Ep329: Britt Andreatta – Our Failures Remind Us That We Are Learning Beings

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning in our community. We know that to win an investing you must take risk but to win big, you've got to reduce it. This episode is sponsored by a Stotz Academy's valuation masterclass. They call it the boot camp for valuation, because it takes about 200 hours, and students must value about 20 companies to graduate. It really is the complete proven step by step course to guide you from novice to valuation expert. Go to my worst investment ever.com slash deals before March 31 2021. to claim your 30% podcast listener discount. Fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz and I'm here with featured guest, Dr. Britt andreatta. Britt, tell us a little bit about yourself and tell us Are you ready to rock.

Dr. Britt Andreatta 01:01
I'm always ready to rock Andrew, I'm excited to be here. Yeah, I am a researcher, author, speaker and consultant and I studied the brain science of success. So that's kind of my focus. And I've written three books on the topic. One's called wired to grow, which is how we learn which of course includes failures. One is on change called wired to resist, which includes the reasons why so many change initiatives fail and how we can overcome that. And another is called wired to connect. And it's about how to create high performing teams. And it turns out that psychological safety is the key differentiator for great teams. It's all about feeling safe enough to take risks and make mistakes. So using that, I consult Oregon, go ahead

Andrew Stotz 01:44
big enough taking risks. That's what we're doing today. Because I want to just tell the audience that rather than focus on Dr. Britt's story, what I really want to focus on is all of this that you've learned. So that's also part of what I just want to tell everybody that we're going to go through a lot of stuff about what you've learned from your research. So sorry, I had to interrupt there, just because people may have thought, Wait, wait a minute, Andrew, wherever you haven't read the bio, and you haven't done this, and that, but we're having kind of a flea free flow conversation. So continue.

Dr. Britt Andreatta 02:14
Absolutely, I was just gonna say based on my research, I now consult with a lot of organizations, helping them to maximize their potential, which is always about getting their people to perform at their best. And so all of that is really looking at learning and failure, it kind of is the core of how we bring out the best in folks. I'm excited to talk to you and your followers today.

Andrew Stotz 02:34
Yeah, and I'm excited to have you with us. And one of the things I just wanted to start off with just a couple of quick things, because I have some questions about what you're doing. The first thing that's really in my head is about failure. You know, I mean, that's what the podcast is about making mistakes. And as you heard, I say we must take risk in the beginning. And yet, everybody's afraid to fail. So I think, you know, part of what I kind of want to focus on is thinking about mistakes, failures, and why is it such a, let's say, a negative thing for the human mind or the human being to deal with that. And that's one of the questions I have right off the bat.

Dr. Britt Andreatta 03:19
Great? Well, it comes down to kind of the difference between learning and education, you know, like humans are wired to learn, it's part of our biology, it's a big part of what our neurological system does. So if you think about it, we are wired to learn through trial and error, like look at how a baby learns to walk, it's about a lot of falling down first, and yet all of that gives the body and the brain inflammation. And eventually we do it. Same with learning to talk. So biologically, we're constantly sensing our environment, trying different actions, and trying to maximize our positive results, right. So we either get a positive outcome or we get a negative outcome. And we are always learning for both our survival and also to work well with others, where things got messed up as we all went to school. And education doesn't necessarily align with great learning. That's when we started to compare ourselves, we got passing grades or failing grades. If you didn't do well, there was a lot of shame and blame around that. A lot of labeling. And so I think a lot of our view of failure, whether it's school failure, or sports failure, or anything is really shaped by those young years where it was kind of turned into a negative. But from a biological perspective, failure is information and it helps us get better as long as we look at the failure and say, Hmm, what do I need to do differently next time.

Andrew Stotz 04:39
I like that statement that failure is information that tries to neutralize it to say it's neutral. That's fascinating. You know, I was 20 I was a 25 year old man. And I was working for Pepsi in Los Angeles at the time and I found myself sitting in a room seminar with Dr. Deming. And he was, you know, the father of the quality movement, you could say, or one of them. And he talks so much about the joy and work, and the joy in education. And how we pound that out of people through the rankings and ratings, and how it just destroys the joy of learning. And I'm just curious, you know, what, why did we do that? It didn't make me when I listened to him, it made total sense, my God, I can see exactly what he's saying. And then you go right back to work, and you're rating and you go back to school, and there's a rating and a ranking, and there's no way you can get away from KPIs and rankings and ratings.

