What Most People Get Wrong About Failing Fast

You’re not supposed to like it. You’re supposed to use it.

Failure Isn’t Glamorous

People love to talk about failure these days.
Fail fast. Fail forward. Embrace the L.
It’s become a slogan—easy to say, hard to mean.

Because in real life? Failure hurts. Especially when you care.

You spend months planning a shoot, investing in a film sequence, traveling for a wildlife moment that doesn’t come.
You launch something and no one notices.
You build something with all your focus, and it lands flat.
There’s no clever caption that makes that pain feel good in the moment.

And that’s exactly why it matters.

The Real Reason to Fail Fast

“Fail fast” doesn’t mean fail cheaply or fail lazily.
It means try things with full effort, and don’t wait too long to find out what’s not working.

It means putting things into the world before they’re perfectly ironed out—because the feedback lives in reality, not your planning documents.

I’ve done that with projects. With content. With gear choices.
And some of it landed hard. Sometimes it’s just silence. Other times, it’s obvious misfire.
Either way, the message is clear: adjust or repeat the mistake.

Failure Doesn’t Feel Noble

Here’s what no one tells you: If it doesn’t sting a little, it wasn’t real enough to matter.

Posting a “fail” that you never cared about isn’t growth—it’s a PR move.
But showing up with something you really wanted to work—and watching it miss?
That’s the stuff that makes you better. If you’re willing to stay in the game.

My Rule Now

Try early. Try hard. Make it real. Then release it before it’s perfect.

I don’t want to polish something for a year only to find out it never resonated.
I’d rather take the hit early, course correct, and move forward smarter.

That’s the trade. You don’t get to be bulletproof and prolific. You pick one.

Failure isn’t a badge of honor. It’s a tool. You don’t have to love it. But you do have to use it.