Why Winners Fail More

SPEAKER_01 0:04

What if the people who seem the most successful are not the ones who avoided failure? They are the ones who failed the most and kept showing up anyway. Not because they were fearless, but because they built something inside themselves that failure could not take down. Welcome back to Healthy Life, Healthy Mind, Healthy Life. The show where we have honest conversations about what it really takes to live well, not just look well. I'm your host Yosef, and today I'm joined by Clive Noop, a 25-year entrepreneur, founder of Agency in a Box, and someone who has built, lost, rebuilt, and kept going in ways that most people never talk about publicly. Clive, welcome to the show. Really glad you're here.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

Well, thank you for having me. I think that's a pretty good introduction, for sure. Because yes, I've heard uh a fellow entrepreneur call it too stupid to quit. But that's not really what it is. It's actually you built you build resilience into yourself. And it's it's true because you're not always going to be successful on your first attempt. In fact, that is very rare. So you do have to sort of build accountability and responsibility

Losing A Business And Starting Again

SPEAKER_02 1:28

to yourself because you are the one person that you have to continue to live with. No matter what happens, no matter what job you're in or where you go, you have to sort of maintain that sense of self and presence and be able to keep calm when everybody around you is losing their mind. Now, there's a couple of things that I've helped myself to do that. And honestly, exercise is probably the number one. Just getting out and getting some daily exercise and getting a little sunshine on your face, getting out in outside. I do actually believe outside exercise is better than even going to a gym because you get to hear the birds and you get to see all these other parts of the real world that don't impact your day-to-day operations and don't cause you stress, right? Because once you know, once you get back into the thick of things, you're pretty much, you can often find yourself at mercy at other people's demands. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

That is true. So Clive, I want to I want to start somewhere personal. 25 years is a long time to stay in the arena. So was there a moment, maybe early on, where you almost walked away? Like where the cost of staying felt too high?

SPEAKER_02 2:48

Well, I will say that I did. So I started my first business, yeah, like literally 27 years ago now, because it was 1999 is when I first incorporated my first business CM3. And that one lasted quite a while. And then sort of the the economic collapse in 2008, sort of my business kind of imploded with that because I lost a lot of my big customers and wasn't easy to replace that cash flow. And I did ultimately take a regular day job for a little while there. So I had both sides of that agreement, but what I found is I didn't have the sense of autonomy that I needed. I also didn't have control over the ship, the direction the ship was going in. And I found that I'm very much of a control freak. And I'm like, well, I've done this before. I can certainly do it again. I mean, I might be old to restart, but then I got this lovely little life lesson from a movie called Fight Club. Once you've lost everything, you're free to do anything, right? And so I realized that I was not encumbered by having this job that I could build up and go out again and start my own agency again. And that's when I started the Element Six Agency, which is more of a user experience type of the user experience agency. And so I did. Yeah, I did. I developed that. This time I had sort of a renewed mission and I understood that systems and process and how you treat your employees and how you lead people on a day-to-day basis, is probably one of the most important things that you can do. And it's also a you first type leadership plan that I do. And so I I invest in myself to make sure that I'm more capable of being the leader that I found absent in my other job. Right. And so that was really the problem, is I didn't I didn't trust the leadership. And so that's a big problem for me. So then I had to sort of become the leader that I didn't have. Um I'd also had lost my father probably 30 years ago now. So not having that sort of anchor in my life and not being able to find it elsewhere. I sort of had to reinvest in myself, really store sort of examined not only my work life, but my spiritual life as well. And just sort of understanding what it is that makes us human, being creators. I mean, that's what we're pretty much put on this earth to do is to create. And I think that's sort of what people mean, or what people should take from the idea of we're built in God's image, isn't that not God does not look like me by any stretch of the imagination, but God is the creator, and we are the creator of our own lives. Right, and so just sort of doubling down on that. And just following that sort of advice and picking up little pieces of advice from little tidbits from here and there, you know. Keanu Reeves once said, stop complaining just for one day and see how better, how much better your life gets. And that's true. When you when you stop complaining and you stop blaming other people, you start to understand that you are the problem. And it's you that can overcome these situations, right? People have lived through much worse adverse situations than I've ever experienced. Right. And so just being able to sort of realize

