Diren Kartal of Project X: Consistency and Emotional Intelligence Drive Real Business Growth Over Social Media Hype

The Fear of Failure is one of the most common restraints that holds people back from pursuing great ideas. Imagine if we could become totally free from the fear of failure. Imagine what we could then manifest and create. In this interview series, we are talking to leaders who can share stories and insights from their experience about “Becoming Free From the Fear of Failure.” As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Diren Kartal.

Diren is a London based personal trainer, online fitness coach and the Head Coach at Project X Training, The UK’s leading accountability program.

He specializes in helping people lose weight and get in great shape by focusing on his NEATUP247 approach which we dive into in this podcast. He is also the host of The Diren Kartal Show.

Diren has a great message that cuts through a lot of the bullsh*t you see online and he pulls no punches in this podcast either.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?

So a little bit about my backstory my name is Diren Kartal I’ve been a personal trainer and business owner for the last 10 years. I got into personal training as a self employed coach, working at a gym in Soho London.

I have come from a sporting in background of my life, I have been playing support from age of 6 in team sports, now I compete in Brazilian Jiujitsu. I run an online coaching business as well doing events around the UK with my current show.

I am a London boy, I am the son of 2 Turkish political refugees who moved to North London in the late 1980’s. I was born in North London in 1992, raised in Newham in East London and went to college Hackney. This is where I studied sports and carried on to be a Personal Trainer. This was the end of my formal learning, however I worked hard over to years to find best way of learning and progressing skills.

Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

For me, one of the most interesting ‘take aways’ is the assumption that having a large following meaning you make a ton of cash. Across all platforms I have a quarter of million followers. Currently with 240 thousand on Instagram, 50 thousand on TikTok, thousands on my email list but the interesting bit was how long it took me to make money.

I attempted many products to get people to buy online from me. It was easy for me to make money on the gym floor. They met me, they enjoyed my energy and they trusted me because they saw my true colours. Getting people to do the online has been more difficult.

Getting yourself across as authentically as possible, can take some time, as well as figuring what the best product is.

What I found during Covid is that a lot of personal trainers and business took a lay back. I thought it was a good opportunity to take advantage of a scenario like a lockdown and hold people accountable and really keep them sane mentally but also keep them healthy physically.

As a business owner you can surprised, when you attempt new things at different times, it is when you least expect that something will really work for you. Until that I point I had failed multiple times and I still do till this day with new things that I try out. It is always good to be open minded and be open to failing. This why it is important to keep trying new things, keep swinging punches and that you never stop and become comfortable with failing.

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Number 1 is consistency, without consistency none of are able to succeed in anything in life. It doesn’t just work out with trying something once, you need consistently keep trying — be on the ball, you need to consistently be aware of what is happening and just keep punching. There is nothing wrong in repeating, not everything needs to be done differently what you do needs to be altered.

For me, number 2 is emotional intelligence. Having emotional intelligence is a key factor to being a good leader. By being a good leader you managing multiple people and you should always be aware of not only the people you are working but those working for you. Understanding this and have good communication skills plays a huge factor in running a business. Knowing what to say to someone, dependent on their mood, knowing the right words to help drive them will not only help you in your business but it will get the most out of them. There has been many occasions in my business my staff have been in sticky situations and through communication and what I believe is good emotional intelligence, I have said the right thing to get the best out of them.

The third characteristic is not caring what other people think. This may sound controversial but in my experience I do better when I am confident in a decision and that confidence not ill influenced. So, I believe it is a very, very important skill to be able to ignore opinions as the fear of those options itself can delude the outcome. Or it simply stops them from trying. I also believe to be a good leader, you need to think a little differently and to do that you need to not care for opinions as this can sway you away from your decision and not doubting your ability.

Ok, thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. We would like to explore and flesh out the concept of becoming free from failure. Let’s zoom in a bit. From your experience, why exactly are people so afraid of failure? Why is failure so frightening to us?

I think there is a simple explanation to it and it goes back to worrying about others opinions. The fear that we will be judged by others for failing. Some people might find it embarrassing to talk about failure and tell someone that they didn’t succeed and they have failed in their attempt again and again.

