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The Billion-Dollar mistake: Why failed plans create more success stories than perfect ones

Andrea Zanon Confidente
3 min readJan 10, 2025

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https://www.fxstreet.com/education/the-billion-dollar-mistake-why-failed-plans-create-more-success-stories-than-perfect-ones-202501100312

Discover why failed plans often lead to greater success than perfect ones. Learn how persistence, adaptability, and unexpected opportunities create billion-dollar breakthroughs.

“I’m going to build the next Facebook,” declared James, a bright-eyed developer, back in 2012. Today, he runs a thriving cybersecurity firm that protects social media companies, including Facebook. Not quite what he planned, but a success story that perfectly captures life’s beautiful irony.

Here’s what no one tells you about success: it rarely shows up wearing the “outfit” you picked out for it. The real magic happens when you stop forcing things and start recognizing the opportunities that have been quietly knocking all along. There’s something powerful about that unexpected shift if you’re willing to embrace it.

The persistence paradox

Think about J.K. Rowling for a moment. Before Harry Potter became a global phenomenon and a billion-dollar success story, she wasn’t trying to revolutionize young adult literature. She was simply writing the story she needed to tell, while surviving as a single mom. Her breakthrough came not from executing a perfect plan, but from showing up day after day at that coffee shop, writing on…

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