I get a team.
Bobby Capuccio is well's it's my little brother. He's a wido, his brother from another mother. He's here every week. He's part of the fabric of typ Of course, he has all of his own things going on. We'll explore those later. But hi, mate, welcome back, Good.
To see you.
Good to see you again. Greg.
What's the it's ten thirty seven here? What does that make it in the AM here? So five thirty seven in the PM?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's exactly exactly what it is. You know your time zones. We talked about this last time.
Today.
I thought, well, I didn't think taken no credit for that. You have the idea of talking about failure, and I think it's a good chat. But let's start with like a definite a definition. Do you think what is failure if you or what is when we're talking good? Is it just like because my failure could be your lesson right or vice versa. So is it really just a subjective label we give stuff or is it an absolute.
I mean, I could talk from my own perspective. I think failure means different things based on different interpretations. But for me, it's just to have an expectation about how something's going to work out, and it doesn't work out that way, and sometimes it's quite shocking, So not really
a failure at all. But one of the things that happened earlier is I was reading the evows from a presentation that I had given turned out to be pretty large presentation, and one of the comments about the presentation was disrespectful and completely distasteful, and I thought, oh, wow, that's that's kind of interesting. And as I as I was reading through it, it's like, this was despicable, this was offensive, was this was done in extremely poor taste. I was like, oh my god, Like did my mom
like write this? This is like kind of weird. And then it turns out that I had utilized the story or an example that I had pulled from research Christakis and Fowler's book Connected, which I've used one hundred times, and the person was really offended to the point they thought I was making, which I was absolutely not making, and they were offended that I even use that example because it was not positive and there are positive examples that you can use, and that's not like that's not
like I'm a traditional failure, but a lot of people would look at that as a failure because it's not the feedback I wanted. It's not what I expected, and it was quite shocking, like I had no way, shape or form expected this, and I so that's one thing that happened. But like I think data day, it's it's these little failures that we don't examine that are probably
more valuable over time than our successes. I could just be completely reframing that because I have so many more failures than successes and I'm just like trying to make myself feel bad about it, but I think that they're they're extremely valuable. And I think if you're not constantly falling on your face and doing something where it's like, damn, that was stupid, I kind of wonder how much you're putting yourself out there.
Yeah, it's when you get feedback.
That's one of the you know, I heard a guy talking this morning and he said, you know, the number one. I don't know if it really is, but it's I guess it's up there. The number one fear is public speaking, and he said, but it's not. It's not really like the fear is not so much public speaking as it is rejection and judgment, you know. And that's the thing because the moment that you're on stage, like it or not, you're being evaluated by whoever's looking at you, and even
the people who are not an inverted commas judgmental. Like, it's virtually impossible to not judge things because we spend our life evaluating, which is another word for judging or labeling or ascertaining safety or you know, it's what we do all the time. But the word judgment has a negative connotation, you know. But you know, when you're crossing the road, you're trying to judge when it's safe to go.
In that context, we don't care. And you know, if you're looking at the fruit, you go, these bananas look better than those that's a judgment call, right, But I think it's hard when like, in your situation, let's say you've got one hundred people and one person's like your shit, ninety nine people are somewhere between. That was pretty good and really good to not invest your energy or to not go down the rabbit hole of the one.
Yeah, because that's how we evaluate it. If that's how I have evaluated, they're like, oh, that was amazing, Well that was the presentation that was disgraceful. Well that's me, that's personal. I mean, for the most part, the rest of the evils were really good, you know. I mean you get like, oh, could have been you know, love the stories, could have got more takeaways around soft skills. One person's like, I was in the back and you know, he whispers a lot, which I thought, do I really
am I a whisperer? Because people who whisper it's a common thing lately where they're talking, like you hear it a lot, like on YouTube and someone speaking in a whisper, I'm like, you are freaking me out. I'm like, I hope I'm not turning into one of those whisper people, because I can't let myself go in that direction. That is very creepy. So I'm just wondering about that.
So, I mean, like, let's just call up failure what we would typically call failure, which is, you know, we wanted something to happen, or we tried something, we didn't get the result we want. Let's not get caught up in the semantics of what is and what isn't, but in the general general understanding that we have of failing. You know, we played a game and we wanted to win, but we didn't, So we lost or we failed or and without kind of weaponizing the term too much, but what's the upside of failure?
