Episode 55 - Making, FAILING, and Becoming (w/ Jimmy Diresta & Bob Clagett)

Transcript

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: About 7 or 7.30, he'd go down to the laboratory and experiment, only stopping for a short time at noon to eat lunch, sit down from the house. About 6 o'clock p.m., the carriage would call to take him to dinner, from which he would return by 7 or 8 p.m. to resume work.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: The carriage came again at midnight to take him home, but frequently he had to wait until 2 or 3 p.m. a.m. in the morning and sometimes return without him as he decided to continue all night. This had been going on for more than five months, seven days a week, when I was called down to the laboratory to see him.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I found him at his bench, about three feet wide and 12 to 15 feet long, on which there were hundreds of little test cells that had been made up by his core of chemists and engineers. He was seated at the bench testing, figuring, planning.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: i then lean I then learned that he had thus made over 9,000 experiments in trying to devise this new type of storage battery, but had not yet produced a single thing that promised to solve the question.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: In view of this immense amount of thought and labor, my sympathy got the better of my judgment. And I said, isn't it a shame that with this tremendous amount of work you've done, you haven't been able to get any results.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Edison turned to me like a flash and with a smile replied, results. Why, man, I've gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.

jimmy: Oh, heavy. heavy

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Oh, here we go again, kids. Another episode of Woodworking is Bullshit, your favorite podcast about why we do what we do, not how we do what we do. I'm your host, Paul Jasper of Copper Pig Woodworking, scientist by day, woodworker by night. And of course, across from me in the chair is my boy, Eric Curtis.

Biggy Fails: How are you, my friends?

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Fine. Fine Furniture Maker and Content Creator. And today we have two guests, ah very excited, two of the most influential, well-spoken, generous, and prolific makers within our community, Jimmy DiResta and Bob Claggett.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Thank you both for making the time to discuss what is arguably a difficult topic today.

jimmy: Thank you.

jimmy: Thank you.

Bob: Absolutely. Thanks for having us.

jimmy: Thank you.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So today is about failure.

jimmy: Thank

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And that's it's you know just even asking the two you to be on an episode about something so inherently negative and associated with negativity in many ways, I felt like it was a big ask.

jimmy: you.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And I pursued the two of you, like chasing you, like, hey, how about that podcast episode? Can we do it now? Can we do it now? and So they thank you both for agreeing to do this.

jimmy: ah You're welcome.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: and

jimmy: We've talked about this quite a bit.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: on your On your podcast?

Bob: I'm really good at failing. so you know.

jimmy: Yeah, yeah

Biggy Fails: ah

jimmy: on our podcast, Making It, 500 episodes plus.

Bob: Yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Right.

Bob: Yes.

jimmy: Yeah, quite a bit of them are.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yes.

Bob: Yeah.

jimmy: Yeah. we've ah

Bob: Several of them are about failing.

jimmy: yeah quite a bit of a more yeah

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So you know what we're going to get to today is like, how do we define failure? What does it look like for each of us? You you often hear this kind of rah-rah, you know like, oh, failure so great. and But yet all of us resist it or avoid it to some extent. right So there's a comp there's a complexity there between it being a teacher and it being a waste of time or a frustration. And so we're going to drill down into all of these topics. But first, I thought just to get the the creative juices flowing,

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: We could start with what Eric and I call a lightning round, where I'm going to give a some quotes from Thomas Edison, who is arguably one of the the finest inventors ever.

jimmy: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: who, no you know, I think probably had, oh, tens of thousands of failures along the way. And I have a whole bunch of quotes and what I'd like from each of you. And I'm just going to call it. I'm going to say the quote. I'm gonna call on one of you. And you have to agree, disagree, or it depends.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: All right. just Just to get the juices flowing. And we don't have to spend a lot of time on this, but I just thought it'd be a ah good way to warm up. All right. So let's start with this one.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. Bob, agree, disagree, or it depends.

Bob: It depends, but I think more on the side of disagree.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Okay. Yeah,

Bob: it's it That's completely immeasurable. And it's a nice sentiment, but yeah, there's no way to know that.

jimmy: How would you know?

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: how close you are. Yeah.

Bob: Yeah. And there's no way to know how many people have been in that situation that were close and didn't know it. So as a quote,

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm.

Bob: he

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It's kitschy, but not necessarily true.

Bob: yeah, yeah, in my opinion.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah. All right, here we go. Number two, the successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn't like to do. Jimmy.

jimmy: I suppose that's true. That's true. Continues to carry on. Continues to ideate.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Okay.

jimmy: Continues to iterate.

Bob: It depends. ah yeah and know you didn't ask me, but like, it depends.

jimmy: ah

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ah

Bob: I mean, in in your example, yes, if if people stop doing those things.

jimmy: continue

Bob: But, you know, the person that fails also doesn't like to take out the trash. And that doesn't mean successful people take out the trash. It depends. It depends on what you're talking about.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Okay. All right, Eric.

Bob: I might be a contrarian on all this stuff. Sorry. Yeah.

Biggy Fails: No, um' I'm closer to you, Bob.

jimmy: ah

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: that's yeah That's exactly why we're were we're just getting the juices flowing. Eric, you're up. You ready?

Biggy Fails: Hit me.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you failure.

Biggy Fails: It's so hard not to take that in a sexual direction right off the top. um ah yeah I say it again one more time, a thoroughly satisfied man.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you failure.

Biggy Fails: I would say i would tend to agree with that because if you're going to... If you're going to be satisfied with your life, looking back on it in the end, i think that necessitates taking risk and being honest with yourself. And in risk will inevitably lead to failure if you stick with it long enough.

jimmy: Hmm. Hmm.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I read that quote differently.

Bob: I did too, but that's an interesting, yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: thought it was, thought it, Yeah, I thought it was basically suggesting that if you're satisfied, you will, you're destined to, if you're satisfied with something, you're a failure.

Biggy Fails: Well, well, that I would disagree with. That I would disagree with I was thinking more like, again, looking back on it, if it like from the set, from the standpoint that you are satisfied, you have lived a life that was striving towards something that was honest to you. And if you do that, invariably, you're going to fail time and time again.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm. Interesting. Okay. Let's do one more round each. Ready? Bob.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.

Bob: It depends. but

jimmy: ah

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ha

jimmy: Nobody asked me, but I agree with that.

Biggy Fails: you

Bob: I, okay. See, it, I think it it truly depends on what you're talking about because you think of somebody like Edison. Let's take that example because we've already talked about it.

Bob: Yes, there was a lot of trial and error. There was, so the genius comes out of experimentation, persistence, and that means you're going to sweat along the way, right?

jimmy: Take somebody like Chopin.

Bob: Take somebody like Chopin. who unnaturally can compose a huge variety of music.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bob: It's not one type of music. Chopin was all over the, he was the radio head of, you know, two centuries ago or whenever it was. Just, it came naturally to him and tormented him in ways that were not like, I work really hard at it.

Bob: He had to write that music, all of that music.

jimmy: Thank you.

Bob: And so it depends.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I feel like you're talking about sort of savant aptitude that is...

Biggy Fails: Yeah, you can't discount talent. But also, if you're in that headspace that you just described, like was he not, and I don't know Chopin really a lot, but but was he not doing it almost compulsively in that you could kind of equate that to like hard work, quote unquote?

Biggy Fails: Like it's it's still putting in the hours, even though he had that that natural gift to do it.

Bob: Yeah.

Bob: Yeah, possibly. i mean, I think, you know, in that example, and are people like this in every discipline. Yeah, the compulsion is I just have to do it. Not that it's hard for me.

Bob: Not that I had to practice a whole lunch a whole bunch for it. It's just a part of me being who I am is getting this thing out. And so I guess that's just a different way to look at that same, you know, work hard or can't help but to are two sides of that same thing.

jimmy: who

Biggy Fails: Yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: All

Bob: So I don't know.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: right, Jimmy, you ready?

jimmy: Go.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: We often miss opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work.

jimmy: I'd say that's true. Absolutely. I'm surrounded with a lot of people that say, oh, you're so successful. You're so successful. It's easy for you. You can have 10 trucks.

jimmy: You're so successful.

Biggy Fails: ah

jimmy: But my brother, my brother loves to, he's like yeah, he fucking works till three o'clock in the morning every fucking night. And that's what my brother always yells at his his two kids that I work. i I told these guys the other day, my alarm goes off at 2 a.m.

jimmy: says, go to bed. So that's that's when my day basically ends.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

jimmy: for Six days a week, most likely, usually Sundays, I try and reserve to watch TV late with Rachel or movie after dinner.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Wow.

jimmy: But typically six days a week, I work way past midnight every night. And a lot of people don't do that type of thing. And they're like, how could you get so much work done? I go, because i don't, I don't take any leisure time because work for me is leisure time.

jimmy: It's disguised as leisure, it's disguised as work, but I enjoy it.

Biggy Fails: Well, and then we also have the whole cultural conversation about work-life balance.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That's awesome.

Biggy Fails: And then a lot of people will see that as like, well, Jimmy's mentally unwell. You know, he' he's not hitting that, you know?

jimmy: That's fine. I'm happy.

Biggy Fails: He said it's not not true.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Ha ha ha ha ha.

jimmy: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: no

jimmy: um Call me whatever you want. I'm happy.

Biggy Fails: ah

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Ha ha ha ha.

Biggy Fails: Also, I only ever met your brother once, but I have to say that was a spot on impersonation.

jimmy: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: That was dead nuts, man.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Ha ha ha ha.

jimmy: Yeah. You might've met John. I'm talking about my brother, Joey.

Biggy Fails: Okay.

jimmy: Who's like always my brother, Joey's like the guy in the new van down by the river.

Biggy Fails: Okay.

jimmy: You know, he's like, he gives everybody an inspirational speech when he meets him for three minutes, you know, and angry.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: you

Biggy Fails: ah

jimmy: He's like, he's kind of like Jocko Wilnick in that way. But, uh,

Biggy Fails: Yep.

jimmy: Yeah, i I totally believe there are a lot of people in my life that it seems to be, okay, I'm an Xer, right? I'm a Gen Xer. Is that right? I'm a Gen Xer, right?

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I am. Yeah.

jimmy: And then the millennials and then the Gen Zs see, they're like, oh, I'll just go, I'll go work on YouTube. But they don't realize I've had three full life careers before I started YouTube that all culminate in a video.

jimmy: I've had a, as a visual artist, as a prop maker, as a toy inventor, as a prototypist, as a machinist, as a woodworker, as a carpenter. you know That all comes together when I do a YouTube video.

jimmy: And then so some millennial coming up with some Gen X, Gen Zer will go, oh, that's what I want to do. And they make movies about them like hanging out and farting in front of their camera with their friends. Like they have no real – I mean sometimes it works.

