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Key Takeaways
- A rehearsal gives you the freedom to screw up when no one is watching – but running a business means your audience is always watching.
- Risk is a natural part of any successful performance. You can’t do anything new or remarkable if you don’t put yourself out there, despite the possibility of failure.
- You’ll pay the opportunity cost whether you succeed or not, so you might as well try. Even an underperforming launch provides clarity, momentum and direction.
I’ve already written about meeting Steve Forbes, but I keep coming back to the advice he gave me that day: “This is not a dress rehearsal.”
For those who didn’t read that other article, he was responding to a question I’ve asked many extremely successful people over the years: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? And of all the answers I received, this one has had the biggest impact on my life. But what does it really mean?
At first this advice may sound like a cliché; another version of carpe diem that encourages us to live in the moment. And while that’s certainly good advice, it’s not very specific to running a business.
That makes the metaphor of the dress rehearsal more useful for leaders. It takes a known idea and forces you to apply it to real decisions about time, risk, and what you want to pursue. Here’s how.
Running a business means that your audience is always watching
A rehearsal has one specific purpose: it gives you the freedom to screw up when no one is watching. Even if you’re a Broadway actor, an opera singer at the Met, or a Grammy-winning artist with an entire support team around you, a mistake made during rehearsal remains hidden from the public.
During rehearsal you can stop the show. You can go back and do things differently. If you really need to, you can step off stage halfway through a scene or song and take a break to calm your nerves.
On opening night, these options are off the table. The seats are full. The show goes on. Everything you do from that moment on will be noticed, interpreted and remembered.
Performing a show is much more like reality than rehearsing it. You’re going to spend most of your life doing things that you can’t take back, and that people will remember. This also applies if you run a business. You are publicly tied to your company’s successes and failures, and people (including employees, customers, and colleagues) judge how you handle both.
I learned that lesson in my early days as CEO at PhoneBurner, when a loosely worded FCC notice briefly resulted in the loss of carrier coverage for our calling platform. Although I was able to find a solution within days, it was one of the highest-stakes moments of my career. I was acutely aware that our customers and our team depended on me, and that my response would make or break their confidence in my leadership and our product. You can see the outcome of that event in this article.
Risk is a natural part of any successful performance
Viewed this way, business leadership may sound very scary. Sometimes that can be true. But that also applies to singing in front of a full house. If there were no risk associated with any of these activities, they would have less meaning to people.
As humans, we are impressed by novelty, and by performance. Risk is a necessary condition for both: you can’t do anything new or remarkable if you don’t put yourself forward despite the possibility of failure.
Think about it: every live performance is new because it can never happen in exactly the same way twice, even if it’s a song or a play you’ve performed hundreds of times. The same goes when you start a new company or release a new feature. Experience helps, but the circumstances are always slightly different; there is always a chance that something will go wrong. You have to do it anyway if you want to succeed.
At the same time, you can’t spend your career repeating the same achievements. Most Broadway musicals only last six months to a year because audiences move on. That’s why artists find new stories to tell. And that’s why companies evolve and innovate to avoid losing customers to competitors.
You pay the opportunity cost whether you succeed or not (so you might as well try)
Think about everything that goes into putting on a show. From writing the original material to hiring talent, rehearsal, production design, location acquisition, advertising and day-to-day operations, the investments ultimately required can be astronomical.
That can cause a lot of pressure. Sometimes it’s enough to convince people to quit before opening night.
But even a performance that doesn’t go as planned has value. It still allows artists to showcase their talents, generates real feedback, and provides valuable lessons for future endeavors. And while it may not fully recoup its expenses, it can still recoup some of it or spawn the next opportunity. A show canceled before opening accomplishes none of these things.
The same applies in business. Once you’ve put in the hours, hired the team, or invested the capital, walking away before launch is no longer a safe bet. You may not get a full return on your investment, but not launching will guarantee a zero ROI. Even an underperforming launch provides clarity, momentum and direction.
Dress rehearsals are important, but you can’t live like that. Real progress requires risk, discomfort, and a willingness to move forward even when success seems like a gamble. You can only reap the rewards, whether hard-earned victories or hard-learned lessons, by taking the risk to share your work with others.
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