Flops 008: The Museum of Failure

Flops 008: The Museum of Failure

Ray Sylvester:
Hey there. Just wanted to let you know that the interview in today's episode contains some explicit language. Let's get to it.

The Ford Edsel. Olestra. The Nike Magneto. Roland’s TB-303 synthesizer. What do they all have in common?

Find out today on Flops.

Karen Beattie:
Welcome to episode eight of the first season of Flops. This is kind of a bittersweet episode because we've come to the end of season one of this podcast.

Ray:
Yeah, it is a, it's kind of a sad day,

Karen:
But thankfully we have a pretty fun interview to round out the season.

Ray:
Yes, we are both talking to Dr. Samuel West, who is the founder of something called the Museum of — wait for it — Failure, which is a home for failed products of many kinds from consumer electronics devices, to food products, to even surgical tools to you name it.

Karen:
You can learn more and see the museum's collection at MuseumofFailure.com. You know, we stumbled across the museum and Dr. West when we were doing research for the show and we just thought we have to have this guy on the show. And it just meant a lot to us to find someone who appreciates the importance of sharing and learning from our failures.

Ray:
Yes. And laughing at them as well when it's appropriate to do so. So fire up your browser, head on over to MuseumofFailure.com and go ahead and gawk at some terrible product decisions, including some that flopped, just because of bad timing, your marketing all. While you listen to our wide ranging interview to our wide ranging interview with Dr. Samuel West.

Karen:
So Dr. Samuel West, welcome to the show.

Dr. Samuel West:
Thank you.

Karen:
Yeah, but when I was doing research for this podcast, I came across something called the Museum of Failure, and I just knew that we had to have you on and talk to you about this museum. So welcome, and we're excited to talk to you.

Samuel:
Thank you.

Ray:
I feel a kinship with you and I think I can maybe speak for Karen because I think with flops, with our podcast and you with, with the museum, I think we, we feel a kinship in terms of, you know, how we look at failure and just recognizing the importance of failure. And of course, we're going to talk a lot about the Museum of Failure today, but just wanted to say that we're excited to talk to you today, yeah.

Samuel:
I’m excited to see where this conversation goes or doesn't go.

Karen:
So I was reading a quote from an article I was reading about you and you said, “all you have to do is read business literature to get sick of success stories of entrepreneurs. It is the same narrative every time and I was fed up.” Just a little funny story, when we first started this podcast, we were actually starting a podcast about success stories and —

Samuel:
Oh no.

Karen:
Ray and I did one test episode of our success stories podcast and it was pretty much a flop. It was not good, it was boring, our producers were like, like, no, this isn't working. So that's when we came up with the idea to kind of turn that idea around and talk about failures.

Samuel:
Can I add something right there? The authors of an awesome book titled The Other F-Word, um, it came out maybe, I don't know, five, six years ago. They tell a similar story, like, yeah, we were writing a book about successful entrepreneurs and startups and blah, blah, blah. And then they finished the book and they realized that the whole book was about accepting and learning from failure. They're like, Oh, so we just changed the title. So you're not the only ones who've gone down that lane.

Karen:
Yes. For some reason, failure stories are much more interesting than boring success stories.

Ray:
Success is boring. It really is. I mean, it's great, but it's, it's kind of boring. Yeah.

Karen:
So why don't you start out by telling us a little bit about yourself, where you're from and kind of your career and background?

Samuel:
I'm half American, half Icelandic, uh, married to a Finnish woman who forces me to live in Sweden.

Ray:
You just hitting all the Nordic and Scandanavian countries, right?

Samuel:
From my window I could see Denmark, I guess I've got all the countries there. And professionally, I mean, I've, my background is as a clinical psychologist. That’s where I worked with for most of my professional life. And then about 10 years ago, I, I did a PhD in organizational psychology cause I was kind of tired of clinical stuff. And the research was focused on how organizations can create a climate for innovation and by being more sort of accepting of failure through experimentation and exploration. That's where Museum of Failure was also born.

Ray:
So was there a point where you realized that failure was really interesting and that's what you wanted to focus your work in your research on, or did it just kind of happen slowly?

Samuel:
The long version of that would be, I mean, as a clinical psychologist or not really interested in — nobody comes and says, I want to pay you a lot of money and sit here and tell you how good my life is. That has never happened. So, I guess I was already sort of pre-tuned into failure being more interesting just from that perspective. And then like you guys, like we were talking about earlier, failure is more interesting than success. There's more interesting stories behind them.

And what I found was just that despite the best intentions and the most conductive, awesome environments, the obstacle for innovation and for taking meaningful risks was a fear of failure. So I didn't know what to do with all that information. I wanted to do something else and that's where Museum of Failure came from.

Karen:
So you were doing all this research on failure and innovation. So how did that lead up to getting the idea to start a museum and how did that all come about?

Samuel:
Yeah, so I don't like museums because I don't have enough attention span for museums. And they're boring for the most part. I wasn't thinking specifically about a museum, but I had this epiphany at a museum in Zagreb in Croatia, and the museum is called the Museum of Broken Relationships. I was just like, Oh my god, this is so awesome. You know, they have this abstract concept of relationships, a broken, the fragile nature of relationships, and how they, you know, they have objects at the museum and little texts. And I was just like, this is such an awesome way of communicating this abstract concept. That was the summer of 2016. I was just like, I'm opening Museum of Failure. There's no question about it, I'm opening it. So from there it took about a year until I got it organized and got some money scraped together.

