One word for success story

Success, it’s something we all strive for in some form or fashion, but what is it?  What is success?  There are multiple definitions these days.  However, there seems to be just one common thread that most people do agree on about success.  And that is this, that success is a biproduct of persisting in the face of failure towards the progressive realization of a worthy goal.  So, if you’re looking for inspirational success stories highlighting some of the most heroic accounts of overcoming the odds, then this page is for you.

Our purpose in sharing these success stories is to encourage you to keep striving towards your dreams, and to help you continue believing that achieving the “impossible” is actually possible.

With that being said, here are the top success stories to inspire you to succeed in the face of failure, setbacks, and obstacles. If you are ready to be inspired, let’s dive in.

INSPIRING SUCCESS STORIES TO HELP YOU SUCCEED

1. Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Stallone has one of the most inspiring success stories. Before he made it big, he was essentially a starving artist. For many years during and after his college years, he worked odd jobs to pay the bills. And he would do so while simultaneously taking on any acting roles he could find to keep his dreams of becoming a successful actor alive.

It was a struggle that Stallone would endure for many years, seven in fact. Throughout all of those seven challenging years, he would gain a few small roles in a handful of movies. But, none of them were grand enough to get his career launched.

During those seven long years of striving, he came face-to-face with near poverty. Getting so desperate for money he at one point had to sell his wife’s jewelry out of desperation for money. He even had to sell his dog because he couldn’t keep him fed. Things got so bad that he even had to endure homelessness for a short period of time.

But, his days of struggle as an aspiring actor would not last forever. After facing seemingly insurmountable odds for over seven years, he would finally get his big break. And this break would come after he managed to get a script he wrote in a three day flurry of inspiration, in front of two big-shot directors in Hollywood.

It was this defining moment that would turn the tides for Sylvester Stallone, and his career would skyrocket after he negotiated the lead role in the film that would come to be known as ‘Rocky’.

Success eventually comes to those who always dream of her. For a more complete account of Sylvester Stallone’s inspiring success story, you can find it here.

2. Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey’s success story is very unique. From a very early age she experienced a level of adversity and poverty that most people would struggle to overcome. She was born into poverty and a broken home in rural Mississippi. Her parents who were just 18 and 19 when they had her, split soon after she was born. This lead to her being taking in by her grand mother.

And her grandmother was not your typical warm and fuzzy grandmother. No, she was a hard-nosed grandmother who was an extreme disciplinarian who discipline her for even the slightest offenses. But, the poverty and disciplined lifestyle didn’t last forever as she moved back with mother at the age of six.

Oprah would then experience sexual assault at an early age, having been molested as early as 9 by some of her family members. Having been emotionally abandoned, abused, and molested, she eventually started part-taking in extremely risky behaviors. Behaviors which eventually led to her becoming pregnant at the age of 14.

Then, because she got pregnant her mother kicked her out of the house. Oprah would go on to live with her father, only to then lose the baby a week after he was born.

Needless to say, Oprah’s early life was chockfull of struggle, adversity, and tragedy. But, regardless of all of her unfortunate experiences, she decided to turn her life around after she lost her baby. So, she committed herself to getting an education, becoming her best, and to going after her dreams.

She decided to start trusting herself again, and loving herself, and making choices that would improve her life versus destroy it. One day, she garnered enough confidence to participate in a beauty pageant. And it was her participation in this pageant that would eventually lead her into a job working for a radio station doing the news.

Oprah’s love for speaking to an audience set the stage for continued success as she would go on to become a news anchor, which she would eventually leverage to host a TV chat show in Maryland, which ultimately led to her having her morning talk show in Chicago.

And as they say, the rest was history. Oprah overcame massive challenges in her youth. Challenges that side line all too many people. She chose to turn her wounds into wisdom, and went on to become one of the most successful talk show hosts in history (by helping many others do the same) with her own self-named talk show, The Oprah Winfrey show. And now she is considered one of the richest self-made women in America.

3. Arnold Schwarzenegger

Considering Arnold Schwarzenegger is the epitome of the self-made man, we wouldn’t dare exclude him from our success stories collection. Having been born and raised in Austria, at a time where it was still healing from it’s defeat in World War II, the odds were already stacked against him.

Arnold grew up in a climate where alcoholism was rampant, defeatism was the norm, and big dreaming was scoffed at.

But Arnold didn’t care. He knew he didn’t want to live the traditional Austrian life his parents wanted for him. He also knew he wanted to move to America because it was the land of the free.

As such, he hatched a plan to become a success in body-building. Then to leverage that success to get into movies. And sure enough he did just that. He went on to fulfill his vision by becoming the youngest man to ever win a Mr. Universe competition, and then on to win five Mr. Universe titles and seven Mr. Olympia titles.

After reaching what he set out to do in the sport of bodybuilding, he then went on to commit himself to the acting career he had always dreamed of. And sure enough, he would go on to conquer the film industry to the same degree that he conquered the body building world. Going on to star in multiple blockbuster movies that would gross over $3 billion, and earn him one of the most sizeable net worth’s in Hollywood.

You can find a more complete account of Arnold’s inspiring success story here.

4. JK Rowling

J.K Rowling had a dream of becoming a writer early on. But, she would have to persist for many years before her dream of becoming a published author would materialize. Almost as soon as she decided to get to work on putting her ideas down on paper for her book, she would be sidetracked by her mother’s death.

The depression that would ensue left Rowling seeking out a job as a teacher in another country. Soon after, she would get married and have a child, which would delay her aspirations even further.

But things weren’t done going off the rails for Rowling, as her marriage would abruptly end just one year after it began, leading her to be jobless with a child, and a barely surviving off of unemployment benefits.

However, despite her challenges, Rowling would persist in the creation of her book. And she did so by seizing every spare moment she could while her child slept to write. Until finally the day came when she completed her manuscript.

Of course, even after Rowling finished her manuscript obstacles still remained. 12 different publishers would reject her novel, and she found herself almost ready to quit before her manuscript would eventually get accepted. And it was at that moment, that J.K. Rowling’s luck turned around.

Now, J.K. Rowling is now one of the best selling authors of all time. In fact, she is the highest paid novelist in the world, with her books having been translated into over 80 different languages with over 600 million being sold. Clearly, persistence and patience pays off in the long run.

5. Steven Spielberg

Most people don’t know this, but Steven Spielberg was rejected from film school three times. But he didn’t let those rejections stop him, and he kept applying till he got accepted.  Eventually Cal State, Long Beach would accept him into their film program. 

Fortunately for Spielberg, he would then go on to leverage his opportunity at Cal State to land an unpaid internship at Universal Studios. 

Of course, this internship wouldn’t last forever, but it lasted just long enough for him to learn how sneak in to the studios undetected so he could continually gather intel on what it would take to become successful in the business. 

Finally, the day would come that he managed to get a film he created in the hands of film executives. But, he had to first overcome the film executives multiple attempts to make him give up.

After being told that the film size was not the right size multiple times, and remaking the entire demo to the recommended sizes every time, the executives finally relented and gave him his film a shot. The movie would go on to win major awards, and solidified Steven Spielberg’s place within the industry.

Steven Spielberg is now one of the most influential film makers in history. On top of this, he’s now also one of the wealthiest. And out of all of our inspirational stories of success, his story in particular, shows, that if you knock long enough and hard enough, the doors of opportunity will eventually swing open for you.

Related: 5 Steps to Start Living Your Dreams

6. Mary Kay Ash

Mary Kay Ash has a truly inspiring success story. She was born in a small town in Texas and got married and started a family at the young age of 17. She would go on to have three children with her husband who was in the military, but they eventually got a divorce.

Mary Kay would struggle for years to take care of her children on her own. But she took on various sales jobs in the direct selling industry, and strived to climb the corporate ranks. However, after many years of selling various products, along with a few middle management and trainer roles, she started to feel like she was being overlooked for the more prominent leadership roles she aspired to because she was a woman. As such, she eventually decided to take matters into her own hands.

Once her kids were out of the house and on their own, at the age of 45 Mary Kay Ash decided to become her own boss. So, she started her own cosmetic company. She started off very small, but in just a few short years, she manage to transform Mary Kay Cosmetics into a multi-billion dollar corporation that still serves and empowers people all over the world to this day.

Despite being past what most people consider their prime, Mary Kay went on to author multiple best-selling books like The Mary Kay Way, Miracles Happen, You Can Have It All, as well as a few others, and she became an inspiration to countless women. And due to the success of her business and her aim to inspire as many people as possible, she became a multi-millionaire and eventually named as ‘The Greatest Woman In American History’.

7. Cristiano Ronaldo

Cristiano Ronaldo grew up in a household that was barely getting by. As a child, he had to share a room with three of his siblings due to their meager financial situation. There were even times where they didn’t have enough money to buy a soccer ball just so he could play in the streets. But Ronaldo did not let his environment dictate his destiny.

No, instead he would find ways to play the sport he loved even without the ball. He would use bottles, rags, or pretty much anything he could find to make a makeshift ball just so he could play. 

Eventually, Cristiano would get so good at soccer, that he would have to make the ultimate sacrifice at the age of 11 to move over 500 miles away from his family to train with a prestigious soccer academy. It’s a good thing he did too, because by doing so, he put himself on track to eventually become on of the best players in history.

Now Cristiano Ronaldo is known as the greatest Portuguese player of all time by the Portuguese Football federation.  He is also considered by millions of soccer fans all across the globe to be the greatest of all time. 

In addition to this, he is the first soccer player ever to earn over $1 billion dollars, while generating one of the largest net worth’s among professional athletes.  

If you’re looking to learn more about Cristiano’s inspiring success story, you’ll love this.

8. Lionel Messi

While on the topic of soccer, we must also mention Lionel Messi’s success story because it’s every bit as inspiring.  Here’s why, at age of 11, Messi was cut from his soccer team because they thought he was too small.  And he was small, but it was because he had a growth hormone deficiency which made him a lot smaller than all the other kids his age.

Fortunately, Messi didn’t let this deter him.  Instead, he would place himself on a strict regimen where he would inject growth hormones into himself.  And he would go on to do inject himself with this hormone for seven days in one leg, and then seven days in the other.

Messi would keep this routine up for six years.

The great news is, Messi’s sacrifice and persistence paid off.  Because now, he is one of the highest paid soccer players with a staggering net worth, and is considered by legions of fans to be one of the best soccer players of all time due to his winning soccer’s highest achievement, ‘The Ballon d’Or’ six times.

Success requires sacrifice.

9. Michael Jordan

Since we mentioned the greatest of all time in soccer, we can’t leave out the man many consider to be the greatest of all time in basket ball. Now, most people aren’t’ aware of this, but when Michael Jordan was merely a sophomore in high school, he already had big dreams of being a great basketball player. 

So he did something brash and tried out for the Varsity team. But, things didn’t go his way and he got himself cut from the team.

This rejection hit Jordan especially hard because of his oversized dreams and expectations. In fact, the rejection hit him so hard he went home afterwards and cried in his closet.

