My Favorite Story Examples of Failure and Persistence

Failure and persistence go hand in glove, don’t they? But not everyone can muster the success of these story examples of failure and persistence. We can all learn a ton from these examples and personalities. And when applied, these lessons can be the difference.

Tom Watson

Failure can often be the highway to success. Tom Watson Sr. (of IBM fame) said, “If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.” If you study history, you will find that all stories of success are also stories of great failures. But people don’t see the failures. They only see one side of the picture and they say that person had lots of luck on his side: “He must have been at the right place at the right time.”


I spent the first 17 years of my career at IBM before they sold the division I worked in. I learned a great deal about Tom Watson in those years. He was an awesome example of persistence in both business and life.

Related: If You Are Demotivating the Team Here’s the Action to Take

Abraham Lincoln

There is probably no better example of failure and persistence that I know of. Let me share Lincoln’s life history with you. This was a man who failed in business at the age of 21; was defeated in a legislative race at age 22; failed again in business at age 24; overcame the death of his sweetheart at age 26; had a nervous breakdown at age 27; lost a congressional race at age 34; lost a senatorial race at age 45; failed in an effort to become vice-president at age 47; lost a senatorial race at age 49; and was elected president of the United States at age 52.

Would you dare call him a failure? He could have quit anywhere along the line. But to Lincoln, defeat was a detour and not a dead end. And a great source of learning.

Colonel Sanders

Colonel Sanders, at age 65, with a beat-up car and a $100 check from Social Security, realized he had to do something. He remembered his mother’s recipe and went out selling. How many doors did he have to knock on before he got his first order? It is estimated that he had knocked on more than a thousand doors before he got his first order.

How many of us quit after three tries, ten tries, a hundred tries, and then we say we tried as hard as we could? Quite a lesson of persistence for us all, isn’t it?

Wright Brothers

A New York Times editorial on December 10, 1903, questioned the wisdom of the Wright Brothers who were trying to invent the machine, heavier than air, that would fly. One week later, at Kitty Hawk, the Wright Brothers took their famous flight.

Walt Disney

As a young cartoonist, Walt Disney faced many rejections from newspaper editors, who said he had no talent. Even fired from one who told him he lacked imagination and original ideas.

One day a minister at a church hired him to draw some cartoons. Disney was working out of a small mouse infested shed near the church. After seeing a small mouse, he was inspired. That was the start of Mickey Mouse.