Inspiring Career Advice from 7 Influential Figures

We scoured the web to bring you some of the best career advice from 7 of the most influential figures of our time. These are the people who've worked tirelessly to achieve what they've achieved, so listen up to what they have to say — it might change the way you view success and your approach towards it.

1. J.K. Rowling: Failure is Inevitable; It's What You Do With It

She wasn't always a best-selling author and one of the wealthiest women in the world. Far from it. Before Harry Potter became the worldwide phenomenon it is today, Rowling was a jobless single mother living on welfare, writing about the magical world of Hogwarts in cafés in Edinburgh. With her first manuscript being rejected again and again by book publishers, she was the biggest failure she knew.

Rowling considers her early failure as "a gift that was painfully won", as she gained valuable knowledge about herself and her relationships through the process. She commented in an NBC interview that "It would've really helped to have someone who had had a measure of success come say to me, 'You will fail. That's inevitable. It's what you do with it.'"

2. Steve Jobs: Don't Just Follow Your Passion; Make a Difference

Steve Jobs' response to his biographer Walter Isaacson on why "follow your passion" is bad advice:

"Yeah, we're always talking about following your passion, but we're all part of the flow of history … you've got to put something back into the flow of history that's going to help your community, help other people … so that 20, 30, 40 years from now … people will say, this person didn't just have a passion, he cared about making something that other people could benefit from."

While it's important to follow one's passion — we're most productive when we're doing something we enjoy after all — it's just as important to use your passion to benefit those around you.

3. Stewart Butterfield: Try Different Things

In the words of the Co-founder of Flickr and Chief Executive of Slack:

"Some people will know exactly what they want to do at a very young age, but the odds are low. I feel like people in their early- to mid-20s are very earnest. They're very serious, and they want to feel like they've accomplished a lot at a very young age rather than just trying to figure stuff out. So I try to push them toward a more experimental attitude."

Experimenting with possibilities allows us to discover our range of aptitudes and abilities. If you've not tried something before, there's no way to know whether you'll be good at it. So try different things often. You might be surprised at your hidden talents!

4. Richard Branson: Never Look Back in Regret — Move on to the Next Thing

The Virgin Group Founder and Chairman reflects, "The amount of time people waste dwelling on failures, rather than putting that energy into another project, always amazes me. I have fun running ALL the Virgin businesses — so a setback is never a bad experience, just a learning curve."

Everyone makes mistakes. We shouldn't beat ourselves up about it. Far more productive to learn from each experience and do better the next time.

5. Maya Angelou: Pave Your Own Path

Award-winning author Maya Angelou quoted the advice she received from her grandmother which she applied for 65 long years:

"If the world puts you on a road you do not like, if you look ahead and do not want that destination which is being offered and you look behind and you do not want to return to your place of departure, step off the road. Build yourself a new path."

Change isn't comfortable, but rather than being stuck in a rut wishing things could be different, make it so. Where there's a will, there's a way.

6. Diane von Furstenberg: Trust (and Be Honest with) Yourself

Fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg believes that " trusting yourself is the key to success." In her interview with The New York Times, she asserted that "In order to trust yourself, you have to have a relationship with yourself. "In order to have a relationship with yourself, you have to be hard on yourself, and not be delusional."

It's easy to hide behind excuses and be in denial about why we're not progressing in the right direction, be it in our careers or personal life. More often than not, we find it hard to be brutally honest with ourselves because we're afraid we're not good enough to succeed (in whatever it is we aspire to achieve).

That's where trust comes in. If you don't believe you're good enough, no one else will. To be brutally honest with oneself requires courage, but it's also the only way to identify what we need to work on, in order to achieve our definition of success.

7. Michael Bloomberg: Never Stop Learning

Bloomberg's advice is simple yet insightful:

"The most powerful word in the English language is "Why." There is nothing so powerful as an open, inquiring mind.

The world is full of people who have stopped learning and who think they've got it all figured out. You've no doubt met some of them already - and you'll meet plenty more. Their favorite word is "No." They will give you a million reasons why something can't be done or shouldn't be done.

Don't listen to them, don't be deterred by them, and don't become one of them. Not if you want to fulfill your potential - and not if you want to change the world for the better."

Experience is undoubtedly the best teacher. Don't worry about making mistakes, it means that you're learning and adding to your knowledge and skillsets. Only worry about doing it right all the time — that usually means you're not challenging yourself.