Failure is the Fastest Path to Mastery: How One Mistake Made Me Thousands of Dollars.
The fall from being among the most promising dancers in the country to being publicly harassed because of a single failure is a feeling that I’ll never forget.
In the summer between my junior and senior year of high school, I was on a plane to Pittsburgh about to spend six weeks with the best dancers my age. Somehow, after only dancing for two years, I managed to finesse a scholarship to one of the top dance intensives in the nation. A scrawny kid from a family without an ounce of creativity pitted against the future stars of the dance world. Needless to say, I was in WAY over my head.
The first week I was placed in the lowest level class in every style, ouch. But I wasn’t one to give up easily and quickly proved to my teachers that I had untapped potential. By the third week, many of them took an interest in me and moved me up through the levels until I was in the middle of the pack. Suddenly I was wearing my dance belt (google it) with a bit more pride. Unfortunately, this high wouldn’t last very long.
Even at this age, I recognized the value in failing publicly. Therefore, I didn’t hesitate to sign up for the extracurricular hip-hop classes, even if I had zero prior experience in this style. To my surprise, I woke up the next day to a notification that my roommate tagged me in a post. It was a video from the hip-hop class, and sure enough, there I was in the back flailing around like a jellyfish going into anaphylactic shock. But if the betrayal I felt from my roommate wasn’t enough, the comments would certainly leave a scar on my ego.
“Jesus, someone needs to put the kid in the back down.”
“The boy in the back has me weak.”
“What is going on in the back?”.
Dozens of comments from strangers laughing at my failure. It hurt, but it couldn’t get worse, right? Later that day, I overheard my roommate laughing with my “friends” about my attempt to do hip-hop. A few hours after that a girl asked me to my face if I was embarrassed by the video. Everyone I knew was talking about it, and suddenly I was an outcast. Now, almost a decade later, this failure is the reason for my career as a performer.
After this my skin got tough. I was the first person on every creative project to make a bold choice, try something new, and fail forward. I could’ve walked away from this experience scared to fail again. Instead, I let it fuel me. I grew stronger and proved to myself that failure is the only path forward. As a result, I improved in all of my creative endeavors faster than any of my peers. This failure taught me that failing is the fastest path to mastery. This failure allowed me to spend the first half of my twenties traveling the country making thousands of dollars performing, while 90% of those people who were laughing at me never made a dime in the industry.
Now that I have shifted my focus toward my entrepreneurial projects, I look back on my short career as a dancer, actor, and singer and feel immense gratitude for the lessons I’ve learned. These lessons apply to every pursuit of something great and are the building blocks for success in any challenge.