237. The Entrepreneurial Spirit: Overcoming Failures and Embracing Learning with Jason Schappert

What if you could transform failure into a catalyst for success? 

Join us as we unpack this intriguing concept with Jason Schappert, a visionary entrepreneur in the financial technology sector. Growing up in an entrepreneurial family, Jason witnessed firsthand the delicate balance between failure and success. He shares his personal insights on viewing setbacks as learning opportunities, urging aspiring entrepreneurs to embrace challenges as a pathway to growth. Discover how Jason's journey from his family's pest control business to the skies of aviation exemplifies the power of resilience and passion in achieving one's dreams.

Our conversation spans the significance of passion and persistence, drawing from Jason's childhood memories and the lessons his father imparted. Jason's early encounters with aviation opened his eyes to the rewards of pursuing what truly lights you up. You'll hear about the importance of goal-setting and visualization in achieving success, inspired by timeless works like "Think and Grow Rich." Jason underscores the richness of aligning personal visions within a team, highlighting that true success is measured not just by financial gains but by the fulfillment of passion, learning, and leadership.

Jason's story of overcoming setbacks, including his own missteps during flight lessons, serves as a powerful metaphor for the entrepreneurial journey. He eloquently illustrates how humility and applied learning can turn apparent failures into stepping stones towards greater achievements. With insights into personal finance strategies and the concept of financial "guardrails," Jason encourages listeners to see adversity as an opportunity for growth. Tune in and learn how the right mindset, coupled with the support of a dedicated team, can drive you to turn failures into a triumphant comeback.

🌐 Connect with Jason:
• Website: https://mzeroa.com/
https://moo.la/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonschappert/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasonandmagda/
https://www.instagram.com/moola_copilot/

Exploring Workplace Mental Health with Dr. Bill Howatt
Learn the why, what and how of fostering a mentally healthy workplace with Dr Bill Howatt

Chapters

• 0:01 Embracing Failure for Success Journey
• 4:51 Manifestation and Prolific Action for Success
• 12:25 [Ad] Exploring Workplace Mental Health with Dr. Bill Howatt
• 13:15 (Cont.) Manifestation and Prolific Action for Success
• 18:55 Overcoming Setbacks and Learning to Succeed
• 23:54 Learning From Failure and Humility
• 36:26 Personal Finance and Business Success
• 41:42 Resilience and Learning From Failure

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

These days, failure is everywhere. Self development gurus on social media love to romanticize it. Failure is a gift. Fail fast, fail forward, embrace failure. But let's be honest, that's only half the story, because what they don't tell you is that failure hurts. It can knock the wind out of you. It can make you question everything, and if you don't know how to use it the right way, it can break you. So the real question isn't, should I embrace failure? It's, How do I make failure actually work for me? And that's exactly what we're unpacking today with Jason Schappert, a serial entrepreneur who's built businesses, lost businesses, and learned exactly what it takes to turn setbacks into real, lasting success. Stay tuned to the end, where Jason really shares how to get value to work for you instead of against you. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the leadership project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Jason Schappert. Jason is a serial entrepreneur and a technology in the financial sector visionary who's dedicated to empowering individuals to find their financial freedom. But he's also a serial entrepreneur. He's been through multiple businesses, and he's learned a lot through failure along the way. He's had these success. He's a very successful individual sitting in front of us today. But that success didn't come instantaneously. It came through the school of hard knocks, through resilience, through learning, through failure, and that's where our focus is going to be today, about what it takes to be a serial entrepreneur, but also, what are some of the learnings that we have along the way, and what kind of mindset do we need to have to be able to pick ourselves up from the floor when things don't always go perfectly to plan? So I don't want to spoil too much of the lessons as as we go, so without any further ado. Jason, I would love it if you would introduce yourself to the audience and give us a bit of a flavor of that career that you've had, the ups and downs, the successes, the failures, and what led you to be with us today.

