We interrupt your regularly scheduled content to bring you another voice from the Futureative team! Hi, I’m Kaye and welcome to the RoundUp.
What’s the RoundUp?
A curated piece of content where I scour the internet for answers to common questions that tend to plague creatives and present my findings here. I’ll be sifting through established creatives, eager ingenues as well as hopping across multiple industries - music, art, filmmaking - to see what answers people have come to for the hard hitting questions.
And today’s question:
Is failure as important as success?
Short Answer: Yes.
Failure as Redirection
Demi Lovato’s It’s Not That Deep Tour is officially in progress and whilst Lovato’s journey is a beehive of the importance of persistence and re-direction, I want to focus on the opener for her concert.
Adela Jorgova, or known by her stage name Adela is a Slovak singer, songwriter and dancer that debuted her first solo song in 2024 and now has signed to Capital Records. She has slowly but steadily grown her artistry and fanbase to become a household name. All of this began because she was eliminated from a pop survival show.
Adela was one of thousands of girls that auditioned for the chance to debut as one of the members of global girl group KATSEYE, a K-pop inspired music group created by Hybe x Geffen. Over 120,000 auditionees were whittled down to 20, to participate in Dream Academy, later shown in the Netflix reality show Popstar Academy: KATSEYE which was released in 2024.
Despite scoring amongst the highest in vocals and dance, Adela did not gain enough public votes to stay in the competition which led to her heart-wrenching leave from the competition just before the remaining girls were set to journey to Korea.
And thus started her solo career.
Her newest single KGB hit No.11 on the Hot Dance/ Pop Songs chart, just above Madonna’s I Feel So Free. She’s set to sing at Lollapalooza 2026. Her solo career is skyrocketing in a way that can be compared to Chappell Roan, and as a solo artist, she has the creative autonomy to pursue her passions in a way that fulfils her.
Adela is not the only person out of Dream Academy to find their footing as a solo artist, Karlee Tanaka, known as Karlee Girl, launched her solo career in April 2025 and her newest single “Right Back!” has amassed over 2.3 million views on Youtube. Another three auditionees Lexie Levin, Samara Siqueira and Emily Kelavos are set to debut in girl group SAINT SATINE.
Pivoting Careers
Our next deep dive is on Eve Cornwell, a trainee solicitor turned tech product manager. - I did say we were shifting through multiple industries - I’ve been a long time fan of Eve Cornwell, her casual yet sophisticated youtube vlog-style videos date back since she was studying law at university.
With just over 345k subscribers, @evecornwellchannel has grown into a community of like-minded, studious people who became invested in the one dream that became synonymous with her brand - becoming a lawyer. Yet, in a 2022, in a youtube video entitled “I quit my dream job”, Eve explains that through the self-reflection that being in a global pandemic will have you sit with, “the one thing (she) could not compromise on was having a creative outlet” and refound her purpose as a tech product manager.
As one of her long-time fans, this news was first surprising and then uplifting. The comments under that video are littered with cheers and well-wishes, fellow creatives who enjoyed watching her videos happy that she’d found what works for her.
Oftentimes when we are at the edge of a decision that could change our lives for the better, we listen to the voices that hold us back.
We tend to amplify them and think that that will be all the reaction there is, but the honest truth is, most people are happy for your success or indifferent to it. And both are blessings.
The Sunk Cost Fallacy
The Sunk Cost Fallacy is the human tendency to continue with an action or behaviour that is proving ineffective because we’ve already invested our time, money or energy into it.
For example: Sitting for an entire movie’s runtime because you’ve paid the full ticket price even though halfway through you realise that horror films aren’t your thing.
Another example: Continuing with a career that you know you don’t have enthusiasm for, because you’ve burnt out, the industry has changed or maybe you’ve changed. We have a tendency to push down those nagging thoughts and persevere, because the alternative looks like giving up and heading home with nothing.. The realisation that if you stop now, all those long nights of work, those early mornings and monthly sacrifices were useless because you thought you were making progress instead of mistakes.
This is the wrong frame of mind, anything that you’ve learnt will be helpful to you in the future.
If you’re a carpenter turned film- maker, you know the colloquialisms of the work place, you’ve met a range of diverse people with unique voices that will inform your writing. You’ve seen homes that could inform set pieces. And then there’s the practical skills - you know bargaining, time management and working in a team. Everything informs everything. Adaptability is a skill and trusting yourself will only get easier over time.
***
My own answer:
Failure is the most consistent thing in my life. That’s not a complaint - (well sometimes it is) and I believe the same is true for all other creatives out there.
A little bit of background on myself - finishing high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do other than write, I had no idea about the publishing industry, or indeed the entertainment industry, I just knew that no one was going to pay me for writing just yet. Cue a good couple years and a few failures that incurred a mound of student debt, it was only through my seemingly endless assembly line of failed ventures did I stumble upon Futureative and land this job and now - I’m being paid to write. Isn’t that funny? It would be more funny without the student debt, I agree, but my point is, none of the paths that lead me here would have appeared if I didn’t have the courage to make mistakes, have the humility and self-reflection to keep going, even if I didn’t necessarily know where I was heading.
I think creatives are so hard on themselves, and we don’t need to be. At all. Especially since “success” means different things for different people.
Non-creatives tend to confuse success with virality and income. Oftentimes, they don’t understand that some creative people do it for the love of the game.
That sometimes they have an idea in their head that just. won’t. go.
And success is that giddy, childlike feeling of triumph when you’ve managed to extract that idea and transform it into something tangible you’re proud of.
That takes work. That takes failure. But that’s the point.
And anyways, you can always just start again : )
***
Thanks for reading! It’s nice to meet you! Let us know if you like this type of content or if there’s anything else you’d like to hear from us.
You can find the creatives that were mentioned in this article down below, if there’s any topics or people you’d like to see me cover, let me know in the comments. (And if you’d like to be featured, let us know too!).
Thanks again for reading and remember - be kind to yourself!
Catch you later,
Kaye
Make sure to check out the artists mentioned:
Adela:
KARLEEGIRL
Eve Cornwell:
Other:
https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/the-sunk-cost-fallacy Pilat, Dan, and Sekoul Krastev. “The Sunk Cost Fallacy.” The Decision Lab, 2021, thedecisionlab.com/biases/the-sunk-cost-fallacy.
Ready for more?
Read Next: Creative careers sure don’t work like they used to.
This article is the first of a 3-part Deep Dive on the future of creative careers; current obstacles and solutions we can all work together on.
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