Henry Ford’s first two car companies went bankrupt. R.H. Macy had seven failed businesses before his iconic store. Carrie, Stephen King’s first novel, was rejected 30 times. Michael Jordon was cut from his high school basketball team. Abraham Lincoln failed in business twice, lost his subsequent job, had a nervous breakdown, was defeated running for the Illinois state legislature, lost elections for legislature speaker (when he was finally elected), and lost elections for the US Congress and US Senate on five occasions, and in 1856 lost his bid to be nominated as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate.

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I proudly join this list: I was rejected by Columbia University, not promoted past assistant manager at Prudential, I was an embarrassment in one of my first workshops for a client in New York (coordinator feedback: “The group was surprised you returned for the second morning”), fired after only 15 months as president of a consulting firm, and Confessions of A Consultant was rejected 15 times before becoming Million Dollar Consulting.

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Many of you are qualified to join this wonderful team. I think the difference between simply failing and sinking, and failing and moving forward, is the ability to learn from the “defeat,” refusal to take it as a personal degradation of our worth, and determination to get up and back into the fray. You’ve been turned down by interviewers, by prospects, by civic and social groups, probably many of whom you knew were not as smart as you.

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I’ve encountered far too many people at critical junctures who were two sandwiches short of a picnic. I decided not to share that meal.

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Life can be a long, slow crawl through enemy territory if you allow your self-worth to be undermined by fate, bad luck, or others’ poor judgment.

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During the Civil War, when the 20th Maine Regiment was out of ammunition on Little Round Top after repelling two attacks, and the Confederates charged for a third time to put cannon on the hill which would have flanked the Union Line, driving them out of Gettysburg, the turning point in the war that was a turning point for the world, the Maine Colonel, Joshua Chamberlain, issued a one-word order which defeated the Confederates against all odds and saved the Union.

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He yelled, “Charge!” and they all fixed bayonets and ran down the hill overcoming everyone in their path.

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Guest Blogger: Alan Weiss
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