Feeling like a failure? You’re in good company. You may have
heard one or two of these classic stories before; they’re stories of the
failures of wildly successful people. It never hurts to be reminded that
failure is a stepping stone on the road to success. But more than that, success
is
usually, if not always, actually driven by prior failure. I have written many times before about failures,
mostly my own so I figured it was worth recounting some of history’s biggest
from some of history’s best.
Success is a bad teacher, because
when you succeed, you’re not always sure what you did right. It could have been
just dumb luck. But when you fail, you usually know exactly what you did wrong.
The paradox of success is that if you’re failing in the right way, you’re
probably doing exactly what you should be doing to succeed long-term. The key
is to make small, calculated mistakes, and then learn from them. That is how
the brain works: our minds stumble through our environment taking guesses, and
then learns through repetition, avoiding negative consequences and seeking
pleasure. It is that simplicity that makes the brain so effective and powerful.
Some of our greatest leaders have
done the same thing, stumbled through the dark until they hit a eureka moment.
Rather than list all my favorites, I figured I would start with ten that I love
and learn from some of yours. Later, I’ll submit a broader article (with
attribution, of course) with the best of the worst.
1. After World War II, many Japanese
homes had electricity but no appliances. Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita
sensed an opportunity, and developed a rice cooker intended to become a staple
in every home. But the cooker was awful – it either burned rice or undercooked
it, and less than 100 units were sold. This didn’t dissuade Ikuba and Morita
from their dream of selling household products. After several other false
starts, they began selling portable transistor radios. Thanks to this product,
the fledging Sony Corporation became a success.
2. Many successful writers
rightfully consider their early rejections to be badges of honor. Stephen
King’s first book, Carrie, accumulated at least 30 rejection slips
before it was accepted by Doubleday. Legend has it that Jack London’s
first story was rejected 600 times. Had he quit after the first couple hundred
failures, the world would have had to live without The Call of the Wild
and White Fang. More recently, J.K. Rowling had her first Harry
Potter novel rejected a whopping 12 times and was told “not to quit her day
job.” (My first book, Wired for Thought, was rejected 9 times. Even
after proving myself as a writer, my newest book, Breakpoint,
was rejected 3 times. I probably would be more successful as a writer if I got
even more rejections!)
3. Bill Gates and Paul
Allen started a business called Traf-O-Data, which took raw data from
traffic counters and processed them into reports to sell to cities in
Washington for traffic planning purposes. Then the state began giving away the
reports to cities for free, making the business model completely obsolete. But
the two college dropouts with a track record of failure didn’t give up.
Instead, they created Microsoft.
4. Michael Jordan was cut
from his high school basketball team – a heartbreaking experience for any
teenager. Then he became what many consider the greatest basketball player in
the history of the game. He is the author of one of my favorite quotes about
failure, one proudly displayed on the Failure Wall at my company:
“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.”
5. As a young man, Walt Disney
was fired from his newspaper job for a lack of good ideas. Then he started his
first animation company in 1921 but quickly went bankrupt and ate dog food to
survive. If you were subsisting on dog food because of the failure of your
first animation company, would you start another animation company? Probably
not. But that’s exactly what Walt Disney did. In fact, he had to restart
several more times after that before finally becoming successful.
6. In 1899, Henry Ford left
his long-term, comfortable job to establish the Detroit Automobile Company with
$150,000 of investor money. A little over a year later it went bankrupt.
Somehow, his investors still had faith in Ford and invested in the Henry Ford
Company in 1901. But this company went bankrupt as well. Having lost all your
investors’ money twice, would you try a third time? Ford did, establishing the
Ford Motor Company in 1903. Five years later the company became a success with the
release of the Model T.
7. Despite some local success
playing cover songs in UK bars and clubs, The Beatles were turned down
by almost every record label. In one infamous rejection, an executive at Decca
Records declined to sign them because "guitar groups are on the way
out" and "The Beatles have no future in show business.” Ouch. Of
course, that rejection is now considered one of the biggest mistakes in music
history (and hopefully that executive learned from her epic failure). Keep this
in mind next time you’re rejected: it may well be that you haven’t failed at
all! Or take the alternative message to heart. It turns out that two years
after Decca rejected the Beatles, George Harrison returned to the label to
offer a tip: sign the Rolling Stones. This time around, Decca learned from its
failure and had a success of its own.
8. As an aspiring actor, Fred
Astaire must have been thrilled to book a screen test for MGM Studios. That
is, until he received the director’s feedback, which read: "Can't act.
Can't sing. Slightly bald. Not handsome. Can dance a little." After
becoming immensely successful, Astaire displayed that note in his Beverly Hills
mansion to remind himself not to take no for an answer.
9. In the early 1990s, rapper Jay-Z
was turned down by every record label in the business, with some stating he was
too old, and some concerned that he wasn’t “hard” enough, as he didn’t rap
about drugs or crime. Instead of giving up, he formed his own record label to
release his first album. Fast forward to 2014 and he and his wife, Beyoncé, are
worth an estimated $900 million, the majority of it from Jay-Z’s empire.
10. Most people know that Babe
Ruth is one of the greatest baseball players of all time, an accolade that
is well-deserved given his record of home runs. What most people don’t know is
that when he retired in 1935, he also held the record for the most strike outs
in all of Major League Baseball. He trudged back to the dugout twice as often
as he ran the bases. His explanation? “I just go up there and I swing. I just
keep on swinging and I keep on swinging. Every strike brings me closer to my
next home run.”
These are my top ten but there are
many more stories of success through failure worth noting. What are your
favorite swings and misses?
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