In January 2019, my wife Chana and I traveled to the edge of the Ecuadorian rainforest, where we filmed a course based on our book The Size of Your Dreams. But the video clips from Ecuador never saw the light of day, and all our careful preparations were wasted. Why? Because we feared the finished product wouldn’t meet our meticulous standards.
Fast forward a year and a half to May 2020. After repeatedly failing to film the ideal course, we stopped aiming for perfection. Rather than continuing to hone our script, we threw the script out the window. Instead of filming in a studio or another remote destination, we used our webcam. Most importantly, we didn’t launch a completed course; we taught our materials live.
On the first night of Dream, Design, Manifest, I stood in front of over fifty participants and, with trepidation, informed them we had no idea what we were doing. I told them about our disastrous attempt to film in Ecuador and our inability to move forward since. “We’re going to Hurry Up and Fail,” I said, and offer whatever we have.
I braced myself. Our students had good reason to be upset. After all, they’d paid a significant amount to join this course, and now their teachers were admitting to winging it. But I wasn’t prepared for their reaction. Rather than booing or asking for their money back, the group cheered. Indeed, Hurry Up and Fail, a phrase I’d created on the spot, became a rallying cry during the six-week course. Participants made bold moves and bragged on group boards about their failures with the hashtag #Hurryupandfail.
Much has been written about the Science of Success. It sounds strange to discuss the Science of Failure, but that’s exactly what this book is about. We all know the road to success is paved with failures, but not all failures are created equal. While some serve as springboards to achieve greater heights, other leave us broken and unwilling to continue.
In this book, we’ll examine the key elements of successful failures. We’ll delve into famous fiascos by the likes of Elon Musk and Sir Richard Branson, as well as some not-so-famous failures, each time unearthing the teachings buried within. In Part 1, we’ll delve into our understanding of what constitutes success and failure. We’ll address our mental blocks around failure so that, in Part 2, we can examine ways to fail faster and more effectively. Failing fast can accelerate our learning process, but only if we know how to learn from our blunders, so in Part 3 we’ll unpack ways to most effectively learn from failure.
Of course, learning from defeats is fine when they don’t cause significant harm. In Parts 4 and 5, we’ll explore how to mitigate the negative effects of our failures, with Part 4 focused on reducing the impact on ourselves and our businesses and Part 5 highlighting how to protect our customers or innocent bystanders from the consequences of our failures. By the time we’re through, I hope to empower you with enough distinctions to help you turn losses into gains so you can rapidly move from failure to success.
Without further ado, let us Hurry Up and Fail!