Karen:
Yeah. So then how did that happen? Did you like rent out a building and how did you curate all of the items?

Samuel:
Oh god, it's it's, it feels like it was yesterday, but it's actually several years ago. I got funding from the Swedish Innovation Fund to open the museum. And so without that money, I could never afford to do it. And so I had, I mean, I was an innovation consultant. I had pretty good network within Sweden. So I contacted some of the cooler companies of Sweden that I, you know, I knew the innovation director and whatnot. And there's a lot of cool Swedish companies that are innovative and like open et cetera. And I was like, Hey, I get this great idea. I'm opening a Museum of Failure. It's about innovation, accepting and learning from failure. It's funny, but the aim is to increase acceptance of failure in the name of progress or innovation, blah, blah, blah, blah. I thought it was great. You know, I was like, yay, this is awesome. And I'm like, I'd like you to — can you look through your archives or whatever you must have. You're such an innovative company. You must have, you know, four or five flops and you've got them somewhere, send them over. I want to open a museum. And I got zero. Like, nothing happened. They didn't even reply. These are like acquaintances and somewhat friends. They didn't even reply to the messages. This was sensitive.

Karen:
Yeah. I can imagine that corporations do not want to tout their failures.

Samuel:
No. I didn't know what to do. And I thought, well, if they don't want to participate, I'll just find their products and just buy them myself. So that's what I did. For the first exhibit we had 70 items and those, most of them I bought myself, other ones were donated or bought through obscure forums and stuff like that. And then once the museum — this is what's strange, once the museum would open and got public like global press, then the same companies who didn't even reply to my messages, they were buying workshops and coming to the museum, donating things. Everybody wanted to be on board then. So it's kinda… I'm glad it worked out well, but it was like, yeah, everybody wants to join once it's a success. But before, then they don’t. So I’m like, agh, come on!

Well, right now a lot of the items are donated. So I just got in a Kickstarter project, a toothbrush. I got it two weeks ago. I haven't done the research so I don't have all the information, but it's like a device you stick in your mouth and then it vibrates for 10 seconds and it cleans all your teeth in 10 seconds instead of, you know, brushing your teeth... innovation, right?

Ray:
I don’t see how that could in any way go wrong.

Samuel:
Such poker faces. You’re not impressed? Wouldn't you like to brush your teeth in 10 seconds?

Ray:
I feel like that would destroy your mouth. You’d get your teeth cleaned but like, rip your gums out...

Samuel:
They raised like, I don't know how many million dollars on Kickstarter a long time ago. And then the product never came out and it was fraud and this and the device doesn't work. And now it's in the museum.

Karen:
So, so that leads me to my next question, which is what is the criteria you have for the products that you get for the museum? Even for our podcast, we kind of have to evaluate each story and say, is this a big enough flop? Is it flops-worthy? So what is worthy of the Museum of Failure?

Samuel:
There's three criteria. One is that it has to be an innovation. So there's all kinds of failures out there that are failures because, for other reasons, they're the production failures or whatever else. I'm not interested in those. I'm sure you can learn things from it, but I want items and stories and services, products where has to be something new about it.

That's number one. Number two, it obviously has to be a failure. And I like the scholarly definition of failure, which is it's a deviation from expected or desired outcomes or results. Failure is always contextual. So what's a failure today isn't tomorrow. What’s a failure for me isn’t for you. But for most companies, when it's a commercial product, making money is sort of the main aim with that. And when that doesn't work out, then it's a failure. Or if it's a humanitarian or a social innovation, then it's to help people. And that doesn't work out, then it's a failure. So failure is obviously the main criteria there. And then the third one is much more subjective: I have to think it's interesting.

So I mean, there's a lot of failure — I could feel the entire museum with smartphones. Seriously, there's so many failed smartphones for different reasons, but, you know, I think we have seven. I think that's enough. I don't want any more smartphones.

Ray:
And so I think we have to ask at this point, what are your — if this is even something you want to say publicly, what are your favorite failures in the museum? Do you have any products in there that you're especially fond of?

Samuel:
So if I'm asked to give a sound bite and I get like two seconds to say it, then there's one answer. But in reality, I like the artifacts that have a great story behind them. Like that there's something, maybe the object itself isn't that exciting, but the story is. Shat's what I think is interesting. There's an Amsted emailer, it's like the size of a fax machine. It's from like early 2000, something, I think, the UK, and this big name manufacturer with the eccentric rich celebrity owner of the company, Amstead developed this email or so it's not a computer, but it's a device, you know, you use it for email. And that's basically all you could do with it.

It was such a weird device like that because everybody was buying computers at the time, where you can check your email, read as many emails as you want. This device was doomed even before it was launched. And it's not a very interesting product per se. But the interesting thing is that the owner of the company sort of protected this stupid, doomed-to-fail device, and continued selling it for years and it bankrupted the company. I love that story, there's something humane, deeply human about him. It's his company, he could do whatever the hell he wants to do, right? And then he has this thing he maybe was very innovative back in the sixties, but now he doesn't get it. And he's still kind of trying to sell this thing. I just think it's fascinating.

