Blake Snow

writer-for-hire, content guy, bestselling author

As seen on CNN, NBC, ABC, Fox, Wired, Yahoo!, BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal
It looks like you're new. Click here to learn more.

Tagged failure

100 fails for 8 successes

Courtesy Marek Piwnicki/Unsplash

My wife and I recently attended a luncheon where a local entrepreneur and philanthropist shared how he’s lost “over half a million dollars” launching 100 failed businesses.

“Those failures were incredibly painful and costly,” he said. But not all of those companies failed. After 35 years of starting real estate, consumer product, and nonprofit companies, eight of his businesses succeeded, resulting in “tens of millions of dollars in sales.”

In other words, success is the exception, not the norm. To capture it, we can’t quit until everyone in the room tells us “no.” I find this incredibly motivating.

Candor in defeat

This is tennis player Andy Roddick during a press conference after getting schlacked (even bageled) by super-human and world number one Roger Federer in the Australian Open semifinals. To set the stage, Federer owns Roddick. He now has a 10-1 winning record against the fifth ranked American. Despite this, Roddick has made several in-roads up to this point even beating Federer in a a warm up match just two weeks ago. But he may be competing against the greatest tennis player who has ever lived. Tough break. And though dropping some censored expletives during his post-game interview, Andy’s candor in defeat is admirably, likable, refreshing, and extremely funny. Well played (the press conference that is).