The Failure Dinner Table Practice
Ask 'What did you fail at this week?' — and be disappointed if the answer is nothing
The Failure Dinner Table Practice is Sara Blakely's family tradition, instilled by her father, of actively celebrating failure rather than avoiding it. Every week at the dinner table, Blakely's father would ask each child: 'What have you failed at this week?' If they didn't have something to report, he would be disappointed — not at the failure, but at the absence of it, because no failure meant no risk-taking.
This practice fundamentally reframes what failure means. In most families and organizations, failure is punished or at least treated as a negative outcome to be minimized. In Blakely's household, failure was the expected byproduct of courage and ambition. The practice taught her that failure is not the opposite of success — it's evidence that you're attempting things outside your comfort zone, which is the only place growth happens.
Blakely directly credits this practice with giving her the resilience to build Spanx. She heard 'no' a thousand times from hosiery manufacturers, buyers, and potential partners. But because failure had been normalized in her childhood, each 'no' was data rather than devastation. She kept going because she'd been trained to see failure as a feature of an ambitious life, not a bug.
- Failure is not the opposite of success — it's evidence of courage and ambition.
- The absence of failure means the absence of risk-taking, which is the real failure.
- Normalizing failure in childhood creates resilience that persists into adulthood.
- Every 'no' is data, not devastation — it only takes one 'yes' to change everything.
- Reframing failure as expected removes its power to paralyze.
- Institute a Regular Failure Check-InCreate a recurring practice — weekly at dinner, monthly with your team, or daily in your journal — where you explicitly ask 'What did I/we fail at this week?' The key is regularity and expectation: failure should be a predictable topic of conversation, not an uncomfortable surprise. Blakely's father asked every week, making it as routine as discussing grades or weekend plans. The consistency is what normalizes the conversation.Pro tipStart the check-in by sharing your own failure first. This signals psychological safety and demonstrates that failure is expected at every level, not just from those lower in the hierarchy.WarningDon't turn failure celebrations into trivialization. The goal is to normalize risk-taking, not to dismiss the real costs of genuine mistakes.
- Celebrate the Attempt, Not the OutcomeWhen someone reports a failure, celebrate the courage to attempt rather than analyzing the outcome. Blakely's father was disappointed when his children had nothing to report — because no failure meant they were playing it safe. The celebration is of the attempt, the risk, the willingness to step outside the comfort zone. This trains the brain to associate risk-taking with social approval rather than social punishment.Pro tipAsk follow-up questions like 'What did you learn?' and 'What will you try next?' to channel failure energy into forward motion.WarningCelebrating attempt doesn't mean ignoring preventable errors. Distinguish between courageous failures (trying something new) and negligent failures (not doing the basics).
- Be Disappointed by the Absence of FailureThis is the counterintuitive key: express genuine disappointment when someone has nothing to report. Blakely's father wasn't neutral about no-failure weeks — he was disappointed, because it meant his children weren't stretching themselves. This inverted expectation is what makes the practice powerful. It signals that the safe path — avoiding all risk of failure — is the one that actually disappoints the people who matter to you.Pro tipFrame it explicitly: 'If you're not failing at something, you're not trying hard enough' — make this a team or family mantra.
After conceiving the idea for Spanx by cutting the feet out of control-top pantyhose, Blakely called every hosiery mill in North Carolina. Nobody would talk to her. They thought the idea was crazy. After weeks of rejection, one mill owner called back because 'I have two daughters, and I thought this was a good idea.' She cold-called the Neiman Marcus buyer, got five minutes, and pitched her product by showing a before-and-after in the bathroom stall. She heard 'no' a thousand times.
Blakely cold-called the buyer at Neiman Marcus and secured a five-minute meeting in Dallas. Mid-pitch, she asked the buyer to follow her to the ladies' room, where she showed the before-and-after of wearing Spanx under white pants. This unconventional demonstration — itself a risk that could easily have backfired — resulted in an on-the-spot purchase order. The courage to make this unusual pitch came directly from her comfort with failure.
Sara Blakely described this practice in the very first episode of NPR's 'How I Built This' with Guy Raz, aired September 12, 2016. She grew up in Clearwater, Florida, where her father, a trial attorney, instituted the weekly failure question at family dinners. Blakely recalls that her father 'would encourage us to fail' and 'would be disappointed' if the children didn't have a failure to report. This practice was so formative that Blakely identifies it as the foundational habit that made her entrepreneurial journey possible — from cold-calling hosiery mills that all rejected her, to pitching the Neiman Marcus buyer in a bathroom stall, to self-funding the entire company with $5,000.