Even though that rejection still bothered Jordan, he dusted himself off and went all in for the JV team.  He trained like no other in the off season and grew four extra inches. And the following year he tried out for the varsity team again. But this second time around, he made it.

Not only did he make it, but he went on to become the team’s MVP, making the All-American Team, and eventually earned himself a college scholarship. And from there, well, you know the rest of the story.

He went on to become the man who would score 32,292 points in a basketball career, acquire 6 NBA championships, collect 5 MVP titles, and come to be considered as the greatest basketball player of all time.

For all the success stories we’ve covered, this one clearly shows the importance of having great expectations, and resilience after rejection.

10. Paulo Coelho

Over 30 years ago a book titled ‘The Alchemist’ was published and hardly anyone noticed. The author of this book was a man named Paulo Coelho, and he was told by the first bookseller to carry his book, that only one person bought a copy after it was released.  As bad as it was to hear about the grim results Coelho remained confident in his work. 

He waited for better results to appear, but they were slow to come by as six months would pass before the next copy would be sold.  Oddly, the person who bought his first book was the same person who bought the second.

After that first year the publisher decided the book was a flop and ended Coelho’s contract.  Fortunately, though, Coelho shrugged off that initial defeat.  He made up his mind to not give in, and so he doubled down to pursue his vision with even more fervor by finding another publisher. 

Now finding this new publisher was no easy task for Coelho, as he was met with rejection after rejection.  But, after many repeated rejections, he finally landed that new publisher, and with it, another opportunity to capture his dream.

From that point forward Coelho’s dreams started to come true.  At first, he only sold three thousand books.  But the sales kept trickling in. And as time went by, he would sell ten thousand, and then 100 thousand, and so on and so forth. 

Coelho’s luck has yet to run out, as his books sales continue to grow year over year, with now over 150 million and counting copies of ‘The Alchemist’ having been sold. Even more staggering is the fact that he sold over 320 million books when including all of his other works. But, it all started with that first book!

Paulo Coelho’s story shows that if you truly want something bad enough, all the universe really will conspire to help you achieve the impossible.

11. Abraham Lincoln

Most of us know of this great man because of what he did for our country. The Emancipation Proclamation which led to the abolition of slavery was a massive accomplishment.

But, what most don’t realized about Abraham Lincoln, is that he has one of the most impressive rap sheets when it comes to overcoming defeat.

In short, his success story consists of a list of failures and set backs so sizable, that you would hardly think it belonged to one of the greatest presidents of the United States of America.

Here’s a great example of the many failures Lincoln endured, with a few victories he managed to sprinkle in over his lifetime:

1832: Lost his job

1832: Defeated for legislature

1833: Failed in business

1834: Elected to legislature

1835: The woman he loved died

1836: Had a nervous breakdown

1838: Defeated for Speaker

1843: Defeated for nomination for Congress

1848: Lost re-nomination

1849: Reject for Land Officer

1854: Defeated for Senate

1856: Defeated for nomination for Vice-President

1858: Again defeated for Senate

1860: Elected for President of The United States of America

To be sure, Lincoln failed his way to success, and his recorded failures helps us realize the truth behind the Michael Jordan quote we mentioned earlier, and that is…that the key to success is through failure.

Related: Success Quotes for Overcoming Failure

12. Tom Brady

One of our favorite inspirational stories of success comes from Tom Brady. Brady didn’t follow the typical athletic path into the NFL. While most athletes begin getting groomed for the sport by the 3rd grade, Tom Brady wouldn’t set foot onto the grid iron until the 9th grade.

In fact, his debut into actually getting onto the football field didn’t come until his Sophomore year. His moment came when the starting quarterback for the JV team quit. Fortunately for Brady, that opportunity helped him capture the starting Varsity QB role by the time his Junior year arrived.

After finding success at the high school level, Brady would eventually go on to become a Michigan Wolverine. But success wasn’t a given for Brady at this level. Nope, he had to earn it.

In fact, Brady came into the program as an underdog, with seven quarterbacks ahead of him on the depth chart. After almost requesting a transfer to another school, Brady’s determination eventually won him the coveted starting position by the time he was a Junior.

The obstacles Brady would face continued on even into the Pros. Brady had his mind set to play in the pros, unfortunately there was little interest in him during the draft. In fact, Brady barely made the draft, being chosen in the 6th round as the 199th pick.

Brady was grossly underrated and underestimated by every coach in the league. His draft report from 2000 NFL draft actually stated the following qualities:

• Poor Build | Skinny
• Lacks Great Physical Stature and Strength
• Lacks Mobility and Ability to Avoid The Rush
• Lacks a Really Strong Arm
• Can’t Drive The Ball Down Field
• Doesn’t Throw a Really Tight Spiral
• System-Type Player Who Can Get Exposed if Forced to Adlib
• Gets Knocked Down Easily

Indeed, Tom brady was not the highest rated quarterback, he wasn’t the most well groomed for the sport, nor was he the best athlete. In addition, he didn’t have the best numbers, or even the best mechanics. However, Tom Brady did have the most heart and determination.

Thus, through sheer willpower, he pushed himself to becoming one of the greatest football players of all times. And he has proved his case with the following accolades:

• Most NFL Championships By a Player (7x)
• Most Games Won By a Quarterback
• Most Games Played By a Quarterback
• Most Combined Passing Yards
• Most Touchdown Passes
• Most 4th Quarter Comebacks
• Best Touchdown to Interception Ratio
• 5 Time Super Bowl MVP
• 3 Time MVP of the NFL
• 2 Time NFL All-Decade Team Player
• Only Player to Win a Super Bowl for Both The AFC & NFC

13. Sarah Blakely

This story is about Sarah Blakely, who was once crowned one of the youngest self-made billionaires by Forbes. Her story begins with her love of the firm look that panty hose offered, but her hating how they looked when she wore open toe shoes.

Blakely’s annoyance with panty hose would lead to her always cutting the feet off of her panty hose to pull of the look she was going for. But, after noticing that many other women were doing the same thing, she had a lightbulb moment. And she started to contemplate the creation of a product that would solve this problem.

Then one day after being inspired by an Oprah show, Sarah decided to take massive action on her idea. So, she risked it all by investing her entire $5,000 life savings to move to Atlanta, GA. Once there, she would kickstart the production of her product idea for the masses.

At first she was met with tons of resistant. Nobody wanted to manufacture the product she was trying to create. They thought it was too risky and a potential waste of time. Her patent officer even found it difficult to take her idea seriously, thinking it to be a dud.

But, after two years of planning, countless late nights, and lots of no’s, she finally found success. Her lucky break came when a factory agreed to manufacture her products. And when Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdales took a risk on her by listing her products for sale at their stores.

Her first year in business she sold over $4 million in revenue. And every year there after her sales would grow exponentially. Sarah’s courage to go all in, and her persistence to bring her idea to the world helped her become a billionaire by the age of 41.

14. Grant Cardone

This next story helps drive the point home, that it’s never too late to be what you might have been. It’s also a good reminder that no matter where you come from, or where you’ve been, you can change. It’s a testament that anyone can clean up their act, and can find massive success in the process.

This success story is about a man who grew up poor in Louisiana, lost his father at a young age, and was raised a single-parent household with four other siblings. This story is about a man named Grant Cardone.

Cardone is not your typical celebrity. He didn’t come from money. He’s not a Hollywood superstar,. Nor does he possess some amazing talent, like script-writing, politics, or athleticism. However, what he does possess, is something that is available to us all, and that is a determination to succeed.

Grant Cardone found himself in bad company in his youth. He was involved and addicted to drugs, and was stuck in a downward spiral for over a decade. After getting robbed at gun point, getting beaten to a bloody pulp with a gun, and then getting kicked out of his mother’s house, he finally decided to change his life.

At the age of 25 Grant Cardone decided to clean up his act. He cut all negative influences from his life, got sober, and took the first job he could land. That job was as a car salesmen. Now, it wasn’t a job he was particularly thrilled about. But he made due given that his options were limited because of a slow economy at the time.

Cardone committed to becoming the best salesperson he could be. So, he invested heavily in his own self-improvement by reading books and studying his craft and his industry.

After committing to becoming his very best, his income quickly doubled. And soon thereafter, he would become one of the best car salesmen in the country. He eventually moved on to running his own business, and was extremely smart and disciplined with his money.

In fact, Cardone would go on to save every dollar that wasn’t absolutely needed to keep him fed and housed. Everything that was left over would get put into an investment fund just for real estate.

Grant Cardone’s focus on learning more so that he could earn more, along with having the discipline to invest his extra money, instead of wasting it on frivolous things, helped him become a self-made millionaire just five years later by the age of 30.

Cardone has since gone on to become a prominent international businessman, speaker, and the owner of Cardone Capital, a $1.5 billion investment firm.  He’s also authored New York Times bestselling books If You’re Not First, You’re Last, and other notable books like The 10X Rule, and Axiom Award winning Sell or Be Sold.  In addition to this, he also founded Cardone University, a popular sales training platform that has accrued over 50,000,000 and growing users.

It took Grant Cardone only five years to completely revolutionize his entire life. With the right mindset and a good dose of willpower, just imagine what 5 years could do for you.

15. KEVIN HART

Every body knows of and loves Kevin Hart. He’s been making us laugh and keeping us highly entertained for many years now. But, what most people don’t know about Kevin Hart, is that he had to overcome some major obstacles before he became one of the most beloved comedians in the world.

Hart had to overcome a negative homelife with a father who was reckless, toxic, and always causing trouble. He had to overcome the challenges of a 2 hour commute for years.

Hart had to endure being told that comedy was not for him. In fact, he was told that he should quit comedy by someone he highly respected in the industry. He had to outlast the boos, the heckling, and getting chicken wings thrown at him due to his performances.

Kevin Hart had to turn countless setbacks into comebacks. He had to choose time after time, to not quit. He chose to keep pushing for his dreams, to ignore the critics, the naysayers, and anyone who doubted his dreams.

Eventually though, Hart’s persistence and commitment to his vision would pay off. The tide would turn for Kevin Hart after years of career stagnancy, rejection, and close calls with defeat.

But now, Kevin Hart is considered one of the world’s top 10 comedians and is one of the richest too. So, if you think you can’t do something, just think about Kevin Hart’s journey and all he went through. Because if he can do it, so can you.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully these success stories help you realize that while success may be elusive, it is not unattainable. We also hope that through these stories, you’ve come to understand that success is both a journey and a destination. And in order to achieve success, you’ll have to first go through your share of struggles, rejections, and even disasters.

So, keep your feet on the ground and your eyes on the prize. Keep moving towards your dreams no matter what. Do this, and your success will be just around the corner.

Till next time,

STRIVE

PS – Every success story is different and can inspire in a different way. That said, if you’re looking for more stories about how others achieved success, then you’ll love these Strive Stories too.

