From failure to huge success. Stories 59 Famously Successful People Who Failed At First

''Success consists of going
from failure to failure
without loss of enthusiasm”
— Winston Churchill

INTRODUCTION
Not everyone who’s on top today got there with
success after success. More often than not, those who
history best remembers were faced with numerous
obstacles that forced them to work harder and show
more determination than others.
Most people who succeed on any massive level
are people who try… everything, and as a result, may
often fail.
Failure is not the alternative to success. It’s
something to be avoided, but it’s also only a temporary
setback on a bigger, more significant course.
Everybody encounters failure at one point or another.
What truly matters is how you react to and learn from
that failure.
When we fail, it makes us question everything,
right down to the very heart of who we are and why
we’ve been put here on this earth. But failure, as much
as it hurts, is also a necessary part of life. It’s the
pathway to our goals.
The road to success is often paved with rejection
and failure. The difference between those who succeed

and those fail comes down to whether or not they
choose to rise above the criticism.
The fear of failing can be immobilizing – it can
cause us to do nothing, and therefore resist moving
forward. But when we allow fear to stop our forward
progress in life, we're likely to miss some great
opportunities along the way.
Throughout history, there have been thousands
of famous failures. In fact, the most successful and
famous people in the world have endured the most
failures in life. They’ve failed repeatedly. But they’ve
also gotten back up. They didn’t throw in that proverbial
towel. They didn’t call it quits or head for the ropes.
They got up and kept going. And that’s just what it
takes to succeed.
Below, you’ll find 59 famous people who failed at
first. Their stories end in massive success, but all of
them are rooted in failure. They’re perfect examples of
why failure should never stop you from following your
vision. When you read their stories, you'll realize just
what they had to go through to succeed. These were
people who didn’t give up in the face of their struggles.
They’re people that persevered. They pushed through
their present-day limitations, had breakthroughs, and

whose names have become synonymous with success
in their respective fields of study and work.
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Here are the stories 59 Famously Successful
People Who Failed At First (business gurus, public
figures, Hollywood types, musicians, inventors,
scientist and thinkers, writers and artist, athletes):
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln, born in 1809, 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.
While today he is remembered as one of the
greatest leaders of our nation, Lincoln’s life wasn’t so
easy. As a young man Lincoln entered military service
in the Black Hawk war as a captain. Yet left as a

private (if you’re not familiar with military ranks, just
know that private is as low as it goes).
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 1858 Lincoln tried for a seat in the Illinois
senate. This led to a series of hotly contested debates,
the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
Lincoln lost the senate election, but really impressed a
lot of the “right” people, even with his loss.
Two years later, in 1861, at the age of 52, he ran for
president of the United States and won. Thankfully he

did not let lack of formal education, initial failure or
setbacks rattle him. 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.
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein, born in 1879, the man that we all
know as one of the most brilliant minds to have ever
lived, was once considered a major failure.
Most of us take Einstein’s name as synonymous
with genius, but he didn’t always show such promise.
In fact, 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. In 1895, at the age of 16, he failed to
pass the examination for entrance into the Swiss
Federal Polytechnic school located in Zurich. Einstein
buckled down, received the requisite training and
applied to Zurich Polytechnic again, and of course was
accepted. After graduating, he wandered, unsure of
what to do with his life. After some time, he ended up
taking a job as an insurance salesman, going door to
door in an attempt to sell insurance. Eventually, 2 years

later, he took a job at the Patent Office as an assistant
examiner, evaluating patent applications for a variety of
devices.
A few years later he had a PHD and was
recognized as a leading theorist. In 1921 won the
Nobel Prize for physics and began to be recognized
as the genius of our modern era. He created the
beginnings of quantum theory.
Beyonce Knowles
Beyonce Knowles was born in 1981 in Houston,
Texas, to Celestine "Tina" Knowles (née Beyincé), a
hairdresser and salon owner, and Mathew Knowles, a
Xerox sales manager. Beyoncé attended St. Mary's
Montessori School in Houston, where she enrolled in
dance classes. Her singing talent was discovered
when dance instructor Darlette Johnson began
humming a song and she finished it, able to hit the
high-pitched notes. Beyoncé's interest in music and
performing continued after winning a school talent
show at age seven, singing John Lennon's "Imagine" to
beat 15/16-year-olds.
When Beyoncé was eight, she and childhood

friend Kelly Rowland met LaTavia Roberson while at an
audition for an all-girl entertainment group. They were
placed into a group called Girl's Tyme with three other
girls, and rapped and danced on the talent show circuit
in Houston. After seeing the group, R&B producer Arne
Frager brought them to his Northern California studio
and placed them in Star Search, the largest talent
show on national TV at the time. Girl's Tyme failed to
win, and Beyoncé later said the song they performed
was not good. In 1995 Beyoncé's father resigned from
his job to manage the group. The group changed their
name to Destiny's Child in 1996. In 1997, Destiny's
Child released their major label debut song "Killing
Time" on the soundtrack to the 1997 film, Men in Black.
Those years were fraught with difficulties. After every
setback and failure, Beyonce and the other three girls
in the group, Kelly Rowland, LaTavia Robertson and
LeToya Luckett, pushed forward.
In 1996, the group signed to Columbia Records
and had limited commercial success. But a storm was
brewing internally. Robertson and Luckett soon quit the
group due to a conflict amongst the members, claiming
that Mathew Knowles was favoring Knowles and
Rowland. Eventually, the two were replaced, but

ultimately, the fourth member was cut, leaving only
three in the group, with Michelle Williams rounding out
the trio.
Beyoncé has won 22 Grammy Awards, both as a
solo artist and member of Destiny's Child, making her
the second most honored female artist by the
Grammys. For her, the failures started early in life but
didn’t dissuade or discourage her from pursuing her
dreams.
Bill Gates
Born in 1955 in Seattle, Washington, Bill Gates
by no means struggled as a child. In fact, he had quite
the stable upper-middle-class upbringing, with a
renowned lawyer for a father, William H. Gates, Sr. It
was originally intended by Gates’ parents that he follow
in his father’s footsteps and become a lawyer.
At the early age of 17-years old, Gates had
demonstrated the entrepreneurial spirit, forming a
company with his childhood friend, Paul Allen, called
Traf-O-Data, in an effort to analyze and process raw
traffic data from traffic counters and present that data
in a reporting format to traffic engineers. Their goal was

to build a hardware device that could read traffic data
tapes and produce the results without having to do the
work manually.
On the big day of the reveal, a supervisor from
the County of Seattle’s traffic department came to see
it and the device failed to work. The business failed
before it had much of a chance to get off the ground,
giving Gates an invaluable lesson that he would carry
forward with him.
In 1973, Gates enrolled in Harvard University
after scoring a near-perfect SAT score of 1590 out of
1600. However, it was the following year that Gates
dropped out of Harvard to start Microsoft with partner,
Paul Allen. The decision, while contentious at the time,
was okayed by his parents after much discussion.
Obviously, it was the right move. Now Microsoft is one
of the biggest computer and software companies in the
world, and Gates is one of the richest men in the entire
world with a net worth.
Charles Darwin
Born in the same year as Abraham Lincoln, in
1809, Charles Darwin’s life was once considered a

major failure by even his own father. In fact, it was due
to his interest in nature that Darwin ended up
neglecting his medical studies at the University of
Edinburgh, and in 1827, dropped out and quit school,
leading his father to say, “You care for nothing but
shooting, dogs and rat catching.”
In a second attempt at school, Darwin enrolled in
Christ’s College at the University of Cambridge the
following winter semester. In 1831, he realized that this
wasn’t for him either, as he was too distracted to finish
schooling. Once again, he quit and dropped out of
college for the second time.
In his early years, Darwin gave up on having a
medical career and was often chastised by his father
for being lazy and too dreamy. Darwin himself wrote, “I
was considered by all my masters and my father, a
very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard
of intellect.” In effect, he was summed up as a failure in
life, or as an “idle gentlemen,” which was another
phrase used by his father.
Of course, things didn’t remain that way for Darwin.
Today, he is considered as one of the most influential
scientific minds of our time. His theories on natural
selection and evolution have had a major impact on

our understanding of species and life here on earth,
along with the progress of biological organisms.
Charles Schulz
Charles Monroe Schulz, born in 1922, died in
2000, nicknamed Sparky, was an American cartoonist
best known for the comic strip Peanuts (which featured
the characters Charlie Brown and Snoopy, among
others). He is widely regarded as one of the most
influential cartoonists of all time, cited as a major
influence by many later cartoonists, including Jim
Davis, Bill Watterson, and Matt Groening.
Schulz attended Richards Gordon Elementary
School in Saint Paul, where he skipped two half-
grades. He became a shy, timid teenager, perhaps as a
result of being the youngest in his class at Central High
School. One well-known episode in his high school life
was the rejection of his drawings by his high school
yearbook, which he referred to in Peanuts years later,
when he had Lucy ask Charlie Brown to sign a picture
he drew of a horse, only to then say it was a prank.
Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip has had enduring
fame, yet this cartoonist had every cartoon he