Bob: Have you tried that though? I mean, come on.

Biggy Fails: That's probably some of the biggest channels, honestly.

jimmy: I mean there's a couple guys that –

Biggy Fails: Yeah.

jimmy: Yeah, right.

Bob: ah

jimmy: I mean, like these Twitch stream people that become famous is literally for chit chatting in front of the camera.

Biggy Fails: yeah

jimmy: And then all this whole like soap opera dynamic develops because who's dated who and and who's ah talked to some underage person here or there. And then all of a sudden they're on Philip DeFranco, who's like approaching my age.

jimmy: And he's still sitting here talking about all this, you know, twink stuff. It's like that right right next to like Trump news. I'm like, what's going on in this world?

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: yeah That makes me think of the quote that people are envious of what you have, not what it took to get there.

jimmy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bob: Hmm.

Biggy Fails: Yeah, they only see the final result. Yeah. They see Jimmy at the bandsaw and they go, well, I can do that.

jimmy: yeah

Bob: Sure. He's

Biggy Fails: And then to your point, like you spent 30 years doing all of the other things that give you the skill set to to make shit, you know?

jimmy: Yeah.

jimmy: Yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: i And to buy 19 bandsaws, right?

jimmy: Yeah. yeah

Biggy Fails: Right. Right, right.

Bob: up to 25 now.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: i mean, you you right you have to cut, you have to change.

Bob: Yeah.

jimmy: It's probably, it's probably more than that.

Bob: now

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: yeah

Biggy Fails: And then you get to, I could do that too if I had 19 bandsaws.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: All right.

jimmy: Yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So

jimmy: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: Right.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: so So we've been flirting around you know failure, but we haven't really gotten into it. And what I'd like to do now is to sort of dive into how you define failure and to really kind of dig into this topic a little more. But before we do that, I want to give a a a framework that I read about in the psychology literature.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: This was advanced by Amy Edmondson. She's a Novartis professor of leadership and management at Harvard Business School. And she wrote a book. ah and it's called The Right Kind of Wrong, The Science of Failing Well. And in it, she advances a theoretical framework. And I think these are particularly helpful when taking on topics that are messy, okay? Not that not that this framework is necessarily right or the only way to see it, but at least it gives us some structures with with which to kind of place our thoughts and digest our thoughts. So she talks about three archetypes of failure that I think is pretty interesting.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So already we're dividing failure into multiple things, right? The first archetype is what I think she would call simple failure. It's a case where we know what we're doing, we know the field, and we make a mistake.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: You're backing your car out, you forget to turn and look, and you run into something, right? That is a simple failure. You know how to drive a car, you know how to look, you just fucked up, you just made a mistake, all right?

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So that's simple failure. And I don't think that's...

jimmy: I did that this summer.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: You did that this morning.

jimmy: No, this summer I drove into a fire hydrant with my brand new truck.

Biggy Fails: ah man

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Now, one can argue we can learn from simple failures, Jimmy, like checking what's around our car before.

jimmy: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: Look for the fire hydrants. Yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Right.

jimmy: Yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So

jimmy: Using that aerial view of my fancy car.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: But I think simple failures are not the kind we tend to grow from. It's really and a nuisance. And then the second archetype of failure is what what what she terms complex failure. So this is where...

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It's like a perfect storm. like ah There's a multitude of influences coming together at the same time to lead to a failure. I think that you could think about this like economic breakdown in the supply chain. You could think about this ah football team losing. right A football team losing is not usually dependent on a single mistake. right It's usually ah you know that the special teams failed on something, the defense failed in some ways, the offense, the coaching wasn't there. you know, the strategy, what it's it's a comp it's it's really a compound or multifactorial type of failure. But again, this is in the context of you know what's going on. We know how to play, like football teams know how to play football.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: um Sometimes things are out of your control, I would say, ah but yet it's still in the realm of understood stuff. all right so Simple and complex failure. Both of those aren't particularly ah enriching when they happen, and I think we tend to avoid them. But I think it's the third type that I think is the most interesting, which is intelligent failure, what she calls it.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And think of intelligent failure as sort of the right kind of wrong or the good kind of failure, thoughtful forays into new territory. And Bob you know bob and Jimmy and Eric, I think all four of us do this all the time. Thoughtful forays into new territory that may or may not work. We know the probability of failure is high. We know that going into it because we don't know what we don't know.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: but we're willing to take the risk. we we We decide we want to try something. We put forth a hypothesis. We think we know what we're doing. We give a shot.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It may or may not work. We know the probability of failure is high. And we get information back. And this is exactly what I think, you know, the the quote on the front of the show that Edison was really talking about is this intelligent failure. And it it has genuine uncertainty to all of it, as opposed to like simple failure or complex failure.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: um Now, she argues, here's the last point. And before we we we go into this ah this part of intelligent failure, which I think is, this is what we call good failure, right? I think all of us are are talking about this.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So she said there's four attributes to to intelligent failure. Number one, it's new territory and we don't have the knowledge. Number two, it's in pursuit of some goal.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Number three, it's a hypothesis-driven approach. It's not just random noodling. And four, we take risks and we make the the the failures sometimes as small as possible, just big enough to learn.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And so we're not wasting immense resource. So like, this is like, think about it like you do a pilot project, right? But you don't do a huge pilot project right off the front costing millions of dollars.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: You do the smallest, right?

jimmy: You dip your toe.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: You dip your toe in. So I thought, I don't know. What do you guys think about this as ah as a framework, like simple failure, complex failure, intelligent failure as sort of a way to think about or categorize failure?

jimmy: I don't, I personally don't think about it too much. I just hope, i guess failure in in light of a recent example that happened this morning. Failure a lot of times is when you get caught with your pants down.

jimmy: You know what happens alone in the shop a lot?

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

jimmy: Oh, you know, I shot the saw blade across the room. Good thing I kept my fingers, you know. Oops, you know, this piece of wood snapped when I thought it was going to be in the clamp in the right direction. Oh, that split when I put a screw in it. Those are all little failures that happen.

jimmy: But when it happens in front of a client, when you make this basketball wall for some stupid reason that they asked for, Bob knows what I'm talking about.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Mm-hmm.

jimmy: this wall full of deflated basketballs for a gym wall. And then you get the phone call this morning that one of the basketballs is falling off. And i have to try and figure it out from Jersey city, 300, 150 miles away.

jimmy: um That's, that is, that is when you fail you with your pants down. And that's, I don't know where that falls into the cat that falls into the, you know, first world problems. It's no big deal. I'll drive down there and put your dumb basketball stuck on the wall again. But,

jimmy: in light of the fact that it costs a lot of money and there was a lot of hubbub and the installation and this and that, and there's a lot of pomp and circumstance because of the client, then it feels like a big, you know, when you got to deal with that. But that's the type of failure that gets me nervous is when you get caught with your pants down in front of a client.

jimmy: And if we're talking about that type of thing, or if you get caught with your pants down in front of your audience, if we're going to talk about YouTube entertainment,

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

jimmy: You do something, you could choose to show it as a teaching moment. You don't have to always show all the things that go wrong. Or when you actually put up a movie and you don't realize you left the cripplers out and then all the fans would point to you. and And I wouldn't consider that failure. I would just consider that you know learning on the job.

jimmy: So that's the you know that's there's a lot of it. And and and I guess when there's high stakes jobs involved, when there's money and there's there's commissions and then you hang something on the wall and it falls off.

jimmy: That's, that's embarrassing.

Biggy Fails: Well, does the the pressure of the situation change the type of failure that's involved? Because like the the way that you described it, and I don't know about this this basketball wall, that it sounds like that one ball falling off.

jimmy: Yeah.

jimmy: Yeah. It's a, it's a grid of about 12 basketballs on a grid.

Biggy Fails: Okay, so so one of them falls off.

jimmy: Yeah.

jimmy: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: And it sounds like for whatever happened, mechanical failure, adhesive failure, whatever it was.

jimmy: Yeah, mechanical failure.

Biggy Fails: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds that sounds like a simple failure.

jimmy: Glue.

Biggy Fails: But because of the stakes, it becomes a more complex failure, right?

jimmy: Just, yeah, it's just a vanity failure, really. I mean, it's like, like I said, there's no big deal because no one got hurt.

Biggy Fails: Well, vanity failure is a good category.

jimmy: no You know, there's just a stupid basketball that was deflated and glued to the wall. And it's actually didn't even fall off.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well, jimmy

jimmy: It just drooped. so Like it's not in the right spot.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: well jimmy jimmy Jimmy, what you're doing is you're you're interjecting another axis. It's not just whether it failed or was successful. You're putting like an emotional axis on it of like, how did it make me feel?

jimmy: Yeah, it's true. It's true. It's true.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Like what was the context of how I looked in in the public domain?

jimmy: Yeah.

jimmy: Well, I mean, as far as like,

Biggy Fails: Well, but but that matters, man. You know, like like to your to your analogy about football, like if you're if you're yeah if you're if you're practicing place kicking and you miss a field goal, no big deal.

jimmy: if we're talking about career,

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: If it's the Super Bowl, like you're not going to have a job next year. You know, so the context of it does matter, even though missing a kick could be a simple failure.

jimmy: You know, failure of not realizing and then, you know, having some sort of fatal car accident, that's that's a huge failure. You know, that's a little bit more, obviously, of a catastrophic situation.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

jimmy: You got to figure out what you did wrong, who's liable. You know, God forbid anything like that should ever happen to anybody. um i'm I'm reminded of the time I cut my pinky off in the workshop.

jimmy: You know, I cut my pinky 90% through. the skin kept it in place. I rushed to the hospital. They sewed it back on. I was so embarrassed. Everybody I met, it was like in the emergency room, like I cut my pinky off.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

jimmy: I'm a woodworker.

Biggy Fails: Hmm. Hmm.

jimmy: They're like, what happened? Like, I don't know. I hit the saw blade. You know, that's like what I felt like.

Biggy Fails: ah

jimmy: i Like I'm in the ambulance.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Did you talk like that?

jimmy: I'm like, I cut my pinky off.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ah

jimmy: I'm so stupid. You know, everybody I talked to, I literally had to constantly ah sort of make an emotional amends.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: did you talk like that

jimmy: Everybody I spoke to, it then I got to the point, I remember being in therapy. physical therapy after they sewed it back on and the pins are out and everything. And I'm next to some guy that works for LILCO, the long, well, for Con Edison in New York, it's the electrical company. And he, uh, a, a cutoff wheel went through the back of his, his hand and cut all the tendons on the back of his hand. He's like, yeah, it happens.

jimmy: It's like, yeah,

Biggy Fails: Yeah, it's a Tuesday.

