Fail to Succeed

Posted November 4, 2008, 9:35 am in Small Business

The next time you're discouraged by your struggles, remember that failure is a big part of success. Consider the following examples of successful men and women who failed before making it.

	Thomas Edison tried over 9,000 different things searching for the right material to make the ideal filament of a light bulb.
	Clarence Birdseye went bankrupt seven times before he discovered the secret of flash freezing which created the entire frozen food industry.
	The Beatles were turned down by the Decker recording company who said "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
	Col. Harlan Sanders, was 65 and had been turned down over 1,005 times before he found someone willing to try his "secret recipe" fried chicken.
	Walt Disney was turned down by over a hundred banks when he tried to get funding to develop Disneyland. He was also fired from his job at a newspaper for "lacking ideas." He also had several bankruptcies before he was able to develop Disneyland.
	George Lucas spent four years shipping the script for Star Wars around to the various studios and racking up numerous rejections before he got his life-changing film made.
	Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team because his coach said "he lacked skill."
	Wayne Gretzky has been quoted as saying, "It's kind of ironic when I broke in at 17, I was told I was too small, too slow and I wouldn't make the NHL.
	Henry Ford went broke five times before he finally succeeded. He forgot to put in a reverse gear in his first car.
	Beethoven's music teacher told him he was a hopeless composer.
	Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin approached Yahoo and suggested a merger. Yahoo suggested that Google keep working on their school project and come back when they grow up. Within five years, Google had an estimated market capitalization of $20 billion.
	Albert Einstein's parents thought he was mentally handicapped when he was young. His grades in school were so bad that a teacher asked him to leave, writing, “Einstein, you will never amount to anything!
	Fred Astaire kept a memo over his fireplace from an MGM testing director after his first screen test that said, "Can't act. Slightly bald. Can dance a little."
	Abraham Lincoln's fiance died, he failed in business twice, had a nervous breakdown, and he was defeated in eight elections before becoming President.
	Richard Bach, the author of "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" was turned down by 18 publishers before MacMillan finally published it in 1970. By 1975, the book had sold more than 7 million copies in the U.S. alone.
	Bill Gates was an unknown Harvard dropout when bought a piece of computer technology for $50 and started a business.
	Mark Victor Hansen & Jack Canfield, the authors of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, were turned down by 50 book publishers before somebody finally agreed to take a chance. They have since sold over 75 million copies.
	J K Rowling’s first "Harry Potter" book was rejected by a publisher who said "there’s no money in children’s books."
	Steven Spielberg dropped out of high school in his sophomore year. When he was persuaded to come back, he was placed in a class for students with learning disabilities. He lasted a month before dropping out of school forever.