When you hear the phrase “secret to success”, what comes to mind? 

In this video, I’ll explain:

• One word that explains my long-term success
• How adjusting your mindset can make a huge difference
• What I mean — and don’t mean — when I use this word (it might surprise you!)

You can watch here:

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How to be Successful

When some people hear “secret to success,” they think you have to have big-name connections. Others think it’s years and years of experience or high-level training. Still others assume it’s just dumb luck and lots of startup capital. 

If you know my story, you know I didn’t have any of these things when I was getting started. I was working from home and struggling big-time. So what made the difference?

I can tell you in one word what the secret to my success is.
And it might not be what you think.

In this video, I want to talk about the one thing that has made all the difference for me and continues to be the key to my long-term thriving.  

It’s not a fancy business “hack” … and it definitely doesn’t involve any kind of cutthroat zero-sum competition. In fact, it’s quite the opposite!

The best part? It doesn’t require anything other than a switch in mindset to start experiencing the benefits right away.

I love sharing this information, because I know it can really help people make a significant turnaround in how they see themselves, their work, and their path to success. I hope it will give you a new perspective on what can be possible in your business, one conversation at a time. 

As always, I’d love to hear from you. If you have follow-up questions or want to share your own experience, leave your comment below and let me know what you think! 

Do you want to showcase your organization and earn funder’s trust? Do you want to relate the transparency of your Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in utilizing partners’ and stakeholders’ resources? Then, you must be thinking of success stories. You will discover how to write a success story that is worth sharing.

Writing a detailed success story requires approaches that would outlay how and the extent of the impact your project and interventions had or are having on beneficiaries – individuals and communities.

But the challenge is this:

• You need a baseline,
• A process that worked, and
• The current situation.

Whilst many propositions exist for writing a success story, the template you adopt will depend on the peculiarity of your project, organization, funder, and target audience.

And to assure you, crafting a success story isn’t overly complex. Understanding the key elements will provide the basis for you to craft an adaptable template for your needs.

So, in this article, I’ll extensively provide you with tips and take you through the elements you need to write a success story that assures funders of your work.

But, let’s have a brief chat on a success story.

Success Story Overview

Success stories are resourceful marketing tools for promoting your organization before stakeholders, partners, and funders. They help you relate to others how your approaches and interventions are transforming lives and impacting the society in the big view.

Basically, it is an account of how you achieved success. This account, at the very core, details the before and after situations, strategies you adopted, and the positive impacts. Aside from marketing your work and organization, they provide relevant information.

Decision-makers can read in-between the lines to ascertain the flow of activities, and thus, make decisions to improve, re-structure, or even stop an activity.

Though success stories are mostly written at the end of a project or intervention, some are, however, written at the beginning and middle points.

This post provides a balanced approach that you can adapt to write a success story that meets the peculiarity of what you do.

Now that you’ve acquainted yourself with the concept, let’s get soaked in how to write a success story.

So, how do you write a success story that satisfies minimum standards and guidelines?

Well, there’s no specific answer to this question. Why? For instance,  Non-Governmental Organizations often have templates given to them by funders to guide how they go about the writing process. Similarly, business enterprises craft theirs based on specific factors such as the niche, context of what they did, and many others.

Nevertheless, there are specific elements to consider that should power your story irrespective of the format, and I’ll be discussing these elements right on.

Step 1: Craft an Appealing Headline

The title of your success story remains the first contact point. Viewers and readers alike will most often see this before the story. They may decide to proceed or simply bounce depending on the picture your headline paints.

Hence, it’s very important to give a close call to the title of your story and make it superfit for others to engage with from the first point of contact.

So, how do you craft the headline that keeps your intended audience engaged? In my years of writing and developing contents, I’ve often utilized 4 headline hacks that are super awesome.

Add an emotional hook:

Emotional hooks contain action and power words that paint the effect of your story. Most importantly, they take your readers through a power-packed universe where each action translates into an impact.

So, think of it this way: If a headline contains an action, someone or a group of people definitely got involved. Your headline is therefore expressing the ‘living‘ effect of your story on the beneficiaries, but concise enough to make readers feel the hook.

Below are examples of common headlines with emotional hooks:

• A change that transversed many grounds
• Livelihood Opportunity Helps 4 Children attend school
• It’s Never Enough to Help Others Grow
• Improved health access by 40% in Maigama through Advocacy

Use numbers to convey impact:

Numbers are powerful and easily convey the impact of your story. In fact, at a snapshot, headlines with numbers help you to spot the extent to which you achieved success. For instance, here’s a headline we crafted for one of our success stories.

As you can see from the image, it straightly tells how 4 children benefited from the intervention provided to their caregiver. Without thinking much, one can immediately tell the impact: building a future by helping these children attend school.

So, always think of creative ways to add numbers as part of your success story headline hacks. However, this is not to say that all your headlines must contain numbers. Just be creative!

For inspiration on headlines with numbers, see a few below:

• Livelihood opportunity helps 4 children attend school
• More than 80% access portable water in [Location]
• Community collaboration delivers life-changing support to 200 youths

Show a sense of relevance:

The number one purpose of your piece is to show success. It reveals the essence of an intervention. Then, why not help people understand the relevance of your story from the very beginning.

Consider expressing the importance of your story to others via the headline.

For instance, the livelihood opportunity success story I used earlier shows, not only the impact but the extent of the impact. You can, from the headline, understand that those children got access to education.

See a few examples to help you craft one:

• A young entrepreneur uses technology for social innovation – FHI360
• Improving development through strategic partnership
• Utilizing the power of awareness to mitigate discrimination.

Keep it concise:

Long and wordy headlines are unnecessary because a rather concise one would pass the message succinctly. Though there are times when adding a few words delivers the intended message and helps people understand the supposed content of your write-up.

While not a universal standard, try to keep your title within 10 words.

A good headline or title is simple, jargon-­free, and has/conveys impact; it summarizes the story concisely and includes action verbs that bring the story to life.

2. Expound on the Situation

Baseline information usually helps people to understand an impact better. And this should often exist in your writing steps. It aids your readers to picture what it was like in the past, thus helping them understand the extent of what you did.

This requires the availability of relevant baseline information and or data. If you’ve had a functional Monitoring and Evaluation Plan from the beginning, this information should already be available. You will, however, gather pieces of information to complement the existing one.

Where it becomes difficult, is when you have no reliable baseline information. Nevertheless, you can adopt data collection techniques to gather information from the right sources. Mind you, you’ll need to squeeze this information for accuracy.

Well, once you have the needed information, you can understand how things were. What you detail should concisely address the following areas:

• Who are you talking about? Sometimes, it might be an individual or individuals, other times, a group of entities such as a community, an organization, among others.
• What was the situation? Help people understand what the situation was. There was no portable water in community A, family C could hardly feed on a square meal each day, etc.
• So, what did this situation cause?  Discuss the effects! Lack of portable water led to the outbreak of waterborne disease to which 1000 children between ages 5 -10 were affected.
• Any clues to what caused the situation? This information is not only useful in showing how you creatively tackled the situation but provides insights into adopting your solution-template for related situations.
• Were there previous attempts to alleviate the situation? If yes, by who and how did it go?

Below is a screenshot of a success story’s situation section that details and provides some answers to the above questions.

Mind you, providing answers to these questions doesn’t mean you’ve to write 100 pages of this document. In fact, one feature (and notable quality) of a success story is that it must be concise. If possible within just a page.

This implies that you will have to creatively provide answers to these questions such that your readers will understand what occurred. That seems a huge task, right? Well, it isn’t! Trimming your words and sentences – removing irrelevant details and expressions – provides a succinct way of providing enormous information within few lines or sentences.

3. Describe your Strategy and Approach

So, you’re through with describing the situation from relevant angles, right? What next? It’s time to describe how you or your organization tackled the situation to achieve success. Remember that strategy integrates all efforts and approaches used to deliver the expected result(s).

Therefore, imaginatively, outline the steps involved, resources, stakeholders, and any other factor that contributed to making the story a success.

In a nutshell, your descriptions should embody the following information:

Funding & Project Brief:

Most times, interventions are funded. This could be by an individual, Implementing Partner (IP), Government, Agencies, or about any other entity. For such, it’s important to briefly introduce the funders. This helps to show how your organization has utilized funding efficiently to achieve success.

More so, the funding can equally be under a particular project. Equally, introduce the project. Discuss its goal, target groups, duration, and objectives where applicable.

For example:

Project X is a 2-year child-focused project aimed at improving access to education by vulnerable children in community Y.

The above example instantly describes what the project was – at a higher level, but explicit enough to enable readers to sum its vision.

The Approach adopted:

If you are familiar with tackling challenges, you’ll agree that sometimes, there are several ways to doing so. But one question beckons, which of the ways was most effective? Well, I’m not detailing the choice of intervention logic here. All I want you to grasps here is that readers need to know about the approach(es) you used.

This could provide clues for someone or an organization to adapt such in future projects. So, detail your approach, the steps involved, its efficiency if possible, and the rationale for the choice.

For example, we achieved a reduced rate of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in one of our focal communities where attempts have previously been made. Our approach yielded geometric success. The screenshot below shows a summary of the approached we adopted.

With that, one can easily surmise that our approach can be adapted in community Z with peculiarity to the situation we tackled.

Collaborative Efforts:

Especially in social and community projects, forming a referral and collaborative system remains the major strength of achieving success. It is quite unlikely to identify a successful project that had no collaborations or synergy with specific entities.

Hence, it’s noteworthy to describe your collaborative efforts and how these/this collaboration(s) impacted success.

In the previous screenshot, you saw how we collaborated with community structures to achieve the desired result. Where available, remember to chip in these collaborations.

4. Showcase the Result(s)

By now, you’ve gotten enough information to start writing a success story. The truth is this, the previous steps would be meaningless if your story fails to reveal the result or success. So, permit me to state that this is the most important part of your success story.

Yes, people have read what the situation was and how you innovatively tackled it. However, they’re yet to understand clearly what the effects of the response were. Thus, help them understand these effects.

There are a few ways to showcase the result of a success story such that those who consume it will understand the impact and its extent in just a few lines.

Let me briefly describe them:

Capture Relevant Quotes:

Quotes are great in revealing the impact you’ve had. When beneficiaries talk about how your work has helped them reach a level, it’s often more emotionally driven. In fact, you might not see the impact the way they will reveal to you.

So, it’s one of the practices you should always integrate into your story. While gathering information for the story, capture relevant quotes that add value. These quotes can be from a single source. Sometimes, from several sources. Ensure that you make the most of them.

Here are quick tips to add quotes to a success story:

1. Use the original language and translate to English if need be. That will depend on your audience anyway.
2. For changes to the original quotes, endeavor to indicate with square braces. This is mostly the case as you might need to structure the grammar contextually.
3. Your adoption of double or single-styled quotes depends on your choice or organization.
4. Mark missing words or expressions with an ellipsis (…).

For more on best practices, read this guideline from Grammarly: Quotation Marks.

