Never Give Up: 31 Failure To Success Classics That Will Inspire You

You've heard it before:"Never give Up","if at first you don't succeed,try again". Most of us think that's just a saying,but it's absolutely not.You never really know if success lies around the next corner.

These 31 inspiring stories are of men and women who through horrible circumstances, rejection after rejection professionally and personally; depression and the like never gave up and eventually became super-successful.

Read on for some serious inspiration,and hopefully glean the underlying factors responsible for their success.

1.Stephen Spielberg

 

Stephen Spielberg was rejected thrice from his dream institution University of Southern California where he wanted to study film because of his C-average. He then applied and was admitted to California State University, Long Beach, where he majored in English. However he dropped out in 1968 to make a 22-minute film entitled Amblin. He finally managed to finish his degree through an independent projects program. In 2002, he was awarded a B.A. in film production by California State. Spielberg has grossed $8.5 billion from films he directed.

After Spielberg became famous, USC awarded him an honorary degree, and Spielberg later became a trustee of the university.His net worth is $3.6B.

2. J k Rowling and Harry Potter

 

Joanne Rowling was born in England and grew up with her mother, father, and sister. From a very young age, she dealt with life’s struggles. Her childhood was particularly stressful due to her mother’s diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. When Joanne was 25, her mother died, and Rowling describes it as the most traumatizing moment of her life.

As the years progressed following her mother’s death, Rowling experienced the disappointment of a broken marriage and the ensuing struggle as a single parent, trying to support herself and her daughter on welfare. Battling depression, unemployed, and without money, she admits to having considered suicide.According to her she was " as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless.”

J.K. Rowling initially came up with the idea for the Harry Potter series in 1990, while riding a train in England. She was inspired to write a book about a young wizard, Harry Potter, and his friends who were all studying at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.She wrote her initial HARRY POTTER Ideas on a napkin .She would often take her daughter with her to a cafe to write, because apparently living in an apartment highly infested by rats was not a very good inspiration.

In 1995, Rowling finally completed the first book in the Harry Potter series on an old manual computer, she began the process of seeking publication, only to be met by multiple rejections. All 12 major publishers dismissed the book as “too long,” saying it was “too difficult for children,” and that “children would not be interested in it.”

It wasn’t until one year later that a small publishing house, Bloomsbury, decided to accept the manuscript, offering a very small monetary advance of about $4,000. Although they were going to publish her book, they did offer some advice: she should get a job because “there’s no money in children’s books.” And the rest is history.She has since won numerous awards.The popularity of the Harry Potter series has translated into substantial financial success for Rowling, her publishers, and other Harry Potter related license holders. This success has made Rowling the first and thus far only billionaire author. The books have sold more than 400 million copies worldwide and have also given rise to the popular film adaptations produced by Warner Bros., all of which have been highly successful in their own right.The films have in turn spawned eight video games and have led to the licensing of more than 400 additional Harry Potter products. The Harry Potter brand has been estimated to be worth as much as $25 billion.

"Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy to finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one area where I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter, and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. " - J K Rowling

3. Howard Schultz

 

Schultz was born 1953 in Brooklyn, New York. He is the son of a truck driver of German and Jewish origin and, together with his two brothers, lived a childhood deprived of luxury. The poor way his father was treated by his employers, the lack of social insurance and benefits, made a great impression to young Schultz. Later, as he successfully graduated from an elite university, the education where he had earned due to his sports achievements, he was bound to make things right for his future employees.

At the time Starbucks was a small Seattle coffee-bean shop. Schultz worked for Xerox, but then switched to the position of general manager for a Swedish drip coffee maker manufacturer, where he had to often make business trips to check how potential and current clients were doing business. The passion of the owners and the amazing smell of fresh coffee he encountered the first time he entered the shop made Schultz wish to start working for Starbucks. His wish was fulfilled and he got the job of a marketing director.

The year later, in 1983, after a trip to Italy, Schultz, realizing the prevalence of the coffee culture there and the country’s 200,000 coffee bars, he convinced the owners of Starbucks to role out the concept across the company’s stores. Previously, they just sold coffee beans and not actual coffee drinks.

While the owners resisted at first, he was persistent and was allowed to open a coffee shop in one of the new stores in Seattle, which debuted in 1984. It was an instant success. But the owners didn’t want to continue with the concept. They didn’t want Starbucks to get too big. In 1985, Schultz left Starbucks to open his own coffee bar, naming it Il Giornale, Italian for ‘The Newspaper.’

However, the story clearly didn’t end there. After two years, Schultz had achieved great success with his coffee shop, but he was thinking even bigger. He proposed buying the Starbucks company, which at the time carried a hefty price tag, so he needed help with the transaction. Attempting to raise the capital to purchase the company, Schultz famously stated that he “was turned down by 217 of the 242 investors I initially talked to.He did purchased it.

4. Harland David Sanders

 

Harland David Sanders was born on September 9, 1890, in Henryville, Indiana. After his father died when he was 6 years old, Sanders became responsible for feeding and taking care of his younger brother and sister. Beginning at the age of 10, he held down numerous jobs, including farmer, streetcar conductor, railroad fireman and insurance salesman.