What's the like what?
Because it's inevitable, like we're not going to navigate life being a constant winner. So how do we how do we lean into it, and how do we use it to our advantage?
Well, one, it's an outcome. I think all outcomes are feedback. So you had something that you thought was going to happen, you expected to happen, and it either happens or it didn't happen. Both of those have a lot of information that are really useful. So if we take the emotion out of it, it's like I did something, there was an action, and that action caused a reaction. Okay, what can I readily observe? What can I take away from this?
So I was on a virtual conference call this person going through like we talked about this a couple of episodes ago, and I thought, that's like, oh God, I wish we dived into this a little bit more because I feel it's really important. She was talking about complete radical accountability, and she said that she had gone in for lunch and she had chosen a burger, and because she had eaten the burger and then had the fries,
She's like, well, that's a fail outright fail. And I was like, I really appreciate the accountability and the ownership, but I was like, hold on, what is she taking away from that? I feel like there when we accountability is the first step. If you're not taking accountability or you're not acknowledging what happened, well you're not observing all of the variables, you're not going to learn anything. But
I thought, is that all that happened that week? Because she said, yeah, that was that was bad that week, that was a failure. I was like, Okay, let's say you had twenty one meals, three meals on average a day time. Seven and one out of twenty one was not the meal that you would planned to have, but twenty was a win.
Yeah.
It was like, you know, if anyone had that level of success in anything, I wrote a book, I wanted to be a bestseller. Like you know, over ninety five percent of the time, it is like they would study you, like they wouldn't even just build statues about you, write books about you. Like you'd be walking down the street one day and they'd put a hood over your head and like next thing you know, you'd wake up in some lab like in some Marvel sci fi film and
they'd run experiments on you. So it's like, what is your expectation and if it's like five percent of the time, whatever I intend to happen for a lot of different variables is not going to happen and your expectations, that's not acceptable. Man, You're gonna be really disappointed in life. You might even stop trying at some point because your
barrier for success is so bloody high. But look at all the other variables there, Like what happened the rest of the week that allowed you to have twenty meals on point? What were the points of differentiation? What were like we have a lot of questions we can ask what was the environment? Were you more isolated, like working from home so you didn't have interference. Were you around people so you weren't eating out of loneliness? Did you plan your meals the day before?
Was?
What was your emotional state? Were you exhausted? And when it came to discipline, you just couldn't be asked, So what were all the variables that led to twenty successes. Now you have that, what's the contrast. Let's take a look at what happened not at lunch, what happened for the time you woke up leading into lunch with environment emotional state? Right? What was the intensity of that emotional state.
All of these things are teaching you what happens when you do really, really well, what happens when you miss the mark, and that gives you preparatory strategies. It's like I would have asked myself, you know what percentage of success and this is completely subjective, would I give myself in a week like that? And it doesn't matter because if things are like I succeeded or I failed, and
there's no information, there's no learning. Like We've also talked about flow states where skill and challenge are at equal measure, where if your skills far above your challenge, I'm bored, like I can't do this, But if the challenge is too far above your skill, I'm frustrated, I'm overwhelmed. Eventually,
I'm probably not going to engage in this. What can I do to level out those two variables to keep me engaged in moving and a lot of times I could get overwhelmed if I don't have information that comes to me as feed back. So once I have what happened on my worst day, what happened on my best day,
and what about everything in between? If I have a percentage of success, I can go okay, well, arbitrarily, why okay, that was a Let's say that was a ninety percent success rate, or in a different week it's twenty percent. What would twenty five percent look like? Not like one hundred percent, but if that was twenty five percent, what
would what would thirty percent look like? And now I have a gauge, and I keep pushing that and making micromodifications as I go, getting better and better and better, or until I level out where what I'm putting in and what I'm getting in return, even if it's like consistently eighty percent success, that's where I want to be
right now. So it was kind of interesting how when we internalize failure, you know, not as a single isolated event, but as a reflection of who we are as a person's an identity it I think it contributes in a lot of ways to how we rationalize or talk ourselves out of things that would otherwise engage us and help us grap.
