EntreLeadership - #306: Studying Failure with Jon Erwin

Episode Date: February 18, 2019

Whether we like it or not—and sometimes, in spite of our best intentions and best efforts—failure is unavoidable. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, says filmmaker Jon Erwin, whose production company makes faith-based, inspirational feature films. In fact, he insists if you examine failure closely—think an uncomfortable, really honest look—you may very well find the keys to your next big success. Tune in as Jon shares how doing just that helped him learn from a crushing box office loss in 2015 to go on to make the highest-grossing independent film of 2018. Also joining us is Craig Groeschel, founder and senior pastor of Life.Church, with an invaluable lesson on the power of feedback.   entreleadership.com/podcast Feature films: Woodlawn and I Can Only Imagine Jon Erwin's website Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio Traction by Gino Wickman Craig Groeschel's website Thanks for the Feedback by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen Download: Leadership Growth Assessment   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Failure is where you learn. Success is where you cash in on what you've learned from failure. I believe that. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andreleaders. Now here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders by leaders for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Here's what we've got coming up for you. John Irwin is one half of the Irwin Brothers Entertainment. company, writer, director, and executive producer of the recent hit, I Can Only Imagine. And you're going to love his perspective on failure, feedback, and learning so that you can move

forward and win. And then we're going to give you just a portion of a recent conversation we had with multi-time guest, Craig Groschell, on this very issue of feedback. So here's a theme. Feedback. It's coming at you. And it all starts right now. All right. Now, I ask the guys, to put that obnoxious noise in there because, one, it's kind of fun to shock you with an obnoxious noise. But number two, that sound is never fun to hear. Will Rutter's shaking his head behind the glass. He's a musician.

That feedback sound always is unpleasant. And I ask the guys to put that in there because we're about ready to have a full episode really themed around feedback. And many times feedback isn't pleasant either. It's that kind of jarring truth that doesn't feel good, just like that. like that sound never feels good to hear. But unlike that obnoxious sound you heard, feedback has got some positivity to it. And so, let's dive in. John Irwin and I sat down to talk about his failure and what he learned so they could move forward. Well, John, this is fun to have you in studio.

I spoke to our team earlier today. Yeah, it was great. And this is fun because, to my knowledge, prior to me coming on board four years ago, I think we've ever had a movie director on the program. And really, this is more than directing. You and your brother, producers, the whole nine yards. So before we dive in to really the meat of our conversation, I want our audience to get to know the quick version. So this is the 90-second reel on John Irwin, but really the Irwin brothers and what you all do every day. Erwin brothers in 90 seconds. Well, my brother and I make films. We're two members of an incredible team. One of things that we say is we're just storytellers serving the greatest storyteller of all time. And, you know, we make films

that the goal anyway is to make films that are entertaining. That's why I go to the movies. Yeah. That are emotionally relatable no matter what you believe. But that really are strategic in telling stories that we believe can change people's lives. And that can have an impact long before the person leaves the theater. And sometimes I think entertainment has that power. And we've made four films. The most recent one is, I can only imagine. And it was released through roadside attractions and Lionsgate and actually became, it was the number one independent film of 2018. Yeah. And I want people to understand this because this is going to play into our conversation. When you say independent film, that means that you're not backed by a big

studio. You and your brother and whatever your business partnerships look like, you all produced this movie. Explain that. It was a great team. We had to raise the money not only to make, I can only imagine, but also to market, release and distribute it. And- Ballpark idea on that budget for that film. There's about 25 million. I had to raise. I think it became 27 at the end of the day, because we chased a little bit. And that's its own degree of difficulty. We have great teams of people, and I'm as passionate about the business as I am the art. There is a complete misnomer in our industry that those two can never touch. Like if you're an artist, you can't be a businessman. And if you're a businessman, you can't be an

artist. I don't see those distinctions. I think there's a lot of business in art. There's a lot of art and business. If you master both, you can be successful. And we're in the entertainment business. We're not in the entertainment art form. Yeah, that's true. And so, yeah, it was a huge degree of stewardship. I think every filmmaker at some point should be, you know, financially responsible for the work, not only to make it, but also to market and distribute it. It changes your mindset. Describe your role on the film and films versus your brother's role. Yeah. So my brother and I have worked together since I was 12 and he was 15. My life sort of changed when I was 15. I got to sort of lie about my age to work for ESPN as a cameraman. I'm not recommending to your audience

that anyone do that or let their 15-year-old child do that. But that's what happened. And a cameraman had gotten sick. And my dad bought us a camera when I was 16 and just said, dream bold, dream big, dream the impossible is what he said. And we just started making stuff, all kinds of stuff. There's a great principle in a great book by Malcolm Gladwell called the 10,000 hour rule from a book called Outliers, that you just have to spend, you know, I think a lot of people, at least in my industry, they don't respect this season of preparation learning,

you know, and even if you look in the Bible, you find stories of long seasons of preparation for short seasons of influence. And so we were very lucky that in our teenage years, when you don't really have care in the world that we were able to just sort of hyperlearn our industry and, you know, started the business when I was 16 and it's all I've sort of ever done. Our great motivator in our business is I literally don't know how to do anything else. And basically, you know, we just started directing together and, you know, worked out a shorthand. And our skill sets really complement each other. Did a lot of jobs in the industry. I love to write. I love to produce. Andy and I co-direct.

