J.K. Rowling

Arguably the world’s most famous author, J.K. Rowling was living on government support and had just divorced her husband in 1994. She could not afford to buy herself a computer or even get someone to make a hardcopy of her 90,000-word novel, so she typed it out manually herself to catch the eye of publishers. A London publisher, Bloomsbury, finally gave her a shot after dozens of rejections from other publications. In 1997 when her first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was released and the series has now sold over 450 million books.

Jim Carrey

Jim Carrey is one of the finest actors in Hollywood for his versatile and sometimes, unplayable roles. He was 14 years old when his father lost his job. Carrey was 10 years old when he took a factory job to help out his parents, they moved into their relative’s lawn as they had to give up their home. He sent out his resume to The Carroll Burnett Show at a young age. He quit school when he was 16 to focus on his career. He moved to LA and got his first break with Dumb and Dumber.

Colonel Harland Sanders

Colonel Harland Sanders is perhaps the greatest hustler of all time. He was fired from numerous jobs before starting his own kitchen in his roadside Shell Service Station. When he was 40 years old. Over the next decade, he spent time perfecting his “Secret Recipe” and his cooking method. In the 1950s when his restaurants were opening up in bigger locations, the interstate was built through the Kentucky town and this took away a lot of the Colonel’s business. He was living off a monthly pension of $105. He then started driving around the country looking for partners who would help him franchise the business and now KFC is one of the leading restaurant chains in the world.

Brian Acton

Brian Acton was rejected by Facebook and Twitter when he applied for a job as a software engineer. This despite the fact that he had over 10 years’ experience working with Yahoo and Apple. He teamed up with another Yahoo employee, Jan Koum and built the one of the world’s most popular cloud-based messaging applications, Whatsapp. Whatsapp has since been acquired by Facebook for $19 billion and he has also been given a position on the board of directors at Facebook.

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