Once Were Losers
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday October 29, 2003
As Homer Simpson says, trying is the first step on the road to failure. Going further takes guts, flexibility and a determination to succeed.
There's a moment in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where John Cleese's Black Knight sits limbless on the ground after losing a duel, his suit of armour now more like a waistcoat.
His vanquisher turns to leave, but the legless, armless knight refuses to concede defeat. "You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you. I'll bite your legs off!"
The world is peppered with latter-day Black Knights - people who looked beaten but, through stubbornness, even blindness, lived to fight another day.
"I can win Monopoly just with Old Kent Road and the light blue ones," says Matthew Reilly, who was once Australia's most rejected author. "Or I'll just hold onto Park Lane so someone else can't get the pair."
When every major publisher in Australia knocked back his first novel in 1994, Reilly got angry.
"When someone says it can't be done, that's them saying they can't do it, not I can't do it. I can do anything," he says.
He took out a bank loan, persuaded a friend's dad to invest in him, and raised the $8000 needed to self-publish 1000 copies.
Then he got in his "little red bomb of a car" and, risking further rejection and carbon monoxide poisoning, travelled from bookstore to bookstore asking them to stock the sci-fi thriller, Contest.
That first edition is now collectable. Rare bookseller John Purcell displays a signed, "not for sale" copy behind his counter and estimates it's worth $200.
The reason? Reilly's doggedness paid off. Two-thirds of booksellers agreed to sell Contest, a Pitt Street store placed it up front by the John Grishams and Tom Clancys, and Pan Macmillan commissioning editor Cate Paterson noticed it.
When she called him at his parents' home in February 1997, Reilly was down. "I figured I was about the biggest failure of an author you could ever get. I'd been knocked back by everybody and I was out $8000."
But despite it all, the final year law student had started researching his second novel, Ice Station, in the Antarctica section of his local library.
The rest is publishing folklore - about 2 million books sold in 15 countries in nine languages. A fifth book, Scarecrow, will be released on Saturday.
Most self-publishers don't break through. But Reilly displays the characteristics of successful people, says psychologist Dr Anthony Grant at the University of Sydney, such as a "flexible, strategic resilience".
"They don't see their present state as an endgame. They don't even notice - it's not really that important where they are now - their focus is on where they're going to go and how they're going to get there," says Dr Grant, who coaches business executives.
Businesswoman-of-the-moment Lisa Hayden is equally long-sighted. Made redundant twice in a year, the 31-year-old moved into a nurses' dormitory to save money and lived on government assistance under the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme while she incubated a kooky business concept.
Last month her idea for a cut-flower vending machine won a $50,000 Yellow Pages Business Ideas Grant. She plans to launch the Floral eKiosk next April in shopping centres, hospitals, nursing homes, service stations and crematoria.
"You constantly come up against brick walls because with new ideas and new innovations, you're pushing comfort zones," Hayden says. "I always looked at different avenues to get around the walls."
Associate Professor John Watson from the School of Business at the University of Western Australia, says the business failure rate is not as high as it has been portrayed. But, he adds, "a lot of small business operators are struggling to earn more than a basic wage".
According to Dr Grant, pathological winners define success differently.
"I think there's a lot of nonsense talked about success and failure. When people think of success they think of earning lots of money and popularity and people liking you ... I think success is about reaching your own potential, being satisfied about what you're doing and who you are. There are many rich and apparently successful people who are miserable. If you look across cultures in terms of the wealth societies have, there isn't any correlation between wealth and happiness."
Reilly says his initial aim was simply to make $40,000 a year out of writing. "The first goal was very modest but once you start taking off, you can make them bigger and bigger."
He is now talking about raising the $100 million needed to "self-publish" Contest as a blockbuster film.
As for Hayden, she set herself two goals at school - to play sport at a representative level and to work in the fashion industry - and did both by 25. A hand injury prevented her cutting fabrics, so she moved into IT and then floristry, where her business idea began to emerge.
"What motivates me is the challenge of striving for goals. I'm more interested in the journey than getting to the milestone. Once this is finished I'll probably give management to someone else and be involved with a lot of community-based work," Hayden says.
A recent obstacle was when she was knocked back for an AusIndustry Research and Development Grant.
But pity the bureaucrat who tries to stop her. A Black Knight of small business, Hayden, at the very least, might threaten to bite their legs off.
Comeback kids
Matthew Hayden The Queensland batsman made his Test debut in March 1994 and was dropped for the next 23 Test matches. He was given another chance in December 1996, toured South Africa and was dropped again. The left-hander missed the next 39 Test matches, made his second comeback in March 2000 and has played ever since. This month Hayden posted a Test record of 380 runs against Zimbabwe and is about to become the first batsman to score 1000 runs in three consecutive calendar years, says the Herald's cricket stats expert, Ross Dundas.
Rove McManus In 1999, McManus was brought from community television to the Nine Network but Nine axed him after only 10 late-night shows. Channel Ten picked him up and McManus now holds the 2003 Gold Logie as the Most Popular Personality.
Petria Thomas Petria Thomas spent seven years in the shadow of butterfly champion Susie O'Neill. When Madam Butterfly retired, Thomas had a shoulder injury to overcome. Thomas has been under the knife seven times for her injury, but is expected to compete at the Athens Olympics next year.
John Howard, Prime Minister Howard is the definitive political comeback kid. He took the federal Liberal Party leadership from Andrew Peacock in 1985, then lost it to Peacock four years later. He was leader again in 1995, when Alexander Downer stepped down, and won the federal election in March 1996 after 13 years of Labor government.
© 2003 Sydney Morning Herald