Jason Schappert: 2:17

Absolutely, Mick. Thanks for having me, and thanks to everybody for listening right time is the most valuable resource we have, so they're voting with their time right now to listen to this. So we'll honor that time. It means the world to have me on here today. You know, I You said it very well. You said serial entrepreneur, but I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. My parents still to this day, have a pest control business. So killing bugs, I grew up killing bugs with dad. That was the very first business, and it taught me so much about entrepreneurship. And one thing really stands out that made an imprint on me very young, and maybe some of the listeners can relate to having an experience like this, my dad had some very wealthy clients, and he had some clients that will just say weren't, weren't as well off. I would walk into what as a 12 year old kid, these homes were mansions, right? And I remember looking at these homes, Mick, and going, Whoa, like, what do these people do? I want to be like this when I grow up one day. And I remember just being that nosy kid and going in the office of these individuals and going, Wow, they have so many books. Rich people must read books. I should start reading books. And here I am as a 12 year old kid, kind of creating these neuro associations that if I want to be successful, I need to read books. Now. Mind you, I was a terrible student. Probably many of our listeners can relate to that, that school wasn't really my thing. But when it came to business and came to my passion, which is actually education, and early on, it was aviation. Was our first business that we actually built working through that we just built these associations that this, this hunger for life, long, learning and eventually, which led us into teaching.

Mick Spiers: 4:06

Yeah, really interesting, Jason. I'd love to know more about the story of your parents there. Like, what did you What were the entrepreneurial lessons that you took from your parents with their pest control business? They're still in business today, and I'm going to say there's not many startups survive more than a few years, your parents are still in business, in the same business today. Tell us what you learned from them.

Jason Schappert: 4:28

You're exactly right. They've been business since 1991 I want to say is they've been added a long time and just started very simply, dad and a pest control truck and mom was running the office. So I learned so many lessons. I got to see this very unique dynamic of husband and wife working together to grow a business. Now mind you, when I say we started out humbly, I mean humbly. When I was young, we lived in a motel in Florida for our for our first, my first few months of existence as my parents poured every. Everything into this business. Now, I don't remember those years, but I remember the struggles. I remember seeing the successes and a few key things really stuck out to me. My dad came to me very young while I was working for him, it was my first job, and he said something very profound. I still to this day think very highly of my father. He said, Jason, the bug business is not for you. You need to figure something else out to do, right? This is you're not going to inherit this or whatever it is like you're meant to do even, even greater things. In my mind, I'm a young kid thinking my dad is awesome. What does he mean? I'm going to do even better than than he did, right? In my mind, pest control was it was fun to kill bugs. That's as funny as that sounds. And he told me that, and I began to build this love of aviation. Anything that flew over. I wanted to know about it. I wanted to see it. My grandmother used to babysit me when I was even young. You know, too young to be working pest control with mom and dad, and she would take me to the airport to watch airplanes just take off and land. And I built this love for aviation. But one thing, and I'm sure some of your listeners know this, learning to fly is very, very expensive, the fuel, the insurance, the liability, all that very, very expensive. So dad made me a deal, and this is where the really, the biggest lesson comes in. He said, anything you upsell my clients, his his pest control clients, you can keep mowing the lawn, pressure, washing the driveway, pulling weeds out of the flower bed. It doesn't matter, but you go knock on the door, Jason, you sell the person and whatever you sell, you keep 100% off. You can use my pressure washer, use my lawnmower. Wow. So here I am, 12, 13, years old. Learn a skill that most 12 and 13 year olds don't have nowadays, which is, you know, cold knocking. Well, lukewarm knocking. They at least knew us on someone's door to upsell them a service or sell them something they weren't expecting. And that is how I learned well, first off, I thought I was just paying for my flight training dreams. In reality, I was learning such a skill of selling, of of becoming a communicator, which is something that's unfortunately still to this day not taught in schools and learning how to sell. Boy that taught me so much hearing the no's and you don't realize even as a little kid, you still get more no's than you get yeses sometimes, but I was persistent, so I'd say early on, the two greatest things my parents taught me was sales unknowingly. And the second one was persistence. If you really want this thing, you got to work for it. And more than once, it takes continuous, repetitive effort to get to that goal.

Mick Spiers: 7:55

There's a few things that are emerging from here. Jason. The first one is about passion we speak. Sometimes we have guests on the show, Dr. John Demartini as an example, experts in manifestation. And they talk about what lights you up. And when I heard you talk about aviation. Even today, your face changes. You light up. So there's something when you find something that you could talk about it for hours without any effort. It's just you're in a flow state. You're fully immersed. That's telling you something, if we're paying attention. The second one, which is about paying attention, is the learnings that you're taking. So when you're visiting those houses and you're going, on, this person's very successful, and they've got books in their room, and this person's not as successful by societal expectations. And what's different between this person and that person. You're paying attention then, through the practice of doing your learning skills, you're learning sales, you're learning relationships. You're learning communication skills, but if we're not paying attention, we're not learning one of the things that you said before was, you know, lifetime leaders, lifetime learners, was similar to what you said, but it doesn't work unless we're paying attention. How does that sit with you?