Play with Real Data:

Another way of showcasing results and impacts is to dissect the available data. Okay, calm down a bit. I’m not referring to data science or deep-layer data analysis. Simple comparisons, percentages, summations, or even measures of central tendencies will do just fine.

Note, however, that the scope of your project might sometimes require in-depth data analysis to represent your success.

Either way, understand that data attract attention compared to words. This is only possible if you had baseline information in place.

Here are a few tips to help you integrate data into your success story:

1. Compare previous and present situations – are there significant or relevant changes? What information can you depict from those changes?
2. Use percentages to show the extent of the impact. People will easily understand that your efforts improved healthcare by 60% compared to stating that you supported 10 health facilities.
3. If need be, use light-weight data presentation features such as tables, pie charts, etc.
4. To provide a balance, support the given data with a brief description for accessibility and improved understanding.
5. Highlight inline stats or data to enable readers to see them earlier.

Use MoV but not compulsory:

There are different types of Means of Verification (MoV), from photos, audio recordings, video, signed attendance schedules to receipts. However, in the context of this post, I will focus on one that is mostly used in writing success stories – Photos.

It’s common to hear people say “A picture is worth a thousand words!“, and that’s just what it is. Well-taken photos can give visual meanings within a few seconds. Depending on policies or guidelines that govern your project, you may include relevant photos to support your story.

Take these tips:

• Avoid adding sensitive, disrupting or offensive photos.
• Acquire signed consent of the beneficiary before usage.
• Some cases might require that you don’t use photos, even if the beneficiary gave you consent, to curtail discrimination.
• Avoid cropping, tweaking, changing the resolution of photos. Maintain the original scale and pixels.
• The photo(s) should relate excellently to the story. Irrelevant photos are a total NO!
• Use photos that are bright, attract attention, and of high resolution.
• Always refer to the guidelines provided by funders and policies of your focal area.
• Stick with .jpg, .png, .gif and .bmp image types.

5. Capture the Big Picture

By now, your success story has taken shape. Notably, stakeholders, funders, and casual readers can depict the change or transformation you’ve brought through your activities. Everyone is now abreast of strategies that can work for a given scenario.

No doubt, you’ve done great justice to your story by providing these relevant pieces of information. But there’s still one last step you can consider- The Big Picture!

What’s the big picture? See it this way:

You helped 4 children to access educational needs and take the burden off their parents/guardian. After, let’s say 5 or 10 years, what impact will this particular act of service have on the society at large. That long-term impact becomes the big picture of the success story.

The big picture is the most important fact about your intervention and how it affects other things over a long a period.

This could be what is happening already as a result of your work. So, reserve 2 – 3 sentences to provide the present and future large-scale impact of what you have done. Where this becomes important is in acquiring funds, and presenting questions for others to answer.

For instance, you helped reduce the unemployment rate by linking 20 youths to relevant skills from which they got start-up grants, right? That’s great! But the problem still lingers in the community. Your projection of what this will bring if more youths are empowered might spur funders and stakeholders. It might make them think of ways to either support you or initiate an intervention along that path.

Overall, your story has inspired others and is in the right direction!

Over to you!

I hope by now you have acquired basic if not enough, skills and information to write a success story? Even if you’re writing success stories for NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) or businesses, this guide on how to write a success story has provided excellent clues.

Now the ball is your court! How do you want to play it? Remember, a good success story offers great advantages, and you can rely on these to mobilize funds and resources for your organization.

Let me cap the salient points from this guide:

• Encourage the culture of writing success stories.
• It begins with a well-crafted headline not void of an emotional hook.
• Describe the previous situation of things or beneficiary.
• Detail the methods used to tackle the situation  – notably why you used the said method.
• Let people know the change your story brought in an easy-to-understand way.
• What are your projections for what has been done?

Note: There are several other success story formats out there specific to your field and needs. It’s never a bad idea to creatively integrate features from several verifiable sources.

Lest I forgot, I promised you a free success story template. Click any of the links below to download your preferred format:

• Free success story template (PDF)
• Free Success Story Template (Word)

Success stories are the inspiration! Because sometimes, no matter how ready we feel for something to change, we are looking for a spark to take the first step. Success stories that reflect the truth also create motivating and positive effects in our lives. People draw their own path with inspiration from one or more success stories. He takes a role model and gets motivated in this way. Those who create their own opportunity, those who get rid of impossibilities, those who are reborn from their ashes… All these success stories are a great resource for those looking for motivation and inspiration.

In this content, we have brought together the stories of many people from different lives, from different branches, who have achieved different successes. 78. We have included Turkish success stories starting from the article. Maybe you will find the inspiration you are looking for thanks to these success stories.

Here are the success stories we have compiled for you!

one) The Mind-blowing Success Story of Alibaba Founder Jack Ma

It is a fact that Jack Ma, who founded the e-commerce giant Alibaba and is the richest person in China, did not come easy these days. His story is perhaps the most inspiring of success stories.

2nd) The Success Story of Walt Disney, Fired from the Newspaper for Saying Uncreative

Walt Disney; up to this point, he has been subjected to countless criticisms like many successful people. So much so that he was expelled from the newspaper he once worked for, saying he lacked creativity.

3) The Success Story of Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister of Game of Thrones

Tyrion Lannister; He is one of the multi-faceted characters who had an outcast childhood in the series, yet is more gentle and sensitive compared to his surroundings, as well as cautious and cunning. Peter Dinklage, who gave life to him as much as this character, has an equally interesting story.

4) Success Story of Coco Chanel, Bringing a New Look to Fashion

The French fashion designer, who inspired the fashion world and never compromised on his own truth, made women feel comfortable in a simple elegance with black mini dresses, pearl necklaces, trousers and jackets.

Let’s take a closer look at how Coco Chanel introduced this new style to the fashion world, what kind of difficulties she faced, how the Chanel brand was born.

5) The Story of Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Born in a 2 Bedroom House in India

Pichai, who is married and has two children, has drawn a career from scratch with his hard work and innovative ideas.

6) The Hope of Poor Women Oprah Winfrey’s Persevering Story

Famous actress, television personality and writer Oprah Winfrey, who started from scratch thanks to her talent and determination, is called “the hope of poor women”. When success stories are mentioned, it is impossible not to mention his story. Let’s take a look at the story of Winfrey, who stubbornly and passionately struggles for her achievements.

7) The Woman Who Landed on the Moon Katherine Johnson and Her Successful Life

Katherine Johnson, a mother of three daughters, African-American and mathematician, was born in 1918. Describing himself as a “fan of numbers,” Johnson has made tremendous contributions to NASA’s Mercury and Apollo 11 Projects. And he certainly had a life full of achievements.

Sean Parker is known as a successful US entrepreneur. But achieving this reputation was not easy. He made many successful attempts with his intelligence and tried to cope with his eventful life.

9) The Impressive Adventure of Phil Knight, The Man Who Founded Nike for $50

Phil Knight is the founder of one of the first brands that come to mind when talking about sports shoes. Founding Nike was not easy for him. In the beginning he only had 50 dollars and dreams.

A book that has made millions addicted to it. On top of that, a movie of the whole series was shot.
This book is called ‘Harry Potter’! The name of the person who signed this successful series is ‘JK Rowling’. So what was his story that made him successful?

11th) Success Story From Factory Worker to Premier League Champion: Jamie Vardy

Vardy, who played a huge role in the championship of his team with 22 goals he scored in 2016, has a story that we are not accustomed to seeing in the players who won the championship.

12) Kara Goldin

Black Goldin found the taste of water boring and flat. That’s why he was consuming an excessive amount (10-12 cans a day) of Diet Coke. At the same time, Kara, who ate very unhealthy and gained weight, decided to eat healthy with her family 12 years ago. Of course, he had to give up diet coke for this.

13) Female Physicist Named “New Einstein” from Harvard: Sabrina Pasterski

When we look at her 23-year life, we see a female physicist who has turned her focus to her work as well as a very successful academic career.

14) Successes and Milestones in the Life of Stephen Hawking, Who Has Left Us

When Stephen Hawking success stories are mentioned, his whole life is a success story. Despite his physical disabilities, the 76-year impressive life of British scientist Stephen Hawking, who was a great source of inspiration with his mental genius, is worth reading…

15) The Story of Chris Gardner, whose life was the subject of the movie ‘Don’t Lose Hope’

Chris Gardner, an American businessman, investor and motivational speaker, became the subject of a movie that many of us watched with admiration and crying.

16) The Woman Who Made Musk’s Dreams Come True: Gwynne Shotwell, President of Spacex

How was the life of this successful woman, who started her SpaceX adventure and was also a mother of two, when Elon Musk called her for the position of Vice President of Business Development?

17) The Story of Rebel Chess Genius Bobby Fischer, Born American and Died Icelandic

Bobby Fischer, who has a higher IQ than Einstein, had a life full of secrets with his superior intelligence, sensitive senses and mysterious life.

18) Robert Downey Jr’s Inspirational Story That You Should Never Give Up

His story is perhaps one of the most popular when it comes to success stories. The path Robert Downey Jr. walked on for this purpose was quite bumpy. Downey shows us with his life that we can’t achieve anything without effort.

19) The Heartbreaking Story of Internet Activist and Reddit Founder Aaron Swartz

Success stories don’t always have a happy ending. The young genius, who has come across as an activist, writer, IT scientist and politician throughout his life, has a life that is heartbreaking, ends in suicide and does not fail to inspire.

20) 12-Year-Old IBM’s Youngest Programmer: Tanmay Bakshi

Bakshi is a little different from the other kids because instead of playing computer games like his peers, he works with IBM on artificial intelligence and is one of the youngest software developers working in the world.

21) A Success Story From Gymnasium to Modeling With Excess Chromosomes: Chelsea Werner

A young girl of 5 years old. Chelsea, who found herself in gymnastics, one of the sports she started thanks to her family, who devoted her childhood to her personal development, has an impressive story adorned with her successes.

22) From Drug Addiction to Millionaire: The Story of Khalil Rafati

Let’s take a look at this inspiring story of 46-year-old Khalil Rafati, a millionaire businessman 13 years later, from a heroin addict trying to hold on to life on the streets of the USA!

23) A Success Story: Elon Musk

We did a little research about Elon Musk, who has made a name for himself as the Tony Stark of real life and compiled it for you.

24) One of the Most Successful Storytellers in the Digital World: The Success Story of Hideo Kojima

The Metal Gear series has shaped the video game industry with tremendous success around the world. The architect of this success is undoubtedly Hideo Kojima.

25) The Story of the Boy Who Created Flappy Bird While His Family Earned $1 A Day

Dong was any teenager living in Vietnam who, like all of us, stays at home and watches TV, gets up and goes to school, after getting scolded by his teachers at school, went to the game development company where he worked as an intern, liked his friends’ photos on Facebook, and then returned home and continued to watch TV.

