Failing My Way to Success: Lessons from Forty-Two Years of Winning (and Losing) in Business

Most business books promise shortcuts to success. This one delivers something better: a battle-tested blueprint for scaling, selling, and surviving as an entrepreneur & business leader.

In Failing My Way to Success, Phillip Cantrell takes you inside four decades of founding and leading various businesses, some of which grew to hundreds of millions in annual revenue. Along the way, he shares hard-won lessons from failure, the mindset of resilience, and the strategic frameworks that turn mistakes into momentum. Inside you’ll discover:

• How an average student became a successful entrepreneur, founding or controlling 10 separate businesses. Many built from scratch.
• A mergers & acquisitions roadmap: from preparing clean P&Ls and balance sheets for due diligence, to negotiating letter of intent (LOI) terms, to navigating earn-out periods and post-sale integration.
• Real-world real estate business strategies and scaling a brokerage with discipline.
• Why knowing your cash position daily and running on a “zero accounts receivables” model can protect your business from collapse.
• The often-overlooked realities of life after selling a business—how founders stay engaged during earn-outs, protect their legacy, and rediscover purpose once the deal is done.
• The four cornerstones of sustainable leadership: delegation, observation, working smart, and compassion.

This is not theory. It’s the inside story of the decisions, negotiations, and systems that separate businesses that burn out from those that endure—and thrive.

Whether you’re scaling a company, preparing to sell one you've built, or simply learning how to turn setbacks into stepping stones, Failing My Way to Success gives you a clear-eyed, practical path forward.

Phillip Cantrell is executive vice president of strategy for United Real Estate. With over 25,000 agents and annual revenue approaching $35 billion, United is ranked as the #1 fastest-growing residential brokerage in the country by RealTrends. Cantrell is also founder and CEO of Benchmark Realty, LLC, a thriving real estate brokerage with offices in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama. In 2025, he ranked #163 in the Real Estate Almanac 2025 Swanepoel Power 200, a listing of the 200 most influential people in the industry. An alumnus of Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee, he and his wife Amanda call Tennessee home.