You can’t have success without failure: What business owners can learn from Walt Disney, Steve Jobs and JK Rowling

Look at the history of any successful person, and you’ll spot a bloody trail of failures dotted behind them.

Sir James Dyson went through 5,126 failed prototypes over 15 long years, before finally hitting on one that worked. As he told Entrepreneur in 2012: “Failure is interesting — it’s part of making progress. You never learn from success, but you do learn from failure.” 

Before he went on to lead Apple to earth-shattering success, Steve Jobs was fired from the company he co-founded. He’d overseen a line of product failures, including the Lisa and the Apple 3, and was eventually ousted over an argument with the board. 

Walt Disney was fired by his newspaper’s editor because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”