Jason Schappert: 9:18

Oh, you're you're spot on. And here's the thing to take it even a step further back to this idea of manifestation of it. I'm pressure washing driveways, and I'm looking up at airplanes saying, that's going to be me one day. You know, one of the greatest books, and I'm sure it'll come up, and I know it'll especially come up at the end there. One of my favorite books is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I know you've read it. I know many of the listeners have read it, something written in 1937 still just as relevant here today that the title gives it away. Think and Grow Rich, but rich isn't just in money. It's in health. It's in manifestation of your dreams, of your passion, of whatever that may be. And I'm pressure washing driveways. And I'm mowing lawns, listening to think and grow rich on a cassette tape that I rented from the library, and picturing myself as that pilot, and picture myself taking that fight lesson, and it's it's funny, but it's still something I do to this day, my goals have changed greatly. I'll fall asleep thinking about one of my goals and seeing it and feeling it as if that really happens. And to bring this all back to the idea of leadership, how do we now take this idea, this my goal, of manifestation, and communicate that message to the people that are under us? So we're all heading in the same direction to achieve that goal, so that my goal is your goal, and we're now arm in arm as a team pursuing that goal. And these are the things I got to see so early on with just mom and dad. This is the goal. This is the 20 mile march, to quote Jim Collins, one foot in front the other every single day. This is the direction we're heading.

Mick Spiers: 10:59

Yeah, I want to make an important clarification here. I think you're you're nailing it here, Jason, that, yes, the book is titled, Think and Grow Rich, but thinking doesn't do it. It's the prolific action and the focus, the decluttering of our life towards what we know is our dream and our goal. That's where manifestation lives. And you know, there was a lot of hoo ha about the movie, in the book, The Secret, and people thinking that if you dream of a million dollar check to come into your letterbox, it's going to come. Of course, that's never going to happen. But the prolific focus, the focus and the ability to say no to other things, because my dream is that plane that was above me. I might be pressure washing a driveway right now, but the dream is the plane that was above me. And what actions the 20 mile march now? What step do I need to take today? Prolific action in the direction of where I want to go. And there was another thing that you said, Jason, how do I get other people around me that believe in the same dream that I believe so that we're on the journey together, because we can achieve so much more together than we can individually. So manifestation is not just thinking to grow rich or dreaming to grow rich, it's prolific focus towards my dream. How does that sit with you?

Jason Schappert: 13:06

Absolutely right. It's the belief, and it's doing something with that belief. Jim Rohn used to say, knowledge isn't power. It's just potential power. You have to put that into use. We all know someone who will tell you how to fix your marriage or tell you how to fix their finances, but their own finances are a wreck, right? Their own marriage is a wreck. Knowledge isn't power. It's potential power. So we have to then take action on that and those steps. I can't just dream of becoming a pilot and hope an airplane is going to land in the driveway. It's those small, actionable steps to get us there, to go back to that 20 mile march. The problem with this is, you know, everybody is looking for and this is true in business, and we're probably getting way ahead of ourselves, but everybody is looking for home runs. Unfortunately, in a Tiktok and Instagram society, you just see what's on stage. You don't see the chaos behind the stage. Everyone is looking for this home run, but to give a fairly international example, the game of baseball is one with a bunch of base hits. Just hit the ball and play and make it to the next base. And let's do it again and then again and then again. But the home runs make it on TV. The beautiful performance on stage makes it on TV. I just took our 10 year old for her 10th birthday, to her first Broadway show in New York, and we had a great time. And she was admiring it how well rehearsed and practiced everybody was. And I told her, I said, Ella, you know, we are seeing this beautiful performance on stage, but what you don't realize is behind the stage, it's chaos. People are yelling at each other. Someone's running around, half dressed, they're chasing they're bumping into each other. It is a total mess behind stage, trust me, and that's how business is, oftentimes, most times, that's how leadership can feel and seem sometimes. Yet there's a generation growing up that sees everything so perfect on their phones and doesn't always realize that's not how life really is. Sometimes life is in Florida in August, pressure washing a driveway, getting bad tan lines, dreaming of being a pilot one day, because that's the action step now in this season, and then there's some beyond that as well. Many beyond that. It never really stops.

