Arianna Huffington

What failed

Her first book sold, but the reviews treated it as an attack on feminism and she has said plainly how much the reception hurt. Her second was rejected over and over — she has said thirty-six publishers and she has said thirty-seven, and her own retellings do not reconcile, so the honest number is more than thirty. Twenty-five years later she ran for governor of California, became defined by a story about her tax bill, and pulled out with her support in the low single digits. It was too late to come off the ballot, so she finished fifth with 0.55 per cent.

What happened next

Broke after the twenty-fifth rejection, she walked into a bank with no assets and talked a manager named Ian Bell into an unsecured loan, which paid for another dozen rejections before the book sold. Two years after the recall election she launched a website that a well-known columnist immediately called unsurvivable. AOL bought it in 2011 for three hundred and fifteen million dollars.

The point

The loan is the part worth keeping. She did not push through on grit alone — she found a way to buy herself more attempts, which is what persistence actually looks like when the rent is due.