The primary focus of this episode revolves around the notion that the elusive concept of "overnight success" is fundamentally a myth; it is often the culmination of years of hard work, perseverance, and numerous setbacks. Ben and Syya delve into the complexities of success, asserting that individuals frequently overlook the extensive efforts that precede the moment of recognition. They elucidate that true achievement is seldom instantaneous, but rather a gradual process marked by dedication and resilience. The discussion further emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the trials and tribulations that accompany one’s journey toward success, ultimately fostering a deeper appreciation for the accomplishments of others. Through their candid dialogue, the hosts provide listeners with valuable insights into the realities of professional growth and the significance of celebrating the learning experiences inherent in the pursuit of success.

The conversation engages with the pervasive myth of overnight success, a concept that often misrepresents the true nature of achievement in the business realm. Hosts Ben and Syya delve into the fallacy that individuals suddenly attain success without the accompanying narrative of years of effort, setbacks, and relentless dedication. This episode articulates the need to dismantle the notion that success is instantaneous, instead framing it as the culmination of a myriad of experiences that collectively shape an individual's path. Ben emphasizes that behind every celebrated figure lies an extensive history of perseverance, learning, and growth that is often overlooked by those who only witness the end result. The hosts employ various illustrative examples, including the world of music and social media, to elucidate their points. Syya draws attention to the misconceptions surrounding influencers, whose perceived ease of gaining popularity belies the substantial effort required to maintain their status. The discussion encourages a critical examination of societal attitudes towards success, advocating for a deeper understanding of the journey that accompanies achievement.

Listeners are prompted to reflect on their own biases and the tendency to diminish the efforts of others, especially when success appears to come easily. In concluding their dialogue, Ben and Syya challenge the audience to foster a culture of appreciation and empathy towards the struggles of others. They assert that true success is not merely about the accolades one receives but is intrinsically linked to the lessons learned from failures and the grit required to overcome challenges. This episode serves as both a call to action and an invitation to engage in a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be successful in today's competitive landscape.

Takeaways:

• The notion of overnight success is a pervasive myth, often misleading those in pursuit of achievement.
• Successful individuals possess a multitude of experiences, including failures and lessons learned throughout their journey.
• Building a brand or following requires consistent effort, strategy, and time, which is frequently overlooked.
• Celebrating the hard work and setbacks of others is essential to fostering a supportive community in business.

Links referenced in this episode:

• Iambenbaker.com
• BrilliantBeamBedia.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Mr. Beast
• Seth Godin
• Kim Kardashian

If there's one thing we've learned about business and life is that people are the X factor.

They constantly surprise us, both in amazing ways and not so much.

We're Ben and Sia, and welcome to the Gnaw Business Bites podcast.

This show is all about real life, things we all deal with every day, how they relate to business, and how to make some sense out of our daily chaos.

Welcome to the show.

Foreign.

Welcome back to another episode of Non this Business Bites.

I'm Ben and this is Sia.

Now, we've all heard about overnight success.

It's just, oh, the person.

You know, they came out of nowhere, and you know what?

They were just a success overnight.

All of a sudden they're playing concerts in huge stadiums and this and that.

The other thing.

Or all of a sudden they're vice president of the company and said, guess what?

That overnight success was probably 20 years in the making.

In, you know, in solitude, in reflection, in frustration, in failures, in, you know, setbacks and lessons learned.

There is a myth to overnight success.

Overnight success is an anomaly.

It is.

It is worse than winning the lottery.

You know, nobody is a success overnight.

There is a lifetime of experiences behind people that get to them to that point where everybody's paying attention to them.

And I think that we need to be able to celebrate those failures, those shortcomings, those lessons learned, those setbacks, and all the things that get you to that point of that overnight success.

And I think that that's the things that make us truly successful.

So, see, let's n this.

Oh, my goodness gracious.

Great ball.

Great balls.

Wait, I really should stop, like, singing.

Like, I just stopped at the wrong word, too.

All right, so you got me on Great Balls of Fire and then I just stopped.

Literally just went.

And I'm like, what were you just talking about?

All right, so, yeah, well, how about.

Let us talk about the Great Balls of Fire, that song, right?

So when you think about, like, overnight success and then when someone pops and becomes visual to you, I think.

I think it's.

I don't think it's unfair to have this assumption that, oh, my God, this person just appeared out of nowhere because from their perspective, they've never heard of you, seen of you, whatever, until that moment in time.

So I completely understand and I completely relate to that of, like, oh, this person's just, you know, what have they done?

Right?

Like, I mean, we could argue the whole Kim Kardashian of it all.

Sure, Right.

So.

But that being said, even how much I love to malign that whole family there is.

They have worked.

Now if it, if it's a kind of work that obviously we would be doing, it's totally different, totally different type of effort.

You know, can you live shallow existence.

That's entirely up to you.

I'm kidding.

I love that.

Just hate them anyway.