He is an actor's director. He is emotionally intuitive. He really brings an incredible degree of authenticity. And then he loves to edit, which is sort of like the final rewrite, they call it. That's really where you find the story. So I love to start things. He loves to finish things. I mean, that's basically the relationship. We say, look, if it weren't for me, we'd never start anything. If it weren't for him, we'd never finish anything. That's sort of the relationship. I love that. Okay. I love, love that. Okay. So I want to start with this moment here where you experience some big failure and then out of that failure, we're going to tell that success story that you just highlighted for us a few minutes ago. So Woodlawn, you've got some goals for that. And

Let's just set people up. What did you want to do with that film? Yeah. So I think we were hoping to achieve at least a $20 million box office. Our first film did five. Our second did 10. Oh, wow. And they've all opened in the top 10.

You know, we just felt like if we made the greatest film, you know, people would come to it. And we didn't achieve our goals. And, you know, to every entrepreneur that, you know, you feel that stomach punch when, you know, in my business, it's sort of like a political election. You know, on Friday afternoon where the last two years of your life have been worth anything. That's right. you know, it's sort of like... So let me ask you this. So the goal was to make 20 million.

What did it end up doing? So we ended at about 14 and a half. So now did that, was that a, we didn't meet our goal or was it actually a loss on the film? Well, that's what led to the financial innovation of I can only imagine. But in film, you have a very tiered, I call it like a totem pole of inequality of financial inequality. And what happens is the investors that believe in you first, that believe in you most, that have been with you. the longest, end up at the bottom of this stack of money. And what's on top of them is all what we would call P&A,

which is the Prince of Advertising money and then distribution fees on top of that. When you don't have leverage in negotiation, like you've put everything in the product, you don't have the ability to control the negotiation of the distribution fees. And all of that advertising money is last and first out. So what you had on Woodlawn is you had people that came in late that got to see a finished movie making a lot of money, exorbitant interest, enormous fees. And then the people that believed in me the most lost money.

And that had never happened to me. In an industry with like an 80% failure rate, we hadn't had a breakout hit, but everything we had done up to that point had made money. And so it was a real stomach punch to think that these people that had been with me the longest were going to lose and other people ahead of them were going to win. And that was my fault.

So you look at the $25 million, just to be very candid with, you know, $25 million it took to make woodlawn, two thirds of that has been retired or whatever, but that means we're just, you know, that the equity was last. And that did not, I couldn't sleep at night. And even though it was a status quo of my industry, I was like, we have to be able to change that.

And we simply did not accomplish our goals. And it's so important to give that a name. And I call it failure. And the most important thing I ever wrote on a piece of paper which sort of like in my industry, one or two things happens. Either that, you know, you blame the marketing. Well, I delivered the movie,

but the market, whatever. Or you sort of, in faith-based endeavors, you sort of pull the, I see a lot of people, pull the finish line back to the results achieved. Like, well, we didn't achieve our goals, but that's okay because no, give it a name and be willing to call it failure. And the most important thing, I think, as a businessman,

I ever wrote on a piece of paper, it was Woodlawn was a failure and it was my fault. And that began a journey in my life that eventually led to a tremendous success, but I had to confront the reality of failure in order to learn from it and change. And I think that's the first step. And I think what people need to realize is if you're in that point where you're just so disappointed by the results achieved, I mean, I think ultimately, I think one of the keys of learning from failure is, you say, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Well, some things do kill you. So don't do those things. You know, don't take risks that can kill you and think God, Woodlawn was not one of those things. But if you're still alive, if you're still in the game, I've determined. that the nitroglycerin qualities for an entrepreneur is if you can be resilient and curious, the combination of those two things, if you're one of those people that just will not give up, but also you're not trying the same thing over and over again and failing in the same way and repeated failure, if you can be curious and nimble and be willing to pivot, but also be hyper resilient,

eventually, if you just stay in the game long enough, you'll win. So let's go to this moment. So you write down on a piece of paper. Woodlawn was a failure. It's my fault. I'm just really curious now because, to my knowledge, I've never heard a story like this, where you, your brother, I'd love to know what the leadership did. What was that curiosity process of tearing apart what happened wrong with woodlawn?