Bob: Mm-hmm.

Biggy Fails: What are you going to do?

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Mm-hmm.

jimmy: he's like, it happens.

Biggy Fails: yeah

jimmy: Yeah. Cut right through my glove. Can't use these two fingers. And 2010.

Biggy Fails: Jimmy, when when was that?

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: oh

Biggy Fails: When did that happen with your pinky?

jimmy: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: Okay, so you were you were doing YouTube by that point, yeah?

jimmy: yeah No, it was about two years before I started YouTube. Maybe a year before I started YouTube.

Biggy Fails: Oh, okay. Okay. I was just curious if if you had been doing YouTube, is that...

jimmy: Yeah.

jimmy: No, no. i i had just It was like within 18 months before I started my first YouTube channel.

Biggy Fails: would Would that be a thing that you acknowledge on the internet, like given the level of embarrassment that you had?

jimmy: I did. when ah Yeah, I got over it when I realized it's a common practice. In fact, one of my friends, and and I probably told this story on our podcast, my good buddy at the time a Long Island is very, very, very talented woodworker.

jimmy: And he called me and he's like, excuse me for cursing. goes, what the fuck? He's like a, like a Long Island douche. He's like, what the fuck? oh How could you cut your fucking finger off? How could you cut your, what the fuck is wrong with you? And he's like trying to give me tough love. was like, I go, I don't know. I said, I slipped. I don't even know. I said, you know, just was doing something stupid. He's like, you should, you should be smarter. Your hands are, your hands are your living. Don't, don't fuck them up.

jimmy: Meanwhile, what happens? ah What happened? Mickey, Mickey slips, cut three fingers off about a year later.

Biggy Fails: Yeah.

Bob: Yikes.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Did you call him?

jimmy: mutilated mutilated his hand his and he's like he's a he's accomplished guitar player and i said to i called him and i didn't go hey remember ah about 18 months ago when you were trying to shame me out of tough love and i just called him i said mickey what happened goes i don't know it just because it was over in a millisecond he was all of a sudden fucking holding my hand together so it i don't know the point i'm making but

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ah Oh, no. Oh, no.

Bob: Ooh.

Biggy Fails: yeah

Biggy Fails: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: Well, it it happens, man. It doesn't matter how long you've been doing the thing.

jimmy: It happens. Oh, so I did talk about it.

Biggy Fails: Yeah.

jimmy: You were talking about like, yeah, I was embarrassed, but then I realized it does happen to other people.

Biggy Fails: Yeah.

jimmy: That was the point I was making.

Biggy Fails: Yeah.

jimmy: And then I did talk about it.

Biggy Fails: yeah

jimmy: I did a ah table saw tips video and I talked about it and I told everybody what happened and how it happened. And I wasn't embarrassed about it at that point. I mean, it was, it happened, you know, it's part of the fabric of who I am at this point.

jimmy: And, and

Biggy Fails: Well, part part of the reason I was wondering is because i was I was curious.

jimmy: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: I feel like so many people in the YouTube game with smaller channels typically will use that as a clickbaity way to to grab views. But it sounds like the way that you did it was intentionally like, a hey, learning moment.

jimmy: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: This shit could happen to everybody.

jimmy: Yeah. At that point, it was almost two years earlier.

Biggy Fails: Let's be safe. Not like a ah thumbnail with you holding your pinky way out here kind of situation.

jimmy: yeah, yeah, yeah.

Biggy Fails: Yeah.

jimmy: yeah

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well, I think you know that's an example of of how that's a simple that's a simple failure, ah right? And we don't really, i don't i don't think simple failures are great in in a general sense.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I think they want to we want to avoid simple failures. Like, yeah, you can say that was a learning moment, but like, shit, do you have to really cut your finger off to learn to use a table?

jimmy: Mm-hmm.

jimmy: Yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: you know So, yeah.

jimmy: Yeah. I wasn't being safe. I really wasn't. I'm not going to sit here and deny it. I wasn't being safe.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: so so

jimmy: I wasn't being, I was being too confident. That's what happened.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So I, without being contrarian about her framework, I do think like simple failures and complex failures are largely to be avoided. We tend to want to avoid them and see yeah the reason I bring this up is because like some people say, oh, failing is so great. We learn so much from it. And then to other people, you know, and, but yeah, at the same time, we avoid failure, like the plague, right? Which is it? And I think it depends on the type.

jimmy: Yeah, it depends. Like if I have, you know, 10 sheets of, of, uh, walnut plywood, I'm making extra sure. I'm not going to screw that up because I just paid, you know, $175 or $200 a sheet of plywood.

Biggy Fails: hmm

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Right.

jimmy: I'm making sure that every move I make, if I have a sheet of just home Depot plywood, I'm like throwing it through the saw of letting it flop on the floor, dragging it on the corners. So there's different types of failures. Again, talking in terms of, you know, YouTube entertainment, making things for a living.

jimmy: Um, When it comes to when my business failed with my brother, we kept trying to navigate the changing landscape of our business. We were in the we were in the subcontractors in the toy business.

jimmy: We would take somebody's product and develop the packaging.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Mm-hmm.

jimmy: We project managed the project from concept prototype all the way through to sales meetings. And you know when a small toy company was was small staffed, we would come in as their as they pinch hitters and pick up the the slack.

jimmy: And we were getting anywhere between $10,000 to $20,000 draws a month from these companies as like a subcontractor to handle all these things. And then one by one, these companies started going out of business and we didn't really know how to make the change.

jimmy: And then one day my brother says, We don't have the money to pay the rent. So we have to make a decision. I spoke to the landlord and we can get out at at least 10 months early. And I said, all right, let's do it.

jimmy: And within a week, we downsized, gave most of the stuff away in the show. We had and a shop with an overhead door on the street Manhattan in the Lower East Side. I mean, we had, you know, a building that right now probably rents for $30,000 a month, but we were paying you know maybe $2,000 a month at the time. And this was in the And and That we both felt like failures, but you know, like, you know what, we got to survive.

jimmy: We got to just, and we both navigated. We both, we ended up going to work for one of our biggest clients who did not go out of business. And we ended up working for him through till nine 11. And then when nine 11 hit that put him in, then I went full time just doing stuff on my own.

jimmy: That's when I got into interior design. So you navigate these changes and you look back and you go, am I a failure or am I just developing experience?

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: well

Biggy Fails: Well, that's that's my question, right? Like, is that a failure or is it just, is it like, ever yeah, everything has ah has a life cycle.

jimmy: i don't I personally didn't think so.

Biggy Fails: And when that life cycle ends, you shift, you you come up with a new way to make money.

jimmy: Yeah. Yeah. yeah

Bob: Yeah, so like I was going to jump in because that's like the the way that I look at all this. Well, one, to jump back, you talking about the framework. I think the framework as far as the small, medium, large thing is fine, but the axis that it's on, you mentioned the axis, I think that might be...

Bob: only one way to look at it. I'll say it's wrong, but it's one way to look at, it sounded like she was talking about domain knowledge.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bob: You know, you you know the domain of driving, but you accidentally do a thing. You know the domain of football, but you accidentally turn this. You know how to run a table saw, but whatever.

Bob: So I think that that's one axis, but it spans every axis. And I think the stakes Like Eric, you started to mention the stakes are probably, at least for me, a more a more visceral way to look at it.

Bob: The stakes of backing into denning your car and cutting your hand off, like the st stakes of Jimmy cutting his finger off changed my life.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

Bob: specifically. So, you know, I think when you look at the the effect of the stakes of your failure, then it starts to define like whether it's big or small, in my opinion.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm.

Bob: But again, think you could also do that with growth.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm.

Bob: You could say growth is the the vector that you're talking about. Is it over here? Is it over here? You know, how much of these actually push you in a good direction? um And and i I think, Paul, you've heard me talk about what I think about failure is it's when you stop.

Bob: to me.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm.

Bob: So the feedback loop you get from experimentation, from doing something that doesn't work, you stay in that loop and you keep trying to like integrate new information and you try it again and you try it again.

Bob: And when you decide to get out of that loop, you either hit your goal or you've gone through the loop enough times that it's not worth continuing it on. And that's, that to me is failure.

Bob: I decided to stop trying to make it work.

jimmy: Mm-hmm.

Biggy Fails: hmm

Bob: And that's my opinion. And a lot of people don't share that opinion about failure. But um for me, yeah, sometimes that's a good thing.

jimmy: cut your losses it depends on you it'll you know it's a decision yeah

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.

Bob: Sometimes like it's it's, okay, how do I move on with my life? I fail at this thing and be done with it. I'm out of the loop, right? And sometimes it means that I've exhausted every possible thing and I didn't get what I wanted.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Is it, is it that you failed or you just, you just didn't get there yet? You just didn't succeed yet.

Bob: I think there are certain cases, and I think you know to to the question originally,

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Like,

jimmy: if you didn't get there yet and you stopped going I think it's a failure

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: is it, or is it, did you just like, ah fuck, I need a break from this.

jimmy: Cut your losses.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I just need a break. I don't have to judge it as a failure. I just need, I just need to stop for now.

jimmy: Yeah, that's true.

Bob: For now, that's not stopping.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It, I guess.

Bob: That's a pause, you know in my opinion.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.

Bob: But and also, there are there are times when you could get through a loop and you could keep trying something and you are literally exhausted every possible outcome.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.

Bob: There is no come back to it in a month and try it again.

Biggy Fails: Mm-hmm.

Bob: you know ah Take a divorce. There is no I'm going to go back to this thing and give it a shot again.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That's true.

Biggy Fails: Mm-hmm.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That's true.

Bob: It's, you know, I mean, I have not been divorced, but from the people that I know who have been through that, when it's done, it's done. And it's not a matter of like, I could try again with her.

Biggy Fails: Mm-hmm.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.

Bob: No, it did not work.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.

Bob: Walk away, you know.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I could tell...

Bob: So so, yeah, maybe both. Maybe both options are there.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Okay. So actually, Bob, what you described about like, I try a thing, i take the risk, I buy the materials, I give it a go. i I obtain information from that try. I try, I leverage that information. and I try again, and I change a variable, and I try again, I change a variable, and I try again. like this This is the scientific method that you're...

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: i mean, this is the scientific method, right?

