How Successful Entrepreneurs Bounce Back From Failure

Failure isn’t the end. For the most successful people, it’s often just the start of something bigger. Every big journey comes with a few major setbacks. Instead of fearing failure, put your energy into how you recover from it. The best entrepreneurs know that bouncing back is an essential skill.

Here’s how some of the world’s most accomplished individuals turned their biggest setbacks into springboards for success.

The bounceback blueprint of the ultra-successful

Welcome the learning curve

Steve Jobs got kicked out of the company he founded. In 1985, Apple’s board of directors fired him. Most would see this as a career-ending disaster. Not Jobs. He saw it as a fresh start.

“Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me,” Jobs later said. “It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

Jobs used his time away from Apple to start NeXT
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Computer and Pixar. When he returned to Apple in 1997, he brought with him the innovations and lessons that would help transform Apple into the tech giant we know today.

Make persistence pay off

Walt Disney’s first animation company went bankrupt in 1923. James Dyson created 5,127 failed prototypes before cracking the code on his bagless vacuum cleaner. Jack Ma failed his college entrance exam three times and got rejected from Harvard ten times.

Disney went on to build a global entertainment empire. Dyson’s company now rakes in over $6 billion annually. Ma co-founded Alibaba, one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms.

The lesson? Keep going. As Ma puts it, “If you don’t give up, you still have a chance. Giving up is the greatest failure.”

Pivot with purpose

Sometimes, the path to success isn’t a straight line. It’s a series of pivots. Reid Hoffman’s first social network, SocialNet, flopped in the late 1990s.

But instead of giving up on social networking, Hoffman refined his approach. The result? LinkedIn, which Microsoft bought for $26.2 billion.

Nick Woodman’s first two startups, EmpowerAll.com and FunBug, both failed. But these experiences led him to pivot his efforts and create GoPro, revolutionizing action cameras and building a company worth hundreds of millions.

Find strength in setbacks

Vera Wang didn’t make the 1968 US Olympic figure skating team. Instead of dwelling on this disappointment and thinking of herself as a failed athlete, she channelled her energy into fashion. Today, she’s a renowned designer with a net worth of $500 million in 2021.

Wang’s philosophy? “Success is not about the destination, it’s about the journey. My journey has been a very interesting one filled with hard work, careful planning, and intense passion.”

Don’t identify with failure

Sophia Amoruso’s first e-commerce venture failed. Kathryn Minshew’s startup, PYP Media, shut down. Christina Wallace’s Quincy Apparel lasted just 10 months.

But in each of these examples, they didn’t take it personally. They knew they were destined for greater things, and used their early experiences as fuel.

Amoruso went on to build Nasty Gal into a $300 million fashion empire. Minshew co-founded The Muse, now valued at over $100 million. Wallace launched BridgeUp, a successful STEM education program, and became a Harvard Business School professor. Failure does not define you.

The mindset that makes the difference

What sets these wildly successful people apart? Not luck or innate talent. Mindset. They see failure not as a dead end, but as a detour. A chance to learn, grow, and come back stronger.

As Walt Disney put it, “All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.”

They understand that failure is part of the process. James Dyson doesn’t mind his 5,127 failed prototypes because each one taught him something new. Reid Hoffman compares entrepreneurship to “jumping off a cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down.”

Failure isn’t the opposite of success. It’s a stepping stone to it, and an inevitable part of the entrepreneur rollercoaster. Delusion and optimism start the journey. Progress and potential keep you going. Just don’t stop.