submitted rejected by his high school yearbook staff.
Even after high school, Schultz didn’t have it easy,
applying and being rejected for a position working with
Walt Disney.
Charlie Chaplin
Born in 1889 in London, England, Chaplin’s early
years were tumultuous at best. Born into poverty,
Chaplin’s father abandoned them at the age of 2-years
old, leaving his mother with no real income aside from
the odd side job making dresses or nursing. His father
provided no financial support for the family and at the
age of 7-years old, Chaplin was forced to go to a
workhouse, an institution in the UK where the destitute
denizens of a parish are sent to work in exchange for
room and board.
After returning from the workhouse for a brief
period, Chaplin’s mother was committed to a mental
asylum at the age of 9-years old, forcing him to go
back to the workhouse again. Afterwards, a brief two
years later, Chaplin’s father, a raging alcoholic at the
time, died of cirrhosis of the liver.
Chaplin’s mother battled mental illness for

several years after that, until she was permanently
committed to an asylum where she stayed until her
death in 1928. In the meantime, Chaplin and his
brother, Sydney, were on their own, oftentimes going
without food for days while trying to survive in the wake
of all the familial turmoil.
During this time, Chaplin partook in stage plays
and enhanced his comedic talents along with his step-
dancing abilities. Ultimately, he found his way to
Hollywood, California where Chaplin was famously
turned away and snubbed, only later to become the
greatest silent-film actor to have ever lived.
It’s hard to imagine film without the iconic Charlie
Chaplin, but his act was initially rejected by Hollywood
studio chiefs because they felt it was a little too
nonsensical to ever sell.
Chris Gardner
Author of critically acclaimed "Pursuit of
Happyness", Entrepreneur, Single Parent and
International Speaker. Born in 1954, Gardner had a
rough upbringing. With a father that wasn’t present, his
mother and siblings suffered abuse at the hands of his

stepfather. In and out of the foster care system,
Gardener was at the mercy of an unstable childhood.
In 1977, Gardener married Sherry Dyson. But
after a 3-month affair with another woman who became
pregnant with his child, he decided to leave his first
wife. In 1981, his son, Christopher Gardner Jr. was
born while working as a research lab assistant at
UCSF, which didn’t pay enough to help support his
family. This led to the decision to become a medical-
equipment salesman.
The story of Chris Gardener was chronicled in
one of the most inspiring movies in present-day history,
The Pursuit of Happyness, starring Will Smith, in 2006.
If you’ve seen the movie, you likely already know
how this turned out. Gardener struggled, but was
committed to living a better life, one that didn’t involve
so much struggle and turmoil. He met a man driving a
red Ferrari who ultimately led him on a career path to
become a stockbroker. But, during that journey, he
suffered through an eviction and homelessness, jail
and an eventual divorce. But that didn’t stop him. Not
whatsoever.
Gardner wrote his autobiography to shed light on
his early struggles and failures in life, which resulted in

an immense amount of pain.
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Colonel Harland Sanders
Born in 1890 in Indiana, Colonel Harland
Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken
(KFC), is famous not only for his chicken recipe, but
also his numerous failures in life and in business. At
the ripe young age of 5-years old, his father died,
leaving only his mother to fend for and support three
children, including Harland.
While his mother left for days on end, Harland
was forced to help take care of his siblings and
became a proficient cook during this time, learning how
to make bread and vegetables and advancing in his
knowledge of cooking and preparing meat by the age
of just 7-years old. By 10-years old, he was already
working as a farmhand.
In 1902, at the age of 12-years old, his mother
remarried, subjecting the children to an arduous
environment that ultimately forced Harland to leave
home the following year. By 14-years old, he began

working as a farmhand at another farm in Southern
Indiana.
Sanders worked odd jobs for years, never really
able to make anything stick. He owned a ferry boat
company on the Ohio River, sold tires in Winchester
Kentucky, and later, in 1930, opened a restaurant
inside a Shell Oil Company-owned gas station in North
Corbin Kentucky where he began serving chicken
dishes. He was 40-years old at the time.
In July 1939, he came to own a motel and a
restaurant, which was destroyed by a fire just 4 months
later. But it wasn’t until 1940 when he began to finalize
his so-called “secret” chicken recipe, at the age of 50-
years old. However, in 1942, during the war, he sold
his business and subsequently got divorced in 1947.
In 1955, another one of his restaurants failed
after an Interstate route that led traffic past that
restaurant, was changed. That year, with just a $105
social security check to his name, at the age of 65-
years old, he set out to sell his franchised-chicken
model to restaurants across the country. He was
famously rejected by 1,009 restaurants. Then he found
a partner with whom he build the KFC franchise
powerhouse (over 15,000 restaurants).

Curtis Jackson A.K.A. 50-Cent
Born in 1975, in Queens, New York, Curtis
Jackson, professionally known as 50-Cent, had a
tumultuous past and a precarious upbringing. Growing
up in poverty isn’t easy on anyone, especially in the
Projects in New York’s roughest neighborhoods. Not
only were drugs and crime all around him, but his own
birth mother, Sabrina, was a drug dealer.
At the ripe young age of just 8-years old, his
mother, however, died in what’s been coined a
“mysterious” fire. His father left, leaving only his
grandmother to help raise young Jackson, who started
dealing drugs at the age of 12-years old during what’s
been labeled the “crack epidemic,” in the 1980’s.
In 1994, at the age of 19-years old, after a string
of run-ins with the cops and a subsequent arrest for
possession of drugs and a firearm, he was sentenced
to serve 3 to 9 years in prison, but was instead sent to
a bootcamp where he spent just 6 months, earning his
GED in the meantime.
It was after his release that he adopted the name
50-Cent as a moniker for change, naming himself after

a local bank robber by the same name. He states that
he chose that name “because it says everything I want
it to say. I’m the same kind of person 50-Cent was. I
provide for myself by any means.”
In 2000, he was infamously shot 9 times at close
range by an assailant outside his grandmother’s home
and left for dead. While in the hospital, he signed a
deal with Columbia records, but was subsequently
dropped from that label and even blacklisted within the
recording industry due to a song entitled, “Ghetto
Qu’ran,” forcing him to go to Canada to record over 30
songs and release a mixtape.
In 2002, Eminem heard his song, “Guess Who’s
Back?” and ultimately signed him to his label, Shady
Records. He was coached by both Eminem and Dr.
Dre, and released his first studio album, Get Rich or
Die Tryin’, which later went 6-times platinum in the
United States and Jackson has since become one of
the world’s most famous and best-selling rappers.
Dr Seuss
Born in 1904 as Theodor Seuss Geisel, he took
on the name of Dr. Seuss in 1927 during his stint at

Dartmouth and Lincoln College, Oxford, where he
enrolled with the intention of earning his PhD in English
Literature. But he gave up in his career pursuits at the
behest of Helen Palm, whom he met at the college,
encouraging him to take up a career in drawing
instead.
In 1928, they married, and he worked drawing
advertisements for years for a variety of notable
companies such as NBC, Standard Oil and General
Electric. In 1937, 9 years after he married his
sweetheart, he wrote his first manuscript entitled, And
to Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street.
That initial manuscript was famously rejected 28
times prior to being accepted by Random
House/Vanguard Press. Ultimately, it led John O’Hara,
who once held the office of President of the company
to remark that “I’ve published any number of great
writers, from William Faulkner to John O’Hara, but
there’s only one genius on my authors list. His name is
Ted Geisel.”
By the time of Geisel’s death in 1991, he had
sold over 600 million copies of his books, which had
been translated into 20 different languages, making
him by far one of the most famous failures to have ever

lived. His persistence carried him through, allowing him
to succeed where others might have thrown in the
towel and given up.
Elizabeth Arden
Canadian, Elizabeth Arden (real name Florence
Nightingale Graham), born in 1878, was a business
magnate who overcame failure to achieve tremendous
success, creating an unprecedented beauty empire by
1929 that included 150 salons throughout the United
States and Europe, and eventually selling over 1000
products across 22 separate countries. At the height of
her success, during her lifetime, she was also
considered to be 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.
Elizabeth Blackwell
Elizabeth Blackwell, born in 1821 (died 1910),
was a British physician, notable as the first woman to
receive a medical degree in the United States (1849)
and the first woman on the Medical Register of the
General Medical Council. She was the first woman to
graduate from a medical school, a pioneer in promoting
the education of women in medicine in the United
States, and a social and moral reformer in both the

United States and the United Kingdom.
Elizabeth was determined to go to medical
school. She consulted with some family friends who
were physicians. They advised her to give up – women
couldn’t become doctors back then. Elizabeth
Blackwell didn’t give up. She got a job, worked hard
and saved enough money for school. She applied to
medical school, and received rejections from all 29
colleges to which she applied. Blackwell visited the
schools in person to try to convince them to admit her.
Numerous times she was advised to dress like a man
and pretend to be a man to get schooling. She didn’t
pretend to be anyone else. And, her persistence paid
off.
Elizabeth was accepted by accident at Hobart
College (then Geneva Medical College). The dean and
faculty that evaluated potential students put her
candidacy up for a vote with the 150 men currently
enrolled. The school decided that if even one person
objected, Blackwell would be denied admission. The
150 men thought the vote was a joke and unanimously
voted to accept her — as a joke. Needless to say,
students and faculty were disappointed when she
matriculated. Fortunately, that didn’t stop her.

