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5 Amazing Success Stories That Started Out As Failures

By David Kiger

Image courtesy of Stephanie Lawton at Flickr.comStephen King

+The lives of the elite and successful usually inspire us to strive for more of ourselves. We want to live in their homes, drive their cars and run business like the ones that made them rich and famous. Everything seems to be perfect from the perspective of those who don’t know the real stories behind the names we today associate with achievement. The truth is, the reality sometimes hides a story of constant failure and rejection that was met with perseverance and resilience. Here are some amazing stories of conquering adversity and persevering to get where you want in life. These famous people had to work hard a endure failure to get where they wanted to be in life.

+Henry Ford

Is hard to think about anything else other than success and wealth when one mentions the name Henry Ford. The Ford Motor Company is one of the most successful automotive companies of all times, and Henry Ford is considered one of America’s finance titans. As unbelievable as it may be, Henry Ford dealt with his share of failure before we struck gold. His first company, the Detroit Automobile Company went bankrupt and later it was reorganized as the Henry Ford Company. Just one year after it was founded, Ford left after disputes with his financial backers and accepted his second defeat. The company eventually became the Cadillac Automobile Company. Henry Ford went ahead and gave it a third try and founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903 and well… we all know how that worked out. Henry Ford’s introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry.

+Walt Disney

Everyone knows the story of how Walt Disney was fired by the editor of the Kansas City Star paper in 1919 from his job because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas”, but that was not his only failure; he later acquired Laugh-O-Gram, an animation studio that went bankrupt due to Disney’s inability to handle the company finances correctly and thus getting the studio in deep debt. His ability to learn from his failures and to overcome adversity is what made Walt Disney as successful as we all know. All of these mistakes helped him pave the way to become the idol of millions whose lives have been touched by the message of his creations and the wonderful ramifications of the work he did throughout his career.

+Thomas Edison

Edison is responsible for holding 1,093 US patents to his name as well as many others in different countries around the world. An accomplished businessman like Edison was no stranger to failure, even from an early age his own teachers dubbed him “too stupid to learn anything” and he was laid off from his first couple of jobs for not being as productive as they expected. Thomas Edison embraced failure as was never deter by it. He firmly believed that failing only meant discovering the wrong way of doing something, which he found to be useful information no matter what. Edison is the embodiment of resilience and hard work in the face of adversity.

+Stephen King.

King is definitely the most successful writer of our generation with more than 350 million books sold. As a businessman, few are able to match King’s accomplishments. He has written 54 novels, more than 200 short stories and many of them have ended up in the big screen and not without great recognition.

One of the things most people don’t know about King, is the fact that one of his most successful titles, Carrie, was rejected about 30 times before it was published. The story tells that he even went as far as throwing his manuscript into the garbage out of sheer frustration.

Stephen King’s story was one of a man working as an English teacher and selling short stories to make ends meet. Through perseverance, hard work and a supportive wife, he was able to reap the fruits of his hard work and become the inspiration he is today.

+Colonel Sanders

The founder of KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) did not even begin to push his fried chicken recipe to restaurants until he was 62. He was shut down 1,009 times and told his product wasn’t special. Sanders worked many odd jobs and did a little bit of everything, but he continued to perfect his recipe until finally in 1952, he started to sell his chicken in a roadside restaurant. The first KFC opened in Salt Lake City, Utah, and its sales tripled within the first year, all thanks to the colonels amazing chicken recipe.

The expansion of the company was something unheard off and at 74 years old; the colonel sold his company for $2 million dollars but retained the rights to the Canadian franchises.

Image courtesy of XWRN at Flickr.com