In this episode of 5 Minutes with Andy, Virtual, Inc. CEO Andy Freed shares one of his most personal leadership lessons yet — how the way we talk about failure, especially to ourselves, shapes the kind of leader we become.

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Andy discusses:

• Why the stories we tell ourselves about failure matter more than the failures themselves.
• How reframing failure is essential to growing, communicating, and leading with impact.
• What his own “loser resumé” reveals about perspective, resilience, and long-term success.

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Hi. Welcome to Five Minutes with Andy. My name is Andy Freed. I'm the CEO of Virtual, Incorporated. For the last 25 years, we've been helping organizations that are forming, growing and changing as they make their mark on the world.

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And, you know, I'm the CEO of Virtual. But more than anything, I am a loser. And I've got a resumé to prove it.

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I've got in front of me my loser resumé. And this talks about some of my accomplishments, so I'd like to share them with you.

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Let's see. I was, the loser of an election for freshman class president in high school. I went on to be rejected from Princeton University. I'm not even sure if that's a four-year school.

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I went on to college, where I did lead my water polo team to a 0 and 12 record against Brown University. After that, worked for a presidential campaign, which lost. Went on to another organization which I was able to help, bring a 75-year old organization to bankruptcy. Came here to Virtual, where we had several clients that didn't succeed over the years and also had a couple of business decisions that didn't go the way I wanted them to go.

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Within the community, I've been involved with several organizations that have also struggled financially. On the personal side, I also am at best a mediocre tennis player.

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Now, all of that is how I would define myself if I let the worst moments and the losses in my life define me. And I came up with this document, my loser resumé, because somebody on our team one day said to me, you know what? I feel like I can never win. I can never succeed. And the reality is, is that she was succeeding a heck of a lot more than she was losing. She was driving her clients to success. She was doing all the things that we want to do with Virtual and all the things we're so proud of doing when we help organizations make their mark on the world. But she was letting that 1% of the time that she wasn't succeeding define her. And that's something I think we can all be guilty of and we all have to be careful of.

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And in the end, this loser resume for me is a really important reminder that there's a bigger story out there and how you tell that story to the world is important, and how you tell that story to yourself - well, that's even more important.

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So, while all of us have those losses, the key is that we don't let them define ourselves, and that those losses become something that's part of a bigger picture and often winds up leading to success.

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Because if I look at this resumé again, what it would say is Andy Freed rejected from Princeton, got into Harvard. That wasn't bad. 0 and 12 record on water polo. Well, also wound up winning an Ivy title. And, winning several titles a year later.

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Losing a presidential campaign and went on to run somebody’s campaign for governor that was successful. And for all the things that didn't go well at Virtual, we've had a lot of things that have gone extraordinarily well and a lot of things and a lot of clients that we're extraordinarily proud of helping make their mark on the world.

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So loser resume, you know what? I don't think we need that today.

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It's been Five Minutes with Andy. Thanks for joining. If you want to spend five minutes with me again, make sure you like or subscribe. Take care.