26) Discipline and Dedication: The Inspiring Story of Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos

The life of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, tells us that nothing comes easy and that it takes hard work and risk to reach goals in life. Among the success stories, it is one of the most valuable, especially for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial candidates.

27) The Story of an Entrepreneur Who Overcame Obstacles by Embracing His Passions: Soichiro Honda

Soichiro Honda; He is the founder of the Japanese brand Honda, whose advertisements we see on the roads today and are familiar with. Most of us have dreams starting from childhood and he had it too. So how was Honda founded? Let’s see together.

28) The Story of Colonel Sanders, the Man Who Brought the Brink of Suicide and Founded KFC

This man with the goatee and glasses, the founder of KFC: Colonel Harland Sanders. He is a successful entrepreneur who managed to get up and achieve his dreams despite falling down many times.

29) The Story of Snapchat Co-Founder Evan Spiegel

Evan Spiegel is the CEO of Snapchat, which many of us love. With this success, he became one of the richest entrepreneurs in the world at the age of 24.

30) The Fascinating Life of Google Co-Founder and Alphabet CEO Larry Page

Larry Page is one of the most powerful people in the world. So how did he get to where he is today? Here is his story.

31) An Enlightenment Story From Suicidal Ideas to Millionaire: Libby Crow

Libby got a call from an insurance company in 2012. He could not have imagined that a casual conversation with a stranger would save his life. She was 25, had just broken up with her boyfriend, quit teaching with dreams of becoming an entrepreneur, and moved to Denver for a fresh start. Although taking out life insurance seemed like a reasonable precaution, he did not intend to live that long.

32) The Australian Who Turned Hundreds Around Suicide: Don Ritchie

Dedicated to saving people’s lives, Don Ritchie was born in 1925 in Australia. He continues his military service in the Royal Navy until the end of World War II and begins to realize that life is full of hard struggles.

33) A Physicist Struggling With Life’s Challenges and Being Overshadowed by His Wife: Mileva Einstein

Mileva Einstein Maric and Albert Einstein met at Zurich Polytechnic and married while working in the Patent office. As Albert Einstein formulated his theories and gained worldwide recognition, his wife bore him two children. Mileva Einstein’s story was also full of successes just like Albert Einstein’s, but unfortunately she did not gain much recognition because she was overshadowed by her husband.

34) One of the Pioneers of the Feminist Movement in the USA in the 20th Century: The Iron Jawed Angel Alice Paul

The basis of male-dominated societies is based on the Agricultural Revolution. Women are left at home and men go to the field to give birth to children and provide labor. With the thought that those who are not on the field do not have a say, the place of women is gradually limited to the home. Throughout history, women are always tried to be left behind. However, history also writes about tens of women who destroyed this opinion. One of these women is Alice Paul.

35) 16-Year-Old Nobel Candidate Raising Awareness with the Climate Crisis Struggle: Greta Thunberg

Climate change affects our lives directly or indirectly. Greta Thunberg, on the other hand, creates the need to question our thoughts and actions with her awareness activities.

36) The Name Who Changed Art History with a Urinal: Marcel Duchamp

French artist Marcel Duchamp is one of the names that changed the history of art. The artist, who lived between 1887-1968, is undoubtedly one of the most important artists of the 20th century.

37) Mother of the Hubble Space Telescope: Nancy Grace Roman

Nancy Grace Roman, the first female administrator of NASA, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, has died at the age of 93. Roman, the ‘motive force’ behind the Hubble Space Telescope, known as the ‘mother of the Hubble Telescope’, is a pioneer for youth and women in astronomy.

38) Creator of Mario and Savior of Nintendo: Shigeru Miyamoto

The dreams and fictions of Shigeru Miyamoto, who contributed to many legendary games we played, in his childhood built the foundations of the games we play today. He is one of the first names that come to mind when it comes to game design, and there are lessons to be learned from his life.

39) 1 Year Died, Became Immortal: The Success Story of Anthony Burgess, Who Wrote 6 Novels After 40

Anthony Burgess is an English writer, poet and composer. We know him from the novel ‘A Clockwork Orange’. He lived as an Englishman could live until the age of forty, even though he was aware of his dreams, he kept some of them in the background. One of them is; was to write a novel.

40) The Person Who Was Fired from His Own Company and Learned From It: Steve Jobs

When it was founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, they were unaware that it would perhaps become the world’s first trillion-dollar company. However, there were many resignations, layoffs and failures in the company until it became what we know today. Especially between 1985-1996, when Jobs was fired.

41) The Story of Two Brands Born out of the Dispute of Two Brothers: Adidas and Puma

All the brothers in the world can fight and get offended, but none of them changed the world as much as the brothers “Adi and Rudi Dassler”.

42) A Fascinating Photo by McFayden Over 720 Thousand Trials and 6 Years

Achieving goals requires sacrifice. We’ve seen that inventors don’t give up until they succeed, while entrepreneurs sacrifice their nights and days. But this time, a photographer sacrificed 720 thousand photo attempts and 6 years for a perfect photo.

43) 11-Year-Old Painter Known for His Incredibly Realistic Paintings: Kareem Waris

Being able to paint is an innate talent for some, and an acquired skill for others. But when you see 11-year-old Kareem Waris, you’ll believe that innate talent is real.

44) Successful Photographer Shocked by Mystery and Discovered After Death: Vivian Maier

The photographs we take are actually a reflection of ourselves, but they are also fragments of our lives. Vivian Maier is a successful photographer who preferred to reflect her life with the photographs she took, kept these photos as a secret as long as she lived and was discovered after her death. But his life story is not worth telling so briefly. So let’s get to know Vivian’s mysterious life more closely.

45) Success Story of the Great Epic: Çanakkale Victory in 18 Items

Success stories may not always tell the life of an individual. The struggle of a country for its freedom is also a success story. We have summarized the Çanakkale Victory in 18 items consisting of people and events that need to be known. Here is the Çanakkale Victory from the Deputy Commander-in-Chief, Minister of War Enver Pasha to Atatürk, the Hero of Anafartalar…

46) The Woman Who Fights for Education: Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai was born on July 12, 1997 in Pakistan. Malala was named after Malalai, whose educator father was the Pashtun hero at that time. From that day on, Malala has been a beacon of hope and a source of strength for the World and Pakistan.

47) The Man Who Carried Inditex, the Textile Giant with Brands such as Zara, Bershka, to the Top: Pablo Isla

Many of us know Amancio Ortega, one of the four richest people in the world. Despite being so rich, he still stays in his old apartment house and drives his car with an average value and does not break away from his humble life, this name is the owner of the world’s largest textile conglomerate Inditex Group. However, I will not talk about it in this article. In this article, from another secluded name behind the company’s success; I will talk about the secret hero of Inditex: Pablo Isla.

48) Global Feeling Company: How Lenovo Succeeded

Lenovo, which was in the fifth-sixth place in the global PC market in 2008, reached the leading position in the global PC market in 2015, exactly seven years later. In one of the most competitive sectors, what did a brand do in seven years to defeat its competitors and sit on the PC throne?

49) 9 Facts About Anna Wintour, Vogue’s Editor-in-Chief and Queen of Fashion Publishing

Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue, was born on November 3, 1949 in England. One of the most influential figures of the century. With its bumpy career, quite different tastes and sharp rules, it represents many values under its own name today. Of course, getting here was not easy. He has many failure stories in America, where he came with his British identity.

50) Living Proof of Genius Is Not Born, Genius Is: The Polgar Brothers

They are the queens of the chess world. Three inspiring sisters who have been successful in chess all their lives. They are also the living experiments of their father, psychologist Laszlo Polgar. Because Laszlo Polgar had developed a theory on his unborn children. That’s why he got married, and when his first daughter, Suzan, was born in 1969, he began testing this theory on her.

51) Building a Global Company with a $100 Borrow: UPS

Yes, you heard right, James E. Casey, who founded a world-renowned company for only $100, is an example of what you can do when you want it enough and work really hard. The company I was talking about is UPS, which we all know today.

52) From the Skateboard Shop to Become Fashion’s Superpower: SUPREME in 7 Items

Success stories of companies can also contribute to us in our own way. It is possible to see the logo of this New York-Manhattan origin brand, which has gained global recognition with its collaborations with brands such as Nike, Levi’s, Louis Vuitton and Playboy, all over the world. The story of Supreme, the most powerful soldier of pop culture, one of the new greats of fashion, who creates a sensation with every event he does!

53) World’s First Autistic Basketball Player

Anthony Ianni talks about how his passion for basketball made it easier for him to learn to live with autism!

54) 11-Year-Old Millionaire Lemonade Maker: Mikaila Ulmer

Mikaila Ulmer is only 11 years old, but is already involved in many bees-related jobs and is the founder of a million-dollar company: Me & The Bees Lemonade.

55) Success Story of a Fashion Designer with Down Syndrome

Guatemalan fashion designer Isabella Springmuhl faced a number of obstacles before she realized her dream. However, he never gave up on his dream. Now, the 20-year-old designer with Down syndrome is breaking some stereotypes in the fashion world with his determination and determination.

56) From Child of a Working Family to the Richest Man in His Country: Robin Li

Robin Li (Li Yanhong), born November 17, 1968, is a Chinese internet entrepreneur and co-founder of China’s most popular search engine “Baidu”. He is also the richest man in China with his astonishing wealth. So, what kind of life story lies behind this success achieved in a short time? Let’s take a look at the inspiring life of this successful man and the challenges he faced.

57) Trump’s Election Success in 7 Items

We have listed for you the factors that led him to the Presidency of America about Donald Trump, who is curious and wants to know the secret of his success.

58) The Story and Advice of Kat Cole, Promoted from Waitress to CEO

At the age of 18, Kat Cole, who studied engineering at the University of North Florida, started working as a waitress at Hooters so that she could take care of her school needs without burdening her family. And then it started to rise rapidly…

59) The Origin Story of the Comic Sans Font

In fact, we are quite familiar with the Comic Sans font from the homework we did in our secondary and high school periods, from the use of Msn. As we got older, our use of Comic Sans decreased, and some of us may even hate it. This is actually the case worldwide. Let’s hear the origin story of Comic Sans from its designer.

60) 20 Years of Success: Pokemon Go

Since its release on July 6, Pokemon Go has grown faster than apps like Tinder and Twitter. The architect of the game, 49-year-old John Hanke, said that he worked for 20 years for this success. Let’s shed light on these 20 years together.

61) How did Uber come about? Uber’s Success Story

How was Uber, one of today’s transportation giants, founded? How did it come about? Who founded it?

62) How did 9GAG come about? 9GAG’s Success Story

We have researched how 9GAG, which almost all of us visit to have fun at home, at work, at school, has turned into a major entertainment site around the world and briefly compiled it for you.

63) How Did Ebay Come Up? Ebay’s Success Story

How did eBay, which started with a broken laser sale and is now one of the largest e-commerce sites in the world, come about?