Her anatomy professor suggested that she
excuse herself from the training on reproduction,
because the topic was not appropriate for a woman’s
delicate mind. Elizabeth Blackwell remained. Many
MDs even refused to work with Blackwell as she got
her medical training. That didn’t stop her either.
Elizabeth Blackwell went on to become the first
woman to receive a medical degree in the U.S. When
she received her degree, Blackwell was called last,
after all the men. When the dean, Dr. Charles Lee,
conferred her degree, he stood up and bowed to her
out of admiration. The crowd was filled with local
women who wanted to see history and cheered for
Blackwell.
Blackwell went on to build a medical practice, to
create a place where women could have medical
internships (since many healthcare facilities didn’t
welcome women) and to establish a medical college
for women. Blackwell paved the way for others. Good
thing Elizabeth Blackwell didn’t listen other people’s
expectations.

Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley, born in 1935, is a famous
American musician who’s sold over 1 billion records
worldwide. Yet, while Presley’s fame is often
celebrated, his failures are usually overlooked. The
family lived in a shotgun house for several years until
hard financial times forced them out due to an inability
to maintain the payments.
In 1948, at the age of 13-years old, Presley’s
family moved to Memphis, Tennessee from their home
in Mississippi. They lived in boarding houses, which
were temporary rooms that could be rented in a larger
home where the common areas were usually
maintained, before being able to afford a two-bedroom
apartment in a public-housing complex.
In 1953, when he was 18-years old, he walked
into Sun Records, where he recorded a demo disc.
Nothing came of it. One year later, in 1954, he walked
back into Sun Records to record another demo, which
he also failed to make any traction with. The same
year, he failed an audition to become part of a vocalist
quartet called the Songfellows. When asked by his
father what had happened, Presley stated, “They told

me I couldn’t sing.”
He was so frustrated, that he decided to take up
a job as a truck driver. Through a friend named Ronnie
Smith, Presley met Eddie Bond, who led Smith’s
professional band. Turned out they were looking for a
vocalist. They arranged some more recordings, which
nothing came of until months later when Presley
randomly launched into “That’s All Right,” Arthur
Crudup’s 1946 blues number. That got the attention of
a professional DJ, and the rest, as they say, is history.
As one of the best-selling artists of all time, Elvis
has become a household name even years after his
death. But even for Elvis success came after failure.
His first recordings went nowhere. After that he tried to
join a vocal quartet and was told he, “couldn’t sing”.
Finally, right before he became popular, he was told,
“You ain’t goin’ nowhere, son. You ought to go back to
drivin’ a truck.”
Emily Dickinson
Recluse and poet Emily Dickinson is a commonly
read and loved writer. Yet in her lifetime she was all but
ignored, having fewer than a dozen poems published

out of her almost 1,800 completed works.
One of the most famed authors of modern times,
Emily Dickinson largely considered herself a failure for
much of her life. As a fiercely-devote introvert, she was
reluctant to embrace many face-to-face relationships,
opting instead for correspondence rather than in-
person meetings.
She was born in 1830 in Amherst Massachusetts
and led a rather reclusive life for much of her years,
being called reclusive and eccentric by the locals who
had come to know her. She never married. She spent
much of her time writing poems about dystopian
subjects such as death, but also wrote vehemently
about immortality, things she would also often discuss
with “friends” through correspondence.
While Dickinson became one of the most
renowned poets in history, less than a dozen poems
were actually published during her lifetime. And, when
poems were published, they were usually altered
significantly because their style departed so much from
the norm of the day with their lack of titles and odd
capitalization and punctuation throughout.
While Dickinson might have been categorized as
a failure during her lifetime, it was likely due to her

reluctance to meet or correspond with many people
about her work. However, after her death, her sister
discovered a significant cache of poems totaling
upwards of 1,800 that were eventually published,
helping her to ultimately gain international notoriety
and fame.
Fred Astaire
Born in 1899, in Omaha, Nebraska, Fred Astaire
is one of the most famous failures to grace the
entertainment business. In 1905, the family moved to
New York City to allow Fred and his sister, Adele, to
pursue a career in entertainment, and they focused
their energies solely on the musical and dancing
education of their children.
The two performed together in acts for some
time, even touring the New York City Broadway circuit,
and on to London as well. This helped to drastically
improve their talent, but Fred shined during this time,
with a set of charisma and charm that shone through
even at the dimmest of times.
However, in 1932, the sister-and-brother act split,
when Adele wed her husband. Fred continued his

career despite that. And, according to legend, he was
famously rejected during a Hollywood screen test.
During his first screen test an RKO executive noted
that Astaire, “Can’t sing. Can’t act. Balding. Can dance
a little.” Yet, that didn’t stop him.
Despite this initial rejection, Astaire persevered and
ended up becoming one of the top actors, singers and
dancers of his generation. Fred Astaire’s career in the
entertainment industry lasted a mind-boggling 76
years, he appeared in 31 musicals, television shows
and recordings. Gene Kelly once stated that “the
history of dance on film begins with Astaire.” This was
clearly a nod to the musical and dance genius that
Astaire was.
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Frank Winfield Woolworth
Some may not know this name today, but
Woolworth was once one of the biggest names in
department stores in the U.S. Before starting his own
business, young Woolworth worked at a dry goods

store and was not allowed to wait on customers
because his boss said he lacked the sense needed to
do so.
F. W. Woolworth was born in 1852, in Rodman,
NY. At 20 years of age F. W. Woolworth found work in
exchange for room and board at a local dry goods
store, and after his employers held a successful
clearance sale he saw the possibilities of a discount
store. His key innovations were having the
merchandise on open display instead of behind the
counter, and having prices plainly marked instead of
encouraging haggling. With borrowed funds he opened
his first F.W. Woolworth store in the outskirts of Utica,
New York in 1879, but the store closed the following
year. Deciding that his problem had been a poor
location, he opened a new store in downtown
Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1881.
Within months he was opening multiple stores in
business partnerships with local retailers, and within a
few years Woolworth was a millionaire. In 1909 he
opened his first store in England, and in 1913 the
company opened its new headquarters in New York's
Woolworth Building -- then the tallest building in the
world.

Woolworth had a deep fear of dentists, allowing
his teeth to rot, and died of a dental infection in 1919.
The company had more than 1,000 stores at the time
of his death, and with lunch counters in many stores,
Woolworth was America's largest restaurant chain
through the 1940s. The company peaked as the
world's largest department store chain in the late
1970s, with more than 4,000 stores.
George Lucas
Born in 1944, George Lucas is an American-born
filmmaker, producer and entrepreneur behind some of
the most successful films made in history such as the
Star Wars trilogy and Raiders of the Lost Ark, amongst
many others. Before Lucas ever got interested in
filmmaking, however, he was obsessed with race car
driving. But after a terrible car crash that nearly killed
him, he abandoned that obsession.
After completing his graduate degree in film at the
University of Southern California, Lucas set out to
make movies. THX 1138, a story about a dystopian
future where android police control the population,
suppressing both their emotions and primal urges for

things like sex, which has been outlawed, through the
use of drugs, was, financially a failure for the studio,
amounting to a loss of money.
Lucas was undeterred. His next project,
American Graffiti, which he directed, was a huge
success, giving him major clout and credibility in
Hollywood. However, that wasn’t enough when he
presented his next project, Star Wars, to two different
studios. In fact, he was turned down for Star Wars by
United Artists, and later by Universal, both rejecting the
movie.
Still, that didn’t deter Lucas from continuing to
pitch it. Eventually, 20th Century Fox picked up the
script, later saying that “I don’t understand this, but I
loved ‘American Graffiti,’ and whatever you do is okay
with me.” Star Wars was the highest grossing film of all
time, surpassing the then-highest-grossing film of E.T.
Harrison Ford
In his first film, Ford was told by the movie execs
that he simply didn’t have what it takes to be a star.
Today, with numerous hits under his belt, iconic
portrayals of characters like Han Solo and Indiana

