Success comes in all shapes and colours.
You can be successful in your job and career but you can equally be successful
in your marriage, at sports or a hobby. Whatever success you are after there is
one thing all radically successful people have in common: Their ferocious drive
and hunger for success makes them never give up.
Successful people (or the people talking
or writing about them) often paint a picture of the perfect ascent to success.
In fact, some of the most successful people in business, entertainment and
sport have failed. Many have failed numerous times but they have never given
up. Successful people are able to pick themselves up, dust themselves off and
carry on trying.
I have collected some examples that
should be an inspiration to anyone who aspires to be successful. They show that
if you want to succeed you should expect failure along the way. I actually
believe that failure can spur you on and make you try even harder. You could argue
that every experience of failure increases the hunger for success. The truly
successful won't be beaten, they take responsibility for failure, learn from it
and start all over from a stronger position.
Let's look at some examples,
Henry Ford - the pioneer of modern
business entrepreneurs and the founder of the Ford Motor Company failed a
number of times on his route to success. His first venture to build a motor car
got dissolved a year and a half after it was started because the stockholders
lost confidence in Henry Ford. Ford was able to gather enough capital to start
again but a year later pressure from the financiers forced him out of the
company again. Despite the fact that the entire motor industry had lost faith
in him he managed to find another investor to start the Ford Motor Company -
and the rest is history.
Walt Disney - one of the greatest
business leaders who created the global Disney empire of film studios, theme
parks and consumer products didn't start off successful. Before the great
success came a number of failures. Believe it or not, Walt was fired from an
early job at the Kansas City Star Newspaper because he was not creative enough!
In 1922 he started his first company called Laugh-O-Gram. The Kansas based
business would produce cartoons and short advertising films. In 1923, the
business went bankrupt. Walt didn't give up, he packed up, went to Hollywood
and started The Walt Disney Company.
Richard Branson - He is undoubtedly a
successful entrepreneur with many successful ventures to his name including
Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Music and Virgin Active. However, when he was 16 he
dropped out of school to start a student magazine that didn't do as well as he
hoped. He then set up a mail-order record business which did so well that he
opened his own record shop called Virgin. Along the way to success came many
other failed ventures including Virgin Cola, Virgin Vodka, Virgin Clothes,
Virgin Vie, Virgin cards, etc.
Oprah Winfrey - who ranks No 1 in the
Forbes celebrity list and is recognised as the queen of entertainment based on
an amazing career as iconic talk show host, media proprietor, actress and
producer. In her earlier career she had numerous set-backs, which included
getting fired from her job as a reporter because she was 'unfit for
television', getting fired as co-anchor for the 6 O'clock weekday news on
WJZ-TV and being demoted to morning TV.
J.K. Rowling - who wrote the Harry
Potter books selling over 400 million copies and making it one of the most
successful and lucrative book and film series ever. However, like so many
writers she received endless rejections from publishers. Many rejected her
manuscript outright for reasons like 'it was far too long for a children's
book' or because 'children books never make any money'. J.K. Rowling's story is
even more inspiring because when she started she was a divorced single mum on
welfare.
Bill Gates -co-founder and chairman of
Microsoft dropped out of Harvard and set up a business called Traf-O-Data. The
partnership between him, Paul Allen and Paul Gilbert was based on a good idea
(to read data from roadway traffic counters and create automated reports on
traffic flows) but a flawed business model that left the company with few
customers. The company ran up losses between 1974 and 1980 before it was
closed. However, Bill Gates and Paul Allen took what they learned and avoided
those mistakes when they created the Microsoft empire.
History is littered with many more
similar examples:
Milton Hershey failed in his first two
attempts to set up a confectionary business.
H.J. Heinz set up a company that
produced horseradish, which went bankrupt shortly after.
Steve Jobs got fired from Apple, the
company he founded. Only to return a few years later to turn it into one of the
most successful companies ever.
So, the one thing successful people
never do is: Give up! I hope that this is inspiration and motivation for
everyone who aspires to be successful in whatever way they chose. Do you agree
or disagree with me? Are there other things you would add to the list of things
successful people never do? Please share your thoughts...(Bernard Marr,
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