Becoming an Overnight Success

“In the midst of difficulty lies opportunity.”

-Albert Einstein

Becoming an Overnight Success

I was having dinner with a group of collogues not long ago.  We’ve all be involved with investing in early stage companies for lots of years.  More years than I care to think about most of the time, but our conversation on this particular night demonstrated the value of long, hard work to me.

I was sitting across the big, round table from my friend Phil and just out of one corner of my ear heard him say something about a company I had been aware of many years ago.  When I heard what Phil was saying I began to listen intently because I remembered another friend of ours talking with me about investing in this same company ages ago.  It had been so long ago that I had completely forgotten about them and assumed that they had gone out of business.  So, I said, “I saw that deal years ago and I don’t think it has any legs.”

Phil looked back across at me and said, “They’ve changed their business model and I think they may really have something now.”

As it turns out, Phil and I are now spending time with this company working to get them positioned to move in to their first rapid growth phase!  What I mean by rapid growth is taking this company from doing about $1.5 million in annual revenue to about $40 million in annual revenue within the next 3-5 years.

What’s so striking about this exciting opportunity is that as the company hits its stride, virtually everyone in the world will believe this company to be  an “overnight success.”  What they won’t know is that the entrepreneur who succeeded in creating this booming company worked many years in developing, testing, and altering his business model and product long before he dazzled the marketplace with his success.

I know the entrepreneur created a technology that worked successfully and he sold it successfully.  Then he reengineered his product to make it cheaper to build and less expensive to purchase.  In fact, his current design is so simple and elegant that the untrained eye will look at it and believe that it’s so simple that anyone could have created it with just a little thought and tinkering.  But, nothing could be further from the truth.

The inventor has spent more than 5 years and 3 million dollars to get it to its current point of refined design.  He also used the same time and money to literally turn his business model upside down.  That’s no overnight success! 

It reminds me that Michelangelo once said, “If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful after all.”

So, next time you see or use something wonderful remember that it’s the culmination of someone’s long, hard work and genius that you’re enjoying.  Perhaps most importantly, remember that when you’re working late and dreaming as you toil, you’re really releasing a life time of personal genius so you can be an overnight success yourself!

Be a growth-mindset person so you can learn from mistakes and failure.  If you will, rather than withdrawing from difficult endeavors or becoming discouraged, you’ll redouble your efforts.  See yourself as a work in progress and you’ll automatically begin to experience feelings of success with every step you take into your bright future.