Redefining Failure Without Shame

SPEAKER_02 6:44

that and come along with that.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Yeah, and the phrase that you that you brought to the table, winners fall, winners fail more than losers. Most people hear the word failure and immediately go to shame, like to stopping, to maybe this isn't for me.

SPEAKER_02 7:06

So, what do you think we've gotten wrong about failure actually is that because you fail at a particular task doesn't make you a failure as a person. It just means you need a little bit more practice, really. I mean, and just getting getting over that shame of failing, and that's what holds people back is is fear, is fear of being judged, fear of being isolated, fear of not having love and connection. But that isn't what happens when you fail. When you it's just a temporary moment, and it only exists as long as you allow it to exist, right? So, yes. So my first business did go under. Not like I didn't, I didn't totally bankrupt, but I mean I was pretty close. That didn't mean I failed as an entrepreneur because I had a lot of happy customers. We won awards, we great built some great products, I built lifelong relationships out of that. So is that really a failure? Right? I mean, it it just it's really a mindset and a perspective change that you really need to have a look at. And it's true. Winners never win the first time. Like the entrepreneurial game is a pretty lonely one, and it feels like you're isolated and it feels like you're all by yourself, but you're not. There's two dozen other people that are in exactly in the same position, feeling exactly the same thing at any given moment. And so finding like-minded people and realizing that you're not actually alone in this process really helps. So I've joined a couple of like entrepreneurial groups when I start up, we do meetups and things like that, we have weekly conversations, we go through the trials and tribulations of oh my god, I can't get a client. Oh my god, I've got too many clients. You know, there's like it doesn't matter how you look at it, each of these can be a failure. But they're also wins because if your your limitation is actually your super strength. So what it is that you're trying to accomplish is well that sort of is becomes the magnifier for what you focus in on. Right. And as you say, as the as another saying, what you focus on expands. So yeah, so it depends, right? So you can pick you can pick to choose to focus on what you've done wrong, or you can adjust your view and look at the things that have gone right. And as I said, my first business did not, and I'm not still at it, and it technically is a failure, but I didn't treat it as such because I looked at it that way. And then five years later, I ended up selling my business or my book of business for a profit after it had literally been mothballed for years just because of the client base and the relationships and all of that. So what was an immediate failure turned out to be a success later on, and that's sort of what we spun up into create the new company called Element Six. Yeah. Which I then moved on from that one and have now and found into the agency in a box, and we're primarily focused on building software and solutions for solopreneurs and small agencies. Having been in that situation, I feel connected with that type of an audience too, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:54

So yeah, Flame.

Stoicism For Daily Self-Mastery

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Uh I could not help but you know recognize that stoicism keeps coming up in your thinking a lot. So for maybe for people who haven't read about it or don't know about it, can you tell them what is the most practical stoic philosophy that you actually use in your daily life?

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Oh, the most practical, I think, is it's probably it's a simple quote from Seneca. As it we suffer more in our minds than in reality. Yeah. And it's true, right? We create our own worst-case scenarios. When you know you're out late at night, your mother is going through, oh, he's he's been hit by a car, he's been he's in an accident, he's dead in a ditch somewhere, but no, you come home at 11:30 or whatever. And all of those worries that you create, all of those scenarios, and the mind, the human mind, is really good at seeking out danger as a preservation tactic, right? So we're hardwired to look for the bad things, which is why people rubberneck at car accidents. And it you just it's a natural instinct, it's the it's the amygdala taking over, right? It's your lizard brain. So the idea there is that you can you can assess that piece of scenario and say, yes, thank you, not needed. I don't need that information, that doesn't really apply to me. And then I can go on and regain control of myself, right? So self-mastery is the idea for sure, and being able to control your conscious thoughts. And it's like a TV. If you're you can just switch the channel, you really can. Like if you you it's a learned skill, and meditation has helped me develop that skill because it allows you to sort of go inside and and just understand your body more, even like even simple breathing techniques can restore your sanity like almost instantly. It's actually insane when you start to look at these things and just how much of what we do on a day-to-day basis is just reactionary to millennia programming. Now I'll say it's not a new concept because I mean these philosophers are 2,000 years old at least, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