Yeah, yeah, I love that reframe on the one out of twenty one meals. I did not see that coming and I was starting to think, yeah, well, is it a failure or is it a choice? I mean, you chose the burger, you know, and then you fucking opened the twenty and I went, that is such a good
that is such a good point. And what if the same person who ate twenty one meals twenty of them were how they should be or how they would hope to be healthy and tick all the micro and macro boxes or whatever, And what if they they what if their protocol or their story is well, one meal a week, I'm just gonna eat whatever the fuck I want.
I'm gonna let my hair down, and it's.
Not going to be healthy, and it's not going to be you know, it's but that's what I'm doing because it tastes fucking great and I'm going to let my head down and that's okay. So this is not a failure. This is actually part of my plan. And for me, I'm not suggesting everyone does it, but for me to have that one cheeseburger and some chips and a coke once a week for me, I fucking love it and bibby Bobby boot that's it.
Then there's no failure at all.
Yeah, I found this out. I don't know if you if you've experienced this, but we're a couple of reform meatheads and pack in my youth, I would just be on this all or nothing like that is it? I am? I am done, Like I am eating this, I am never eating that. And what I started to notice, because I made such a big deal with food, I started having kind of like a weird relationship with it. And I noticed like one day where it's like, no matter what conversation I was in, I was trying to somehow
cleverly integrate the subject of bagels into it. And I was like, what's wrong with me? Like all day, like one of my team would come in, it's like I got to talk to you, and at some point in the conversation we'd be talking about bagels, and then like I'd be chatting with my girlfriend and like bagels would come up, and then my ball, I'm like, Okay, what's
going on? This is kind of weird. And I started to realize that the less of a big deal I made about food, like letting myself have it within measured amounts, especially when you're planning so you don't fall prey to what happens when there's no space between stimulus and response. It wasn't that big of a deal. It was in that like, this is like a completely forbidden food for me. It became so enormous in my mind that all I
was doing was thinking about it. It's like trying to not think about like a polka dot pink and bla flying elephant. The more you try to not think about it, the more it appears in your head, and it's like, God, it's not it's not that big a deal. If you step back and say, Okay, there are going to be certain behaviors and outcomes, and I'm capable of getting better. I have evidence of that, but if something happens, I
don't tell myself. This is what we were talking about with Kristin Neff's work with self compassion, because if it's like, oh my god, you bagel eating disgusting cow, and I say that to myself, not saying I would, not saying I haven't, but well, I start to reinforce a pattern of beliefs that perpetuates that behavior pattern rather than looking back and curiosity and going, well, what happened there? Was
that a choice. It could have been a deliberate choice, like right there was like okay, yeah, I want that, or it could have been I was solo in blood sugar. I had zero, zero discipline mechanisms at work. Did you ever read Bowmster's research on the cookies versus the radishes? No, oh, it's it's fascinating. So Bowmeister brought in the radishes, by the way, Oh it's disgusting, but listen to what happened.
So he brought all these students in and they were doing an experiment and they thought they were doing an experiment on food memorization and how like tactile texture of different foods affected like what you remember about the food. And one group was divided into the cookie people, where it's like, all right, go over to that table, and what we have for you is freshly baked, hot piping
chocolate chip cookies. So they got to just like and it was like, just just take your time, eat slowly, but you can eat as many biscuits as you want. So these people are like, wow, glad I signed up for this the other people. It's like, Okay, radishes have a very distinct texture. So your job is you can eat as many of these cold, disgusting, bland radishes as you want, but you're not allowed to have any cookies. We just need you to stick with one type of food.
So like, right now, I think like the radish people are regretting their decision not to mention they hate the cookie people. And at the end of that, it was like, well, you know, since you're already here, we're running another experiment, would you mind solving some some like mathematical problems or I think there were word problems. Anyway, solving some problems and they were extremely difficult to solve.
Well, what's happening is something that required a high ish level of cognitive function.