Bob: Absolutely. Yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: This is what every scientist learns in school, and this is what we do to approach difficult problems in the unknown space. So to me, when we're applying the the scientific method into... like ah In the shop, let's say you're trying to make something new.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And you you're like, i think I think it might work like this. You buy the materials. You take the risk. You try it. It doesn't work. See, that doesn't sting for some reason. That doesn't feel like a mini failure to me. That is like, oh, wow. like Almost like Edison was saying, I've learned what didn't work. All right, I feel i see. i can see what it kind of worked a little bit, but it kind of didn't work for this reason. that doesn't feel like failure for some reason to me. Maybe it's just that I'm a scientist. So I've done it, you know, for the last 25 years, every day of my life. And it just seems like that is just what life is. That's just trying to learn something new. i don't know.

Biggy Fails: But is that just coming into that experiment with a mindset knowing that there's a high probability of failure? And so you're looking for the needle in the haystack. So when you when you just find a bunch of straw, you're not disappointed.

Biggy Fails: You know, it's just, it's it's a framework of looking at it rather than like, if you if you are producing whatever you're producing, let's say you you know, you run a a production shop and you've produced 10,000 of this object and then one of them gets fucked up because of whatever reason.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: Well, then that's a failure. That object failed because you know the process and you assume success.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yes, yes, yes.

Biggy Fails: And then when it doesn't happen, it's a failure.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Right.

Biggy Fails: But what you're describing is going in knowing that whatever you try first is probably going to fail. right It's like the the door to the cabinet that I made the last couple of months.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yes.

Biggy Fails: It had this spring-loaded central latch where I could put a lock in the middle of the door.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yep.

Biggy Fails: And I went through probably close to a dozen iterations of that, knowing that every one of them was getting a little bit closer. But ultimately, none of them worked until the last one did. So the first 11 were failures in in that sense.

Biggy Fails: But...

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: did it Did they feel like failures to you at the time?

Biggy Fails: No, it never stung because because it was just literally like, OK, I need to see what happens if.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Or was it just like, oh, yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Right.

Biggy Fails: And if it works on the first attempt, great.

jimmy: I often call it, I always call it, if you're trying to invent something or iterate or develop something that didn't already exist, you need a reference point.

Biggy Fails: Like, that's magic.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well...

Biggy Fails: Mm.

jimmy: You need a starting point. And the starting point is that first 3D print that our Bob's iterated on a few things lately.

Biggy Fails: Mm-hmm.

jimmy: You you need that first 3D print to look at it and go, you know what? It needs this now. I didn't see it until I saw it. I didn't have the wherewithal to make this decision until I see this version of it.

Biggy Fails: Mm.

jimmy: And that's really what a lot of it is. And then if you look at, let's say you make 50 of them and you come up with the best one, there's no failure in any of those. That's just it iterating.

Biggy Fails: Yeah,

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, but see, do do do you guys sense the tone of our conversation about this? It's like suddenly it's like, oh, no big deal. We try. Yeah, you you don't know what you don't know.

jimmy: There is, yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Let's give it a try. We'll see. I'm no big. Like it's like I feel like the temperature has been turned down. Whereas, Jimmy, when you started talking about the fucking basketball falling off the wall and you're like, ah, right?

jimmy: Well, like I said, it's it's really more the failure there is shame.

Biggy Fails: yeah yeah, it's about stakes again.

jimmy: It's like, net yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: But see, but but yeah some why why is some why is one like associated with such intense shame?

jimmy: Yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And like Bob, like you iterated, big deal, right?

Biggy Fails: because Because when people watch, when people are watching, there's a higher level of whatever, performance anxiety.

jimmy: yeah Well, I'm a professional.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm.

Biggy Fails: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

jimmy: I'm supposed to know that PL glue doesn't stick to a blue basketball made in China.

Biggy Fails: Uh-huh.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm.

Biggy Fails: Uh-huh.

jimmy: I'm supposed to know that.

Biggy Fails: Yep.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm. I don't know.

Bob: So i I think a lot of this and a lot of things that are emotional, take grief, take sadness, take happiness, whatever it is you want to talk about.

Bob: All of those are filtered through your own personal way of internalizing results, right? So like if your girlfriend dumps you,

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Thank you.

Bob: ah you get to internalize that however you want to. And so you can choose how big of a deal that is and what the impact is going to be on how you look at your relationships going forward. And I think from what you're saying, ah Paul, about you know you experiment, every you do the scientific method every single day. We all build things in the shop every single day that have a high probability of not working the first time.

Bob: And we've conditioned ourselves through all those experiences to internalize a certain way. And we may internalize woodworking or whatever in a different way than we do emotional stuff with our friends or a family or whatever.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bob: But you've got a gauge, right? Everybody has a gauge for what you do with input and how you how much of it you want to take in and start working into the system and how much of it you just want to like, yeah, whatever.

Bob: And so I think when it comes to building stuff, at least, we all have a higher ah like yeah, whatever, then we do, okay, I need to take this in and be upset about it and try to figure out how to like make it not ever happen again.

Bob: You know, relationships, so you have a different balance of what you internalize and what you you let go.

Biggy Fails: what Is

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: hmm hmm

Biggy Fails: our competency, coming back to your point about domain, is our competency affecting the way that we see failure in the workshop? like yeah what What I'm wondering about right now is like,

Biggy Fails: putting ourselves back in the mindset of when we first started, you know, however many years or decades ago that was. When we failed in the woodshop, it felt like, I don't know what I'm doing.

Biggy Fails: Like, I don't know. i don't know how this is going. Maybe I feel like a failure because I wanted to make a pretty cutting board for my girlfriend and it looks like dog shit because I don't know what I'm doing. Now, you know, 15 years later on for me, I make a mistake on a client piece and I'm like, no big deal.

Biggy Fails: I can fix it. You know, like this.

jimmy: You just got to figure out how to, it's just, I got to just take a different route of hide it or remake it.

Biggy Fails: So, well, did you guys feel that level of, ah we'll call it shame, I guess, for lack of a better word, when you did fail early on in your careers? Was that a thing? Like, Jimmy, I feel like you've been making since you came out of the womb.

Biggy Fails: So I don't know how you approached it.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: yeah

Biggy Fails: Bob, Bob, I don't know your background.

jimmy: Honestly, I, I,

Biggy Fails: Like, how did you guys, when you first started making things, when you did inevitably fail, did it affect you emotionally?

Bob: ah

jimmy: ah You know, I honestly think that I'm i'm i'm immune to the emotional ah effects of failure because when you look at you know the the eight or ten TV show opportunities that I had that didn't go anywhere, or when you look at the...

jimmy: umpteen times I was up to bat in the toy store that didn't turn into a Rubik's cube. Or when you look at the umpteen times I met millionaire clients and it's like, this is your big break. I'm going to work for Leonardo DiCaprio for the rest of my life. I worked for him for two months and never talked to him again. You know, like all these opportunities, I was going to go work for this rich guy in, in, uh, Asheville.

jimmy: And that turned out to be a big failure.

Biggy Fails: but But did you have that same level of resiliency when you like when you were a kid in the workshop?

jimmy: The pro,

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Oh no, right?

jimmy: Honestly, i i think, well, you know, i think this is this is a very emotional story ah and I'm not going to cry, but the I remember all the experimentation as a, you should say, here we go.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: How could you?

Bob: Yeah, you will.

Bob: i said yeah I said, yeah, you will.

jimmy: ah No, no, I won't.

Biggy Fails: Hmm. Hmm.

jimmy: but But it's funny. You know, I have I always have these tuxedo cats, right? They all keep coming back. Rachel says they come back. They're coming back to you to to give you penance. So when I was a kid, probably five or seven years old, I watched my dad do stuff in the shop and then I would always experiment.

jimmy: And you learn you have these reference points in life that, you know, when if something falls over and hits a kitten, it could kill the kitten. Right.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

jimmy: And this is what happened to me when I was about six or seven years old.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

jimmy: I saw my grandfather had left this jack with these old jacks, these bottle jacks where you crank the handle and the thing screws up slowly. It's like a little looks like a little bowling pin. And I put that under a bench that was really tall.

jimmy: This bench my dad used to always use to cut wood on. It was a long, kind of like a picnic bench, but a standalone picnic bench. It was skinny and tall. So I put the jack under one side of it and it was already too tall to begin with.

jimmy: And I'm wobbling the jack and the thing is wobbling. And then it falls over and kills baby kitten that was just born in this kitten litter that was nearby.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Oh. Mm-hmm.

jimmy: My dad always used to feed the local cat. So we always had like seven or eight cats running around the backyard. And this cat and I was hysterical. I was hysterical. And it's even now why when I don't have little Yorkies in the shop, I don't, I'm always like making sure that wood's going to fall on like anything.

jimmy: And, you know, i never liked having the Yorkies in the shop for that reason, because cats are a little bit more agile when they're adults.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

jimmy: This cat didn't see it coming. And I remember crying my eyes out. My dad said, he goes, well, now you know better.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

jimmy: That's basically what my dad said. And that was a catastrophic failure where a little animal died.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

jimmy: And, you know, I live with that for the rest of my life and I always felt guilty about it. i remember talking to therapy about it when I was in my forties. And even now and it's funny cause it was a little black and white. It was a tuxedo.

jimmy: And now like I've had like six tuxedo cats by accident. They've all come back to me.

Biggy Fails: Yeah.

jimmy: And, uh, So I remember that as a failure as a kid.

Biggy Fails: yeah

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: my God.

jimmy: I remember the other time as a failure, this is also when I was a real little kid, I picked up a sledgehammer and I picked it up over my head. And I was like, this is, this was before the cat incident. So i was always making these stupid failures where I, somebody got hurt.

jimmy: I picked, I picked the sledgehammer up and then and it got it high enough and it fell against my face. And that's why I have a scar through my eyebrow.

Bob: Ouch.

jimmy: You can't see it anymore, but there's a scar through my eyebrow, right on my orbit. The end of the sledgehammer hit me right on my orbit, cut through my eyebrow and all through my cheekbone.

Biggy Fails: Oh, man. Jesus,

Bob: Oh.

jimmy: And,

Bob: It's amazing that you are a whole person, honestly.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: god

Biggy Fails: man.

jimmy: i it's

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: For real.

Bob: i

jimmy: And then, and I mean, all my failures, I'm equating to getting injured. Another time, my brother was cutting with a razor blade and it slipped and I was standing behind him and poked me in the face with the razor blade and it cut my eyelid right here. I almost lost my eye.

Bob: Good grief.

jimmy: Cut my eyelid right there.

Biggy Fails: this sp

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Oh my God.

jimmy: That was about 10 years old.

Biggy Fails: so

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well, see, Jimmy, you have it.

jimmy: So these are all, that when I think of failures as a kid, I think of all these times I got injured or that I injured something or somebody

Biggy Fails: Well, yeah, this is coming back to the stakes question. Like you're talking about physical harm and literal life and death. Like that's those.

jimmy: Yeah, but when I think about failure in the workshop, to me, it's all just learning experiences.

