Jerry Seinfeld performs at New York’s Beacon Theatre during his Netflix special “23 Hours to Kill.”

Jerry Seinfeld is a world renowned actor and comedian who was the pinnacle of comedy for quite sometime during and after the release of his hit comedy show about “nothing”, Seinfeld, in the 1990s leading into the 2000’s. Jerry’s success is very apparent, but his life before Seinfeld is very much an enigma for many people. Like many successful people, Jerry Seinfeld had pursued his career and passion through thick and thin to get to where he is today. He had to face his own mistakes and failures and come out the other side having learned from the experience. Now, his career in comedy might seem distant and unrelated to the passions of a great multitude of people, however, the attitudes and mental state of Jerry during his series of drawbacks can help us glean useful feedback for our own passion journey.

Jerry had always enjoyed comedy ever since he was a little kid who would follow his dad around continually writing jokes. He just loved to make people laugh and he found a lifelong passion for doing so. Like many comedians, Jerry Seinfeld got his start by doing stand-up for various comedy clubs around New York City. And as you can probably guess, it didn’t go so well at first. The night of his college graduation, Jerry didn’t celebrate with a party, but rather he spent the night doing his first ever stand-up routine at a local comedy club in NYC. When he got on stage, he completely crapped the bed. He had forgotten all of his lines and proceeded to stand there dumbfounded, and eventually he was able to force some random words that were kindly received by the audience. Although many would consider this to be the defining moment that would show the world and oneself that this may not be the right career, Jerry took it as inspiration to do what he couldn’t the first time. He dedicated himself to the proper preparation and lifestyle of a stand-up comedian.

Jerry Seinfeld on an episode of “Benson”

Jerry went on and continued to perform at club after club, which miraculously led to an appearance in a Rodney Dangerfield HBO special. This was a great resume booster, but unfortunately it was nothing more. A few years later in 1980, Jerry got a part in the scripted comedy show Benson, and he was promptly fired after four episodes due to creative differences. He only found out when he showed up for a script reading to discover they had removed him from the show and neglected to tell him. For Jerry this was very disheartening and rightfully so. He had finally made it to stage and was told he had no place there as his lack of acting and comedic skill was overwhelmingly apparent. Instead of quitting or taking time off, Jerry began the plans for a new show that he would be able to write for and act in, but for the time being, he steadily continued his stand-up work.

Larry David on “Curb Your Enthusiasm”

Throughout the 1980s, Jerry would go on to slowly grow his career with increasingly frequent appearances on late night shows and eventually his first comedy special on HBO. Then using this momentum, Jerry was able to bring his new show, Seinfeld, to fruition in 1988 with the help of co-writer Larry David. Ever since then, the rest is history as Jerry blew up and became one of the largest comedians at the time and continues to be today. Looking back, if Jerry had thought his first night of stand-up was one of failure rather than a successful learning experience to further push his skill development, we might have never had the generational trauma of people constantly trying to impersonate Jerry or recite lines from the show. Jokes aside, Jerry became extremely successful by simply doing and working on his passion at a slow and steady pace, and by mitigating his failures by just looking at them from a different angle. Of course not everyone’s dreams will work out in the end, but you’ll never know if you turn away at the first sign of failure.

Colonel Sanders late 1970s

Although Colonel Sanders has sadly passed away in 1980, he remains as a pop culture icon for his restaurants and his legacy is strongly carried on. Many people know and recognize Colonel Sanders as the face and founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, but they have no idea about the story behind it nor the state of his life prior to founding KFC.

Harland David Sanders was born on September 9, 1890 near Henryville, Indiana. His father passed away when Sanders was 5 years old and his mother then had to take up a job at a cannery to provide for the family. This left young Sanders to feed and take care of his two younger siblings. The young kids often had to forage for food during their mother’s multi day work shifts and learn to survive on their own. By the age of 7, Sanders was reportedly excelling at cooking for his siblings. He had become very skilled cooking with bread and vegetables, and he was quickly learning with meat (haha funny sentence lol). 

By the age of 10, Sanders had gotten himself a job as a farmhand to support his family, and when his mother remarried two years later, Sanders had developed a tumultuous relationship with his stepfather and promptly dropped out of 7th grade the next year to live and work on a nearby farm. At age 13, he left home for Indianapolis to work painting horse carriages, and then at 14 he went to work on a farm in south Indiana. In the first few years of his life, Sanders had worked many different labor intensive jobs and would further continue this sporadic and diverse career.

