EVER TRIED AND FAILED? TRY AGAIN AND FAIL BETTER

Throughout history, there have been thousands of famous failures. Even before re people were battling with the push-and-pull created by this burning desire to succeed. This stems beyond mere survival. Survival is built into our DNA — it’s part of the very fabric that makes us into who we are.

However, human beings weren’t just made to survive; we were made to thrive. We’ve been thriving since the earliest days of our species some 200,000 years ago. With the beautiful invention of language, we’ve been able to expand our knowledge, enhance our technology and vastly improve our quality of life.

Still, while we’re suffering through the disheartening and gut-wrenching pains of failure, we’re often not thinking about thriving, we’re solely focused on surviving. 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.

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.

Today, if you’ve suffered through failures in the past, or you’re going through the torrent of a failure right now, know this — failure makes us better. Failure will improve your life. It will allow you to reach new understandings and epiphanies on life, love, business and the people all around you.

You get the idea? Never give up on your hopes and your dreams. Never allow someone else to tell you that you’re not good enough, smart enough or talented enough to achieve greatness in whatever capacity you’re seeking. You can do anything you put your mind on. ANYTHNIG.

THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS FAILURES

Abraham Lincoln

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

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

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

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

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. In fact, Einstein didn’t speak until he was 4-years old. Yes, four-years old. In 1895, at the age of 16, he failed to pass the examination for entrance into the Swiss Federal Polytechnic school located in Zurich.

And while he did graduate from university, he struggled and nearly dropped out, doing very poorly during the course of his studies there. In fact, he was in such dire straits that at the time of his father’s death, he considered his son to be a major failure, which left young Einstein completely heartbroken.

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.

Of course, this is the same individual who brought us the theory of relativity, with groundbreaking work done in physics and mathematics, and helped us to reach deeper understandings about how the universe works, developing several fundamentals core laws governing physics, won the Nobel Prize in 1921 and created the beginnings of quantum theory.

Aliko Dangote

Born in April 10th 1957 in Kano state, Northern part of Nigeria. As a young teenager growing up, Aliko Dangote comitted himself to doing business, selling packs of sweet in his school days. He established a mini trading business in 1977 from a loan that was given to him by his uncle.

His textile company failed and was even shut down, he later went into the cement industry which crawled and almost failed due to it capital intensiveness until 2013 when it grew and expanded to various African nations. According to Forbes , he has been the richest man in Africa for 7 consecutive years. His words: ' Nothing is impossible. That is my mantra in life. No matter what you go through, just remember, nothing is impossible for you to achieve and you will overcome it

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.

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 autobiography, Darwin knew that others, including his father, were displeased in him. He stated, “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.

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 before one agreed to his idea.

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.

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.

Emily Dickinson

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.

Henry Ford

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.

Jerry Seinfeld

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 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 simply kept going.

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

Quite possibly one of the most famous and renowned former-failures of our time, 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.

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.

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.

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

There’s little need in the way of an introduction to Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, what can be considered as the world’s most successful site that reaches nearly the whole connected world. He was also the inspiration for the popular movie, The Social Network.

However, 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. 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.

Jordan is credited with once saying that,”I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve 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

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.

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.

Stephen King

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.

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 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.

Vincent Van Gogh

Born in 1853, Vincent Van Gogh is one of the most influential painters in modern history, and is accredited with painting some of the most notable works of art in all time. Throughout his life, Van Gogh created 2,100 various pieces of art, which included 860 oil paintings, most of which were painted within the last 2 years of his life.

However, during Van Gogh’s brief 37 years of existence, prior to committing suicide in 1890, he had only sold a total of one painting. Yes, just one painting. For the most part, Van Gogh considered himself a failure and didn’t feel that life was worth living. That also could be because much of his life was lived steeped in poverty and battling mental illnesses.

While Van Gogh suffered through psychosis and delusional states, his bold impressionist work and dramatic brushstrokes have resonated with the art community. While he only sold one piece of art prior to his death, he had only begun the bulk of his oil paintings just two years prior to committing suicide.

Still, it’s clear that Van Gogh was a true genius, with an unending imagination and talent to transform the pictures in his mind into wild landscapes and portraits filled with illustrative brushstrokes and bold impressionistic vibrancy.

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