Dr. Britt Andreatta 05:47
Yeah, in fact, it's really interesting when neuro neuroscientists want to study, there's one brain structure in particular, that tracks our failures, and then tried to guide tries to guide us through to better actions and choices in the future. When researchers want to study this structure, it's called the habenula. They put people through a performance review, and then look at what's happening in their brain in an MRI as they're going through performance review. So those kind of rankings and things are very threatening to us. And it kind of gets back to a lot of our tribal biology. You know, we are a tribal species, and a bunch of our biology is dedicated to kind of knowing where we fit in, in the tribe, knowing if we're starting to get excluded or marginalized and pleasing the tribe, but being of value to the tribe, they don't necessarily have to like us, but we have to be of value. We're very sensitive to that. Because if we're getting pushed to the edge of the tribe, and our risk of being ousted, that's a survival thing, you know, you can't survive the lions and the Tigers when you're living on your own, but your chances are better if you stay part of the group. So, you know, this whole kind of shame and blame and measuring people and ranking people, it all kind of started with the school system and the school systems really about socializing people to be workers, it kind of started around socializing people to be factory workers, and to be good at following the orders of management. That was the initial goal of schooling. And we haven't gotten far away from that in a lot of ways. And yet, what's really interesting is that the rise of the Internet and online learning, which you know, I'm the former chief learning officer for lynda.com. So definitely have been part of this, it really democratized learning and it took it away from who gets access to some of these learning opportunities. Now you can grab your phone and learn anything from experts around the world. And I think that's really shifted us to be able to embrace learning and love of learning, again, is that we can follow our own interests, we can better ourselves. And we can kind of decouple it a little bit from what the higher ups decide we are worthy of or get access to.

Andrew Stotz 07:51
It's funny, it's like, when you start your life, you have the joy of learning, and discovery, and all of that, and mistakes, and you know, pain and all of that. And then you just have to suffer through, you know, elementary school, high school, university, maybe when you get to your PhD, you can start to have fun learning again, by, you know, exploring the areas that you're really interested in, or maybe when you graduate, but even when you have your PhD, they're gonna say, you got to publish, you know, you got to hit this, you know, KPI, and then but then then you get into business. It's like, it's like, where's the fun anymore? And I, my question to you is, is there an alternative?

Dr. Britt Andreatta 08:31
Well, I would say, first of all, you know, having goals and outcomes and setting a standard and achieving that standard, that can be really motivating. That's not necessarily a bad thing, right? where it gets bad is if it's, it's only about that, right. And we're not like taking a more holistic view. And also, if we don't celebrate progress, and effort and success. So what happens a lot is we focus on this, in fact, I talk about this a lot with organizations I work with, you know, the habenula tracks failure, and you can go into a team that is producing something amazing for their organization. And the meeting goes something like this, Hey, everyone, we're two weeks behind schedule. We're really in trouble. We got to fix it. And so the brain just takes that and says, oh, everything we've been doing is a bummer. It codes it is kind of a negative, when really what should have been happening is Hey, great job, everyone. You accomplished A, B and C, high fives all around. Now we're two weeks behind schedule. Let's brainstorm how are we going to tighten it up? How are we going to go faster. And so in a lot of ways, because we're so busy, we just kind of cut to the chase and focus on the negative and we really just need to also be, you know, celebrating progress and effort. That's the whole movement of growth mindset. And I do want to give a shout out to educators, a lot of schools and universities now are really trying to reshape education. And you know, the research on the multiple intelligences honoring different ways of learning and the growth mindset. I'm seeing a lot of shifts happening, but it certainly is slow process. And it's not out there enough yet, but my kid is certainly in her schooling being exposed to much more positive views of education than I experienced.

