Fail 1000x - Fail Faster 3/20

You need to fail more. Failure can be your best ally.

As the basketball icon?Michael Jordan?once said: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Successful people often talk about their failures because they recognize that experiencing failure is an essential aspect of achieving success.

However, it's not just about failing, it's about failing on a small scale and learning from those failures to find out what you can work on and what is worth investing in the future.

Throughout my life, I've applied this philosophy to everything I do. I've always been a believer in the idea that you have to take one step back to take two steps forward.

Every missed opportunity, every missed partnership, and every setback was an opportunity for me to learn and grow as a person. It's through those failures that I was able to refine my skills and become the professional that I am today.

When I was just starting out, I didn't try to catch the big fish. I didn’t invest much in advertising. I didn’t do those things because I knew I had to focus on mastering the basics first, on getting the fundamentals right.

I spent countless hours in the studio, working on my designs and animations, and developing my 3D and video-editing skills. After failing so many times, I had the opportunity to collaborate with a ton of great people from marketing leaders to CEOs of large tech companies.

I failed thousands of times, but those failures allowed me to learn what worked and what didn't.

And that's the key. Failure is only valuable if you learn from it. If you fail on a small scale and don't take the time to reflect on what went wrong and how you can improve, then you're not going to get anywhere. But if you're willing to put in the work, to analyze your failures, and to learn from your mistakes, then you're setting yourself up for success.

This philosophy isn't just limited to animation and design, of course.

It applies to anything in life. Whether you're starting a business, learning a new skill, or pursuing a hobby, you have to suck. You must be bad at it for the first 100, 200, or even 300 hours.

So my advice to anyone who wants to be successful is this: don't be afraid to fail. Embrace it. Fail 1000x on a small scale, learn from those failures, and then use that knowledge to succeed on a larger scale.

Remember, failure is not the opposite of success, it's part of the journey toward it.