06/12/2026
SpaceX started trading on the Nasdaq today.
The headlines call it a triumph. Here's what they're skipping:
This is a 24-year "overnight success."
The first three rocket launches? Failures. The company was weeks from bankruptcy in 2008. And in the years since, SpaceX has blown up more hardware — publicly, on camera, in front of the entire internet — than any company in history.
They didn't just tolerate failure. They built their whole system around it. Every explosion produced data. Every iteration flew better. Last week, one of their boosters flew for a record 35th time — a rocket that lands, recovers, and launches again.
After a decade of coaching executives, athletes, and founders, I can tell you: the people who reach the top operate exactly like that booster.
Not because they fail less.
Because they recover faster.
They've trained their nervous system to treat a setback as data instead of a verdict. They iterate in public while everyone else polishes in private. They play a 24-year game in a world demanding quarterly results.
That's not a personality trait. It's a trainable skill — it's the core of what I coach.
So the question today isn't "did you buy the stock?"
It's: when your version of a rocket blows up — the deal, the launch, the promotion, the plan — do you treat it as a verdict, or as data?
Reusability isn't just rocket science. It's the most valuable career skill of the next decade.
Read the full piece and rethink how you define progress:
By Christine Walter, PCC, LMFT — Executive CoachOn June 12, 2026, SpaceX began trading publicly on the Nasdaq — the capstone of one of the most remarkable business stories of our era. Just days earlier, the company launched a Falcon 9 booster on its record-breaking 35th flight: the same rocket, ...
