Everyone starts small, others make it big in no time, while others struggle for years before seeing progress. But there’s also a portion of successful people that started as failures, with broken dreams and a lot of constraints.
Bu with the right amount of will, eagerness, determination, and hard work, they made it. Let’s look at the top five famous failures that have stories that will inspire you to not give up on your dreams.
Everyone knows who Mark Zuckerberg is but the most common way to introduce this man is Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, the most successful social networking website. The very same man who’s the basis of the popular movie, The Social Network.
Prior to launching thefacebook.com (now named Facebook), Zuckerberg created Facemash, a website that lets students choose the better-looking person from a set of photos. But, students whose pictures appeared on the website weren’t too happy about their photos being used without their consent. Facemash was shut down by Harvard, and Zuckerberg needed to issue apologies.
At present, Zuckerberg is famous and rich. However, before catapulting to fame, he went through different levels of stress and frustration when shortly after launching Facebook, he was sued by brothers Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narenda. The case was later settled for 1.2 million Facebook shares.
Born in 1950, Richard Branson is an English billionaire and a business magnate. He is well-known as a famous and successful individual who founded Virgin Group, a global brand that houses a wide variety of business ventures, such as music, telecom, hospitality, and travel.
Before becoming the billionaire that he is today, Branson started small, with the Student magazine, where he interviews distinguished people. Through the magazine, he started to sell records at a discounted rate and that catapulted into an overnight success that led him to open a record shop in 1971.
However, the records he had sold were labeled as export stock. He was fined a hefty amount of money and unpaid taxes. It has come to the point where his mother had to re-mortgage their house to help pay the settlement cost with the government.
All is well and the Virgin Records store turned out popular and it allowed Branson to finally create his record label. By 1992 and at the age of 42, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Megastores followed. But that’s not all of Branson’s obstacles.
To keep his airline afloat, Branson was pressured to sell the record label, otherwise, he would have suffered a major financial failure, as well as a loss in the airline industry. Branson was distraught upon selling Virgin Records to EMI for £500 million. He had a deep love for the record label as his first successful venture into the business world.
Fortunately, the airline managed to dodge a terrifying hitch and succeeded to be the airline that it is now, valuable and excellent customer service.
Soichiro Honda, a Japanese inventor and industrialist who created an automotive empire that we all know today as Honda Motor Company. At present, Honda has grown to rival different other automotive companies but the company’s early days were not easy.
With no formal education under his belt, Soichiro Honda left home at the age of 15 and headed to Tokyo to search for work. He was hired at an auto repair shop where he apprenticed for the next 6 years. He returned home and opened his automotive shop.
In 1973, the era of the Great Depression, Honda, at 31-years old, founded Tōkai Seiki, intending to create piston rings for Toyota. Despite pulling all days and nights for work, he failed and was told that the rings weren’t up to Toyota’s specifications. He was struggling to make ends meet and resorted to pawning his wife’s ring.
Fortunately, giving up was not in Honda’s vocabulary, and after failing, he went back to school and looked for ways to improve his designs. And after two or more years of designing, he secured a contract with Toyota to create its piston rings.
But that wasn’t all. Shortly after, the factory he built to build the products was hit by a bomb carried by a B-29 bomber during World War II. He rebuilt the factory and for a second time, it was hit by a disaster as an earthquake destroyed it.
But Honda refuses to give up. He then started building motorized bicycles, the very product that solidified Honda’s success.
Another famous person made it into the list. Steve Jobs, born in 1955 and sadly passed away in 2011, was a legendary billionaire, inventor, and entrepreneur, all in one person. He is responsible for one of the most acclaimed and successful tech companies to have graced the earth – Apple Computers.
However, before his success, he was met with failures and a frightening number of setbacks.
Early into his childhood, Job felt unwanted. He was put up for adoption by his mother and was raised in Palo Alto, California by a blue-collar couple. Instead of trying to finish his degree, he dropped out of college and took courses that interest him.
In 1976, Jobs co-founded Apple Computers with a friend, Steve Wozniak. At the get-go, the company revved its rhythm and was highly successful. All tumbled down the drain when in 1983, Jobs hired John Scully from Pepsi to take reign as CEO. This, however, became the worst decision he had made.
Scully and Jobs had a disagreement and Jobs was unable to oust Scully out of his position as CEO. Due to this, Jobs resigned from Apple and took 5 employees with him. He started his new business, NeXT.
All luck on his side, NeXT thrived while Apple plunges into bankruptcy. In 1997, NeXT acquired Apple, bringing the failing company back its feet.
Born in 1901 and the root of all children’s dreams was Walt Disney, the founder of Walt Disney Company. We all know the company as the place that brought laughter, realizations, dreams, and memories into films we’ve all treasured until now. But before garnering its success, Walt Disney went through a pretty rough road.
In 1919, Disney was working with Kansas City Star, a local newspaper, when he was fired for ‘lacking imagination’ and ‘having no good ideas.’ Later on, Disney created a company called Laugh-O-Gram which produces cartoon animations. At that time, his major client was Newman’s theaters, a large theater chain. His cartoon animations were showcased at the start of the films.
However, Laugh-O-Gram didn’t last long as the money earned wasn’t enough to keep the company in the game. It declared bankruptcy in 1923.
The same year and at 22-years old, Disney moved to Hollywood where his brother Roy was and they formed the Disney Brothers Studio, later named to Walt Disney Company. The company was to produces animated films.
Five years later, when Disney created Mickey Mouse, the company took off to become one of the largest and most successful companies in the world.