A Lesson From Angry Birds

My new book Renegade comes out in a few months. It’s about how to live an adventurous, high impact life for God. One of the principles is that perseverance is the path to greatness. We tend to think people who live great lives do so because they were more talented or more connected or had better opportunities, but that’s not it. Typically, they’re just people who refused to quit. They don’t let obstacles stop them, and so they keep going until they finally broke through spiritually.

This principle isn’t just true of us as individuals, spiritually. For instance, it’s also true of businesses. A great example is Rovio. Rovio is the company that created Angry Birds. Angry Birds had 50 million downloads in its first year. Along with its sequels it now has been downloaded more than 1 billion times. It is the most successful App of all time. Almost exclusively due to the Angry Birds success, the value of Rovio is now estimated at $9 billion.

So it’s been an easy path for Rovio, right? Well, actually, Rovio started in 2003, and Angry Birds came out in 2009. Angry Birds was Rovio’s 52nd project. 51 misses, and then success. Perseverance is the path to greatness.

So where do you need to persevere?