The thing is you are not the minority. Those who are successful are a very small minority who just had the stars aligned at the right moment at the right moment

The thing is you are not the minority. Those who are successful are a very small minority who just had the stars aligned at the right moment at the right moment with some luck. When you consider it, those promoters are selling you picks and shovels so that you can find your gold. But similar to the gold rush, we know that very small amount of people actually found gold and from those who found it, a smaller amount was able to sustain that. I'm sorry that your enterprises have failed but this doesn't surprise me. I'm happy that you changed your direction (imho, it's not giving up) to something different. It's very hard to find the point where you let it go while success seems such a very short distance away like you can reach your hand and grab it. But it's so frustrating that even if you are approaching your goal, you can't just close the distance and it's still far away. There will be people who will label you as a "loser" as you "gave up on your dreams", but you are not actually. You are just one of millions of people who were trying to make it but didn't. I doesn't matter if your idea was great or not, if your execution was perfect or not, if your audience was willing to pay or not, if the time was right or not, sometimes it just doesn't work. And it's still OK. Best of luck to you.