At 65 years of age, Colonel Sanders received his first social security cheque of $99. He was broke, owned a small house and a beat up car.He made a decision that things had to change. His friends used to like his chicken recipe very much. The fact that this was the only novel idea he had, he decided to act upon it.

He left Kentucky and started his travels to different US states to sell his idea. He would tell restaurant owners that he had a chicken recipe which people liked and he was ready to give it to them for free, in return for a small percentage on the items sold. He got rejections after rejections, but did not give up. He got a total of 1,009 No's before a yes.

Today KFC is the world's second-largest restaurant chain (as measured by sales) after McDonald's, with almost 20,000 locations globally in 123 countries and territories as of December 2015.

5. Akio Morita and Sony

 

Sony today has revenue worth over ¥7.6 trillion.Sony has products ranging from consumer electronics,films, TV programs to semiconductors,video games,music,computer hardware and telecommunication equipment. Sony’s first product however was a rice cooker that unfortunately didn’t cook rice so much as burn it, selling less than 100 units. This first setback didn’t stop Morita and his partners as they pushed forward to create a multi-billion dollar company.

6.Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill Nobel Prize-winning, twice-elected Prime Minster of the United Kingdom travelled a tough road to get there.Winston Churchill performed poorly in school and his father even thought he was retarded because he usually finished near the bottom of his class. Churchill failed the sixth grade and had to take a math class over three times just to pass.

His father’s original plan was for him to become a barrister which is the US equivalent of an attorney in the United Kingdom. So, he attempted to get in both Oxford and Cambridge but was rejected due to his poor scores at school. Churchill’s father thinking about the rejections of both Oxford and Cambridge and his parental dreams of Churchill becoming an attorney dashed suggested Churchill pursues a career in the Army. Churchill followed his father’s advice and applied to the Royal military College which is the British equivalent to West Point in the United States but even failed that entrance exam two times. To help himself he acquired tutoring and studied a lot and eventually passed the entrance exam on the third try.

After he graduated from Royal military College and British Army. He worked his way up in the British Army and by 1911 had acquired a title called the first Lord of the Admiralty. During World War I he helped set up tactics which resulted in an unsuccessful battle which is referred to as the Gallipoli disaster. Some people thought that the reason for the failure should be placed solely on the tactical commanders but Churchill stepped up, took the majority of the blame and as a result received the demotion. It is said shortly thereafter he told the news of the world publication, “I am finished”.

However, that comment proved very far from the actual truth. He went on to hold several positions during the 1920s where he proved his real value and prowess as a commander in British Army. When World War II first started, he was reappointed first Lord about morality and was made a member of the British war cabinet. Early in the war, the British prime minister resigned and Churchill was placed in the position by overwhelming majority vote. He was an overwhelming success in leading the country throughout the difficult World War II era, but was defeated in 1945 when he ran again as Prime Minister. Many people speculated that his success during wartime couldn’t be repeated during peacetime thus leading to his defeat in the election. Obviously not one to give up easily, Churchill ran again during the next trimester election and won, where he held that position until he resigned in 1955.

“If you’re going through hell. Keep going.” – Sir Winston Churchill

7.Jay - Z

Shawn Corey Carter(Jay-Z) is now worth $810 million, has 21 Grammy awards to his name, is married to pop queen Beyonce , have sold more than 100 million records.His history would surprise you.

Born in 1969, in the projects of Brooklyn, the man we now know as Jay Z was raised by a single mother with his three older siblings after being abandoned by their father. His neighborhood wasn’t the best. Crime was rampant. Jay Z himself dropped out of high school, despite showing a great deal of potential, to sell crack to make money. He even shot his brother in the shoulder once during an argument.

Luckily, Jay Z was able to turn some of this depravity into art. An incredibly talented lyricist, he would compete and win freestyle competitions, making a reputation for himself. He’d even read the dictionary cover to cover on multiple occasions, scouring for better rhymes. He was able to start telling his story through his music.

After being shot at on a few occasions, and tiring of the drug life, Jay Z partnered with a fellow rapper on a single called “The Originators,” which earned him a feature on MTV. He kept working with DJs to try and get more tracks recorded, but had little to no success securing a record deal. Every major label in the country turned him down. It became clear that he would never make a living as a hip-hop performer.

Rather than let that news get him down, and turn him back to his old life and all the crime, Jay Z tried it from another angle. He became a producer himself and started his own label—aspirationally titled Roc-A-Fella—with two friends. It was a rocky road. Almost all of their artists left the label before making an album. By 1997, only Jay Z had managed to release one. But they persisted. They worked with Notorious B.I.G., and when he died, Jay Z was asked to collaborate on the posthumous album Life After Death, allowing Roc-A-Fella to get a little press.

The following year, in 1998, Jay Z released Vol. 2 and the song “Hard Knock Life” and, well, the rest is history. Roc-A-Fella shot up and became quite successful, and was later sold to Def Jam Records for millions of dollars. As for Jay Z, he became the President and CEO and took the whole merged label by storm.