Jones, and a career that stretches decades, Ford can
proudly show that he does, in fact, have what it takes.
While many people know Harrison Ford for his
blockbuster roles in films that are now part of American
culture and history, he was also considered a personal
and professional failure at several times in his life.
Clearly, he’s one of the most famous people to have
ever worked in the movie business, commanding top-
dollar for his performances. But his life wasn’t always
sunshine and rainbows.
Born in 1942 in Chicago, both of Ford’s parents
had a connection to the entertainment industry. His
father was a former actor and his mother a former
radio actress. It seemed as though acting was in his
blood. After graduating from college in Wisconsin, at
the age of 22-years old, Ford headed to Los Angeles to
try his hand in voice-overs. He failed to secure that job
but ended up staying in the area.
It took Ford two years of working odd jobs and
small-time bits before he landed his first uncredited
role as a bellhop in the movie, Dead Heat on a Merry-
Go Round, in 1964 at the age of 24-years old.
However, studio execs were rough on young Ford,
telling him that “he would never make it in this

business.”
But Ford refused to give up. It took him until
1973, 9 years later, when he landed his breakthrough
role in George Lucas’s film, American Graffiti. It was
that role, and his relationship with Lucas, that would
help catapult him into stardom. Lucas later cast Ford in
Star Wars and the Indian Jones series.
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman, born in 1884, sworn in as the
33rd president after Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
sudden death. In his first months in office he dropped
the atomic bomb on Japan, ending World War II. His
policy of communist containment started the Cold War,
and he initiated U.S. involvement in the Korean War.
Truman left office in 1953 and died in 1972.
Harry S. Truman was the first of three children
born to John Anderson Truman, a farmer and mule
trader, and his wife, Martha Ellen Truman. Truman
grew up on the family farm in Independence, Missouri,
and did not attend college. He worked a variety of jobs
after high school, first as a timekeeper for a railroad
construction company, and then as a clerk and a

bookkeeper at two separate banks in Kansas City. After
five years, he returned to farming and joined the
National Guard. When World War I erupted, Truman
volunteered for duty.
After the war, Truman returned home and
married in 1919. That same year, he made a foray into
business when he and an associate, Eddie Jacobson,
set up a hat shop in Kansas City. But with America
experiencing an economic decline in the early 1920s,
the business failed in 1922. With the closing of the
business, Truman owed $20,000 to creditors. He
refused to accept bankruptcy and insisted on paying
back all the money he borrowed, which took more than
15 years.
About this time he was overseer of highways and
after a year he was elected judge, which was an
administrative rather than a judicial position, but he
was defeated when he ran for a second term. Truman
ran again in 1926 and was elected as a presiding
judge, a position he held until he ran for senator.
Truman was elected to the United States Senate in
1934.
This WWI vet, Senator, Vice President and
eventual President eventually found success in his life,

but not without a few missteps along the way.
Henry Ford
While Ford is today known for his innovative
assembly line and American-made cars, he wasn’t an
instant success. In fact, his early businesses failed and
left him broke five time before he founded the
successful Ford Motor Company.
Born in Greenfield Township, Michigan, in 1863,
Henry Ford was the industrialist who started Ford
Motor Company, which has been one of the most
profitable automotive companies in the world over the
years, making him into one of the most richest and
famous individuals on the planet. However, while Ford
celebrated many successes later on in life, he also
failed often in his earlier years
In fact, it wasn’t until 1891, when Ford was 28-
years old, that he decided to become an engineer,
working for the Edison Illuminating Company and
earning a promotion in 1893 at the age of 30, to Chief
Engineer. It was around this time when he started
experimenting with gasoline engines.
However, it wasn’t until 1898, when Ford was 35-

years old, when he designed and built a self-propelled
vehicle that he showed off to people, winning the
backing of William H. Murphy, who, at the time, was a
lumber baron in Detroit. Subsequently, Ford founded
the Detroit Automobile Company a year later in 1899.
In 1901, however, that company failed after an inability
to pay back a loan to the Dodge brothers and due to
inefficiencies in the design of the vehicle; the company
ceased operations, dealing a stealthy blow to Ford.
However, subsequently, Ford convinced one of this
partners to give him another chance. With mounting
pressure, it was agreed that he would try again. But
after disagreements, this venture also flopped.
It wasn’t until 1903, when Ford would give it one
final shot. At the age of 40-years old, after two
separate failures, he tried again, incorporating the Ford
Motor Company. Even after the failures, Ford found an
unconventional backer who he made agree not to
meddle in the business. He found this in Malcolmson, a
Scottish immigrant who had made his fortune in the
coal industry.
Afterwards, what transpired is one of the most
famous stories of an individual who went from failure to
success in the grandest way. The Ford name is

synonymous with the automobile. In fact, while the
assembly line existed prior to Ford’s arrival on the
scene, so to speak, he created a car that was
affordable by the everyday family, helping to develop
what was to become the largest boon in the automotive
industry with cars everywhere.
Howard Schultz
Born in 1953, Howard Schultz is the famous
American entrepreneur behind the wildly-successful
coffee company, Starbucks. However, his early life, like
many other famous people who failed at first, started
off in extreme poverty, growing up in Canarsie Bay,
part of the New York City Housing Projects. In 1975, he
graduated with a Bachelor in Arts from the Northern
Michigan University, which he attended on a sports
scholarship.
After graduation, Schultz headed to Xerox
Corporation and he was quickly promoted to become a
full sales representative. After Xerox, in 1979, at the
age of 24-years old, he headed to s Swedish
coffeemaker called Hammerplast as the general
manager in a small company comprising just 20

employees. However, it was the company’s client,
Starbucks, that led him on the next leg of his journey in
life.
In 1982, at the age of 29-years old, he joined
Starbucks, after being so impressed with the company,
as their Director of Marketing. 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. You have to have a tremendous belief in
what you’re doing and just persevere.”
Jack Canfield
Born in 1944, in Fort Worth, Texas, Jack Canfield
is the celebrated author and motivational speaker
behind the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. As a
Harvard-educated person, Canfield clearly possessed
the intelligence for crafting such a book, however, it
was his tenacity to see things through that helped him
to catapult that book to success.
In fact, it wasn’t until the age of 48-years old,
with the help of his co-author, Mark Victor Hansen, that
he set out to write that book, a collection of stories to
help inspire and motivate people to achieve their
dreams. Yet, things didn’t exactly go according to plan
once the book had been completed.
Canfield and his co-author suffered through 144
rejections from publishers over the course of a 14-

month period. When one publisher claimed that it
wouldn’t even sell 20,000 companies, Canfield replied
that he had hoped it would sell 500,000 copies at the
least. The publisher laughed at Canfield.
Eventually, they convinced one small-time
publisher in Florida that they would at least have some
nominal success with the book. Little did they know
what was in store for them. Chicken Soup for the Soul
is an internationally-acclaimed brand that’s sold over
500 million copies in over 20 languages. Canfield’s
determination and unwillingness to give up speaks
volumes about the characteristics that allow famous
people who failed at first to keep pushing forward no
matter what the situation. Canfield’s book brand is now
a $1 Billion brand.
Jack London
Born in 1876, Jack London is an American
novelist who penned the poignant classics,The Call of
the Wild and White Fang. He was put up for adoption
by his biological mother who had attempted suicide at
the time. She shot herself after news of the pregnancy
after William Chaney, her husband at the time,

demanded that she have an abortion.
At the age of 21-years old, in 1897, while in
attendance at the University of California in Berkley,
London wrote to his father, Chaney, who denied that he
was the boy’s dad, instead sending him a letter that
chastised him and his biological mother. Completely
distraught by this, London quit Berkley and moved to
the Klondike to live in the wilderness for a year.
Upon returning, he had committed to mastering
the art of writing, deciding to write at least 1,000 words
per day no matter what the situation. Realizing that
mastery would come only through this method, he
followed through with his goals, working from sunup
until sundown, every single day without fail.
Yet, with every piece that he would mail to a
newspaper or magazine, with the enthusiasm that he
would get published, failure after failure returned in the
envelopes that were sent back. No one was willing to
publish his writing. After some time, he tired of the
feeling of failure and rejection.
However, by 1899, after the rise of lower-priced
technologies for printing presses that resulted in a
boon for magazines, his first story had been published.
In that year, he had earned a respectable $2,500

through his writing, equivalent to about $70,000 in
today’s dollars when accounting for inflation.
Yet, London suffered through more than 50
separate rejections during a 5-month period of sending
out his manuscripts and writing to various publishers.
Just a few short years later, in 1903, at the age of 27-
years old, London’s celebrated novel, The Call of the
Wild had been published, and he had reached a
dizzying height of success in his career.
James Dyson
Born in 1947, James Dyson is an English
inventor and entrepreneur who launched the wildly-
popular Dyson brand of products. In the late 1970’s,
Dyson had the idea of using cyclonic separation to
create a vacuum cleaner that wouldn’t lose suction. At
the time, he was supported by his wife, who had to
start working as an art teacher to make ends meet.
Dyson states 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.”
By 1991, he had a great product, but was unable
to convince any of the major retailers to sell it since the
vacuum bag replacement industry was so large and
none of the retailers wanted to buck that trend. So,
Dyson created a company after his namesake, Dyson,
Inc., in 1993. He was 46-years old at the time.
However, through Dyson’s failures, he never lost
hope. By 2005, Dyson had become the market leader
in United States by volume sold, allowing him to launch
a range of other products that are notoriously well-
manufactured and work extremely efficiently, delivering
a value-driven concept that the brand has become
synonymous for.
According to The Sunday Times, in 2017 his net
worth was 7.8 Billion Pounds.
Jerry Seinfeld
Just about everybody knows who Seinfeld is, but
the first time the young comedian walked on stage at a
comedy club, he looked out at the audience, froze and
was eventually jeered and booed off of the stage.