Bob: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

jimmy: It's like, okay.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, but see see but coming back to the original framework, all of these examples you're giving are simple failures. You know how to use a razor blade.

jimmy: Right.

Biggy Fails: Yes, but the stakes are huge.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, it's true. The stakes are high, and those are the ones that are really embarrassing. But for some reason, all of us agree, like the intelligent failure of taking a calculated risk in the shop to try and break new ground or learn something new is not particularly shaking to us emotionally.

jimmy: Okay.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Now, I think to some new woodworkers, Eric, this is what you were driving at.

Biggy Fails: Well, that's, that's what I was trying to get at.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It is.

Biggy Fails: Yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: And, and, and that emotional resiliency, is that a thing that some people like Jimmy just naturally have, which is wonderful. Or, uh, is it a thing that, I mean, it's a thing that definitely can be learned, but like Bob, again, when you started making things, I don't know when that was, uh, what was the emotional experience of failure?

Bob: Yeah.

Bob: Well, okay. So i grew up in a house where i i grew up in a, my grandfather and my father were both dentists, self-employed, kind of self, not self-made, but you know, like not afraid to go start a business. They go to school, they, they learn a thing, they go start a business and they're successful at it and they raise a family. Right. So ah my other grandfather was a contractor built.

Bob: He would build a building and then move on and build another building. And so I followed him around in his truck and job sites and like watch him build a McDonald's. And he was just like, you do a thing, you go do a thing.

jimmy: That's cool.

Bob: Right. And so I grew up with the. the the the kind of feeling surrounding me and all of my family was, hey, just go do a thing.

Bob: If it doesn't work, do another thing. And so I have never been one. I'm not, I don't think I'm particularly cocky. I'm not one that feels like I can do everything, but I'm certainly not afraid to try. And so even as a kid, I was encouraged to like, i don't i don't know, go go give it a shot.

Bob: You know, it was about everything, about music and about building and about art and about music.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

Bob: Again, the different musics and, you know, like all the things I was just encouraged to do. So when it came time to, you know, as an adult, get back in the shop and start actually using tools again.

Bob: Like, I don't know. I mean, I didn't know what I was doing, but I wasn't worried about it. So I didn't feel like a failure was going to maybe I shouldn't be one that does this.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

Bob: It was like, well, i if it doesn't work, then I'll just try something else. And so that I think that has been.

Biggy Fails: So you...

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well,

Bob: i don't want to say superpower in that, like it makes me special, but I think it's been one of the things that's allowed me to continue to do what I do is because I don't get emotionally like ah about doing a thing wrong in the shop. Now, the other side of that, we've already talked about stakes. The other side of that is something that affects people.

Bob: um i had a you know like I had a team of people, we had a building, we had a bunch of stuff a few years ago, and all of that started to fall apart because of economic dynamics. Some of it had to do with me, some of it didn't. right But those were my good friends who then had to go find new jobs.

Bob: And that, of all the things that I have been a part of my entire life, felt like a failure more than anything else because it was there was a direct personal effect

Biggy Fails: Hmm. Hmm.

jimmy: yeah.

Bob: on other people, other people with families, with kids, with insurance, with whatever. right And that wasn't, it was I don't know if it was any of those specific three things that we talked about in the framework.

Bob: It was like, it was it was maybe all of those at the same time.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well, no, I think it is. it's ah that was a multi That was a complex failure, right?

Bob: Yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Complex. There were multitudes of things coming together at the perfect storm that led to the the business.

Bob: Yeah. But that one almost wrecked me to to answer your question, Eric.

Biggy Fails: Well, so yeah, in in using that example, did the failure of the business, like, did you bear the emotional weight of the failure of the business?

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: Or did you feel like a failure because the business failed? i feel like those are two separate things.

Bob: Ooh, say that again?

Biggy Fails: you know like Did the failure of the business just make you feel bad because you ah you know you had to let your friends go and everybody's lives got affected? Or did you feel like a failure because the business had to end?

Bob: Maybe both.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

Bob: And I think, hmm.

Bob: That's tough. I think both, yeah.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

Bob: um In different ways, and I'm not even sure how to say that. I'm not even sure how to like define which, but I felt both of those things for sure.

jimmy: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Bob: um Now, what's interesting about that failure is that, you know we talked about the feedback loop and the exit and stuff, is that I didn't exit. I didn't get out of the loop. I didn't stop doing what I was doing, but I changed the goal.

Bob: Right. So rather than like, hey, let's build a thing with more people that can be more complex and reach more and cost more and be more and have more and in in more, more, more. I switched the goal to, hey, let's do less.

Bob: Not because I had to. I could have tried to pursue the more, more, more thing, but it was like, I think I actually will be happier when the dust settles if I'm doing less, if I'm trying to not reach as far and I'm trying to be in my own space with my own thoughts and my own creativity and my own goal and and not try to include the opinions of great people, smart people, but just not trying to be all of this web of things.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Mm-hmm.

jimmy: you

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

Bob: And so instead of staying in that loop, I switched the loop, right? To like, let's do less. I want to be less. I want to have less. I want to ah focus more on fewer things.

Bob: And I think that

jimmy: The mental strain, I'm sure, was a lot of alleviated.

Bob: Oh yeah. It was like that moment of of that switch from like too much to a lot less was one of the best moments of my life and has taught me so much more about who I am and what I actually want and what I'm capable of and where I should be and ah just like so many things.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And so I... Hmm.

jimmy: Mm-hmm.

Bob: So it's hard to say that that's a failure in the end of it, but in the middle of it, heck yeah, like big time.

Biggy Fails: Yeah, yeah.

jimmy: Well, i want I want to bring up a good point because I'm thinking in terms of like –

Bob: Yeah.

jimmy: so-called success with Walmart, it was a complete failure. We went ahead and sold all these products to Walmart. Everybody sees it on the shelf. They think I'm some huge success. I'm still getting buyback bills in the $30,000 from Walmart.

jimmy: I just ignore them. But I just, i literally, I forwarded to my, my, my partner.

Biggy Fails: Yeah,

jimmy: i'm like, deal with this. I'm not paying them. They can go pound salt. They're not getting a dollar out of me because my name somehow is on some bill somewhere. Like in the name of the company is Jimmy's Woodshop.

Biggy Fails: yeah, yeah.

jimmy: And, uh, but yeah, The good thing is, is only your immediate friends know that you failed at Walmart or you failed at your own personal expansion of your business.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm.

jimmy: Everybody else thinks I'm a successful Walmart toy salesman. Everybody thinks Bob has a staff of 10 people.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm. Hmm.

jimmy: Nobody pays attention. So when it gets to that, you know personally what not to do next or what you what you feel happy doing versus what you think you think thought you were happy you're doing in the past.

jimmy: But again, for me, I guess it goes back to that sense of shame of like everybody seeing you with your pants down, the basketball falling off the wall. It's, it all depends on what kind do you really feel like, like anybody that looks at Bob or me would assume that we were the most successful people on YouTube or, you know, one of the most successful people, you know, whatever we decide to do, we get every product we ask for, we get everything we touch it.

Biggy Fails: well

Biggy Fails: Well, in fairness, you you are two of the most successful people in our space.

jimmy: We're getting paid for every bottle of glue we use.

Biggy Fails: You know?

jimmy: Well, I mean, I always point to Colin.

Bob: and Yeah, Yeah, I...

Biggy Fails: In that way.

jimmy: Like, yeah, look at Colin first. look at Look at Alex Steele. yeah i'm still I'm still on the junior.

Biggy Fails: Yeah. Well, I... I...

jimmy: i'm on the junior team.

Biggy Fails: into

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I don't know.

Biggy Fails: Well, I'm down on the elementary school team, but i I do think I was as you were talking about like the fact that only your friends know you fail.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: i don't know about that.

jimmy: ah

Biggy Fails: I was I was like, maybe the sense of shame is the difference ah between what you guys are doing and becoming a con man. Like because if ah because if everybody thinks you're successful and you just keep selling it over and over, man, you know, that's a con.

jimmy: yeah yeah

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: he

Bob: Uh, huh.

jimmy: Well, the the other thing, too, is it's like, you know, there's it's there's no shame in it.

Bob: Yeah.

jimmy: but But the Netflix thing, you know, we did this Netflix show and I meet people all the time out and about and they're like oh, my God.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

jimmy: we met a Netflix star. I'm like, I could have been moving furniture for Netflix.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

jimmy: I just happened to be doing things on camera. I mean, that's the pay scale. I said, do not, you know, it's, I'm glad you're inspired by the things I've said and done and the things we've built on the show. That's really wonderful. And children think that they're meeting a big star, but at the end of the day, you know, technically speaking, the show is a failure.

jimmy: They didn't make more.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

jimmy: But it's out there and it's another piece of the it's another piece of the patchwork of my career that I'm proud of. I don't look at that and think of it as a failure, but Netflix probably does.

Biggy Fails: Well, that's

Bob: Hmm. See, I.

Biggy Fails: an interesting... Go ahead, Bob.

jimmy: What about?

Bob: Well, I was going to say, I don't see that as a failure to me.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

jimmy: I don't. I don't.

Bob: Like, like if if your goal was we're going to keep doing this show forever, then, yeah, I guess it failed. But at the same time, you were a part of a really fantastic section of media.

jimmy: Yeah.

jimmy: Mm-hmm.

Bob: Everything life has seasons, right? Everything has a start and an end. Nothing lasts forever. And that piece of media that you were a part of was excellent.

jimmy: Thank you.

Bob: start to finish. And so even if it didn't jump the shark in season five, and then become a thing that nobody actually wanted to watch, you made a really good thing.

jimmy: Yeah.

Bob: So I wouldn't call that a failure, even if it didn't continue. But that's just my opinion.

Biggy Fails: Well, that's that's what was interesting to me is like you you said it was a failure, but you're also proud of it.

jimmy: Well, you had the same experience, Eric.

Biggy Fails: and

jimmy: Exactly the same.

Biggy Fails: ah For sure, for sure.

jimmy: Exactly the same.

Biggy Fails: And so it's one of those things where you're like, okay, well, I did a thing. I did a thing as best I possibly could do it. And I was proud of the result and that it was received in a way that I ah disagreed with to some extent.

jimmy: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: Like I would have loved to gone back and do a season two.

jimmy: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: That is outside of my control.

jimmy: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: You know, I can't I can't force the executives to make a financial decision to bring the show back.

jimmy: 100%. Yeah.

Biggy Fails: But that it exists. And and that's it. That is the thing that people took a lot of joy in. Then it's a success. So it can be both of those things simultaneously.

