I wouldn’t just write about success with nothing to add other than a 200 page version of my resume. You can find me on LinkedIn for that. I even updated my profile for you to make it easier. In order to earn 200+ pages of your time, I need to present a novel perspective. And so, to write about finding your success, I have written a book about failure.

Through this book, I hope to show people how to talk about failure and how to learn from it – that failure doesn’t make you a Failure.  The process and experience of failure is nothing to fear, nothing to be ashamed of, and in fact should be celebrated and studied. Failure is valuable experience. If shared, imagine how much more we would learn from one another.  So, this is my small contribution to try to change the world for the better. Let’s do this.

I’ve written this book to give you an entirely different perspective on success. I am successful; but that alone doesn’t make me different. Most successful people can tell you what they think made them successful, but really, they don’t know and they have even less of an idea of whether or not it will work for you.

No one, along the way to success thinks about making a map for others – they’re too focused on the end goal to leave breadcrumbs for the competition. This is where I am different. Most of the things that I do are for the learning experience. Thankfully, in the process, I’ve done well, even without a specific focus on money. At some point, I decided that wanted to learn what made success, well, success. Coming from a legacy of teachers, I believe that you haven’t really learned something unless you could teach it to a 5 year old. That’s been my standard for learning that got me to Duke (graduating high school with enough credits to skip most of the freshman year pre-requisites), to Harvard Law and to passing two Bar Exams in two states, in one shot. So, that was the standard I set for this subject.

Learning how to be successful for me came from observing, recording and interpreting my navigation of the process of becoming successful and what comes alongside. I actually left the breadcrumbs with the intention to mark the way. What success means to me, in short, is setting a fulfilling goal, pursuing that goal and navigating all of the expected and unexpected setbacks and obstacles along the way, without giving up. And that last part is the most important. Everyone can dream, and everyone does. Everyone can set a goal and most people do. Many people will actually get going, but the overwhelming majority will stop before they reach the goal. That’s the missing knowledge – how not to give up.