These 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

• Quote of the Week: Keep swinging!
• Monday Matinée – The Babe & Baby Ruths
• Quick List: 10 Famous Fools
• Tuesday Matinée – Famous Fools
• Brainteaser of the Week #23
• Mid-week Matinée – Michael Jordan’s “Failures”
• Playing an unfair game?
• Thursday Matinée – Knock the cover off!
• Eat sunflower seeds?
• Does your company have a baseball or softball team?
• Take Me Out to the Ball Game
• Mick Mixon’s Homer at Texaco
• Movie of the Week – The Natural
• It Ain’t Over

Sources for Above Biographies:

• http://www.kfclist.com/about/colonel.asp
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Sanders
• http://www.bookrags.com/biography/frank-winfield-woolworth/
• http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/6401/Woolworth-F-W.html
• http://www.justdisney.com/walt_disney/biography/long_bio.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_M._Schulz
• http://www.shareguide.com/Canfield.html
• http://astore.amazon.com/thewashingtpo-20/detail/1558747699
• http://www.thomasedison.com/biography.html