7 Famous People Who Turned Their Failures into Gold!

There is no single recipe to guarantee success. It requires trial-and-error experiment and comes with a very hefty price tag. These 7 people knows this for sure. His family moved to Missouri after Walt’s birth. It is in Missouri where he spent most of his childhood drawing and selling cartoons to his neighbors.

Walt Disney

Mickey Mouse, a famous character is known to every young and old is a foster child of Walter Elias Disney. Born in Chicago, IL in December 5, 1901. Walt spent his childhood in Illinois drawing cartoons. When he was young, he helped his father sell newspapers and candy on the train that travels between Chicago and Kansas City. This is about the same time when he began drawing and took arts seriously. From the young boy whose hobby was to draw cartoons, he became the world known animator, entrepreneur, multi-awarded film-maker and an icon that he is now. Let us take a look at his failures and see how hard he had to struggle to reach the pinnacle of success.

At 17 years old, he dropped out of high school and tried to enlist himself in the military. Unfortunately, he did not make it because he was underage. He then applied in Red Cross and was sent to France as an ambulance driver. His ambulance was interesting because its windows are plastered with drawings of cartoons. After his stunt in France, he returned home and wants to work as a cartoonist. However, he landed a job that creates advertisements for magazines and movie theatres – not what he has imagined. He was fired from his job in Kansas City and was told that he lacks imagination and good ideas.

In 1922, he opened the film studio Laugh-O-Gram. The following year, his business went bankrupt and he had to close it down. With his suitcase and $20 in his pocket, he moved to Hollywood. Together with his brother, Roy, he formed the Disney Brothers Studios.

In 1926, he collaborated with Universal Studios and created Oswald and the Rabbit but he lost the rights of ownership to the studio. To make things worse, they had hired his artist out of his company!

The following year in 1927, MGM Studios refused to distribute Mickey Mouse. They thought that Mickey Mouse was a bad idea as it would freak out women seeing a giant mouse on screen. On May 15, 1928, Mickey was given a test shot at a cartoon Plane Crazy. It did not gain traction with the audience and Walt had a difficult time finding a distributor. As he refused to give up, he produced The Gallopin’ Gaucho but did not succeed either. On his third try, Walt, together with Ub Iwerks co-directed Steamboat Willie and it became that featured Mickey Mouse. The release of the animation was a success and they finally found a distributor. From then, Mickey Mouse’ success was unstoppable! ABC even produced Mickey Mouse Club and as they say, the rest is history.

Oprah Winfrey

Born in an impoverished teenage mother in a farm in Missippi, Oprah Winfrey did not have an easy childhood. She admitted that she was sexually abused at the age of 9. She ran away from her home at 13 years old only to get pregnant at 14. Sadly, she lost her first child. You may think that she would just give up and spend the rest of her life depressed.

At present time, she is a world-known TV-host, producer, philanthropist, entrepreneur, billionaire and one of the most influential woman. Before she became the Oprah Winfrey we know today, she took some hits in life. Apart from her early childhood sufferings, she was fired from her work as a co-anchor from the 6pm program in WJZ Baltimore. The producers thought she is not the right fit. Such failures did not stop her from moving up. She was offered another job and she gladly accepted it. She did all her best to excel as an anchor and her offers started piling up.

Oprah Winfrey’s early life may not have been what she ought it to be. Her past and failures did not define the Oprah Winfrey everyone knows today. As Oprah said: “Turn your wounds into wisdom.”

Mary Kay Ash

A woman who has been divorced from her first husband and a widower from her second marriage, Mary Kay Ash knew hardship is real.

She was married to a military serviceman and was selling books from door to door. Her first husband divorced her when he returned from the military. It was a tough time for her to be left with 3 children at the time when divorce isn’t acceptable.

Mary Kay Ash remarried after the divorce and was working at Stanley Home Products as a party host to encourage people to buy household items. She was doing very well in sales that World Gifts pirated her in 1952. After spending almost a decade with the company, she quit in protest because she was not promoted simply by being a woman! This prompted her and her second husband to put up their own company in 1963. Unfortunately, her husband died a month before the launch of their company.

WIth a capital of $5000 she got from her son, she started the cosmetic company, Mary Kay. As of 2013, the net revenue of the company is a whopping $3 billion!

J.K. Rowling

Every Potterheads know J.K. Rowling. People of all ages know about the fantasy Series Harry Potter, which is a brainchild of Joanne Rowling, better known as J.K. Rowling, one of the richest authors to date.

The success of Harry Potter did not happen overnight. Joanne suffered a great deal of failures and rejections before she became this successful author known worldwide.

She moved to Portugal in 1990 to teach English. It is in Portugal where she met a Portuguese journalist Jorge Arantes. Joanne and Jorge married and had a daughter, Jessica who was born in 1993. Unfortunately, their union ended in divorce. After the unfortunate separation, Joanne, together with her daughter, Jessica moved back to England.

It was in England where she wrote the initial chapters of the first Harry Potter book. At that time, she was a divorcee, bankrupt and living on welfare. It was a struggle for her to raise her daughter with very minimal money and living on welfare while writing the books. At some point, she was told that she needed to get a job as there is no money in children’s books.