“I was forced to be an artist and a CEO from the beginning, so I was forced to be like a businessman because when I was trying to get a record deal, it was so hard to get a record deal on my own that it was either give up or create my own company.” – Jay-Z

“All I got is dreams. Nobody else believes. Nobody else can see. Nobody else but me.” – Jay-Z

8.Bill Gates

As the richest man in the world, Bill Gates is obviously one of the most respected and revered individuals across the entire globe. Despite the massive amount of success that Gates has experienced, he’s also had his fair share of failure. Bill Gates after dropping out of Harvard didn’t seem like a shoe-in for successs when he started a failed first business with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen called Traf-O-Data. 

The company read and analyzed data from roadway counters and created reports for traffic engineers.

As Allen recalls;“Despite efforts to sell our wares as far afield as South America, we had virtually no customers. Traf-O-Data was a good idea with a flawed business model. It hadn’t occurred to us to do any market research, and we had no idea how hard it would be to get capital commitments from municipalities. Between 1974 and 1980, Traf-O-Data totaled net losses of $3,494. We closed shop shortly thereafter.”

Despite the failure of Traf-Data, the learning experience played a crucial role in the formation and success of the global empire Microsoft.

9.Benjamin Franklin

 

One of the founding fathers of America,Benjamin Franklin had only two years of formal education. He was a completely self made man going all the way to become an author, scientist, inventor, political theorist, politician, postmaster, musician, civic activist, satirist, diplomat, and above all among the Founding Fathers of the United States.

10 Mary Kay Ash

 

Mary Kay Ash, born Mary Kathlyn Wagner in Hot Wells, Harris County, Texas, was the daughter of Edward Alexander and Lula Vember Hastings Wagner.Her mother was trained as a nurse and later became a manager of a restaurant in Houston. Ash attended Dow Elementary School and Reagan High School in Houston, and graduated in 1934.

Ash married Ben Rogers at age 17. They had three children, Ben Jr., Marylin Reed and Richard Rogers. While her husband served in World War II, she sold books door-to-door. After her husband's return in 1945, they divorced.

Ash went to work for Stanley Home Products. Frustrated when passed over for a promotion in favor of a man that she had trained, Ash retired in 1963 and intended to write a book to assist women in business. The book turned into a business plan for her ideal company, and in the summer of 1963, Mary Kay Ash and her new husband, George Hellenbeck,planned to start Mary Kay Cosmetics. However, one month before Mary Kay and George started Beauty by Mary Kay, as the company was then called, George died of a heart attack. One month after George's death on September 13, 1963 when she was 45 years old with a $5,000 investment from her oldest son, Ben Rogers, Jr. and with her young son, Richard Rogers taking her late husband's place, Ash started Mary Kay Cosmetics.The company started its original storefront operation in Dallas.

Mary Kay Cosmetics grew beyond her wildest dreams. Today, the company has over 3 million consultants around the world with sales topping $3 billion annually. By 1968, the company had gone public, but was later taken private again after 17 years as a public company.

She died in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 2001 with a net worth of $3 B.

11.The Beatles

 

The Beatles are the best-selling band in history, with estimated sales of over 800 million physical and digital albums worldwide. They have had more number-one albums on the British charts and sold more singles in the UK than any other act. They are also the best-selling music artists in the United States, with 178 million certified units. In 2008, the group topped Billboard magazine's list of the all-time most successful artists; as of 2017, they hold the record for most number-one hits on the Hot 100 chart with twenty. They have received seven Grammy Awards, an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score and fifteen Ivor Novello Awards. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Famein 1988, and all four main members were inducted individually from 1994 to 2015. They were also collectively included in Timemagazine's compilation of the twentieth century's 100 most influential people. 

 It's interesting to note that this same Beatles were rejected by numerous record labels which said, “guitar groups are on the way out” and “the Beatles have no future in show business.” Goes to show that people's opinions are based on their perspective,they miss out on a lot of other factors. Amazing huh!

12. Madonna

 

Born in 1958, Madonna Veronica Ciccone, who goes by the stage name, Madonna, is an American pop culture icon who’s often referred to as the Queen of Pop. Born in Michigan, where her father worked as an engineer in the automotive industry, Madonna lost her mother early on to breast cancer at the age of just 5-years old, which had a great impact on her life.

In 1978, while attending the University Michigan School of Music on a dance scholarship, she dropped out to move to New York City to pursue her dreams of becoming a professional dancer. With little money to support herself, she took a job at Dunkin’ Donuts. However, after an incident that occurred shortly after she was hired, where she squirted jelly on a customer accidentally, she was fired.

With only $35 in her pocket on arrival in New York City, Madonna searched for other work. She took random jobs where she could, primarily dancing as a backup dancer for modern dance troupes. One night, when she was returning home after a rehearsal, she was robbed at knife point by two men, leaving her scorned and fearful about her choices to abruptly move to New York City.