And so these innovations are not always about where there's a technological feature that doesn't work or marketing mishap, it's deeply sort of human stories behind it.

Karen:
Right. Not, not wanting to let your baby go.

Samuel (18:29):
No. You got to kill your darlings, man. So that's an example of that. Then the other one is, another favorite would probably be Olestra. I know everybody likes diarrhea.

Ray:
It's always good for a laugh.

Samuel:
It's so funny. The big, one of the biggest consumer companies in the world, Procter & Gamble, launches a calorie free fat substitute, ‘96. And everybody's expectations are like, Oh wow, we can finally eat all the junk food we want without getting fat. And then, sure, you don't get fat, but you sit on the toilet for the rest of the day.

And then the whole fact that diarrhea was rebranded, ‘cause diarrhea wasn't . . . it's not really a positive thing to have associated with your food products. So they rebranded diarrhea. This is as funny as the product itself, but they rebranded it as anal leakage. Beat that! You can’t make this stuff up, you know?

Karen:
Oh gosh. I can imagine the marketing team sitting around a conference room table trying to come up with the correct wording for their rebranding of diarrhea.

Samuel:
Explosive diarrhea — nah, doesn’t have a good ring to it.

Ray:
A little too exciting. Now at this point, I'm figuring our listeners are intrigued enough to want to go and see what else you have in the museum. And they can go to MuseumofFailure.com to see what's in the collection, correct?

Samuel:
Yeah. There’s a hokey thing where you have to put your address in.

Ray:
I think it’s worth it, for all the good stuff you’ll find.

Samuel:
I hate sites like that. Everytime a site asks for my email I’m like, I don’t need to see whatever’s behind there. But my web developers like, you have to ask for their email, that's the least they can do is write in their email.

Karen:
I can attest to the fact that it's very worth it. It's a very fun website. One thing that really caught my eye was the DeLorean.

Ray:
Yeah, let’s talk about the DeLorean.

Karen:
Okay. So the story behind that is one of our CEOs of SPI media is obsessed with Back to the Future and the DeLorean. And he's actually given a talk on stage where he had an actual DeLorean sitting on stage with him. So we're afraid to tell him that the DeLorean is actually in the Museum of Failure.

Samuel:
Oh definitely. It firmly, solidly has its place in the Museum of Failure..

Karen:
So tell us why the DeLorean is a failure.

Samuel:
Oh, wow. We only had an hour, right? The DeLorean . . . it's an awesome looking car. It's futuristic, hence Back to the Future. It's got these, the golf swing doors that opened up weirdly, but the car itself was absolutely horrible. It's a sports car, but the engine is just, it's powerless. The electrical system doesn't work. Basically it's a pile of crap car.

Ray:
But it looks cool.

Samuel:
It looks so cool. And that's, you know, that's also what made it famous. It's such a bad car, but it looks cool. So then it's good to use in the movies. I'm trying to remember the details. One detail why it failed was that because of tax incentives or pay out, I don't know exactly. Some kind of a tax incentive. The car was manufactured in Northern Ireland. It wasn't a car factory. They made boats, ships. And so making a car in a ship factory . . .

Ray:
It floats really well.

Samuel:
Yeah there’s some problems there. It was that, the things didn't work. It was a sports car that didn't have any power. And then on top of all of this the man himself, DeLorean — there was a scandal. He was caught trying to smuggle cocaine. So it didn't help his cause, you know so everything just sort of imploded on the DeLorean.

Ray:
The DeLorean's really interesting to me because it's one of those failures that I think you could argue is now no longer a failure because it's such a cult. It has such cult status. Are there other objects in the museum that have kind of come around that either they failed so badly or they just, there's something else about them that people came to appreciate, you know, later on that now, you know, this is not so much a failure anymore, it’s become something different?

Samuel:
Some things like the DeLorean are cult status because they were a failure. Like the Ford Edsel is also a failure. And it's also a collectors item. There's a doll, I think it's by Hasbro in the sixties or seventies called Little Miss No Name. The doll that looks really sad. It was developed to teach little girls empathy. So Barbie's all about not boys, just little girls.

Totally, this is before any of this discussion was relevant. And Barbie's about consumption and looking good and all this little miss no-name was the opposite. She looked like, malnourished. She had sackcloth dress. She had a hand that sticks out sad. And she had big eyes to evoke empathy and she had a tear in one of her eyes. Yeah, it didn't work. No girl wants to play with this sad little...

Ray:
Like, if you just want to offload all of your parenting into some dolls. Just give them Barbie, and then give them the little sad doll.

Samuel:
That's an example, that one is like, cult. That one is super expensive from something that was a failure. And that’s also like the DeLorean, I would say it's success now is because of its failure.

And there's like unexpected successes. The Roland 303, it's a synthesizer. It's like, if you hear the sound from the synth you recognize in just any modern music across genres. And it was originally, it’s a Japanese company, Roland, that makes synthesizers and they launched it again, I can't remember the dates but a long time ago, in the eighties. And it was supposed to be something that solo guitar sort of you know.