Seinfeld knew he could do it, so he went back the next
night, completed his set to laughter and applause, and
the rest is history.
Born in 1954, in Brooklyn, New York, Jerry
Seinfeld is a famous American comedian and actor
best known for his role in the hit television series by his
own namesake, Seinfeld, which aired from 1989
through 1998. However, it’s Seinfeld’s earliest failures
that are most notable when speaking about his
success in life.
In 1976, at the age of 22-years old, after
graduating from Queens College, Seinfeld tried his
hand at standup during an open-mic night in New York
City at a comedy club where he froze on stage,
forgetting the joke. From the second row, a heckler
asked, “Is this your first time?” He was booed off the
stage and felt miserable about the failure. But he didn’t
stop. He went back the next night, completed his set to
laughter and applause.
He continued his stint of standup acts over the
next three years, which eventually led to an appear on
an HBO Special for Rodney Dangerfield, and
afterwards, to a role on the sitcom, Benson. In 1981,
Seinfeld appeared adjacent to Johnny Carson on, The

Tonight Show.
In 1988, at the age of 34-years old, Seinfeld
created the semi-fictional series about his life with co-
creator, Larry David and pitched it to NBC. It was
originally named, The Seinfeld Chronicles, but was
later changed to simply read, Seinfeld. In 2002, TV
Guide ranked it as the greatest show of all time, then
subsequently ranked it the second greatest show of all
time in 2012.
Jim Carrey
Born in 1962 in Ontario, Canada, Jim Carrey is a
renowned comedian, actor and entrepreneur, and quite
possibly one of the most famous comic minds of our
time. However, his early years were distraught with a
string of failures, with a childhood steeped in poverty,
which didn’t help his cause or because his family was
unable to help Carrey support his ambitions.
In 1977, at the age of just 15-years old, Carrey’s
family ran into severe financial problems, forcing them
to move to a Toronto suburb where they all worked at
the Titan Wheels factory. Carrey took a job as a janitor,
doing 8-hour shifts after school had let out. However,

after they left their factory jobs, they lived out of a VW
camper van until they could afford enough money to
move back into a house.
Once Carrey’s family had financial stability, he
made his standup debut at a Toronto comedy club
called Yuk Yuk’s. Supported by his dad who made the
drive to help aid his son to follow his dreams, he
bombed during his first time on stage. However, he
didn’t give up, even after the painful failure that it
caused to be heckled and booed off stage, much like
Jerry Seinfeld experienced initially.
Carrey kept at it. In fact, he dropped out of high
school to pursue his passion. Eventually, in 1979, at
the age of just 17-years old, Carrey moved to Los
Angeles, and found his way into a regular standup gig
at The Comedy Store on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood.
However, after a failed marriage, and 5 years had
passed, Carrey threw himself into acting roles. Initially,
it didn’t pan out, but he kept at it.
In 1990, after 11 years of trying to pursue his
dreams, he got his break to appear on a show called,
In Living Color. But it wasn’t until 1994, at the age of
32, when he got his biggest break to star in the film,
Ace Ventura, 15 years after arriving in Hollywood. It

was that role that helped to catapult him into stardom.
While he suffered through major failure along the way,
Carrey’s fame is now much talked about around the
world.
J. K. Rowling
J.K. Rowling is the author of the wildly-popular
Harry Potter series of books. Born in 1965, she grew
up with a tumultuous childhood that included a difficult
and oftentimes-strained relationship with her father,
and dealing with the illness of her mother.
Rowling may be rolling in a lot of Harry Potter
dough today, but before she published the series of
novels she was nearly penniless, severely depressed,
divorced, trying to raise a child on her own while
attending school and writing a novel. Rowling went
from depending on welfare to survive to being one of
the richest women in the world in a span of only five
years through her hard work and determination.
Rowling is the perfect example that success can come
to anyone at any time.
In 1982, at the age of 17-years old, she
attempted to gain acceptance to Oxford University. She

failed and was rejected, instead enrolling at the
University of Exeter where she received her Bachelor
of Arts in French and Classics. After graduating from
university, at the age of 21-years old, she moved to
London to work for Amnesty International in 1986.
After London, she moved to Manchester with her
boyfriend. It was there, in 1990, at the age of 25-years
old, while on a 4-hour-delayed train, when the idea of a
young wizard popped into her mind, later stating that it
came “fully formed,” and all she needed to do was
flesh out the details.
However, it was just a few short months after that
her mother, Anne, died from Multiple Sclerosis, leaving
her extremely distraught and upset. In the wake of her
mother’s death, only a few months afterwards, she
moved to Porto, in Portugal, to teach English. There,
she met a man, got married, got pregnant, and gave
birth to her daughter, who was born in 1993.
The relationship was a very strenuous one, with
reports of domestic abuse, resulting in a separation
and eventual divorce. With only three chapters of Harry
Potter completed, at the end of 1993, when she was at
the age of 38-years old, she moved to Edinburgh, to
live with her sister.

At that point, she considered herself a major
failure. She had failed at just about everything she had
ever attempted to do in life. She was diagnosed with
clinical depression and was suicidal. Two years later, in
1995, five years after the initial idea had come to her,
she managed to finish the manuscript for Harry Potter
and the Sorcerer’s Stone. She located an agent, but
after one year of trying to get it published, all 12 major
publishing houses had rejected her book.
It wasn’t until 1996, when a small literary house
in London named, Bloomsbury, gave the green light
and a very small advance of£1500, only due to the
behest of the owner’s daughter, that the book was
published. In 1997, seven years after the initial idea for
the young wizard, the first Harry Potter book was
published. By 2004, Rowling had become the first
author to become a billionaire through book writing,
according to Forbes.
Rowling herself said she was the “biggest failure
I knew” and credits a lot of her success to her failure.
At a Harvard commencement speech Rowling had this
to say, “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.”
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Jon Hamm
Born 1971, Jon Hamm is an American actor most
famous for his role in the hit television series, Mad
Men, which aired from 2007 through 2015. However,
it’s Hamm’s early failures, and how he overcame
desperation in his career to achieve success, that’s the
most notable here.
Interestingly enough, after he had moved to Los
Angeles, he couldn’t land a single gig. It was so bad, in
fact, that his talent agency in Hollywood cut him.
Distraught, Hamm began working as a waiter and had

contemplated giving up entirely on the acting business,
considering himself a major failure at the time.
During that period, he gave himself an objective
— either he would find stable work before he reached
the age of 30, or he would entirely quit the acting
business. To his delight, he found work on Mel
Gibson’s Vietnam War story, We Were Soldiers,
deciding to then stick it out in show business.
Good thing he did. This famous failure would
eventually land the role of a lifetime in 2007’s Mad
Men, turning him, not only into a famous actor, but also
a cultural icon. When he was cast as Don Draper, he
states that he was at “the bottom of everyone’s list.” It
just goes to show you what people can accomplish
when they refuse to give up on their hopes and their
dreams.
Katy Perry
Born in 1984 in Santa Barbara, California, Katy
Perry is an American singer and songwriter best known
for her hit, I Kissed a Girl. Perry experienced a
seemingly-sudden rise to fame. But did she really? In
fact, Perry experienced numerous heart-wrenching

failures on the path towards stardom before she ever
became a household name.
In her childhood, her family faced severe
struggles, oftentimes living in poverty, having to use
food stamps just to get by, which had a big impact on
Perry’s upbringing. From an early age, she realized
that things weren’t easily obtained, and that she would
have to work hard for it, something that clearly stuck
with her through the failures.
Growing up, her and her siblings listened to
Gospel music often. At the age of 13, she was gifted a
guitar, and shortly thereafter she began performing the
songs that she wrote using that very guitar. However,
she was far from famous. In fact, fame was going to
elude her for quite some time.
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.
Keanu Reeves
In 1964, the world welcomed Keanu Reeves,
one of the most famous, gifted, kind-hearted and
generous actors to have ever graced the Silver Screen.
However, Keanu’s life was wrought with failures, most
of which were completely out of his control and his
hands. To say that Keanu suffered through a
monumentally-difficult upbringing would be an
understatement.
In fact, nothing about Keanu’s life was

straightforward, nor was it common. Born in Beirut,
Lebanon, where his mother, who is of English descent
from Essex, met his father, an American from Hawaii,
while working in the country. At the age of 3-years old,
however, his father abandoned the family. Reeves kept
in touch with him for the next few years, but then didn’t
see him again until he was 13-years old.
His childhood was spent in multiple locations.
Initially, it was in Australia, but then, he was led to
Canada. His mother had married and divorced 4 times
and he had been to four separate high schools in a 5-
year period. When he was 17-years old, he dropped
out of high school and moved to Los Angeles,
obtaining a green card through his stepfather, Paul
Aaron, a Hollywood director.
In 1998, Reeves married Jennifer Syme with
whom he fathered a baby, who unfortunately was
stillborn at eight-months old, which led to the
disintegration of the couple’s relationship. Tragically, 18
months after the relationship ended, Syme died in a
car accident.
Reeves starred in numerous minor roles in films
prior to his breakthrough role in River’s Edge, which
led to the role in the widely-popular film, Bill and Ted’s

Excellent Adventure. Ultimately, however, it was his
role in the 1999 blockbuster movie, The Matrix, that
resulted in an unprecedented rise to fame.
Lucille Ball
During her career, Ball had thirteen Emmy
nominations and four wins, also earning the Lifetime
Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors.
Before starring in I Love Lucy, Ball was widely
regarded as a failed actress and a B movie star. Even
her drama instructors didn’t feel she could make it,
telling her to try another profession. She, of course,
proved them all wrong.
The woman who will always be remembered as
the crazy, accident-prone, lovable Lucy Ricardo was
born Lucille Desiree Ball on August 6, 1911 in
Jamestown, New York. Her father died before she was
four, and her mother worked several jobs, so she and
her younger brother were raised by their grandparents.
Always willing to take responsibility for her brother and
young cousins, she was a restless teenager who
yearned to "make some noise". She entered a dramatic
school in New York City, but while her classmate Bette