However, instead of giving up, even through all the failure and setbacks, she pushed forward. She landed small parts singing and performing with bands such as the Breakfast Club, and eventually she caught the eye of Sire Records founder, Seymour Stein. In 1982, at the age of 24-years old, she debuted her single, Everybody, followed by, Burning Up, both which became huge club hits.

Subsequently, she released her self-titled album, Madonna, and has since become one of the most famous singers to have ever lived, influencing many other modern-day singers and professional dancers.

She has sold more than 300 million albums worldwide. Madonna is the best-selling female recording artist of all time.

13.Oprah Winfrey

 

There are easier ways to grow up than getting publicly fired, after a big buildup, within months of starting a new job in a new town. But that's what happened to Winfrey, who began near the top of the local TV news food chain as co-anchor of WJZ's 6 p.m. weekday newscast with the legendary Jerry Turner. Winfrey's seven and a half months in that co-anchor chair amounted to the first and worst failure of her TV career.Winfrey was given the boot and reportedly told by a producer she was “unfit for television news.” “I had no idea what I was in for or that this was going to be the greatest growing period of my adult life,” Winfrey later said. “It shook me to my very core.”

About it,Oprah has this to say:

“I came to Baltimore when I was 22 years old. Drove my red Cutlass up from Nashville, Tennessee,” says Winfrey who in 1976, was hired as the co-anchor of 6pm newscast. Seven and a half months later, after a big promotional buildup, Oprah would experience what Zurawik calls her “first and worst failure of her TV career.”

“I was removed from the 6 pm. news exactly April 1, 1977,” Winfrey says. “The general manager called me upstairs, and I thought it was an April Fool’s joke when they told me, ‘We have bigger plans for you; we’re going to put you on the morning cut-ins.'”

About another news job Oprah said:

“I once went back … after covering a family that had been burned out and brought them some of my blankets and stuff. And the assistant news director … told me … that if I did that again and they found out about it, I could be fired, because I was involving myself in other people’s stories. Which is true, you’re there to cover the story, not get involved in it…”

Oprah became a media billionaire, hosted the highest ranked TV show of it’s kind in history, and is an incredible philanthropist – getting involved in other people’s stories to help them.

14.Ferrucio Larmbourghini

 

Ferruccio Lamborghini was born into a family of grape farmers, and was always interested in mechanics. After serving in the air force during World War II, Ferruccio took advantage of the post-war need for agriculture supplies by repurposing military machines into tractors. When his tractor business brought him wealth and success, he did what many middle-aged men dream of and in 1958 bought a Ferrari (along with a few other luxury cars of course, but it’s the Ferrari that concerns this story). Ferruccio was happy indulging his passion for cars and even tried his hand at racing once, but because he knew a little something about mechanics, he couldn’t help but notice a few things that he would change. For Ferruccio's taste the Ferrari was too noisy and rough for use on the road, and it had an inferior clutch that often needed repairing.

In the early 1960s Enzo Ferrari and his cars were arguably the reigning superpower of luxury sports cars. Ferruccio Lamborghini took his complaints about his Ferrari all the way to Enzo, who didn’t exactly appreciate being given technical notes from a young tractor manufacturer. When Enzo told him as much, a rivalry was born and Ferruccio’s hobby of driving fast cars turned into a passion for vindication.

Driven by Enzo’s insult, Ferruccio got to work designing his car, and in just 4 months unveiled the Lamborghini 350 GTV at the Turin Motor Show in October 1963. By the end of 1964 Lamborghini sold his first 13 cars (renamed 350 GT), and although he did so at a loss to keep prices competitive with Ferrari, the humble tractor manufacturer proved to be a formidable rival over the years. 

15. Sir James Dyson

It took 5 years and 5,126 failed prototypes for James Dyson to develop the world’s first bagless vacuum cleaner. 10 years later Dyson setup his own manufacturing facility, because other manufacturers wouldn’t produce his vacuum. This excerpt from Australian National Review will interest you:

James Dyson may be known as the inventor of the Dual Cyclone bagless vacuum cleaner and the owner of a $4.4 billion fortune, but for 15 years he was nothing more than just another failed inventor. When speaking of his prototypes, Dyson finds a Thomas Edison quote closest to his heart. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”.

James Dyson started his journey to success far away from home, when he was sent to boarding school after his father died of cancer. He showed signs of creativity long before inventing the vacuum cleaner that would revolutionize the world. Dyson also designed the Ballbarrow [reinterpretation of wheelbarrow] that featured on BBC’s Tomorrow’s WorldTV program.

In the 1970s, irritated by the fact that the vacuum cleaner loses suction as it picks up dirt, Dyson thought of his earlier invention, the Ballbarrow and the idea of creating a vacuum that used cyclonic separation thrived in his head.

In an interview with Entrepreneur, James Dyson mentioned that failure was an important part of his success and wrote on Wired.co.uk that “there are countless times an inventor can give up on an idea. By the time I made my 15th prototype, my third child was born. By 2,627, my wife and I were really counting our pennies. By 3,727, my wife was giving art lessons for some extra cash. These were tough times, but each failure brought me closer to solving the problem.”

The 15 years that Dyson spent improving his product is nothing compared to the ordeal he went through after his vacuum cleaner was ready to see the light of day.

