J.K Rowling, the author
of
Harry Potter,
spoke to the graduating class of Harvard in June 2008. She
didn’t talk about success.
She talked about failures. Her own
in particular. I absolutely love her quote.
“You might never fail on the scale I did,” Rowling told that privileged
audience. “But it is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you
live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case,
you fail by default.
She should know. The author didn’t magically become richer than the Queen of
England overnight. Penniless, recently divorced, and raising a child on her own,
she wrote the first Harry Potter book on an old manual typewriter.
Twelve publishers rejected the manuscript! A year later she
was given the green light by Barry Cunningham from Bloomsbury, who agreed to
publish the book but insisted she get a day job cause there was
no money
in children’s books.
What if she stopped at the first rejection? The fifth? Or the tenth?
The measure of success can be shown by how many times someone keeps going
despite hearing only no.
The following people are not the only ones who have succeeded despite failure
and rejection.
I thought they would be the most interesting to you.
People who found success despite failures
Colonel Sanders
: The founder of KFC. He started his dream at 65 years old! He got a
social security check for only $105 and was mad. Instead of complaining he did
something about it.
He thought restaurant owners would love his fried chicken recipe, use it,
sales would increase, and he’d get a percentage of it. He drove around the
country knocking on doors, sleeping in his car, wearing his white suit.
Do you know how many
times people
said no till he got one yes?
1009 times!
Walt Disney: The
man who gave us Disney World and Mickey Mouse. His first animation company went
banktrupt. He was fired by a news editor cause he lacked imagination. Legend has
it he was
turned down 302 times before he got financing for
creating Disney World.
Albert
Eistein: He didn’t speak till he was four and didn’t read till
seven. His parents and teachers thought he was mentally handicapped. He only
turned out to win a Nobel prize and be the face of modern physics.
Richard
Branson: He’s a billionaire mogul of Virgin but has had his share
of failures. Remember Virgin Cola or Virgin credit cards? Probably not. He’s
lost hundreds of millions of dollars but has not let failure stop him. When
you’re rich like him you can rent his private island for
$53,000 a night.
Mark Cuban:
The billionaire owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks got rich when he sold his
company to Yahoo for $5.9 billion in stock. He admitted he was terrible at his
early jobs. His parents wanted him to have a normal job. So he tried carpentry
but hated it. He was a short order cook but a terrible one. He waited tables but
couldn’t open a bottle of wine. He says of
his
failures,
“I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter how many times you failed,” Cuban says.
“You only have to be right once. I tried to sell powdered milk. I was an idiot
lots of times, and I learned from them all.”
Vincent Van
Gogh: He only
sold one painting in his lifetime!
Just one to a friend. Despite that he kept painting and finished over 800
pieces. Now everyone wants to buy them and his most
expensive
painting is valued at $142.7 million.
Theodor Seuss
Giesel: Dr. Seuss gave us
Cat in the Hat and
Green
Eggs and Ham. Books every child reads. At first many didn’t think he would
succeed.
27 different publishers rejected Dr. Seuss’s first
book
To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.
John
Grisham: The American author first was a lawyer who loved to write.
His first book
A Time to Kill took three years to write. The book was
rejected 28 times until he got one yes for a 5,000 copy print.
He’s sold over 250 million total copies of his books.
Steven
Spielberg: He applied and was
denied two times to
the prestigious University of Southern California film school. Instead he went
to Cal State University in Long Beach.
He went on to direct some of the biggest movie blockbusters in history. Now
he’s worth $2.7 billion and in
1994 got an honorary degree from
the film school that rejected him twice.
Stephen
King: His first book
Carrie was
rejected 30
times and he threw it in the trash. His wife retrieved it out of the
trash and encouraged him to resubmit it. The rest is history. He has sold more
than 350 million copies of his books. (He’s also made many adults fear clowns
too.)
Stephenie
Meyer: The author of the crazy
Twilight series said the
inspiration from the book came from a dream. She finished it in three months but
never intended to publish it until a friend suggested she should.
She wrote 15 letters to literary agencies. Five didn’t reply. Nine rejected.
One gave her a chance. Then eight publishers auctioned for the right to publish
Twilight. She got a three book deal worth $750,000. In 2010, Forbes
reported she earned $40 million.
Tim Ferris:
The man behind the
4 Hour Workweek, who changed how many people view
work and life, was
rejected by 26 publishers before one gave
him a chance. It’s been on the bestseller’s list for years, sold all over the
world, and last year published T
he 4 Hour Body that went to #1 on the
New York Times bestsellers list.
The
Beatles: They were rejected by many record labels. In a
famous
rejection, the label said,
“”guitar groups are on the way out” and
“the Beatles have no future in show business”.
After that the Beatles signed with EMI, brought Beatlemania to the United
States, and became the greatest band in history.
Michael
Jordan: He’s famous for being cut from his high school basketball
team. He turned out to be the greatest basketball player but never let failure
deter him. I love this quote…
“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.”
Thomas
Edison: No list of success from failures would be complete without
the man who gave us many inventions including the light bulb. He knew failure
wouldn’t stop him.
If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not
discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step
forward.
There is no success without failure
Decide what is important to you and take huge steps everyday even though it
doesn’t seem like it’s working. Success doesn’t happen without failures. It’s
reality.
Deal with it.
How bad do you want to achieve your goal? It better be so bad that rejection
won’t derail you.
How much do you believe in what you’re doing? Colonel Sanders did despite
1009 rejections!
“Fall down seven times, get up eight.” – Japanese proverb
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