Failure is the one topic that every Diary of a CEO guest has in common. Behind every success story Steven Bartlett has explored on the podcast lies a chapter of crushing defeat, rejection, or near-collapse that the guest had to survive before they could thrive. These aren't motivational platitudes — they're raw, detailed accounts of what rock bottom actually looks like and, more importantly, how to climb back up.
This guide collects the most powerful failure stories and resilience advice from Diary of a CEO episodes, organized into practical frameworks you can use when life knocks you down.
Before exploring guests' stories, it's worth understanding that the entire Diary of a CEO podcast was born from failure and struggle. Steven Bartlett has shared his origin story across multiple episodes, and it's far from the glamorous "young entrepreneur builds empire" narrative people assume.
Bartlett grew up in a low-income household in Plymouth. He dropped out of university after attending a single lecture because he felt the education system wasn't designed for someone like him. He then moved to Manchester with almost nothing, sleeping on friends' floors and running a series of failed ventures before eventually building Social Chain.
But even Social Chain's early days were marked by failure. Bartlett has spoken about periods where he couldn't afford to pay himself, where client deals fell through at the last minute, and where the stress led to anxiety and depression that he hid from everyone around him.
"I've failed so many times that failure doesn't scare me anymore. It's familiar. And that familiarity is a superpower because it means I'll try things that other people won't." — Steven Bartlett
Across his conversations with guests, Bartlett has distilled his failure philosophy into several core principles:
Alex Hormozi's appearance on The Diary of a CEO was one of the podcast's most-watched business episodes, and for good reason. Hormozi, now worth over $100 million, was brutally honest about the failures that preceded his success.
Hormozi shared the story of his first major business — a chain of gyms — that nearly destroyed him financially. He had six gym locations that were all losing money simultaneously. He was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, sleeping on the floor of one of his gyms because he couldn't afford rent, and his relationship was under enormous strain.
The turning point came when he was forced to close five of the six locations and focus everything on making one work. This painful consolidation taught him a lesson he's repeated many times since: focus is saying no to things that are working, not just things that aren't.
Hormozi told Steven about a deal where he invested $400,000 into a business partnership that completely fell apart. He lost the entire amount. Rather than dwelling on it, he asked himself one question: "What did I learn that's worth $400,000?" His answer: he learned to never enter a partnership without clear, written agreements about roles, equity, and exit terms. He said that single lesson has saved him millions since.
Hormozi shared a specific mental framework he uses whenever something goes wrong:
"The people who win aren't the ones who don't fail. They're the ones who fail and keep going. That's it. That's the entire secret." — Alex Hormozi on The Diary of a CEO
Sara Davies, who went from appearing on Dragons' Den as an entrepreneur to sitting in the chair as a Dragon, shared a powerful failure story during her DOAC episode. Before her company Crafter's Companion became a massive success, she faced years of rejection.
Davies talked about pitching her product to major retailers and being told repeatedly that nobody would buy it. She recalled one meeting where a buyer literally laughed at her product concept. Rather than being defeated, she used each rejection to refine her pitch and improve her product.
Her advice on DOAC was refreshingly practical: "Keep a rejection file." She literally kept a folder of every rejection email and letter she received. When she eventually succeeded, she'd look through it — not to gloat, but to remind herself that the people who rejected her weren't being malicious. They simply couldn't see what she could see. And that's often what entrepreneurship requires: maintaining belief in something that nobody else believes in yet.
Dr. Julie Smith, the clinical psychologist and author who has amassed millions of followers through her mental health content, brought a clinical perspective to failure and resilience on The Diary of a CEO. Her advice was less about business failure and more about the psychological architecture that determines whether failure breaks you or builds you.
Dr. Smith explained that resilience isn't a personality trait you either have or don't. It's a set of skills that can be developed. She identified several key differences between people who bounce back from adversity and those who don't:
When you're in a failure spiral, your instinct is to withdraw, isolate, and stop trying. Dr. Smith recommended doing the opposite of what your emotions are telling you. If you want to stay in bed, get up. If you want to cancel plans, go anyway. If you want to give up on a project, do five minutes of work on it. This doesn't ignore your feelings — it prevents them from dictating your behaviour.
Mo Gawdat, the former Chief Business Officer of Google X, brought perhaps the most profound perspective on failure to DOAC. After the devastating loss of his son Ali during a routine surgery, Gawdat rebuilt his entire understanding of suffering, happiness, and what "failure" truly means.
His core message on DOAC was that most of what we call "failure" in business and life is trivially small compared to what humans are actually capable of enduring. This isn't said to minimise anyone's pain — it's said to remind us that we are far more resilient than we believe.
Gawdat shared his "happiness equation" from his book Solve for Happy: happiness equals or exceeds your perception of events minus your expectations of how life should be. Failure only hurts to the extent that reality falls short of your expectations. Adjust your expectations — not to be pessimistic, but to be realistic — and failure loses most of its sting.
"Every failure is just an event. You add the suffering by comparing it to what you think should have happened. Remove the comparison and you remove most of the pain." — Mo Gawdat on The Diary of a CEO
Synthesizing the advice from dozens of DOAC guests, here's a practical framework for building resilience and overcoming failure:
If you're currently dealing with failure or a major setback, these specific DOAC episodes are the most useful, ranked by situation:
After hundreds of episodes and conversations with people from every walk of life — billionaires, athletes, scientists, artists, survivors — there's one insight about failure that comes up universally on The Diary of a CEO:
The failure itself is never the problem. The story you tell yourself about the failure is the problem.
Every single guest who has overcome significant adversity describes a moment where they consciously chose to interpret their failure differently. Not denial — but reframing. Seeing it as data, as education, as redirection, as motivation. The failure stays the same; the meaning changes. And when the meaning changes, everything changes.
That's not motivational fluff. It's the lived experience of people who have lost millions, faced public humiliation, experienced devastating personal losses, and come back stronger. If they can do it, so can you. And listening to their stories on DOAC is one of the best places to start.
Browse all episode guides and advice at DiaryOfCEO.online — your complete companion to The Diary of a CEO podcast.