Ray:
Like a keytar?

Samuel:
Well, it's just like singer songwriter, you're supposed to play your guitar. And then it's a bass sort of accompaniment.

The problem with this device was that it sounded nothing like what it was supposed to sound like. And the device is only like the little keyboard thing, but the instruction manual was twice the size. It was like so complicated to use. So the whole thing was an economic, it was a total flop for the company. Rumor has it that they dumped their entire sort of, like a whole shipload of these synthesizers in Tokyo Bay, sort of in the ocean outside of Tokyo.

Anyway, so what happened was there was a complete failure. And then later on some early hip hop artists found these synths in second hand shops and stuff, cause nobody could use them, and they started using them without consulting the manual and created these awesome sounds which are now iconic because of it. So I think it's a beautiful story about failure and then it was used in another context in the wrong way and it became a success.

Ray:
So I'm also curious, are there any products in the museum that — so we've talked about like, you know, like the Roland 303, it was maybe just ahead of its time where people didn't know how to use it but people came to appreciate it later. Are there any products in the museum that you feel shouldn't have failed that, you know, should have succeeded on the market? I'm thinking maybe of like the Betamax, which was a superior technology right, to VHS, but I don't remember exactly why, but it obviously didn't succeed. Are there any products in the museum that kind of fit that criteria for you?

Samuel:
That's a good question. The Betamax, f you take that example first, I mean, it had all the advantages. Sony was a bigger company than the competition. The technology of the Betamax system was superior to the competitors, VHS. They were first to market. Like, that's super important, but despite that, they still didn't succeed because the competitor VHS format was cheaper and they collaborated with movie studios to get the content on there. Betamax should have been more successful, but it wasn't, but there's also good reasons why it wasn’t.

Karen:
So out of all the products in the museum, there are different ways that these products fail, whether it's just a failure in the product itself or the marketing, or maybe the timing. Like, is there one kind of one of those factors that seems to be the most common as far as failure, or does it kind of just depend?

Samuel:
There's a famous quote by Tolstoy in Anna Karenina, he writes that all happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in their own special way. I love that quote because it's brutal, but also because you can just translate that to a failure, at least in this, when we talk about failure and innovation and sort of in the corporate sense. But because the successes are — that's why they're boring. They're all more or less the same. But failures, like things can fail for the most strangest, unexpected reasons. Some things fail early on. Some things fail later. Sometimes failures just happened because of unlucky timing. This isn't a great example, but there's a diet, it's not a pill. It's a diet candy of some sort from the, I think it's in the forties, fifties, sixties, and you were supposed to eat it's, it's an appetite suppressant.

Ray:
Is this AYDS?

Samuel:
AYDS, yeah. It was super prominent, great name, diet AYDS. Yeah. Et cetera. And then come, you know eighties, nineties, and it was not their fault in any way, but you don't want to be eating a diet pill called AYDS. But that's like, they had nothing to do with that.

And there's another one I come to think of, a Swedish innovation, it's called the pacemaker. It's small sort of mobile DJ thing. It had a little disc on it and you could take it where you're deejaying. You could, from your pocket you could mix songs and stuff. And it was a great innovation and they were just unlucky, because the same year iPhone comes out and you can just get an app called the DJ app. Their whole product just becomes useless. And that's not their fault. They didn't know Apple was...

A lot of companies got screwed over by the iPhone, by the way. You don’t really know where it's going to happen. And I wish I could answer—I often get asked, like, so with all these failures, you must be an expert on avoiding failure. I’m like, well, I wish I was. There are some themes at the museum that I can extract, but I mean, there's not any super recipe on how to fail or how not to fail. One of the themes is, one that's very strong, which is unexpectedly strong, is don't over-hype your product.

Karen:
Yeah. That was the case with the Edsel.

Ray:
I'd love if we could maybe ease our way into a broader conversation about entrepreneurship and failure. I guess one burning question I had is do you get approached by entrepreneurs of any kind who see you as like an expert on failure, asking for advice or asking you to consult for them on how to, you know, how to avoid failures of their own. Does that happen at all?

Samuel:
It does happen. And then from entrepreneurs it's been mainly sort of at sort of startup events and similar events where anybody in the startup world . . . there is an understanding of how important failure is. I mean, you're doing this pod for that reason. So they're more open to it. I wouldn't say that they're especially interested in learning, cause they haven't really done that many failures. So to answer your question, are entrepreneurs asking for advice? I'd say no, it's the dinosaur companies who are. Yeah, I never actually thought of that, but sometimes I feel like if I'm in a context — if I'm giving a talk or doing a workshop at a bank finance industry event in New York or Switzerland, that's where it's like, Oh wow, wow, this is good stuff.

But if I'm at an event for entrepreneurs and startups, what I'm saying is not maybe as interesting for them.

Karen:
I think I read somewhere in an article that you were quoted saying that the startup culture is if you fail you just kind of move on, instead of learning from that failure. Is that kind of what you're talking about?

