6 Things You Need To Know Before You’re Crushed By Failure

Julie Wain­wright is the founder of The Real­Re­al, the online lux­u­ry resale store where users buy and sell authen­ti­cat­ed, pre-owned lux­u­ry goods like a Chanel bag, a Carti­er watch or an Her­mès side table. Wain­wright has had a roller­coast­er career, filled with highs and lows. High: she sold a com­pa­ny called Reel​.com for $100 mil­lion. Fol­lowed by a big dip: Pets​.com the com­pa­ny she was lead­ing (remem­ber the sock pup­pet mas­cot?) bombed in 2000. And now she’s rid­ing high again with The Real­Re­al. How did she make a come­back? First she need­ed to fig­ure out a few things about fail­ure, rela­tion­ships and her­self. Julie is authen­tic and tells it like it is, and her men­tor­ing moment (in her words) is very real:

I had a seri­ous­ly bad day in Novem­ber of 2000. I knew I had to shut down Pets​.com and lay off over 200 employ­ees — most of whom I had per­son­al­ly helped to hire. And I knew the press would be all over this sto­ry as the com­pa­ny had been “dogged” by the press for the last year. What I didn’t know is that my hus­band of eight years would also ask for a divorce the morn­ing that same day. Boom. My life as I knew it was about to change in an unpre­dictable and at the time, very bad way.

That was near­ly 16 years ago, but the lessons I learned are time­less and still rel­e­vant in my life. Since fail­ure is part of every life expe­ri­ence, espe­cial­ly if one takes any risks in life, here are six things I learned that can help you pick up the pieces and move forward:

To read the full arti­cle, vis­it Forbes.