64) How Did YouTube Appear? YouTube’s Success Story

How did YouTube, the largest video sharing website, come into existence, with the initiative of Steve, Chad and Jawed, which entered our lives with the slogan of Broadcast Yourself?

65) How Did WhatsApp Appear? Success Story of WhatsApp

How was it established? Founded by which entrepreneurs? What is its story? We did a little research on WhatsApp Inc and compiled it for you.

66) From Mom’s Cancer to the Kombucha Kingdom: How GT Dave Built His Empire

GT Dave, the founder, and CEO of GT’s Living Foods may be known as the “King of Kombucha” and has a fortune of over $900 million, but he was only 15 when he started his venture and was working in his family’s kitchen. Let’s see how Dave, who doesn’t have any business plans, manages to build a giant company from this small kitchen.

67) Successful Journey From Water Bottles to Million-Dollar Company: Sarah Kauss

Sarah Kauss worked at several companies after graduating from Harvard Business School. But while he was in his working life, he took over a million-dollar company with an idea that came to his mind. Let’s take a closer look at this story.

68) The Startup That Made a 17-Year-Old Inexperienced Billionaire: Subway

Subway is one of the most well-known restaurant chains worldwide. Subway, the world’s largest fast-food chain with more than 70,000 franchises, was founded by a 17-year-old teenager to pay his university fees.

69) Suhail Doshi, who thought Jobs was wrong about the design and started his own company

Once upon a time, Suhail Doshi’s dream was to earn $90,000 as an engineer at Intel. That was Doshi’s biggest dream, growing up in Arizona. Not more.

70) Meet Gary Vaynerchuk, One of America’s Most Successful Entrepreneurs

Gary Vaynerchuk: the hero of one of the most talked about stories in the USA in the last 10 years when it comes to entrepreneurship and success stories. Entrepreneur, investor, speaker, storyteller, author and many more.

71) From Renting an Inflatable Mattress to a $31 Billion Company: How Airbnb Was Founded

Today, Airbnb, which has become the first digital platform where we look for a place to stay, especially in foreign trips, has become the 21st century with its establishment. It is one of the most inspiring success stories of the century. Before it became such a big company, it was an idea where three friends were trying to make some money just to pay their rent.

72) Teenager Designing an Early Diagnostic Bra for Breast Cancer Inspired by His Mother

73) The Man Who Made a Millionaire By Selling Rocks As Pets

Gary Ross Dahl made a living as a copywriter. Then he invented the perfect pet that changed his life. a rock. No dirt, no allergies, no effort, simple.

74) The Story of 18-Year-Old Millionaire Erik Finman Who Got Rich With Bitcoin

There’s a mind-blowing story of Erik Finman, who, at the age of 12, hated his teachers, hated school, and made a deal with his parents to drop out if he became a millionaire.

75) Youth by the age of 19 who helped plant 14 billion trees in 130 countries

Felix Finkbeiner set a goal to plant 1 million trees against climate change 10 years ago when he was only 9 years old. And in line with this goal, he founded an initiative called Plant for the Planet.

76) Alex Tew, a Millionaire with a Simple Website Idea

The difficulties experienced by a student and the limits of creativity are in parallel. If we agree with this thesis, let’s support this by examining how Alex Tew made his way into the history of the internet in 2005 when he was a student.

77) How did Spotify come about? Spotify’s Success Story

How did Spotify come about, which is used by almost everyone in daily life and saves us from the trouble of downloading songs, creating playlists, keeping them up to date?

Turkish Success Stories

78) Born in Mardin’s Village Without Electricity and Becoming the Minister of Energy in Sweden

There are also examples of success stories from our country. Born in the Midyat district of Mardin, İbrahim Baylan tells his story after he became the Minister of Energy in Sweden.

79) Turkish Chef Who Founded a Restaurant Chain in London While Lying on the Toilet: Hüseyin Özer

Among the success stories, “This much can’t be true!” Hüseyin Özer has a story that makes you think and can be the subject of movies.

80) 15 Facts from the Life of Cahit Arf, a Turkish Scientist Who Left A Mark on Mathematics

Cahit Arf, who was passionately devoted to his science from the first day he met mathematics until the last day of his death;
“Mathematics is an art like painting, music and sculpture.” He emphasized the artistic side of mathematics. So much so that this passion made him leave his mark on the Science of Mathematics. Let’s get to know this esteemed scientist better.

81) Young Scientist Who Made Our Chest Bloat With His Success: Prof. Dr. Mete Atatüre

He made the measurement that many authorities described as impossible and made us proud by achieving a great success. Let’s take a closer look at the story of Mete Atatüre and try to get to know him.

82) The Successful Life of Ara Güler, Who Filled Every Frame of His Life Perfectly

Ara Güler, who passed away at the age of 90, left behind a story that will affect all of us.

83) A Strong French Speaking Woman Opening a Cheese Museum in Kars: Zümran Ömür

Zümran Ömür, who lives in the Boğatepe Village of Kars and works for women to take more place in society and stand on their own feet, is one of our strong women who should set an example for everyone.

84) Success Story of Eren Bali, One of the Best Entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley

We have written for you the inspiring success story of 28-year-old successful entrepreneur Eren Bali, who was mentioned by Business Week as “He founded one of the 25 brightest companies in the USA”.

85) The Successful Life of Münir Özkul, One of Yeşilçam’s Plane Trees

Let’s take a closer look at the life of Münir Özkul, one of the master actors of Yeşilçam, whom we all know, who gave life to unforgettable characters, and who conquered our hearts with Mahmut Hoca and Yaşar Usta.

86) Visually Impaired Painter Who Sees and Represents the World by Touch: Eşref Armağan

This man, whose life has been the subject of documentaries and whose brain has been examined by scientists, is a Turkish painter whose name is known to almost the whole world.

87) 17 Facts About Selda Bağcan, whose success exceeded the borders of the country despite the obstacles

Not only in our land, but today, he receives the reward of his work with the fans he has won from many parts of the world. Here is the information that should be learned from Selda Bağcan’s life:

Our national football player Cengiz Ünder, who plays in Rome, one of the biggest teams of Serie A, one of the biggest leagues in the world, continues to enchant sports fans with his performance. So who is Cengiz Under? Let’s shed a little light on Cengiz’s success story.

89) The Journey of a Youth from Silivri to Galatasaray and Bundesliga: Ozan Kabak

He won the admiration of football fans during his half season with Galatasaray jersey and became the fan’s lover. German team Stuttgart Let’s take a look at the success journey of young Ozan, the “child of Galatasaray”, who went down in history as the most expensive transfer of .

90) Mother of Public Relations in Turkey and International: Betûl Mardin

Until the late 1960s in Turkey, perhaps no one was aware of the existence of a profession called public relations. Well, thanks to whom did this profession come to our country? Who led? It was all thanks to a strong woman with an entrepreneurial spirit who never stopped working. Let’s look at the story of that strong woman, Betûl Mardin, together.

91) Success Story That Started As A Hobby At The Age Of 6 And Moved To The NBA: Our National Pride Cedi Osman

Basketball is a rising trend in our country over the years. Thanks to the successes achieved in the international arena, the halls are now filled with resentment in national matches and club matches. Cedi Osman is the most important chance of the audience, who have the opportunity to watch important stars in the halls! The story of Cedi Osman, who continues his journey as a hobby in the world’s most prestigious league, the NBA, is with you!

92) An Educational Revolutionary Not To Be Forgotten: İsmail Hakkı Tonguç

İsmail Hakkı Tonguç, an educator who played a role in the establishment and development of Village Institutes, is an idealist teacher who has his name written as “Tonguç Baba” in the Turkish education world. He was born in Bulgaria in 1893 as the eldest child of a family of 8 children. He completed his primary education in his own village and his secondary education in Silistra. After his education in Silistra, he wanted to continue his education in Istanbul, ignoring his father’s objections.

93) A musician who believes in the power of music and makes a sound with the song “Susamam”: Şaşaner

Şanışer, who pioneered the song “Susamam”, performed by 17 rappers for about 15 minutes, is a musician who aims to change things with music. Of course, the success of a song that had great repercussions on social media and received so much attention and interest was not achieved overnight. What is the story behind this success? Who is Shansher? Let’s get to know him briefly.

94) The Story of Our Sculptor İlhan Koman, Considered Turkey’s Da Vinci in Science and Art

Ilhan Koman, who uses science and art in perfect harmony and is therefore regarded as Turkey’s Da Vinci, is one of our rare artists who even Google doodles.

95) The Story of Afife Aunt, Who Travels the World and Devotes Herself to Books Despite All the Obstacles

To be positive, to set goals, to never give up… I will tell you shortly about the power of these words that we hear all the time and often go in one ear and out the other. The story of 63-year-old Afife Teyze, who scrapes her nails every minute of her life and shows that impossibility should not be an excuse.

96) The Turkish Scientist who went down in the History of Science as ‘The Woman Who Captured the Sun’: Dilhan Eryurt

Carrying astrophysics to Turkey and receiving the Apollo Achievement Award for his work on the Sun, Prof. Dr. Dilhan Eryurt worked at NASA for years. When he returned to Turkey, he continued his studies at METU.

97) Europe’s First Female Surgeon to Perform Artificial Heart Transplant: Dilek Gürsoy

Dilek Gürsoy, one of the inspiring scientists, once again made us proud with her artificial heart transplant in Europe. Let’s take a closer look at the story of surgeon Dilek Gürsoy that started in Germany.

98) Turkish Astrophysicist Who Played an Important Role in Taking the First Black Hole Photograph: Prof.Dr. Feryal Special

Another mystery about the universe has passed into the history of science. Astrophysicists affiliated with the US National Science Foundation shared the black hole image with the world public. Scientists have described the giant black hole, which is three million times larger than Earth with a diameter of 40 billion km, as a ‘monster’. Among the architects behind this important development was a Turk: Astrophysicist Prof.Dr. Feryal Special. Let’s get to know this precious person who makes us all proud.

99) A Hero Who Dedicated 35 Years of His Life to Treating Children for Free: Ertuğrul Sabah

Our good wishes are not realized by the occurrence of a miracle, but perhaps by the arrival of the miracle. Ertuğrul Sabah takes his mobile bag with him every new day and goes after the miracles that are expected to happen.

one hundred) Being a Woman Artist in the Years When the Word “Women Can’t Make an Artist” Dominates: Sabiha Bengütaş

Sabiha Bengütaş, the first female sculptor of Turkey, is the owner of magic fingers, one of the most talented women and one of the best examples of what she can do.

101) Associate Professor Hande Özdinler, Among the 10 Best Inventors in the World

Although medicine has found cures for many diseases, it continues to investigate diseases for which there is still no cure.
The biggest reason why there is no cure for diseases such as ALS is that the exact cause of the disease is not known. Molecular biology, genetics and neurology are the most important fields for the treatment of such diseases. Associate Professor. Hande Özdinler has been a beacon of hope in this regard. He has made a name for himself in the world with his studies on ALS disease and the invention he brought to the medical world.

