10 Business Failures

baseball-playerThese business people struck out – several times.  But they kept swinging.  And you could say that they “hit it out of the park”.

1.  Scott Adams –  “Most success springs from obstacle or failure.  I became a cartoonist largely because I failed in my goal of becoming a successful executive.” The cartoon he created?  Dilbert.   Note:  You can download this quote from the Get 2 Goal section of our Quote Library.

2. Colonel Sanders worked on a farm, on a streetcar, on the railroad and then in a service station.  He loved to cook and started cooking for folks who stopped in for gas.  Then a new highway came through, forcing the station to close and him to retire.  He was 65 and had nothing to live on except for Social Security.  When his first check came for $105, he decided to do something different and worked to sell investors on the idea of his “finger lickin’ good” chicken.    During the next 10 difficult years, he was able to grow the business to the point where he could sell Kentucky Fried Chicken for $2 million.

3.  F.W. Woolworth worked for several different  stores for several years for no or very low wages.  At one point, his pay was reduced because he had no sales ability.  He chose to open his own store, The Great Five Cent store in New York.  It was a poor location and didn’t last long.  He opened another store in Pennsylvania – this one a 5 and 10 cent store.   When Woolworth died forty years later, he owned 1225 stores in United States, Canada and England with revenue of $119 million.

4.   Alexander Graham Bell. An irate banker told him to get “that toy” out of his office.   After a demonstration, President Hayes reportedly said, “That’s an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?”

5.  Walt Disney began producing short animated films for local businesses early in his career.   At age twenty-one, he ran out of money and his company, Laugh-O-Grams went bankrupt. Instead of giving up, Walt packed his suitcase and moved to Hollywood to start a new business, setting up shop in his uncle’s garage.

6.  Charles Schulz’s drawings were rejected by his high school year book.  His cartoon creation, Peanuts ran for nearly 50 years in more than 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries.

7. John Grisham’s first novel, A Time to Kill, was turned down by fifteen publishers and thirty agents.  He has now written twenty-three books, approximately 250 million sold to date.

8. Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, authors of Chicken Soup for the Soul were rejected by 123 publishers,  There are now eight million copies of that book in print.

9.  Malcolm Forbes, the late editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, failed to make the staff of the school newspaper when he was an undergraduate at Princeton University.

10, Thomas Edison failed hundreds of times as he was testing his light bulb.   He held over 1,500 patents, before he died.  Wonder how many times he failed at each of these?

Keep these stories handy, as inspiration when you need it to keep swinging.

copyright 2010 – Business Class Inc

Other Resources to Help You and Your Team Keep Swinging

Sources for Above Biographies:

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This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. John Grisham is one of my favorite authors, I knew that he struggled as do most of us in the early days. I just never realized how many publishers and agents he went thru to finally get his book published.

    Persistance and passion can accomplish many great things.

    Two of my favorite quotes of his are:

    “Don’t compromise yourself – you’re all you have.”

    “You live your life today…Not tommorow,…and certainly not yesterday.”

    Thanks for the great post and letting me share.

    Boomer54 Mark

  2. Thank YOU, Mark. These quotes are great!

    John Grisham spoke at a literary festival here last year. Hearing him tell the story about riding around the state trying to sell a trunk load of books entitled “A Time to Kill” was fascinating.

  3. Love the quote by Scott Adams, at the time, what he thought was his biggest failure led him to his biggest success.

    Jan, keep the great quotes coming.

    I read your site daily.

    Boomer 54 Mark

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