Wanna Succeed? Make Failure Your Friend!
An Interview with Groove Life CEO, Peter Goodwin
I had the opportunity to interview Peter Goodwin, the founder of Groove Life, on success as a by-product of failure. Here is an audio recording, a list of key highlights, and a cleaned-up version of our conversation formatted for print.
Key Takeaways from This Conversation
God's Blueprint Works: Universal principles govern success in relationships, business, and life. These principles work regardless of your religious beliefs, but full life comes through a relationship with God and his Blueprint.
Redefine Failure: Failure isn't an identity—it's feedback. The only way to permanently fail is to quit. Everyone is failing in some areas while succeeding in others.
Remove Identity from Outcomes: Don't tie who you are to what you do. Whether you succeed or fail at something doesn't define your worth as a person.
The Golden Boy Myth: Even successful people have experienced profound failure, depression, and brokenness. Don't assume someone "wouldn't understand" your struggles.
Life is Learning: Success isn't about money or status; it's about continuously learning who you are, who God is, how relationships work, and how His creation operates.
Humility is the Key: Admitting "I don't know what I'm doing" opens two doors: you'll seek knowledge, and you'll attract mentors who want to help you.
Fail Fast, Fail Small: Don't bet everything on one endeavor. Start small, expect to fail, and treat each failure as a valuable education.
Buy Time with Others' Mistakes: You can spend decades learning through trial and error, or you can find successful mentors and learn from their failures in months.
Find Specific Mentors: Identify successful people in each area where you want to grow. Don't ask a great husband for business advice or a great businessman for marriage counsel.
Make Your List: Write down five areas where you want success, then identify who in your life has achieved success in those areas. Approach them humbly for guidance.
Kevin: You all know the Peter Goodwin of today, but there's something we want to share today.
There was a guy who worked at Groove Life a few years ago who was in a very broken place in life. We tried to help as much as we could, but he wasn't ready to be helped.
He's been calling me lately—hasn't worked here in probably four years—and one thing he said recently really surprised me. He was talking about his brokenness, his failures, his addictions to drugs and alcohol, and he actually said to me, "Peter Goodwin wouldn't understand any of this because he's been the golden boy from day one."
I told him I didn't think he knew Peter's story very well. As Peter and I were preparing for this morning, I realized many of you ALSO don't know Peter's story very well.
I had the beautiful fortune of meeting Peter back in 2007. I remember that year because it was my hell year, my dad had just died in a car accident, and I was crushed. I met Peter literally seven days before my dad's accident. When I met Peter Goodwin, he was living in Auburn, Alabama, in a friend's garage. He had built his own bed out of plywood.
Peter: Yeah, I built this bed out of a tree.
Kevin: He had purchased two homes to flip. Both of those went south because we were moving into the housing market collapse of 2008. Peter was on the edge of absolute total personal collapse in all areas of his life. He and Katie were kind of dating, but he was trying to figure that out, and it was a really hard season.
The Peter you know today is not the Peter that has always been. He's not the golden boy who has never had failures.
So Peter, when you were in that stage of life, what was your mindset on failure?
Peter: I'll add some color to the story. I had good parents, but I moved out of the home two days after high school. What led up to that was when I asked my dad at age 14 what he thought I'd be when I grew up. He said, "I think you'll probably be one of these factory workers.” We lived in a factory town, so he said, “You could probably be a manager at one of these factories."
That one sentence crushed me. To me, it said I was a loser and a failure and that I couldn't do anything else but work at a factory. From age 14 on, I got a job to prove to him and others that I had what it took to be successful. That became my mindset: I had to prove to my dad and everybody else that I was smart and had what it takes.
That lie lasted for 12 years.
I graduated from high school and spent the season guiding in Alaska, while living in North Alabama during the off-season. I convinced some guys to give me money—it wasn't my money—and I bought houses with their money. When the 2006 housing bubble popped, I was on the brink of bankruptcy. My fiancé, not Katie, broke up with me, and that sent me into a multi-year depression.