Mick Spiers: 15:26

There's a few things emerging from me here, Jason, I want to play back some of them to you as a quick side note. That is one of the things that worries me in the world today, by the way, is comparison syndrome, and people comparing themselves to. Someone's curated Instagram life, and all you're seeing is the finished product and the thing that they want you to see. There's the world is full of overnight sensations that were 20 years in the making. They were never overnight. They were 20 years in the making. And you don't see the chaos and the mess in the background. You see the the finished product. You don't see everything that it took to get there. All you see is, I want to be that person on the stage. You didn't see the years and years of practice rehearsals, calluses on on their toes from how many hours they practice to make that performance happen. So there's an important one there. The bit I want to unpack further is, yeah, knowledge doesn't change the world. Applied knowledge changes the world. Learning doesn't change the world. Applied Learning changes the world. And I want to bring us to this word failure, because there's a lot of I'm going to call them social entrepreneurs out there that are that are saying a lot of things on social media, and they say, oh, you know, everything's about failure. It's all about failure, but it only works if we actually learn from the failure. Now, this is what we teased everyone at the start of this interview. Tell us about your experience with failure and what how it's shaped you to who you are today and the businesses that you run?

Jason Schappert: 17:02

Well, I'll bring it back to continue the story of learning to fly, and then relate it to business as well. But first a preface to go back to Napoleon Hill's 1937 book, Think and Grow Rich in there. Believe it's in the chapter in persistence. He talks about how in every adversity, there's the seed of a greater advantage. But what is, what is a seed? Right? Well, a seed is it's nothing unless I put it in good soil and I water it, and I nurture it. I bring it inside when it's too cold, and put it out when the sun is shining, and I really take care of it as it grows into a sprout and then a small bush and then eventually a tree. But it takes time, and it takes purposeful effort and consistency in loving that seed and watering that seed and working with it. So if we believe in every adversity, there's the seed of a greater advantage. Well, we can look at that adversity and say, Okay, let's plant the seed. Let's learn from it, and let's see what this adversity can really grow into to use for good, to relate that back to aviation. Now I'm let's say I jump ahead a little bit. I'm pursuing my flight training dreams, and I'm 16 years old at this point, and one of the first things you do when learning to fly after significant amount of training, is you do your solo flight. Is your first flight by yourself. And I remember my instructor, very, very sweet lady said, Hey, Jason, if you can nail this next landing, I'm going to solo you. I thought, wow, this is what I've been waiting for. This is, this is the next milestone. I'm so excited. And I, I remember coming into land, and I I was lined up for the runway, and then the wind blew me way to the left, but I corrected, and then I over corrected. The wind blew me way to the right, just like how business works sometimes, and I'm doing these s turns as I'm supposed to be landing, and sure enough, I missed the runway. I'm not making this up. I missed the runway. I landed about 100 yards to the left of the runway in the grass, tall grass, bouncing around like we just landed like in the African bush. It seemed like bounce all around. My instructor had to get on the controls. It felt like a controlled crash. Our our headsets popped off. Everything else, my instructor took over. There, no damage to us or to the airplane. And taxied back over, and she looked at me and said, Jason, maybe you're not meant to be a pilot. And I still, I feel like the way I felt when she said it that day, you know, 2530 years ago, I think, Wow, maybe I'm not meant to be a pilot. And unfortunately that kind of branded me for a little bit there early on, just like the parent that came to you and said, What are you doing starting a business, right? Or the friend that said that business ideal never work like these. Sometimes we catch these scars that hurt us, but we have to realize who we surround ourselves with, and I wasn't smart enough to know what to do with this adversity just yet. So I did what all 16 year olds do, is I went to mom, right? And my mom was very smart and said, Jason, is it your dream to be a pilot? At this point, I'm crying like they told me I'm not going to be a pilot. My dream is over. I spent all this time, all this money, and I'm not going to be a pilot. My instructor told me, I'm not going to be a pilot. My mom said, Jason, if that is your dream, you call your instructor up and you say you want another lesson tomorrow. I said, What do you mean tomorrow? I can't go back in there. Everyone knows about it. Everyone's going to laugh at me. Everyone's going to I can't go back in there. That's what you do when you fail. You. You go back in there and you try it again, right? You learn from what happened. Why did you miss the runway? Oh, well, you know, it was the wind. And I probably should have went around and tried again, but my ego got in the way. That's exactly the problem, right? Fix those things and work through that. Well, I can't remember the exact dates, but say that that near accident happened on a Monday, and by Friday, I had genuinely soloed the airplane safely, all on my own. And you know, business is exactly the same way. Things are going to happen to you, and not just one thing. I say, Things plural, things are going to happen where it is so important to say, okay, what can I learn from this? Where's the advantage? Where is the where is the lesson that I can apply to allow me to grow and to step up to the next level? And sometimes these setbacks are really just a set up to get you to the next thing you know, from that moment, humbly speaking, we went on to build one of the largest, really, flight training institutions in America. We were in the largest providers with over 60% of the market doing the test preparation for pilots. And I almost gave it all up at 16 years old, when someone told me, maybe you're not meant to be a pilot. Like, what if I would have really believed that. So those are the things I want people to really be thinking about when adversity strikes.

