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April 19, 2023

715: How to Break Free from FEAR & Turn Setbacks into SUCCESS

Strategies for Overcoming Your Fear of Failure and Turning Life's Setbacks into Triumphs

Are you tired of feeling stuck in your comfort zone? Are you ready to break free from your fear of failure and start taking risks? Then you need to watch this episode of The Brian Nichols Show, where host Brian Nichols and author Andrew Thorp King discuss the power of embracing failure.

In his book "Failure Rules: The Five Rules of Failure for Entrepreneurs, Creatives, and Authentics", King shares his personal journey of embracing failure and using it as a tool for growth and success. He encourages listeners to see failure as an opportunity to learn, rather than a setback, and offers practical strategies for using failure as a catalyst for change.

During their conversation, King and Nichols discuss the "failure purify" rule and how it can help you identify and eliminate faulty thinking, habits, and worldviews. They also explore how failure can be used to open up new perspectives and opportunities for success. With actionable advice and inspiring stories, this episode is a must-watch for anyone looking to overcome their fear of failure and start living life to the fullest.

But that's not all - this episode also includes exclusive behind-the-scenes content for Patreon subscribers. By becoming a Patreon subscriber, you'll get access to even more insights and advice from Brian Nichols and his guests. Plus, if you're looking for personalized coaching and guidance, check out Brian Nichols Consulting to set up a one-on-one with Brian.

Don't let fear hold you back any longer. Embrace failure, learn from your mistakes, and start living the life you've always dreamed of. Watch this episode of The Brian Nichols Show today and start your journey to success!

 

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Transcript

Brian Nichols  0:00  
Well hey there, folks, it's Brian Nichols here. And before we get started, I want to let you know that today's episode is a little bit different of an episode not in terms of the awesome guests we had during the show, but rather, the length of today's episode because normally, as you likely will know, our episodes run around 20 or so minutes, but not today. Today. We are over 30 I think over 35 minutes I could be wrong. But that is because today's episode also includes our behind the scenes, paywall content over on our Patreon, which you can find usually at $1.99 a month, I want to give you guys regular subscribers here of the show a little sneak peek a little taste of what we are doing behind the paywall some of the questions that we're asking our guests, but also some of the fantastic conversation pieces that we continue with after the main show has ended. So with that being said, if you enjoy today's episode in its entirety, well then you're going to love our Patreon. So head over there, Brian Nichols show.com forward slash support signup on the Patreon $1.99 a month for your audience insider exclusive access or if you're loving the show, and you want to go ahead and become a $5 a month subscriber as a superfan. Well, I encourage that as well. But enough from me onto the show Andrew Thorpe king here on The Brian Nichols Show. Alright folks, it's time to embrace the F word. No, not that F word you weirdo. The one that we all try to avoid failure. Let's talk about that. Instead of focusing on winning arguments. We're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Well, hey there, folks, Brian Nichols here on The Brian Nichols Show. And thank you for joining us on of course, another fun filled episode. I am as always your humble host. Joining you live from our B and C Studios here in loving Eastern Indiana folks, your recession is right around the corner, you're probably feeling it. I know a lot of folks I'm talking to you are already feeling it. So do not let the outdated sales and marketing strategies that you're currently focusing on for your business. Keep you behind your competitors. Learn more by checking out my website, Brian Nichols, consulting.com. Or if you want to go ahead and set up a one on one with yours truly, truly email me Brian, at Brian Nichols show. I'm sorry, Brian at Brian Nichols consulting There we go.com. Folks, thank you for joining us. And yes, we touched on this in the intro here. The F word the one that we are always running away from that is failure. I talked about this many a time on the show, it's important for us to be the best version of ourselves. And with that, we want to make sure we focus on how can we be the best version of ourselves. Joining us today talking about how we need to embrace failure and his brand new book failure rules. Andrew Thorpe King, welcome to The Brian Nichols Show.

Andrew Thorp King  2:43  
Brian, thanks for having me. Sorry about our technical difficulties earlier. Appreciate you having me on excited to be here.

