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.

Breanna Duncan

There was a time when I was determined to work at MAC Cosmetics. I attended a one-on-one interview, answering various questions to the best of my ability. I even presented my makeup portfolio, but the interviewer didn’t seem impressed. She told me I wasn’t ready and suggested I return in a year. I left feeling defeated, questioning my abilities and wondering if this path was truly for me. Read more>>

Rishav Raman

Though in a creative field like mine, success is usually attributed to awards and recognition, I personally slightly deviate from that notion. Though I would of course love my films to have great recognition that can help me leapfrog in my career, I tend to define success in terms of whether the people I showed my work to, like it or not. Though my recent short film, didn’t get the scale of recognition I hoped for, the fact that most people who saw it, liked it and understood what I was going for, made me feel happy and confident in my journey ahead. Read more>>

Rob Moffitt

After spending so much time in the field of nursing, it wasn’t easy leaving all that behind to venture into the unknown world of plant design. Nursing was stable and this was a whole new beast, right in the middle of Covid. When I began, I wasn’t familiar with the market nor the clientele and certainly didn’t anticipate the expenses and complexity that comes with running a plant truck. From dealing with permitting nightmares to nearly dying of heat exhaustion in the middle of summer, I learned the hard way that selling small houseplants out of a truck that someone could simply buy on their next big box store visit wasn’t a great strategy. The truck was ultimately a financial failure and without the pivot to where things are today, the business would not have been successful. Read more>>

Lily Flowers

Rather than a failure, I see it as a valuable lesson for beginners. I had the desire to create language books for children who, like me, immigrated to Canada (or the Americas) at a young age and lost their native language to English. In my zeal to get this done, I paid someone to “coach” me through it. The things they “helped” me do are things you can do for free on your own, and something I learned to do on my own for my romance author side of the business. I feel like I was taken advantage of because I didn’t do sufficient research. I regret not investing in editors and illustrators instead of hiring a coach who provided no more value than what I could have found on YouTube. I truly hope other new authors don’t fall into this same trap. Read more>>