Successful People Who Failed At First

Not getting that promotion can feel like the end of the world, but the people on this list show that devastating failures are just another stop on the road to success.

I've put together some of the world's greatest success stories, who just happen to have experienced massive failure that could have easily made them give-up.

But they didn't and now they're the monumental successes that they are remembered for, a good source of encouragement when it feels like you will never make it to the top.

The Beatles were dropped by their record label.

When The Beatles were just starting out, a recording company told them no.
Decca Recording studios, who had recorded 15 songs with the group, said "we don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out. They have no future in show business."

Walt Disney was told a mouse would never work.

Before Walt Disney built the empire he has today, he was fired by a newspaper editor because "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas."
In 1921, Walt formed his first animation company in Kansas City, where he made a deal with a distribution company in New York, in which he would ship them his cartoons and get paid six months down the road. He was forced to dissolve his company and at one point could not pay his rent and reportedly survived by eating dog food.

Also, When Walt first tried to get MGM studios to distribute Mickey Mouse in 1927, he was told that the idea would never work because a giant mouse on the screen would terrify women.

J.K. Rowling was on welfare.Before J.K. Rowling had any "Harry Potter" success, the writer was a divorced singled mother on welfare struggling to get by while also attending school and writing a novel.

Luckily, that novel turned into the "Harry Potter" franchise, which has since made Rowling a billionaire as of April 2012.

Oprah Winfrey was told she was "unfit for TV."

At age of 22, the now-TV mogul was fired from her job as a television reporter because she was "unfit for tv."

Winfrey was terminated from her post as co-anchor of the 6 o'clock weekday news on Baltimore's WJZ-TV after the show received low ratings. Winfrey has called it the “first and worst failure of her TV career.”

Winfrey was then demoted to morning TV, where she found her voice and met fellow newbie Gayle King, who would one day become her producer and editor of O, The Oprah Magazine.

Seven years later, Winfrey moved to Chicago, where her self-titled talk show went on to dominate daytime TV for 25 years, and ultimately head her own channel, OWN.

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.

After being cut from his high school basketball team, a young Michael Jordan went home and cried in the privacy of his bedroom. But Jordan didn't let this early-in-life setback stop him from playing the game and the basketball superstar has stated, "I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

Steve Jobs was removed from the company he started.

Steve Jobs was a college dropout, a fired tech executive and an unsuccessful businessman.

At 30-years-old he was left devastated after being unceremoniously removed from the company he founded.

In a 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University, Jobs explained, "I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

After his return to Apple, Jobs created several iconic products, including the iPod, iPhone and iPad, which have changed the face of consumer technology forever. And Jobs became one of the richest men in the world.

Elvis Presley got fired after his first performance.

In 1954, Elvis was still a no-name performer, and Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, fired Elvis Presley after just one performance telling him, "You ain't goin' nowhere, son. You ought to go back to drivin' a truck."

Elvis went on to become the second best-selling artists of all time.

Charlie Chaplin's act was rejected by executives because they thought it was too obscure for people to understand.

But then they took a chance on Chaplin, who went on to become America's first bona fide movie star.

Marilyn Monroe's first contract with Columbia Pictures expired because they told her she wasn't pretty or talented enough to be an actress.

Monroe kept plugging away and is one of the most iconic actresses and sex symbols of all time.

Albert Einstein didn't speak until age four and didn't read until age seven. His teachers labeled him "slow" and "mentally handicapped."

But Einstein just had a different way of thinking. He later won the Nobel prize in physics.