Jay-Z's weed factory is a hulking 100,000-square-foot facility on a busy intersection in San Jose, California, so mammoth it dwarfs even the Walmart down the street. A steady procession of customers shuffles patiently in line at the front-room dispensary, oblivious to the whirring machinations behind closed doors.

Success is seldom a straight road; it almost always involves many detours and dead ends. It takes tenacity and determination to keep going, but those that do will eventually reach their destination. Most of us have heard before that Thomas Edison failed more than 1,000 times but continued on despite being ridiculed by the media and those around him.