Fail Fast, Fail Often: How Losing Can Help You Win by Ryan Babineaux & John Krumboltz

Author:Ryan Babineaux & John Krumboltz [Babineaux, Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-12-25T14:00:00+00:00

Celebrate Your Small Win

Once you have completed your action step, take a moment to celebrate your small win. Hurray! You did it! Enjoy the feeling of vibrancy that comes from getting out there and shaking things up. Done celebrating? Great! Time for your next small win.

The 26-Cent Sale

Emma started taking photographs when she was thirteen years old. She grew up in a rural community in northern California and loved to hike through the countryside and take black-and-white photographs of old barns and abandoned farm equipment. In high school, she built a dark room in her bedroom and learned to develop her photographs. She entered a photo of a broken-down barn in the county fair and was awarded first place.

Although Emma loved photography, she never considered it as a potential career. Following her father’s advice that she should pursue a “real” occupation, she studied computer science at college. She then proceeded to spend the next two decades working as a programmer for a number of different companies.

Over the years, Emma continued to pursue her love of photography. She made the transition to digital equipment and spent thousands of dollars on cameras, computers, and printers. She would often spend thirty hours or more perfecting a single photograph. On vacations she needed an extra carry-on bag to hold her many cameras and lenses.

When Emma was in her mid-forties, she got laid off, and for the first time in her life, she found it difficult to find another job. It seemed that all the nearby companies wanted to hire young college graduates who lived and breathed technology and were happy to work fifteen hours a day. Emma, who by that time was married and had two children, wanted more from life than writing computer code. She also realized that she had grown tired of programming. The thought of working at yet another company made her feel depressed and exhausted.

For many years, Emma had dreamed of being a professional photographer. Now she decided it was time to give it a try. She came to Ryan seeking help on how to get started.

When Emma first spoke with Ryan, she had some big goals. She wanted to be a fine-art photographer and sell her prints in galleries. She thought that the best way to get started would be to create a portfolio of a hundred high-quality photographs. From these she would create a professional website that would include all of the high-tech bells and whistles—print ordering, image management, social networking integration. She figured that it would take her about four months to create the photographs and another three months to set up the website.

Noting that Emma’s goal had a high cost—over half a year of work—and afforded little opportunity for social interaction and feedback, Ryan asked if there was a way that she could put together a website featuring her best photos in the next week or two. Emma was at first resistant to the idea of creating a website quickly, as she feared that it would appear unprofessional.

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