Andrew Stotz 10:09
You know, I wrote a book about Dr. Deming, in fact, when I saw you coming on the show, this is the book that I wrote is called transform your business with Dr. demings, 14 points. And I gave a seminar last week, which, which was to a management team for two days. And we went through just four of Dr. demings points, but one of them was about, you know, education and understanding the role of education and also the role of training, which I think a lot of people don't think about, you know, there's a difference. Training is about acquiring a skill, and education is about expanding the mind and bringing new information into the system. But when we talked about the concept of KPIs, and the way that we manage, what I talked about was the idea that, you know, like you said, we got to have goals, and those types of things. But I say that when you attach money to your performance review, it sets off a whole nother dynamic of kind of survive. I'm wondering if you have done any research or seen any research that what happens? Because if I come and sit down with you, as a concerned friend, we trust each other, and I'm giving you sincere feedback. It's a very different situation, when it's a boss that says, There's ABCs in this company, and only the A's are going to get the bonus. And you don't get that well. Tough.

Dr. Britt Andreatta 11:27
Yeah, absolutely. In fact, you know, I, I kind of have this little short way of telling everyone, here's how to think about humans, we're wired for three things survive, right? food, water, shelter, belong, be successful in that tribe, whatever tribe we're part of, and we're part of multiple tribes, and then become, which has become our best selves grow and learn and become self actualized. And survival. You know, when people are under distress, like a geopolitical strife or a natural disaster, you can definitely see it play out. But when everything's fine during our regular work, world, survival is really about our performance review, and our ability to have an opportunity for promotions, because that's how we buy food, water, shelter is our paycheck. So you can actually really trigger people's survival stuff through performance reviews, or only focusing on their faults and not seeing what they're accomplishing or limiting, you know, the best perks to the very top performers, you can kind of de motivate a lot of folks in the middle. If the manager doesn't have other ways to motivate people. And there's other things we want out of a workplace, we want to feel engaged, we want to feel connected to a sense of purpose. We like leaders who are transparent and care about us as people. But if you're not doing those things, and you're all just about the numbers, it's going to be a pretty disengaged workplace.

Andrew Stotz 12:43
In fact, recently, I've read this book called the tyranny of metrics, which I found very great. And you know, just highlights how I think a lot of young people, particularly the World Finance, a lot of young people think that a successful manager is one who has an empty desk, a bunch of screens with KPIs measuring divisions and people and their performance. And if you and then send in a message to someone like you're underperforming. And we have one bank in Thailand now that has taken KPIs to an absolute extreme level, based upon the, you know, consultants that you know, I brought it from America. And it's not the way Asian society treats each other is through this type of KPI. But it's now come here. And now everything you do, every call you make, every action you take is measured. And now a great manager is someone who just kicks people's I asked when they're behind on their numbers, and I just don't know, I don't see how we can break out of this.

Dr. Britt Andreatta 13:45
Well, I see a lot of organizations moving in a different direction, you know, if they start to look at the, you know, I mean, inevitably leaders care about invest, you know, the dollars, right? So looking at ROI of employee engagement, if you start to have a disengaged workforce, I actually do the math for people, because it's pretty shocking what it costs them to have disengaged people in their work workplace. So we have to look at how people feel their sense of satisfaction, their sense of purpose, their sense of feeling respected translates to real performance indicators. So what I'm trying to do is bring a whole more holistic view of like, if you're not getting the performance you want. There's lots of ways to enhance performance, but it's really about treating people better, more respectfully, more kindly, more, more encouragingly, and the data is really, really clear about it. There's no question about it.

Andrew Stotz 14:37
I think there's an ancient saying about, you know, treat others as you'd like to be treated yourself. And I think we forget that in business. And think, no, no, no, we got to, you know, kick ass and we got to have these numbers and we've got to hit him and I've been in the world of finance. One of the things I tried to do with teams is to say, could we come up with a common goal rather than trying to everybody has to Separate KPIs, it's a lot harder to come together to cooperate, to get a common goal than it is to just divvy out specific assignments. But it's impossible that you could ever have real success without that type of coordination. What has been your experience with that?