For the next 25 odd years of his life, Harland Sanders would jump from job to job and venture to venture in hopes of only having a stable job to pay the bills. He would be fired for insubordination multiple times and ended more than one gig (including his law career) through beating the living crap out of people he did not agree with. To be fair he also left many jobs on his own volition in order to seek better opportunities. Finally in 1920, Sanders had established a ferry boat company that became an instant success. A few years later, he decided to cashout his shares in the company to fund a venture manufacturing acetylene or carbide lamps that was promptly dismantled after Delco introduced the electric lamp. Sanders then went on to find yet another job that would let him go when they closed their doors. 

Colonel Sanders’ North Corbin Restaurant

Then what happened next was probably the most important thing ever to happen to Sanders, in 1924, he would be very lucky to randomly meet the general manager of the Standard Oil company of Kentucky. This man gave Sanders the opportunity to manage a service station (a gas station and restaurant combo) in Nicholasville, Kentucky. Unfortunately this only lasted for 6 years as the service station went under as a result of the Great Depression. Sanders was then approached by the Shell Oil Company to run one of their service stations in Corbin, Kentucky, where he would be involved in a shootout, commissioned as a Kentucky colonel (and recommissioned in 1950) because the Governor loved his fried chicken (how he became Colonel Sanders), and continually tried to perfect his fried chicken recipe all while gaining local popularity at an unnatural rate. Sanders moved on to acquire a motel as well and, as fate would have it, both the motel and his restaurant were destroyed in a November 1939 fire. 

Sanders rebuilt the motel with a 140 seated restaurant add-on, and during this time he would finally perfect his secret fried chicken recipe. Unfortunately World War 2 had started and as gas was rationed and the tourism industry dried up forcing Sanders to close his motel in 1941. For the next 12 years, Sanders worked managing cafeterias for the government, and it was only until 1952 that any mention of a fried chicken franchise escaped Sanders’ lips. This was the founding of the first KFC in South Salt Lake, Utah. Within the first year, the restaurant reported more than triple its average annual sales and it was clear that this was the result of Sanders’ chicken. Soon after, many other restaurants heard about the success and decided to join the franchise. By 1964, 12 years later, KFC had expanded to more than 600 locations and became one of the first fast food chains to expand internationally as well, with stores in Canada, Mexico, UK, and Jamaica. At the age of 73, Colonel Sanders was finally successful and accomplished, and he sold the KFC Corporation for around $2 million (~$16.5 million today) and kept the Canadian KFC Operation for himself.

Sander’s life was full of bumps, bruises, and hardships. He had spent the first sixty years of his life hopping from one thing to the next as he was met with seemingly every failure and economic mishap possible. Yet by chance, Sander’s golden goose finally fell into his lap and he proceeded to become successful in the one thing he had been proficient at as a kid: making food. This should serve as a lesson to not let your age define your success. Just because you spent the first 30 years of your life accomplishing nothing does not mean it too late to start or that the next 30 years will be just more of the same. You are never too old for success as long as you persevere.

Elon Musk at the Royal Society admissions day in London, July 2018

Welcome back to another successful story of failure. For the past few posts, I had focused on some rather dated, last generation examples and I thought I would cover someone more current. Elon Musk may seem like he had it all since he was a child, and with his almost 94 Billion dollar net worth, alongside his many companies, it may seem like he just got lucky and everything fell into place for him to succeed. However, this is not a feat done without great effort and tenacity.

As a child, Elon was born and grew up in Pretoria, South Africa. His parents divorced when he was 9 and he chose to live with his dad in the Suburbs of Pretoria, a decision he subsequently regretted. Elon would then go on to spend 5 months in academia at The University of Pretoria, while waiting for his Canadian Passport to leave his estranged father and seek greater opportunities in North America. Once in Canada, Musk attended Queen’s University and then later attended the University of Pennsylvania to study economics and physics. 

In his business ventures, Elon Musk had originally tried to join many emerging tech start-ups and companies but he was promptly rejected every time. Despite these constant rejections, Elon decided to hire himself and start his own innovative tech company, ZIP2, along with the help of his brother, Kimbal Musk, and Greg Kouri. ZIP2 was all about putting everything in a phone book online for ease of use. This idea did not gain very much traction with investors until Musk implemented a very early form of google maps to act as an internet city guide for tourists and non-tourists alike. This is when the big bucks started rolling in and Elon took this as an opportunity to become the company’s CEO. Unfortunately, Elon was ousted by the board of directors and was subsequently given a much smaller role in the company. Deciding to cut his losses, Musk left the company after it was sold three years later in 1999 and he received a handsome 22 million dollars for his seven percent share. 