Yeah, and not only cognitive function, but you had to have enough discipline and stick to itiveness. The people who were eating the cookies worked on these problems over twice as long as the people who were eating the radishes, because they had to utilize so much glucose and discipline to not just rock up to the cookie table. The other people didn't have to use anything. So it was kind of interesting because let's say I'm walking home from
work and I've made a series of decisions. I've been in like really difficult meetings all day, and oh my goodness, there's a bake shop and normally I don't do that, and I pop into that bake shop and I get, you know whatever, let's say a couple of cookies. If I don't have any self compassion, and it's like, no, you don't do that normally, and no, you're not an
undisciplined person, you just happen to be. Really, I'm not likely to engage in the reflection that would teach me the lessons that would mitigate the occurrences of that type of thing in the future. And that's the problem that I have with not examining what didn't go the way you expected, because it's like, oh my goodness, one I'm like really spent I fall prey to at the behaviors I can't even walk past that big shop. Or maybe I need to bring healthier snacks into the office. Let's
get to the root cause of the problem. But if I don't have self compassion, I'm not going to evaluate failure. If I don't evaluate failure, I'm not going to learn anything from it. If I'm not going to learn anything from it, I'm going to perpetuate the same mistakes that are avoidable.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think when you get an outcome that you don't want, it's it's easy to default to the emotional kind of system of disappointment or frustration or anger or embarrassment or anything in that kind of spectrum. Like when I I recently did a gig and it went pretty well, and the people that I did it for didn't know
that I had an issue. But I have this thing, you station tube dysfunction ETD, right, where sometimes one of my ears just blocks, and it is it sounds like not a problem, it's like and there's no pain or anything. It's just that one ear blocks, and it's like somebody has walked up to me and put an aluminum can or a steel can over my head and it's so distracting that I can't think clearly. And for the last ten minutes of this presentation, I have this bin over my head in inverted commas.
And they didn't know.
And I finished it and I got good feedback, but I know I could have done better. I was so angry at my body. I was so angry at myself for letting myself get angry, and I'm like, and it's so funny with all of my alleged fucking whatever, right, I just I didn't capitulate, which was good, but yeah, I get part of me felt like it was a failure and it wasn't really, but I felt like it and in that moment, so this is my humanity, this
is my flaw, one of my many flaws. But yeah, I find it in that immediate, you know, aftermath, whether or not that's five or ten minutes. I find it extremely challenging when I feel like I have failed or fucked up. I find it really challenging not to hate myself for five or ten minutes. And I know that's bad and I understand it, but I just do and I get so fucking angry at myself because I want to be great for them. I want it to be great. I want it to be a great experience. And yeah,
in that moment, there's no logic going on. I know it's not my fault. I didn't create it. They probably did, they even notice, but yeah, I find it hard not to go down that emotional rabbit hole. But then I guess conversely, when other things happen. I get outcomes I didn't want, maybe because my identity isn't so intertwined with what I think that outcome is. I can dissect it a little bit more logically and go, you know, well, what can I learn? But yeah, I don't know.
I did a seminar for just local government here not too long ago, and we were talking about negative emotions, and my position was, there is no such thing as a negative emotion. There are negative responses, interpretations, and enduring patterns to emotions, but there are no negative emotions. Now, I know what that feels like. And I'm very hesitant to say I know exactly how you feel. I'm not you. I don't know exactly how. But I do the same thing. And if I feel like I have, and it's not
a matter of failure. If it's a personal failure, it's one thing. If I feel like I have failed a group of people or another person, yes, sim I don't. I don't deal with that very well. And I'm Bernie Siegel had the phrase name to tame, and it's it's since you know, it's known, you know a few different ways. But you can call it affective labeling. And what I find is emotions are kind of like that bake shop.
It's okay to go there, Yeah, don't don't live there, don't make it a thing, and don't hang out in their old day. And the premise is for for a lot of reasons, neurobiologically as well as psychologically, When you lean into that pain, it becomes really valuable. One, it stops you from engaging in dysfunctional behavior patterns like I'm just gonna repress it. I'm just going to ignore it, and then it resurfaces in non constructive ways, or one of the things I do is I browt about it.