102) Turkish Couple, One of the Important Competitors of Space Company and Elon Musk: Eren and Fatih Özmen

Today we will get to know a Turkish couple who talk more about their companies than themselves; Eren Ozmen and Fatih Ozmen.
The Özmen couple own a space company called Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC). This company works with NASA and the European Space Agency. Apart from this, it has taken its place among the 10 most innovative companies in the world.

103) İlber Ortaylı’s ‘How Does This Fit into a Life?’ A Resume That Makes You Think

Our successful historian İlber Ortaylı was born in 1947 to a Crimean Tatar family in an immigrant camp in Bregenz, Austria. İlber Ortaylı, who completed his primary and secondary education in Istanbul and Ankara, has an ongoing success journey by thinking, “How does this much fit into a life?”

104) The Story of Berk Traveling the World by Making Drawings on Coffee Cups and Selling them

When it comes to making our dreams come true, each of us can become extremely creative personalities. 23-year-old Berk Armağan, like every young person, has dreams and realizes this with his creative ideas and skills.

We will continue to constantly update the content of success stories.

Last Update Date: August 25, 2020

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You may have noticed that some brands use success stories or case studies as social proof.

Sometimes testimonials are not enough and prospects need more robust evidence to prove how great your service or product is.

Case studies also help to clarify the message and are particularly useful in B2B.

If you sell software, an innovative product or a specific service, explaining in more detail how that product or service helped a customer solve their specific problem can be what prospects need to take the decision.

There are case studies that are mega detailed reports which take up several pages, and others that are more specific and summarise only the problem and the solution.

In this post, we will see some examples of case studies/success stories to better understand the structure they follow.

As with everything related to words, it’d be convenient to count with a copywriter to write them.

A copywriter knows what’s important to highlight and what can be left out in each case.

They know how to choose the right words, so the case study provides better results.

Let’s now look at the steps you should take to create compelling case studies together with some great examples.

Are you staying?

Let’s go!

Choosing the client

You may have many clients who are highly satisfied with the results obtained after using your product or working with you.

But when choosing one of them, you should look at certain criteria that will ensure the case study is a success.

Criteria for choosing the perfect client for a case study or success story:

– The client is highly satisfied (Elementary, my dear Watson)

– The client represents your ideal client (or that area on which you want to focus your efforts)

– They’ve obtained specific and verifiable results after working with you

– They’ve worked with or used a competitor’s product and switched to your brand. This would be the perfect case!

Once you have chosen the client you need to be prepared not to waste anyone’s time.

Have your questions ready and let the client choose the best time for an interview.

Organise a video call or meet in person. This way the client can elaborate and provide more details.

If you just send a questionnaire, you run the risk the client will never reply or they won’t include important information.

In a conversation, you can always ask more questions whenever the answer is a bit vague.

Now let’s see what kind of questions you should ask to obtain powerful answers for a compelling and enlightening success story.

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The kind of questions you need to ask to create a success story

Every success story we find on the internet follows the old “Before and After” narrative.

What we aim to do when writing a success story is to help the prospect imagine how your product or service can improve their lives.

You want to show them: “this customer was in A as you are now and thanks to this product they’re now in B which is where you also want to be”.

So when writing a success story we need to start with the problem.

I rectify, we should start, as always when we write a piece of copy, with an exhaustive research of the challenges, objections and wishes of our prospects.

Recommended reading Research will save you from catastrophe

Once we know really well which are our prospects’ struggles and wishes, we can ask the right questions to the client we’ve chosen for our success story.

You should choose a client with whom you’ve worked recently because you will know exactly what situation they’re in when they contacted your company and they will also have a much more vivid memory of that transformation.

Write a script to make sure you don’t leave anything out and make sure you ask open-ended questions that need more than just a yes or no answer.

Here are some examples of the kind of questions you need to ask the client to describe their situation before working with you and the transformation they have experienced afterwards:

• What specific problems did you have before you decided to look for a solution?
• At what point did you realise that you had to do something immediately to solve those problems? Was there a “turning point”?
• Which factors played an important role in your decision to choose us?
• What made our product or service different from others?
• What was your experience of working with us after you bought our solution?
• Did anything about working with us surprise you? Did it exceed your expectations?
• Was our product or service easy to implement in your workflows?
• How long did it take before you started seeing positive results?
• What kind of benefits have you gained from working with us? Can you detail them as much as possible?

The structure

The success case will always follow this structure.

– Problem or better called Challenge

– Solution

– Result

Let’s take a look at an example to make it clear.

On Accenture’s website, we find good written success stories.

Accenture is a consulting and digital solutions company.

With their success stories, they explain in a clearer way (with examples) how they can help a company to obtain better results.

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Call for change

Keeping metro commuters comfortable in the summer heat is no easy task. It can take huge amounts of energy to power the ventilation systems that keep the air flowing and the temperatures down. Metro de Madrid knew this better than most.

Notice how they use clear language, without technicalities that are difficult for the average citizen to understand.

You should always aim to write copy that is understood by everyone and not just by experts.

Our buyer persona may be the director of a company that doesn’t necessarily need to know all the technical aspects of their activity.

When tech meets human ingenuity

The Madrid Metro Ventilation experts worked with Accenture Applied Intelligence to develop a system that took inspiration from an unusual source: the coordinated foraging behavior of a bee colony.

That’s the solution. See how they use a simile to help prospects better understand the solution, they compare it with the coordinated foraging behaviour of a bee colony.

With this simile, they also confirm a suspicion we all have, that much of the innovative technology man has created is inspired by nature.

To tell us about the results they use simple icons and headlines.

See how they provide specific data – with percentages and number of tons – of the improvements obtained.

As you can see, the success story demonstrates with a real example how Accenture can help a company to solve a specific problem, with clear, specific and descriptive language so everyone can get it.

They also take the opportunity to market their advanced technology and equipment.

Storytelling in Success stories

Success stories are useful to convince those prospects who need a final push.

Because they have doubts and need answers.

By reading the details of why a company with a similar problem to theirs got the results they are also looking for they will get the final nudge they need.

Moreover, success stories follow the structure of any story. People like stories, especially those that end well.

They all follow the same structure: Challenge-Struggle-Triumph

The hero of every story suffers from a difficult situation but in the end, he wins.

This kind of story gives us hope because we think that we too can achieve big things and get out of a problematic situation.

Let’s look at an example where they use storytelling elements to tell a success story.

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Scape the City is an organisation in the UK that offers a Start-Up accelerator program.

On the program page, we can find a few success stories told in only a few lines of brilliant compelling copy.

This is a good example of how we can write great copy to tell a story without having to add too many details.

Every success story follows the same structure as that of a tale.

The heroes found themselves in an undesired situation and they scaped to make their dream come true.

If you are thinking to found a start-up you will identify completely with these protagonists and will feel compelled to do as they did and join the program.

Look how they add details of their success, yearly revenue, reach, etc.

Being specific always help to be more compelling.

Format

Success stories can also be presented in video format.

The video can include parts where the customer talks about her experience as well as demonstrations of the service or the solution.

It can be done in webinar format as Scandit does, a mobile scanning software company I work for.

It can also be presented in downloadable pdf format as Kira Hug, an American copywriter does.

For both video and pdf, or directly on your website, the structure will be the same: Challenge-Solution-Result.

I hope I have helped you understand how you can create a success story with your best clients and thus demonstrate that your brand transforms businesses.

See you around!

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“Your success and happiness lie in you”- Helen Keller. This quote says a lot about the way we live our life. Everyone looks towards the external sources for success without knowing the key to success is in their own selves. It is really important to know that success takes years of hard work and failure. Focussing on positivity sure is important but so is looking at the things that made that happen. In this blog, we have curated a list of 10 inspiring success stories and covered both the successes as well as failures in journeys.   

Must Read: Top 10 Motivational TED Talks for Students

“Your time is limited. Don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

Steve Jobs is one of the most famous names in the entrepreneurial community. His story is one of the most inspiring success stories in the world. Today, everyone knows about his company Apple but no one actually believed such a technology could be created at that time. Steve Jobs was a visionary who believed in himself and decided to give everything towards building his company. He was adopted by a working-class couple at the time of his birth. Steve, being a born genius, developed a taste for machines and computers very early in his life. However, if we look at Steve Jobs’s education, formal education soon started to bore him. Although, he went off to college but quit only after the first semester. He then took up a job at Atari from where he saved up some money and traveled to India. He stayed there for spiritual purposes and returned home after 7 months as a Buddhist and led a simple life. However, soon after that, he started working on a computer project with Steve Wozniak and they created their first apple product in a garage. This is how the largest IT company in the world was built. Steve Jobs has created a legacy today.

Explore: Top Lessons to Raise a Future CEO

J.K Rowling

“Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”

We now move on to J.K Rowling whose story is the most notable inspiring success story ever. The person is responsible for the creation of Harry Potter, who is the most iconic and inspiring fictional character of all time. J.K Rowling is one of the most renowned authors of our time. Everyone knows the fantastic world of Harry Potter today but not everyone knows about the person who brought that world into life. After the death of her mother, she moved to Portugal in order to teach English. She married a man there and had a daughter with him. However, after some time both of them parted ways and filed for a divorce. This was a turning point in her life as she moved to a different city with her daughter and three chapters of Harry Potter that she wrote before. J.K Rowling even suffered depression, anxiety during this time. After about two years she finally completed Harry Potter which was rejected by 12 publications. Soon after, the book was accepted and published and the rest is history. Her story teaches her that no matter what life throws at us, the solution is always inside us. 

Michael Jordan

“If you quit once, it becomes a habit. Never quit!”

From being rejected for the basketball team to becoming a basketball legend, MJ has seen it all making his story on our list of inspiring success stories. Michael Jordan was rejected from the basketball team in his high school due to his height. However, his liking for the sport made him even more determined to excel at the sport. He used to go reach the gym before anyone else and practice shots. Soon after the opening of a spot on the basketball team, he was selected. However, he still did lack the skills but he carried on anyway and worked every day towards perfection. He gained a reputation as a valuable player of the basketball team which eventually led him to the NBA and become the basketball legend that we know him to be.

Must Read: How to deal with failures!

Walt Disney

“First, think. Second, dream. Third, believe. And finally, dare”

Next on our list of inspiring success stories is the story of Walter Elias Disney known as the world’s greatest animator didn’t have it so easy from the start. He used to be a daydreamer back in his school days and used to draw random sketches. After serving as a red cross volunteer in World War 1, he decided to make cartoon motion pictures and started a cartoon company at the age of 19. He failed miserably and went bankrupt at the age of 22 and also got fired from his newspaper agency for lacking imagination. After that, he went bankrupt several times and the company was completely shattered in 1928. That’s when he created his most famous cartoon character Mickey mouse. Everyone knows what happened next.

Colonel Sanders

“One has to remember that every failure can be a stepping stone to something better.”

