McDonald's CEO failed — again. (So what?)
Quick note: A Goof-up on my part, kept this essay from going out on time, so I rescheduled it for this morning.
Fitting — this essay's about what to do right after something goes wrong...
It's still an extremely useful essay. Stick with it to the end and you'll see what I mean...
True Story:
February 2026.
The CEO of McDonald's posts a taste-test video of the new Big Arch burger.
By March a whole industry is laughing at him.
Millions of views. Memes everywhere.
Rival burger chains filming their own videos just to rub it in.
What did he do in that embarrassment???
Hold that thought. I'll show you in a minute — memes and all.
But first, look at the seat he was sitting in.
Most people in that seat have two moves:
❌ Hide the wreck — delete it, go quiet and pray it blows over.
❌ Go down with the ship — get defensive and make it worse.
He did neither...
Now...
Look at you.
Your failure (whatever it was) didn't trend.
Nobody at Burger King made a video about you.
No millions of views on memes mocking you...
And yet you're STILL hiding it...
And there lies the real problem.
People like us treat a failure like a body to bury instead of a story to tell...
Keep it buried and you stay the best-kept secret in your field — holding a highlight reel that sounds like everybody else's.
Put it to work and it becomes the fastest way to make a stranger trust you.
I know because I did it with my first "personal brand"...
602 days of posting. Around 91,000 words written. Only $127.68 in revenue.
That failure is baked into my backstory — deliberately.
Today I'm showing you how to do the same with yours — and how to get AI to pull a whole list of them out of you in one sitting.
A personal brand isn't a highlight reel. It's a world you build.
And inside of that world is a confession stand with receipts.
Here's what you walk away with in this essay:
- What the McDonald's CEO did — and what he did next...
- Why the failure you're hiding is the fastest trust magnet you've got
- 5 steps to get AI to dig your failures out of you
- Two paste-ready prompts that turn each failure into content
OK. Here's what he did.
He picked up the burger.
Called it a "product."
Then took a bite.
A really, really, really small one.
And the internet did what the internet does.
Then the competition pulled up.
The president of Burger King posted himself taking a GIANT bite out of a Whopper.
The president of Wendy's followed with a Baconator.
Ouch…
So what did the McDonald CEO do next?
He sat down with the Wall Street Journal and joked that his mom raised him not to talk with his mouth full.
Then he took another bite on camera — a McNugget this time.
But did the retake win the internet over?
NOPE.
They roasted that one too...
But it didn't matter.
And listen up:
The man who froze on camera got back on camera.
👆🏾 That's the part to study.
The secret question: Who's gonna follow a failure?
Everybody.
People don't follow perfect.
They don't remark on perfect...
They follow proof.
And proof means you've been through something and came back holding the map.
Think about who YOU trust.
It's the one who says "man, I was dead wrong" and shows you what it cost.
Then shows he learned how to fix that problem...
That's the proof that attracts trust. Builds audiences, etc.
"But what will my old colleagues think?"
"What if the internet laughs at me? "
"What if...."
If you're reading this essay then you likely don't have a massive audience like McDonalds.
Man, look… they're busy —
And the ones who do read it get something a highlight reel can't give them — a reason to believe your wins later on...
Here's what I mean...
The failure isn't the anchor. It's the fuel.
The failed launch becomes a lesson.
The empty bank statement becomes a story.
The "I was dead wrong" becomes the most trusted thing you ever write.
So stop selling only the wins.
Start documenting the climb.
But...
One problem though…
Ask an expert to list their failures and they blank.
The big one comes to mind. The rest are buried so deep you forgot you buried them.
AI can't write your failures for you. It wasn't there to witness it.
But it can help to dig them out of you.
How to get AI to dig up your failures (5 steps)
Before you start: do this in a Cowork session inside your Project — the one linked to your AI Mind folder.
NOTE: If any of this sounds foreign, check out this essay on building your AI Ghostwriter.
Everything you make here is a file.
A file with nowhere to live gets rebuilt from scratch next month.
Step 1 — Just talk
Install Wispr Flow — an app that types what you say.
Hold the key and talk about your failures for ten minutes.
The launch that flopped. The client you lost. The year the money didn't come.
Don't organize it. Don't make it sound good.
'Cause when you type, you edit — and the embarrassing part you'd sand off IS the content.
Step 2 — Flip the chair
Raw AI wants to start writing the second you stop talking.
Don't let it. Paste this:
Don't write anything yet. Don't summarize, don't prepare, don't start.
Above is me talking through my failures. Treat it as raw material.
You interview me. First ask who my avatar is — the one person I want to reach. Then set the scene and ask about my failures one question at a time.
For each failure get four things:
1. The receipt — the real number, date or result
2. The cost — money, time or pride
3. The detail — one small thing I couldn't have made up
4. The turn — what I do differently now
Ask clarifying questions and follow up on every single loose thread I leave hanging. Never invent a detail, a number or a feeling for me.Keep answering out loud.
👆🏾 That prompt never asks AI to write your story. It makes AI ask until the real one comes out.
Step 3 — Get your Failure List
Build my Failure List from this interview. Use only what I said.
One row per failure: the failure in one sentence, the receipt, the cost, what I do differently now and why my avatar needs to hear it.
Then give me four content ideas per failure:
- A Trap — "X mistakes I made when…"
- A Hard Truth — the lesson only that failure could teach
- A Backstory — the story start to finish
- A Red Flag — the early sign my avatar can catch
Rank them by what my avatar feels in the gut first. Mark every missing receipt. Don't fill the gap yourself.Five failures in. Twenty content ideas out.
Step 4 — Go get the receipts
Find the real number.
The bank statement. The screenshot. The email that said no.
A failure without a receipt is a sob story.
A failure with one is proof.
Step 5 — Test the smallest one first
Don't write the book yet.
Pick the top idea. Write one short post. Ship it.
Test. Don't guess.
Where you'll outgrow this: a few failures in, you'll notice the interview is only as sharp as the questions being asked. That's your signal to go deeper. The full version is /ai-interview — the skill I built for exactly this, with a host in the chair doing the asking.
You don't wait for permission from success
You build the brand while the water's rising — in public, in your own voice, one honest post at a time.
That CEO didn't wait for the internet to forgive him.
He took another bite.
The failure everybody swears will end you?
It's the reason they trust you now.
It was never the end of your story.
It's just the first chapter…
Peace and Love,
J. Young El
P.S.
The first draft I wrote of this essay intro'd like this:
Quick note:A technical error kept this essay from going out on time, so I rescheduled it for this morning.
.
.
.
But that just doesn't hit as hard as the version that has no hedges to soften my failure.
So I edited it with a more honest version of the failure: I goof'ed up.
But here's the deal — that's still not the real failure...
Because here's the raw version...
Quick note: I've been so up to my neck in work that past few weeks, from national conventions to political campaigns. I simply missed my deadline for this week's essay...
That's probably the version of the failure I should have started with...
I chose the mid-level "goof up."
Let me know which would have connected deeper with you — the "goof up" or the raw version?