So how did you do that? Yeah, yeah, there's a process to it. I think the book I would most write, my favorite book of the year, by the way, is Principles by Ray Dalyo. Ray runs a great hedge fund, largest hedge fund in the world. and I don't agree with his worldview and everything, but I do agree with his process of basically deriving principles

from the study of failure. And I've found every great entrepreneur that I've studied has that punched in the gut. I think Mike Tyson said every boxer has a plan until you get in the ring, get punched in the face. You have that moment where you just get laid out in the ring.

And I've learned that great entrepreneurs, that's a defining moment for them. And it can be a defining moment for anyone listening. So the question is what to do with it now that you've owned it. I think the first step was to sort of separate my identity front. You have to separate your identity from your work to be able to attack the work. And so was to say, look, I have to detach from this. And then the biggest thing, and I've never

read a book on this, and I don't know why. I'm sure there is one. I've read a lot of books on dealing with criticism, which I mean, there's a whole category of people in my business called critics. Like, if you even think about that, that's kind of messed up. Like, their job is to criticize. What a horrible job. Anyway, you have to learn to deal with criticism. I've never read anything on soliciting criticism. I've only ever heard Elon Musk talk about it. So what we did is we went to people inside the campaign, outside the campaign, and we began to solicit criticism.

It was a lot like getting in a boxing ring, tying your hands behind your back and say, punch me in the face. But I wanted to learn. And I wanted to win, ultimately, it was worth it. And what you're looking for, so what you do, here's sort of the secret sauce, is look at it as a puzzle. So, and get super inquisitive and curious. about it, solicit a bunch of criticism.

And what you're listening for is trends. And I was able to do this, I think, well, because when we are honing a movie and we go through the testing process of a movie, you're looking for commonality and feedback. So if one person says, I hate that character, you know what I mean to change? You know, it could just be them.

But if 10 people say, I hate that character, there's something wrong with that character. So we sort of applied that to business and said, and we listen for trends. And we listened intently. I think I've also found that in soliciting criticism or creating a culture of candor,

a lot of the great organizations I study, candor and honesty keep coming up. Yes. That has a lot more to do with the listener than the person's speaking. You have to create an environment where people are free to speak their minds openly. And we began to solicit that.

Now, I would say... So I want to interrupt real quick, because I think you're on to something here and I want to hear how you did it. Who did you solicit it from? Were there groups of people, buckets of people? What can we learn that are listening in here?

Who all did you solicit from? Yeah. I mean, we had probably 25 people inside the campaign, and then we had a lot of people that weren't working on the campaign. Some friends of mine, wonderful friends of mine, we had made a film called War Room, and that came out just before. And we sort of had run over, which led to sort of a peace treaty between the brands, almost like Abraham and Lot in the Bible. So it was soliciting a lot of people that were on that campaign. I remember there was an event that the Kathy's put together at a retreat center in Atlanta, and it was like a Faith in Film Summit. And I literally asked for three hours of the program when I got there.

we got about 30 people together and I literally said the word I said guys rip woodlawn two shreds you could say anything you want what happened what are your observation and people slowly said well I mean is he is he legit and they would sort of venture out into the water

so that's interesting talk more about that you know and what happened is clear trends began to emerge and we did this for about four months and we compiled it into what we call the woodlawn postmortem now this is like a Bible for us it's like a money ball

a playbook and it is the secret sauce. Everything that led to the success that we would enjoy later came out of that playbook. We saw insights in the market. We saw changes that needed to happen our organization. Mostly I saw changes in my leadership style and my ability to galvanize and let go and empower other people. Okay, so hold on a second. So if I'm hearing you correctly, it wasn't so much the storytelling ability. Not at all. It was the leadership of the organization. I mean, if you look at Woodlawn and I can only imagine. Yeah, because I just, Woodlawn is a very good film. Yeah, I mean, really, I would say they're comparable as movies.

I mean, they both got A plus cinema scores. Only about 70 films have ever gotten an A plus cinema score. The critical rating is similar. The audience metrics are higher with like a line, but they're similar. Gotcha. So it wasn't learning how to make a better film. It was learning how to be a better leader and seeing insights to them. Innovation is always looking at the same data and seeing what no one else sees.

So we saw an innovation and we saw some market trends and we saw them early and we applied them. We saw that we weren't really in a movie business. We were in a brand-driven event business and we applied that thinking. So you apply a brand like I can only imagine. That has millions of built-in fans. And it's an event. But I'm telling you mostly it was, I just cannot stress this enough. If you're an entrepreneur and you are frustrated with your organization and there are things wrong with your organization,

the first place to look is the mirror. You need to change. And if you are unwilling to change, your organization will not change. And I see so many entrepreneurs, and I was one of them, that you're frustrated about things that are actually, I feel that in organizations, characteristics amplify from the top. So a characteristic in the leader amplifies down. And I learned that a book that changed my life in that time was a book called Traction. It was a fantastic book that I needed to empower implementers, that my Achilles heal.

is implementation and management. I work off burst inspiration. I left to design things, but I had to have great implementation, and I had to empower those implementers. And so many things that I learned, I just can't stress enough the value of studying failure

and really just studying it inquisitively and separating your identity from your work and then separating failure from the fear of failures. How painful was it to actually, because I think there's fear of failure, and then there's fear of looking at my failure. I think those are two very different things, and I think I think I want you to address that.