After several attempts to introduce the product to manufacturers from UK, he finally realized that the odds were not in his favor, because accepting such a revolutionary product would automatically mean the end of the vacuum cleaner bags’ market. Therefore, with no other choice he launched his product in Japan where he won the international fair prize and sold the vacuum cleaner for £2,000 per item.

Although the year 1991 was good to James Dyson, two years later he was facing yet another problem after being rejected by American companies including Amway. He tried his best to convince all UK manufacturers to purchase his product.

Successstorydaily.com reports that 10 years after Dyson first uncovered his vacuum cleaner and approximately 25 years after assembling the first pieces of his product, this inventor became world renowned and sold more products than each of the companies that rejected his product in the first place. The slogan “say goodbye to the bag” indeed affected UK’s disposable vacuum cleaner bag market, as people were more willing to purchase a product that was more economic in the long run.

In an interview for Entrepreneur, the inventor admitted that “life is a mountain of solvable problems” and that he hires people who believe that failure is good." He is worth over €7.8 billion today.

16.Jack Canfied

 

Jack Canfield was rejected 144 times before he found a publisher for his book, Chicken Soup for the Soul. When Jack told the publisher he wanted to sell 1.5 million books in the first 18 months, the publisher laughed and said he’d be lucky to sell 20,000.

That first book sold more than 8 million copies in America and 10 million copies around the world. Canfield’s book brand is now a $1 Billion brand.

Canfield’s advice:

“So the reality is that you just have to say, ‘I’m more committed to my vision than I’m committed to your doubt or my fear,’ and just go for it…” (From Conversations with Top Achievers by Woody Woodward)

17.Sochiro  Honda

 

The billion-dollar business that is Honda began with a series of failures and fortunate turns of luck. Honda was turned down by Toyota Motor Corporation for a job after interviewing for a job as an engineer, leaving him jobless for quite some time. He started making scooters of his own at home, and spurred on by his neighbors, finally started his own business.

18. Elvis Presley

 

One of the best-selling artists of all time, Elvis has become a household name even years after his death. But back in 1954, Elvis was still a nobody, and Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, fired Elvis Presley after just one performance telling him, “You ain’t going nowhere, son. You ought to go back to driving a truck.”

19.Michael Jordan

 

Michael Jordan, considered by many to be the greatest basketball player of all time, was devastated when he was cut from his high school varsity basketball team sophomore year. Good thing failure only inspired him to work harder.

Here’s what he said about failure: 

“I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

20. Elizabeth Arden 

 

Florence Nightingale Graham (December 31, 1878 – October 18, 1966), who went by the business name Elizabeth Arden, was a Canadian-born American businesswoman who founded what is now Elizabeth Arden, Inc., and built a cosmetics empire in the United States. By 1929 she owned 150 upscale salons across the United States and Europe. Her 1000 products were found in the luxury market in 22 countries. She was the sole owner, and at the peak of her career, she was one of the wealthiest women in the world.

However, in 1909, at the age of 31-years old, Arden failed in business after a 6-month stint when she formed a partnership with Elizabeth Hubbard. One year later, in 1910, at the age of 32-years old, she pieced together the name Elizabeth Arden with the name “Elizabeth” used in an effort to save money on a sign for her salon, and “Arden,” which stemmed from the name of a nearby farm, thus giving birth to that name, the same year that she opened up the Red Door Salon, in New York City.

In 1912, she traveled to France where she would learn beauty and facial techniques. Upon her return, she joined forces with a chemist to begin developing what would become a vast arsenal of beauty products, lending a hand in catapulting the makeup industry into a widely acceptable practice that moved beyond the upper classes.

Her company, Elizabeth Arden, Inc., has surpassed $1 billion in annual sales, making it one of the most successful beauty businesses ever started still to this day.

21.Katy Perry

 

Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson was born in Santa Barbara, California, to Pentecostal pastors Mary Christine and Maurice Keith Hudson. Her parents are born again Christians, each having turned to religion after a "wild youth".Perry has English, German, Irish, and Portuguese ancestry.Through her mother, she is a niece of film director Frank Perry.She has a younger brother named David, who is a singer, and an older sister, Angela.From ages 3 to 11, Perry often moved across the country as her parents set up churches before settling again in Santa Barbara. Growing up, she attended religious schools and camps, including Paradise Valley Christian School in Arizona and Santa Barbara Christian School in California during her elementary years. Her family struggled financially, sometimes using food stamps and eating from the food bank intended to feed the congregation at her parents' church.

Growing up, Perry and her siblings were not allowed to eat Lucky Charms as the term "luck" reminded their mother of Lucifer, and had to call deviled eggs "angeled eggs".Perry primarily listened to gospel music,as secular music was generally discouraged in the family's home. She discovered popular music through CDs she sneaked from her friends.While not strictly identifying as religious, Perry has stated, "I pray all the time – for self-control, for humility.Following her sister Angela, Perry began singing by practicing with her sister's cassette tapes. She performed the tracks in front of their parents, who suggested she take vocal lessons. She began training at age 9,and was incorporated into her parents' ministry,singing in church from ages 9 to 17.At 13, Perry was given her first guitar for her birthday,and publicly performed songs she wrote.

