One of the most important lessons of entrepreneurship is that many successful people forge themselves out of failure, and one of the important lessons a manifestation coach will teach you is that failure is not a step away but a step towards success.

The reason for this is simple; failure allows you to learn what does and does not work, and when you try again you are in a much better position to succeed.

In fact, one of the greatest examples of this principle in action comes from one of the most successful self-help writers of all time, Dale Carnegie.

His name may not be familiar to everyone, but his book, How To Win Friends And Influence People, has sold over 30 million copies, more than The Great Gatsby and Nineteen Eighty-Four, putting it amongst the best selling books of all time.

Its advice, which centres around how our approach to situations and to people can change our outcomes, was inspired largely by struggles and failures in Mr Carnegie’s early life.

Born on a farm in Maryville Missouri, and growing up in rural parts of the state meant that he regularly struggled with failure as his family struggled with their farm and he worried whether he would have enough to eat or keep the roof over his head.

This changed when, to try and increase his confidence at the teaching college he was attending (and travelled to on horseback because he could not afford room and board), he joined the speech team and his experiences would shape his most successful book.

However, when he moved to New York, he had several brushes with failure again, struggling to make it as an actor and struggling to find other opportunities besides being a travelling salesman.

Eventually, he convinced a local YMCA to let him do a public speaking class for a 20 per cent cut of the net revenue, and many of the discussion points of his books came from attempts to stall for time with his classes, eventually making his courses a success and inspiring one of the most successful self-help books ever written.