Brian Nichols  2:50  
Absolutely. Andrew, thank you for joining us. And hey, no worries, technical difficulties are a name of the game here in the 2020, post COVID world I work in technology. And this is the huge Hey, can you hear me now? Oh, you're on mute. Still, trust me, no worries. It happens all the time. But we're very appreciative that you're able to join us today. And we are able to get things figured out because Andrew, you're bringing a lot of important conversation topics to the audience today. And that is not the idea of running away from our failures, but rather embracing our failure. So we want to hit on that. Before we do that. Please do us a favor. Introduce yourself to The Brian Nichols Show audience.

Andrew Thorp King  3:27  
Sure. So my name is Andrew stone King. I'm the author here of failure rules, the five rules of failure for entrepreneurs, creatives and authentics background in a variety of different spaces, mostly a dual career in banking and finance in different manifestations, as well as the music industry also in the gym, also wrote a spy novel also have done bodybuilding competition. So things like that kind of wide array of background, cigar lover, punk rocker, lots of things. So

Brian Nichols  3:55  
that's, yeah, a lot of stuff there. And I guess it kind of goes all hand in hand with your overall theme that you're focusing on here. And that is embracing failure to help you become a better person trying new things being open to the idea that failure might be an option. And hey, mistakes are proof that you're learning. So talk to us about what led you down this path of embracing failure. And going to the point you wrote a book about it.

Andrew Thorp King  4:20  
That's right. Yeah. So during my 20s and my 30s, I was doing a lot of what I would call off road entrepreneurial adventure, adventuring, right, trying many different things in many different spaces, learning what worked and what didn't. And I learned a lot about what didn't work and I learned a lot about how to handle things when they didn't work and how to handle sometimes even near catastrophic failures that might ruin other people. So I think of like missing two leaves concept of anti fragile, where when you know you're when you're confronted by harm, you don't just get up and restore but you actually, you know, grow from harm and get stronger. And you know, taking a beach walk one day thinking of the Winston Churchill quote, that bell He was going, or success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. And I think, again, I was convicted to write a book, but the value of failure, and kind of excavate all these different experiences I had, and layer in kind of inspirational input from virtual mentors that helped inform my life and helped me in certain failure moments, including a lot of the music, I listen to hardcore metal and punk rock. Because, you know, I own to hardcore metal and punk rock label record labels. So I just started writing the book. And as I read, wrote the book, draft a draft, through iteration from year to year, it became apparent that there were these overarching kind of rules that really coagulated the stories together. And that's how I came up with the five rules of failure. So that's kind of the background. So let's

Brian Nichols  5:48  
kick things off with the I guess, understanding that we need to embrace failure, right, and we hear at The Brian Nichols Show, while we do talk about the world of politics, we also talk a lot about sales and marketing, and specifically, how can we take what we know works in the private sector and bring it to the world of politics to help meet people where they're at on those issues they care about, but with that, understanding not just what works, but what didn't work, recognizing where we can learn from the failures, so we don't repeat them in the future. So I guess when you're going through, and you're you're mapping out some consistent, I guess, issues that you see with folks, when we're addressing the term failure, you mentioned that there are specific rules here, you gonna kind of walk through some of those main rules and and where you kind of came to find them as being the underlying, I guess, principles of embracing failure.

Andrew Thorp King  6:39  
Yeah, so failure Rule number one is failure, purify. So it's this idea that the Phoenix must burn to emerge, that when we have a failure event in our lives, although it's very difficult, it's best to try to step out of your emotional participation in that event, and step more into an objective observer role where you can look at the event, see, see the chaos and the energy that exists within that event, and see how it might actually be there to serve you and shape you into a better next version of yourself, whether it's professionally, personally, spiritually, emotionally, however, that might be and really take ownership of your own response to that event, you know, and it's the idea that, you know, oftentimes when we encounter failure events, if we're really kind of leveraging it correctly, or metabolizing, it wisely, we might realize it actually was good for us in the sensitive burned off, you know, faulty ways of thinking old thinking dies, new thinking kind of emerges, it could, you know, burn off, you know, bad habits, it could, it could open us up to a wider view of the world as we tried to make our way forward in a different path. And so it's really, it's really that kind of idea that failure can actually be a great purifier.