In 1999, at the age of 15-years old, she dropped out of high school after completing her GED in order to pursue music full time. She moved to Tennessee where she signed with Red Hill Records and debuted a Gospel record entitled, Katy Hudson in March, 2001 at the age of 17-years old. It sold only 200 copies before the label ceased its operations a few months later.

In 2004, at the age of 20-years old, she signed with another label called Java, which was associated with The Island Def Jam Music Group, to work on her solo record. However, after Def Jam dropped Java, the record was shelved. Afterwards, Perry signed with Columbia Records, and recorded new music over the next two years. But before the record was completed, she was dropped from that label as well.

However, her big break came in 2007 when she signed with Capitol Records. In 2008, when she released the would-be-hit song, I Kissed a Girl, Perry was 24-years old. What seemed like an overnight success actually took 9 years to accomplish from the time that she had dropped out of high school.

 22.Mark Cuban

 

Born in 1958 in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, Mark Cuban is an American entrepreneur and pop culture icon, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and star of the hit television show, Shark Tank. However, things weren’t always so rosy for Cuban. He learned failure the hard way, by failing numerous times, again and again before he ever attained any semblance of fame.

In his earliest years, Cuban was always a tinkerer with an entrepreneurial spirit. From selling garbage bags to running newspapers and everything in between, Cuban learned early on how the mechanics of business worked, but that didn’t mean he didn’t experience the gut-wrenching pain of failure along the way.

In 1982, at the age of 24-years old, he moved to Dallas, Texas, on the word of some of his college friends, in a 1977 Fiat X19 that had a hole in the floorboard. Upon his arrival, he worked numerous odd jobs. He simply couldn’t find something that he was good at.

He failed at bartending because he couldn’t open a bottle of wine without the cork falling in. He failed at short-order cooking because he never knew when the food was ready unless he cut off a piece and tasted it. And he failed as a salesman at a computer distributor when he was fired after less than a year on the job.

Cuban simply couldn’t get anything right. At the age of 25 years-old, one year after he arrived in Dallas, he decided to start his own company, MicroSolutions, selling software, doing training and configuring networks and computers. He grew that company to $30 million dollars in revenue, and it was later acquired by CompuServe in 1990 at the age of 32-years old.

That gave him the ability to create Broadcast.com in 1995, at the age of 37-years old, a company that was later acquired by Yahoo in 1999 when it was sold for $5.7 billion in stock. Cuban was 41-years old, famous and wealthy beyond measure. Although he had failed numerous times and been through the ringer, he never gave up.

23.Abraham Lincoln

 

Born in 1809, Abraham Lincoln is famously known for being the 16th President of the United States. He was a champion of equal rights, and he blazed a trail towards the freedom of slaves in America. But Lincoln didn’t start out as a success story. He failed numerous times before attaining the highest office in the land.

In 1832, when he was 23-years old, Lincoln lost his job. At the same time, he also lost his bid for State Legislature. Just 3 years later, at the age of 26, the love of his life, Ann Rutledge died. Another three years later? He lost his bid to become Speaker in the Illinois House of Representatives.

In 1848, at the age of 39-years old, Lincoln also failed in his bid to become Commissioner of the General Land Office in D.C. Ten years after that, at the age of 49-years old, he was defeated in his quest to become a U.S. Senator. Of course, through all the personal, business and political failures, Lincoln didn’t give up.

In 1846, Lincoln was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives where he drafted a bill to abolish slavery. In 1861, at the age of 52, he secured the office of President of the United States and has since become one of the most famous failures to ever hold office in the United States. His face also appears on the U.S. five-dollar bill.

24. Richie Ashburn

Richie Ashburn was chosen to play in the Esquire Game in New York City with other teens who had baseball talent. Richie and his family travelled from their Nebraskan town of 950 people to play. Branch Rickey, who was considered the premiere judge of baseball talent, shook Ashburn’s hand after the game and said, “Son, you should go back and do whatever it was you were going to do before you decided to be a ballplayer.”

One Hall of Fame career later, Ashburn demonstrated that it’s important to persevere. Ashburn did so well that each year the Phillies present the Richie Ashburn Special Achievement Award to “a member of the Phillies organization, and an area at the Phillies’ stadium, is named “Ashburn Alley” in his honor.

25. Stephen King

The first book by this author, the iconic thriller Carrie, received 30 rejections, finally causing King to give up and throw it in the trash. His wife fished it out and encouraged him to resubmit it, and the rest is history, with King now having hundreds of books published the distinction of being one of the best-selling authors of all time.

26. Lucille ball

Lucille Ball, most widely known as the star of, I Love Lucy, had never made a name for herself. She was a failed actress and B movie star. While her instructors told her to pursue another career, she continued to follow her passion and soon got offered a star position. She was happy to prove anyone who doubted her wrong and has done so throughout her career. Since then, she has received 13 Emmy nominations, 4 of which have resulted in wins

29.Henry Ford

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” – Henry A. Ford

Henry Ford is one of the most renowned entrepreneurs in history. He optimized transportation and forever changed the United States automobile industry. His innovative manufacturing process produced low-cost, reliable vehicles, while simultaneously keeping his workers well-paid and loyal.

