Alright y’all… failure to success stories are legit my comfort food right now.
I’m sitting here in my messy apartment outside Atlanta (yes it’s January 2026 and it’s still weirdly 68°F at 6 p.m., climate change is having a field day), drinking probably my fourth iced coffee of the day, staring at the giant stack of rejection emails I never deleted from 2023–2024 like some kind of emotional hoarder. And honestly? These failure to success stories are the only thing keeping me from yeeting my laptop out the window sometimes.
So buckle up. Here are 10 absolutely wild failure to success stories — some famous, some less known — that make my own screw-ups feel… almost cute?
1. J.K. Rowling – 12 Publishers Said No Before Magic Happened
Yeah yeah we all know this one but hear me out — when I read that she was basically living on state benefits, a single mom, clinically depressed, writing in cafés to stay warm… man. That hits different when you’ve cried in a Starbucks yourself because your freelance check bounced (true story, last August).
12 rejections. TWELVE. Then Bloomsbury took a chance. Now she’s… well, you know.
Stressed Out Images – Browse 4,960,872 Stock Photos, Vectors, and …
Then the turnaround — after those 12 rejections, someone finally said yes, and the rest became history.
Here’s her later, holding the magic she created:
J.K. Rowling’s journey to success
And one more classic shot of her in that very café where it all started:
Nicolsons’ history 4 Harry Potter pilgrims ⌁☍
[Outbound link for credibility] → Read her own words about rock bottom in her Harvard commencement speech: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/06/text-of-j-k-rowling-speech/
2. My Own Pathetic First Blog Attempt (2019–2021)
Okay this one’s embarrassing af. I started a “motivational” blog in 2019. Posted 7 times. Got 43 total views (including my mom and my ex). Then ghosted it for two years because “nobody cares about my thoughts” (dramatic much?).
Fast forward to late 2024 — I started again, same niche, different vibe. Now we’re here. Still small, still messy, but growing. Sometimes the biggest failure to success story is just… refusing to stay dead.
Here’s what my desk looked like when I almost quit forever vs. today:
3. Colonel Sanders – 1,009 Rejections Before KFC
Dude was 65. Had one social security check. Drove around in his beat-up car sleeping in it sometimes. Offered his chicken recipe to 1,009 restaurants. All said no. The 1,010th said yes.
I think about this every time DoorDash cancels my order.
4. Walt Disney – Fired for “Lacking Imagination”
Fired from a newspaper job for “lacking imagination and good ideas.” Multiple businesses went bankrupt. Mickey Mouse was rejected by distributors. And now… Disneyland exists.
Sometimes I wonder if the people who told me my writing was “too casual” will ever see this post. Probably not. But whatever.
5–10 Quick-Hit Insane Failure → Success Speedruns
- Vera Wang didn’t design her first dress until 40 (after failing to make the Olympic figure skating team and then quitting Vogue)
- Harrison Ford was a carpenter who got told he’d never make it as an actor
- Oprah got fired from her first TV job for being “unfit for television”
- Thomas Edison — yeah the 10,000 ways that didn’t work lightbulb thing (still iconic)
- Arianna Huffington — 36 rejections for her second book before she built the Huffington Post empire
- James Dyson — 5,126 failed prototypes before the bagless vacuum cleaner (bro was in debt for years)
Look… I’m not saying every failure automatically becomes a Hollywood montage. Most don’t. Most failures are just… failures. Painful, expensive, ego-shattering failures.
