1519: Burn the Boats

In 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés landed on the coast of Mexico, near present-day Veracruz, with a small force and an almost impossible objective. According to the famous account, before marching inland Cortés gave an order that stunned his men: destroy the ships. (Historically he had them scuttled and run aground; the story is most often told as “burn the boats.”) Either way, the message was unmistakable. There would be no retreat. There were no boats to flee back to. The only way out was forward, through victory.

The expedition went on to bring about the fall of the Aztec Empire and Spanish control over large parts of Mexico. Whatever one thinks of the history itself, the leadership principle has echoed for five centuries: when retreat is removed as an option, commitment becomes total. Men who might have hedged, half-tried, or slipped back to the ships at the first hardship now had only one path — and they fought like it.

Take the Shot: Gretzky’s Law

Wayne Gretzky is widely regarded as the greatest goal-scorer in hockey history, and the line most associated with him is deceptively simple.

It sounds obvious until you realize how often fear of missing stops people from ever shooting — from applying, asking, pitching, trying. A shot not taken is a guaranteed miss. The only shots with zero chance of going in are the ones you never attempt. Persistence isn’t only about enduring; it’s about continuing to take chances, again and again, because every attempt is a chance and every non-attempt is a certainty of nothing.

Every “No” Is Closer to a Yes

Anyone who has ever sold anything — a product, an idea, themselves in a job interview — knows the sting of rejection. The people who succeed are not the ones who hear fewer no’s; they’re the ones who don’t quit when they hear them. There’s a reframe that changes everything: every no gets you closer to a yes.

If you know that, on average, it takes a certain number of attempts to land a win, then each rejection isn’t a failure — it’s progress, one step nearer the yes that’s coming. The no’s are not walls; they’re the toll you pay on the road to the yes. The person collecting no’s the fastest is often the person closest to success, because they’re working through the count instead of stopping at the first sting.

That’s the next piece. So-called luck tends to land on the people who put themselves in its path the most often. The harder you work, the “luckier” you get — not by magic, but because effort creates more attempts, more relationships, more readiness, and therefore more chances for fortune to find you. Luck is largely the residue of work.

The Myth of Overnight Success

We love the story of the genius who came out of nowhere and got rich overnight. It’s almost always a lie — or rather, the “overnight” part hides years of grinding the public never saw. Consider Jeff Bezos and Amazon. Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 selling books out of a garage. The company lost money year after year, was widely mocked as a doomed dot-com, and nearly collapsed when the tech bubble burst around 2000–2001. Amazon didn’t post its first full-year profit until roughly 2003 — about nine years in.

The fortune people call “overnight” was built on a decade of losses, doubt, and relentless reinvestment before it ever paid off. That pattern is nearly universal: behind almost every “sudden” success is a long, invisible stretch of work, failure, and refusal to quit. The overnight success usually took ten years.

Michael Jordan: Failure as the Path

Michael Jordan is regularly called the greatest basketball player ever. Yet as a high-school sophomore, he was passed over for the varsity team — a setback often described as being “cut.” He went home, and by his own account, he used that pain as fuel. He practiced relentlessly, made the team, and the rest became history. The man synonymous with winning began with a very public rejection.

Later, in a famous commercial, Jordan laid out his failures like a résumé: thousands of missed shots, hundreds of lost games, dozens of game-winning shots he was trusted to take and missed.

That is the paradox at the heart of perseverance: failure isn’t the opposite of success — it’s the path to it. The misses are the cost of the makes. As the old line goes, people don’t remember every shot you missed; they remember the ones you made. You can’t make the ones you’re too afraid of missing to take.

Ray Kroc: It’s Never Too Late

Ray Kroc spent most of his working life as a traveling salesman, including years selling milkshake-mixing machines — a solid, unremarkable career. Then, at an age when many people are winding down, he encountered a small but brilliantly efficient hamburger restaurant run by the McDonald brothers. Kroc saw what it could become, and he went all in. He opened his first franchised McDonald’s in 1955 — at around 52 years old — and through sheer determination built it into one of the largest brands on earth.

Kroc demolishes two excuses at once: that it’s too late, and that you’re not special enough. He wasn’t a young prodigy; he was a persistent salesman who refused to believe his best chapter was behind him. His drive, not his timing or his pedigree, built the empire.

Abraham Lincoln: A Career Built on Defeats

Before Abraham Lincoln became one of the most revered presidents in American history, his life read like a catalog of failure. His early business venture collapsed, leaving him in debt for years. He lost his job. He ran for office and lost — repeatedly. He was defeated for the state legislature early on, lost bids for Congress, was passed over for appointments, and lost two separate races for the United States Senate, in 1854 and again in 1858. By most measures, he was a man who kept failing at the one thing he most wanted.

And then, in 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States — and went on to lead the nation through its gravest crisis. The string of defeats didn’t disqualify him; the perseverance through those defeats is exactly what forged the leader he became.

Lincoln’s life is perhaps the clearest proof of the principle: a long record of failure does not determine your outcome — quitting does. He kept stepping back into the arena after loss upon loss, and history remembers the victory, not the defeats that came before it.

Andrew Zimmern: From Homeless to Star

Andrew Zimmern is today a celebrated chef, writer, and television host known to millions. But his story includes a chapter most people would never recover from. A gifted young cook in New York, Zimmern spiraled into alcohol and drug addiction that cost him his career, his relationships, and ultimately his home. For roughly a year, he was homeless — addicted, broke, and by his own description, stealing to survive.

The turning point was getting into recovery and committing to sobriety in the early 1990s. From that rock bottom, he rebuilt his life piece by piece — rebuilding his career in Minnesota, then earning national acclaim and award-winning television success. He went from homeless and hopeless to the top of his field, not in a single leap but through years of recovery, work, and refusal to let his lowest point be his final one.

The Common Thread — and How to Use It

Look across all of them — Cortés committing past the point of retreat, Gretzky taking the shot, the salesman collecting no’s on the way to yes, Bezos grinding through a decade of losses, Jordan turning rejection into fuel, Kroc starting his empire at 52, Lincoln rising from a pile of defeats, Zimmern climbing back from the streets. Not one of them succeeded because it was easy or because they never failed. They succeeded because they refused to stop.

That same engine is available to you, in your business, your goals, and your own recovery:

• Commit fully. Burn the boats — remove your own escape hatches and give your goal everything.
• Take the shot. Every attempt is a chance; every non-attempt is a guaranteed miss.
• Reframe rejection. Every no is a step toward yes. Collect them; don’t quit at them.
• Outwork the doubt. The harder you work, the luckier you get. The grind is the part nobody sees and everybody needs.
• Expect the slow middle. Overnight success takes years. Staying in the game is the whole skill.
• Refuse to let the low point be the end. Failure is training, not a verdict. The comeback belongs to whoever won’t quit.