Bob: Hmm, that's interesting.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Good points.

Biggy Fails: Well, in in when I was so coming back to the question of like how you guys started, because both of you guys were basically just like, nah, I've always had this like deep confidence. Like I'm just good at what I do.

Bob: Not confidence.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well, that's not what they said.

Biggy Fails: What's it?

Bob: No, no, no, don't hear that.

Biggy Fails: What's no, no, no.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That's not what they said.

Biggy Fails: i I'm paraphrasing.

Bob: but

Biggy Fails: I'm just I'm picking on you guys a little bit. ah But what's interesting to me is like my experience is I had like deep performance anxiety when I was younger.

Biggy Fails: And I did like all of the things, music, sports, etc. And anytime there were people watching, I was like, I was terrified to fail.

Biggy Fails: So terrified to fail that I was focused on the potential failures and not on like the play I was supposed to be running. Right. Right. Um, and being in the woodshop and I don't know if it's because nobody was watching or it's because just natural aptitude.

Biggy Fails: That was the first time in my life where I felt like failure wasn't a reflection on me. Like I just had a hard headedness about it of like, whatever happens, I'm going to figure out how to make it work.

Biggy Fails: And then I think over time that translated to being comfortable failing in front of other people because I learned how to fail and I learned the value of failing. But early on, like it was in in every other aspect of my life, failure was like, well, I guess I'm a piece of shit then.

jimmy: other aspect the failure was

Biggy Fails: See you guys later.

jimmy: ah

Bob: Yeah. So one ah we're a soccer family. we have three We have four kids, three of which play soccer at a pretty high level. um And my my second oldest son ah is is very talented. He's excellent. And he's gotten even better. But he's had a lot of back and forth around his confidence when it comes to this. So what you just said, like is he's a prime example of that.

Bob: When it comes to him in the backyard working hard by himself when nobody's watching, he's out there, he's he's doing the drills, he's at it, right?

Biggy Fails: Mm-hmm.

Bob: When he gets in a game, historically, when he's gotten into a game, he loses the ball, makes a mistake, he immediately shrinks. You can see the, oh no, everybody just saw me do that.

Biggy Fails: Mm-hmm.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: hmm

Bob: And in soccer, at least, I'm not a big sports guy, but I know soccer. And in soccer, if you hang your head for a half a second, you've given up.

jimmy: Mm-hmm.

Biggy Fails: Yep.

Bob: You've given up the next two minutes of play. You cannot do that.

Biggy Fails: Yep.

Bob: it just You have to stay engaged. And so for him, the way that we've tried ah to help him, a lot of that is just his own personal belief you know and in in what he's capable of that nobody else can really affect.

Bob: But we've tried to change his perspective on... um kind of like why he's doing it. And it comes back to what you were saying about like performance anxiety and even doing it on YouTube, doing anything on YouTube in front of people.

Bob: if If the reason you're doing it is for how it's going to make you look to the other people, then you have way more opportunities to go off the rails and for things to go wrong and for you to feel it really deeply.

jimmy: Mm-hmm.

Bob: If the reason you're doing it is because you like doing it, then the results don't really matter that much. And so,

jimmy: I just said that to someone the other day. He was asking me, like, my opinion on YouTube. I said, you got to do because you love it, not because you want to make money.

Bob: yeah, yeah.

Biggy Fails: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bob: And so for him, it's it's like, you know, how do we get him to just love it so much that he just wants to keep his head in the game and just wants to, if you lose the ball, now you got a new challenge. Go get the ball back, you know?

Bob: Not like, oh man, everybody saw me do that.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.

Bob: and

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: yeah

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

Bob: And so, and you know, he's a young teen and so he's, there's a lot of things happening at the same time around his understanding of of himself and becoming a man and all these different things.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

Bob: Right. So he's both learning how to care about the right things and, And also learning how he as a growing person deals with caring about the right things and caring about the wrong things.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

Bob: And so there's a lot there, but his experience has been a really good example for me to kind like, huh, I need to make sure that I'm really listening to the right voices.

Bob: And the one inside my head that says, you suck and everybody saw you screw up, that's not the right voice.

jimmy: Mm-hmm.

Bob: So, you know, in, in trying to talk to him about his, what I would call small failures, um, and how you get past them, I've ended up learning a lot myself, you know, in trying to coach him into, you know, enjoying what he's doing more. But anyway, that's just a similar example that we're dealing with, have been dealing with for a couple of years.

jimmy: this This goes a little deeper. How many times do you feel like a failure because there's one person watching? There's one person. You don't care about the entire world. There's one, two people watching you and you feel like a failure because they saw what you did wrong.

Biggy Fails: Depends on who those two people are, right?

jimmy: ah Well, that's what I'm saying.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

jimmy: I mean.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well...

jimmy: You know, i'm I'm thinking in terms of of your son's soccer game. i mean, maybe he feels shame because the coach might have picked on him or the coach is having – he might feel shame because he's expecting you to –

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm.

Bob: Right. Yeah.

Biggy Fails: Right, he might not want to let dad down, right?

jimmy: to Yeah, you know, ah or, you know, maybe there's a crush that he's feeling stupid in front of. I'm not saying him particularly, but just in general, you know, ah I know from being a public figure, there are times when I want to put a troll in his place.

Bob: Right. Yeah.

jimmy: And then, you know, he comes back at you and he stings with a truth that you don't want to hear. He's like, you wore those pants yesterday, you know, something like that. I don't know.

jimmy: I'm just trying to be silly, but.

Biggy Fails: No, that's but that's an interesting question though, because I guess it then comes back to stakes.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yes.

Biggy Fails: Because it like when I was a musician, I found it a lot harder to perform in front of a small group of people than a much larger group of people.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yes. yes

jimmy: My brother's a comedian.

Biggy Fails: Because what...

jimmy: It's the same thing. He says he'd rather...

Biggy Fails: Yeah, yeah. If you're performing for like dozen people, yes.

jimmy: You could hide in plain sight.

Biggy Fails: If you're performing for a dozen people, you see everybody's eyes. If you're performing for a thousand people, it's just, it's a wash, you know?

jimmy: You know I'm saying? Yeah.

Biggy Fails: Nobody exists.

jimmy: Or, for instance, you know, like when we do a public appearance and like one your close personal friends in that city shows up, just like, please just leave.

Biggy Fails: Mm-hmm.

jimmy: Don't... I don't want you to watch this live performance.

Bob: Yeah.

jimmy: I'm just going to feel completely self-conscious.

Biggy Fails: Yep, yep.

jimmy: Could you just go in the bathroom until I'm done? We could talk afterwards. We can go to TGI Fridays later.

Biggy Fails: ah

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah. Well, what we've been talking about, and I didn't appreciate this coming into the to today, was like, I came in at this from a sort of a intellectual angle.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Like there are certain kinds of failures that are simple and certain are complex and certain are intellectual failures. Like you try a new thing and you don't know, right? Like that's sort of the axis I came with. But what you guys are talking about is an entirely different way to see it, which is what's at stake.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And it's like the emotional risk or that we're taking.

jimmy: Yeah. For me, honestly, like when it comes down to failure, I think the only real failure is the emotional shame when something breaks or, you know, or when a project fails.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

jimmy: And yeah how many times do we commit to our audience and our audiences is as a blanket term for family, friends in our audience.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well,

jimmy: And then we we don't follow through. you know, how many times have kila me and Jaco made the joke?

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: so then it, well,

jimmy: How many times we commit to losing weight to each other and the two of us are two fat pudgy dad bods no matter what we do. You know, ah do we, yeah. You know, like, what do you do? We can't, no matter how hard I try, I can't keep up a pace. ah It all depends on shame, but when it comes to shop failure, I'm like, whoop well, I guess I should have tightened the bolt on that, that saw blade.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: so then

jimmy: You know, let me tighten it and cut it again.

Biggy Fails: Well, in shame is a good way to say it, right?

jimmy: It's not failure.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm.

Biggy Fails: Because if if i make ah what if I make a table and it's in my house and something happened, like whatever, the i not yeah, the wood split's fine.

jimmy: The wood splits. Yeah.

Biggy Fails: And I go, okay, that's fine. Like I'll take it back to the shop and repair it. If a client calls me up with that same table and they go, dude, the wood split, like the the the stomach drops, right?

jimmy: Yeah. A hundred percent.

Biggy Fails: Because you feel shame that like you sold this thing. They gave you money for this thing.

jimmy: That is, that's a hundred percent.

Biggy Fails: And now they're like, dude, I thought you knew what you were doing. What the hell?

jimmy: That is like the big, that is the biggest shame there is when you give clients something and they call you back and they're like, yeah, ah the breadboard ends are like coming off the edge.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So...

jimmy: I'm like, that's what it's supposed to be.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So then really the big the big deal about failure is about processing our ego and our emotional ah damage as a result of failure.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: If it's small, if you're alone, who cares?

jimmy: Yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: No one saw. I don't feel bad at all. If it's in front of a crowd, you feel shame. So here, let let me read you ah a question that a patron gave us about failure. And I think this bears on exactly what we're talking about.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: He said, ah The pyrography cabinet I've been working on has been a tough one for me. I generally welcome failure as a great learning tool, but this piece has had me questioning my abilities at every turn.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It really ruined my confidence for a bit. How do we push through a piece or come back from a situation like that? And this is Eric Brockvist. And when I read that, decoding it in light of what we've talked about,

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It's like I was taking the intelligent failure approach.

jimmy: Mm-hmm.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I was trying a new thing. I'm experimenting, right? like and And I think the four of us are outliers. We are so comfortable doing that. That is like, that's a Tuesday, like whatever.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: All day, every day we do that. So that's no big deal. But this is a newer woodworker saying, it had me questioning my abilities at every turn and it ruined my confidence.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Eric, this comes back to like, there's an experience factor learning to deal with the aftermath of, of maybe it's not embarrassment to others because I think it's only him, but it's, it's like, he's almost embarrassed himself.

Biggy Fails: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Like I thought I was better than that. And apparently I'm not, and I'm coming to grips with it.

jimmy: Yeah. The, and the anecdote to that is just make it again. You made it once, make it again.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That's what I told him.

jimmy: Anytime you do. Yeah. Anytime you do anything, you do it twice. The second time is always better. I, my patrons know this. I haven't shown this on, on anywhere. i mean, i talked about it on the podcast for a second. I'm making these hair dryers boxes. It's a stupid concept for marketing for some liquor company where there's this box that looks like a hair dryer. It's the silhouette of like a 1950s hair dryer.

jimmy: I made the box four times yesterday. The fourth version I'm getting close to being good. I still got to make it. I might even have to make 150 of them. don't know. They're still trying to figure out what they want out me. But now I know the approach. It took me four times to get it to where it's like, okay, now I'm on the right path.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Okay, Eric, did you hear that?

jimmy: Now I know.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Jimmy DiResta had to make it four fucking times, and he's been making since he stepped out the womb.

