868: LOSING more! (This is tough for me...)

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Hey, what is up?

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Welcome to this episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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As always, I'm your host, brian Lofermento, and in this Solo Sunday episode, I am going to be stealing and sharing some words of wisdom from the great Roger Federer, former world number one in tennis, because we're going to be talking about how much we must lose in order to win.

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I'm excited about this one.

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Let's dive in.

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We are well and truly into graduation season here in the United States, which I absolutely love, because I love a good graduation speech.

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It's one of the rabbit holes that I frequently go down on YouTube, and this year, the one that I have been most anticipating was Roger Federer's speech at Dartmouth.

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So Dartmouth is a good old school in New England.

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It's an Ivy League school based out of New Hampshire, and Roger Federer was their commencement speaker this year.

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And Roger Federer personally is one of my favorite athletes of all time For sure, top three favorite athletes of all time and this is someone who achieved the absolute maximum possible in his field.

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This is someone who, when he retired from tennis, had won 20 Grand Slams, which, at that time, nobody had done.

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Obviously, it has now been surpassed by Novak Djokovic, but Roger Federer broke records, created new views of what's possible, and this is someone who is known for his excellence in so many ways.

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And with all of that said, I love the fact that he focused on in his speech, not on winning, but he talked about losing.

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He talked about the importance of persistence.

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He talked about the importance of a mindset of overcoming temporary setbacks, and so I wanna read an excerpt.

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Dartmouth very coolly I think it's incredible that they did this they published the full transcript of his commencement speech.

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So if you wanna read the full speech, definitely go check it out on dartmouthedu.

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You'll find it.

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Or just hop on YouTube, because that's the cool thing about commencement speeches is that they are all recorded and they are all uploaded to YouTube.

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So here I'm going to read directly from the transcript of Roger Federer's speech.

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Begin quote he said in tennis, perfection is impossible.

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In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches.

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Now I have a question for all of you what percentage of the points do you think I won in those matches?

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Only 54%.

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In other words, even top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half of the points they play.

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When you lose, every second point on average.

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You learn not to dwell on every shot.

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You teach yourself to think okay, I double-faulted, it's only a point.

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Okay, I came to the net and I got passed again, it's only a point.

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Even a great shot, an overhead backhand smash that ends up on ESPN's top 10 plays, that too is just a point.

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Here's why I am telling you this when you're playing a point, it is the most important thing in the world, but when it's behind you, it's behind you.

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This mindset is really crucial because it frees you to fully commit to the next point and the next one after that, with intensity, clarity and focus.

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The truth is, whatever game you play in life, sometimes you're going to lose A point, a match, a season, a job.

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It's a roller coaster with many ups and downs and it's natural, when you're down to doubt yourself, to feel sorry for yourself and, by the way, your opponents have self-doubt too.

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Don't ever forget that.

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But negative energy is wasted energy.

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You want to become a master at overcoming hard moments.

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That, to me, is the sign of a champion End quote.

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So that's the excerpt that I wanted to share with you here today.

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I love that we.

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Here's the thing.

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When I talked up Roger Federer at the top of this episode I bragged about his 20 grand slams.

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I bragged about him being a former world number one in the peak of his career.

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But guess, what he acknowledges is that he actually only won barely more than half of the points that he played in his entire professional career barely more than half.

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And when he phrased it that way, obviously we hear you know he only won 54% of his points, but when he phrased it the way let me find it again he said when you lose every second point on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot.

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That really blew my mind, because hearing it phrased that way is that for every single point he won, he lost.

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The next point that is the way that tennis and life and business and so many things go is that in order to win, we also have to lose.

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And I phrase it very intentionally that way because I think it's important to acknowledge that if you want to win, you have to be willing to lose, because you have to be willing to play.

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And if you're willing to play, you will never in anything win every single time.

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And take this from someone who is incredibly competitive.

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I am competitive in literally every single thing that I do, and let's use chess as the example.

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I don't enjoy losing in anything, and particularly in chess, because I have.

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I've hired a coach, I've worked really hard to get better at chess.

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I've watched YouTube videos, I've read chess books.

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I invest in getting better at chess because it's something that's come to me very late in life.

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I'm an adult learner in chess.

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I never played growing up.

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I didn't know how to play until a few years ago, and so I take it seriously.

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I really I measure my progress there and I take pride in my progress and I love getting better.

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But I don't love losing, and so I go through these spells where I'm almost afraid to log on to chesscom to play some more rated and ranked matches, because I don't want to lose.

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But that's the problem is that in life, we need to just more willingly lose more.

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We need to play the game more, which inevitably will ensure that we lose more in order to win more.

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Now, when Roger Federer uses the example of tennis, now I actually think 54% is going to be high when it comes to the game of life.

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When it comes to the game of business, I think that for us, we really only need a 1% success rate.

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We you and I can lose 99% of the things we do and the things we try, but as long as we have that 1% of success, that's all it takes to truly succeed.

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And I think that's what's so encouraging, and I think the real message there is that of course, we need to embrace losing.

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Of course we need to have that short memory.

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As Roger Federer said in that commencement speech when it's behind you, it's behind you, because we don't need a 100% success rate.

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When it comes to sales conversations, you can get rejected 99 times.

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That's perfectly okay, and that one success can outweigh all of those 99 failures.

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If you're waiting to launch the perfect ad campaign or email marketing campaign or website funnel and all of these things that you're working on, if you're waiting until you can guarantee victory in that domain, then you are not understanding the game.

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You are not understanding how this stuff works.