Elon Musk, Maye Musk (Mother), Kimbal Musk (Brother) and Tosca Musk (Sister) at Kimbal’s Wedding

Despite his apparent success, Musk wanted more and proceeded to invest nearly half of his ZIP2 money into a new project called X.com, only one month after the sale of ZIP2. This new company was yet another innovative, new way of interacting on the internet. It was a financial and e-mail payment company that would eventually become one of his greatest early successes, PayPal. At first PayPal was considered to be one of the worst business ideas ever and it was even voted the worst business idea of the year in 1999. But Elon and his business partner, Max Levchin, began to focus on the idea of an electronic wallet and eventually gained enough investors to go public in 2002. Unfortunately, Elon was ousted as CEO yet again by the board over disagreements about the future platform of PayPal, but this time he was allowed to remain on the board. Despite being dethroned as head of the company, Elon still received 165 million dollars from the sale of PayPal to Ebay.

Musk would also go on to create Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) with an initial 100 million dollar self investment from his PayPal money and would again be ridiculed by critics about the feasibility of such a project. Many considered what Elon Musk was trying to do was simply out of his reach and many expected the company to fail within a few years. Musk’s electric car company Tesla was in the same boat when it started out. The experts and prominent figures in the auto industry were very vocal about their disdain for Tesla and were certain that the company would fail. On both accounts the critics were nearly right about Musk’s enterprises when the 2008 stock market crash happened and both SpaceX and Tesla had lost all profitability. Instead of choosing one company over the other, Elon decided to risk it all and poured all of his fortune into the two companies. A risky move that left him bankrupt, but would ultimately pay off. During this time, Musk resorted to his infamous 20 hour work days and would sleep on the factory floor until both companies had survived the economic peril. Leading to two of the most innovative companies today that are currently changing the world as we speak. One in commercial space flight and the other in creating affordable electric cars to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Elon had faced many challenges and obstacles on his path to be where he is today, and he is still facing challenges and obstacles as he continues to grow his entrepreneurial empire. Elon was not afraid to abandon a project and let it tie him down as he was undercut by board members as he knew that we would be able to recreate success at increasingly larger intervals. Elon was not about to walk away from his projects at the first sign of failure, but rather he doubled down and persevered his way to success. We can learn a lot from Elon Musk’s past escapades and potentially even more from his future ones.

Steve Jobs 1980s (Left) and 2000s (Right)

Probably one of the most famous and impactful technological advancements in recent history is the ability to have a minicomputer in your pocket 24/7/365. And the company largely responsible for that is Apple and more specifically Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was a technological and business titan in his time. He was famously fired from Apple before coming back to then become its CEO. He was one of the most successful failures in all of the technological industry to date, and here is his story.

As an infant, Jobs was put up for adoption and was taken in by Paul and Clara Jobs, but not before his biological mother fought them in court to have Steve be given to a wealthier, more educated family. After the case was resolved, Jobs enjoyed a fantastic upbringing in which he ultimately wasn’t anything special but had a deep love for electronics and had befriended many of the engineers that lived in his neighborhood. 

As a young adult, Jobs attended Homestead High School located near Los Altos, CA that happened to have very strong ties to the nearby Silicon Valley. Jobs started high school with his friend Bill Fernandez, the first employee of Apple Inc, who would go on to first introduce Jobs to none other than Steve Wozniak. Steve’s time in high school was interestingly split between electronics and experimenting with drugs, in which Jobs and Wozniak were able to create their very first profitable electronic product. A digital ‘blue box’ that allowed for the bypassing of the telephone network to enable free long distance calls. 

For college, Jobs spent all of about one semester in attendance at Reed College in Portland, Oregon before dropping out due to a desire of not wanting to waste his parents’ money on a meaningless education. Although he had dropped out, Jobs remained on campus and still attended his classes through audit. He would find and return/recycle bottles for food money and sleep on dorm room floors to get by. Jobs would then spend the next few years working for Atari to save up for a spiritual journey where he would go to India for 7 months to search for spiritual (and psychedelic) enlightenment. 

Steve Jobs (Left) with John Sculley (Middle) and Steve Wozniak (Right) unveiling the Apple 2 computer in San Francisco, 1984.

In 1976, Wozniak approached Jobs with his Apple 1 computer design and agreed to try and sell it, forming the Apple Computer Company (Now known as Apple Inc.). Following the success of the Apple 1 came the Apple 2, which then became one of the first highly successful mass produced computer products in the world. For Steve Jobs nothing could stop the dynamic duo that he and Wozniak presented until Jobs lured the previous PepsiCo. President John Sculley to become the new CEO of Apple.

