 We all know that there's no such thing as failure, there are only lessons. But how many people really believe that? How many people really have a positive relationship with failure? If used correctly though, failure can be a very powerful tool. A great and surprising example of this is the famous comedian Chris Rock and how he prepares for his biggest performances. The story of the incredible and unusual way Chris Rock prepares for his comedy routines is told in a book by Peter Sims named Little Bets. The concept of Little Bets is to make small experiments to gather information and to see what works instead of making big bets by going all in and hoping that something will work out. Chris Rock's story is a perfect example of how to use Little Bets. As Peter tells in his book, Chris Rock has become one of the most popular comedians in the world and while there's no doubt he has great talent, his brilliance also comes from his approach to developing his ideas. The routines he rolls out on his global tours are the output of what he has learned from thousands of Little Bets, nearly all of which fail. It turns out that when beginning to work on a new show, Rock picks venues where he can experiment with new material in a very rough fashion. In gearing up for his next global tour, he makes between 40 and 50 appearances at a small comedy club in New Jersey, not far from where he lives. In front of audiences of, say, 50 people, he will show up unannounced, carrying a yellow notepad with ideas scribbled on it. When people in the audience spot him, they start whispering to one another. As the waitstaff and other comedians find places to stand at the sides or back, the room quickly fills with anticipation. Rock won't launch into the familiar performance mode his fans describe as the full preacher effect, when he uses animated body language, pitchy and sassy vocal intonations, interrupting facial expressions. Instead, he will talk with the audience in an informal, conversational style with his notepad on a stool besides him. He watches the audiences intently, noticing heads nodding, shifting body language or attentive pauses, all cues as to where good ideas might reside. In sets that run around 45 minutes, most of the jokes fall flat. His early performances can be painful to watch, jokes will ramble, he loses train of thought and needs to refer to his notes. And some audience members sit with their arms folded, noticeably unimpressed. The audience will laugh about his flops, laughing at him, not with him. Often Rock will pause and say, this needs to be fleshed out more, if it's gonna make it, before scribbling some notes. He may think he has come up with the best joke ever, but if it keeps missing with audiences, that becomes his reality. Other times, a joke he thought would be a dud will bring the house down. According to fellow comedian Matt Ruby, there are five to ten lines during the night that are just ridiculously good, like lightning bolts. My sense is that he starts with these bolts and then writes around them. For a full routine, Rock tries hundreds, if not thousands of preliminary ideas, out of which only a handful will make the final cut. A successful joke often has six or seven parts. With that level of complexity, it's understandable that even a comedian as successful as Chris Rock wouldn't be able to know which joke elements and which combinations will work. This is true for every stand-up comedian, including the top performers we tend to perceive as creative geniuses like Rock or Jerry Seinfeld. It's also true for comedy writers. The writers for the human publication, The Onion, known for its hilarious headlines, propose roughly 600 possibilities for 18 headlines each week, a free percent success rate. You can sit down and spend hours crafting some joke that you think is perfect, but a lot of the time, that's just a waste of time, Matt Ruby explains. This may seem like an obvious problem, but it's a mistake that rookie comedians make all the time. By the time Rock reaches a big show, say an HBO special or an appearance on David Letterman, his jokes, opening, transitions, and closing have all been tested and retested rigorously. Developing an hour-long act takes even top comedians from six months to a year. If comedians are serious about success, they get on stage every night they can, especially when developing new material. They typically do so at least five nights per week, sometimes up to seven, and sweat over every element and word. And the cycle repeats day in, day out. Most people are surprised that someone who has reached Chris Rock's level of success still puts himself out there in this way, willing to fail night after night, but Rock deeply understands that ingenious ideas almost never spring into the people's minds fully formed. They emerge for a rigorous experimental discovery process. As Matt Ruby says of Rock's performances, I'm not sure there's any better comedian class than watching someone that good work on material at that stage. More than anything, you see how much hard work it is. He's grinding out this material. Listening to the story of Chris Rock's approach will put most of us to shame. So many of us avoid mistakes or potential humiliation by all means possible. Unfortunately, as a result, we lose an opportunity to experience what works and what doesn't. We lose an opportunity to learn from our failures. Instead, we end up making big bets, or even worse, no bets at all. We try to come up with a perfect plan or strategy and hope for the best. But if we don't fail, how will we really know what works and what doesn't? Reading about Chris's approach, I felt how close it was to my heart. I realized that I actually applied a very similar strategy to my own journey. When creating my main channel, Martial Arts Journey, which now has over 140,000 subscribers and nearly 30 million views my first few years were full of experimental videos. I made so many videos which I wasn't sure if they will turn out to be successful or not, risking embarrassment in order to learn what works and what doesn't. Sometimes I was pleasantly surprised. As a result, I discovered new ways to deliver my message and make a new line of successful videos. At other times, I was criticized and was a subject to mean comments pointing out how terrible some of my videos were. Being criticized is not nice. No one likes it. But I consider that to be the price that needs to be paid to discover something greater than what you knew before, even with over 100,000 subscribers, I still actually apply this method of taking little bets. I realized that the long-term result is more important than the short-term failures, failures which lead to lessons and greater understanding. And also, it's no coincidence that the channel has close to 30 million views to date. Most of these views were a result of many little bets I took, successes and failures that I experienced. I hope that this video will inspire you to try out little bets too. Also, check out Peter Sim's book to learn more about it. For more videos on challenging popular ideas about success, subscribe to The Journey. This was Rokas, and I wish you to work hard, smart, and purposely.