I think about it forever, like Okay, I'm having this really bad experience in twenty fifteen, I'll be thinking about this in like twenty twenty two. Still, that's not really constructive. But when you lean into it, it's like, Okay, how do I feel? Am I angry? Or is it something else? Am I? Do I feel betrayed by my body? Or
like what exactly is the nuance of that emotion? It decreases the intensity, And once it decreases the intensity, you can evaluate it because for you, there's a value there, like you wouldn't get so angry about that if it wasn't threatening something that you valued deeply, and for you being on stage in front of people doing that thing, it probably it's connected to your highest values.
Yeah that's true.
Yeah it's not making sense, but I mean okay, so just unpack this with me, Like to understand the emotion and to understand my emotional response to that outcome or that experience is one thing. How do we how do we change that emotion? How do we you know, it's like, you know, when people are worried and someone says to them, don't worry, Well, that's not at all helpful.
No, I can't stand I can't stand those people. It's like talk about things that make you angry right there. You know, there's there's a few things. One affect of labeling in and of itself is a strategy because we so explain that like effectively. Is weird?
Practical example for someone.
Okay, you just gave a presentation and something was not at your standard for what you want to deliver, and it could be because of a physical impediment or anything, and you're really angry. Name it. Okay, I am angry right now, but go deeper. It's not just like I'm angry. I feel I betrayed myself and my audience, which in
your case in this story is not like appropriate. It could be your body betrayed you, or you know, I feel I feel resentful because I was up late last night working on a project that I didn't need to be on and I didn't sleep, and now I delivered in a way that is not my standard of what
those people deserve. Like really get into that. When you start to get into that, a couple of things start to happen in your brain that mitigate the entity that emotional state where you start telling yourself stories about how horrible you are and things that are not true, not constructive. One is the upregulation of the prefrontal lobes when you start leaning into analysis, like what exactly am I feeling
right now? And why, your prefrontal lobes increase in activity, which lowers the activity in the AMIG deals just modulating that emotional state. Two, you're starting to put words and language to a feeling. When that starts to happen, you're bringing in your left temporal lobes, so you're getting more whole brain integration. Because if you're thinking about when I'm really angry. You're going to have a disproportionate amount of activity in the right prefrontal cortex and the right side
of the brain overall. So now you're starting to integrate those hemispheres by bringing in your language center because they reside in the left temporal lobes. So biologically you're starting to reduce that intensity. So step number one is name it, like what exactly am I faan? And you don't have to be accurate, You just have to lean in and ask the question and pursue the answer. What do you think caused that? Right? And then once that emotion subsides,
what's the value that this is threatening? Because now you start to learn more about what drives you. Because if you were standing up in front of a room and all of a sudden, like you got this incredible mental clarity, like your brain just had a cup of coffee, you wouldn't walk out of that room. And I'm so angry right now because nothing you cared about was threatened. As a matter of fact, something aligned with one of your values, you might walk out of them. I don't know what happened.
I was feeling okay, but halfway through, like the lights went on, and I feel I really connected with the audience. Another question is what human need? Is this threatening or is going unmet? Because maybe maybe the reason why you're angry is I need appreciation, I need acceptance. I don't think I got it from my audience. Okay, everybody needs appreciation and acceptance. Could that possibly be getting in the way of how I deal with problems when they occur
on stage? Could my motivation in the moment be something that's creating a blind spot that's causing me a respond this way? So you're learning more about yourself, and the more you're learning about like where you are and where you want to be, you have you have greater possibilities around strategies and ways to prepare or ways to adapt, so that becomes highly constructive. I mean, that's that's one
area where having Taret's helps me. Is like a turning turning, turning rumination into constant reflection.
I feel for me, like and maybe for a lot of people, but for me, you know that, And that's not like I'm angry as in fucked off at the world. I'm angry at myself right and I'm frustrated and all of these things periodically not. I think for the most part, I don't go there too often, but when I do, and as you're talking about it there, I'm thinking.
Okay, so.
What what's driving that emotional response to that particular not not great outcome on or not great outcome as.
Perceived by me? Right?
And I think it's fear. I think all of those emotions come back to fear. It's like, oh, I fear. I'm fearful that I won't be able to do this anymore. I won't get any more work, they won't think I was any good, they won't love me, they'll say bad shit about me, They'll like all of these insecure, fear based fucking emotions, you know.