Life is messy, and we all experience the same struggles in one way or another. The Peter you see now, even my wife laughs because she knows I'm just a knuckle-dragger — a hunting guide, and construction worker. Somehow God has blessed us with this to steward.
I believed I wasn't good at business and wasn't smart. I didn't go to college and felt like a failure, and that no one would love me if I weren't successful. What that produced in me was shame—a ton of shame—and defensiveness, trying to prove to everyone that I did have what it took. That made what looked like pride on the outside, but it was really insecurity on the inside.
Let’s Turn This Into A Conversation!
Kevin: Does that surprise you guys? That the successful Peter Goodwin you know today was in that situation. We're all in this growth process, and we're all going through different types of failure. How you manage and navigate that failure makes all the difference.
I read a book called "The Dark Side of Leadership," by Gary McIntosh, and the principle is that the most successful people in life are probably the most broken because they hurt so badly in their brokenness that they had to find a way out. They look for the most guaranteed pathway to affirmation, to get out of their poverty, whatever kind of poverty they were going through. All of that has to do with this pivotal mind shift.
Peter, if you compare that with where you're at now, what's your current mindset?
Peter: The mindset I have now about any new endeavor I want to tackle is different. Let's define success, as everybody thinks it means money, but there are many aspects of life where success and failure coexist. Most of the ones that really matter to people are relational.
Any endeavor you care about involves a mix of success and failure: you envision one outcome as successful and the other as failure. Getting divorced is failure, going bankrupt is failure, and having a happy marriage is success. But we just measure whether we're successful or a failure without recognizing the middle ground of learning.
Removing your identity from your idea, career, or endeavor is hard to do, but super necessary. In our modern Western society, we don't really have any familial identity, and most people don't have any spiritual identity. So we look to the world to tell us who we are and whether we're worthy.
The problem is that if you think your idea or endeavor is tied to your identity, you swing for the fences. If it's relational, you get married and get way too involved too quickly. If it's motherhood and you tie your identity to being a mother, then if you can't have children, you think you're a failure. If you get a bad grade in college, you might feel like a failure.
What's changed for me is removing my identity from that failure. Here's my framework for life: life is all about learning. You're born pretty ignorant about everything, but your endeavor through life is to learn who you are, who God is, who others are, how things work, and how things don't work.
There are principles to how business works and principles to how relationships work. If you're kind and humble, you'll likely have strong relationships. If you're arrogant and stubborn, you probably won't be very good at relationships or business. That's my framework. I look at everything as a learning opportunity.
Here's a quick story about my daughter Mary. When you're a kid, you don't think about failure. When Mary was little and learning to ride a bike, she wasn't crushed when she fell down over and over. She kept at it because she didn't tie her failure at riding a bike to her identity. She didn't think "I suck"—she just scraped her knee, cried, and got back on. She removed her identity from that failure. But the only way she learned to ride a bike was by falling over every single time. That principle at age four is the same as it is now at 44.
Kevin: One thing I've noticed about you, particularly in recent years, is that you've shifted from a "win now fast" mindset to "slow down over time." You've mentioned that you're less interested in immediately achieving success through hard work and more interested in letting things develop and grow over time.
Does that resonate?
Peter: Yes, it's a longer-term mindset. As you get older, you realize that achieving success in marriage and parenting takes a long time. It's about getting out and doing the hard things every day. You can't measure your success in a moment. If you realize that failure is the best teacher, then you welcome your failures instead of running from them.
Kevin: Guys! Can you imagine making space in your life for failure intentionally? Nobody does that. Nobody says, "I'm going to create an opportunity to fail" because failure can be so painful. But I know from personal conversations with many of you that you're stuck feeling like you're never going to achieve your goals. You don't know how to get out of that stuck place.
Peter, for those who might feel stuck, what steps would you recommend?
Peter: I don't have the keys to life, I'm just telling you what happened in my own life.
