Failure Teaches What Success Cannot

April 3, 2026

How We Learn(or not) From Those Who Failed

A few days ago I was thinking about what topic to write about for this issue of the newsletter. Maybe a story about an entrepreneur who had great success with their business and what was done to create that success. Hundreds of books have been written by successful business people about how they built their businesses to million and billion dollar successes. We are all impressed by those stories and of course we learn from them. But it occurred to me that there is not much written by or about those entrepreneurs who failed. Some were complete and utter failures who either faded into obscurity or learned from their mistakes and tried again.

Just as those successful entrepreneurs tell their stories of success and provide us with valuable information about how to make it in the world of business, the failed entrepreneurs have valuable information to give us that is just as helpful. The difference is no one seems to care about writing about these people or telling their story. Knowing how to not fail can be as important as knowing how to succeed.

Failure Teaches What Success Cannot

If we don’t study failure we are left with hidden traps along our business journey. They are the mistakes that were made by the failed business owners that we might not know about. Some might be obvious mistakes that we are blind to simply because of our enthusiasm for our product or service. Here’s a simple example. This is a toy created by Alfred Gilbert, the creator of The Erector Set. I had the Erector Set when I was about 6 years old. It was comprised of steel pieces of various sizes and shapes meant to teach children about engineering and construction. I learned more about that from my Lincoln Logs. Being a typical 6 year old boy, I used my Erector Set to make weapons- an axe(semi-functional), a sword, and a knife. And a contraption that I could use to sling marbles at a high velocity. But that’s not the example. This is the example:

The Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab

You read that right. This was a toy for children to create and watch nuclear and chemical reactions using radioactive material. It included a Geiger counter, a radioactive cloud chamber, a spinthariscope, electroscope, nuclear spheres, alpha, beta, and gamma radiation sources, and radioactive ores. And the disclaimer that “All radioactive sources are completely harmless”. Okie dokie. This toy came out in 1951. There’s no need for me to go into any physics explanations as to why giving radioactive materials to children and expecting them to follow the suggested safety precautions was a bad idea. Why? Because that’s not why this product failed. It was not pulled from the market by the government. In fact, it was encouraged by the government. The product failed for a simple reason. Pricing. In 1951 it was priced at $49.50. Sounds reasonable by todays standards. However, that $49.50 in today’s money would be about $660. That’s a really high price for a child’s “toy”. Gilbert the inventor was so excited with this product that he was blinded to the reality that the average family could not afford the price. That’s why the U-238 Atomic Energy Lab failed and was ultimately removed from the market. Gilbert didn’t know his audience.

Interesting side note: If you can find one, collectors pay as much as $12,000 to $16,000 for the Atomic Energy Lab. I have seen them on Ebay.

How many stories like this are out there? Millions? A compilation of failures would make for a great business book. Most of these failures are most likely completely unknown. And here we are today making the same mistakes again because we didn’t learn from them. I guess that’s not surprising since some of us don’t even learn from our own mistakes and repeat them several times until we finally catch on (yep, done that). Still, it would be nice to have that book on my shelf of business reference books. Wouldn’t you agree? Please. Someone. Go write it!

Have a happy Easter everyone!

That's it for this time. See you next week!

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