Over the years, after talking with tens of thousands of entrepreneurs, artists and creatives, almost every success story we’ve heard has been filled with stories of failure. Unfortunately, in our view the media rarely covers these parts of the story – instead we often read summaries that make it seem like success happened “overnight.” However, what we’ve learned in our conversations with so many successful folks is that failure is core ingredient in the recipe for future success. Below, we’ve shared some fascinating stories of failure from folks who have ultimately found great success.

Joelle Maritza

The biggest failure I’ve experienced in my personal and professional life was this business closing the first time around. White Rose Coffee originally opened in 2017, but in 2020 we couldn’t hold on anymore. COVID impacted us immeasurably, but if we’re being honest, it really wasn’t the only reason we didn’t make it. A bad location, staffing issues, menu inconsistencies, poor marketing – there is a laundry list of reasons why our business was failing. Read more>>

Derek LaCaze

The biggest failure for me happens to be something that I feel defines me and that is helping people. I say that in the sense of always wanting to help other succeed by trying to bless them with a blessing that I received. It almost always lead to disaster for me. One story that is most recent, I have a film that I wrote and Directed. I had a deal on the table with a major distribution company that I wont give the name of. I hired someone I considered a friend, I paid them $1000 a day to film. Read more>>

G. M. Lupo

Perhaps my worst perceived failure is my time in New York between 1989 and 1994. I say “perceived” because there were a lot of positive experiences related to my life there, I earned my Masters degree, established my independence, and somehow managed to survive for five years with little support and not nearly enough income. Ultimately, though, I regard it as failure due to the lack of planning that went into my time there and the absence of any sort of Plan B when things started going wrong. Read more>>

Shannon Gentry

My first attempt at starting a business was a failure. I invested quite a bit of money and only made back about half of what I invested. While technically this was a failure because I didn’t make my invest back I choose to view this as a learning experience. The company was big into personal development and encouraged me to start that journey. This also open doors into the online business world that I didn’t know existed. Read more>>

Brandon Winfield

I could write a book on the failures or as I like to call them. “hurdles”, that I have encountered along this journey of growing a start-up. The one that hit me the most was working with a consulting group that told me they would develop iAccess Life at no cost to me, just a percentage of the company. A percentage in hindsight, that was incredibly too high. This is one of those “failures” that I believe taught me a lot and got us to where we are now. Read more>>

Lindsay Jones

I would say that I am not necessarily talented. I was the only 8th grader on the cheer team to not go to our cheer team’s competition. I wasn’t very athletic in high school, and was afraid to be in any game. My grades were not very good, and I struggled a bit as a youth in many ways. Read more>>

Justin Leslie

I always like to think I started my journey as a professional writer with several lessons learned, or as they are rightfully called failures. As a master’s degree toting author, there was a time when I started that I assumed I could do no wrong with my grammar. Five editors, dozens of poor reviews, and well over $7K later, I had experienced my first true failure. While I was selling books, I was losing the initial audience that I had worked hard to reach. Read more>>