Samuel:
Yeah. I mean, I don't want to sound too critical. But a problem with this fail forward mentality in some of our approach of, sort of Silicon Valley, and a lot of sort of startup hubs or intensive areas is that it's all good to fail and we all agree that, you know, you need to fail and that's the way forward. Definitely. But Silicon Valley is not any better at learning from their failures than the big companies that we make fun of. They suck at it. They'll fail, but they don't learn from it. If you look at the number of startups or you look at the entrepreneurs starting different whatever area or domain of industry they're in, they're surprisingly bad at learning from their own and other mistakes.

So yeah, I think they should pay more attention to failure and not just accept that it happens. Cause that's like, Oh, I'm a risk taker. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm going to do this. I'm not afraid. That's all good. But I mean, if you could learn from your failures and those around you, you'd be much more successful in whatever endeavor you're doing.

There's a great talk by the founder of Fuck-Up Nights. And she says, I think it's a Ted talk, but she says she doesn't want people to fail more often or, you know, fail more. It's not an embracing, like encouraging failure, but she says that she wants people — and she’s directing this to entrepreneurs, fail mindfully, you know. I love it, I'm not gonna take credit for it, it's hers, fail mindfully. Like when you do, when you screw up whatever it is in your private life or in your, as an individual or entrepreneur you know, fail and then own it accepted, it hurts and learn from it. That's mindful, you know? So being a hot shot, failing fast and Zuckerberg, he can say that as much as he wants to, but he's always fucking up, you know? He can't seem to get anything right. So that attitude isn't really working in the long run.

Karen:
Yeah. Can you explain what Fuck-Up Nights are?

Samuel:
Fuck-Up Nights are great. I think they started a few years before Museum of Failure, so I don't know exactly when they started, but the concept is it's like a, it's an event concept.

So like Ted talks or PechaKucha, they arrange an evening or whatever, a session where people—and it started from entrepreneurs, but now it's anybody who get up on stage. And I think it's six minutes, you have a certain amount of slides that you have to get through and they give you sort of, they say, you know, they give you some instructions. Don't don't, for example, which is a problem for entrepreneurs, don't glorify your failure and try to spin it to make it look like a success, cause that's also boring. That's what corporations and their PR departments do to try to be sincere. That's like, one other instruction. And it just, it's a nice thing that you might have three or four speakers in one evening and that's a Fuck-Up Night.

Ray:
And this is an international thing, right?

Samuel:
Oh yeah. I think it’s based in Mexico, but it's everywhere. And I often find when Museum of Failure is invited to different events, whether it's internal sort of innovation days or kickoff events with corporations and even open events, I often find that Museum of Failure and Fuck-Up nights are both invited to the same gigs.

Karen:
So there's a whole culture around failure. I did not know this.

Samuel:
Yeah, no, there used to be a FailCon, like a convention, in San Diego. I don't know what happened to it, but it was a while ago, but I mean, they had a whole FailCon, it’s also for entrepreneurs. So there's definitely a whole culture. There's a lot of activity in failure.

Ray:
Cool. Are there other organizations or groups out there that are doing similar cool stuff around, you know, embracing and recognizing failure?

Samuel:
I get quite a bit of people writing books about failure or wanting to share their experiences in some way. So I think aside from the like failure movement, I think there's just also a greater appreciation that that story needs to be told as well. And it's usually entrepreneur focused. I had a chat last week with a group in Tokyo, entrepreneurs and artists who were starting something, some kind of movement. A lot of it was lost in translation, but a movement also sort of like sort of trying to, not celebrate failure, but normalizing it in the Japanese business culture. So things are happening. I'm sure it's not like intense activity, but there's plenty of content. And there's plenty of sort of interest in failure.

Ray:
The Japanese business culture is one where—and you probably know more about this—but that yeah, that, that failure is not celebrated. It's, it's quite, it's quite shunned, isn’t it?

Samuel:
No. If you fail in California, it's one thing, if you fail in in in Japan or Korea, China, it's another thing. You, you just don't fail. It's fascinating, the cultural differences. In Europe, there's like the North and South, up in Sweden with the somewhat transparent, open culture in the workplace. Failure is not as horrible as it is in France, Italy, where you just, if you fail, you do not own up to it. It’s devastating.

Karen:
Related to that, do you see more innovation coming out of societies or cultures that do embrace failure?

Samuel:
I mean, this is the million dollar question, and everybody's totally focused on Northern California and the West Coast startup culture and their whole embracing failure attitude. So everybody wants to emulate that. And it's not always possible. I mean, you can't — you can say what you want to in a French startup culture, but, you know, if you go bankrupt in France it's more devastating than going bankrupt in the States. If you screw up an initiative in a Japanese company and you're the team leader, that's going to be more devastating than if you do so in Sweden. Those cultural differences exist and it's fascinating, but it's also something that, yeah, it's really difficult to actually do anything about it.

Ray:
And I think that's great, you know, just giving people an opportunity to just de-stigmatize failure, it just feels so important. Like you said, there's so many ways to fail you and there's so many ways to be an unhappy family, there's no way we're going to avoid or eliminate all of them, but if we can at least get rid of that stigma a little bit. And, you know, we talked to so many people, so many other people on this season of the show who, who said you know, if I had just talked to someone about what I was going through, that would have helped, and just realizing that, you know, you don't have to take it all on yourself. So just raising the floor a little bit so that failure is a little less daunting.