Before his success, however, Ford encountered failure during initial production of his first automobile. His investors got cold feet over Ford’s meticulousness, and he was unable to find solid financial backing for the automobile in his first two ventures. Nonetheless, Ford used the lessons from these failures to instruct his future success as an inventor and a businessman.

Once Ford created the Quadricycle, an automobile prototype, he needed funding to start work on enhancing it. Capital was difficult to attain, however, and in the late 1800s no one had established a standard business model for the automobile industry.Ford convinced William H. Murphy, a Detroit businessman, to back his automobile production. The Detroit Automobile Company resulted from this union, but problems arose shortly after its creation. In 1901, a year and a half after the company began operations, Murphy and the shareholders got restless. Ford wanted to create the perfect automobile design, but the board saw little results. Soon after, they dissolved the company.

Ford recalibrated his efforts after his first failure. He realized that his previous automobile design depended on serving numerous consumer needs. He convinced Murphy to give him a second chance, a rare occurrence in the early 20th century. However, their second venture, the Henry Ford Company, stumbled from the start. Ford felt that Murphy pressured him to prepare the automobile for production and set unrealistic expectations from the beginning. Shortly after Murphy brought in an outside manager to supervise Ford’s process, Ford left the company and everyone wrote him off.

These two failures could have been career-ending, but Ford continued. Several years after the second parting with Murphy, Ford met Alexander Malcomson, a coal magnate with a risk-taking spirit like Ford. Malcomson gave Ford full control over his production, and the company introduced the Model A in 1904.

For Henry Ford, failure did not hinder innovation, but served as the impetus to hone his vision for a technology that would ultimately transform the world. 

28. Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was fired from the company he founded – Apple. He also failed with NeXT computer company and the Lisa computer. When Jobs returned to Apple, he led the business to become the most profitable company in the US.

29. Albert Einstein

 Einstein’s name is synonymous with genius, but he didn’t always show such promise. Einstein did not speak until he was four and did not read until he was seven, causing his teachers and parents to think he was mentally handicapped, slow and anti-social. Eventually, he was expelled from school and was refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School. It might have taken him a bit longer, but most people would agree that he caught on pretty well in the end, winning the Nobel Prize and changing the face of modern physics.

30. Walt Disney

 

Walt Disney was born on December 5, 1901, at 1249 Tripp Avenue, in Chicago's Hermosaneighborhood.He was the fourth son of Elias Disney‍—‌born in the Province of Canada, to Irish parents‍—‌and Flora , an American of German and English descent. Aside from Disney, Elias and Call's sons were Herbert, Raymond and Roy; the couple had a fifth child, Ruth, in December 1903.In 1906, when Disney was four, the family moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri, where his uncle Robert had just purchased land. In Marceline, Disney developed his interest in drawing when he was paid to draw the horse of a retired neighborhood doctor.

Walt's brothers were so frustrated about their relationship with their dad that they all one by one ran away from home early in their lives. First it was Herb and Ray over a dispute about money they had earned. Later it would be Roy, who at 19 felt treated like a little boy by his father's domineering attitude. Eager to move on himself, Walt himself would lie about his age so he could be an ambulance driver during World War I.

Still, despite the dysfunctionality he and his family experienced, Walt Disney became the leader and the voice of family entertainment. Of Disneyland, he would comment how badly he wanted a place where children and parents could enjoy time together. Millions of families come together because of the entertainment Walt Disney and his legacy has produced. And he, along with his brother, did their best to honor and support their parents until the day they died. Importantly, he was a good son.

At age 22, Walt experienced bankruptcy after the failure of a cartoon series in Kansas City. He headed to Los Angeles with $40 in cash, and an imitation-leather suitcase containing only a shirt, two undershorts, two pairs of socks and some drawing materials. Feeling that others did animation better, his goal was to be an actor out in Hollywood. It never occurred.

The upside was that he and his brother Roy realized there was no animation business headquartered in California. They set up stakes and the rest is history. In time they became the most successful team of brothers in Hollywood.

On the heels of a successful run with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Walt learned not only that he did not hold ownership of the character, but that most of the artists who worked for him had committed themselves to working for the distributor instead. Essentially, Walt's entire organization was taken from him, with the exception of his artist Ub Iwerks.

Still, on a train ride back from that fateful meeting in New York, Walt created a new character in Mickey Mouse, who would serve as symbol of the entire company. Iwerks himself would serve to help design Mickey, and he supported Walt in pioneering many innovative achievements, including the xerographic process adapted for cel animation and work for WED enterprises. Most importantly, he was considered Walt's oldest friend.

