According to CliftonStrengths^®, one of my top 5 strengths is Learner.

I recently had the privilege to attend a local conference held by Lessonly; a proud partner of the company I work for, Purple Ink. If you want to find energy and people that love to learn, sign up for next year’s Yellowship conference. Each keynote and breakout session allowed me to experience what organizations are doing well. The most remarkable aspect was that people were sharing how being vulnerable and leaning into failure enabled them to achieve more.

Guy Raz, famous host of the podcast How I Built This, with 14 million downloads per month, had extraordinary details to share about some of his guests. During his podcast, he interviews the greatest innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists, and tells the stories behind the movements they built. Guy told us that he has learned 7 essential life lessons from truly spending time with each guest (sometimes up to 5 hours). He also laughed about the contacts in his phone; he didn’t intentionally name drop but he has become friends with so many prominent people it’s humorous. Why has he become friends with them? Because he took the time to get to know them and allowed them to be vulnerable during his podcast.

Here are his 7 lessons:

1. Always be prepared to leave your safety zone, but do it safely
2. Listen to the doubters respectfully
3. Offer something better than anything else out there
4. Failure is your friend; embrace it, learn from it, get better
5. Always be ready to pivot
6. When you are comfortable, you are vulnerable (but not in a good way)
7. Act with kindness

We can all learn so much more if we are willing to explore new opportunities, rebound intentionally from failure, and through it all be vulnerable and kind.

Thank you Max Yoder, Conner Burt, Karlie Briggs and the rest of the awesome Lessonly team – giving the gift to learn is priceless and a joy!