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.

Lauren Simmons

We have experienced many failures on the farm. Being the first at something means you have to forge the path yourself, and unfortunately with inexperience comes poor decisions and wasted money. That is why I started ‘Confessions of a First Generation Farmer’ as highlights on our Instagram @browningsflowertruck. So I could share my successes, but mostly my failures, and help others on a similar journey as us by sparing them from the mistakes we made and continue to make. Read more>>

Forrest Schrader

At Lost in the Forrest, we now grow a large portion of our inventory. Growing tropical plants in bulk in Minnesota is not the easiest task. Figuring out an effective system to do so, definitely had many moments of failure. In growing these tropical beauties, there is always a percentage of plants that end up looking less desirable than the rest, essentially being ‘Ugly Ducklings’. These Ugly Ducklings took a longer time to grow to the point where they could be sold. Read more>>

Devin Giovacchini

When I began my career in Real Estate I thought that I could apply many of the tools and sales techniques I had learned from 16 years as a Navy Recruiter. I also started with a mindset of how much money I could make as a real estate broker. What I quickly realized is that helping someone in the process of selling or buying a home is more of a marathon and less a sprint and money is a byproduct of taking great care of people. Read more>>