When I got to a point where it was so painful, I had to have relief. I opened up and embraced it. I said, "Okay, maybe I am a failure." I went down the rabbit hole:
What does it mean if I'm a failure? It means I can't provide for my family.
Okay, can my wife work? Yes. Can I mow yards? Yes. Will my kids starve? Probably not. You go down the rabbit hole and realize it wouldn't be that bad if this endeavor failed.
That's the first step. Humility is the key to life and success.
Humility is the first step for two reasons.
First, you admit to yourself that you are failing. We are all failing all the time. You may be crushing it in one area, but not in three or four other areas. If you're not successful in an area of life you want to be successful in, you're failing. My daughter was failing at riding a bike the first week, but she wasn't a failure. You're not a failure. Failure is the best tutor ever.
When I first got married, I thought I knew how to be a good husband.
Newsflash: I didn't, and nobody does when they first get married. Instead of admitting I needed help and seeking wisdom from people who were good husbands, I blamed my wife. I thought that if she were just better, things would work out. But there's no humility in that. I was scared of being a failure as a husband, but I was literally self-sabotaging because of pride and insecurity.
The same thing happens in business. I failed many times in business. People say, "Oh, you're so successful," but I've had eight failed businesses. I almost went bankrupt, living in trailers, my truck, and a shack where I couldn't afford a bed. So, I cut down a tree and put it together. My wife saw that bed and somehow still married me. But I always blamed somebody else—the market, my partner, being robbed. I couldn't admit to myself that I sucked at business.
Remember, the key to life is that life is about learning. You're here to learn who you are, who God is, who others are, how things work, and how they don't.
Kevin: For those sitting there thinking this is exactly how they're stuck in this identity of failure, give us a few steps you've learned over the years to dig out of that pit.
Peter: The first step: wherever you're not happy with where you're at, just admit you don't know what you're doing.
Admitting you don't know does two things. First, you're going to seek knowledge. Second, and more powerfully, humility really attracts people to you. When young people come to me asking about business, my time is very valuable and I'm packed out, but I always make room. I want to meet with them for an hour to share everything I know, as I'm drawn to them and they've asked.
But very few people do that because we're all walking around thinking we're stupid failures instead of thinking we're just not good in this one area and we need help. If somebody came to you with a flat tire, would you turn them away? No. God made us to want to help each other, but we're repelled by pride.
Humility is the first step: admitting you don't have what it takes in this area where you want success, then having the humility to ask for help. I'm very specific about who I ask advice from. I spend a lot of money on coaching. Right now, I have a family coach because I feel like I'm failing as a father and husband. My family's doing pretty good, but I know it could be better. I found a guy who does family coaching, and I pay him because he has a very successful family, and I want that.
Wherever you want success, find people who are successful in those areas. Not many people are successful in every area of life. We're all trying to be more balanced, but find people who are hyper-successful in the area you want to succeed in, whether it's marriage, family, money, or even a hobby.
Kevin: Give us, again, your one-sentence definition of success.
Peter: Success is about learning who you are, who God is, who others are, how things work, and how they don't.
Don't assume you know how they work. In our insecurity, we think we know when we don't. I'm very hard on my kids about this. If an adult tries to tell them something and they interrupt and say, "I know," we have a big sit-down. I tell them never to say those words in my house. You don't know. If that person has volunteered their time and wisdom, be humble about receiving it.
Kevin: Give us a couple of steps toward living into that definition.
Peter: There are two ways to become successful in something and one way to permanently fail. The only way to be a failure in an area is to completely give up. The guy at Meta (Mark Zuckerberg) said their company grew fast because they fail fast and fail forward.
My mantra is: fail fast, fail often, fail small. If you go into business, don't mortgage your house or put everything on the line.
Whatever your endeavor, start small and realize that failure is your best friend. If you can embrace that, you will be successful in any area you go into. Failure is just a feedback loop—a gift from God saying, "Hey, you don't know," and it forces you to seek knowledge from a place of humility.
