Some of them before they even got started.

Can you imagine how discouraged they felt?

Or even  foolish?

But they kept swinging.  And eventually “hit one (or more) out of the park”.

And then who do you think felt foolish?  Ah yes – the joke was on the naysayers.

1.  Julia Child and two collaborators signed a contract to produce a book tentatively entitled French Cooking for the American Kitchen.  They worked on it for the next five years and it grew to be an 850 page manuscript.  The publishers rejected it.  Twice.  Instead of cutting it down or giving up, they found a new publisher.  And finally, eight years after starting, Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published. Forty years later,  just after the release of the movie Julie and Julia,  it became a #1 best seller.

2.  Lucille Ball enrolled at the John Murray Anderson Drama School when she was 15 years old.  She felt intimidated by the other girl, especially the star pupil, Bette Davis.  The school told her she didn’t have “what it took” to make it as an actress and wrote Lucy’s mother,  “Lucy’s wasting her time and ours. She’s to shy and reticent to put her best foot forward.”

3.  Elvis Presley auditioned with the house band at the High Hat Club in Memphis and was told he would never make it as a singer.   He “bombed” at the Grand Old Opry where they didn’t approve of his approach to traditional country music.  In fact the  Opry’s talent director, Jim Denny,told Presley he should go back to driving a truck.

4.  Woody Allen went to New York University  where he studied communication and film.  He failed a film course, was suspended and eventually expelled.  He then briefly attended City College of New York.    He wrote for various television shows.  At one point,  his agents convinced him to start doing stand-up and telling his own jokes. He reluctantly agreed but was so scared of the audience that he covered his ears when they applauded his jokes.

5.  Dr. Seuss’ real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel.  At Dartmouth College, he became editor-in-chief of the school’s humor magazine.   He lost that position when he and his friends were caught hosting a drinking party, which was against the prohibition laws and school policy.  He continued contributing  to the magazine, however by signing his work with the name “Seuss.”    His Dad wanted him to be a college professor so he attended but was very bored at Oxford University.  After returning to the United States, he pursued a career as a cartoonist, landing jobs at various magazines for ad campaigns.   When he wrote his first book  And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, he used a pen name to avoid contract violations with his other work, adding “Dr” before “Seuss”  to make his Dad happy.  Reportedly the book was rejected by twenty-nine publishers before it was accepted.

6. The Beatles. In 1957, John Lennon started a band called “The Blackjacks”.   A week later the name was changed to “The Quarry Men”.   Paul and George joined the group.  Others left.    They performed rarely and eventually none.  George left.  When another group failed to show up for a club event, “The Quarry Men” reunited but soon changed their name to “Johnny & the Moondogs” (1960)and again to “Silver Beetles”.   They changed drummers 3 or 4 times over the next few weeks.   Still no Ringo.  Before the year was out, they changed their name again to “The Beatles” (1960).   They played long hours and soon came to be regarded as Liverpool’s top band.   They hired Brian Epstein as their manager, got an audition with Decca Records who told  them,  “Guitar groups are on their way out.” They were  devastated but soon landed a recording contract.  Ringo joined in 1962.  Within a year, the “Beatlemania” craze had started in Britain.  And then – the next year, they came to America.  What followed was phenomenal.  They became a musical legend.

7.  Leo Tolstoy wasn’t a very good student.  He went to Kazan University, switched majors several times and left without earning a degree.   He returned home to work as a farmer but reportedly failed because he spent too much time socializing “in town”.   He joined the army and was assigned to an outpost with little to do.  And so he wrote about people and places.   He used these stories in the books he wrote, the most famous of which was War and Peace.

8.  J.K. Rowling wanted to be a writer from an early age.   1990 is when she first came up with the idea of Harry Potter.  She began working on it right away but it took four years to complete the manuscript for the first book.  During this time, her mother died, she moved to Portugal to get a teaching job, she got married, had a child, got divorced, returned to England as a single parent working full time.   After several tries, she found an agent who took the next year in search of a publisher.   A small publisher agreed to take the book but advised her to continue teaching since childrens books usually don’t do very well.  The initial press run was only 1000 books.   Since then, she has written seven more books – with some sources reporting that 50 million of each has been sold.  In addition, each book has been produced as a movie.

9.  Richard Hooker, AKA Richard Hornberger, Hornberger worked eleven years on his novel, MASH. It was rejected by many publishers (one report said twenty-one!)  before being acquired by Morrow.  It soon became an Academy Award winning film and a popular television series that lasted eleven seasons.

10.  Michael Jordan did not make the high school basketball team his freshman year.

Keep these stories handy, as inspiration when you need it to keep swinging.  And if you feel like a fool while doing it…who cares?

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 Business Failures
• 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.biography.com/articles/Lucille-Ball-9196958
• http://oldies.about.com/od/elvispresleyhistory/a/elvistimeline1954.htm
• http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000095/bio
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_Allen
• http://www.carolhurst.com/authors/drseuss.html
• http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_publishers_rejected_Dr_Seuss’s_first_book
• http://www.catinthehat.org/history.htm
• http://www.catinthehat.org/history.htm
• http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/the-beatles-biography/9b5665a6978fdf4b4825685d00067ce3
• http://www.notablebiographies.com/St-Tr/Tolstoy-Leo.html
• http://www.biographyonline.net/writers/j_k_rowling.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Richard_Hornberger