Sculley and Jobs got along relatively well until Jobs’ first irreversible error within the company. The release of the Macintosh Computer. The Macintosh was supposed to be the great successor to the Apple 2, however its high price, slow processing speed, and limited range of available software allowed for their competition to swoop in and take the market. Resulting in huge creative differences between Sculley and Jobs, which would then lead to Jobs’ resignation from Apple. 

The utterly apparent failure of the Macintosh did little to harm Jobs’ ego as he simply brushed it off and proceeded to follow his next inspiration, NeXT Computer Inc. Here Jobs flourished and was able to string together success after success with only minor issues along the way. And in 1997, Apple acquired NeXT Inc. for $427 million and allowed for the return of Steve Jobs as de facto CEO. A decision that Apple wouldn’t regret. Jobs would go on to innovate and inspire huge technological advances within Apple and the world that all wouldn’t be possible without his successful efforts at NeXT Inc. which he learned as a result of his previous failures at Apple.

Despite trillions of dollars of economic damage, Bill Gates is optimistic that a strong pipeline of therapies and vaccines will carry the US through the pandemic. PHOTOGRAPH: JEFF PACHOUD/GETTY IMAGES

Bill Gates is one of the most influential and successful business men, developer, and philanthropist of all of modern history. Gate’s original claim to fame is his trillion dollar business, Microsoft. It is practically impossible to not know about this company unless you haven’t had any human interaction for the past 30 years. They manufacture anything from software to hardware to games and consoles to personal consumer electronics. But as you can probably guess he wasn’t always the billionaire tech guru we know today.

William Henry Gates the third was born in 1955 in Seattle, Washington to William Henry Gates the second and Mary Maxwell. As a child, Gates always had an interest in learning anything and everything. He spent the majority of his time reading and honing his competitive spirit as his parents encouraged him to do so. By age 13, Gates had been enrolled into Seattle’s Lakeside Prep Private School where he would go on to write his very first software program and fatefully meet his future business partner Paul Allen.

Bill Gates (Left) with Paul Allen (Right) in 1981

Through a “rummage sale” held by the school, Gates and Allen were able to use the proceeds to purchase a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal as well as time on a General Electric computer. Gates used this opportunity to create his very first computer program, a computer vs player tic tac toe game. This launched a passion for computers that was unparalleled by anything else in his life. He even got excused from some of his classes to be able to spend additional time on the GE computers coding in BASIC. After his proceeds dried up, Gates and his friends spent their time on PDP minicomputers exploiting bugs in the operating system to get free computer time that would eventually be the cause of a multi-month ban from the Computer Center Cooperation’s (CCC) systems. After this ban, Gates and friends offered their expertise in finding bugs in the OS in exchange for free computer time, creating a longstanding agreement between the boys and the CCC that would hold up until sometime in 1970 when the company went out of business.

The following year, Gates was approached by the school to automate the class scheduling system along with his best friend and first business partner Kent Evans who would go on to be killed in a freak climbing accident before the project was finished. Gates then partnered with Paul Allen to finish the project. Unfortunately for the school, Gates wasn’t one to not exploit loopholes when he sees one. So, the end result of the class scheduling system allowed Gates to place himself in classes exclusively filled with girls during his senior year. 

After high school, Gates graduated as a National Merit Scholar and was accepted into Harvard Pre-Law with a 1590 SAT. Although his major was Pre-Law that didn’t stop him from taking computer science and math classes as the majority of his schedule. While at Harvard University, Gates would drop out after two years and go on to meet his Microsoft CEO successor Steve Ballmer who stayed and graduated Harvard Magna Cum Laude.

Prior to his start with Microsoft, Gates got a summer job working for a company that manually analyzed traffic flow patterns which gave Gates the initial idea to create his first company with Allen called Traf-O-Data. The company would offer an automated way of collecting and analyzing traffic flow pattern data to help traffic engineers create reports. The business was noted as a great idea with a horrific business model as Gates and Co had done no market research and had failed time and time again in acquiring capital investment into the business and they were forced to shut it down in 1980 after six years of consistent net loss. However this failure did nothing more than allow Gates and Allen to focus on Microsoft, the company they had previously started in 1975.

By 1986, Microsoft went public making him the youngest self made billionaire in the world at the time (Now a record held by Mark Zuckerberg). During the first five years he served as the head developer and eventually transitioned into management and then as an executive. It has been commonly stated by Gates that if it were not for the failure of or experience with Traf-O-Data then Microsoft would never have been able to reach the heights it has today.