Davis received all the raves, she was sent home; "too
shy". She found some work modeling for Hattie
Carnegie's and, in 1933, she was chosen to be a
"Goldwyn Girl" and appear in the film Roman Scandals.
Ludwig van Beethoven
In his formative years, young Beethoven was
incredibly awkward on the violin and was often so busy
working on his own compositions that he neglected to
practice. Despite his love of composing, his teachers
felt he was hopeless at it and would never succeed
with the violin or in composing. Beethoven kept
plugging along, however, and composed some of the
best-loved symphonies of all time–five of them while he
was completely deaf.
Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn. There
is no authentic record of the date of his birth; however,
the registry of his baptism, in a Catholic service at the
Parish of St. Regius on 17 December 1770, survives.
He displayed his musical talents at an early age and
was taught by his father Johann van Beethoven and
composer and conductor Christian Gottlob Neefe. At
the age of 21 Beethoven moved to Vienna, where he

began studying composition with Joseph Haydn and
gained a reputation as a virtuoso pianist. He lived in
Vienna until his death. By his late 20s his hearing
began to deteriorate and by the last decade of his life
he was almost completely deaf. In 1811 he gave up
conducting and performing in public but continued to
compose; many of his most admired works come from
these last 15 years of his life.
Beethoven's first music teacher was his father.
He later had other local teachers. From the outset his
tuition regime, which began in his fifth year, was harsh
and intensive, often reducing him to tears; with the
involvement of the insomniac Pfeiffer there were
irregular late-night sessions with the young Beethoven
being dragged from his bed to the keyboard.
Madonna Ciccone
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.
Madonna pushed for a career as an artist, and
she succeeded. She has sold more than 300 million
albums worldwide. Madonna is the best-selling female
recording artist of all time.
Marilyn Monroe
Originally born, Norma Jeane Mortenson, in
1926, in Los Angeles, California, Marilyn Monroe is an
American actress and model who achieved
extraordinary fame in Hollywood. Monroe never knew
her biological father and had a sister and brother that
she didn’t know about until she was 12-years old.
Monroe’s mother suffered a mental breakdown in
1934 and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
She was in and out of mental institutions for the rest of
her life and Monroe had become a ward of the state,
moving in and out of foster homes for the next several
years, where she was sexually abused, became

withdrawn and also developed a stutter.
In 1936, her mother’s family friend, Grace
McKee Goddard, became her legal guardian, but she
was molested by Goddard’s husband, Doc. She was in
and out of homes again subsequent to that and
eventually attended Van Nuys High School, but
dropped out in 1942 at the age of 16-years old,
marrying the son of a neighbor in order to stay in the
state after the Goddard’s had to leave to West Virginia.
In 1946, after a stint of appearances on the
covers of 33 magazines, she secured a contract with
an acting agency, and ultimately, a 6-month contract
with 20th Century Fox. During that time, she procured
no work, and instead focused on taking dancing, acting
and singing lessons while also spending time in the
studio to observe others acting. Her contract wasn’t
renewed when it came to an end, but she was
determined to make things work.
However, in 1948, at the age of 22-years old,
she was signed to Columbia Pictures, and starred in a
low-budget movie called, Ladies of the Chorus. Still,
her contract at Columbia was also not renewed. Later
that same year, she signed with the William Morris
Agency, with the persistent attitude to never give up.

Still, her big breakthrough didn’t come until 1950,
when she had appearances in a couple of critically-
acclaimed films. Since then, her films went on to gross
over $200 million, and subsequently turning her into a
pop culture icon and sex symbol.
While Monroe’s star burned out early, she did
have a period of great success in her life. Despite a
rough upbringing and being told by modeling agents
that she should instead consider being a secretary,
Monroe became a pin-up, model and actress that still
strikes a chord with people today.
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.
Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, born in 1984, is an
American technology entrepreneur and philanthropist.
He is known for co-founding and leading Facebook as
its chairman and chief executive officer.
Born in White Plains, New York, Zuckerberg
attended Harvard University, where he launched
Facebook from his dormitory room on February 4,
2004, with college roommates Eduardo Saverin,
Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris
Hughes. Originally launched to select college
campuses, the site expanded rapidly and eventually
beyond colleges, reaching one billion users by 2012.
Zuckerberg took the company public in May 2012 with
majority shares.
While Zuckerberg is considered wildly famous,

rich and popular today, that wasn’t always the case. In
fact, shortly after starting up Facebook, which started
as thefacebook.com, Zuckerberg was sued by
Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss and Divya
Narenda, resulting in an enormous level of frustration
and stress. That case was later settled for 1.2 million
Facebook shares.
Before launching thefacebook.com, Zuckerberg
created Facemash, a system that allowed students to
pick the better looking person from a set of photos,
either male or female. However, students complained
that the photos were being used without their consent,
and it was later shut down by Harvard, forcing
Zuckerberg to issue apologies and for the student
paper to call the site “completely improper.”
However, Facebook’s success in undeniable. His
net worth is estimated to be US$61.4 billion as of
October 19, 2018, declining over the last year with
Facebook stock as a whole. Zuckerberg is now
amongst the world’s richest individuals, far surpassing
anything he might have envisioned his success to be.

Mary Kay Ash
Born in 1918, Mary Kay Ash, born Mary Kathlyn
Wagner, was the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, a
direct-selling, multi-level marketing cosmetics company
based in Addison, Texas. After marrying early on in life,
in 1935, at the age of 17-years old, she became a
housewife, had two children, and would later go on to
sell books door-to-door when her husband was fighting
in the war.
However, in 1945, she divorced, and eventually
went to work for a company called Stanley Home
Products. Yet in 1963, at the age of 45-years old, she
retired. She had been passed up for a promotion and
instead of continuing what she felt to be a dead-end
career, she decided to write a book instead. That book
turned into what would be her business plan for the
business she intended to start with her new husband,
Mel Ash.
However, Mel died just a month before the new
business was set to start. One month after he died, she
took the plunge by taking a $5,000 investment from her
eldest son, Richard Rogers. She opened up her first
storefront in Dallas and created the company to help

empower women to succeed in a marketplace that was
very much in favor of men.
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.
Michael Jordan
Born 1963, Michael Jordan is a former
professional basketball player and also the owner of
the Charlotte Hornets team. Called “the greatest
basketball player of all time,” Jordan’s professional
career is something for the history books, with a game
play that will likely be unmatched and unrivaled for
decades to come.
Most people wouldn’t believe that a man often
lauded as the best basketball player of all time was
actually cut from his high school basketball team.
Luckily, Jordan didn’t let this setback stop him from
playing the game and he has stated, “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.”
At the age of 15-years old, while a sophomore in
high school, Jordan was passed up for the varsity
basketball team, instead being assigned to the junior
varsity team. He cried after he saw that list without his
name on it. But instead of giving up, his mom
convinced him to push forward. Every time he thought
about stopping his training, he would picture that list
without his name on it.
He was able to take failure in stride. He allowed
it to push him rather than to entirely defeat him. At the
age of 21-years old, he entered the NBA as a
professional basketball player for the Chicago Bulls,
where he would go on to win six championship titles
and become one of the most impactful players to ever
grace the courts.
Milton Hershey
Born 1857, Milton Hershey is the founder of the
Hershey Chocolate Company located in Hershey,

Pennsylvania. It was early on in life, while working on
the family’s farm, that he learned the values of
persistence and hard work, carrying that with him
throughout his life during his elder years.
Milton Hershey left school after just two-and-a-
half years, instead opting to apprentice with a local
printer. One day, he dropped his hat on accident into
one of the machines there and was subsequently fired
from that job. That was 1871 and Hershey was just 14-
years old at the time.
After working for a candy factory near Lancaster,
he decided to start his own business, opening a candy
store close to Philadelphia. That business failed. He
left town and headed to New Orlean’s and then
Chicago. Unable to find the right opportunities, he
continued moving around until he settled in New York
City where he started working for Huyler’s, a candy
and restaurant chain.
After a few years on the job, he quit and decided
to sell candies on the street in New York City but was
also unsuccessful at that as well. Disheartened by
failure, Hershey moved back to the farm where he
grew up, experimenting with chocolates and candies,
considering he had a large supply of fresh milk from

the dairy cows. It was here that he learned how to
make delicious chocolates from condensed milk.
In 1893, at the age of 36-years old, he
established the Lancaster Caramel Company, which he
eventually sold for one million dollars seven years later
in 1900, giving him the ability to start the Hershey
Chocolate Company. When Hershey Chocolate
Company first opened its doors, Hershey was 43-years
old. Success didn’t come early for Hershey, nor did it
come easy. But Hershey’s chocolates are still today
one of the most famous and best-tasting brands of
chocolate in the world.
Oprah Winfrey
Most people know Oprah as one of the most
iconic faces on TV as well as one of the richest and
most successful women in the world. Oprah faced a
hard road to get to that position, however, enduring a
rough and often abusive childhood as well as
numerous career setbacks including being fired from
her job as a television reporter because she was “unfit
for tv.”
Oprah Winfrey was born in 1954 in Kosciusko,

