MasterClass CEO David Rogier has sat down with hundreds of successful people, from tennis star Serena Williams to former Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger, to learn what sets them apart from everyone else. Rogier’s top takeaway: Some common myths about success need dispelling.
“I think we have this myth that, if you just work hard, things will be OK [and] you’ll be successful,” says Rogier. “That’s not true.” Hard work, while essential, is just one necessary ingredient of success alongside pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, making mistakes and learning from those failures, he adds.
Within that advice is another common myth worth debunking, Rogier says: the idea that you shouldn’t be afraid of failure. “I think that’s bulls—,” he says.
A healthy fear of failure is what drives people to strive for success, and the key is to overcome those fears by taking necessary risks, says Rogier. Successful people tend to push ahead while accepting failure as both a potential outcome and a learning opportunity, he says. It’s an example of the so-called “growth mindset” that is a hallmark of many successful people, psychologists often say.
“I’d be scared of somebody who’s not afraid to fail,” says Rogier.
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Rogier co-founded his online education subscription program in 2015 after spending more than a year cold-calling “hundreds” of well-known leaders across many industries to recruit them as MasterClass instructors, he says. More than 200 people — including athletes, actors and entrepreneurs — have hosted classes for the platform that was valued at $2.75 billion as of May 2021.
Those leaders are often eager to learn from setbacks and seek out impartial feedback whenever possible, says Rogier, pointing to Spanx founder Sara Blakely as an example. Blakely founded the shapewear company in 2000, and the company grew over the course of roughly two decades before private equity firm Blackstone acquired a majority stake in October 2021. The deal valued Spanx at $1.2 billion.
“My dad growing up encouraged me and my brother to fail,” Blakely said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in October 2013. “The gift he was giving me is that failure is (when you are) not trying versus the outcome. It’s really allowed me to be much freer in trying things and spreading my wings in life.”
Blakely, who founded footwear brand Sneex in 2024, did not immediately respond to CNBC Make It’s request for comment. In a MasterClass program that launched in November 2019, she told the story of how her father would regularly ask her a question at the dinner table when she was growing up: “What have you failed at this week?”
Rogier has adopted a similar practice as MasterClass CEO, sending his employees a weekly email asking what the company recently failed at, and how they can learn and improve, he says. He’s also learned the importance of advocating for yourself and promoting your successes from his platform’s instructors, he says.
One of those instructors, longtime Stanford University organizational behavior professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, recommends unapologetically promoting your accomplishments to get ahead in your career. “You are seen for how you show up,” Pfeffer told CNBC Make It in September. “Therefore, how you show up is at least as important as what you actually do.”
The willingness and ability to sell their own accomplishments is a common trait of successful people, Rogier says, and he recommends trying to follow suit by speaking up to stand out. “You can’t just do good work and expect people to know it or see it,” he says. “You have to be good at like it out there in the world [and] getting people to pay attention to it.”
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