Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Ray Dalio, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk all lost nearly everything, and each came back by learning one hard lesson: align your partners, persist, drop your ego, grow into the job or risk it all. The video starts from the idea that failure is the greatest teacher and that no entrepreneur reaches remarkable success without battle scars. It tells five comeback stories and pulls one lesson out of each.
The details below follow the video’s telling of each story.
Watch the full video here, or skip to the breakdown below.
The 5 comebacks at a glance
- Henry Ford: shared vision is key to success (0:37)
- Walt Disney: persistence turns setbacks into success (3:18)
- Ray Dalio: transparency leads to better decisions (6:22)
- Steve Jobs: growth comes from humility and learning (11:44)
- Elon Musk: big risks lead to big rewards (16:54)
1. Henry Ford: shared vision is key to success
In 1899 cars were still called horseless carriages and were a luxury for the wealthy. Ford, a young mechanic, wanted a reliable, high-quality car for the middle class, but his first company needed investors who wanted a variety of cars sold to wealthy collectors at high prices. They forced him to rush the cars out, quality suffered, customers left, and the business shut down in under two years.
Ford turned to racing, became a celebrity engineer and attracted new investors. This time the investors wanted affordable vehicles and he wanted expensive racing cars, and he was fired within months. In 1903 he started Ford Motor Company with everyone aligned on a motor car for the great multitude.
The Model A sold for around $750. Assembly-line production then cut the Model T to $260, and it became the first car to sell more than 15 million units. At one point over half the world’s cars were Model Ts.
Make sure everyone involved in a project is aligned on the same vision.
2. Walt Disney: persistence turns setbacks into success
In 1926 Disney was a struggling young cartoonist who believed animation was an art form that deserved the big screen. He developed a technique for layering animation over live-action film and pitched a show called Alice’s Wonderland. Someone bought the idea and funded it, and he and his team made over 60 episodes.
Then it collapsed. The funder set extremely tight deadlines, Disney pushed his staff to the limit, and they all quit on the same day. He had also signed away the rights, so he had to move from New York to California and start over. On the train home, doodling, he created Mickey Mouse.
Mickey starred in Steamboat Willie, the first cartoon synchronised with sound, and later musical cartoons including the first in color, which won an Oscar. Still, people valued cartoons below live-action movies, so Disney became obsessed with a feature-length fairy tale. It was so costly and slow that people thought he had lost his mind. He released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 and it catapulted him to extraordinary success.
Hold onto your belief however tough the situation or loud the doubters.
3. Ray Dalio: transparency leads to better decisions
In 1982 Dalio ran a hedge fund called Bridgewater from a small apartment in New York. He studied how economies work and built a reputation as an insightful analyst, and within a few years had clients like McDonald’s and the World Bank.
Then he became overconfident and made a bold public prediction: the US was about to enter a massive recession. He set up Bridgewater’s whole portfolio to profit from it. The recession never came, the US went on a bull run of almost two decades, his investments went under and clients pulled out. He laid off all his employees and had to ask his father for $4,000 to keep Bridgewater from bankruptcy.
The lesson he took was that he had made a bad decision because everyone was scared to challenge him and he never questioned his own ideas. He rebuilt with radical transparency, where everyone could voice opinions regardless of rank, and ideas were judged on quality, not on who was the boss. The strategy moved from big bets on his predictions to many perspectives and diversified investments.
In 2002 the market fell 22% and some hedge funds lost everything, while Dalio was down only a few percentage points. Three years later Bridgewater was the world’s largest hedge fund, as the video says it still is.
To make the best decisions, let go of your ego and build a culture of trust and transparency.
4. Steve Jobs: growth comes from humility and learning
Jobs started Apple at 21 and wasn’t ready to run a major corporation, so Apple brought in experienced CEOs. One was John Sculley, who the video says cared more about short-term profit than great computers. Jobs’s expensive new products weren’t selling, he pushed staff so hard that employees were quitting in droves, and when he tried to get Sculley fired the board fired him instead. In 1985, at 30, he was out.
He started NeXT, which taught him to lead without a CEO or board telling him no. He also bought a computer graphics company, rebranded it Pixar and moved it into 3-D animated movies. Toy Story was an industry-shaking success, and Jobs made Pixar public just before its release. With most of the shares, he became a billionaire.
Meanwhile Apple, which had stopped improving its operating system after he left, needed a new one it couldn’t afford to build. In 1997 it bought NeXT for $427 million, and Jobs returned and became CEO, this time ready for the job. He still demanded a lot, but now it served the products. The iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad followed, and in 2011 Apple became the world’s most valuable company.
Learn to work with others, and never stop innovating.
5. Elon Musk: big risks lead to big rewards
Before SpaceX and Tesla, Musk had sold two businesses and made almost $200 million. He started SpaceX with $100 million, enough for three rocket launches, and put around $6 million into Tesla, which hadn’t designed its first electric car.
Then it went wrong. SpaceX’s first launch in 2006 exploded after 33 seconds. The next didn’t reach space, nor did the third, and the $100 million was gone. Tesla was selling cars for less than they cost to make, and by 2008 his $6 million had become more like $40 million. That year brought a divorce and the biggest US economic crash since the Great Depression, so no investors would fund either company.
He described the choice as having two children and letting one starve. At the last minute a friend put $20 million into SpaceX, enough for one more launch, and Musk put his last $40 million into Tesla. The launch reached orbit, and NASA awarded SpaceX $1.6 billion to carry supplies to the International Space Station.
Tesla had two days of cash left at year end. On Christmas Eve, with 60 minutes to spare, he secured a $40 million investment. Months later the same investors added $50 million and Tesla got a large US government loan. The video says SpaceX now lands rockets and runs a satellite network, Tesla is the most valuable car company, and in 2021 Musk became the richest person in the world.
If you want to win big, you have to be willing to risk everything.
What the five stories share
None of these founders avoided failure. Ford lost two companies, Disney lost his team and his rights, Dalio lost his clients, Jobs lost his seat and Musk nearly lost both firms.
What changed in each case was a specific lesson: alignment, persistence, humility, openness or nerve. Find the one that matches your current setback.
FAQ
Which business leaders came back after losing everything?
The video tells the stories of Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Ray Dalio, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, each of whom lost a company, a team, clients or nearly all their money before returning stronger.
What did Henry Ford learn from his first two companies?
That investors and founder must share the same vision. His first two ventures failed over misaligned goals, and his third, Ford Motor Company, succeeded with everyone aligned on affordable cars.
How did Ray Dalio recover from his failed prediction?
He rebuilt Bridgewater around radical transparency and diversified investments. The video says it became the world’s largest hedge fund in just a few years after the 2002 downturn.
How did Steve Jobs get back to Apple?
After being fired in 1985 he built NeXT and Pixar. Apple then bought NeXT for $427 million in 1997 for its operating system, and he returned and became CEO.
How close did Tesla come to bankruptcy?
The video says Tesla had only two days of cash left at the end of 2008, and Elon Musk secured a $40 million investment on Christmas Eve with an hour to spare.
What is the main lesson of these comeback stories?
The video’s framing is that failure teaches what success can’t, and each leader came back by applying one hard-earned lesson, from shared vision to transparency to willingness to take risks.
Keep reading
- How To Get Rich According To Ray Dalio
- How To Get Rich According To Steve Jobs
- 15 Books Elon Musk Thinks Everyone Should Read