Because I think we all understand the idea of failing. Well, that has a lot of the fear of peers, what they're going to say, family, is there financial, all that. We get that. But I think there's almost an equally large fear to examining our failure. Is that the case with you? And then how did you and your brother stomach it? I think it's the fear of what you think it's going to be, if that makes sense. The illustration that I can give, and my dad has taught me so much and so much of what we do is from what he taught us and continues to teach us. But one of the things that I think would be applicable here is there's a, when I was five years old, five, six, seven, I don't remember how it was young.

We went to a water park called Whitewater in Georgia. And we didn't go to parks much, we didn't have a lot of money, and so it was great to be able to go. And there was this slide called the Dragon's Tale. Now, to a five-year-old, that slide was 10,000 feet tall. So we went up, and it was just like a Dragon's Tail, and we went up to the top of the slide, and we climb the staircase, and every flight of stairs, it just gets scarier. And you get to the top, and it's like you can see the earth bending. It's like you're in the substratosphere, you know, in the little boy's eyes.

And I was genuinely petrified. And my dad did something really great. He didn't shame me, like, be a man, go down the slide, son. He also didn't sort of baby me and make me take the walk of shame like other kids. Like, it's okay. You don't have to confront your fears. Let's just walk down these stairs, these loser stairs or whatever. He didn't do that.

he said, I know you're scared, but John, if you go down the slide, I'll buy you Dusty. Now, Dusty was a GI Joe that I had won it all year. Buying a GI Joe, oh, that's awesome. We could geek out. He was like, with all my GI Joe's, there'll always be an epic battle. He was always the last band standing once I own him. But, you know, buying a GI Joe was like a thing. Like, we didn't do that a lot.

That was like an annual event, right? So he's like, I'll buy you Dusty. So I looked down the barrel of that slide and I'm like, I'm probably going to die. But I really want Dusty. It's worth it for the chance to get this. And I just close my eyes and here we go. I loved it and I went 12 more times that day. The principle is this, anything great is going to terrify you. And as a Christian, I would say that God's will, the reason fear not is in the Bible

so many times is because God calls us to terrifying things. Okay. So the key is what to do with your fear. And I've found that not, well, I shouldn't be scared. I shouldn't be scared. That doesn't really work. The key that I learned from that event with my dad is let your passion outweigh your fear. Even if what you want to accomplish is just a little bit more. more powerful than what you are afraid of. You can move forward. So you really have to ask the question when you fail, what do I want to do? Do I want to? Because if you're a victim, fine. You might feel better, but a victim has no power, right? And if you have a victim mindset and the world is happening to you, then you might feel better at night. You don't have any power.

The cool thing about it is you can change yourself. And so to me, my passion to grow and to figure out and to win simply outweighed my fear of how it would feel for people to say so was it comfortable no was it painful yes but i've learned it's now an essential part of my process that i actually enjoy clenice would set it best take your work seriously but don't take yourself seriously so if you could just take a deep breath and say it's okay to fail like and failure is an essential part of winning and you know what i'm an idiot and to be able to say that and i was completely wrong wrong, and I want to learn from it and grow. Once you sort of get beyond that threshold, I think the fear is in the unknown.

But I'm telling you, once you do it, it becomes such a shorthand, a natural part of life that it's not scary at all. So we've heard now about the 170 page, we'll call it a manifesto, for lack of a better word for me. Before we get to how you translated that 170 pages into the wild success of, I can only imagine, I want to know how the team, the 25 people that you've bragged about that are part of your mission, how did they react? Because I think leaders need to hear how the people that they're leading are going to react when they see you and your brother go, hey, not only do

we own that it was a failure, but we're digging into this. And not only are we digging in, we're actually transferring the truth that we've been told. And we're coming up with a new mode of operating around the office. I just think that most leaders don't do that. And I know these people haven't heard it much. How did those 25 people react? Well, sometimes as a leader, you have to be willing for people to be uncomfortable that work for you. And sometimes I think there was pressure on me to just, we got to get going to figure out what we're going to do next. And I really dug in on the post-mortem and worked the playbook. And sometimes it's okay.

Like I say in my business, I want people to be happy with me at the rap party, not on set. Because I'm going to push you. I'm going to push you to achieve great things. We have a thing that we say, you know, quality is our number one core value. We never achieve it, but we always chase it. George Lucas said it best. Films are never complete. They're only abandoned.