I I love that because I think sometimes we make wisdom sound too complex. But what you are describing is almost simple. However, it is not just easy, and there is a real difference between those two things.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

No, for sure. For sure. We totally make our lives more complicated than they need to be. Right? My brother used to have this saying it's like, you know, most of your worries are nonsensical. Like you worry about things like who squeezed the toothpaste in the middle. Like, how does that affect your life? Right. And so these are the things that you get angry about in the morning, right? And it's like, okay, so how does this actually affect your life? And if you just stop for a quick second and analyze it, you can pretty much say, yes, thank you. That's not needed. And you just sort of control yourself that way. You get your under, you get you get a hold of your ego, right? Because your ego is the is is there to protect you from harm, right? And as I said earlier, like instinctually we're programmed to sort of to look for harm and danger. And you know, when we came out of the caves 25,000 years ago, like something could kill us left, right, and center, right? So we had to be very careful. And so it's our our DNA is very slow to change. But in today's society, I mean, there's some violence and some issues out there, but it's not survival, it's not a daily occurrence, like you're not really survival as a daily thought, right? I mean you pretty much know you'll have food tomorrow, you know you've got a roof over your head, you know you've got a family who loves you, right? So these are all of the things that are important that but we tend to overlook them because we often judge our own success by looking at others as well, which is usually a pretty much a false narrative because you can put on a show pretty easily, uh, and you can hold it together for a 20-minute conversation with anybody, but the rest of your life might be an absolute mess, right? And so also understanding that that other human over there has their own bag of issues that they're dealing with, and that they're not as perfect as they seem to be, even their lovely little Instagram dinner is oh, it's beautiful, but that's a moment in time and it's curated. That's not reality, it's not their reality. That's what they want you to think their reality is, right? So once you start to have a look at the way all of those things go together, and just again, just take the time to breathe and relax and process it in that fashion, I think is very helpful.

Where To Connect And Final Advice

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Oh Clive, for people who want to connect with you or just want to learn more about you, your work, where can you do that?

SPEAKER_02 16:47

I am most active on LinkedIn, and my handle is Clive Moore, C-L-I-V-E-M-O-O-R-E. You'll also find me on Instagram as Clive Moore1979. That's a little bit of a homage to the Death from Above band because I created an account called Clive Moore, and I posted two photos on it like 15 years ago. I no longer have access to that account, so I had to rename myself, and and that's why I ended up with going Death from uh Death from Above tag of Clive Moore 1979. So on threads and on Instagram, that's what I am, and on LinkedIn, I'm just Clive Moore.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Perfect, and to everyone listening, all these links are in the show notes, so just go and check those out.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Fave, is there any last message that you want to leave us with? Just be kind to yourself.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

That's really the thing. Be kind to yourself, forgive yourself for the things that you've done wrong. Because that that really that's the only way you can sort of really go and forgive other people is to forgive yourself first.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Thank you, Clive. Genuinely. Because this is the kind of conversation a lot I think a lot of people need it today. And even if they did not know it when they press play, I think eventually when their life gets hard and when your teachings will hit them, then they'll realize how important this conversation was.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

No, thank you very much for having me, Yusuf.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

And to everyone listening, I hope something from today helps you stay just a little longer in the arena. We'll be back soon with more conversations like this one. Take care of yourselves. That is always the book.