Samuel:
Yeah. Like this podcast, just, just having a discussion about it in a positive sort of — it doesn't even have to be positive, in a constructive, productive manner is part of that movement of de-stigmatizing failure. Cause everybody wants success. It's easy to want that and it's easy to be on the front cover of a success magazine or whatever, but that's not the real story.

Ray:
Now, you've had a flop of your own and you've talked about it publicly, a bankruptcy. Are you open to sharing a little bit of what happened?

Samuel:
Now I am, I wasn’t the case a few months ago. From Fuck-Up Nights, they have like, based in like the entrepreneur, small business owner domain, they have their experiences, they published something like why do businesses fail? And I can't remember number one, but number two was conflicts with co-founders and business partners. I was like, mm-hmm, just take that one and just put a fit red circle around that one.

So my previous business partner sued me claiming that he owned half of the Museum of Failure. Nobody was interested in it when it was not a success, but then it's doing as the New York Times and BBC's there and everything, then all of a sudden, and some money starts coming in then, Oh, hey, that was my idea. So yeah, I've got a completely different appreciation or disgust of a legal—it's a legal system and not a moral system. Yeah, so I got that lesson and it hurt, but I've learned from that. I wish I could say like, oh yeah, and there's some great advice, but there's not, just be really careful who you marry and who you do business with.

Karen:
Yeah. We've had a couple other stories this season on the podcast of business partnerships gone wrong. So—

Samuel:
I think it would be fascinating, I mean, I think Fuck-Up Nights has already sort of highlighted that, but I think it's fascinating also because of my experience, there's a lot of talk in startup, entrepreneur sort of advice or content about, you know, Oh, the idea and how I did this and how that, and venture capital all the good stuff. Right? But I feel that this is something that's not really—it's like mentioned, just be careful, but right, it's kind of interesting. Like, wait, it's more than that. This is a big reason for pain along the way. Yeah, I think it deserves more attention.

Ray:
I just want to go back to the museum real quick. Obviously with Covid a lot of a lot of businesses that had a physical presence had to, had to close their doors. And I know the museum did, or does have a physical location. Right? Is it still operational?

Samuel:
I mean, for the Museum of Failure, Covid’s been horrible economically, because there's zero income. I don't give any talks and there's no conferences on innovation when the whole global economy has gone to hell and there's no flights anywhere. So that's a big economic sort of misery for me. And then the museum is closed as well. So it looks better, I mean, it does look not completely hopeless looking forward, but it's definitely don't… Just advice, if there's a pandemic, don't have a business idea that’s all about public events and travel.

Karen:
Well hopefully it'll be up and running soon. I would love to see it in person if you ever come to the US. I have a question just about any products out there in the market right now that you feel eventually will end up in the Museum of Failure.

Samuel:
Oh, I've got that question before and I've learned the hard way not to answer it.

I had an event I had, I was getting — this is the worst one. If you want a little fun failure here. And I'm still not answering your question. So I gave a talk and it was this prestigious tech company, the owner was there, he was also the CEO. Very, very high level, prestigious company. I cannot tell you the name. And I’m in there, I give my talk, everybody loves it. Oh, wow. Yes, you're awesome. I'm like, yes. And then I get that question.

And this is 2017. And I say, you know, I don't get the Apple Watch. I don't get it. I think it's not good and whatever, I gave my reasonings for it. And I'm like, I'm absolutely sure that we're going to have Apple Watch in the Museum of Failure in the future. And then the whole auditorium just got silent, like completely silent. So all these managers from around the globe, big shot guys and women from everywhere, they just, silent, and the energy and the fun that was just there a few minutes ago, it was gone. “Okay. Thank you very much, Dr. West. Okay. Get off the stage.” And then the CEO and owner, his assistant came up to me and said, “Last year's Christmas present to all managers was an Apple Watch.”

Ray:
That's perfect.

Samuel:
So sorry. No comment.

Ray:
That's okay. I think it was a perfect comment to stand in for an actual answer.

Karen:
I just love, you know, failure is, you know, sometimes a really hard topic and the stories that we have covered in this season of Flopshave, you know, have been really profound and really, you know, sometimes sad, and people have lost a lot of money but then recovered. But I also just love hearing just kind of the joy that you have in failure, you know. Like failure, at some point you can laugh about it, and there are some failures that, you know, you just have to find joy and, and just laugh. And so I just really appreciate you telling us all about the Museum of Failure and all the stories behind it today.

Ray:
Yeah. This has been a lot of fun. I was just going to say anybody out there who feels like they're failing, just go visit MuseumofFailure.com and it'll lift your spirits.

Samuel:
And everyone that listens to this, if you have any suggestions, I can't Google everything myself. So if you have any suggestions, like if you're in a specific industry, a sewage pump expert, right, and there's something in your industry that is, that you know is a failure or was, however esoteric it might be, please send me a line. The museum needs these suggestions. And if you have something in your garage, we like donations even better.

Karen:
And where would they send those suggestions?

Samuel:
Yes, it’s on the website, [email protected] It all goes to me.

