For today, I'm sharing a great interview with one of my big heroes on the Internet, Chase Jarvis, via the Sara Dietschy's YouTube channel. They get into a lot of relevant and practical wisdom on how to make it as a creative, and the bit near the end about "overnight success" is fantastic. Here's what Chase says:
"Overnight success is a total myth. Even the people who you think it happened, I'll take Macklemore, who's also our friend, he was making music in his parent's basement for ten years before you'd ever heard of him. And I think people, like, 'Oh my God, overnight success! This guy has, you know, 15x platinum!' But what you really find out if you look even just one inch below the surface is that there is this, they always say the struggle is real... But 100% of the people have had that experience where they toiled what seemed like an eternity where there was ten viewers... Brandon [Stanton, of Human of New York] today talked about.... his first post... it had... no likes and one comment. And you know, now, I think his has the highest average number of comments and the highest number of views on Facebook everyday.
The gap between where you think you are and where you want to be is always closer than you think... People can talk about tipping points, there was no one event ever, and any time people got some event... where you think you've made it, they were quickly fed a piece of humble pie, and realized that it's a series of making-its over and over and over that actually makes it possible to do what you love."
A timely reminder at the start of another work week: you never know which one of your hits is gonna be a home run, so don't let the yawning uncertainty of The Gap defeat you. Make sure to watch the rest of the interview as it's full of useful bits of wisdom and inspiration. Have a great week everyone!