Brian Nichols  7:43  
Interesting. I like that a lot. Because I think you look too often people, they try to run away from failure, they don't want to experience the pain that comes with failure. And I'll give you a real life example. So myself, I used to weigh 385 pounds. And the idea of me going to the gym, and working out, it was terrifying to me, because I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I thought I was gonna look like an idiot in there. And you know, it's gonna hurt myself, and I was gonna get laughed at and I was gonna fail, right? But I kept going to the gym, even though I everything in my body told me not to both mentally and physically. And then fast forward. Two years later, I look back and I had lost 180 pounds of fat. And for me, that I guess for it was like the big spark I needed to your point of realizing you have to embrace the possibility of failure. Even if you don't necessarily fail, you still, at least are putting yourself in a position that you're in your uncomfortable zone, right? Getting out of that comfort zone, where you just feel safe and secure and being willing to, to face failure head on, but also to test things that you thought were true. So maybe if you could articulate a little bit more about what examples you've seen in your personal life, where you've had maybe some preconceived notions or something in that world where you tested it, and you were, in fact met with failure and how that helped you. On your path moving forward.

Andrew Thorp King  9:10  
Yeah, so I mean, what you touched on there with the with the working out example, the way that the example is perfect, right? Because again, it's this idea that we're constantly going to need to go through sometimes intentional cycles of death and renewal in our lives, in order to grow to grow like that really is the pathway to growth, you're not looking for failure. Failure is not this is not like failure porn. This is not like, you know, a willful indulgence and failure and just do whatever you're wanting, and it doesn't matter. Just be reckless. I mean, obviously, you want a plan, you want a plan to succeed, but you have to be prepared to iterate because like Mike Tyson said, you know, plans great to your punch in the mouth. So you still want to go forward. And just the idea that if you're doing difficult things on a regular basis, you know, you're likely going to encounter more failures along the way, they're going to travel together. So I think of one time in my life where I had just gone through a business divorce and had split from a partnership and an online lending company I was involved in, I had also just gone through a marital, marital divorce. And so all of a sudden, I found myself, you know, a longtime entrepreneur, self employed and longtime married all of a sudden, I was not, he didn't have that my primary income come from a, you know, a source of self employment. And that was no longer married. And I found myself living in a hotel room, no office to go to by day, no family to go home to at night. And so in that empty failure space, right, I viewed it more as a, you know, the chaos was more of an opportunity, I use that energy to reshape my future. And in that space, instead of wallowing in discomfort instead of wallowing in, you know, you know, anxiety, I use that space, and I filled it with a number of different pursuits in parallel, and really invoke this kind of divinity of purpose within and so I was able to take my skills from the online lending world become a consultant, I quickly got to clients that evolved into a proper partnership. And in a lead generation company that became lucrative. I also repurposed my resume ended up giving, getting a formal job in the online or the commercial banking space in the FinTech world, I still work that job today, as an executive at nine years in, I also finished my first spy novel, rejuvenated my record labels and put out a number of record releases. And I began writing failure rules. So within that empty space, all kinds of new threads were born. So this new me came out that was wider, more diverse, and more, more disparate and more interesting. And life really opened up. And that was a choice. And that was a particular kind of mindset in that failure space. So it's really this idea that failure, many failures, although some of them often are tragic, could be damaging, could could, could wield. You know, all kinds of problems in your life. You know, there is a way to look at those circumstances and scenarios, and find something great in them and apply yourself to them in such a way that you come out stronger, and better. And you really move forward into your calling journey.

Brian Nichols  12:05  
Oh, for sure. I really appreciate you kind of walking through your your personal experience and your personal story, because I'm sure that there are lots of folks listening right now who they're putting themselves in your shoes, because that's their shoes, right? They've experienced failure, and you kind of come to this fork in the road, right? And you're deciding which way do you want to go? Do you want to go towards the path that seems the safest, which is maybe going back to what you're comfortable with, or, at this point, when you've hit failure, trying something new, embracing new things. So to those individuals, right, who are facing this fork in the road, what would be some guidance and recommendations that you'd make to them based on your personal experience on your end?

