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.

Amy Christine Parker

A few years back I was hired to take an archived film script and turn it into a young adult novel for traditional publication. The studio I was working with offered me the job because they were so impressed by my first published novel, GATED. I had a tight deadline for this project and was juggling another book project with an equally tight deadline at the same time. This was at the beginning of my career. Read more>>

Nancy Benet

When I first started Fix-It Accounting, I had already had 5 failed businesses, was a divorced, single-mother of 4 small children, had $650,000 in debt from all of the failures and had no income because I had lost my job. I had sworn off business ownership, but was approached by an older gentleman who had a small tax return preparation company who wanted to sell me his business. I didn’t have any job prospects because of the recession, so I accepted. It was actually a pretty great opportunity because he was going to finance it for me. Read more>>

Alicia Fadgen

The writing industry is not for the faint of heart. The challenges and failures seemed to pile high in the beginning as well as throughout my author journey. As passionate as I was to get my stories into the hands of many children, it wasn’t going to be an easy ride. I had everyone from publishers to agents that returned my stories with denial letters. I quickly came to realize that this was a competitive career. At first, I considered giving up. After facing so many rejections, you start to question your work and if it is good enough. I reached out to many other authors and realized I wasn’t alone. Read more>>