Bobby Bones Says His New Book Is ‘The Opposite of Instagram’

Radio personality Bobby Bones may be a huge success now, but the American Idol mentor wants fans to know that that wasn’t always the case.

Bones recently sat down with People to discuss his upcoming book, Fail Until You Don’t: Fight. Grind. Repeat., which focuses on the host’s stories of failure that brought him to the position he’s found himself in today.

“I wrote this book to be the opposite of Instagram. On Instagram, you look and see all the beautiful things people are doing all of the time,” Bones explained. “I wrote this book to show the opposite: most of life is not about all the wins, actually most of life is the rough spots and failures that get us to the wins.”

Fail Until You Don’t follows Bones’ first book, Bare Bones: I’m Not Lonely If You’re Reading This Book, which detailed The Bobby Bones Show host’s childhood in Arkansas, growing up poor with a single, drug-addicted mother. In contrast, Fail Until You Don’t will serve as a story of motivation by shining a light on the mistakes Bones has made throughout his life.

“I got rejected from 30 radio jobs before I ever got a real radio job,” the host said of his biggest mistake in the book. “So here’s this guy who’s really good at talking to people through their iPhone or their radio, but in reality, I’m quite a bad speaker. I speak in broken sentences. I have an accent. Everything that I do should be wrong but I started really young and I just learned how to learn. I would fail and I would figure out why that didn’t go right and do it again. So my main job, which I’m celebrated for, I sucked at forever.”

In addition to the radio host, celebrities including Andy Roddick, Chris Stapleton, Walker Hayes and Charlamagne tha God will also discuss their own past failures.

Bones also discussed his time as a mentor on American Idol, explaining that his mistakes had helped shaped him for that role as well.

“They didn’t bring me in to be the singing coach, because I can’t sing like those guys can,” he explained. “They brought me in as a well-rounded mentor, [as in] I can do stand-up comedy, I do radio, TV, I perform, I play an instrument… I failed so much in all of the careers that I’m in now that I talk to people about what it’s like to not be good at it. I think the role was great, I loved working with all of the people at Idol.”

Fail Until You Don’t will be on sale June 19.

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