But we pursue it with all we have and relentlessly. And we say, look, it's really excruciating to try to make something great, but it's also pretty difficult to make something mediocre. So why not go the extra mile? Right. You have people under you, and I've just learned that sort of behaving with integrity and leading people well and trying to get everybody to like you. Okay, those are two different pursuits in life.

So pick one, you know. And so I think it was just about having the discipline to say, we're doing this and knowing that people that work for you don't understand what you understand don't see what you see you have to be ahead of the organization right and you have to work on the organization so a lot of people that work for me I think it wasn't until the thing was done and then we started implementing it and seeing it working that everybody understood the value of it right and sometimes as a leader you have to go forward with conviction even when people don't understand even when people don't understand that work for you even Andy honestly my brother

because he's a doer he didn't understand the post-mortem for a long time. But now it's our Bible, it's our playbook, but that's my role. I'm meant to go ahead and start things. And so you just have to own your role as a leader and chart a course. And even when, you know, people don't get it, that's the whole point. I'm leading, you know, is to lead away. When you come out of this post-mortem and you finally reveal, okay, gang, this is how we're

doing things going forward. Here's the why. Did most people at least say, hmm, okay, they may not completely. completely understand it, but you were so clear in the vision going forward. I just want you to encourage people right now that feel like, okay, I need to lead, but I'm going to have to make a really clear distinction on how we're going to change the way we're going forward. What can you tell us that you learn from standing up and going, all right, this is different. Here's why it's different. Well, I think there's a couple things. Number one, you can really empower your team to

implement. Like, one of things that we talk about is there's a difference between, and I think, I forget what book I read this in, there's a difference between a battle plan and directors and So for a while, I think it was the Army, they were using a battle plan methodology. Well, a lot of times, like, we're supposed to take this hill and the battle plan would say this Jeep is supposed to go here and turn right or this tank is supposed to go over there. Well, that tank just blew up. A director's intent is more like, here's the hill to take. By this time, how do we do it? It was a lot of that stuff.

It was saying, guys, I've realized that we have not identified our core values. And by the way, if you have not identified and solidified your core values, and I would even say your behavioral values of the type of people that thriving organizations, you'll violate them in the heat of battle. And we had done that with our partnerships and with some other things. So we clearly identified our core values. We clearly identified who we were and the products we wanted to make.

And then we saw a lot of insights in the market and a lot of the ways we needed to change. And then it was about having a negotiation and a discussion with the core team members. Like, if this stuff is true, how should it change the environment? And sort of empowering them to become a part of implementing this stuff.

It was a bunch of principles. It was a bunch of insights to the market. it was a bunch of values. And then, what's so interesting is the right people just rose to the occasion. And because we saw it clearly identified the culture we wanted to create, which is like culture trumps everything. I mean, everything. The right people trump everything. The wrong people just weeded themselves out of the organization because there was such a spotlight on them.

And so there was a transition. There was some people that needed to go. There were some people that needed to be promoted. There was a new methodology and mindset that needed to be adopted. Now we're ready to get back in the game. How long was it from the Woodlawn post-mortem to production day one on I Can Only Imagine? Yeah, so Woodlawn came out in October or whenever it came out. And it's been a while.

And then imagine we were up and rolling the next November, so 12, 13 months. So just over a year, here you go, you're back in the game, but you got a whole new playbook. Yeah, yeah. And the right people are there. What was it like? Describe now. So what we've done is we've walked the listener and folks that are watching.

We've walked them through, okay, how we looked at the failure. And so now you get in this new film. How different was it for you? Well, you know, it's interesting about that question is, I think one of the things that hold leaders back

is this idea that the changes that need to happen in my organization are extreme. And so I'm going to avoid it. It's like the attic in your house. Yeah, it's not a night and day. You know what I've learned is

small changes. make huge differences. Right. And so, like, one of the things that we did that we continue to do is, I think Craig Rochelle said this, first time I heard it, is he said, you know, the biggest, the biggest mistake in communication is the assumption that it's taken place. Right. And we did this thing on day one of production, of I can only imagine. First of all, we made a commitment to ourselves that we are going to hire, fire, recruit, and promote first off values, first off competence, or character. then off competence. There is a misnomer in the entertainment industry

that someone's skill merits and allows them to be toxic. And what we said is, I don't care if you're Michael Jordan, if you're a toxic person that damages the culture of the team, you are gone. And so we valued first like, these are our values and these are the type people that thrive in our organization. We're going to start there, and then we're going to go for competent people.