Andrew Thorp King  12:48  
Yeah, so that's good, that actually points to a couple of the other rules. So failure rule number five is you are not your failures. And it's this idea that in the failure event, you need to detach your, your identity from your failure events, you know, to come, you know, just detach from the optics, the negative optics of failure, and view yourself differently. And then it also that also kind of tracks back to failure Rule number two, some of what you're saying there, failure, we're number two is nothing is safe. And it's this idea that because nothing is safe, you really wanna have a portfolio of pursuits. You don't want to over identify with any particular pursuit, even though you still softly identify as you're creating an identity in the world that's evolving and might be you know, widening as your interest grow. But it's really kind of that remaining nimble knowing that nothing is safe out there, which yield tracks back to somewhat of a small l libertarian ethos. And I go through many case studies in the book of those that kind of rub that elk, whether it's Let me kill Mr. Motorhead or Norman Colin, Sailor Jerry, from, you know, sailor, Jerry, who, you know, is the godfather of old school tattooing. And it's those kinds of mindsets and people like that, that I really look up to always found a way to keep doing something new no matter what hit them, and brand new, expressive ways to put themselves out there in the world.

Brian Nichols  14:02  
Talk to us more about these rules, right? Because I know you mentioned as you're kind of going through and you're you're kind of self analyzing yourself, and you're realizing that there are specific rules that you're uncovering. Talk to us more about the rules themselves, you know, they're not necessarily hard and fast rules, but rules that you have moreso embraced, to avoid, I guess, the avoid, but more so embrace the ideas of failure and not to be afraid of them. So more of the context there if you would. Yeah. So

Andrew Thorp King  14:31  
you're right. It's not to avoid failure, certainly not to potentially collide with it, but to recognize it's going to happen, not particularly doing difficult things or unorthodox things. Right? Right. And so failure rule number one was failure purifies failure. Rule number two, is nothing is safe. And again, it's this idea that, you know, many of the people in the world would kind of seek safety clean the safety kind of go for that anesthetized life are often not really living out their full purpose. I believe that You know, I think oftentimes they're kind of muzzling something inside that they're afraid to really evoke in the world because of the risk. You know, and I think that oftentimes those who take the safe path and ignore that internal spirit voice might be calling to something more difficult, higher, in more bold, that oftentimes they're gonna, you know, ended up kind of succumbing to an existence that is, much like the Henry David Thoreau quote of, you know, living lives of quiet desperation. And they'll manifest some sort of dysfunction, some sort of sickness, mentally, spiritually, even physically, because of that emotionally, right. And so it could be someone with all the externals in life, but internally, they're dead inside. You know, it could be somebody who has that nice job, but they feel like they're a slave to it, they're trapped to it. They might have, you know, a nice family, a nice house, but everything seems to be controlling them. And they seem to just kind of be an automaton within that structure. And they might be muzzling something inside them that might be calling them greatness in a specific area. But they're not even really willing to look at it, or go after it because of the risk of failure.

Brian Nichols  16:01  
What are some of the biggest, I guess the biggest areas where folks and maybe you can speak to yourself as well start to feel that that sense of rejection, that sense of failure creeping in is a societal pressure? Is it financials? Or is it something in between?

Andrew Thorp King  16:19  
Could be societal, that's big for a lot of people. I think the two biggest ones that I think I felt I personally felt peripherally but always, you know, overcame, and didn't allow to come into my decision making matrices was familiar or perceived familial, you know, you know, opinions, and as well as financial, because financial is hard and real, like, yep, you know, if you don't have money, you really are gonna have real, real problems. And I've been in those positions, right, I've made it all lost, it all made, it all lost it all traverse through wild fluctuations within my personal economic journey, you know, really, really high euphoric highs and really, really low, almost near catastrophic lows. And that seems that kind of bipolarism of economics is very difficult to diversity, for a lot of people, they would rather have just a steady path. But I find that even with that bipolarism of an economic life, based on the volatility of chasing it, they're difficult and interesting things. For me, that puts me into spaces of highest meaning. And I really felt like at all times, I was aligned with my calling journey, and doing what I could do to most succinctly maximize my own personal talents that stack and put it out into the world.

