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.

Cassie Green

As most entrepreneurs who have been at it for awhile, I’ve experienced some epic and very expensive failures. My first business was a little organic/locally focused grocery store in Chicago called Green Grocer Chicago. I opened that in 2008 and my husband left his corporate job in 2009 to join the business. It was overall successful (nothing is always smooth sailing but it was profitable and running well). We got an opportunity through some business partners to open a second location in Dallas. Like many of us in this situation, we said hells yes and boot-scooted down to Texas. Read more>>

Justin Murchison

I think my biggest failure in life in allowing the opportunity to learn from my father before he died, pass me by. One of the biggest things I feel we take for granted is the wisdom that is readily available to be passed down from our spitting image. Maybe I blame maturity, or the need to satisfy a culture that doesn’t satisfy my soul. My consequence for this failure echos into eternity, lessons that must now be learned the hard way when there was someone right next to me with open arms, readily available to give me all the knowledge they obtained in their own life. Read more>>