Dr. Britt Andreatta 15:20
Absolutely. I talk about this a lot in the book wired to connect, you know, the research on teams is really clear that because we're wired to survive, right, and most companies still do individual performance reviews, when we put people in teams, there's this natural tension, whether it's spoken about or not, are you folks are even conscious of it, that if I come to a place where I either take an action that's for the good of the team, or one that's better for me, people are going to default for the one that's better for them. So to there's two solutions to that, you have to really lean in to creating teams and helping them understand how their work is interconnected, and having a common goal and agreed upon ways to work together. But in addition, you know, your performance review should have two scores, their individual contributor score and their team score, the thing with the team score is every member of the team gets the same score. And so that then they have skin in the game, they are all held accountable equally for the success or failure of the team. And they will equally experience the joys and they will equally experience the pain. But by having them be connected in that way. That's you know, and that's how we're wired as a tribe. You know, if the tribe found no food, we were all equally hungry. And that's the tribe found food we all ate. So that's how our body's used to thinking and there's a lot of organizations that are doing really great work with kind of really supporting teams and being successful. And the ones that do they they outperform their peers significantly. Right.

Andrew Stotz 16:50
So what I'm hearing is the idea of tapping into the human potential. And sometimes by doing these types of invented individual incentives, what would we end up doing is creating a competitive atmosphere. I mean, I would like to tell you a story of an experience I had when I first came to Thailand, and I was working in a workforce in the US. And I came to Thailand, and I worked in an office. And what I noticed was something very fascinating. And that is when one person had a late night, and they may have to work a couple hours later than the time that everybody leaves, the people that were with them. In that area stayed. It was very odd to me why they would stay because I grew up in an environment where you didn't do your job, you know, it's your problem, not mine. But for some reason, they wanted to say now I've come to learn so much more about the way people work here, but the the the connection to each other, the support of each other, that time people want an environment of almost kind of family like environment, they value that much more than they would value for instance, you know, monetary incentives. And what you know, what I started to realize was that part of what that KPI does it's can be so damaging is that you're setting a fire of competition between employees. And do my question I have is do we really need that is that how we get the most out of teams when they're competing against each other to beat a common, you know, goal outside or economy competitor?

Dr. Britt Andreatta 18:31
Yeah, the problem with competition is that it does yield some short term benefits. And I think people are lulled by the short term benefits, you can kind of create that fire and you'll see a boost of productivity. But if you take the long view, so for example, Microsoft, you know, years ago, they went into a very pitted competitive culture, dog eat dog really bad. And at first, it generated a lot of, you know, spurts of innovation, spurts of productivity, because people were truly competing with each other for resources and acknowledgement. But when you take the long view, it became kind of a death for the culture of Microsoft, you know, it became where people were literally looking to undermine each other and they started to game the system and figure out how to keep other folks from doing well. And then Satya Nadella came in the CEO and he's been working so hard to put in place a growth mindset. But it's the old behaviors and habits of competition are so ingrained that it's not really yielding the benefits yet because the underlying undermining, you know, forces are still there, and people have a hard time letting go of that kind of because of what it creates inherent distrust in everybody. And a constant looking out for yourself and bettering yourself and when that's kind of every way is unspoken way of working every day. You're just not going to get the most productive teams or the best outcomes. You know, it's

Andrew Stotz 20:05
interesting that you mentioned Microsoft, because I represented a client here in Thailand who sold his software company to Microsoft, in probably in the heat of that adversarial relationships within the company. And he had set up his own company, and, you know, a group of employees, and they were all brought into Microsoft. And he was like being brought into a battleground. And in the end, you know, it's kind of fascinating, because, you know, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is talking about all the things they're doing for medicine. And here was the most innovative software that was running one hospital, one hospital could run on one piece of software never been really done in the world, they acquired that software and said, they're gonna roll it out to hospitals around the world, particularly in the developing markets where they really needed that. And within three years, basically, the software was pretty much gone. And you could see, you know, how destructive that type of environment can be. So I think this The other thing, I think about this, when I went to do the training last week, I brought a gavel. And I have a gavel, which is normally up behind me. It's my grandfather's gavel when he was the head of the rotary in Pittsburgh. Not like it has any big meaning to me, but just that it was my grandfather's. So it's 70 years old, or whatever. But the point is, is that when I stood up in front of everybody, and I talked about, you know, fear in the workforce and driving of fear, the first thing I did is I slammed the gavel down, and I said, I want everybody to get 100% on this exam, you know, you're gonna have a quiz after this material, you know, and I slammed it and, you know, shocked everybody, for sure. And it I laughed, I use it as a way of saying that, you know, fear works in the short run. And now you're telling us from a, you know, from a research perspective, and from experience perspective, that fear causes long term damage, and you can think about that with kids or with anybody.