Biggy Fails: but

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So, uh...

jimmy: Well, I mean, I never made a box.

Bob: ah

Biggy Fails: Wait, he stepped out the womb?

jimmy: I didn't.

Biggy Fails: That's an odd way.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: He, like, walked out...

Biggy Fails: ah

jimmy: I never made a i never made a a hair dryer shaped box. I mean, I never made a box that looks like a hair dryer like that, you know?

Biggy Fails: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

jimmy: So it's a stupid thing, but, you know.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: was going to say, that looks terrible. No, just kidding.

jimmy: It does.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I'm just kidding.

jimmy: No, that's the good one.

Bob: ah

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I'm just kidding.

jimmy: That's the good

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I'm just still kidding. Okay. um So yeah. So anyway, that that comment to me, it was both dancing on Eric's point that there's ah there's a progression to this of of feeling comfortable with failing. But it also brought up the point that it doesn't have to be in the sight of someone else. It can be embarrassing or humiliating just for yourself because you're trying to build your sense of self-esteem and there are setbacks along the way. I think all of you are like,

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: well established in who you think you are, who you know you are, you're way down that path. And I think for a new woodworker, they're still trying to figure some of that out. And that's what I read out of his question.

Bob: Well, and and I think there's there's always a deeper thing, right?

Biggy Fails: Hmm. Hmm.

Bob: But I think there's a deeper thing there as well that he you could look at about identity, right?

Bob: If you

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm.

Bob: if you really

Bob: if you If you scale yourself and view yourself on your ability, then you can either ah only do things that you know how to do and be really confident in your own identity because you're only doing things that you've proven that you can do.

Bob: right And then if you...

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Woodturners.

Bob: What terms?

Biggy Fails: but

jimmy: Thank you.

Bob: Or if you if you if you take like you know new things all the time,

Biggy Fails: Just taking random strays out there.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Sorry. I. Hmm.

Bob: you're going to do them wrong all the time. And if you're if your validation of own identity is based on success, then you're going to feel terrible all the time.

Bob: right So I think just generally, people put their identity in the wrong things often.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm.

Bob: um And so if if you are trying to qualify who you are based on what you can accomplish,

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Mm-hmm.

Bob: then that stuff is going to hit a lot harder than if your identity is in something else. And maybe that's a whole different episode, but I think that's a lot to do with it.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well, Bob, bob there there is this intuition, I think, that was recently in the last 10 years about parents, about what to tell your children so they don't fear failure or fear trying.

jimmy: Thank you.

Biggy Fails: That is, but that's an excellent point. Yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: This is exactly your point. the the The article, and I don't remember where it first appeared, and I'm sure you've heard it, it said, don't praise the outcome of your children. Don't say like, oh, wow, you're so smart or you achieved this.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: praise their effort. Because if you praise them always having a successful outcome, then when they think they might and they may not have a successful outcome, they don't even want to try. right they So they don't want to try something new because i everyone tells me I'm smart. And if I tried this thing that I've never tried before and it doesn't go well, that means that they they won't see me as smart. right But you if you praise their effort,

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It's always about giving it a shake, always about you know taking a step towards trying something.

Bob: And I think it's not even just about effort. I mean, effort's part of it for sure. But I think you can, praising analysis and praising a risk are probably even more useful to them than praising effort.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm.

Bob: Because effort is based on strength, it's based on persistence. But like, if you, if ah if a kid looks at a problem and analyzes it and says, it's dangerous for me to try this.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm.

Bob: I mean, I got to praise that, right?

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

Bob: If you know it's dangerous and you don't do it, like not, I'm going to muscle, I'm going to jump the the bike off the roof because I think I can like good effort, but sorry about your leg.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Good point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Biggy Fails: Mm hmm.

Biggy Fails: Well, that was me as a child.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Eric, Eric,

Bob: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: Sorry, guys.

Bob: but

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Eric Curtis. What's up?

Bob: Yeah. So, so I think, yeah, I, I totally agree with you, but I think another, it's very important to, um, analysis or like calculation for thought, you know, think of it however you want to and risk and being willing to risk something emotionally in school and sports and whatever, and just praising the effort to, or the, the willingness to risk something I think are in that same line.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That's a great point.

Biggy Fails: That is.

jimmy: Mm-hmm.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That is a great, excellent point. And actually, that brings up something I wanted to ask you about, which is with with taking risks in the shop, right? Let's talk about this intelligent failure, right? Trying to learn a new thing, breaking new ground in the shop, something that all of us do all the time.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I was curious about your risk tolerance with that. So this is something i was talking to Conrad Sauer, who makes these, you know, the the most beautiful hand planes on the earth, Conrad, and I were talking before the ah before the show. And he's like, you know, some of this plays into risk tolerance.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: How big of a risk are you willing to put into something new? both financially, like how much money are you gonna put on the line to to try this new thing?

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And emotionally, so for all of you, I'm curious, like when you try something new, Jimmy, I know you were talked about ceramics being kind of like tough and sewing and, and you know, Bob, you've you've been all over the place and Eric, I know you you try things all the time. how How risk averse or risk risky are you guys?

jimmy: Well, I bought a house that I'm trying to bring back from the dead. So I think I have no tolerance at all. I mean, I buy cars.

Bob: And he buys dead cars all the time.

jimmy: I i look at cars and go like, I could fix that. ah Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I literally bought a broken down house. I'm trying to fix that. That's a lot of money, you know, tens of thousands of dollars.

jimmy: And ah so it's funny. Now I'm at a point now where like if I make 10 grand, I'm like, oh, now I could buy the material for the roof. And so if I get like four grand, I'm like, oh, now I can get those pieces to do that.

Biggy Fails: ah

jimmy: It's not even like, oh, $10,000. I can keep that in the bank. I'm like, oh, now I can buy the roof rafters. Oh, now I got got i got a little bit of money in my – I got my YouTube earnings.

jimmy: Now I can go and buy –

Bob: A hamburger.

jimmy: $1,000.

jimmy: No, it was it i usually get a couple thousand dollars. i was like, oh, my YouTube earnings are in.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: can can i

jimmy: I'm going to go buy lumber. You know, that's really how it.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: can i just say Can I just say what I think everyone's thinking? Fucking Jimmy, you are a cut from a different cloth, baby.

jimmy: What?

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: my god.

jimmy: No.

Biggy Fails: We knew that already.

Bob: yeah

jimmy: No.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: my god

Biggy Fails: um i i think that I like i like risk. it's If I don't take risks, I get bored very easily. But I do hedge my bets a little bit. like I'm not i'm not that a degenerate gambler, if that's a way to phrase it. um like So for example, when i when I wanted to start the YouTube channel and I made the decision to see if I could make it work, I took a part-time job at a cabinet shop again to make sure that I could pay the bills. I wasn't going to be like, well, let me go broke trying to do this thing. Let me get a little thing going part-time. I'll focus on the channel part-time. And then hopefully eventually I get it to a point where I don't need that other thing anymore.

Biggy Fails: And that worked out within a year. I didn't need that part-time job anymore. And so that's fine. But like, starting the channel and in thinking that that could be an avenue ah for my business was a risk. I just wasn't willing to put all of my eggs in that basket.

jimmy: Yeah, no, I think that's just being smart. I still take work that I don't videotape. I take commissions all the time.

Biggy Fails: hu

jimmy: Just with with the amount of YouTube content and stuff that I make, I can be a little bit more picky with the work I take.

Biggy Fails: Yeah.

jimmy: I don't have to do built-ins and I don't have to be on site to install things as much as I used to. So i'm just more picky.

Biggy Fails: Yeah.

jimmy: But I still do work that will never be a YouTube video.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Bob, what's your, oh, sorry.

jimmy: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: And that's good for people to know, by the way, because I feel like a lot of people think that you just, if if you have a YouTube channel, then everything you make has to be a video.

jimmy: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: And it's like, dog, sometimes you can just take the work or just make a thing for your own edification. And both of those things are also good.

Bob: Yeah.

jimmy: Yeah.

Bob: Yeah.

jimmy: Yeah. I make a lot of things in the leather shop I don't show.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Bob, where are you on the, on the risk?

jimmy: Go ahead.

Bob: I think on the risk, like I'm not risk averse, um but when it comes to how much like investment, like how much money I'm willing to put in it, I think I just have a, I've got a very clear idea of the the priority list in my life and my family and my kids and their future and what I can offer them and how I take care of them and stuff is absolutely at the top of that list.

Bob: And so, you know, the amount of money that I'm willing to throw at something that seems like a fun idea is downstream from all of that. Now, if it comes to like, if there's a pile of material in front of me and I want to see if I can make a thing out of it, let's do it.

jimmy: Yep. yep

Bob: There's there's no limit there to if I get burnt or I break something, whatever. So I guess it depends on which part you're talking about. But yeah.

Biggy Fails: where are at?

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I would, yeah, I'm probably the most risk averse of all four of us. And I'm, I am, I think, by nature, yeah being a scientist, I am highly calculating with risk.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I will, I will take a risk, I will put money, but I have to almost know up to say, like 90% that it's going to work out before I'll put that money on the line. Like, for example, um I got into metal engraving about three, four years ago, about four years ago now. And that was a fairly sizable investment to even try it. like It's like $3,000, $4,000 to buy the equipment on this thing that I didn't know how to do. i didn't know if I'd like it. I don't know if I'd be good at it. But I just...

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I just did enough hand carving and enough drawing and enough pyrography to just, I just knew that those skills would be transferable enough for me to figure it out.

jimmy: Yeah. Yeah.

jimmy: no

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And so I was highly calculating. I think in in in general, I'm not a huge risk taker. But because of my scientific training, I take baby risks and I iterate them and stack them on top of each other. And once I do that enough times, it looks like I made a huge progress in like whatever, a drawing or engraving or pyrography or inlay or woodworking. But it was like it was like a thousand tiny little risky steps, but none of them were big. I tend not to do that. And I was like that with girls too. I could never, never. ever lay it on the line and ask the girl out.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I had to know. I had to know. The answer was a yes before I would ask her.

Biggy Fails: So you're saying you were afraid of failure?

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And I was, I was such a weenie. Now, Eric, Eric, that was before the woodworking maker experience.

jimmy: Eric, that was...

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Like that was before, because I think, and before my scientific training that, oh, play, but

Biggy Fails: So you're saying you're a playboy now? Is that...