Brian Nichols  17:31  
When you talk about family, I think that one hits very home for a lot of folks listening to the show, because, you know, when you talk about family, there is that sense of your, your your voc, right, your tribe, your your people. And just going back to our ancestral genetic approach to life, we don't want to disrupt that environment, that family vibe, because they are at the end of the day, the people we are hoping will embrace us when the proverbial crap hits the fan. But to your point, family, in some cases are some of the biggest barriers that are actually holding us back because of that stick us that self imposed feeling of safety and security, and really not realizing it might not be true safety and security at all.

Andrew Thorp King  18:19  
That's right, that's right. Because what is safe, if the, if at the end of the day, you have this suffocating feeling about your existence, and oftentimes still still tethered to structures that will temporarily might make you feel safe, still, but they're not bound to you, you don't control them, they control you. And so you have to realize that nothing is safe, even those things that appear to be safe. You know, and, you know, what you're talking about, it kind of tracks back to a quote that I leveraged in the book a lot, you know, aligned to, you know, the failure number five of you are not your failures, which is Leo Tolstoy, when he said, you know, the best solution often is to ignore the opinion to be kind and ignore the opinions of others. So it's, it's that idea, like smile, be kind, listen to, you know, the perceptions of others, you know, let them have their perceptions, but you got to follow it, follow your own internal spirit voice and act on that. And what you know, is the best path for you to maximize your impact in the world, right, and your highest highest calling. So that is really a tough one. And I think for a lot of a lot of people family really oftentimes, you know, they're more concerned about your safety. They're more concerned about you not failing and not getting hurt, not going through a difficult time because you want to protect you. And I think that instinct really, you know, while natural, and in a very measured sense can sometimes be okay, a lot of the times it's hindering, and it can really be something that cripples people from really maximizing the potential.

Brian Nichols  19:49  
What would you say to those family members out there who are listening and they go, Well, yeah, I want to protect my family to help them feel maybe more comfortable with the idea of letting their family members experience failure failure for the sake of growing?

Andrew Thorp King  20:04  
Yeah, I think that, right. I mean, I think that would be a challenge for a lot of people. And I think it takes, I think, some intentional study of those who really live kind of intentionally unsafe lives for hire purposes, to get a sense of what that means, and why somebody you love might be attracted to that type of path. And that maybe could give a family member some understanding of unorthodox paths that somebody loved might be pursuing.

Brian Nichols  20:32  
Yeah. Well, hey, I know we're getting towards the end of the the main episode here before we go behind the paywall for the Patreon, which I'm going to be asking a lot of, well, not a lot, but some more detailed conversation topics as it pertains to failure in the world of politics. But before we get there, I want to wrap this episode up with your uptake in terms of what do you think if you're looking at the rules are the most important rules, if you had to rank them that you've outlined in terms of living a more successful life while also embracing the idea of failure?

Andrew Thorp King  21:05  
I think it's failure rule number five, you are not your failures, for sure. You know, it's the one that caps out the suite of failure rules. And it's one that's most important, because how we think about ourselves, you know, as we approach failures are climbing out of them, or potentially might be planning a path that might run into them is the most important. So it's that mindset of like, failure in this event, I'm detached from it, I'm going to chase after my path and find a way to metabolize and leverage values if they happen. And it's not who I am. It's just something that I experienced and something that I have to overcome.

Brian Nichols  21:37  
All right, Andrew. So with that, we're gonna go towards our final thoughts here for the main part of the episode, I'll kick things off, if you're cool with that. And that is, I'll say, you know, from my end, I have failed more times, and I can count in my life and Andrew, you hit the nail on the head. It's how you learn and adapt to those failures. And I think, for me, I think Rule number one is very important that the idea that purifying because it helps you realize not just what works, but frankly, what doesn't work. And with that, I want to actually as we go towards the Patreon part of the episode, focus on some of that from a political standpoint. So folks, if you want to hear Andrews answers in terms of how he applies the rules of failure to some of our political questions, we'll make sure you head over to our Patreon dollar 99 A month gets you in as an audience insider to catch the rest of our conversation here. So that's my final thoughts. Andrew, as we wrap up the main episode, what are your final thoughts for today?

