The Winning Formula

Arthur Blank and Bernie Marcus didn't let getting fired stop them from building their own home improvement chain.

In 1989, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman approved the $330 million purchase of steel company Edgcomb, which ended up being a costly mistake for the private equity firm.

In its early years, FedEx was a success, but rising fuel costs led the company to go into debt quickly.

General Motors was faced with a huge crisis just months into Mary T. Barra's tenure as CEO. She was named "crisis manager of the year" for the way she handled it.

In 1994, Richard Branson launched Virgin Cola, but after significant pushback from competitors, he decided to fold the brand and move on to other ventures.

When Barnes & Noble launched its website in 1997 and people thought Amazon would lose to the bookseller, Jeff Bezos told his employees to focus on customers instead of competition.

Before he was the CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings led another company called Pure Software, where he went through five VPs of sales in six years.

Tim Cook had a lot of pressure as Apple's new CEO in 2011, especially after his mentor Steve Jobs died.

In Microsoft's earliest days, Bill Gates admitted he micromanaged his team.

Here's how Mark Zuckerberg learned that leaders can't just have purpose, you have to impart it to others.

Mark Cuban had trouble holding down a job before he started his own successful business.

Elon Musk was fired from his role as CEO of PayPal in 2000, but has since created SpaceX and Tesla and become a billionaire.

When Meg Whitman took the role of eBay CEO in 1998, she helped propel the company through acquisitions while keeping the culture alive.

Even though Warren Buffett has said that buying Berkshire Hathaway was "the dumbest stock I ever bought," he turned the company into a conglomerate with over 90 subsidiaries.

In 1998, Jamie Dimon was forced out of his role as president of Citigroup. By 2005 he was the CEO of JPMorgan Chase.