Trying to break an official Guinness World Record’s Title during a motivational talk to a live audience makes it a lot harder. I was actually packing up my cameras after giving my alternate closing speech after a failed world record attempt when I looked at my watch and realized I was still on the schedule for 10 more minutes.

I confirmed with the conference organizers of the Idaho DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) county conference that I had time for one more attempt. We set up another 120 matches on the table so I could take another shot at breaking the current Guinness World Record’s Title more most matches snapped in one minute of 84.

On the first attempt, I broke about 112 matches but 32 of them didn’t break fully into 2 pieces leaving me with only 80 completely snapped matches. I thought I had broken the record, but when I got to the final count of 80 completely snapped matches the crowd groaned but then cheered. My whole message is how we should respond to failure, and I had just faced one. I was ready to go back to my day job as a technology product manager when I realized I didn’t need to give up just yet.

On the second try, I didn’t get to as many match sticks, but I was more deliberate when I broke them to ensure I didn’t have nearly as many disqualifications. I still had to move fast, but on the 2nd try, I only had 12 DQ’s with 103 matches broken resulting in a new Guinness World Record’s title of 91 matches broken in one minute.

Thank you to the Idaho DMV for making me part of your conference. It was truly an honor for you to hear my story and I’m so grateful for your support.