15 Highly Successful People Who Failed On Their Way To Success

Free Resources Hub
8 min readSep 13, 2021

--

Many successful people have their own inspiring stories, but these 15 people will inspire you with their failures.

Photo by Razvan Chisu on Unsplash

“If You’re Going Through Hell, Keep Going — Winston Churchill”

The path to success is quite difficult and quite often leads us to failures that turn into downfalls in our lives. Success requires a lot of hard work, patience and courage to face challenges and all possible obstacles.

Success is something that doesn’t come easily. Failure on the road to success is the norm, but the fact remains that it is simply a step towards success. Many famous people had to overcome numerous obstacles in their path to become successful . Failures have brought them to the lowest points of their lives.

However, their hard work gave them what they fought for, and their perseverance is currently an inspiration to many.

If you’ve ever felt fallen down in life and needed a little inspiration to get through this period, here are some inspiring stories of people who were pressed for hard times and who came to success and became famous.

1. Walt Disney

Walt Disney
Photo by Quick PS on Unsplash

Walt Disney’s inspiring story began with his share of failures — he was fired from his job at the Kansas City Star because “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas”; his Mickey Mouse cartoons were rejected for being “too scary for women”; Three Little Pigs was also rejected because it only featured four characters; his first business venture, the animation studio Laugh-O-Gram, was shut down due to bankruptcy.

Stepping over the setbacks, he built the Walt Disney Company, which is now raking in billions. Rumor has it that Disney was turned down 302 times before it finally got funding for the Walt Disney Company.

2. Harrison Ford

Attribution: Gage Skidmore

Before Harrison Ford became Han Solo and Indiana Jones, at 30 he was a self-taught carpenter, taking care of his family with all his might. He had small roles in television shows, but that was barely enough to support his family. That is why he decided to become a carpenter.

Ford was assembling a closet at George Lucas’s house when he offered him a supporting role in American Graffiti at the age of 29. But only 6 years later, he became Han Solo, created by the same George Lucas.

3. Sylvester Stallone

Credit: wikimedia.org

Hollywood star Sylvester Stallone inspires us with her unique story. At 20, he was a regular grocery store salesman. He was so broke that he had to sell his wife’s jewelry in order to somehow feed his family.

At one point, he was so desperate that he was forced to sell his dog to a stranger at a liquor store for $ 25.

He says that the biggest downfall in his life was when he started crying. Then he did “Rocky” and this eerie part of his life was closed.

Guess what he did with his first paycheck? He bought his dog out for $ 15,000.

4. J.K. Rowling

Credit: celebrity-photos.com

She is currently one of the richest women in the world. Her inspiring story began in total poverty, when she was a divorced child raising a child alone.

J.K. Rowling has gone through a series of falls. Rowling was so poor that she didn’t even have the money to print the Harry Potter manuscript, so she typed all 9000+ words on an old typewriter by hand to submit to the publisher.

5. Arianna Huffington

The president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post is a prominent figure in American politics, but she tasted the bitter taste of failure when she came in fifth with just 0.55% of the vote in the 2003 California governor’s race.

Although she successfully sold her first book, her second book was rejected 36 times. She has now published 13 books and the success of The Huffington Post is incredible — all suggesting that she has learned a lot from her failures and her story is truly inspiring.

6. Donald Trump

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

Donald Trump owed $ 1 billion in the early 1990s, and journalists insisted that this money could be forgotten, it could not be paid back. One day he said to his daughter as he passed by a homeless man: “Do you think this is a bum? He has one billion dollars more than me. “

Back then, Trump says, he was at the lowest day of his life. Then it generates the largest financial turnover in history, after which it is entered into the Guinness Book of Records. He once owed $ 1 billion, but now Donald Trump’s net worth is estimated at $ 4.5 billion.

7. Michael Jordan

Michael Jordan is undeniably the most famous basketball player in the world. As a child, he understood that he loved basketball and wanted to make a career out of it, but the coach would not take him because he was short.

The basketball legend was not even accepted into his high school varsity basketball team. Jordan has pushed forward through all the setbacks that have defined his success and is truly inspiring now.

8. Albert Einstein

Photo by Taton Moïse on Unsplash

Albert Einstein did not know how to speak until he was four, and did not read until he was seven. His parents and teachers thought he was not just slow, but mentally retarded and antisocial.

He was expelled from school, and he was also denied admission to the Zurich Polytechnic.

Now Einstein is a household name, a synonym for “genius” — recognized for having changed the world with his discoveries.

9. Abraham Lincoln

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

Abraham Lincoln’s inspiring story began in his youth when he held the rank of captain, but soon lost it. Then he tried to open many businesses, all of which failed.

Coming from a very poor family, he went through many difficulties to become a successful lawyer. Lincoln then lost several races for public office, but none of which could stop him from trying to become President of the United States.

10. Jim Carrey

This successful comedian briefly lived with his family on a Volkswagen bus parked all over Canada. As a child, his family was so poor that he had to leave high school to find work.

He took a job as a janitor just to support his family. Kerry ‘s story is inspiring because it was during these financially difficult times that he developed his sense of humor, which he later earned millions from.

11. Stephen King

Credit: flikr.com

We all know about the success of this horror master. Few of us know the true story of his success, which now inspires many new writers to create their own masterpieces.

King’s first bestseller, Carrie, was rejected 30 times before the book was published. In fact, out of desperation, he threw the manuscript into the trash.

He came from a poor family and worked as an English teacher, selling short stories for magazines to supplement his income.

To date, he has over 50 novels that have sold over 350 million copies.

12. Thomas Edison

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

Thomas Edison’s teachers said that he was “too stupid to learn anything” for his mother to pick him up from school and teach him herself.

He was also fired from his first two jobs because he was not “productive enough.” Ironically, Thomas Edison is currently considered one of the greatest innovators of all time.

His inspiring story is that his success, after over 10,000 failed attempts to invent a commercially viable light bulb, has set a good example of how perseverance is truly worth it.

13. Steven Spielberg

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

Steven Spielberg is considered one of the greatest filmmakers of our time, giving us films like Jaws, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan, and a few others.

It sounds incredible, but he was dropped from the University of Southern California School of Motion Picture Arts — not once, but twice. Spielberg’s story is inspiring because, despite this, he did not allow himself to be thrown off the track and abandoned his dream of making films; he survived and is now successful enough to donate money to the construction of the University from which he was once expelled.

14. Henry Ford

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Henry Ford has built one of the most successful car companies of all time, but he is no stranger to failure.

Henry Ford’s story began in 1899 when he formed the Detroyd automobile company, which went bankrupt shortly after. Again in 1901 he formed the Henry Ford Company.

And she went bankrupt as well. His third attempt, the Ford Motor Company, is truly inspiring, as it propelled Henry Ford to the pinnacle of success and revolutionized the automotive industry.

15. Oprah Winfrey

Credit: Greg Hernandez

his television star has a very tragic past. Oprah was born into a poor family, and at the age of 14 she gave birth to a child and lost him. She was molested by her cousins ​​and family friends. She dropped everything and went to work on television.

She is now one of the richest women in the world with a net worth of $ 2.9 billion.

These inspiring stories are mostly based on the hard times and low downs of famous people who are successful and wealthy today.

All of them achieved their success from scratch, having nothing, only their talents and abilities, which they developed and honed over the years.

Final Thoughts

I hope that these stories will really inspire you for serious feats in life, because it is important to understand that many people will already walk the path to success, which means it can be traversed by us too!

Follow me for read stories like this and in the future if i publishing new story then you get notification first.

--

--