Andrew Thorp King  22:29  
Yeah, I would just I would just echo that. Just remember that failure is a purifier if you view it correctly. Detach your identity from your failure events, and find a way to reshape the chaos in your life to make you a wider more interesting better evolving self.

Brian Nichols  22:45  
Love it all right, the book is failure rules. where can folks go ahead and grab their copy today, Andrew?

Andrew Thorp King  22:52  
available anywhere books are sold online, including an audio book, you can find me at Andrew Thorpe king.com Knowing and the end of Thor from there you can connect to me on Instagram YouTube, you get a free failure rules, many courses a failure will soundtrack on Spotify, and Apple Music, all kinds of great stuff.

Brian Nichols  23:08  
fan tastic. Folks, we will include that link why all those links in the show notes plus the link to the book failure rules, which again can be found over on Amazon and yes, I know this is the third time I'm bringing it up but we are going to continue our conversation over on Patreon so if you want to go ahead and catch the next part of the episode, please head over to the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash support become a supporting listener $1.99 a month and it lets you hear more detailed conversations with amazing guests like Andrew here. So with that being said you can follow me on social media at be Nichols liberty, twitter, facebook minds.com. And also, we're gonna go ahead and catch this episode before anybody else sovereign.com It's a sovereign exclusive airs a day before anywhere else the podcast version, the YouTube version, Rumble wherever it is Elsa, you're gonna catch it early over on sovereign so head over there to get your sovereign exclusive. But with that being said, Brian Nichols signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for Andrew Thor. Oh my gosh, my British rock Andrew Thorpe king that was a Johnson and Adam Johnson on my show last time. Enter Thor King we'll see you later.

Unknown Speaker  24:13  
Thank you. All right, and

Brian Nichols  24:15  
let's kick off the Patreon sorry about that. Andrew, my brain broke. By the way I'm a dad of three weeks right now so slow, who sleep is hard to find I'm I'm hauling right now. So thank you for sticking with me on the episode today.

Andrew Thorp King  24:31  
No problem at all. Myself I remember those years.

Brian Nichols  24:35  
You get it. Okay, perfect. So I feel better than that. That's my failures my brain breaking. Well here let's go ahead to the Patreon side of the episode Yeah, but I'll leave this in so folks can see that I fail as well as a host. So with that, I wanted to talk some about the politics side of failure right because we in the greater small l libertarian movement. We're very, I guess used to and frequented by the He has a failure. So based on learning about failure today and the main episode, what would be some recommendations you would make to libertarians out there in terms of actually learning from our failures to have more political sex success in the future?

Andrew Thorp King  25:16  
Learning from our failures have more political success in the future. Okay. So I think there's been obviously like, you know, as politics has evolved, particularly over the last 10 years, I think it's become really, really interesting that nuance has played more of a part in kind of splintering various factions within the entire political spectrum spectrum. Right. And, and I think that's a big part of the libertarian big tent as well, right. And so I think that one of our biggest failures is to think too narrowly, about what it means to be any sort of political stripe, and so libertarian in general, so I think, I think libertarians do this better than any other, just basically, based on the fundamentals of the philosophy, but then again, always kind of keeping that open mind of, you know, someone might still be aligned with your most core values and principles. You know, even if they had different opinions on certain policies, or different opinions on how a small l libertarian philosophy translates into a big L libertarian policy, those type of things. So I think it's really kind of learning from, I think, what has been, you know, the failure of the Republican Party? And, you know, one of the, the real issues, obviously, the Democrat Party, which is a lot of the rigidity in that platform, yeah, whereas libertarian really is supposed to decouple yourself as much as possible functionally, from governmental, down press, so that you can have more freedom within within society, to you know, make your own choices and to fail and to be responsible for those failures and figure out how to get up from them on your own or with the private help of others, you know, right. And so I would say that would be respond to that. Well, and