Mick Spiers: 22:07

There's a lot of important things to take away from that story, Jason, and the first one was the beautiful metaphor of landing the plane and the corrections, the course corrections and the over corrections. And maybe that's what sometimes we do in business, is we correct sometimes too early, we over correct. We you know, there's a lesson there. And in its own then the world is full of successful people that at some point in their career someone told them, oh, you're never going to amount to anything. It could have been a school teacher or someone along the line, you're never going to amount to anything, but it's the people with the grit and the resilience. They get knocked down seven times, but they get up eight times, are the ones that that get there. The big one for me is then the learning and the applied learning. What went well? What didn't go well? The key question, what am I going to do differently next time? So all of this talk in business about lessons learned, about, you know, learn from failure, etc, and yet, what I see in some is Einstein's famous quote, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. So they're not really learning. They're just trying and trying again. So what? What's the difference here, in your view, between the try and try again and just keep on trying until it succeeds, versus, know what went well? What didn't go well? What subtle change am I going to try next time for you, it was park your ego at the door so that you can land the plane. What's the difference here?

Jason Schappert: 23:44

Let's go back to a sports analogy, right? All great sports teams, what do they do on Monday after the game, on the weekend, they re watch the same game they just played 24 or 48 hours ago? And what are they watching for? They're not watching for every single thing they did, right? They're watching for the areas they made a mistake, where they turned the ball over, where they gave up that point, whatever that is, if you are willing to learn from your mistakes, instead of saying, Hey, this is over, this is I'm done, or banging your head against the wall, like you said, and trying the same thing over and over, knowing that that's not going to work. You have to have the humility. And I think, and I know you speak about this so often the podcast, that leading from a place of humility is going to go over much better than leading with brute force and the iron hammer and everything else, but learning from your mistakes from a humble place, boy, does that make you not only a better leader, but just more successful in your own journey? Let's relate it back to, like you said, the social entrepreneurial face. And even for you and I, because I know you experienced this too, you get that one really nasty person that leaves a comment on one of your shows, and you know, it's just, you read it, you go, Geez, that that really wasn't very nice of that person. And I used to get my feelings hurt when I'd read a mean comment or something like that, and I'd want to back to the ego, right? And you want to fire off a mean response right back to them. But it's my wife, who's the smart one, who says, Hey, Jason, let's look at this real quick. First off, is there any truth to what this person is saying? But you look at it and go, Well, yeah, maybe, maybe I was talking a little fast in that last video, or maybe I was talking a little louder than I should have, or being verbose, or whatever it was in there. Okay, great. Now if. They went about it in a mean way. We'll handle that. But looking at everything from the mean comments on your YouTube or your marketing or your Facebook ad, whatever it is to say, Is there any truth to this? Take it back to my airplane analogy, Jason, maybe you're not meant to be a pilot. Is there any truth in that I'm going to say no, I'm committed to being a pilot. But let's even go further back. What were the mistakes I made, the zigzags and S turns out there the wind. I was so committed to my ego of saying I'm going to solo today that I forgot about safety and fundamentals of flight and the foundation of getting back to the basics. And we make these mistakes sometimes, and this is where we have to bring humility back into the game.