But if someone's super competent but super toxic, we're going to get rid of them. So we had to change some of the department heads. hire. Now we have an advantage because every film, you know, we're bringing on crews just for that film. And so there were some people that didn't get the invite back. And there were some new people and there's some people we needed to allow in the process. But then we took a day for, I can only imagine, when all the department heads were in, we took an entire day and we paid everybody. And we just spent a day educating our team on what we value and why. In the environment that

we want to create and how we want to treat each other, that it's such a small thing. It's such a cheap thing. And then we did the same thing with the marketing team when we started. And just that change changed everything. Like it created an entirely new atmosphere. And the culture, ultimately you'd have to ask members of my team, but my perception of it is the culture between Woodlawn and I can only imagine was night and day different. And the changes that it took to do that were small. But it led, do you believe it led to the big profitability? I believe 100% the changes that we made. because you got two good stories. Yeah.

Obviously, I can only imagine, did have a base. I mean, you acknowledged that freely. It had a strong base. But we only knew to look for it. Right. Like, I had a conversation with an executive about I Can Only Imagine before we self-funded studio that was looking at it. And they said, there's no audience for this movie.

Like, because he didn't understand the metrics. So the post-mortem allowed us to view our industry through a different lens. But we say is we're not in the movie business. We're in the brand-driven event business. Right. So when you understand how to, to look for different things. Okay, now you can, that's innovation. You can look at the same data and see what no one else sees. So the postmortem is what gave us the lens to see the value in,

I can only imagine, because I'm like, this checks about 10 boxes that everything that we've studied says to look for. And other people didn't know to look for them. We need to look for them because of this intense postmortem. So even in identifying the value of the project, the postmortum changed everything, I would just say that, again, if you can create the right culture and recruit the right people in that culture. It changes everything. So yeah, I would say it absolutely did. Well, I love that exact anecdote there because of the post-mortem, which again, here's what we're talking about, folks. We're talking about diving into failure, and you've given us a wonderful story here on how you did it, and by diving into failure, you find the huge key to success.

Correct. And going forward, you're out looking for those other types of brands where there's something there. You can tell a story around an already existing brand. Correct. It's basically partnering with a pre-cultivated audience and finding the story within something that people already have massive. Exciting stuff. So what I love to do many times when we have a guest on is ask them what you're being challenged by. Where are you learning?

Where are you growing now? So we've really heard a great story of how you turn failure into terrific success. But as somebody who's creating, I mean, the very nature of your business is creating. You're always looking for another story to tell. Each one of those brings us some unique challenges. What are you learning as a leader now? How are you growing in your organization? Well, you know, now I worry a lot about, you know, the success, if I can only imagine,

was enormous financially and culturally and all the things that we want. And the millions of people that saw, the lives changed all around the world, trigger all these output deals so countries like China aren't paying for it. You know, so now I worry about they say nothing fails like success, you know. And I think, I don't know which sin is worse, but it's the worst sin. But I can tell you what's the most deadly by my experience is pride. you know, and a certain level of arrogance and entitlement. I worry a lot about that.

Like Pixar talked about post-toy story having to unlearn, not necessarily learn. And I think just constantly celebrating what you don't know instead of what you do. And just being on a quest to learn from great people and blistering them with questions. I mean, I think Craig Rochelle said something. He said that really stuck with me. He said, you know, if you want to learn from great people, don't learn what they do, learn how they think. If you want to change your outcome, you got to change the way you think. And so now I think one of the great ways to view life is, and I think biblically, I'm passionate about this, to not view life as weeks and years, but view life as seasons.

So different seasons of life have different challenges and different opportunities. Success is not all it's cracked up to be, you know. Success is, there's a fog to it. There's a responsibility to it. There's a, the recklessness of being the underdog is so much fun. Yes. It's so clear. on the back side of the hit,

you know, it's foggy, you know, and it's tough. And I mean, these are high-class problems. So I'm trying to learn to lead at scale. You know, we've done a deal with Lionsgate that enables us to just be on this explosive growth path and do more than Andy and I can make. Right. Mentor other filmmakers do going from one film every two years to two films a year.

That's a growth path. Television on top of that, digital on top of that, you know, stage adaptations on top of that. And so all of a sudden you're, instead of focusing on, I guess what I'm saying is what I'm really obsessed with is learning the difference between leading and leading a scale. I had a lot of questions for Dave on that today. Sure. And those are two very different things and I'm enjoying learning.

