The majority of us, if not all, strive hard to achieve success—whether it’s working for your dream company, putting up your own business, establishing a name in your chosen industry, or simply following your passion.
While each of us has our own definition of what success truly is, it is simply defined as the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. This definition, perhaps, is the foundation of how many people triumph in life.
However, the journey towards success isn’t always easy, and most of the time, you can only get there if you know how to recognise and accept failure. And once you do, you don’t allow failure to stop you.
We can take it from these entrepreneurs who rose from the ground up and never gave up on their dreams, no matter how many failures they had to face.
Jack Ma
Chinese businessman; founder of Alibaba
Jack Ma is a Chinese business magnate who founded and serves as the executive chairman of Alibaba Group, one of the world’s successful e-commerce websites. Ma struggled to get into college. Finally, after 4 years of trying, he was able to attend Hangzhou Teachers’ Institute (now known as Hangzhou Normal University), where he graduated B.A. in English in 1988.
After college, Ma began to apply to 30 various jobs and was unfortunately rejected by all. In fact, he tried applying to KFC, and from the 24 applicants, including him, 23 got the job, and he was the only one rejected.
1994 was when he tried to explore the internet. The next year, he went to the US with the help of a friend and learned more about the internet. He then tried searching for the word “beer” and didn’t get any results from China specifically.
After which, he and his friend created a website and were surprised that upon its launch, he had received calls from Chinese Business owners and found out that the internet has a lot to offer, and the rest was history.
Up until today, Alibaba has emerged to be one of the top e-commerce platforms known globally.
Howard Schultz
Founder of Starbucks
Howard Schultz is the father of the top coffee chain in the world, Starbucks. He grew up in the Bayview projects of Carnasie, Brooklyn. Growing up, his lifestyle was not ideal since his father was only a truck driver.
He dreamed of going beyond what he currently has and worked hard. He eventually got into college through a football scholarship. He finished a degree in Communication from the University of Northern Michigan.
Schultz was just a regular employee at Xerox before he discovered a small coffee shop called Starbucks. In 1987, he found his passion in coffee and left his full-time work at Xerox for Starbucks.
From humble beginnings of 60 shops, Starbucks now has 16,000 outlets worldwide.
Steve Jobs
Founder of Apple Computers
Steve Jobs dropped out of college because his family could not handle the financial burden of sending him to school. While living off free meals and returning Coke for change to get by.
In 1976, Jobs and his friend, Steve Wozniak, started building the first Apple computer – the Apple I. He had a vision of a “computer for the rest of us,” which inspired him to innovate and develop more Apple devices.
Success did not come easily for Jobs. At the time, he and Wozniak had been successful in launching Apple I and Apple II and proceeded to develop new ones, such as Apple III and the LISA. It did not come easily as the fame of the brand had started to wear off, and they eventually lost half of their market to their competitor, IBM.
Jobs has also been fired from his own company due to a clash with his board of directors. He sold all his shares and resigned from the company in 1985. Fast forward, and after launching his own technology company, NeXT Computer Co., he was re-hired as the CEO for Apple following its loss in 1997. From there, a lot of Apple innovation has been made, and now, they are one of the biggest electronics providers in the market.
These are just some of the most successful entrepreneurs who have started from the bottom and worked their way up despite many failures. If there is one thing that we can learn from their success is to never give up, no matter how hard life is.
Just keep going. Hard work will pay off in the end.
