Patrick Zeis Success stories look different once we know how they end. A rejected musician becomes a future legend. A struggling writer becomes a bestselling author. What once felt uncertain starts to look like preparation for something inevitable.
For the people living through those setbacks, the ending was still unknown. There were bills to pay, disappointing decisions to absorb, and reasons to wonder whether another attempt would lead anywhere.
The ten stories below include business failures, professional rejection, abandoned work, and experiments that did not succeed. These experiences were different, and so were the responses. Some people changed their methods. Others found a better setting for their abilities or accepted help when they were ready to stop. Their eventual success depended on opportunity, collaborators, and timing as well as effort. Looking closely at what they did next offers something more useful than a promise that persistence always pays off.
Milton Hershey — Starting Again With More Than Determination
Milton Hershey’s first confectionery business went bankrupt in Philadelphia in 1882. His second, in New York, failed by 1886. At twenty-eight, he returned to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, without enough money to have his belongings shipped home.
He did, however, return with knowledge he had acquired while working for a Denver confectioner: how to make caramels with fresh milk. That technique became central to his next business, the Lancaster Caramel Company.
Starting again also required people willing to help. A former employee assisted with his belongings, his mother and aunt helped with production, and a bank cashier personally backed a loan needed to fulfill a large order. The business prospered. In 1900, Hershey sold it for $1 million while retaining his chocolate business, which he went on to expand. Hershey Community Archives
Hershey brought a different product, accumulated experience, and practical support to his next attempt. Those changes made his persistence more than a repetition of what had already failed.
Walt Disney — Losing a Character and Rethinking Ownership
Walt Disney’s Kansas City animation company, Laugh-O-Gram Films, went bankrupt in 1923. He moved to Hollywood and established another studio with his brother Roy, gradually building a business producing animated shorts.
Then came a setback involving a character who was already successful. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit belonged to Universal, rather than Disney. During contract negotiations in 1928, distributor Charles Mintz demanded a pay cut and had arranged for several Disney animators to continue making Oswald cartoons without him.
Disney lost the character and much of his staff. He and Ub Iwerks developed Mickey Mouse, but even that new creation did not immediately secure distribution. The breakthrough came with synchronized sound and Steamboat Willie. The Walt Disney Family Museum
This was a creative reinvention with a practical consequence: Disney became more protective of ownership. Creating something audiences wanted had not been enough to protect his position. The terms under which he worked mattered too.
The Beatles — One Rejection in a Career Still Taking Shape
On January 1, 1962, the Beatles auditioned for Decca Records in London. They had already developed through extensive performances in Liverpool and Hamburg, but the label declined to sign them.
Knowing what followed makes the rejection seem absurd. At the time, however, the Beatles were still developing, and a record deal remained uncertain. Their manager, Brian Epstein, continued seeking opportunities. Later that year, they began working with George Martin at Parlophone, the EMI label that released their first single.
The documented audition matters more than the dismissive quotations often attached to it. We do not need to imagine a label declaring their music worthless to recognize how disappointing the decision would have been. The Beatles Bible
Their progress depended on continued work and someone advocating for them, followed by a productive relationship with a different label and producer. Decca’s rejection was consequential, but it represented one organization’s decision about a band whose future had not yet been formed.
Henry Ford — Rebuilding Credibility After Unsuccessful Ventures
Before Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford struggled to establish a viable automobile business. The Detroit Automobile Company, founded in 1899, failed. His involvement in a second venture, the Henry Ford Company, ended after disagreements with investors. That company continued under different leadership as Cadillac.
Ford needed more than another idea. He needed people willing to back him after earlier disappointments. Racing helped him attract attention and demonstrate his engineering abilities. In 1903, he established Ford Motor Company with new investors and collaborators. The Henry Ford museum’s collections document the failed ventures, racing efforts, and precarious beginnings of the new business. thehenryford.org
The Model T followed in 1908, and the company later became known for production methods that made automobiles more affordable.
Ford’s experience shows an often overlooked part of trying again: rebuilding credibility. Private conviction could not finance a company. He had to demonstrate enough capability to persuade others to take another risk with him.
Stephen King — Accepting Help When His Own Confidence Failed
Before Carrie, Stephen King supported his family through jobs that included industrial laundry work and teaching high school English. He sold some short stories, but financial pressure remained, and he continued writing around his paid work.
He nearly discarded the project that changed his career. As King recounts in On Writing, he threw away the opening pages of Carrie. Tabitha, his wife and a writer herself, retrieved them, read them, and encouraged him to continue. She also offered help with aspects of the story he felt ill-equipped to write. bpb-ca-c1.wpmucdn.com
Doubleday accepted the novel in 1973. Its subsequent paperback sale made writing full time financially possible. The Author
The familiar image of a determined writer collecting rejection slips leaves out this moment of dependence. King needed another reader’s judgment when his own had turned against the work. Continuing involved allowing someone he trusted to see possibilities he could no longer see himself.
J. K. Rowling — Finishing the Work During an Uncertain Period
Long before the success of Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling was a single parent facing serious financial hardship. In her 2008 Harvard commencement address, she described that period as one in which, by conventional measures, she felt she had failed.
