Famous Failures

On Famous Failures, I interview the world's most interesting people about their failures and what they learned from them.

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Episodes

Scott Amyx on Achieving Success Through Discomfort

Scott Amyx is the Chair & Managing Partner at Amyx Ventures, a venture capital firm, and an author. He grew up in South Korea without a father and in deep poverty. After he immigrated to the United States, he was placed in foster care and moved from home to home. He has created an incredibly successful life for himself through doing what makes him uncomfortable, a condition that he calls “strive.” In his recently released book, Strive , he argues that the secret to success is doing the thing...

Apr 11, 2018•27 min

Bonnie St. John: A Paralympic Ski Medalist, Former White House Official, and Best-Selling Author on Overcoming Adversity and Building Resilience

Bonnie St.John is an Olympic Medalist, bestselling author, highly sought after keynote speaker, and a leadership consultant. Despite having her right leg amputated at age five, Bonnie St. John became the first African-American ever to win medals in Winter Olympic competition, taking home a silver and two bronze medals at the 1984 Winter Paralympics in Austria. President Clinton appointed her as a Director for Human Capital Issues on the White House National Economic Council, and NBC Nightly News...

Mar 28, 2018•32 min

Verne Harnish: Failures In Scaling Up

This week's guest on Famous Failures is Verne Harnish. Verne is the founder of the world renowned Entrepreneurs' Organization, which has over 12,000 members worldwide. For 15 years he chaired the Entrepreneurs' Organization’s premier CEO program which is called the Birthing of Giants held at MIT. He is the Founder and CEO of Gazelles which is a global executive education and coaching company with over 210 partners on six continents. He has spent the past three decades helping companies scale up....

Mar 21, 2018•37 min

Bea Arthur: How to Stay True to Yourself as You Build Your Company

A child of entrepreneurs, Bea Arthur has used her tenacity and creativity to become a successful therapist, entrepreneur, and media personality. She’s employed her clinical training to develop innovative companies in the mental-health sphere including In Your Corner, and her new company,The Difference, which uses machine learning to modernize mental health services. As a celebrated woman in tech, she’s been a TedX speaker, Forbes writer, and the first black woman admitted to Y Combinator, the wo...

Mar 15, 2018•22 min

Barbara Oakley: From Flunking Math to Becoming an Engineering Professor

Barbara Oakley defied the odds (and her early educators) by overcoming perceived weaknesses in math and science to become a professor of engineering at Oakland University. She’s also the Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning at McMaster University, where she teaches two massive open online courses (MOOCs)—Learning How to Learn and Mindshift—with esteemed neuroscientist, Terrence Sejnowski. Oakley’s most recently published work, Mindshift, discusses overcoming learning “h...

Mar 08, 2018•19 min

Gretchen Rubin How Gretchen Failed Her Way to #1 On the New York Times Bestseller List

Gretchen Rubin started her career in law—even clerking for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor—before stopping everything to become a writer. Though the transition was pitted with failure, it turned out to be one of the best decisions she made. Not only has she written three New York Times Bestsellers—Better Than Before, The Happiness Project, and Happier at Home—she’s also built an enormous readership, sold more than three million books, and started a weekly podcast called Happier with Gr...

Mar 01, 2018•21 min

Srinivas Rao: The Art of Being Unmistakable

Srinivas Rao is a bestselling author and the host of the wildly successful Unmistakable Creative podcast, where his guests range from Olympic athletes to bank robbers to trailblazing entrepreneurs. He self-published his first book, The Art of Being Unmistakable, which went on to become a Wall Street Journal bestseller. His latest book is Unmistakable: Why Only Is Better Than Best. You’ll learn: -- How an early failure launched Srini’s successful career as an author and speaker -- How Srini’s Fac...

Feb 22, 2018•20 min

Isaac Lidsky: From Saved By the Bell to the U.S. Supreme Court

Isaac Lidsky is an entrepreneur, bestselling author, and coveted speaker. But that brief description doesn’t do justice to his remarkable resume. Lidsky was a child television star, appearing as series regular “Weasel” on NBC’s “Saved By The Bell: The New Class.” Lidsky left his acting career and went on to graduate from Harvard at 19 with an honors degree in mathematics and computer science. He returned to Harvard to study law and became the only blind person to clerk on the U.S. Supreme Court ...

Feb 08, 2018•22 min

Ryan Carson: Avoiding Heartache Down the Road

RYAN CARSON Ryan Carson is neither ashamed nor apologetic about his initial failures as an entrepreneur. Rocky beginnings are what spurred Ryan to evaluate his motivations very early in his entrepreneurial journey, and avoid a boatload of heartache down the road. He eventually found a true understanding of his ‘why’, and a professional purpose he was ready to fight for. Today, Ryan is the CEO of Treehouse , an online technology school that aims to revolutionize education by providing debt-free t...

Jan 30, 2018•14 min

Hank Weisinger: A World-Renowned Psychologist and Pioneer in the Field of Pressure Management

HENDRIE WEISINGER, Ph.D . A world-renowned psychologist and pioneer in the field of pressure management. He’s a two-time New York Times bestselling author. He has consulted with and developed programs for dozens of Fortune 500 companies and government agencies, and has taught in Executive Education and Executive MBA programs at Wharton, UCLA, NYU, Cornell, Penn State, and MIT. He’s appeared on the Today Show, Oprah, and in The New York Times Sunday Business Section. His latest book is Performing...

Jan 30, 2018•54 min

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