Episode: Failure Is How You Learn to Win — Loving the Journey, Episode 7

Blog: www.donnakunde.com/blog/ari-rastegar

Podcast Link: https://pod.co/loving-the-journey-with-donna-kunde/ari-rastegar-failure-is-how-you-learn-to-win-from-3-500-to-a-multi-billion-dollar-portfolio

YouTube Link:https://youtu.be/k5sEyp1hAso?si=Uc7SpJeXpSZ2EEN-

Ari is a real estate investor and entrepreneur who went through two community colleges before graduating top of his class and building one of the most recognizable names in real estate. He has 750,000-plus followers across social platforms and a platform built entirely on what he has been through, not just what he has achieved.

He was also the very first guest recorded for Loving the Journey. And when you hear this conversation, it makes complete sense.

What he came in talking about is the thing most people run from. Failure. Not the kind you post about on LinkedIn once the comeback is already done. The kind you are in the middle of. The dark night of the soul. The moment when you have done everything you can think of and it still feels like not enough.

Here is what Ari says to that: when you think you are done, you are only at 40% of your capacity.

He credits that to David Goggins, who has completed more Navy SEAL hell weeks than anyone alive. But Ari applies it to everything -- business, fatherhood, grief, the gym, the moment when you are tempted to quit the podcast because the microphone stopped working again or the guest did not show up or the episode got 60 views.

Imagine speaking to a room of 60 people, he says. That is 60 people you could have touched. Why would you stop?

Ari also makes this point: the barriers in your way are psychological. And since you made them, you can break them.

The two-million-year-old reptilian brain was designed to keep you safe, not to help you prosper. The threats most people face today are not lions. They are perception, judgment, and rejection. And since you built that barrier, you are the one who can dismantle it.

Failure is not something to rush through or post about once it is safely in the past. It is something to sit in. To sift through. To look for the gold that is always in there somewhere, even when everything feels like rubble.

You cannot always change what happened. But you can change what it means. And that reframe -- from this means I failed to this is showing me something -- is where the real leverage lives.

Near the end of the conversation, Donna asked him what he wanted to say to the one person listening who really needed to hear something.

He paused.

Then he said: it's gonna be okay. Maybe not when you think it should, and maybe not today. But if you wake up again tomorrow, one day you're gonna wake up and it's gonna be okay.

This is not a podcast about real estate. It is a conversation about what it takes to keep going -- through the 60-view episodes, the failed launches, the dark nights, the moments when you are convinced you have nothing left.

Ari Rastegar is proof that the thing standing between you and what you are building is almost always psychological. And since you made it, you can break it.