Who is it?
• Struck out a major league record 1,330 times.
Babe Ruth
Who is it?
• Endured over 1000 rejections before finding a
restaurant that would work with him.
Col. Sanders
Who is it?
• Re-wrote music when he was unable to
overcome his awkwardness with a violin.
Beethoveen
Who is it?
• Teacher described him as “too stupid to learn
anything.”
Who is it?
• Could not speak until age 4. Could not read
until age 7. Teacher described him as
“mentally slow” and “adrift.”
Albert Einstein
Who is it?
• Flunked the 6th grade and didn’t taste true
success until age 62.
Winston Churchill
Who is it?
• Cut from his high School basketball team –
went home, locked himself into his bedroom
and cried. Later played in the NBA, missed
9000 shots and missed 26 game winning
baskets.
Michael Jordan
Who is it?
• Was told at an audition that he should give up
singing and go back to driving trucks for a
living.
Elvis Presley
Who is it?
• She was demoted from her job as a news
anchor because she “wasn’t fit for television”
Oprah Winfrey
Who is it?
• Left devastated after being removed from the
company he founded at age 30
Steve Jobs
• Steve
Jobs
Who is it?
• Turned down by a record company that told
them “Guitar music is on the way out”
Who is it?
• Rejected by 12 Publishers
J.K. Rowling
Who is it?
• Fired from a newspaper for lack of ideas.
Walt Disney
 Failure takes many forms …
 It doesn’t work
 It works well, but no one wants it
 It works fine, but someone else’s works much better
 It works, but the timing is wrong
 Failure is critical to the experimental process
 It’s how designers, inventors and scientists prove themselves
wrong
 Without it, people and organizations become stale, stagnant
and uninventive
 Failure makes our ideas stronger, but only if we are willing to
learn from it
What does it mean to me?
• YOU are a failure.
– You fell down when you learned to walk.
– You nearly drowned when you learned to swim.
– You fell over when the training wheels came off.
• Failure was your gateway to success. It taught
you what doesn’t work and what to avoid in
future attempts.
Walt Disney
• Went Bankrupt at age 22 after a failure of a
cartoon series
– Came to Hollywood with $40 in his pocket
• After a successful run with a character named
“Oswald the Luck Rabbit”, Walt leaned he did
have ownership of the character and all the
artists who worked for him left
– Developed a new character named “Mickey
Mouse”
Walt Disney
• Tried to sell the idea of Mickey Mouse to MGM
studios and was told it would never work
– Mickey is now the most famous cartoon character in
the world
• During a sneak peak of Snow White and the
seven dwarfs to college students, the audience
got up and left halfway through the movie.
– Turned out the students had a dorm curfew and had
to leave. Snow White became one of the most
successful animated movies of all time
Disneyland
• Banks would not finance the construction
because banks don’t lend money for Dreams
– Raised the money himself
• 11,000 tickets were given away for opening
day. The tickets were so easy to copy that
nearly 30,000 people showed up.
– One person was selling tickets at the back of the
park for $5 and put a ladder over the fence to
sneak them in
Disneyland
• The plumbing was not finished so toilets and
drinking fountains did not work.
• The restaurants ran out of food
• The asphalt was not fully set and it was so hot
that the tar was melting and stealing high heel
shoes off of ladies feet!
• Autopia had no rails so people could drive the
cars anywhere they wanted – and they did.
• It was predicted that Disneyland would fail and
be closed within the first year.
Disney Revenue
• The average annual profit for Disneyland is
estimated at $23 million per year.
• The average income for all of Disney is $41
Billion per year
• Disneyland alone provides 23,000 jobs
• Disneyworld provides 60,000 jobs
Disney Quotes
• "It is good to have a failure while you are
young because it teaches you so much.
For one thing it makes you aware that such a
thing can happen to anybody,
And once you've lived through the worst,
You're never quite as vulnerable afterwards.
Disney Quotes
• All the adversity I've had in my life, all my
troubles and obstacles, have strengthened
me... You may not realize it when it happens,
but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in
the world for you.”
Disney Quotes
• Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in
the world to do. But to hold it together when
everyone else would understand if you fell
apart, that's true strength.