Brian Nichols  26:54  
I'd say that kind of adds to maybe why, while the libertarian, the Libertarian sentiment and our principles, they make sense from art, not just like a living our lives perspective, but it also makes sense in terms of why maybe we haven't seen the success politically. And that is, you look at the what we were talking about earlier, the idea of folks want to have that sense of safety and security, right. And I mean, government, if anything is looked to as this big arbiter of creating a safe and fair environment, eliminating the opportunities of failure, and it almost becomes this utopian vision for how we can build our societies versus to the point that you were making earlier in the episode, but just now, we have to embrace the opportunity to fail, because that's how you can learn what works and what doesn't work, when you're just trying to force feed one size fits all solutions based on the idea that, well, this is going to keep us safe and secure. Yeah, it might have unintended consequences, by inspiring people to continue to do acts that fail and not actually let them fail.

Andrew Thorp King  28:01  
Yeah, and to that point, I would expand and say, you know, it's also, you know, this idea of, you know, the big government kind of ethos, or movements or forces, you know, it's like they have this idea of, almost as to humanizing expectation of sameness from people were they think of us all as kind of these bricks, right, right. As opposed to the reality is that we were all created very, very unique. We're more like stones, not like bricks, bricks is more like this socialism mindset. We're we're really individuals, we're like stones, we have our own different special bright spots and scratches and pock marks and shapes and everything else. And you have to allow that to flourish with freedom without the intervention or the the kind of overbearing, you know, rigidity that the Government continues with their, their, their scope creep, to try to impose on us and that's happening now on a global scale to more than just national. And so, you know, for me, taking it back to the smaller libertarianism, which to me tracks back to the punk rock ethos of DIY, to the do it yourself ethos of entrepreneurialism, to the supernatural reliance on sort of some sort of faith beyond this world, beyond the governments of this world, all those things tracked together to meet to, to really kind of solidify this libertarian approach to living life and living it as a unique individual, molding your character through you know, trying many different things and failing at different things and getting up and getting stronger. And yeah, I think that's a big part of what would be you know, libertarian mindset as you walk through the world.

Brian Nichols  29:36  
So we libertarians, right, we in fear and The Brian Nichols Show, by the way, we focus on what sales and marketing and how do we bring these ideas to your average person? So I'm gonna challenge you, Andrew, what would you say would be a good way for libertarians to actually effectively sell the opportunity for failure to maybe your red team and Blue Team folks out there who they're they're terrified of the idea of Failure what could what wouldn't be a good maybe starting off point to build that that common bridge?

Andrew Thorp King  30:06  
Yeah, I mean, look, my whole book is littered with all kinds of diverse case studies of those who live very unique, eventful lives, where their ultimate success was defined by the backstory narrative of many failures that punctuated their, their their path. I mean, I got everything everybody here from legendary boxer Jack Johnson, to ex gang leader Elgin James who happens to be the half brother of Jocko willing and ended up being a screenwriter on Mines MC the spin off the Sons of Anarchy to Sara billionaire, Sara Blakely, to, you know, Elon Musk, James, all teacher, podcaster investor. So, you know, looking at those stories, and seeing how failure really made these people very, very, very unique, that would not have happened if it wasn't for them, stepping out, taking risks, encountering failures, learning how to grapple with them and reorganize their lives, you know, so hey, that's really its go by failure rolls the five rules of failure for entrepreneurs, great as authentics. And that's your blueprint right there. I mean, it's 480 pages worth of great stuff that will really show you how to do that.

Brian Nichols  31:16  
Absolutely. Well, we're getting to the other talent here, the Patreon. So with that, I wanted to maybe give you an opportunity here to talk about your personal stories, right. And we went through that a little bit here on the main episode, but the one specific example of a failure in your life that just hit you hard to really like taking this entire approach to embracing failure to the extreme and living out this idea and this life, of being open to failure so you can learn how to actually embrace success.