But failure doesn’t sum up our self worth, they are just actions that have not served us.

What are the downsides of being afraid of failure? How can it limit people?

Firstly, we limit our self, and only we face our limits for it. We also feel alone that fear of failure, and I assure you, we are not.

The downside is that by limiting yourself, you limit what you see yourself doing, how big you can go. You limit how many punches you throw to get to what you want.

In contrast, can you help articulate a few ways how becoming free from the free of failure can help improve our lives?

Through my experience, the only way you become free from failing is consistently failing and learning that the outcome is not that bad. By overcoming this fear you learn new skills through your mistakes that better your life.

As we get older our ego’s costume us, and making mistakes and learning to be acceptant of failure stops us from being reactive. Our fear of ‘failure of the self’ will make us feel vulnerable but acceptance of mistakes will give us confidence.

This is why we should get used making mistakes from an early age.

We would love to hear your story about your experience dealing with failure. Would you be able to share a story about that with us?

One example of a time I failed was when I launched an app where I did collaboration with a company who helped me to build an app. I had spent a lot of time designing this app, thinking about the content, basing the purpose of the app on what I thought people needed and wanted but I got it so wrong, I was so off the mark! I spent a lot of my time, effort and money on this app, I was convinced this app was going to take off in a big way, I thought it was the next big thing in my mapped out business plan, I thought the success of the app was going to pave the way for me in terms of financial freedom but it was a big flop. Yes it was a disaster, yes it was a complete fail but I took away from the experience some really important lessons from the whole experience. It helped me to understand that even when you fail there is always a lesson to be learnt. I learnt that I had assumed what people wanted from this app without actually asking my target audience obvious questions, I didn’t do enough research, I didn’t ask the right questions, I didn’t involve my audience in the content of this app.

How did you rebound and recover after that? What did you learn from this whole episode? What advice would you give to others based on that story?

I reached out to very successful business people around me at the time to get support and what I found from listening to successful business owners is success comes from failure. Failing in business is part of the process. It’s ok to fail, it’s how you pick yourself up, it’s how you walk away from It, it’s what lessons you learn from the whole experience and it’s about how you come back and go again and not give up. ]

Here is the main question of our interview. In your opinion, what are 5 steps that everyone can take to become free from the fear of failure”? Please share a story or an example for each.

If we become free from failure there is nothing you can achieve. Not only with just business and with success but also mentally. When you are mentally free of failure you are 10 times happier and when you are happier the energy you have from this will attract the sort of tribe you want around you as well as the opportunities that will attract themselves to you as you have cleared a path for positivity to come your way.

The famous Greek philosopher Aristotle once said, “It is possible to fail in many ways…while to succeed is possible only in one way.” Based on your experience, have you found this quote to be true? What do you think Aristotle really meant?

Yes absolutely, It only takes 1 thing out of the many things you are trying to really take off and succeed and then you are off, you are on a roll. For me, I am not scared to fail, I am happy to try lots of things and by doing so I put myself in a higher chance to succeed because of the number of risks I am willing to take. Be open to fail, keep failing and eventually 1 thing will work for you.

And you can find that right by making the many mistakes before.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the greatest amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

I would like to inspire people to just got for it! I feel like people overthink things way too much, analysis paralysis is an actual blocker to a lot of our future successes and we mustn’t’ let it. Overthinking will stunt our personal and business growth, we need to consistently just go for things and see what that outcome can be. Don’t hold back, don’t overthink and don’t care what others think.

We are blessed that some very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them :-)

I would love to sit down with someone like Gary Vaynerchuk — he is a huge inspiration to me and have the chance to ask him questions that I know his advice would help me with my business. When I listen to him and hear him talk, there is a part of me where I see some similarities’ between me and him and sometimes reassurance from an individual who is more successful than you would be an honor. He Is one of those business people who just goes for it in business, I love his energy and mindset and to be around that even for an hour is priceless!

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Working in fitness, I create content on lifestyle and fitness. My biggest audience is on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/diren.kartal/) and I have a large audience for my daily emails which you can sign up for here (https://forms.aweber.com/form/12/1485521912.html).

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.