Mississippi to a single teenaged mother. Winfrey grew
up in a sheer state of utter poverty for most of her
childhood life, living with her grandmother during those
years. When she was 6-years old, she moved in with
her mother in Wisconsin, about the time her mother
had another daughter, becoming Winfrey’s half-sister.
During those early years, Winfrey says she was
sexually molested by her cousin, her uncle and a
family friend. At the age of 13-years old, she ran away
from home. At 14-years old, she was pregnant and
gave birth prematurely to a baby that died shortly after
birth.
At the age of 17-years old, she won a beauty
pageant and interned at a radio station, creating a love
for the media, and eventually landing a job after
college as a news anchor in Nashville. After college,
she moved to Baltimore to co-anchor the news, but
was later removed by the producer for being unfit for
television.
In 1983, at the age of 29-years old, she
relocated to Chicago and took over a fledgling show
called, AM Chicago, which would ultimately become
the, Oprah Winfrey Show. She became the highest-
ranked talkshow in Chicago. Today, she is a multi-

billionaire and has had a major impact on a large part
of world.
Oprah was able to overcome multiple failures in
her life, but didn’t give up. Because of it, she reached
international fame and is known around the world as a
household name.
Orville and Wilbur Wright
The Wright brothers, Orville (born in 1871) and
Wilbur (born in 1867), were two American aviators,
engineers, inventors, and aviation pioneers who are
generally credited with inventing, building, and flying
the world's first successful airplane.
These brothers battled depression and family
illness before starting the bicycle shop that would lead
them to experimenting with flight. After numerous
attempts at creating flying machines, several years of
hard work, and tons of failed prototypes, the brothers
finally created a plane that could get airborne and stay
there. They gained the mechanical skills essential for
their success by working for years in their shop with
printing presses, bicycles, motors, and other
machinery. Their work with bicycles in particular

influenced their belief that an unstable vehicle like a
flying machine could be controlled and balanced with
practice.
In 1878 their father, who traveled often as a
bishop in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ,
brought home a toy helicopter for his two younger
sons. The device was based on an invention of French
aeronautical pioneer Alphonse Pénaud. Made of paper,
bamboo and cork with a rubber band to twirl its rotor, it
was about a foot long. Wilbur and Orville played with it
until it broke, and then built their own. In later years,
they pointed to their experience with the toy as the
spark of their interest in flying.
Rowland Hussey Macy
Rowland Hussey Macy, born in 1822, was an
American businessman who founded the department
store chain R.H. Macy and Company.
Most people are familiar with this large
department store chain, but Macy didn’t always have it
easy. Macy started seven failed business before finally
hitting big with his store in New York City. At the age of
fifteen, he worked on the whaling ship Emily Morgan

and had a red star tattooed on his hand, which became
part of the store's logo.
Rowland and his brother, Charles, opened a dry
goods store in Marysville, California, shortly after the
city was founded at the height of the Gold Rush in
1850. Charles stayed in Marysville after the store
failed, but Rowland headed east. Between 1843 and
1855, Macy opened four retail dry goods stores,
including the original Macy's store in downtown
Haverhill, Massachusetts, established in 1851 to serve
the mill industry employees of the area. They all failed,
but he learned from his mistakes. Macy moved to New
York City in 1858 and established a new store named
"R.H Macy Dry Goods", significantly north of other dry
goods stores of the time. On the company's first day of
business on October 28, 1858 sales totaled $11.08,
equal to $312.83 today.
Richard Branson
Richard Branson, born in 1950, is an English
billionaire entrepreneur and business magnate well
known around the world for being one of the most
famous and successful individuals at the helm of a

global brand, Virgin Group, with businesses in a wide
variety of fields such as music, telecom, hospitality and
travel.
In the late 1960’s, Branson started the Student
magazine, where he interviewed prominent people. He
also started to sell records through the magazine at a
discounted rate, helping it result in an overnight
success. Branson opened a record shop in 1971, but
was labeling records sold as export stock, and thus
had to pay a hefty fine and unpaid taxes. His mother
had to re-mortgage the house to help his son pay the
settlement cost with the government.
Ultimately, however, the Virgin Records store
was a success, and it allowed him to create his own
record label. By 1992, at the age of 42-years old, he
had created Virgin Atlantic and the Virgin Megastores.
But in order to keep the airline afloat, he was
pressured into selling the record label or have to suffer
a major financial failure and loss in the airline industry.
He sold the label to EMI for £500 million and was
completely distraught after this because the record
business was his first foray into the business world.
Eventually, the airline succeeded and the Virgin
brand today is synonymous with value and customer

service, also making Branson one of the richest people
on the planet. He simply refused to give up, even
through all the failures and the setbacks.
Robert T. Kiyosaki
Born in 1947, Robert Kiyosaki is an
entrepreneur, investor and the wildly-popular author
who wrote the Rich Dad Poor Dad series. He also
founded the Rich Dad Company, which provides
financial education to children and adults, along with
creating the Cashflow board game, which helps to
instill the same educational concepts as much of the
books in a game format.
Yet before all that fame, Kiyosaki faced a number
of failures along the way. His road to fame and wealth
was wrought with a number of setbacks and defeats. In
1977, at the age of 30-years old, Kiyosaki started a
company that sold surfer’s wallets, with nylon and
velcro, but failed to intellectually protect the products.
Facing stiff competition, that company eventually went
bankrupt.
Afterwards, he started a company selling t-shirts
and hats and other licensed products for heavy metal

rock groups. That company also went bankrupt in
1980. He was 33-years old at the time. In 1985, at the
age of 38-years old, he started a financial education
company to teach investors and entrepreneurs various
strategies for investing in real estate and other financial
products. In 1994, at the age of 47-years old, he sold
that company and began his investing and writing
career.
However, it wasn’t until 1997, at the age of 50-
years old, when he penned the Rich Dad Poor Dad
book, that he achieved international notoriety. The
book has since sold over 26 million copies worldwide
and has been translated into 51 languages.
Shawn Carter aka Jay-Z
Born in 1969, Shawn Carter, also known as Jay-
Z, is an American singer, songwriter and entrepreneur
who’s sold over 100 million records and rose up
against extraordinary odds to succeed in life. While
quite possibly considered as one of the most famous
and successful rappers of all time, his early life was
dominated by a string of failures and unstable family
life that led to a career of dealing drugs.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Carter grew up in
the housing projects known as the Marcy Houses in
the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. After his father
had abandoned the family, it was his mother that raised
him and his three siblings. He became passionate
about music early on, appearing on several early
recordings of artists such as Jaz-O and Big Daddy
Kane’s, Daddy’s Home.
However, while wanting to pursue a record
career, he realized that no label wanted to sign him, so
he opted instead to selling CDs out of the trunk of his
car. Every major label had turned him down, so he did
what any enterprising young individual would do that
was committed to succeeding — he co-founded his
own label called Roc-A-Fella Records.
Once the label had been setup, he sought out to
find a distribution partner, which was no easy task.
Ultimately, after finding one, Jay-Z released his debut
album entitled, Reasonable Doubt, which reached
number 23 on the Billboard 200, and it eventually hit
platinum status, with Rolling Stones calling it one of the
500 greatest albums of all time. This was the start of a
long and very successful career.

Soichiro Honda
Born in 1906, Soichiro Honda was a Japanese
inventor and industrialist who created the automotive
empire by his namesake — Honda Motor Company.
However, while Honda’s company has certainly grown
to rival even that of Toyota, Honda’s earliest days were
anything but easy. Yet, it was his perseverance and his
tenacity to never give up that kept him going and
helped him to ultimately succeed.
Without any formal education to his name, at the
age of 15-years old, Honda left home to head for Tokyo
to search for work, which he later found at an auto
repair shop where he apprenticed and worked for the
next 6 years before returning home to open up his own
automotive shop.
During the Great Depression, in 1937, at the age
of 31-years old, he founded, Tōkai Seiki to create
piston rings for Toyota. He toiled and labored night and
day to create these, but to no avail. With little cash and
bleak chances for survival, he had to pawn his wife’s
ring just to make ends meet. He failed ultimately, and
was told that the rings didn’t meet Toyota’s
specifications.