Those circumstances were not evidence of personal inadequacy. Nor did Rowling romanticize poverty, which she described as frightening and humiliating. What she emphasized was how she responded: she concentrated on completing the novel she most wanted to write, without knowing whether it would succeed.
Looking back, she said:
“Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential.” news.harvard.edu
Her account describes a change in how she allocated her effort. The need to earn a living and care for her daughter remained. Within those constraints, she made finishing the manuscript a priority.
The eventual success can obscure how uncertain that decision was. At the time, she was completing work that mattered to her without the reassurance of knowing what it would become.
Oprah Winfrey — Finding a Role That Used Her Strengths
Oprah Winfrey joined Baltimore’s WJZ-TV as a news co-anchor in 1976. The role proved stressful, and in 1977 she was demoted to lower-profile assignments. Her early television career had reached a painful point rather than the breakthrough she had hoped for.
The station eventually placed her on the daytime talk program People Are Talking. There, abilities that had not found a comfortable place in her news work became useful: thinking on her feet, engaging with guests, and responding with warmth and emotional openness.
In an interview preserved by the Television Academy, she recalled her reaction:
“That is where I decided I should have been all my life!”
Her subsequent move to Chicago led to the nationally syndicated The Oprah Winfrey Show. Television Academy
Winfrey’s story raises a different question from how to improve after failure: are your abilities being used in a suitable role? A disappointing evaluation may reveal something to develop. It may also reveal a mismatch between a person and the work they have been assigned.
Michael Jordan — Responding to Disappointment With Development
Michael Jordan was not cut from basketball altogether, despite the familiar version of his high school story. As a sophomore at Emsley A. Laney High School, he missed selection for varsity and played on the junior varsity team instead.
The distinction matters. Jordan still had a place to practice and compete. But the disappointment was real, especially because his taller friend Leroy Smith made varsity. Jordan trained, developed physically, and earned a varsity position the following year. He later played at the University of North Carolina before entering the NBA. Only A Game
The accurate story is less dramatic, but more useful. A teenager received a disappointing assessment at one stage of his development and had room to improve.
Feeling underestimated can supply motivation. It does not, by itself, build skill. Jordan’s response mattered because the disappointment was followed by training, competition, and growth—not simply a stronger belief that the coach was wrong.
James Dyson — Making Each Attempt Answer a Question
James Dyson began developing a bagless vacuum cleaner after becoming frustrated with the loss of suction caused by clogged bags. According to Dyson’s account of the development process, reaching a working design required 5,127 prototypes over several years.
That number is often treated as a monument to perseverance. Its practical significance lies in what happened between attempts. Testing revealed problems that required changes to the design. Another prototype was useful when it answered a question the previous one had raised.
A working machine also presented a different challenge: finding a commercial route for it. Dyson encountered resistance from established manufacturers before his technology reached customers and, eventually, the DC01 launched under his own name in 1993. dyson.com
An experiment that does not work can still produce useful information. But the information has to influence the next attempt. Dyson’s story is compelling because persistence involved ongoing revision. Repeating the same unsuccessful design thousands of times would have been an entirely different undertaking.
Steve Jobs — Beginning Again After Losing His Place at Apple
In 1985, a power struggle at Apple left Steve Jobs without operational responsibilities. He resigned later that year, aged thirty, from the company he had co-founded. WIRED
He established NeXT and acquired the computer graphics group that became Pixar. Neither undertaking provided an immediate, uncomplicated recovery. NeXT’s computers struggled commercially, while Pixar took years to establish its success in animated feature films.
Apple’s acquisition of NeXT in 1997 brought Jobs back and supplied software technology central to Apple’s future operating systems. The work he had done away from Apple became relevant to the company he had left. d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net
In his 2005 Stanford commencement address, Jobs described the experience as:
“The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again.” Stanford Report
That interpretation came after the recovery. At the time, losing his position was devastating. His story shows how beginning again can create room for different work, without making the original loss painless or the eventual return predictable.
What to Take From These Stories
Because we know these names, it is easy to mistake their lives for evidence that failure reliably leads to success. They are selected stories of people who eventually became successful. Many others worked hard, adapted, and still did not receive comparable opportunities or recognition. A fair reading leaves room for both realities.
What these stories offer is a closer look at different responses. Hershey returned with new knowledge and support. Ford rebuilt confidence among potential backers. King accepted help. Winfrey discovered a more suitable role. Dyson changed the design. Their next steps were specific to the difficulties they faced.
After a setback, the useful question is often concrete: what needs to change? Perhaps you need more practice, a different collaborator, a workable budget, or another setting for your abilities. Perhaps the goal still matters, but the current method is exhausting you without producing progress. Sometimes the best decision is to leave a pursuit behind. Sometimes it is to return with a smaller, clearer next step.
A failed attempt deserves attention without becoming a verdict on your worth. You do not have to turn every disappointment into an inspiring story. You can acknowledge what it cost, examine what happened, and decide what you are willing to do from here.