Dr. Britt Andreatta 22:05
Yeah, short term damage to I mean, the you know, if you think about it, when our fight or flight mechanism is tripped off our neocortex part of our brain, our thinking part of our brain where we do logic and analysis and all that it literally gets shut down we go, it takes away our self awareness as well our body prepares for, for injury. And so I actually worked with one company where the leader of the sales team, you know, when it was getting kind of to the end of the cycle, and everyone was up against their performance goals, would bring in a baseball bat. And we'd be walking up and down the aisles, banging the baseball bat in his hand. And every just Betty just went deer in the headlights. I mean, it was such a toxic place to work. Eventually, they got rid of him, obviously. But there's just no question, the data shows that. So there's two different things here. One is using fear, it's always going to undermine performance, because we cannot perform at our best when we're in that fight or flight. The other thing is competition. Competition can nudge some things, and you can have healthy competition, but like what Microsoft did was create absolute toxic competition. And that over time, while it may have led to some short term benefits at the beginning, it definitely has done way more damage over time. So you know,

Andrew Stotz 23:26
I want to I just want to take your knowledge, and you and I discussed about a lot of things that we want to talk about. But I want to take your knowledge and see if you can apply it to, to what we found through this journey of this podcast. And I've now I've received 500 written stories of loss. And I've interviewed more than 300 people. So we have the basis of some research there. Really, if you think about research that is survey based, well, these are surveys and they're kept as a record. And I've come I've identified six common mistakes that people make, and I'm going to read them off to you and maybe any one of those that triggers something that you know, that can help us to think about how do we overcome that mistake? And I'm going to list them by the order of significance, the first one being the most common one. Okay, first one. So I'll just read them quickly. And then after that, we'll kind of pick out the one that you think you know, so the first one is they failed to do their own research. Number two, they failed to properly assess and manage risk. Number three, they were driven by emotion or flawed thinking. Number four, they just misplaced trust. Number five, they failed to monitor their investment. They just didn't follow up. And number six is a catch all is says basically they invested in a startup company. Any thoughts come from some of those mistakes and how we can get better?

Dr. Britt Andreatta 24:55
Well, a couple things. So the first one is, you know failing to do your own research. You know, part What our brain does is it's a meaning making machine. And every time you read something, every time you watch something, your brain is trying to connect the dots. And when you have that aha moment, and you feel that little flash of insight, you're actually feeling the good feeling that dopamine rush of the synapses connecting. And I think sometimes when we let other people do our research for us, we deny ourselves the opportunity to just kind of sit with the data and see how it feels and see what flashes of insight we might get from it. So other people, you know, may be good thinkers, but they're gonna think from their perspective, and ultimately, you know, we all have our own self interest in mind. So whenever you're pulling data from someone, you got to ask what was their self interest? And does that self interest, maybe create a lens or a block to something that I need to know? What was the second one

Andrew Stotz 25:49
second one was failed to properly assess and manage risk?

Dr. Britt Andreatta 25:54
Yeah, that one, you know, it depends, I would say, sometimes it's a lack of skill, we just don't know how to do it, you know, or we're trying to do something, and we may like, have our area of expertise, and then we get into some of the business stuff, and it's a little out of our comfort zones. And then we have to kind of rely on experts. I mean, I'm preparing my taxes right now, I feel this way, every every time. You know, I'm having to rely on the expertise of financial folks, and I don't totally get it all. But you either have to really vet your people, so you can trust them and relax. Or you have to just say, Okay, I don't have to become an expert at this. But I'm gonna take a basic finance class and just give myself enough working knowledge that I can navigate this, but what you don't want to do is be like, Oh, I'm intimidated, I'm just going to look away. And I think that's what happens is, if we get intimidated, and we're worried that we might fail, or we might not be good at something, sometimes it's easier to just kind of avoid it. And I think that's where then you're cutting yourself off from, you know, keeping track and then it's right for being taken advantage of then too is that that's also where bad players can come in and, and take advantage of you.

