The 1 Way "Fail Fast" Falls Short & Leaves Side-Hustlers Burned Up On Reentry

Any research into starting a side-hustle or your own business will quickly reveal the "Fail Fast" mantra.

The idea sounds amazing: instead pursuing perfection, pursue failure quickly so that you get ultimately get to success more quickly. Even giant companies like Pixar drill that mindset, lending it more credibility. Plus, it's a catchy saying and feels intelligent to say.

So if so many successful companies abide by "Fail Fast," why are so many side-hustlers and aspiring entrepreneurs still struggling?

What "Fail Fast" Gets Right: Doing > Planning

The entire idea is to get out of your own head and start doing things.

How many brilliant ideas never saw daylight because someone wanted it to be perfect and staying in planning mode for decades? We learn more through execution than planning—just ask any Maker about the first YouTube video they watched vs. the first project they built. As much as my 24-year-old self didn't believe it, experience counts more than book (or YouTube) knowledge and "fail fast" is the highway of experience.

However, there is 1 way most who fail fast fall short.

The 1 Way "Fail Fast" Falls Short: Lessons Must Be Applied

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.

Thomas Edison is famous, in part, for saying, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." The key is, Edison didn't try the exact same thing 10,000 ways, then on the 10,001 try it magically succeeded. After every attempt, he looked at what didn't work, noted down why, changed one thing, tried again, and kept comparing the failures so that each one was better than the last.

Many succeed in failing fast, but when the lessons from failure are not applied, failure is as inevitable as Thanos.

How To "Fail Fast" To Success Rather Than Continued Failure

Whether failure is failure or a lesson comes down to data and its application.

Data is vital for any business or content strategy. But, as with failure, the data must be applied to the next iteration. Data and analytics show us where our baseline is, what isn't measuring up, and what's out performing. Use that data to inform the next iteration.

Yes, "fail fast" but take the lesson from failure and apply it so that the next iteration is different, then look back at the data and repeat until success is inevitable.