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I'm married. I'm not a playboy now. But I think both scientific, the rigorous scientific training, like 15 years of school, right, to learn to be a scientist, that coupled with the...

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: the gauntlet that is making and woodworking has totally changed my ego part where my ego is not attached to success or failure.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I have failed some like, you know, Jimmy, the the whole idea of shame. I don't really feel it much anymore. Maybe it's because I don't take big enough risks, but even if it it fucks up, I'm just like, eh, you know, I am who I am.

jimmy: No.

jimmy: Yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It doesn't change who I am.

jimmy: Yeah. Like you said, it's all proximity to who paid what for it. If it happens before I drop it off, back inside, fix it.

Biggy Fails: Yeah. yeah yep

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: well I, well, mean, that's fine, but, but, but I, I think the lesson for me though, was the more times you, you experience many failures and get over it, many failure, get over it.

jimmy: If it happens after I leave, I'm like, I failed. so sorry.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Like by the time you're into the tens of thousands, it kind of wears off on the, on the ego, at least, you know i think it,

jimmy: Yeah.

Bob: Another interesting thing, talking about risk, and maybe this ties back to the identity a little bit, but I think the persona that we have for ourselves in the shop, in the making, whatever thing you're doing, um the persona has a lot to do with how you view risk. So like Paul, I've seen so ah a small amount of your work, finished work, not progress work, not you know, like experiments and stuff, but your finished work, highly detailed, highly polished, highly finished.

Bob: And so if that is the benchmark for what risk you're willing to take your, your, you know, each risk is calculated against the, the greatest effort you've ever made towards something.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm.

Bob: And so risk is a pretty big deal. I personally, my persona that I know about myself is that I'm a prototyper. Like,

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

Bob: My final version is maybe 0.5, right? I am not a finished woodworker.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

Bob: I am not going to do fine detail stuff. That's just not what I care about. It's not what I want to do.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm.

Bob: And so I'm a prototyper. So the risk for me to give something a shot is I might get to 0.1 and like, that's cool.

jimmy: Thank

Bob: That's that's almost as far as I'm going to go anyway. So if it kind of works.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

Bob: it's not really that big of a deal. So, you know, what you're used to calling your finished product probably has a lot to do with how far you're willing to step on those first things.

Biggy Fails: That's a really interesting framework.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That's a great point.

Biggy Fails: I wonder, like, as you were talking about that, I was thinking like something that I always remind myself is ah there's only one piece I'll ever make.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: That's the best piece I've ever made. And so everything else is just an object.

Bob: Hmm.

Biggy Fails: Right. And so but really what that is, is is kind of an emotional workaround of like if it doesn't turn out to be good, then it's like, well, you know, what are you going to do?

Bob: This wasn't it. Yeah.

Biggy Fails: You know, like the aim is to make the best piece.

Bob: Yeah.

Biggy Fails: But like, I only ever get that once. And like it can you can do better.

Bob: Right.

Biggy Fails: And like that piece can change over time. But if it's a little if it's a little if it's a bogey, like, you know, that's fine. That's pretty good.

jimmy: I have that feeling every single time I pick up a Japanese handsaw and I say, this is going to be the most finest cut I ever make.

Bob: Yeah.

jimmy: And then all of a sudden it's like a quarter inch off the line.

Bob: yeah

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Oh my God, Jimmy.

jimmy: I'm like, i just just quit doing woodwork.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Oh brother, that's all I use. They're so great.

Biggy Fails: Oh,

jimmy: Now we say every...

Bob: So this is ah this is a tangent, but it's it's similar into what you just said about the project being the best one you've ever made. or you know There's always one that's the best. So my kids are teenagers and they're into relationships for the first time in the last couple of years.

Bob: And so when you see your kid get their heart broken for the first time, it is rough.

Biggy Fails: oh.

Bob: But every time that's happened or every time there's like a hard thing, I try to remind the kids that if you're lucky, if you're lucky, you get one relationship in your entire life that works.

Biggy Fails: oh

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bob: Every other one fails. It has to fail, otherwise you couldn't get to the next one. right So there's a little bit of like consolation in make an effort, do your best, but know this one's probably not the one, right?

Bob: And maybe the next one is, don't know, but you're still kind of, it's the same ideal.

Biggy Fails: Yeah.

Bob: Like you're, you're going to give it a go knowing that this might not be the best thing you ever do, but eventually something will be.

Biggy Fails: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Biggy Fails: Yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And it can still be fun along the way, right?

Bob: Oh, maybe. yeah Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And you, and you grow and you learn and you understand people better.

Biggy Fails: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bob: And you know, there's, there's great stuff in all of those things that don't work.

jimmy: I always say relationships are like walking through a dark room with no shoes on. You're going to keep hitting your toes and then the 15th time, yeah everything.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Are there Legos on the floor? All right. Uh...

jimmy: And then by the 15th time you walk through that room, you're going to walk through without stubbing or stepping on anything.

Biggy Fails: ah

Bob: Mmm.

jimmy: That could take you two tries.

Biggy Fails: That's pretty good.

jimmy: It could take you 10 tries. In my case, it's taken me 10 tries.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ah

Bob: Yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ah

Bob: That's really good.

jimmy: Yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: All right. Well, this has been great. I want to end with like a last question and but and and what and we can wrap up. This has been a fascinating discussion. You guys have absolutely brought in new angles. I didn't see coming into this, which I think is amazing. ah the The question I want to end it is, this is from our patron, Devin Perkins, who I think tried to make Jimmy cry at the making it 500.

Bob: Hey, Devin.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Um, um

Bob: you know Devin.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: The question is, is failure required to be the best artist one can be?

Biggy Fails: Hard yes.

jimmy: I think people get lucky. I mean, failure failure day to day is is inevitable. So, I mean, I guess, but if you're gonna fail at your art, like say Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo digging into a big piece of marble and they realize halfway through the marble's flawed and they got to go start again,

jimmy: They're not going to look at that and be like, nah, I guess I'm not going to do this. They're going to go start again on another piece of marble. So i don't know if that answers the question or not.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well, is, Jimmy, you yeah, is failure required to be the best artist you can be? So for you, Jimmy, to be your best version of yourself was failure required?

jimmy: I think yes. Yeah. Yeah.

jimmy: Yeah. Because you got to, you need all those reference points. like I said, I don't necessarily consider them failures as much as reference points.

Biggy Fails: Mm-hmm.

jimmy: I know if the chisel's at this direct angle, you know, you can't, you can't chisel up. You can't chisel up the grain because you're going to get a chip out. You know, how many times have we learned that trying to carve something fancy? You know, Paul, you carve fancy things.

jimmy: You know, like you got that perfect fleur-de-lis and then all of a sudden, like the key piece that makes it a fleur-de-lis is like shooting across the room.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Pop?

jimmy: And you're like, ah, you like just, you just pause to watch where it lands so you could glue it back in and not tell anybody.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yep.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Exactly. Bob, yeah.

jimmy: But you know, you know, not to carve up the grain.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: is fit Is failure required to be the best artist you could be?

Bob: I think it's inevitable. I mean, I think it it goes back to one of those quotes at the very beginning, like if you're not failing, then that means you haven't tried hard enough to be an artist, I would think.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah. Yeah.

Bob: You know, I think it's, it's, yeah, or whatever you're doing, it's an inevitable part of process.

jimmy: Yeah, or whatever.

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

Bob: Process has to happen for output to exist. And so, yeah, I think it has to be.

jimmy: i think a Ray Kroc, you know, isn't he famously tried this many different businesses until he discovered he could steal McDonald's from the McDonald's brothers?

Biggy Fails: Hmm.

Bob: Now, also, though, you know, ah all this is all semantics, because like you can talk about failure and even with a framework, we can all be thinking of a different thing. And art is one of those things that is, think, supposed to be an expression of the artist.

Bob: And so theoretically, there's no wrong way to do that. And so it it it's a weird thing to say that I tried to express myself several times and it didn't work. And then this is a more pure expression or something. don't know.

Bob: I'm not really sure. But that's a tough one to use in the case of art, which is highly subjective to the creator.

Biggy Fails: fair point.

Bob: But I don't know.

Biggy Fails: It's not, it's not like building a bridge where like, if it falls down, then, you know, it failed, you know?

Bob: Right, yeah.

jimmy: That could be but but that can be part of the performance art, so you could disguise it.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well, i think...

Bob: Yeah.

Bob: It was supposed to fail.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well, I think in terms of art, artists failing, it can only be judged by themselves.

jimmy: Yeah, that's part of the performance.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: was trying to convey this or I was trying to, i was trying to get something to look this way or convey this idea.

Bob: Sure.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And it doesn't really, so, I mean, I guess only you can decide as the artist if you failed or didn't fail.

jimmy: another another Another big part.

Bob: But then art is seen by ah by a viewer. it's You can't control the perception of the person seeing ah Yeah.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, that's true too.

Biggy Fails: Mm-hmm. Yep.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That's true too. That's true too.

Biggy Fails: Yep.

jimmy: Another thing with art that we really – with life in the terms of failure we haven't really touched on is financially. If you fail financially, is that – if you're an artist that makes beautiful art but nobody buys it, are you a failure?

Biggy Fails: That's a hell of a question to end on, Jimmy. i'll tell you what.

jimmy: to answer on that's –

Bob: Of

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Should we take that in the after show?

Biggy Fails: I like it. I like it.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: all right. Let's take, Jimmy, we'll take that into into a short after show.

jimmy: Okay.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: All right.

jimmy: You got it.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That's a great, that's a good one. Well, yeah both Bob, Jimmy, and of course, Eric, my bae. Thank you guys for being on the show today.

jimmy: Thank you.

Biggy Fails: Yeah, thank you guys. That was ah that was a great chat.

jimmy: Thank you.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Extremely thoughtful.

Bob: course.

jimmy: It was fun.

Bob: Thanks for having us.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Thank you so much for your viewpoints. You you both, and i know I speak for the entire audience that you know you both have set the tone in the maker community for quite some time about what it means to be a maker.

jimmy: Thank you.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And I know you probably don't feel that way. oh I'm just doing what I enjoy. I'm just making it work for me. But do know that I think so many people follow your example and about not failing and not getting down on yourself, trying a new thing has really helped probably more people than you realize.

Bob: Thank you. thank you

jimmy: Thank you.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So thank you. All right, y'all. um Go ahead, Eric.

Biggy Fails: I was just going to say, thanks, friends. We'll see you in the after show.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah. Yeah. If you want the video feed of the after show, just subscribe to our Patreon and we'll see you there. Thanks, everyone.

Biggy Fails: bye.

jimmy: Bye.

Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Bye.