I swear if I hear about one more overnight success story I'm just going to get up from wherever I am, go outside, and scream.
I'm part of an online course launching community that's awesome. And every year, there seems to be someone brand-new to the biz who launched a course and earned like $7 bazillion.
And they're a goat farmer who teaches people how to make fly fishing lures.
Those kinds of stories are such a kick in the head for me. Because it triggers the convergence of three feelings in my brain:
Stage 1.
I'm so happy for them. It's so cool to see people make a lot of money.
Stage 2.
I'm in awe because they're natural marketers who did such a great job owning their uniqueness and their marketing and that's also very cool and fun to see.
Stage 3.
The jealousy kicks in and I begin to ask, "What am I doing wrong?"
Well, the first thing I'm doing wrong is looking at overnight success as my benchmark.
Because it completely disregards the fact that the goat farmer spent decades – decades! – perfecting their fishing lure technique. Or that the fly-fishing-lure-making community is pretty tight, too, so they earned a reputation over those decades for their amazing lures.
So when they launched, yes, it seemed like an overnighter, but there was a long road before that that I'm sure had its fair share of lumps and bumps and lures that's didn't work.
Comparing your results to an "overnight" success also makes it easy for new entrepreneurs to over-estimate the amount of money they can make in their first year ("I want to 6X my income in 6 months!") and under-estimate the money they can make in 3+ years ("Er, I haven't thought that far ahead!").
Ask any really successful person and they'll tell you overnight success is a long game.
So give yourself the gift of the journey and enjoy the ride. Take a long look at yourself in the mirror and acknowledge all you've done to get here (because you've come a long way). Because you're going to be on this beautiful business-building road for a while.
And it's so worth it.
xo, Heather
