Super Bowl Champion Ben Utecht: The Culture System Most Leaders Miss | E1

I love this.

So talk to me about your biggest failure as an athlete.

And then how did that shape how you handle failure in business?

I'd probably choose a different word and say growth area.

I wouldn't say that I had any failures as an athlete, but I do think that going through each level revealed areas in my life that I really needed to develop and I really needed to grow in.

I would say just being vulnerable And I don't know if you've ever experienced this in the trajectory of your career, but fear of failure was always something that I really battled with.

My whole life, just with my personality profile, you know, I've cared deeply about what people think.

I don't want to let down my teammates.

I don't want to let down my coaches.

And put that kind of pressure on yourself.

Sometimes it can cause you to focus on the consequences of failure versus on the successes of failure.

of your talent.

Looking back, that's probably one of the biggest things that I had to battle that held me back at times was really allowing kind of the fear to creep into my mind around, well, what's going to happen if I drop this ball? What's going to happen if I fumble that ball? Or if I miss it? But what if

you catch it, right? So almost like seeing the glass half full or half empty, right? Yeah.

Perfect example, 100%.

Yeah.

And really trying to, you know, have the psychology or the mindset, the attitude to choose the glasses half full approach versus half empty approach.

So how did that shape how you handle, you know, failure in business, I guess? Because you, you know, we're going to get into all your business stuff, but how did that, how did that change your mindset in the business world?

Honestly, by inspiring how powerful hope is.

You know, I think sometimes, especially in business, especially in certain industries, some industries are much more, I mean, all business is transactional, but some industries are much more focused on the transaction than anything else, financial services.

And I would say that in business, especially as an entrepreneur, the power of hope is what drives you to keep going, right? When you hit the valleys in entrepreneurialism, when you come to the moment where you're looking at your P&L sheet and you're seeing, gosh, I have three to four months of capital left.

Right.

How am I going to make this turn, right? How am I going to add the sales that we need in order to keep going without having to go and raise more? And so that...

That value principle of hope and what do you believe about hope and how it applies to your performance improvement is something that I think really is something that I had to carry into that business world.

Because, man, business is hard.