In the early 1930s, Walt suffered what he called, "a heck of a breakdown." He was anxious about the ability for cartoon shorts to really deliver serious profit. Beyond being irritable at his employees, that breakdown included sleepless hours in bed at night. There were story sessions where he was completely unfocused and unable to contribute. He would even plunge into crying spells at a moment's notice. At the urging of others, he and his wife took a second honeymoon by going on a long-anticipated voyage down the Mississippi River. But when they arrived at the St. Louis waterfront, they found out that the Great Depression had wiped out the passenger trade. They had to go elsewhere to vacation.

Ironic then, when Walt celebrated his and Lillian's anniversary days before Disneyland opened in 1955, they did so by taking their invited friends on the first trip down the Rivers of America on the newly built Mark Twain Steamboat. I wonder if that steamboat would have been dreamed of, much less built, if Walt hadn't wanted so badly to ride down the river on one.

And of course, returning from that second honeymoon, Walt was refreshed and ready to start on something really ambitious: The development of a full-length animated feature we would know as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It would be triumphant success.

From the windfall of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt and Roy built a home so their aging parents could be close to them in California. Only poor construction and subsequent attempts at repairing it by studio workmen ended in their mother dying one morning from carbon monoxide poisoning. Walt and Roy were devastated by her death.

Just prior to World War II, Walt experienced an acrimonious strike by his animators. The experience severed him from artists he had thought to be close to for years. To settle the strike, his brother sent him away to South America on a good will tour for the U.S.

From this good will tour came the films Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros. More importantly, Walt learned the importance of teamwork. He said: "Whatever we accomplish is due to the combined effort. The organization must be with you or you don't get it done." Years after he died, his artists would recall with great emotion the relationship and experience they had working with Walt.

On the morning following December 7, 1941, the United States Army took over the Walt Disney Studios as a repair shop for tanks and artillery. Walt's artists went to war. Worldwide markets were closed to film distribution. And even Walt himself had to have a government ID to get on his own property. Working on government projects, bookkeepers would question all expenditures.

Working on one project for the treasury department, Walt created a film starring Donald Duck called, The New Spirit. The film did much to inspire Americans to pay their taxes, something not commonly done back then. Those monies served to help win the war.

The company had more than $4 million in debts, and business was still very slow in the aftermath of World War II. The company was distributing films in Europe, but they had difficulty getting monies to come back to the Studios in the United States. Described by Roy O. Disney as "the lost years," after a heated exchange one night, he told Walt: "Look, you're letting this place drive you to the nuthouse. That's one place I'm not going with you!" Still, Walt struggled to deal with the stress he was facing.

With monies held in Europe, they began producing some of their first feature films across the seas. This supported Walt as he learned to diversify his studio beyond doing animation. He also took up a new hobby to deal with his stress: trains. And that interest in trains fed his interest in building a park with a train running around it.

Walt could not find the money to build Disneyland. The only way he could see was in doing television. But the major Hollywood studios put pressure on each other not to support television production as it would ruin the movie business.

Walt took courage and went with television anyway. From it, we have classics like The Mickey Mouse Club, Davy Crockett, and The Wonderful World of Color. Moreover, Walt gained the financing to open Disneyland.

On July 17, 1955, Walt Disney dedicated Disneyland before a television audience of millions. Meanwhile, forged tickets were bringing thousands of people into the park without his knowledge. The newly poured asphalt melted the heels of women, and a plumber's strike kept drinking fountains from being installed in time. Critics blasted it as "Black Sunday."

Walt resisted allowing the park to become poorly cared for. He held the park to high standards of customer service as well as paying attention to detail. The result was that Disneyland became a phenomenal success, spawning other parks, and creating a critical component of the Walt Disney Company.

So beyond all that disappointment and learning came fantastic success. Walt would say, "Get a good idea, and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it's done, and done right." In picking himself up and in learning from his mistakes and moved on. He said: "To some people, I am kind of a Merlin who takes lots of crazy chances, but rarely makes mistakes. I've made some bad ones, but, fortunately, the successes have come along fast enough to cover up the mistakes. When you go to bat as many times as I do. you're bound to get a good average."

31. Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison was an American inventor and entrepreneur born in 1847 in Milan, Ohio, one of seven siblings in a very large family. Edison was home schooled by his mother and developed hearing problems early on in life. He was trained to use the telegraph after a train almost struck the son of a station agent who was so grateful that he taught Edison how to use the system, eventually leading to a job working for Western Union.

In 1877, at the age of 30-years old, Edison invented the phonograph, an invention that was so magical that it made the public dub him with the name “The Wizard of Menlo Park.” In 1878, just a year later, Edison began working on a commercially-viable incandescent lightbulb that would be both long-lasting and highly efficient by not drawing too much energy to operate.

Thomas Edison went through thousands of iterations to make this dream a reality. In fact, he failed over 10,000 times trying to invent a commercially-viable electric bulb. At one point, when asked by a reporter whether he felt like a failure after so many failed attempts. He said, “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”

Edison had a huge impact on society, holding 1,093 patents to his name at the time of his death. His work in a number of fields created the basis for much of the technologies that we enjoy today and take for granted. However, like anyone else, he suffered through failure numerous time, but where others quit, he persisted.