The point is always be learning. Always be improving yourself. I just think if you're not curious and if you're not learning and growing in my industry, the world is changing so fast. Ray Kruowitz, who does a lot of TED talks. He called the Law of Accelerating Returns. Change happens exponentially. And his theory was that we're going to experience 20,000. years of change in the next hundred based off world history. So change is happening so fast that

if you're not learning and growing, at least in my industry, look at Blockbuster. Your industry will fly by you and you will be irrelevant overnight. So one of the biggest dangers, in my opinion, professionally, is to get comfortable. Comfort is the enemy of growth. And so to me, it's just about maintaining a mindset of learning, learning from great people, seeking out mentors. You know, we did just as exhaustive post-mortem on, I can play imagine. It wasn't, you know, it's interesting though we didn't learn near as much as I really do believe, and other

people differ with me, but it really is failure is where you learn, success is where you cash in on what you've learned from failure. I believe that. And I just think there's a process to learning. Again, the book I would most recommend as principles, Ray Delio's book. The other big thing I would say is you have not completed it. When you study your failures

and you learn from them, look at them as a puzzle, and let the puzzle give you a principle. Write that principle down, right? So those are golden. Write it down, live by it. What Ray would say is these are algorithms by which to make decisions, and I agree with that. The idea is when you confront failure, solve the problem, discover the principle, write it down, and then let when life is foggy, when you can't see the forest beyond the trees, when you're in the middle of it, when you're in the heat of battle, let your values and your principles make decisions for you. And I have yet to

regret a values and principle-based decision. since this process. Because sometimes you just don't know what to do. And that's leadership. Sometimes the truth is clear. Sometimes you have a hunch. So when it gets really confusing, let the things that you've learned make decisions for you. Well, I can tell you, John Irwin, really, really excited that you've shared your story

with us. We're rooting for you and your brother and the company. You guys really are embodying entree leadership out there. And this is good stuff. So much we can learn from failure. I think the process that we can pick up from the story. story you shared is really, really valuable. So on behalf of the entire entree team and our audience, thanks for hanging out. Well, I love, first of all, I love this company. I love everything you guys do.

The principles work, the principles have changed my life. And I think to every entrepreneur listening, the biggest thing is just not to give up. I mean, imagine if Andy and I had given up after Woodlawn. Yeah. And sometimes that breakthrough success that you crave, my life changed. It's 316, good date. 2018. My life changed fundamentally forever. And it was almost over. night, but it was 20 years in the making. And I think that the biggest thing is if your cause is just and you believe in what you do, keep going, keep dreaming, just keep believing, and never give up. Because you just never know when that breakthrough is right around the corner. And if there's anything that I would say, I think a lot of entrepreneurs, they simply give up too

early. Success takes longer than you think, costs more than anything. But, or is it worth it if you'll just stick with it. It's good stuff. It's a good word. He is John Irwin. And we'll have links to everything that he and his brother are doing in this episode show notes. Big thanks to John Irwin for hanging out with us. Hey, let's talk about a tool from our Entree leadership team that is really relevant to the conversation you just heard. Our leadership growth assessment. How to develop leaders within your team.

Now, feedback is a huge part of assessment. I mean, let's just think about it. Whether you take an online assessment, that assessment cranks out some feedback back to you. If you sit down in a one-on-one or a one-on-few, whatever it is. Feedback is a huge part of assessment. You've got to know where you are if you want to grow where you are. So we want you and your team to fill out this self-test here that will give you some great feedback and then you can actually conversate around it.

This resource also includes some leadership development tips as well. It's jam-packed with goodness and it's free. Text the phrase leader growth. There's no space there. Just text the phrase leader growth to 33444. That's 33444. Or you can click the link in this episode's show notes. All right, let's get to Craig Groshell. He's been on the podcast many times. And I love Craig's perspective because he's the pastor of the largest church in America. Now that's impressive enough. But they run their operation debt-free. They always come in under budget. This guy is a pastor and a CEO. a mind-blowing leader, and we're going to bring you a portion of a recent conversation I had with Craig on feedback. Here's Craig Rochelle. How do we go from agonizing over feedback to looking forward to it, to say, okay, this is going to be great, I'm going to get some stuff that's going to help me grow. That's really easy for me to say. I mean, I almost feel just goofy putting it in a question that way, because that's not an easy emotional state to get into.

I can say it. It's not as easy to do. No, it's not. And I would like to recommend good resources. I think the book's called Thanks for the Feedback by Shulaheen. It's one of my favorite books I've read on feedback. One of the things that I try to do is try to tell myself and then tell the team, is that we don't endure feedback.

We embrace it. A lot of times whenever we get feedback, we tend to think it's feedback on who we are. And generally it's not. It's usually feedback on what we do. We feel like it's feedback on our identity, but it's more feedback on our performance. And we have to hear that. If I don't give you feedback, that's more of an expression that I don't love and don't care about you.