Andrew Thorp King  31:48  
Yeah, sure. So you know, one of the biggest failures I went through was, when I was running my two record labels full time, you know, I got over leveraged at the same time, the industry transitioned very quickly into digitization. Nobody really expected it to transition that clearly, nobody really understood what the consequences would have been in that transition. large retail retail chains were closing returns, were coming back to me. And I had a few records that underperformed and over invested in and I got to a really overleveraged point where I had to declare bankruptcy on my on my personal credit, to to move forward, ultimately, and I didn't know at this time, the IP rights to the to the catalog would end up surviving and being valuable, you know, up until now, right, even and I ended up putting out records again, in the future revitalize record labels. But at the time, I was in a failure space. And so there I was, I was bankrupt. There was no unemployment. For me, I still had some debt that wasn't discharged that I had to deal with. And I had to find a new career, I had three young kids, and it was a single income household. So there was literally nothing I mean, I was hitting rock bottom. And I ended up doing financial planning for a few years just building up a practice out of Scratch. All of a sudden, I'm wearing a suit after being like this tattoo punk rock guy, you know, and I found a way to reinvent myself and network with high worth individuals and start to kind of build my way into a new career. And I'm still in banking and finance today. And so it's that type of reinvention mentality. It's sometimes you know, mere mere, your devastation that, that you have to adapt, or adopt in those types of circumstances.

Brian Nichols  33:25  
Yep. I mean, dude, I was an alcoholic for a number of years, I still, you know, to this day, if I ever get near alcohol, I still kind of get that tingle until I sniff it. And I'm like, Well, I don't want that no more because the hangovers suck. And the person I was, was not the person that I wanted to be. So you know, to that I hear you like, you need to sometimes hit the real proverbial mountain, we call it but rock bottom right, truly, embrace the suck, feel the suck, you know, and with that, learn from the suck and focus on doing the things that are gonna make you a better version of yourself. And that's something that we are really trying to do here at The Brian Nichols Show, you know, more recently with our good people network, bringing good people in and talking about what the good things they're doing to help better their communities better their their, you know, their states, whatever it may be, but by bringing good solutions to the table as well. And so just talking about problems and being you know, narcissistic Facebook posters about, well, here's a problem that really sucks and not really doing anything to remedy it now actually promoting people who are bringing good solutions to the table. So no, I firmly embrace this idea that we need to not just acknowledge that failure is an option, but sometimes it's the best option and it helps us grow. So with that, we are going to wrap things up here for the Patreon Andrew, any final thoughts for the Patreon members as we wrap things here on the episode today?

Andrew Thorp King  34:45  
Go check it out. Failure rolls fibrils a favor. I know what's great isn't authentics I love it. It'll help you to embrace the F word and learn it after it sucks. Failure rules.

Brian Nichols  34:56  
Perfect. Andrew, thank you so much. Yes, Andrew Thorpe King Don't worry, Brian, your memory is going to get there soon enough once you get some sleep there, fingers crossed and a couple of weeks months, I don't know, we'll see a three week old baby to be determined. With that being said, Folks, thank you for joining us on today's episode. And thank you for joining us on this special version of the episode here for our Patreon subscribers. If you if you're getting some value of please go ahead and invite other folks to the Patreon dollar 99 a month and have awesome conversations like we had here with Andrew that leave you what educated, enlightened and informed. That being said Brian Nichols signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for Andrew Thorpe King. We'll see you later. Thanks for listening to The Brian Nichols Show. Find more episodes at the Brian Nichols show.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Andrew Thorp KingProfile Photo

Andrew Thorp King

AUTHOR

Andrew Thorp King is an executive fintech banker, spy novelist, speaker, punk rocker, podcaster, ex-bodybuilder, cigar lover, and serial entrepreneur. He founded two independent record labels—Thorp Records and Sailor’s Grave Records—and has invested in many spaces, including online lending, fitness, lead generation, and independent music.

Andrew Thorp King is also a serial failure. He has crashed and burned through bankruptcy, divorce, mortgage default, public assistance, and multiple business failures. But, like a jack-in-the-box after a punch, he pops back up every time, rebuilding his life—informed by failure—with a big smile on his face.