And it's it's, yeah, where you're trying to.
Trying to understand the the you know, they're not particularly desirable emotional response that I'm having to this, and to be it's so funny to realize, I don't know for me, like I still sometimes have this moment of awareness that isn't a good moment of awareness, but it's awareness nonetheless, and it's like, oh, I'm actually still quite insecure. I'm like, I'm I'm really about three percent better than I was thirty years ago. You know, it's like I'm not a
work in progress. I'm pretty much a work in stagnation.
You know. It's like I'm fucking.
Treading water in an emotional sea of fucking mediocrity.
Not to be one of these people. But I think a useful questions like what is good about that? You know, like what's good about that? Because we know what can be bad about that? And there could be a lot of maladaptive behaviors associated to that one. There's there's honesty there, there's openness because you're not only self aware and honest enough with yourself to say that, but you're vulnerable enough to say that, like on a podcast talking to countless
numbers of people. So just even that conversation reveals a lot of attributes that you have that could be leveraged. But what is good about that feeling of insecurity? Because again, I think everything has a light in a dark side, depending on what dose you're taking at it.
Right, I actually quite I like that question. I've thought about that, I've this is this is my explanation. But the insecurity and fear and all of the you know, like there's not generally speaking, there's not much self life loathing. I don't, you know, I don't think I'm a piece of worthless shit, none of that. But I don't think highly of myself. And I'm definitely not saying that to
garner any praise or whatever. But what I do like, for me, the upside of insecurity is that it makes me keep working hard, it makes me keep trying it. Kind of It's like I never you know, people might not believe this, depending on how they perceive me, but I never think, fuck, I'm amazing at this.
I never have that.
You know.
It's like when people comfortably call themselves an expert, I'm I'm simultaneously impressed with them and curious because I go.
How how do you say that?
So like, and I don't think they necessarily should or shouldn't, but I feel too embarrassed, too insecure to tell the world, Ah, listen to me, I'm an expert, right, and I think I've got as much knowledge and experience as many of the people who say that. But nonetheless, on no level do I feel like an expert.
So I think for.
Me that you know, well, you don't want it to be debilitating or controlling or overwhelming, but me feeling while knowing that I have potential and I have some skills, and I can string a few words together, and I have a you know, like, I've got evidence to tell me that I'm not terrible at what I do. I've got data, I've got outcomes. Right, So that's nice, that's just logic, but also that underlying insecurity for me anyway, I think it keeps me grounded, and it keeps me hungry,
and it keeps me curious, and it keeps me. I think it keeps me relatable. I think it keeps me so people go, ah, he's a bit like he's a bit fucked up, like me, cool, you know.
So I don't think it's a bad thing.
So there are a lot of benefits to something that because I mean, I think when it comes to collective truths, we double down way too much on our collective illusions as a society about like this is good, that's bad. I mean, there are some things that are just like okay, just really bad, and then there are some things that are obviously really good. But it's like, oh, you should always feel really good about yourself. Well, what if I feel so good about myself that I'm always certain so
I have zero self awareness, zero self reflection. I don't modify my behaviors. I do tons of damage to people, but don't give a shit about that. It has to be them, can't be me, And I never honestly evaluate myself. It's like I was in I was in a situation probably a year ago, where I'm leading this team of people and it's not working out very well. Now my identity.
It's like some of the people that I have loved the most, that have been closest to me, that have added so much of my world are people that I've worked with and people that have been on my teams reporting into me, because like, if you report into me, my job is to serve you. Not at the expense of the mission, but my job is to serve you. Yeah, And I was just allowing a lot of things, and it was just evolving and evolving and evolving, and it's like what if I would have been like, well, it's
not me, it's them. And I was so sure myself. I kept asking myself, Okay, what am I doing here? It's got to be It's not totally my fault, obviously, because there's a lot of factors in a team dynamic, but I'm leading the team. This is overall my response.