If I genuinely love and care about you, I want you to get better. And so I'm going to give you feedback. At the same time, some people say, well, Craig, you're the leader of the organization. Why would you let people anonymously give you feedback? If I don't do that at the point position, then how in the world can I expect it to be given through the whole organization. The truth is that any kind of feedback is, it can often be difficult to hear, but it's kind of like if you were playing a sport and I told you, hey, your baseball swings off or your golf swings a little bit off and I helped you improve you and say thank you very

much. Why in the world in business and leadership and ministry would not want the same thing? Someone who sees something from the outside that can help us get better. Instead, we need to say thank you. The other thing that I've found, Ken, is whenever I'm most defensive, that's generally, an indicator of the place that I have the most to learn. Whenever I want to push back and say, no, you're wrong. You know, you don't know me. That's not right. That's generally an indicator that I have a big blind spot. And so now I recognize that's a cue that I probably really do need to learn something for the feedback. Okay. I don't want to move on here because you're exactly right. I've sitting here thinking about it. If I go to a golf lesson, you know, I'm going to cringe when

I watch the videotape just because, you know, your swing always looks better in your mind than actually does on camera, at least for most of us. And yet, I don't take any of that critique personal. He's like, you know, your swings flat here, you know, your weights, your weight's not distributed, whatever it is. And I go, okay, great. And I can take that. But then if you talk about my job performance, it still feels personal. And you touched on that. So again, I want to stay here because there's got to be some maturity. There's got to be some level of, I've got to be intentional here and practice this muscle or build this muscle, be able to receive feedback so that it's not, okay, this is who I am as a person. This is just how I'm performing. I know you touched on it,

but I feel that we need a little bit more here. How do we get to that point where it's not as agonizing? I think if it's your golf swing that feels like a hobby, that's a performance, that's not identity unless maybe you're a pro golfer. And then it might feel more like identity. But in work, this isn't something we do for a couple hours a week for fun. This is, you know, 40, 50, 60 hours a week. And right or wrong, we often do tie our identity and with our work and our performance. And so I think by nature, it's a little bit more difficult. I think one of the ways that we can work with an individual to help them get better at giving and receiving feedback, but even more importantly, what we want to do is we want to think organizationally, not just individually.

If we can train our whole organization to be both better at giving and better at receiving, then organizationally is something that we embrace, not something that we endure. For example, when we interview people to come into our organization, one of the things that we do, we always do big group interviews and have dozens of people in for an interview day. Everybody does some sort of performance, some sort of talk, presentation, or whatever. And then everyone in the interview process has to give feedback and receive feedback. This is really important because what we want to do is we want to see how do they give it, how do they receive it? But we also want them to know before you ever step foot on this team, we're a high feedback organization.

Whenever I meet with our new team members, once a quarter, we have a bunch of them come in and I spend a little bit of time with them and I ask them, what's the number one thing that surprised you about being here? The top two answers always would be the leadership development and or one or two, the other one would be the amount of feedback that I get. And again, it's because culturally, most younger adults or kids that are the age of my kids, they haven't been getting a lot of feedback besides, hey, you get a trophy for showing up. And so especially the emerging generation hasn't gotten a lot of constructive feedback. And so we have to teach them the value of it and teach them how to do it. You could give me feedback in a way that I might say thank you or you could give me feedback in a way I'd say, Ken's a jerk. And so organizationally, what we want to do is we want to embrace. race a really helpful, a loving, a constructive way of giving it. And then when we all get better

together, especially when we're giving feedback in groups, we see that we're all a little bit better. That creates a win. Suddenly, I don't just endure feedback. I seek it out. For me, before I preach a message, Ken, I'll have into my office probably four to maybe as many as seven groups of people and a group maybe two people, it may be as many as five. But I talked through the message with them beforehand because I want feedback. What I want to know is, what have I become emotionally attached to that you don't care about? What's really interesting to me that's born to you? I'm a 51-year-old father and you're a 23-year-old single girl. How am I not applying this to your life? And so rather than wait to get feedback on Monday from a message I give on Sunday,

I want feedback days before, so it's going to make me better. That is something we value. If you don't embrace feedback in your culture, your whole team is limiting themselves on the potential for improvement. Hey, you're going to hear more from Craig Groschelle next week as we bring you a portion of that conversation where we talk about communication and specifically how to become more effective at this vital leadership tool of communication. Here's a short clip just to give you a taste. What I want them to know, feel, and do. If you can answer those three questions before a podcast, before, a meeting, before an interview, before vision casting, before a planning session, before a sermon, before leading people toward an outcome, that'll drastically change. Just because you said it,

doesn't mean they heard it, doesn't mean they believe it, doesn't mean they'll do it. We want to create the emotion that leads to the action. All right, that is just some goodness from Craig that you come to expect. You're going to hear the rest of that conversation next week. On behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thank you so very much for listening. We'll talk with you again, soon. Hey folks, I want to make you aware that we have other great podcasts from Ramsey Solutions. Here's a sample of Christy Wright's Business Boutique podcast. Hey, I'm Christy Wright, and I help women all over the country take their ideas and passions and hobbies and turn them into profitable businesses. If you have an idea in your head or a dream in your heart and you've ever wondered

if you could make money doing it, I'm here to help. Join us on the Business Boutique Podcast where we are equipping women to make money doing what they love. If you'd like to hear episodes, just search Business Boutique in iTunes or go to business boutique.com.