Failure is good. It’s fertilizer. Everything I’ve learned about coaching, I’ve learned from making mistakes.

Pitino reframes failure as a productive, even necessary, ingredient in growth. By calling it “fertilizer,” he suggests that setbacks enrich future performance the way compost enriches soil: unpleasant in the moment but essential for new development. The second sentence grounds the metaphor in professional practice—coaching wisdom is portrayed not as a set of inherited doctrines but as knowledge earned through trial, error, and correction. The quote also implies a leadership ethic: a coach (or any leader) should normalize mistakes as part of learning, extracting lessons rather than assigning shame, and using losses or misjudgments to refine strategy, communication, and decision-making.