The responsibilities on me too. There has to be things that I am doing to create this, and I cared enormously about the people on the team, So there were certain actions I should have taken, but I didn't take them because I was like, I'm doing something and there's something that I don't know, like something you know, like
where you're like, something just doesn't feel right. And then I find out, you know, after the fact, I'm a no longer like on this team anymore, that there were things that I absolutely did not know, and it's like, oh, that doesn't completely explain it, but that makes a lot more sense. And had I handled it a different way, I might have injured somebody that I really cared about, And that, to me, is a lot worse than being in a managerial position and kind of not being a
great fit. I can live with that. I don't look at myself as a manager, never have. To me, leadership is far more important for me, not not saying leadership is more important than management, I don't think it is. I think those things are both incredibly important in any organization, but you have to be careful about feeling so good about yourself that it creates devastating blind spots because you might think you're right in everything or other people of
the problem. You might not work on things that need attention and that could go un check for about five years until people you really want in your life disappear from your life. And now that hurts.
So yes, yeah, yeah.
What what is a if there is one?
A memorable for one of a better term, a memorable failure that you experienced that ended up being something more of a positive or at the very least, you know, a growth kind of experience.
Oh my days. Okay, well, don't want to talk about Australia. That was big, not not like your country. Your country is great. I'm talking about a specific situation in Australia. Besides Australia wasn't my failure, So I'll talk about I'll talk about PTA Global, Sure, that was that was massive.
So what had happened was I had put together this company as a co founder with people I really cared about, really respected, loved working with, and then we brought on we brought on some other people as co founders after and I think looking back, it was one of the best times in my life and then it all went away. So I had lost my place in a company that had a very large role in creating and that led to a couple of other things that happened in my
life around the same time. And it was just absolutely devastating. I mean, probably the most devastating event in my adult life, not just because of the loss of what I considered my home, my girl, my company, a couple of my mates. But I think it turned out to be it turned out to be incredible for me because I learned a lot of lessons, one of about what my motivations were. I was very dishonest with myself at that period of my life about what I really wanted out of business,
what I wanted out of that company. I wanted all the things you would traditionally want out of a business, you know. I wanted to make a livelihood, create something of value that endures. But I was also looking for a family.
Yes, And.
When you're doing that with business partners, that's kind of interesting because and we would all use the term, oh, we're brothers and everything, and to me, we were I don't want people to take this the wrong way. I think sometimes when you're on a team, there is a closeness that is greater than your family. And I'm not saying these people are more important than your family at all, But what I'm saying is you choose one another and
you come together based on a common mission and values. Yeah, where with your family it's like, Okay, you're born into that or adopted into that, and you don't have to say for me, I was looking for I think that void and that's not something that is fair for people when you enter into that and they don't know that, and it's not fair for you because you'll start making decisions that are that are kind of skewed towards fulfilling an emotional need rather than what is the best decision
for the business right now. And so I learned a little bit about what I need and what drives me that I that I don't think I I led with. And that level of clarity helped me structure my life quite different. And I think it kind of really helped me when I met Amy, to be fair, because I was in I was in this state where I don't I don't need relationships, relationships. I'm fine, I'm totally fine. And I had these views on dating and all that
was was anger and pain. Yes, And when I met her, I was at the tail end of that, and that clarity about what I wanted, what I was looking for, allowed me to see something that I probably wouldn't have seen beforehand. So that's a very long winded answer because I just had to work that out in my head. It wasn't like right there, it was like because it was a really big question.
Well, this is the beauty of an organic conversation. I might I've got to go. We've got I've got more stuff to do, and you've probably got more stuff to do. It's probably twenty past six on planet U. It's heading towards dinner time. Are you making the lovely? Are you making her dinner? Are you taking her out for dinner? Are you having dinner together?
We are having dinner together. So she'll make one part of it. I'll make another part of it. We like to split the t It's a good it's a very good time to wrap this up because otherwise, like with these questions where they're going, I would have to like lay down on a sofa and continue this conversation. Greg. Always love talking to you. Thank you listeners.
Thanks a lot tell everyone where they can find your mate before you go.
I am currently on K Street in downtown San Diego. But if that's like too much of an ask, you can just find me at robacacuccio dot com or thesouth Albad dot com.
All right, buddy, thanks Mike talk.
She is met. Bye bye,