Karen:
Okay. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. We really enjoyed having you, and maybe we'll invite you on at a later season and get an update on the Museum of Failure.

Samuel:
If it still exists.

Ray:
Then we’ll definitely want an update, if it doesn’t exist.

Samuel:
Awesome. Great. Thank you very much for having me.

Ray:
So Karen, here we are. We've come to the end of the first season of Flops. How does it feel?

Karen:
Oh, wow. Well, it's been quite a ride. We've talked to some amazing people who have dealt with some pretty big failures and it's been honestly incredible to hear what some people have gone through and managed to find a way through, and in some cases come out stronger on the other side. How about you, Ray? What are your thoughts as the season comes to an end?

Ray:
You know, a lot of cliches come to mind for me, but it's because they're true. It's been really inspiring to learn from, to hear from the people that we we've talked to we've interviewed and meaningful to be a part of helping them share these stories with the world. For a lot of the folks we talked to, this was the first time they shared this story outside of their inner circle. And I also hope that our listeners have gathered some things along the way that are, you know, that might be helpful to them as they think about how to avoid certain kinds of failure, how to, you know, navigate failure if they're faced with a big one of their own. And yeah, talking to Dr. West was a pretty fun way to end things, we try to have some fun with failure on this show as well as, as you know if you've been following us this season.

Karen:
Fun with failure. That's another podcast title that we could use. But I agree learning about yeah. Learning about failure can be fun. Obviously it can be hard, but I like how Dr. West finds joy in telling the stories of corporate and product failures. And I'm glad that there are others out there like Dr. West who are working to destigmatize and normalize failure because that's so important. And that's exactly why this show exists.

Ray:
It sure is.

Okay. So every week we have a special guest join us to round out the show with a failure story of their own. And today I am very excited to welcome, to help close things out, the world's biggest Back to the Future fan, the founder and co-CEO of SPI media, Mr. Pat Flynn, welcome to Flops.

Pat Flynn:
I'm excited, Ray. Thank you for having me.

Ray:
Yeah, we're excited to have you. So before we jump into your story, something that everyone should know about Pat is that for the past, what, 10 plus years, Pat, you've been sharing your Flopsessentially with the world to help others kind of navigate the—

Pat:
I'm kind of an open book when it comes to my failures.

Ray:
There you go. You said better than I could, you know, just helping people navigate the pitfalls of entrepreneurship and build businesses. At one point you were known as the crash test dummy of online business. So I'm not sure if you're still going with that moniker, but—

Pat:
Sometimes, but I mean, you know, I try things so that I can fail in front of others and teach those lessons because when you try something, you either get the result you wanted or the lesson that you needed. And then I just tried to pass that forward.

Ray:
Totally. So all this is to say that you don't really have a lot of Flopsleft in the tank to share that people haven't heard before. So today, as we understand, you're going to be sharing one that maybe some people have heard, but it's maybe also more of a niche flop, you know, a bit of a deeper cut from the Pat Flynn archives, is that fair?

Pat:
That’s true, and the reason why I wanted to bring this one up was because, you know, this is what, literally 10 years later, 10 years after this flop happened, somebody randomly brought it up. So this stuff doesn't leave you sometimes, but it's important to respond to it in a way that allows you to continue to laugh about it and to grow.

Let me set some context. So I had just started speaking on stages, actually, I was always wanting to start a business and help people, but never really in front of people. I liked the fact that I was blogging and podcasting behind a microphone, and I could always sort of just like edit my words and I didn't have to worry about looking at people while presenting or anything like that. However, in 2011, I started speaking as a result of a favor to a friend. Philip Taylor from FinCon had asked me to speak, and I ended up speaking on his stage.

And although I was very scared, I literally ended up scripting the entire thing because I was so scared. It was just a 20 minute presentation, but it still was something I was very nervous about. I still recall walking back and forth down the hallway before going on stage and just kind of being very nervous and other people going, why are you sweating much? Because I'm speaking for the first time. But I got through it, and it was nerve wracking, but it was very much, I was very grateful for that experience because it really got me excited about speaking again and, and seeing the impact that it could make on people really had me excited about the next one. So I had the next one booked. In fact, it was a big event. This event was called BlogWorld Expo and it was in Los Angeles.

This was the time when they were doing it both on the East coast and West coast twice a year. And this time it was in LA in 2012. And I really wanted to come out with a bang. Like I knew that I was going to be speaking a lot and I wanted to come out and just be the most memorable speaker there. Unfortunately, I was remembered for different things during this time. And so what ended up happening was I spent about three months preparing this presentation and I learned it so well in fact, that I had the slides choreographed with where I was going to be on the stage, choreographed with what I was going to say and when I was going to click the button, all this stuff, I had just gone kind of overboard with preparation, but it was good because I knew that the more I prepared, the more that I would be, you know, just excited about it and hopefully, even though I was still nervous, you know, be able to get through it and teach people.

The title of his presentation was called How to Be Everywhere. A lot of people were talking about how I was seemingly everywhere. So I developed a presentation for this. So I got there early, I got the computer set up, the guy there was like, okay, give me your slides and I'll put them on my computer. So we got that ready. And I started noticing hundreds of people pour in. So I started getting a little nervous, but I was also excited because this was a well-thought-out preparation presentation. I was prepped. And then I started right on time, just like the way I was supposed to. And I just kind of was in a flow, you know, sometimes when you're in the flow, you're kind of having this out of body experience and you're just going, you're on autopilot.