Andrew Stotz 27:04
So that kind of fits with one of the things that I say how to overcome this problem is just take a blank piece of paper and write down at the top, what are the risks, and just try to write down instead of running away, as you said, Just take it head on and just write a list. Don't don't write it, you have another piece of paper that's about your research, about the return and all the exciting stuff. But okay, just let's just let's just make a blank piece of paper. 12345 things what could go wrong? Boom. Yeah. So what about the next one driven by emotion or flawed thinking? I think this is one that you probably understand very well.

Dr. Britt Andreatta 27:40
Well, you know, I'm as much as I'm a researcher, I also really believe in intuition. And that we have, we can have a gut sense that we need to check in with, it's different for each of us. But I think we do have our brain is capable of tracking so much more than we're consciously aware of. And so for me, my gut sense that something's a little off, or I better check into something or Oh, yeah, that feels right. is kind of my way of knowing that all these kind of systems I'm not consciously aware of or giving me information. So I think, you know, checking in with your gut is a good way to make sure that you're not letting any overexcited feelings of like, Oh, my God isn't the best thing ever. I need to do this right now. And also, oh, no, it's terrible. I'm going to fail, and I shouldn't go there. It's interesting. Rene browns, research talks about that. We have two Gremlins. One is Who do you think you are? Which is like, Okay, why do I think I'm special enough to like launch my own company? And then if you can talk it out of that one. The other one is, you know, you basically you're gonna mess up, like, Who do you think you are? and How dare you kind of thing?

Andrew Stotz 28:49
So I know those feelings.

Dr. Britt Andreatta 28:51
Yeah. So I think it's important to just kind of sit with with kind of our fears can show up. But if we have a system where we kind of think our thoughts we check in with our feelings, we run it by some trusted folks, you then can kind of counterbalance any emotions that might be getting in the way. And, you know, either someone's slowing your roll a little bit or being your cheerleader, because you tend to be a negative Nelly, I think those are good things to have around you. You need to have really good people that you trust.

Andrew Stotz 29:22
So this is what I, one of the things I've learned from the podcast is that there's a difference between emotion and intuition. And you mentioned intuition. You later also mentioned motion, but I would describe I mean, I'm not an expert in this area. But what I've noticed is that when you interview people, they have this flash this moment where they realize, Oh, this isn't right or whatever. But then they override that. And I think if there's one lesson I've learned from this podcast is if we can build more awareness to our intuition, I think there was a piece of research I remember reading where they were basically flashing things in front of people's face. And then showing them something and then measuring their reactions, whether they were positive or negative based upon you know that and the people didn't know that this images were flashed so quickly that the people didn't even know that those images even were there. Or it was very difficult to detect it. So therefore, you could argue that it really wasn't feeling it was more of this intuition concept. And so what part of what I think I've learned from all this is to try to encourage all the listeners out there to focus on your intuition. Give it space.

Dr. Britt Andreatta 30:34
Yeah, and for me that the, I'm not a researcher of emotion. So I don't have the background on this. I know, there's a couple really good books out there on kind of the neuroscience of and biology of emotion. So they're probably worth reading. But for myself, I know when I'm having a feeling, you know, it has the tone, its sadness, its happiness, its anger, intuition is just that little light. Hmm, something's up. And I don't know if it's a positive or negative, but there's just a little like, hmm, something's worth looking into here. You know, and of course, in relationships, those are the moments where we look back on it and go, Oh, there's all these red flags, or I had this sense, but I didn't look into it. So one of the things, I think this comes with just age and wisdom, having not done it when I was younger, but now when I get one of those little like, Huh, I stop and go, Okay, what is that? Or if I am, particularly if I get to three, if I get to three, then I know that there's something really going on. So I think it's just to also know that your your biology is is in the mix, and to pay attention to what it's telling you.

Andrew Stotz 31:37
And I think for the listeners out there, if you're a logical left brain person like myself, it's easy to get distracted, because you'll have that first, huh? This particularly in the world of investing, you oftentimes can have this question like, this seems really complicated. And then you get excited about figuring it out. You know, okay, yeah. And then they try to explain it and all that. But so many times when something's complicated in the world of investing, you should probably just stay away from it.

