Featured episodes
Listen Now
Latest episodes
Flops: A Podcast About Failure

May 19, 2021
Flops 008: The Museum of Failure
Disclaimer: the interview in this episode contains some explicit language. We thought we'd finish off this season with something a little different. Back when…

May 12, 2021
Flops 007: The Rocket to Nowhere
Growing up, many of us are encouraged to follow our passion in the hopes of finding a career or life path that we will…

May 5, 2021
Flops 006: The Shark Tank Stumble
Sometimes success isn't always what it looks like on its face. Sometimes we have an idealized view of success, that one day we'll clear…

April 28, 2021
Flops 005: The Song of Regret
Pianist and songwriter Jason Myers caught a big break. A few of them, in fact — but one was a huge opportunity, the kind…

April 21, 2021
Flops 004: The Case of the Missing Contract
Trudy Rankin spent 15 years in the corporate world, but despite the success she had, found herself feeling unfulfilled. With a strong desire to…

April 14, 2021
Flops 003: The Hotel From Hell
"I make sad houses happy" — that's how Tina Cheesley once described her side business to her children. With a flair for interior design…

April 7, 2021
Flops 002: The Rock-Bottom Beach
Colin Clapp and his partner, Elly, own a website and business called Parenting, Passports and Profits — it's all about helping parents and digital…

March 31, 2021
Flops 001: The Pyramid Scheme
Welcome to the inaugural episode of Flops! We hope you're as excited as we are. Flops is a brand-new show from SPI Media that…
About the Show
Let's normalize failure.
Our vision with Flops is to present an honest portrait of entrepreneurial failure in its numerous forms. Why, you ask? Because failure isn't just a part of the process—it's the process. When we hear entrepreneurial stories, we often glorify the big wins and brush over the failures that had everything to do with why success occurred. This show is, essentially, the inverse of the typical entrepreneurial success story.
Season 1 features interviews with entrepreneurs who've failed big in some way, along with stories of failure from recent and not-so-recent history, in business and beyond—along with some guest cameos that reveal a lighter side of failure.
It may sound cliché, but failure really puts things in perspective. It's amazing what people can withstand and bounce back from. In season 1 we talk to more than one entrepreneur who lost six figures, one whose new business got exactly zero clients, and another whose first retail product was bleeding money while she battled cancer.
They all bounced back in different ways; some are still in the process of bouncing back. They're here to tell their stories so that we can learn and avoid similar mistakes but ultimately embrace failure. It's not just okay to talk about our failures—we should talk about them, celebrate them, even!
So that's what Flops is all about. Enjoy!

Your Host:
Karen Beattie
Karen Beattie serves as SPI’s Senior Content Manager. She’s the author of two books and has 20 years of experience creating content. She lives in Chicago with her husband David, where they are raising their 11-year-old daughter Desta and three cats with mixed success.

Your Host:
Ray Sylvester
Ray Sylvester is SPI’s senior writer. He’s an accomplished nonfiction book editor, as well as a Feldenkrais practitioner and movement teacher. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife, son, and two cats. He hopes this podcast doesn’t flop.