She sent the first three chapters to several publishers but received numerous rejection letters. Finally, one literary agent wrote Rowling a letter, asking to see the rest of the book. The first Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone,” was sold to a publisher for approximately $4,000.00.

The rest is history. The Harry Potter novels went on to become a record-breaking book series, and its films became box-office successes. J.K. Rowling has since become one of the wealthiest women in Britain, and writes and sells books for the benefit of Lumos, a charity for institutionalized children.

Dwayne Johnson (The Rock)

Today, Dwayne Johnson is one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood, with numerous movie projects in the pipeline and an ongoing HBO series “Ballers.”

Johnson’s current success belies his humble beginnings. Being the son of Rocky Johnson and grandson to High Chief Peter Maivia – both former professional wrestlers of considerable reknown – did not guarantee Johnson a comfortable life. Despite moderate career success, Rocky Johnson had constant financial trouble, and a rape allegation resulted in Rocky Johnson getting blacklisted by wrestling promotions. At one point Dwayne Johnson and his mother Ata came home to find their house padlocked, an eviction notice stapled to their door.

After a brief brush with the law, Johnson sought to improve his lot in life by turning to athletics. With the help of Jodi Swik, his first football coach, Johnson had a successful high school football career. This career helped Johnson secure a scholarship to the University of Miami, where he would also find early success in college football. Unfortunately, an injury and his replacement by future football Hall of Famer Warren Sapp meant that Johnson’s chances at the National Football League were nil. Undaunted, Johnson left Miami after graduation and signed up with the Calgary Stampeders in the Canadian Football League.

Johnson’s stint in the CFL was far from successful. After only two months, Johnson was cut from the team. Forced to return home to his parents, he had only $7 in his pocket, with no job and no future. He had already experienced symptoms of depression during his stint in Miami, but now the symptoms were worse than ever.

Finally, while sitting alone in his parent’s apartment, Johnson made a decision that would change the course of his life forever: he decided to become a professional wrestler.

Johnson had a shaky start in the pro wrestling world, as fans were quick to boo him despite his being a “good guy,” and early in his career Johnson suffered a knee injury. However, his time in recovery led to a fateful decision for Dwayn to return as a “heel” wrestler, and return he did. As his brash-talking, eyebrow-raising, now iconic persona “The Rock,” Dwayne Johnson dominated World Wrestling Entertainment shows and programming for the better part of a decade, becoming WWE Champion on 8 separate occasions. Since that time, Dwayne Johnson has become one of the most recognizable faces in entertainment and Hollywood’s bankable stars.

Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga, born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, was already talented and creative ate a very young age. But the price she paid for it was steep; enrolled in a private Catholic school, a young Lady Gaga suffered constant bullying and exclusion from her peers. This resulted in bouts of depression and self-destructive tendencies.

At 19 years old, Lady Gaga was a college dropout, looking to start her music career with Def Jam Records. However, just three short months later, Def Jam dropped her as an artist. Before long, Lady Gaga was shacked up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, getting into drugs and performing in burlesque shows for a living.

In 2008, things turned around for Lady Gaga, as she became a songwriter for Interscope Records, writing songs for the likes of Fergie and Britney Spears. But it was R&B singer Akon who recognized Lady Gaga’s talent while she was singing a reference vocal for one of the songs she wrote. Akon signed Lady Gaga to his own label, Kon Live Distribution.

Lady Gaga has since gone on to win numerous Grammy awards and sell nearly 30 million albums and hundreds of millions of singles as of 2016. Lady Gaga, along with her mother, also founded the Born This Way Foundation in 2012, a foundation that advocates youth empowerment with a particular focus on anti-bullying. By using her musical career as a platform, Lady Gaga draws from her horrible experience as a child to help other children in need of support and inspiration.

Mark Cuban

People hear the name “Mark Cuban,” and they think, “self-made billionaire, owner of the Dallas Mavericks.” But things weren’t always rosy for Mark Cuban.

One of Cuban’s first jobs was at Mellon Bank as a specialist in computerizing local bank systems. He had a job, but he was very enterprising, creating an internal newsletter for the bank employees. Rather than be praised for his work ethic, Cuban was shouted at and dressed down for the unauthorized newsletter. Sensing that his boss wouldn’t keep him around much longer, Cuban left his job and moved to Dallas.

While in Dallas, Cuban worked odd jobs, until he landed a job with a company that sold PC software. He did well for himself there, and in less than a year was poised to make a single sale worth $15,000. Rather than support him, his boss told him not to push through with the transaction. Cuban pushed through with it anyway, and upon returning to the workplace with the $15,000 check, Cuban was fired on the spot.

Ironically, it would be this firing that would lead Cuban to attain his first successful business venture. He returned to the person with whom he was about to make the $15,000 sale, nd offered to accept the money to start up his own company and complete the work himself. This company would eventually become Micro-Solutions, Mark Cuban’s first successful startup in what would become a long, successful line of Mark Cuban’s companies.