The most successful people in the world, like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates—what's the one thing they can't get? More time. That's the great equalizer. They can have more money than you, but you have the same amount of time. The only way to buy time is to buy other people's mistakes. When you make your own mistakes from scratch, you waste time.
You can figure out how to be a good husband by age 75, or you can seek wisdom from people who have failed, implement their wisdom, and get there faster. I don't want to have a bad marriage or figure out how to be a good parent after my kids are gone. I want to do it now. But the only way people will help you, even if you pay them as a coach, is if you're not prideful. You have to admit you don't know.
Kevin: A friend recently told me that in digital marketing, there are two ways to gain an audience: buy an audience with ads or content, or borrow an audience by partnering with someone who already has one. That's what you're saying—why spend precious time and energy learning everything from scratch when you can reach out to someone who's already wrestled through it and leverage their experience?
The beauty is that as you leverage someone else's mistakes, you create room to make your own mistakes and invest deeper in the next generation. It's an expression of love: I'll learn from your mistakes so I don't make them, which creates margin for me to make new mistakes that I can then share with the next generation.
With all we've talked about, please give us a couple of wrap-up statements.
Peter: If you're depressed, sad, or defeated, I would first pray that God would give you some relief. All of this is about the right relationship with God. You might even have to admit you don't know how to pray or how to be a child of God. Seek God first, because what good is it to help everybody in life, gain the whole world, and lose your soul?
Second, look at every obstacle in your life as an opportunity to learn. If you reframe success in life as stacking knowledge, understanding, and wisdom—if that's your KPI for success instead of money—then you embrace challenges. You want to get better.
All failures are opportunities to learn, and life is about learning. Children are born amazed at how everything works. There is a way things work and a way they don't work. When you break the way things work, they no longer serve you or others. Find out how things work—whether it's money or relationships.
There are people in your life who are successful in the areas you want to be successful in. Go to them humbly and say, "I will do anything, I just want to be around you and learn." They will 100% reach down and lift you up.
Make a list of five things you want to be successful in and prioritize them. Maybe it's relational—you want to get married. Then become the person worthy of that. If you want to be successful in business, start with why—why do you need to make a lot of money? If it's not for a bigger purpose, it's very empty. Make a list of what you want to be successful at, then write next to it who you know that's successful in that area. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Kevin: Our goal this morning was to show you that every person you put on a pedestal is not perfect. We are all in the same place the day we're born. We all have gifts that God knit together in our mother's womb for the good works He planned for us. But we also all experience broken moments, moments of failure, confusion, and broken relationships.
Remember the guy who said Peter Goodwin wouldn't understand what he's going through because he's the "golden child?" Peter has found areas of success in his life because of brokenness, not despite it.
And he's still growing.
The most important thing we can say is this: if you pull back the curtains, there are broken places in everyone's life. Don't embrace an identity that says, "they won't understand because they haven't been through what I've been through."
That's a lie!
The truth is, we all start at square one. We have beautiful gifts we can leverage and terrible wounds that can hold us back.
We shouldn't identify with either.
We should say, "I am a neutral person, and I can do with life and with God whatever I choose to do." I can choose to submit to the ways Jesus has for my life, or I cannot. I can choose to identify as a failure, or I can choose to do something about it.
Find mentors who are successful in the areas where you're trying to succeed, and let them pour into you. It's not about what those things have done to us—it's how we choose to respond to them. Help us respond in a way that drives us to glorify God through what we choose to do with our lives.
Closing Prayer:
"Lord, thank you for this time, and what a beautiful conversation with Peter, and I thank you for the recognition that we're all in the same. Nobody is more or less. We don't have any more brokenness or extra gifts than the person sitting next to us. We might have different gifts and different brokenness, but not more or less. And it's not about what those things have done to us. It's how we choose to respond to them. So help us to respond in a way that drives us to glorify God through the things that we choose to do with our lives. In Jesus’ name. Amen."
Good word, and exactly where I was at this morning! Thank you!