18 Business Failures From Successful Entrepreneurs [Infographic]

The journey to becoming a successful entrepreneur is quite long and tedious. When starting out, your spirits are high and bursting with excitement at the great idea you have. You probably never let anyone around you have a moment rest because you keep talking about your great business idea and how successful you think it’s going to be. You expect them to catch the excitement fever with you and agree that you’re on to something big.

When you begin talking about the feasibility of your business idea, you could go on and on.

You never sleep without dreaming about the big and successful CEO you’re going to be. Yes, before long, you could even purchase a mansion and get yourself a Ferrari. You’ll be so rich that you’ll be able to travel and see the world.

So you went into action, plunging yourself into implementing your business idea. You work day in day out. You spend all of your waking moments, brainstorming and thinking up new strategies.

You send business proposals and pitches for partnerships and funding. But to your shock, nobody is buying your idea. You get series after series of rejection letters. Those who show a little interest take a rain check on your proposal.

2, 3, 5 even 8 months later, you’re still struggling to kick-start your business. 2 years later, you still don’t understand why nothing is working. You wonder if this is actually happening to you. “If starting a business is this difficult and discouraging, how come there are so many successful billionaire CEOs today?” You wonder.

Is Entrepreneurship Worth The Trouble?

“Could they have gone through this tedious process and still became successful?” Well, the answer is a big “YES!” Most of the entrepreneurs who today own multinational corporations started out just like you. They went through everything you have suffered from starting a business.

Yes, they did. It even took some over 5 years before they got their business off the ground. They just kept trying, remained resolute and dogged. That’s how they came to be the wealthy, successful CEOs you know today.

Take, for example, Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. He ran over 5,000 prototypes before he started getting results. Another example is Colonel Sanders of KFC. His recipe was rejected 1,000 times at the beginning of his journey. Can you actually believe that?

Success in business is not delivered to you, decorated in fancy ribbons neither is it handed to you on a platter of gold. You grind and sweat for it! I could probably give you many more examples of these hard-at-battle CEOs, but I don’t want to be a spoilsport.

In the infographic below, you’ll see 18 business failures from successful entrepreneurs. These are founders of big multinationals that you know very well. Knowing how wealthy and successful they are today, you wouldn’t believe that they at one time were starters who were struggling to keep their feet on the ground.

Infographic via Pound Coffee

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