No doubt you will have heard the name, ‘Birdseye’, synonymous with the frozen food industry. Clarence E. Birdseye (1886-1956) was a failure, who simply kept on trying until he succeeded.

In 1924 he lost all that he had on his failed frozen food enterprise, including money borrowed against a life-insurance policy! But ‘Captain Birdseye’, as the UK television adverts portray him, didn’t give up. Instead, with just $7.00 in cash and the loan of some space in a friend’s ice factory, he started out again and began experimenting in methods for freezing and preserving foods for later use.

Only five years later, he sold his frozen food company for $22 million Dollars (US), so that he could concentrate more time to experimenting and coming up with new inventions. He went on to register nearly 300 patents in all. Clarence Birdseye was a man of character, a man who understood that “failure is an event and not a person”.

R. Ian Seymour

R. Ian Seymour, excerpt from Discover Your True Potential