3/9/10 As this montage shows, Beck’s poor interviewing skills had as much to do with his disastrous interview with former Congressman Massa as any craziness of Massa. Beck repeatedly failed to probe for details and, instead, flailed around with his questions, alternately pushing for damaging information about Democrats and alternately making known his disgust and disappointment with his subject. Not a good interviewing tactic.
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Beck's Epic Fail Interview with Eric Massa (excerpts)
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Fail Your Way to Success
The Truth
A life of great achievement can be viewed as a series of failures punctuated by high points – successes for what many fail to realise is that the greater the level of success you achieve in your life then the more failures you will experience. And we have to have both – the failures as well as the successes – for how else would we be able to appreciate our success when it does finally arrive.
Jack Canfield said in an interview that “Chicken Soup for the Soul” (co-authored by Mark Victor Hansen) was turned down by 144 publishing houses,”Nobody wanted it. They all said it was a stupid title, that nobody bought collections of short stories, that there was no edge – no sex, no violence. Why would anyone read it?”
Their agent gave up after the first 33 rejections New York publishers.”Sorry boys, I can’t sell it.”
Quite frankly, could you blame him? After all, he didn’t have the same personal investment in this product as did Jack Canfield and his co-author Mark Victor Hansen.
But the “experts” were wrong.
“Chicken Soup for the Soul” became an international bestseller and inspired a whole series of over 100 Chicken Soup books with titles as obscure as “Chicken Soup for the Scrapbooker’s Soul” and “Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover’s Soul Dog Food”. Really!
In the long run, the agent’s lack of staying power turned out to be an advantage to Canfield and Hansen as they got to keep the agent’s 15% commission.
It takes a very special mindset to persevere seemingly against all odds – the mindset of a goal achiever, the mindset of a WINNER!
Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen are not the only authors to have suffered repeated rejections for their literary efforts.Other Famous Examples of Authors who Experienced Numerous Rejections
1. John Grisham’s “A Time to Kill” was also repeatedly rejected. “A Time to Kill” was turned into a major film with a stellar cast including Samuel L Jackson, Sandra Bullock and Matthew McConaughey.
2. Alex Haley’s “Roots” was rejected about 200 times! Yet, the television serialisation of Roots took the world by storm.
3. James Redfield’s “The Celestine Prophecy” was initially self-published. It was its underground success that made publishing houses sit up and take notice. “The Celestine Prophecy” is a testament to the power of viral marketing. It sold over a hundred thousand copies within months of its first printing primarily by word of mouth.
So you see, if you truly believe in something, within reason of course, then follow it through. Keep trying different combinations and approaches and until you will find a way to bring your idea, your dream into fruition.
I was reading recently about Corey Rudyl, the Internet Marketing guru who turned a $25 investment into over $40,000,000 in online sales and, in the process helped thousands start their own Internet businesses. Corey died suddenly and tragically in a car accident last year.
Corey loved car racing and he also loved the Internet business. He was just 34 when he died and it is a testament to his tenacity, perseverance and vision that the company he founded, the Internet Marketing Centre, continues to grow ever more profitable under the leadership of his protege, Derek Gehl.
Did Corey Rudyl make mistakes? Of course he did but he did not see them as such. He had the foresight to recognise that each ‘failure’ could be turned into a huge success if he simply applied the lessons he learnt from his mistakes.
However, perhaps one of the most famous men who would not give up in the face of repeated failures was Thomas Edison. When Napoleon Hill interviewed Edison he joked that if he hadn’t found the secret of the incandescent lamp that at that very moment he would be in the laboratory working on it instead of wasting time talking to him! Edison also said,”I had to succeed because I finally ran out of things that wouldn’t work.”
We now all benefit from Thomas Edison’s invention in ways that Edison himself may have found too numerous to contemplate. Or perhaps I’m being presumptuous.
Walt Disney was another great visionary who never gave up. When it was discovered that he was buying thousands of acres of swamp land in Florida folk thought he had gone mad but they didn’t have his vision. Walt Disney actually died before his dream could be fully realised.
Someone later remarked to an associate of Walt Disney that it was a shame that he did not see his theme park in all its splendour. The associate smiled and replied,”Oh, he saw it.”
Perhaps Thomas Edison’s vision of how the incandescent bulb would illuminate our lives was far more detailed and expansive than I give him credit for. Who am I to talk? While I work on eliminating my limiting beliefs I don’t know that I would have had the staying power to do 10,000 experiments.
I guess my point is that if you learn from your failures and keep striving towards your goals or dreams you will achieve success because that which you seek is also seeking you. I’d like to leave you with this quote by Thoreau,”If a person advances confidently in the direction of their dream, and endeavours to live the life they have imagined, they will meet with success unexpected in common hours.”
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The Truth
Finger Fail: Why Most Touchscreens Miss the Point
Most touchscreen phones use the same capacitive-sensing technology, and often the very same components. So why do some touchscreens work so much better than others?Read more on Wired News
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England's Pampered Soccer Players Fail Again
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England fail to qualify for the Euro 2008 football tournament, with a tepid display against a technically superior Croatian team.
The premiership players were defended by a number of ex players who cited the head coach, the tactics, the pitch and injuries to key players as excuses. Others cite the number of foreign players who ply their trade in the premiership depriving English youngsters of the chance to gain experience in the world’s premier league.