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All this preparation we do, I feel like we, societally, we've tricked ourselves into believing that preparation is the key to success, which it is one of the keys to success, but it is not a guarantor of success.

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There's no guarantee that any amount of preparation even if you felt the most prepared you've ever felt at literally anything you've ever done in your life, still doesn't guarantee success.

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It does not guarantee success.

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And so the only thing that will guarantee success over the long run not the short run over the long run, the only way to guarantee success is to keep playing.

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You cannot ever win if you don't keep playing.

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And so to hear Roger Federer talk about that and I love the I even love the structure of tennis and how beautiful of a game it is, because there are points, there are games, there are sets, there are matches, and it really puts it into perspective what we're able to lose yet still win.

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It's why we, colloquially, we have that phrase in society where we say you know you can lose the battle, but don't lose the war, and it really puts it into perspective.

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Of course I can totally fail at this sales call that I have this week.

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Of course it's okay if this ad campaign that I'm working on absolutely flops.

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All of those things are perfectly okay.

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They're all just small battles in a much bigger war.

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They're all just small points within the context of a much bigger game, a much bigger set, a much bigger match, a much, much bigger career, and so I think embracing that mindset puts so much of life into perspective, and it really comes down to embracing loss, understanding that loss is also one of the key ingredients to winning.

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You have to lose in order to succeed.

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Show me anybody in any industry that's had a 100% success rate.

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Quite frankly, it just doesn't happen, and sports are a perfect illustration of that.

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Not only thinking about this Roger Federer example, but I always I love talking to baseball people because baseball is such a metrics-driven sport.

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It's something that I'm not personally into.

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I never was into baseball.

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I find it boring for a lot of other reasons.

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But on a data basis, they look at it and they say, hey, if you can get on base, if you can have a hit 30% of the time, you're a freaking great player.

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70% of the time, these guys aspire to be at that success rate or that failure rate.

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Let's actually phrase it that way today, they aspire to have a failure rate of 70% of the time they walk up to the plate they don't get a hit.

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That's what they aspire to.

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70%, they fail, and that's amazing.

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That's what they target.

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They would take that in an instant if we offered it to them.

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And so here we are, so many of us as entrepreneurs and we're saying, oh, I don't even want to lose 10% of the time.

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Who the heck do we think we are?

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What the heck do we think we're doing?

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Nobody is that good we are.

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What the heck do we think we're doing?

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Nobody is that good.

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Look at any of the most successful business people, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, the most brilliant people in history.

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How many times have we heard that quote from Benjamin Franklin?

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I think it was where he said, yeah, or it was Thomas Edison.

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It was the Thomas Edison quote where he said look, I found 10,000 ways that it's not going to work.

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And so, literally, we must be willing to fail more.

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And so for so many entrepreneurs when they say to me, I'm really stuck right now I love asking that question what have you failed on recently?

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What have you put out there?

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What hasn't worked?

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What have you tried that has absolutely flopped in your face?

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Because if you're not racking up those losses, then of course you're not racking up those wins.

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And a core part behind this is I think Roger Federer so eloquently and articulately spelled this out for us is that these things, we have to be able to put them behind ourselves.

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We have to be able to overcome those hard moments, we have to be able to understand and contextualize the scope of what a loss, a temporary loss, a small loss, what it means in the grand scheme of things.

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We can't hold on to those things.

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We need to quickly put it behind us.

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And that's what's beautiful about tennis, it's what's beautiful about so many sports, it's what's beautiful about life is that if we adopt this mindset, we get to do this in our own journeys, in our own businesses, in our own, whatever that journey looks like, if it's learning a new language, learning a new instrument, picking up a new hobby, learning how to play chess, growing your business.

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Start racking up those losses, embrace those losses and, most importantly, learn from and then put those losses behind you.

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So shout out to Roger Federer's commencement speech at Dartmouth this year.

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I found it to be a really deeply meaningful and impactful speech.

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I recommend everybody goes and watches it.

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And if you want a bonus speech recommendation from me today gosh, this is really a throwback, but Charlie Day spoke at Merrimack College, which again, is in New England.

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It's a good old Massachusetts-based school which, as many of you who listen to this podcast know, I'm originally from the Boston area.

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So Charlie Day it's another great, great commencement speech where he talks so much about rejection.

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So that's the name of the game today Start losing more if you really truly want to start winning more.

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That's it for me with today's episode.

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I am so excited for the episodes we have coming your way this week, including tomorrow.

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This is an episode I did this interview a while ago.

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Ron Hadley is freaking brilliant.

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You are going to learn from him.

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That title of tomorrow's episode is gonna be Growth is at your Fingertips and we're gonna be talking about how to dream out loud.

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Ron Hadley is an incredible business mind who practices what he preaches.

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And, yeah, you do not want to miss that.

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Lori Hartke on Wednesday's episode, she talks about profitability in a way that I feel like we are weird about talking about money in society and in entrepreneurship and in life in general, and Lori really is going to paint a picture of how she went from struggling as a business owner to profitability sustainable profitability in Wednesday's episode.

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So definitely don't miss that.

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And then this Friday, sunette Coetzee.

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She is just a brilliant person.

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I love hearing her passion and really her wisdom that shines through so much in this Friday's episode where we talk about going from idea to execution, in the importance of the people, the processes and the collaboration behind all of that.

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So all of this fits in with incredible entrepreneurs who are willing to take these chances to rack up these losses, to accrue those wins along the way.

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So all of that is just a little bit of a teaser.

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To say pound that subscribe button, because we'll see you as always every Monday, wednesday, friday, saturday and Sunday here on the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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Hey, it's Brian here, and thanks for tuning in to yet another episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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