But, but, but, but, but you know, I, I know we like to make fun of like influencers, for example, on social media.

I, I'm not a big fan of the how Instagram kind of evolved that into again, real material materialism, that vacuous like pay me or give me free things and then I'll promote you kind of vibe.

There used to be a good reasoning behind it and I still think there is justification.

It's just the bar of entry is so low you now don't have quality control of who really are influential versus people just putting up schlop.

Right.

But despite all of that and everything, what I'm trying to say here is.

But as much as I love to make fun of those types, it's a lot of work behind enormous amount of work that people don't realize.

Yes, there are some folks that could just video and be like done and, but that's a skill.

Right?

One and done recording and they can do it.

What most people are, are like me.

Clumsy af.

Yeah.

Let's take two.

Take three.

Let me do a jump cut here because holy crap, you know, whatever.

So I think there is, I think there is understanding or empathy that one must offer in that way to appreciate someone that has quote arrived.

But again, I think I've argued this other previous episode, Ben.

I think we have.

We are selfish individuals.

So we tend to think of from our own personal lens.

So could it be if we don't fully appreciate someone's success or celebrate their success, you know, what is it?

Is it, is it jealousy?

Is it your ego that's, you know, stopping you from celebrating their success or appreciating their success?

Is there something going on in your life personally?

Like, I think that is the, the, the challenge that all success people, people of success, successful people.

I'm learning English back off to, to.

To do it.

So I know I ranted a little bit.

I kind of coming around the way.

But the bottom line where I'm really ultimately coming to Ben is there are some people who are like lightning in the bottle.

They got it.

They got lucky.

Okay.

There's no two ways about it, but at the same time.

But those, those, those same people tend to burn out just as quickly and.

That they don't sustain it.

How do you sustain it?

So, yeah, I mean, but again, if you're having a problem with people that are successful, it's on you.

It's on you.

It's not on them.

And so me knocking on the Kardashians, it's on me.

Why do I not care for them?

Because they represent everything I despise of life.

But you know what?

But here's the thing.

You're not their audience.

And that's.

That is true.

That's the key thing.

You're not their audience.

I'm not Kim Kardashian's audience.

And that's okay.

I look at these people that are these, these influencers on Instagram or where.

Or TikTok or wherever they are.

It takes, as you said, it takes an enormous amount of work.

It takes strategy, it takes time, it takes effort, and it takes consistency to build a following.

Yeah.

And that following, if you do it wrong, can be gone overnight.

Yes.

So you look at things like Mr.

Beast.

Mr.

Beast, you know, is enormous.

He's absolutely enormous.

I mean, the man is a billionaire.

How you make a billion dollars on YouTube, I have absolutely no idea.

But he's figured a way of doing it, you know, through squid games and everything else that he's come up with.

And the thing is, he's gotten to a point where he has hundreds of millions of people that follow him.

So ergo, he can go and do this.

Here's a perfect example from my world, Seth Godin, from the marketing world.

Seth went out and deliberately did a post a day for years.

Decades actually, for decades.

He.

He wrote a post and he still does.

Every single day.

I wake up in the morning and I read 2 to 500 words from.

From Seth Godin.

And they're short and it's easy to read and it's thought provoking and it's interesting.

He's done this for years.

He's built up millions of people on this list.

Now he goes and says, hey, I have a course called this is Marketing.

Anybody interested in taking it?

5,000 People sh.

Sign up for the course within a matter of 48 hours at 5 to $800 a person.

He's run that same course 23 times.

He's got another dozen courses that he.

That he's done based on things.

And the reason he can sell out these courses so quickly is because he put in the 10,000 hours.

Yeah.

And he built a reputation, he built a brand, he built a following, he built a level of trust and was able to build it Out.

And the same thing I would say probably goes for the Kardashians, probably goes for a lot of these Instagrammers or Tiktokers, is that the ones that are sustainable, the ones that are not a flash in the pan and have built success over time.

You didn't see the first hundred iterations, you didn't see the missteps.

You didn't see because you weren't paying attention and very few people were.

But the people that were paying attention became lifelong followers because they saw these people slip, fall, get back up again and keep trying.

And therefore those people told somebody else to tell somebody else.

It's not overnight success.

It takes time, it takes effort.

Big Bad John's is where all the bands came to test out their music.

So I got to see in the 80s some of the biggest bands out there in these small little venues before they became huge.

You know, before they, before they played 50,000 seat stadiums.

I was seeing them in a bar that's probably sat four or five hundred people and you know, you got to listen to them rock out, you know, every night and got to, you know, got to basically test them out.

And we, we bought the cassettes, we bought the albums.

We, you know, we, we, we communicate.

I mean it was obviously before social media, but you became fans.

And they built their fandom by testing out their music and testing out their sets and testing out their how they inter engage with the Internet and small little audiences.

And those small audiences became mid sized audiences, became huge audiences.