Mick Spiers: 26:30

Yeah, it's really good. Jason, I want to extrapolate from that and give examples of what I use here in terms of things like even a communication breakdown. Let's say I'm having a conversation with someone else, and the conversation doesn't go well, or or they, they walk off in a different direction altogether compared to what I thought the conversation was about. I don't blame them. I stop and go, Okay, what could I have done differently to get a different result? How could I explain myself? Could I have checked at the end of the conversation, Hey, what are you taking away? Like, done that validation? Are we? Are we taking away from this conversation? The same thing that I think that we're taking away so I don't blame the other person. I I reflect and go, Okay, what was the learning there for me? How does that sit with you? Yeah.

Jason Schappert: 27:19

Absolutely. Well, but that took years of humility and repetition for you to learn as well. And you know, it is the same thing. It's that works in marriage, that works in business, it works in our finances, in so many different things. You and I have a similar personality, both being an entrepreneurial type, as do many of our listeners well as the entrepreneurs, we're often called to be the visionaries of our business, and oftentimes we are all guilty of having the vision in our head but failing to communicate it in plain English to those that are we are leading to those that work for us. I found myself in the same boat, getting frustrated with employees going, Well, why did you do it that way? Right? We this would be the better way. And they go. You never told me that. I thought, wow, sometimes I've got this plan in my head of how to do things, or where we're flying this airplane, this figurative, metaphorical airplane right now that I haven't communicated to my team or in marriage, I haven't communicated to my wife that is important, that we have everybody to the analogy of rowing the boat in the same direction, not just the crazy plans of Jason today. And in my head, we have to get these ideas, these thoughts out right on paper to help then take action. And what you'll find is you can't even communicate those things once, right? You need to continue to over communicate that vision. So if you find yourself, I've learned to take your approach this. Mick, if I find employees not doing what I've asked or not meeting the expectations that I have, I first say and say, Okay, is there an uncommunicated expectation that I have. Is there something in my head that I have not communicated or again, I'm an educator and a teacher at heart. Started with aviation, now teaching finance. Is there something that I could teach better? Everyone has different learning styles, different learning languages. For that matter, where is my failure as a leader to communicate this message? Now some people, you can try all different ways, and now you're the one banging your head against the wall trying to get the same message through 10 different ways to someone who clearly doesn't want to hear the message. That's when it's time to take that person you know off the bus or put them in a different seat on the bus, all together, but taking back that humble approach and saying, Okay, what can I do better as a leader to communicate this message?

Mick Spiers: 29:50

Yeah, really good. A couple of things there. People are not mind readers, so you might have a wonderful vision in your head, but if you haven't communicated it, it's not going to land. You may need to be consistent in that message and repeat it multiple times before it truly does land. The other part I'm going to add there, Jason is you need to meet you. Subtly built this in there as well. You need to meet people where they're at. You might have been thinking about this idea for six months, 12 months, 12 years. They might be hearing it for the first time, and you might get frustrated and go, how are people not getting this? This is, this is the best idea ever, but you've been thinking, you've been thinking about it for three years. They they're hearing it for the first time, so meet people where they're at as well. Want to build on the communication now and come back to our lessons learned. And. Our learning from failure. You spoke about the humility before. This is also where the lessons learned need to come in. Is the sharing of the lesson. And if you're able to share it with others and talk them through it and say, Hey, team, I made a mistake. This is what happened. This is what I learned from it, and this is what I'm going to do differently in the future to avoid that mistake. Again, that's where the humility then encourages others that it's okay to communicate as well, and now we've got a learning culture. How does that sit with you?

