These were disgusting

My appetite for failure

This is a picture of banana bread from a few weeks ago. I never get that recipe wrong and have decided to stick to that for the near future.

I made the most disgusting brownies ever last week.

I followed the recipe pretty religiously (totally my style) and uncomfortably pushed through a few necessary substitutions (dairy milk instead of almond milk, sweetened cacao powder instead of unsweetened and honey instead of maple syrup).

They tasted vile. So bad I didn’t let anyone taste them. Not even the dog.

They went straight in the bin (food bin, of course). And before I could even snap a photo for this email.

I was pretty bummed to be honest. I don’t have loads of spare time on my hands to flounce around on Tuesday baking, not to be rewarded with yummy, gooey steaming hot brownies.

I have a child at home every afternoon, I have paid work half the week and creative projects I want to spend time on.

I have little time for failed brownie bakes.

Trying and failing and going again. Pushing through failure. Pivoting.

That’s all very well if you have time and energy to take the failure hit. If you are footloose and fancy free, can work 80 hours a week (like one of the contacts I spoke to last week) and can get up and dust yourself off pretty unscathed.

I am energy and time poor these days and prefer to take more calculated risks when it comes to my time.

So either I do my research and lower the risk of failure or I test very small, low effort things without much research at all.

What I will not do is put loads of effort (time, energy and money) into something that has more than 50% chance of failing.

My life, right now, doesn’t allow me to work with those kinds of odds.

In business, it’s always useful to thinking about your odds. Really asking ourselves what is my appetite for failure? Not everyone can keep pushing until they find a product or service that sticks.

Something to chew on for this week.

I have loads of ideas of how to test small in my book Do Penguins Eat Peaches? (Chapter 11 if you have a copy).

Since the book came out, another option has emerged: Chat GPT or your AI partner in crime of choice.

I saw someone last week create an app in just 10 minutes with an AI app builder called Bolt. It wasn’t intended to be a business but just reminded me of how fast we can test things these days. Check it out here.

May the odds be in your favour this week.

All the love, Katie