The so called golden generation who are paid upwards of £100,000 a week to play in The Barclays Premiership appear to have decided that club and monitory rewards come before national pride. England have always lacked some of the more technical aspects of the game, preferring a more robust and direct style, but what England lacked in skill, they more than made up for in passion and work ethic. Sadly, the passion and work ethic has departed along with the support of many of the long suffering England fans.
The head coach Steve McClaren and his assistant Terry Venables were immediately sacked, but depart with a substantial pay off. It seems that failure can make you rich.
The position of England head coach has always been something of a poisoned chalice. However, many fans believe its time for the players to step forward and admit their shocking lack of effort and basic skills led to the humiliating defeat.
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The Truth
This woman decides to drive through a big puddle.For more FAIL videos and pictures, visit http://failblog.org/
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McDonald's Fail
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Who ordered the McChicken Head?For more FAIL videos and pictures, visit http://failblog.org/
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Sportsmanship Fail
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a_omega Art Studio , faliraki - rodos - hellas / greece , by horamis -
Three More Reasons Why CEOs Fail
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There are two main reasons why chief executives fail to hang on to their jobs: a decline in the company’s finances, and failure to communicate bad news in the best way. But there are many other reasons, too, that can contribute to a CEO’s lack of success.
Here we’ll take a look at three that concern key stakeholders in the business. And, if you plan to be a chief executive yourself one day, I’ll offer some strategies that will help you to avoid the pitfalls many others have fallen into.
1) CEOs are first against the wall in the investor revolution.
These days, more investors are taking an active role in companies whose shares they own - and you’ll get the chop if they decide you’re not doing enough to boost their money.
Taking one example from recent history, Michael Eisner of the Walt Disney Company learnt the hard way what happens when you lose shareholder support. After 18 years at the top of the company, Eisner was found wanting by 43 per cent of shareholders at the US media group’s annual meeting in 2004. They withheld their support for his reappointment as both chief executive and chairman, and Eisner had to resign as chairman. This was not enough for the shareholders. He had to leave the CEO role early, too.
What you can do:
You can help to reassure investors by having non-executive directors on the board, even if you don’t have to. It also helps to keep the non-executive directors fully in the loop on your communications and your strategy.
Non-execs won’t make your life easy - independent directors are increasingly holding executives to account. But they are the single most important thing to prove that you and your board have the shareholders’ best interests at heart.
2) They lose the boardroom battle.
ABB, the Swiss-Swedish engineering group, amazed investors when it announced the departure of Fred Kindle, its respected chief executive, after “irreconcilable differences about how to lead the company”. Kindle had enjoyed both personal success - being named Swiss Entrepreneur of the Year a few months earlier - and professional triumph, sorting out ABB’s big asbestos litigation problems in the US, improving group performance, and achieving a successful restructuring.
Investors concluded that Kindle didn’t get on with the chairman, and so he paid the ultimate price.
What you can do:
Some leaders seek to avoid disagreement by surrounding themselves with friends. But this can backfire. By excluding critics from the boardroom, you may set them loose to undermine your position. So there needs to be room for all views within the boardroom - and you need particularly to listen to those who disagree with you.
Make sure you can have a good fight with the board. Hire a high-level facilitator to get your issues out in the open as much as you can. The time to do this is in the easy times. When the going gets tough, it’s too late.
3) They fall for merger mania.
When Carly Fiorina lost her job as CEO at Hewlett-Packard, the computer-maker, in 2005, a failed merger was largely to blame. She had made merger with Compaq such a key part of her strategy, and fought so hard for it, that she became vulnerable. When the merger didn’t push profits up, she took the blame.
Similarly, investors were surprised when the CEO of Kuoni, the premium Swiss travel group, quit at the end of 2007. Armin Meier’s shock move followed his company’s failed merger with First Choice of the UK, a collapse that prompted boardroom ructions and the resignation of its chairman.
What you can do:
Recognize that few mergers work instantly. Make sure you manage the expectations of all the players - keep them realistic. Your job is to broadcast as much news about the ongoing success as possible. Stress any and every success the merger has. Promote any innovation or new market entry, even if these haven’t yet fed through to the bottom line. And when they do, shout it from the rooftops.
You must keep everyone - board members, investors, employees - informed of the long-term prospects for the merged company, and hold your nerve.
And it’s not only in times of major change, such as mergers, that you have to keep all these stakeholders - board members, investors and employees - informed. Informed stakeholders tend to be motivated, enthusiastic stakeholders. And that’s what you need if you want to succeed as a leader. -
The Truth
Andrew Koenig’s parents fail to appear on Larry King Live
For “reasons unknown”, Walter Koenig, the actor who played Pavel Chekov in “Star Trek”, and his wife left the Vancouver studio prior to a scheduled appearance on CNN’s Larry King Live where they were due to make an appeal for their missing son Andrew. The 41-year-old Growing Pains star who suffers from depression went missing on Valentines Day in the Vancouver area and has not been seen or heard …Read more on People’s Daily
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VANCOUVER 2010 OLYMPICS BIGGEST FAIL AT GUITAR EVER
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this hobo tried to jam with a techno dj guy…. the got hauled away by the police (listen to the background music of the techno. TAGS: VANCOUVER 2010 OLYMPICS BIGGEST FAIL AT GUITAR EVER luge crash. death vancouver canada HD guitar riot this hobo tried to jam with a techno dj guy…. the got hauled away by the police (listen to the background music of the techno.