However, he refused to give up. He went back to
school and continued to search for ways to improve
upon his prior designs. Eventually, after two more
years of designing and trying, he succeeded and
successfully secured a contract with Toyota to create
the piston rings.
But shortly thereafter, his factory that he built to
build the products was hit by a bomb during WWII
when a B-29 bomber run carpeted the area. After he
rebuilt the factory a second time, an earthquake
leveled it. But he refused to give up. Instead, he
created a motorized bicycle that would become the
start of the Honda motorcycle.
Stan Smith
Stanley Roger Smith (born in 1946 in Pasadena,
California) is a former world No. 1 American tennis
player and two-time Grand Slam singles champion who
also, with his partner Bob Lutz, formed one of the most
successful doubles teams of all time. Together, they
won many major titles all over the world. In 1970,
Smith won the first year end championship Masters
Grand Prix title. Smith's two major singles titles were

the 1971 US Open and 1972 Wimbledon. In 1972, he
was the year-ending world No. 1 singles player. In
1973, he won his second and last year end
championship title at the Dallas WCT Finals. In
addition, he won four Grand Prix Championship Series
titles. His name is also used in a popular brand of
tennis shoes.
This tennis player was rejected from even being
a lowly ball boy for a Davis Cup tennis match because
event organizers felt he was too clumsy and
uncoordinated. Smith went on to prove them wrong,
showcasing his not-so-clumsy skills by winning
Wimbledon, U. S. Open and eight Davis Cups.
Smith grew up in Pasadena, California and was
coached mainly by Pancho Segura. He played
collegiate tennis at the University of Southern
California, under Coach George Toley, where he was a
three-time All-American and won the 1968 NCAA
Singles Championship as well as the 1967 and 1968
Doubles Titles.
As a kid, he went to get a job as a ball boy for
the Davis Cup, but was turned down because the
organizers thought he was too clumsy. In his 1979
autobiography, Jack Kramer, the long-time tennis

promoter and great player himself, ranked Smith as
one of the 21 best players of all time.
Stephen King
King was working as a teacher in rural Maine
when he wrote his first novel, “Carrie”. King had some
small success selling short stories previously, but
nothing that anyone could create a “career” on. The
first book by this author, the iconic thriller Carrie,
received 30 rejections. Before his 31st attempt he
threw the manuscript out. His wife rescued it from the
round file and asked him to try one more time.
Born in 1947, Stephen King is one of the most
famous and successful authors of all time. He’s sold
over 350 million books but had an unorthodox start to
his writing career. In fact, after a subsequent string of
failures, Stephen King was all but ready to give up on
his hopes and his dreams of becoming a published
author.
King was so passionate about writing, that he
worked tirelessly to get his worked published. He was
rejected so often, however, that by the time he turned
14-years old, a nail supporting his rejection letters on

the wall, could no longer bear their weight. Eventually,
he replaced the nail with a spike and continued to hang
his rejection letters.
After completing his studies at the University of
Maine in 1970, at the age of 23-years old, he got
himself a teaching certificate, but he was unable to find
any work teaching. Instead, he worked for a laundry
service while his wife went to work at Dunkin’ Donuts,
writing short stories in his spare time.
In 1973, King finally secured a teaching job,
however he continued to write when an idea came to
his mind. When the idea for his first book, Carrie, a
story about a girl with telekinetic powers, first came to
him, he had envisioned creating it as a short story for a
magazine like, Playboy. But after beginning the story,
he realized it was going to need to be longer than the
format would call for in Playboy.
One day, after being so frustrated with the story,
he crumpled it up and threw it into the garbage, only
later to be retrieved by his wife, telling him that he
should continue the work and finish it. Upon
completion, 30 publishers rejected the book.
Eventually, he got published by Doubleday and
received a $2,500 advance. A short time after, he was

told that he would receive $200,000 for the rights to
that book.
Steve Jobs
Born in 1955, the late Steve Jobs was an iconic
billionaire, inventor and entrepreneur responsible for
the one of the most renowned and successful
companies to have ever been created — Apple
Computers. Yet, Jobs’ life was filled with failure. Before
fame ever graced him and his name become
synonymous with success, he suffered through an
enormous number of setbacks.
In his earliest days, Jobs felt unwanted. He was
put up for adoption by his mother and was raised by a
blue-collar couple in Palo Alto, California. He dropped
out of college and started taking the courses that were
most interesting to him rather than trying to complete
his degree. Afterwards, he opted to travel the world
and see places like India where he would study Zen
Buddhism.
In 1976, Jobs co-founded Apple Computers with
his friend, Steve Wozniak. The company was highly
successful. However, in 1983, Jobs hired John Scully

from Pepsi to helm the company as CEO, which ended
up being one of the worst decisions he had ever made.
After a disagreement with Scully, and a foiled plan by
Jobs to oust the new CEO, Jobs resigned from Apple
and quit, taking 5 employees with him to start his new
business venture, NeXT.
That disheartening period helped to embolden
Jobs. While Apple was fledgling and would eventually
be on the verge of bankruptcy, NeXT thrived.
Ultimately, NeXT was acquired by Apple in 1997
bringing him back into the fold of a now-struggling
company.
Steven Spielberg
Born in 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio, Steven
Spielberg is an American Academy Award-winning
director, producer and entrepreneur responsible for
some of the biggest and most successful movies and
movie franchises in history such as E.T., Raiders of the
Lost Ark, Jaws and Jurassic Park.
After his parents’ divorce, Spielberg moved to
Los Angeles, California with his father where he
applied to the University of Souther California’s film

school, but was rejected for his poor grades, instead
opting to attend the less-prominent California State
University at Long Beach.
In 1979, Spielberg released a film that flopped,
entitled 1941. He had been riding high on the success
of his previous films such as Jaws. Although 1941 was
not a financial failure, it was a critical failure, and
resulted in the loss some of Spielberg’s notoriety at the
time.
Ultimately, however, Spielberg refused to give
up, even after that major failure. He could have called it
quits, but he refused to do so. He pushed forward, and
because of it, we’ve had some incredible blockbusters
such as Schindler’s List, The Color Purple, A.I. Artificial
Intelligence, and so many more.
While today Spielberg’s name is synonymous
with big budget, he was rejected from the University of
Southern California School of Theater, Film and
Television three times. He eventually attended school
at another location, only to drop out to become a
director before finishing. Thirty-five years after starting
his degree, Spielberg returned to school in 2002 to
finally complete his work and earn his BA.

Sylvester Stallone
Born in 1946, Sylvester Stallone is an American
actor and director best known for his role as Rocky
Balboa in the hit boxing film, Rocky. Stallone moved to
New York City in the 1970’s to pursue his dream of
being an actor. However, all he seemed to face was
rejection, failure and a string of people telling him he
talked funny, walked funny and couldn’t act.
He was broke at the time. It was during this
period that he was forced to sell his dog for $25 just to
pay for his electricity bill. He had been rejected 1,500
times by talent scouts, agents and everyone in the film
industry that he could get a meeting with. He would sit
for hours on end in offices just to wait to the see the
person who would ultimately reject him again. He did
this repeatedly, over and over.
Eventually, this wore on Stallone. He was broke
and homeless. He lived and slept in the New Jersey
Port Authority bus terminal for three weeks while trying
to scrimp and save money together for another
apartment. He was just about as desperate as anyone
could be in their lives.
After writing the script for Rocky, he was offered

a tremendous amount of money with one caveat —
that he not star in the film. The offer was raised as high
as $325,000 with the condition that he not act in the
film. He refused time and again. Eventually, he
accepted just $35,000 and a percentage of the film’s
sales. That film grossed over $200 million in the box
office!
The Beatles
Few people can deny the lasting power of this
super group, still popular with listeners around the
world today. Yet when they were just starting out, a
recording company told them no. The were told “we
don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way
out,” two things the rest of the world couldn’t have
disagreed with more.
The Beatles were an English rock group that
formed in 1960 and have since gone on to sell over 1.6
billion records worldwide, with over 600 million records
being sold in the United States, and are considered to
be one of the most popular musical groups in history.
Its members were John Lennon, Paul McCartney,
George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

However, The Beatles once considered
themselves failures. On New Year’s Eve in 1961, the
group drove in a snowstorm to Decca Recording
Studios to lay down 15 tracks based on songs that they
were already performing, which was a mashup of R&B
and Rock tunes.
Still, it was Dick Rowe, an A&R that was there to
hear their sound, who stated that they would never
succeed. Specifically, he said that “guitar groups were
on their way out.” Five months later, the group received
the big break they had been hoping to receive. and
signed with George Martin from Parlophone and
released their first in a string of hits late that year
entitled, Love Me Do.
While others might have gotten discouraged
during the rejections and the failures faced by the
group, they didn’t falter. They didn’t throw in that
proverbial towel. They knew deep down inside that
they were bound to be famous and that it was just a
matter of time as long as they didn’t give up.

Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison is 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 his early years, teachers told Edison he was
“too stupid to learn anything.” Work was no better, as
he was fired from his first two jobs for not being
productive enough. Even as an inventor, Edison made
10,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light
bulb. Of course, all those unsuccessful attempts finally
resulted in the design that worked.
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.
Walt Disney
Walt Disney, born in 1901, is the beloved founder
of the Walt Disney Company, quite possibly one of the

most famed companies in the world throughout history.
However, Disney’s road towards success wasn’t easy;
it was paved with a number of failures and setbacks
that included bankruptcy.
In 1919, Disney had taken a job with the Kansas
City Star, the local newspaper, when he was fired by
the editor for lacking imagination and having no good
ideas. Later Disney started a company called Laugh-O-
Gram, producing cartoon animations. His biggest client
at the time was Newman’s theaters, one of the largest
theater chains. His cartoons were shown at the start of
the films at Newman’s theaters and were dubbed the
“Newman’s Laugh-O-Grams.”
However, his success with Laugh-O-Gram was
short-lived. The money earned didn’t provide enough
income to keep the company afloat, and in 1923 it
declared bankruptcy. Subsequently, Disney moved to
Hollywood in 1923 when he was just 22-years old,
where his brother Roy was living at the time.
With the help of Roy, they formed the Disney
Brothers Studio, which later became called the Walt
Disney Company. The company was formed to
produce animated films. However, it wasn’t until 1928,
five years later, when Disney created Mickey Mouse,

From failure to huge success. Stories 59 Famously Successful People Who Failed At First

From failure to huge success. Stories 59 Famously Successful People Who Failed At First

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