FAIL EFFICIENTLY

I’ve learned a great deal over the years about failing efficiently. When I use the word “fail,” I’m not talking about falling off tall buildings, going bankrupt, or losing everything. What I mean by failing efficiently is that if you can’t get to profitability, you need to accept that you have nowhere left to go. You have to become financially profitable before you go on to the next step. I see far too many people say, “Oh, well, if I just add resources and scale, then I’ll get to profitability!” But they are inevitably wrong.

Failing efficiently means that unless you hit profitability in whatever time you’ve allocated, you are done! You need to stop. If you do, you’ve failed efficiently and life goes on. If you aren’t willing to stop, you will fail at a level that may have devastating consequences.

In your personal life, if you keep going into debt without getting to profitability, you will end up in financial ruin. You cannot keep trying to add resources or buy more and more things unless you have the cash to pay for them. (And while, yes, credit can be easy to get, at some point you’ll max out and no one will loan you more money.) Become profitable in your life, in whatever pursuit you have undertaken.