Colonel Harber Sanders is famously known for his creation of Kentucky Fried Chicken today but not many people know the struggles he went through in order to make this happen and transform his story into the most inspiring success stories in the world. He continuously faced rejection in his life. His father passed away while he was just 6 years old which left him to cook for his siblings. Soon after that he dropped out of school and started working full time. He got a job in the army by faking his age from where he was discharged after a year. He got fired from his next job as well. Later, he founded a ferry boat company and failed at that as well. He started selling his fried chicken at a service station at the age of 40. However, as he started growing, he had a shootout with his competitor. He started a motel, four years later which got closed again due to world war 2. He tried to franchise his restaurant after that and was rejected thousands of times before his ‘secret recipe’ of KFC got selected. After years of failures, Colonel Sanders grew KFC at such a place that he sold it off for 2 million dollars. Even after facing so many rejections in his life, he didn’t give up and the world knows him as the face of KFC today. 

Must Read: Types Of Entrepreneurs You Must Know About!

Henry Ford

“Don’t find fault, find a remedy. Anybody can complain.”

Henry Ford is the most noted entrepreneur in the automobile industry. He completely revolutionized the automobile industry and made sure his story is one of the most inspiring success stories in the world. After launching his company, he went for funding from a businessman who later dissolved the company leaving him with nothing. However, he was determined to what he had started and aimed for perfection. He went back to the same investor again and requested him to give another chance but he failed again. Even after these consecutive failures he didn’t give up and finally introduced the Model A in 1904 and then he never looked back.

Stephen King

“Isn’t bravery always sort of beautiful?”

Stephen King is one of the most famous writers in the world and has one of the most inspiring success stories ever. The author is best known for writing in the genre of science fiction, horror, and suspense. Stephen had a knack for writing since his childhood and was seen contributing articles for his school magazine. He graduated with a bachelor of arts degree and started working as a teacher alongside selling his short stories to different magazines. He was working on completing his novel ‘Carrie’, but he left it in between due to depression and anxiety. However, his wife’s encouragement played an important part in his life which made him several successful books, some of which even turned into movies. He is the writer of the greatest movie of all time, ‘The Shawshank Redemption.’ Despite his failures and struggles he believed in his skills as a writer and continued on the path towards greatness.

Thomas Edison

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up”

There’s no need to introduce who Thomas Edison is. He was the greatest scientist of his time and also the inventor of the bulb. If we were to look at the education of Thomas Elva Edison, he was a mentally unstable child and was dropped out of school because of this. However, he was a hard worker and never gave up on his dreams and made sure that his hard work made his story one of the most inspiring success stories in the world. His mother was also a true warrior, who showed her full confidence in Thomas and never let him down. He used to sell fruits and newspapers at the age of 12. He continued to work on different inventions, and after inventing the telegraph, he set up a laboratory in New York. Before inventing Bulb, he failed thousands of times but continued and finally made the bulb’s invention.

Also Read: Famous Inventions and Inventors

Dhirubhai Ambani

“If you don’t build your dream, someone else will hire you to help them build theirs.”

Next on our list of inspiring success stories is Dhirubhai Ambani. The story of Dhirubhai Ambani, the founder of reliance is a true rag to riches story. He was born in a poor family and worked his way up the ladder. He moved to Yemen at the age of 16 to work at a petrol pump. He returned to India in 1958 and started his own textile business. Working in this business he got good marketing knowledge. After he ended this textile business he launched Reliance Corporation in 1996, which is today known as the Reliance Industries. There is also a scholarship in his name now by the name of Dhirubhai Ambani Scholarship.

Steven Spielberg

“I don’t dream at night, I dream at day. I dream all day. I’m dreaming for a living.”

Last but not least we have the story of Steven Spielberg on our list of inspiring success stories. He was a filmmaker who was rejected from the USC School of Theater, Film, and Television three times due to bad grades in his school. However, this did not stop him from carrying on with his dream of becoming a filmmaker. He went on delivering great movies and even won Oscar Awards three times consecutively. Even after facing so many failures in life, he delivered some of the best films to the film industry. He is known for blockbusters like Jaws, Jurassic Park, The Color Purple, etc. after being rejected from USC, today he is one of the school’s board of directors. 

Must Read: Motivational Movies for Students

FAQs

All these stories were the most inspiring success stories and show us that nothing is impossible in life. Are you confused regarding your career path? We at Leverage Edu would love the opportunity to guide you through the process of choosing the best career path for yourself. Sign up for a free session with us now!

If you are like most people, I’m sure you sometimes find yourself feeling like giving up on pursuing your dream.

But its important to remember that some of the most famous success stories started out as complete failures.

So today I’d like to share some true stories with you to consider before you give up.

My intention in sharing these is that they will inspire you not to give up at all, but to persevere in the face of the natural process of achieving any worthwhile success.

1. Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg was rejected three times when he applied to the USC School of Theater, Film and Television.

He ended up going to Long Beach State. After directing and producing such blockbuster hits as Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Jurassic Park, The Color Purple, Saving Private Ryan, and Lincoln, he now sits on the Board of Directors of the USC film school, and donates a million dollars a year to the school.

2. General Douglas MacArthur

Another person who was rejected by the school of his choice was the famous World War II general—General Douglas MacArthur, who might never have gained power and fame without being persistent. When he applied for admission to West Point, he was turned down, not once but twice. But he tried one more time, was accepted, and marched into the history books.

3. Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss’ first children’s book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was rejected by twenty-seven publishers. The twenty-eighth publisher, Vanguard Press, sold six million copies of the book. And all of his children’s books went on to sell a total of more than 100 million copies.

4. Richard Hooker

Richard Hooker worked for seven years on his humorous war novel, M*A*S*H, only to have it rejected by twenty-one publishers before Morrow decided to publish it. It became a runaway bestseller, and then spawned a blockbuster movie and a highly successful television series.

5. Peter J. Daniels

When Peter J. Daniels was in the fourth grade, his teacher, Mrs. Phillips, constantly said, “Peter J. Daniel, you’re no good, you’re a bad apple and you’re never going to amount to anything.” Peter was totally illiterate until he was 26. A friend stayed up with him all night and read him a copy of Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Now he owns the street corners he used to fight on and has written and published 10 books, including Mrs. Phillips, You Were Wrong!

6. Michael Jordan

Basketball superstar Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. He once said, “I have missed over 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the gam winning shot, and I have missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

7. John Grisham’s

Fifteen publishers and thirty agents turned down John Grisham’s first novel, A Time to Kill. More than 60 million copies of his books are now in print.

8. Star Wars

The movie Star Wars was rejected by every movie studio in Hollywood before 20^th Century Fox finally produced it. It went on to be one of the largest grossing movies in film history, and created a series of 10 films that have won a total of 7 academy awards and 9.2 billion dollars in revenue.

9. Woody Allen

Academy Award-winning writer, producer and director Woody Allen flunked motion picture production at New York University and the City College of New York. He also failed English at New York University. And yet he went on to write and direct 54 films, for which he won 4 Academy Awards. 

10. Tyler Perry

In 1992 actor, playwright and filmmaker Tyler Perry wrote, produced, and starred in his first theater production, I Know I’ve Been Changed, which was somewhat informed by his difficult upbringing.

Perry put all his savings into the show, and it failed miserably; the run lasted just one weekend and only 30 people came to watch.

He kept up with the production, working more odd jobs and often slept in his car to get by. Six years later, Perry finally broke through when, on its seventh run, the show became a success.

He’s since gone on to have an extremely successful career as a director, writer, and actor. And in 2011 Perry was named Forbes’ highest paid man in entertainment, having earned 130 million dollars that year. He now has an estimated net worth of $800 million.

11. Howard Schulz

When Howard Schultz was raising money to start Starbucks, Charles Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, was turned down 217 times. If he had given up after 200 rejections, there’d be no Starbucks.

12. Robert Frost

Robert Frost, one of the greatest poets that America has produced, labored for twenty years without fame or success. He was thirty-nine years old before he sold a single volume of poetry. Today his poems have been published in twenty-two languages, AND he won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry four times.

13. Louis L’Amour

Louis L’Amour, the successful author of more than 100 western novels with more than 200 million copies in print received 350 rejections before he made his first sale. He later became the first American novelist to receive a special congressional gold medal in recognition of his distinguished career as an author and contributor to the nation through his historically based books.

14. Bill Bradley

Former U.S. Senator and former NBA Hall of Famer New York Knicks basketball star Bill Bradley practiced relentlessly. He had five spots on the basketball court from which he would shoot 25 times. If he didn’t hit 22 baskets out of 25 shots, he’d start over.

15. King Camp Gillette

King Camp Gillette dreamed of a cockeyed invention that caused investors, metal engineers and experts at MIT to snicker.

They all believed that there was no way a razor could be made sharp enough to provide a clean shave and yet be cheap enough that it could be thrown away when it was dull.

Gillette labored four years to produce the first disposable razor and another six years to get it placed on store shelves. Although only 51 blades sold during the first year, 90,844 were purchased in the second year and Gillette’s risk-taking innovation was on its way to revolutionizing the shaving industry.

16. Herschel Walker

When NFL running back Herschel Walker was in junior high school, he wanted to play football, but the coach told him he was too small. He advised young Herschel to go out for track instead. Undaunted by the lack of encouragement and support, he ignored the coach’s advice and began an intensive training program to build himself up. Only a few years later, Herschel Walker won the Heisman trophy.

17. Walt Disney

Did you know that Walt Disney was once fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas? And he also went bankrupt several times before he built Disney Studios, Disneyland and later Disneyworld.

18. Henry Ford

Another person who went broke and bankrupt was Henry Ford, who failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded in creating the successful Ford Motor Company.

19. Clint Eastwood & Burt Reynolds

And think about this: A Universal Pictures executive dismissed both Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds at the same meeting with the following statements. To Burt Reynolds: “You have no talent.” To Clint Eastwood: “You have a chip on your tooth, your Adam’s apple sticks out too far and you talk too slow.” As you no doubt know, Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood went on to become big stars in the movie industry, Eastwood with 13 Academy Awards and Reynolds with numerous golden Globe and Emmy Awards.

20. Soichiro Honda

Think about this, sometimes what seems like a terrible rejection can be a huge gift. One example of this is the story of Soichiro Honda, who wanted to work for Toyota, but was rejected; however, he didn’t give up his dream of building cars and later he went on to found the very successful Honda Motor Company.

What will your Success Story be?

It’s okay to recognize that sometimes Achieving your dreams can feel like a daunting task and like it is never going to work out.

Whether it is giving up on finding a publisher for your book, getting enough funds to launch your own business, losing the weight you want to lose – sometimes the journey to reach your goal can feel like an uphill battle.

It’s important to remember that we all face obstacles and that when we overcome those barriers, you can achieve the success you so desperately want.

So the next time you think of giving up or quitting, remember these stories of the people who didn’t and went on to create great success in their lives.

Are you willing to persevere to achieve your goals, no matter what?