Jason Schappert: 31:13

Well, it's funny to bring it up that way. We built, really now, two businesses around that entire business model. I'm not here to teach someone what happened, you know, from a textbook, because you and I both know what happens in a textbook in a business class that named the institution and what happens in the real world are two very different things. I want to teach people what happens out there in the real world and in our aviation business. What I found why I taught you the fundamentals, I taught you the basics. But when I was teaching people, and our main business was books and videos and audio books on passing your test to become a pilot, what I would often do is go off script, and I would tell a story. When we're teaching about weather, tell a story about the stupid time I flew too close to a thunderstorm and what happened, or that, that silly time I thought air traffic control said this, but they really said this, and here's what I did wrong. Talk about a literal communication breakdown, and I would teach through these stories of my failures, and most people are scared to do that, because they think, well, you failed so many times. Jason, how could you possibly be a good pilot? Well, that's what makes you a good pilot, and good in finances and good in your business, and good whatever else it is, if you're taking these failures, not just yourself, learning from them, but now using those failures to instruct others say, Listen, I've done this. It was stupid. Here's why I learned from it. So you don't make that same mistake too. It's exactly how our parents are supposed to teach us. Not every parent does right, but how we're supposed to be learning. Because as humans, we learn better through these stories, and when you can lead your team through stories like that, of failures, and, for that matter, the successes in there as well. They can build their own neuro associations as to okay, this is my lane to be operating in. Now, these are the things I can learn from from that Jason failed doing this, but what if we try this instead? This is how we build the strong marketing team, the strong finance team, the strong support team in all aspects of our business, learning from those failures and being willing to communicate them.

Mick Spiers: 33:32

Yeah, really good. Jason, so we've got lots of really good takeaways from today, so I'm going to summarize a little bit for the audience. So yes, there can be success at the at the end of failure, but it's only going to be successful if we're paying attention. We're reflecting what went well, what didn't go well, what did I learn about myself? What did I learn about others? What would I do differently next time to convert that into applied learning? It's not doing the same thing over and over again and fail 27 times and then wish that the 28th time will be successful. It's those little course corrections. Think about Jason landing the plane, minor course corrections. Okay, I tried to here's an interesting story for you, Jason. I'm sure that this product is universal. Have you heard of a product called WD 40.

Jason Schappert: 34:22

Of course, I know WD 40, and I know why it's 40 at the end. I know where you're going with this. Yeah.

Mick Spiers: 34:27

Yeah, there you go, right. So WD 40 is because it was the 40th recipe you had. So water displacement 40, and it was the 40th recipe. And each of those recipes was only subtly different, 1, 2, 3, 4, through to 39 and the 40th one was the one that that worked, right? So it's those little course corrections applied learning that changes your outcome, not doing the same thing over and over again. And then the final chapter is then to share that learning, share that openly with all of your team and to anyone that will listen. Hey, this is what I learned, because we're all wiser together when we share these learnings. Now, Jason, I want to give you an opportunity. Here you're wearing a shirt that's got mula written on it, and this is your new business. Tell us about your new business.

Jason Schappert: 35:15

Sure. So we just exited that aviation business that I was speaking about after 16 years, right from from nothing to 16 years of work to an eight figure exit so far from an overnight success, although others will tell you it is, and we hit a lot of speed bumps along the way, especially in our personal finances, and when my wife and I sold the business and looked. Each other. Said, Okay, we're, we're, you know, in our 30s, what are we going to do next? She said, Well, listen, let's work off our passions and our skills. Your skill is, you're a great teacher. Teaching is a passion, but you've also led this family to financial abundance and success too, by stewarding our personal finances. What if we build a technology that allows others to do the exact same thing for their families. So we built moolah, which I don't know if that translates across the world, but in the United States, it's a slang term for money, especially towards a younger generation as well, which is who we're targeting with that. And it's exactly that it is the guard rails to put up, to use an analogy here, you don't always have to follow the guardrails, but it's recommended. It's the guardrails in your personal finance, from envelope based budgeting that my mother taught me and still uses to this day, round up, style, spare change, savings, to quote from another business book, Profit First, paying yourself first. We know how important that is in business. Well, imagine adding that to your personal finances now, of paying yourself first, not paying the electric company and Netflix and everybody else first, you're paying Mick first. You're paying Jason first. So helping them do that, in addition that helping them invest in US stocks and international stocks for that matter, as well, so just really setting people up for success. And as you can imagine, the biggest aspect of move law is the teaching. It's the learnings. It's the I was broke once with a tow truck at the end of my driveway because I wasn't paying my bills early on, right? These are the learnings that we can teach and learn from and that we've built into the app and into the algorithm to really help people with that we're teachers. And that was, you know, that's probably a podcast for another day, but talk about an interesting thing, reinventing yourself, going from teaching people to fly to teaching people finance. Now it's quite the the jump, but you know what business is business and teaching is teaching at the end of the day.

