The financial superstar Dave Ramsey has something to say about victory. He quips: “Success is a pile of failure that you are standing on.”
Today, Dave Ramsey is a multi-millionaire, and international speaker, a New York times best-selling author and a household name. However, he wasn’t always doing so great. Dave Ramsey has made some major mistakes.
If you spend any time listening to Dave Ramsey’s radio show or hearing him speak, you’ll find that his lessons about money management come from personal experience. That’s right: Dave Ramsey was broke. Dave Ramsey lost millions in the real estate business. He fielded phone calls from creditors, wrecked his own credit rating and even filed for bankruptcy.
That quote from Ramsey—”success is a pile of failure you are standing on”—might make it sound like success is a place you reach. Isn’t Dave Ramsey done? He’s rich, influential and certainly has few of the practical concerns that most of us face. It might seem like failure is merely a precursor to success.
But even Dave Ramsey is still facing failure. The Fox Business Network decided to kick him off the air. One blogger said:
Anything would be an improvement given Ramsey was better at putting people to sleep than getting them out of debt. We’re not exactly surprised by this one – Ramsey never gelled with the rest of FBN’s line-up. Our source put it this way: “He possessed the lethal combination of lacking the charisma and warmth to carry his own television show combined with the delusional arrogance to think he was the next Dr. Phil.”
Those are harsh words of failure. But they won’t set back someone like Dave Ramsey, who also knows that failure is the secret to success.