The 72-hour rule that will transform your business

Six months. That’s how long one of my clients spent “getting ready” to launch their video game.

Six months of telling me they needed to refine it more, that it wasn’t quite there yet, that once they fixed this one thing, THEN they’d show people. Meanwhile, the game they were building sat on their laptop: unplayed, untested, unknown to anyone but them.

Then we had one session about mindset, about shifting from this endless pursuit of perfection to actually running tiny experiments. Two weeks later, their calendar is full of events where they’re testing the game with real players, turning every session into content, building visibility, and getting feedback that’s actually making the game better.

The difference between six months of stuck and two weeks of momentum? They stopped asking “Is it ready?” and started asking “What can I test this week?”

This is what I’ve learned working with founders over the years: planning feels incredibly productive, like you’re making real progress toward something, but it’s often just procrastination wearing a productivity mask.

Hot Take 🔥 Planning Is Procrastination in Disguise

The hard truth about building a business (especially if you’re doing it on your own) is realising that the thing you’ve been “working on behind the scenes” for six months isn’t actually being refined anymore, you’re just avoiding the moment when real people tell you what they actually think about it.

And while you’re sitting there perfecting it in private, someone else is testing something similar in public and already has their first ten customers lined up.

You see, there is an uncomfortable truth most founders don’t want to hear:

The thing holding you back isn’t that your idea isn’t ready or that you haven’t thought it through enough. It’s that you’re absolutely terrified of finding out it might not work the way you imagined, so you keep planning and tweaking and telling yourself you’re “almost there.”

This is what actually happens when you start experimenting instead of endlessly planning:

You get real feedback instead of just your own assumptions running wild in your head. Your brain will tell you “people won’t like this because of X, Y, and Z,” but then real people will say “actually, I’d pay for that tomorrow if you just added this one thing.” One is a guess that keeps you paralysed, the other is actual data that moves you forward.

You also create what I call a bigger surface area for luck, because every experiment you run becomes visible, every test becomes a conversation starter, and every iteration shows people that you’re actually building something rather than just talking about building something. My games industry client has already had three collaboration offers from people who saw them testing their game publicly, and that simply doesn’t happen when you’re refining something alone in your room.

And perhaps most importantly, you discover what actually works instead of what you THINK will work. You can’t think your way to the answer; you have to test your way there.

The shift you need to make:

Stop asking yourself, “Is this ready?” and start asking, “What’s the smallest version of this I can test this week?”

Steal My Strategy 👀

The 72-Hour Experiment Rule

This is the framework that got my client from six months of overthinking to a calendar full of actual tests: if you can’t test something within 72 hours, it’s not really an experiment anymore, it’s a full project that you’re disguising as a test.

Your job is to break whatever you’re working on down until it’s small enough to actually test by the end of this week, not next month or next quarter.

Here’s how to do that:

Step 1: Identify your smallest testable version

Don’t try to launch the full polished thing with all the features and perfect messaging, just find the ONE aspect you can test right now with real people. My client didn’t launch their entire game with all ten levels and perfect graphics; they just brought one single level to a local game night and watched five people play through it. That’s it. Five people, one night, immediate feedback they could actually use.

Step 2: Make it public (and yes, this is the scary part)

Don’t test things in secret, hoping to surprise everyone later with something perfect; instead, tell people you’re running an experiment right now. Say things like “I’m testing something new this week and would love your honest thoughts”.

Making experiments public creates accountability because you’ve told people you’re doing it, real feedback because people will tell you what they actually think instead of being polite, and visibility because people start to see you as someone who’s building and iterating rather than someone who just talks about ideas.

Step 3: Document what happens and turn it into content

Every single experiment you run is potential content, every test becomes a story you can share with your audience. My client is now posting about every game night they attend.

Including all the wins they had, the tough feedback they received, and what they’re changing based on what they learned. The result is that people are actually following along with the journey, asking when the game is going to launch, and offering to help with testing, which is the fundamental difference between building something in private where nobody knows you exist and experimenting in public, where people become invested in what you’re creating.

Step 4: Iterate fast based on what you learn

You don’t need to get everything right on the first attempt; you just need to get something out there in front of real people and then improve it based on their actual feedback rather than your assumptions. If the experiment works, do more of it; if it doesn’t work at all, pivot fast to something else; if it’s close but not quite there, tweak the specific thing that’s off and test again. Most of the “overnight successes” you read about online actually ran something like fifty failed experiments before they finally found the one approach that actually resonated with people.

Your move this week:

Think about what you’ve been overthinking for the last few months and make it small enough to test by this Friday.

Put it in front of five real people, get their honest feedback even if it stings a bit, and then iterate based on what you learned. Don’t wait around for it to feel perfect, just test it with real people and see what happens.