Mick Spiers: 37:41

Yeah. Well done, Jason. And congratulations on the success of the aviation business with the failures along the way, but the success because of learning from those failures. Best of luck with the new business. What I see there is, by the way, the same ingredients, which is passion and a gap in the market and the ability to fill it with the right skill sets. So best of luck for the future of that, I'd like to take us now to our Rapid Round. These are the same four questions we ask all of I guess. So what's the one thing you know now, Jason Shepherd, that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Jason Schappert: 38:17

You don't have to get it right. You just have to get it going. And that sounds crazy from a guy that just told you right where I was teaching people to fly hunks of metal through the sky at 100 knots, right? You don't have to get it right. You just have to get it going. Perfectionism will kill your business. Get your business idea out there. Let the market test it. Let people vote with their dollars. Man, I would have been in business 20 years if I didn't wait so long trying to create this perfect product. In reality, I waited a long time and still released an imperfect product that not everybody loved, and spent 16 years refining it and fine tuning it so you don't have to get it right. You just have to get it going.

Mick Spiers: 39:00

Well, the one recipe for complete failure is to never start, right? So you have to start. There's an interesting word you use when you spoke about finances, and I think about it with aviation as well. There's guardrails. We're not asking you to put yourself at risk and do something silly. But if you do nothing, nothing is going to change. Nothing is going to change, right? What's What's your I think I know the answer this book. But what is your favorite book?

Jason Schappert: 39:23

You do know it? Think and Grow Rich. It is a book my wife and I read probably every 90 days, and it really kind of sets our compass, kind of our North Star, to keep us focused on that there's so many learnings inside of there a close second would be we also mentioned it. Jim Collins, Good to Great. Another, another, great, great. These classics, right? These classic business books, it's just timeless advice.

Mick Spiers: 39:47

Yeah, really good, and they do stand the test of time for sure. What's your favorite quote?

Jason Schappert: 39:52

Wow. Back to that Napoleon Hill idea of in every adversity, there's the seed of a greater advantage if you truly approach the next adversity or the adversity you're currently in with, saying, hey, there's an advantage here. It's just a seed right now, but I'm going to work to figure it out. I'm going to nurture it, and we're going to overcome this thing, and we're going to be better for it, and I'm going to use this lesson to teach others.

Mick Spiers: 40:16

I think it's so true, but it's only true if we're paying attention. That's the big, big takeaway for paying attention and we're present and you're paying attention to what's happening around you, all of those become opportunities. Yeah, really good. And finally, Jason, how do people find you? If they'd like to know more about moolah, they'd like to know more about you and your career and your successes, how do they find you?

Jason Schappert: 40:39

Yeah, sure. You can follow us at moolah copilot. I had to work the aviation analogy in there where Molaa Copilot from Tiktok through YouTube, everything in between. You get to see some of those learnings they've been talking so much about teaching people their finances as well. So check that out on social media. Obviously you can download the moolah app as well. But before anybody spends any money with us, as we always recommend, fall in love with our teaching style. Fall in love with the creators behind the product. Before you even consider opening up your wallet to buy anything that we have. We want to create fans for life. That's what we're really in the business of. So Moola Copilot across all your social media platforms.

Mick Spiers: 41:18

All right, once again, Jason, thank you so much. Congratulations. Thank you so much for your time and your gift of your wisdom and learning today, and for sharing it with us today so openly. Thank you so much.

Jason Schappert: 41:29

Thanks, Mick. Yeah.

Mick Spiers: 41:31

Wow. What a great conversation. Jason has given us a master class in resilience, learning from failure and the power of persistence. His journey is proof that setbacks are just setups for a bigger comeback if you have the right mindset, I'd love to hear from you. What are your biggest takeaways from today's episode. How have you personally navigated failure and turned it into growth? Send me a message or drop a comment. We'd love to hear your stories too. In the next episode, I'll be sharing my own reflections on what I learned from Jason today and my own approach to learning from failure. Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project mickspiers.com a huge call out to Faris Sedek for his video editing of all of our video content and to all of the team at TLP. Joan Gozon, Gerald Calibo and my amazing wife Sei Spiers, I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel where we bring you interesting videos each and every week. And you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Now in the meantime, please do take care, look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.