But it didn't happen overnight.

But most people just see people playing in these 50,000 seat stadiums and say oh my God, the rock stars, they're amazing.

But they don't see the thousands of hours hitting, you know, hitting a Tom Tom or sitting in, you know, sitting in the back of a bus, touring across the country, you know, figuring out a chord set, you know, and, and playing, you know, playing four gigs in five different, in five different cities, you know, with, at the beginning of their, at the beginning of their life, you.

Totally just reminded me of.

And of course when you talk about music, you know, I'm like, oh, this is C is happy place.

They totally remind me of like the other channel that I have.

Mildly obsessed now.

Please like and subscribe anyway.

So you know I'm following the Stray kids, right, and they're this K pop band and they have additional content they put on YouTube and they have this Thing that's behind the scenes.

Right.

And it shows them literally working through dance moves right before a concert and all that stuff.

And what people don't realize is, and I get it, because we like to simplify things in our heads because we're simple people, humans.

Right.

Which is, well, if you're going from concert to concert, yeah.

You should know all your dance moves.

You're doing the same over and over again.

Oops.

Stuff over and over over again.

Right.

But the truth of the matter is, is each venue has its own challenges.

So they have to reconform, like re.

Change up their positions.

Maybe they're having audio or technical issues of something.

They have to scrap one thing, redo another, whatever.

Right.

And it's that pressure, it's that constant pressure to perform whatever your task is, by the way, that I think people just don't see.

They see the end results and it looks good.

Right.

But that's kudos to you.

Yeah.

Well, let's take that into business now where people see somebody in the court, in the C suite, in the court, in the quarter office, you know, and they, they look at these things as, as an idol or, or you know, or as a hero.

And they have no idea what it took that person over, over a career to get to that, that point of time in their lives.

This is, oh, the person's making $10 million a year in bonuses.

Well, think about the 30 years that it took them to get to that position where somebody's willing to pay them $12 million of bonuses.

You know, it, that doesn't happen overnight.

You know, you don't get those type of stock options.

You don't get the access to the private jet.

You don't have, you don't have the, the executive assistant that, that the presidents of the United States would kill for.

You know, when you're a mid level manager and all these people started somewhere, right.

You know, and we need to realize that our world is full of people that are continually, and we're, you know, people in our audience are going to be part of that, that are continually growing and constantly evolving and learning and changing and, and getting better and sitting there going, okay, how.

What did I learn from that?

Who are the people that I need to meet?

What are the things I need to learn?

What are the things I need to get better at to be able to be more successful and do and reach the goals that I'm looking to reach?

Because it doesn't happen by happenstance.

Nobody reaches down from the C suite down to the mail room and says, you're going to be the next CEO, right?

They might reach down in the mail room and say, you know what, why don't we give you, we'll give you a shot at the neck at the next level.

And it's up to you at that next level to get to the next level, to get to the next level, to get to the next level.

And then so on and so on and so on to someday 30 odd years later and maybe a bunch of different companies.

You're in the C suite making that $12 million bonus this year and hopefully you're not firing 1,000 people just so you can maintain that bonus.

But that's a different story altogether.

I mean, we'll take it like to a different like, application and we know this all too well, right?

Which is you take your car into a garage, right?

You go to one garage and they are like, yeah, it's going to cost X amount of dollars.

And you're like, and it's going to take three days of work.

You're like, I don't have that kind of time, right?

So you go to another garage, person looks at it, I can.

And they tell you, I can solve in 20 minutes.

Here's the price point.

And then people get annoyed, right, because they're like, wait, you're only working for 20 minutes and you're charging me double.

It's like, yeah, you're not charging by the hour, you're charging for my wisdom.

That's right.

Right.

And it's kind of like that, that again, it is that flash of success or whatever.

That's wisdom, right?

That's something that again, it needs to be appreciated, needs to understand.

There's a lot of work that, that and, and it sucks, you guys.

There are some careers that just don't get the same level of respect.

It never will.

And, and it just is like, it is so fascinating to me of, you know, me switching over from, you know, tech sales into this, you know, marketing world that I've entered into.

And it's so much interesting the, I don't know, call it respect, but how quickly people are comfortable negating your value because they say, oh, you do social media content, My high school kid does that.

And you're like, cool.

I don't do it for personal branding type stuff.

So if they're rocking it, go for it, man.

It's a different beast for business to business.

Social media management marketing is totally a different beast.

So yeah, I'm right there with you.

It's, you know, some people could argue like, you know, you and me, they're like, oh my God, not on this.

What?

Well, it came out of nowhere.

Yeah, because we're been around.

Yeah, we're amazed.

I've been podcasting for 14 years now.

So anyway, let's land this plane because I think that we've, we've beaten this one to death.

I'm Ben.

I see ya.

And we'll see you soon.

Hey, hey, hey.

Thanks for listening to another episode of not on this business Fights.

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