And when you rehearse a lot, that's what happens. You just kind of go and you don't even think, you're just kind of in it. Well, five or six minutes into the presentation, you know, I kind of like snap back into reality after having gone just through the intro, the way I practiced it hundreds of times before. And I started noticing that every time I clicked the slides over, I didn't even look at the slides ‘cause I didn't need to, um, it was all choreographed, but every time I clicked the slides, people started laughing like every time. And eventually I look back at the slides and there's this, there's a key moment in the presentation, the climax, where I go, “I'm going to teach you how to be everywhere.”

Well, I look back at that slide. It's supposed to say how to be everywhere. And it says Hoby every w. And I was like, what? Those aren't my slides. Those, those aren't my slides. Well, they were, but the problem was when the technician asked me to take the slides off of my computer and put them on his computer for the presentation, I didn't know—it was a rookie mistake—that you also need to bring the fonts over or else it's just going to default to Arial. And so that's what it did because I used some specialized fonts that were much thinner, it defaulted to a much thicker font. And so it was ho, H O, and then tube, and then the B and then every w. And I was just like, Oh, no, this is not happening. The worst nightmare after three months of preparation, having a technical issue that I just didn't have the time to fix right there in front of everybody.

So, you know how every time there's some emergency, like somebody faints in a room and somebody goes, is there a doctor in the house? Well, I literally yell out loud, “Is there a slide expert in the house?” I was falling down. And I literally wanted to just escape. It was a complete flop and I had a choice. Right? I had a choice. I could either just say, you know what, I'm sorry, this is not the way it's supposed to go. You guys can leave now and just kind of escape from it. Or I could say, you know what? I learned everything I needed to know about this presentation. Maybe I don't even need the slides. So I just kept going. And it was funny because every time I hit the slides, you know, I was just like, don't look at that, just look at me, but it was there.

And I still needed it to kind of guide me in terms of what was coming next, but it just didn't make sense to anybody. And new people would come in, like people would come in late and I'd wave at them. And I go, Hey, don't look at the slides, they're all jacked up. Don't look at the slides. And everybody started laughing. And then, you know, what was really interesting was I got through it and I was a wreck. And at the end I had a number of people come up to me and go, you know what, I think you did that on purpose. And I said, I would never, ever do that on purpose. Trust me, like I wanted to throw up. And they were like, well, just, I don't know, like, it's, it seems like you just were trying to prove how well you knew the presentation. ‘Cause you didn't even need the slides. And it just was a funny laugh and it just really made it really wholesome and like, thank you for the presentation. Like I'll never forget it. Oh my gosh, I don't—I want you to forget it, please.

But you know, I got through it. And I think that just speaks to, you know, as far as a presenter, you know, you don't need the slides. But at the same time, like in those moments when you do flop, especially in front of people, you could either just keep going and laugh it off and get to the end and get through it, or you could run an escape and become known for that. So I'm grateful that I kept going, but I definitely, definitely was very embarrassed. And the other funny thing was one of my friends, Cliff Ravenscraft was recording this.

He ended up without telling me just for fun cause we're buddies, because eventually he found out that I was okay with it, he created an animated GIF of my triple-take of looking back and seeing the slides. And it is still on the internet. If you look up, I think it's, “Pat Flynn triple take” or “double take presentation fail” or something on Google images, you'll see the GIF of young Pat in my moment of just putting my hands down at my sides and going, Oh, no. And, so that was a flop and it's a lesson, you know, I've never made this mistake again.

Ray:
I got to know what font was it that you had that, what was the intended font that never made it to the screen?

Pat:
I think it was called mathlete. Yeah. Very niche. Like nobody would have it default on their computer. And again, nobody told me this is one of those things that you don't know until you mess up. And you know, now whenever I'm, you know, helping people with their presentations, I'm like, okay, first of all, your font, like, no matter what, make sure you do this, if you go to this event and whatnot. I triple check every time now, every single time.

Karen:
Well, that's a really good failure story. I've known you for what, four and a half years or something and this is the first time I've heard of it. So thank you for sharing your failure story.

Pat:
You’re welcome.

Ray:
Yes. Thank you, Pat. It's been a pleasure to have you on the show. We're glad you could join us for the first season. So yeah, that'll do it for this episode. We'll catch you on the flip side.

Thanks for listening to Flops. For more information on today’s episode, including links and show notes, please visit SmartPassiveIncome.com/flops.

Special thanks to Dr. Samuel West for joining us on today’s episode. Learn more about the Museum of Failure at MuseumofFailure.com.

That’s it for this season of Flops.

Your hosts are me, Ray Sylvester and Karen Beattie.

Flopsis a production of SPI Media.

Our executive producer is Matt Gartland, and our series producers are David Grabowski and senior producer Sara Jane Hess.

Writing by Ray Sylvester and Karen Beattie.

Editing and sound design by Paul Grigoras.

Music by David Grabowski.

Thanks for listening.