Dr. Britt Andreatta 32:11
Well, the thing with intuition is that little hum moment will clear. But if it if you got enough data, and you got more information, and it's fine, it'll clear. If it keeps showing up, then it's worth listening to because there's something that's not right. It could be the person, you know, it could be, it's not the right partner for you. It could be sometimes it's just not the right timing. I've definitely had, you know, I own my own business, and I'm launching products and stuff. And I'll be like, Oh, yeah, I really want to do this products. But I'll get a feeling like, but it's not now this is not the right timing for this thing. And the minute something is really hard, and it's taking a lot of effort to make it happen. That's usually a hint to me that I should pause. When I'm on the right track, things are just are in flow, it goes easy. the right people are calling the right things are kind of coming together. So I've learned to pay attention to that just in my own journey. But sometimes when something's not right, it's just not right now, it may become really viable down the

Andrew Stotz 33:09
road. So maybe what we can do is wrap it up and a nomina asked just a couple of last little questions. But I think the question I want to ask you is, is based upon all that you've learned, and you know, your own mistakes, the clients mistakes, that you've seen the research that you've done, the writing that you've done, the thinking that you've done about it, you know, can you give us one or two simple pieces of advice that can help us weather not only just to avoid, you know, our worst investment, but just just general life advice, what would be, let's say one or two things that you would tell us,

Dr. Britt Andreatta 33:43
okay, I've got them because I really believe in these, the first one is to just re embrace your true nature as a learning being. And I always think of failure, the word fail is an acronym, and that it really stands for first attempt in learning. And that we are learning beings, you know, and failure is how we get there. So you got to create space for making mistakes, taking risks, falling down, picking up learning from it, trying again, and letting yourself get better at something mastery takes time. So kind of embrace that. And then the second one is, as you become an investor, and you're you're moving your business forward, the number one mistake that cuts across everything I've talked about, and all the organs I go into solving all kinds of problems is that they inevitably you're dumpings doing something really big, they're launching a new product, they're putting on a change initiative, they're disrupting. And the mistake they make is they don't put the learning solution in place. They don't invest in the learning along with all the dollars they're spending on this thing that would help their people do that thing successfully. So they kind of shortchange themselves on not putting the right training or learning in place, and then it costs them so much more in, you know, 50 to 70% of change initiatives fail, you know, they people put a lot of time into designing them and launching them and then they fall apart. And it's largely because they underestimated, first of all the resistance that humans have to change. But they didn't put in place the skill set that folks needed to move through that change and be successful. So invest in learning, invest in training it with the dollars will pay for themselves a thousandfold. And don't skip that piece. Because it looks like it's a cost saver, but ultimately down the road, it's going to bite you in the butt.

Andrew Stotz 35:27
That is such valuable advice and you know, coming from yourself, all the writing you've done, but also all of the courses that you've done, you know, in your experience with lynda.com. And all that, I just think it's you know, fantastic. So last question, what's your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Dr. Britt Andreatta 35:44
Oh, that's fun. I'm putting the finishing touches on my brain aware manager training. So I've actually built a whole training around using brain science. So as a manager, you can bring out the best and others and ask you that I'll be building my brain aware leader, I'm already delivering it with certain executive teams, but it'll be a sellable product. So for me, it's all about getting that launched, it's going to happen at the end of q1 and then really working on getting it in more companies. I'm already working with a lot of different industries, but looking forward to just spreading those skill sets to help people be better.

Andrew Stotz 36:17
And for those people that want to be a part of that or learn more, get to know you more, what's the best place for them to go to do that?

Dr. Britt Andreatta 36:25
It's my website, Britt andriana.com. And everything is there. My books are there, my training solutions and getting certified in my models, if you want to hire me as a speaker, all of that you'll find at Britt andreatta.com. And I also love when people connect with me on LinkedIn too.

Andrew Stotz 36:40
Beautiful, and we'll have links to that in the show notes. So if you're driving your car, don't worry. Go to the show notes. It'll be there. All right, listeners. There you have it. This has been another discussion of loss to keep us winning. Remember to go to my worst investment ever.com slash deals to claim your 30% discount for podcast listeners on the valuation masterclass. As we conclude, Britt, I want to thank you again for coming on the show. And on behalf of Esports Academy I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Dr. Britt Andreatta 37:20
I would just say go out and learn something fun and it's been lovely connecting with all of you. Fantastic. And

Andrew Stotz 37:25
that's a wrap on another great discussion to help us create, grow, and most importantly, protect our well fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz Seine. I'll see you on the upside.