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.

Becky Marshall

Being a maker is not easy. Especially being one that doesn’t fit the norms, or one who makes items that are outside the box. Read more>>

Taylor Philmore

One of my low points in my business career is when I realized that my shoe brand was good , but it wasn’t marketable in terms of the models and pictures I chose . The beginning hurdles of me understanding this is that people buy with their eyes first and I had to create a marketing strategy that made my brand more desirable . I was experiencing a “these look better in person “ syndrome and wanting to hone in on correcting this for the future . Now my brand looks good on pictures and in person. I switched up my models, photographer, and aesthetics . Read more>>

Cayce Wagner

I recently made a huge technical error with a clients photoshoot and shot all of their images in a format that was much too small for professional portraits. It was a honest human error, but it made me stop and question everything. Isn’t it funny that you can find so much success in life and business, but one failure is all it can take to send you down a spiral of believing you are not good enough? The images from this particular shoot were stunning and some of my very favorite since I began this journey 14 years ago. Read more>>

Marissa Eller

Something we don’t talk about enough as authors – at least until well after it’s happened – is when we have to shelf books we love. This is a process we call “dying on sub,” which is both dramatic and appropriate. In traditional publishing, this means that you’ve signed with an agent, and your agent has taken your book out on submission to editors at publishing houses. This is the “on sub” part. Read more>>