I needed a miracle.
And I had an idea where to find one.
I live in Jerusalem, just a half hour walk from the Western Wall. There’s an obscure legend that if one goes to the Wall for 40 consecutive days and prays for a single thing, they’ll be answered. I had no idea where this legend came from--it’s certainly not recorded in any of Judaism’s foundational texts--but I was desperate and had little to lose.
My desperation came from a string of costly business decisions that put me in real danger of losing not only my company, but my house as well. Without seeing an easy way out, I committed to put in my 40 days.
Each evening, I walked to the Western Wall and prayed for a miraculous turnaround. True to the promise, within 40 days, I received my answer. But as an attorney, I should have been smart enough to read the fine print. The legend promised me an answer, but not necessarily the one I wanted.
Halfway through my 40 days, I stood with my forehead against the wall when a flash of clarity boomed in my head. It said, “Stop being such an idiot! Don’t expect some miraculous influx of cash to return your business to profitability. Stop avoiding the hard decisions and get to work!”
That slap in the face was exactly what I needed to wake up and see the obvious. My business strategy until then had been the very antithesis of what I teach in this book.
I’d enjoyed early business success, largely based on being in the right place at the right time, which fooled me into thinking I knew more about business than I actually did. I made decisions more from my gut than from solid business principles. I rarely gathered feedback on what was actually working and what wasn’t. When something failed, I didn’t conduct post-mortems to learn from the experience. Nor did I do pre-mortems when starting new projects to identify potential pitfalls.
Probably the most damaging mistake was a close corollary to the fear of rejection: my fear of rejecting others. I struggled to set clear expectations for staff, and I hated firing people. The result was a bloated company with a higher payroll than our revenue could support.
The cuts I made in the weeks following my Western Wall epiphany were some of the most painful I’ve made in over two decades in business. I fired more than half my staff, closed my offices, and slashed underperforming segments of my business. I also started becoming a student of business. I had to face the fact that I had no clue what I was doing.
You’ll often hear personal growth gurus say, “the way you do one thing is the way you do everything.” This doesn’t match my experience at all. If this were true, we wouldn’t see Hall of Fame athletes filing for bankruptcy. We wouldn’t see Oscar winning actors on their fourth marriages. In my case, there were areas in my business where I excelled and others where I flailed. Not surprisingly, I thrived in areas where I was willing to fall on my face repeatedly, and I struggled in areas I avoided.
Whenever I pivot from being too scared to act to embracing a Hurry up and Fail mindset, I prime myself for a huge wave of growth. That’s what I experienced when I shifted from avoiding the camera to publishing daily videos. I felt it again when I stopped ignoring bad stock picks and started dancing to my Failure playlist. And it’s what’s fueled my business turnaround once I stopped burying my head in the sand and made the hard choices.
Are there are areas in life you prefer to avoid? Flipping the switch from avoidance to Hurrying up and Failing can be just the thing you need to experience massive growth.
I wish you the very best on your Hurry Up and Fail journey. You can share your experiences with me and the rest of the community by using the tag #HurryUpandFail.
