How Long Will Your Success Story Take to Write?
There’s an answer — and it’s wrong
When I was 25, my friend’s dad asked me this,
“How long are you giving yourself?”
I had just quit my job to start my own business.
With no experience and no skills, I had no idea what I was doing.
He was worried about his son taking a similar risk. He questioned me constantly.
To this day, I’m grateful for my answer.
I said,
“I don’t know, it could take 10 days or 10 years. It really doesn’t matter because it’s something I’m passionate about… I’ll just keep trying.”
2 years later, I was $40,000 in debt.
I thought,
“Was he right to question me? Did I make a mistake?”
He wasn’t. And I didn’t.
Failure is a necessary part of life.
And wrong turns point you in the right direction.
To grow but also to understand what success really means.
To you. Only you. The only person that matters.
Fast forward to today, and I’ve only just recovered.
Conventional wisdom would say that it’s time to move on.
That I shouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
But life is nuanced.
And far from conventional.
Although I failed once, I’m not shying away from trying again — the exact same business model.
Only now with a little more experience.
An understanding of how to budget. How to be smarter.
Although failures are painful, I’m grateful for my younger self for:
- allowing me to experiment.
- having the foresight to push back.
- not giving in to the expectations of others.
- not falling into the trap of immediate success.
If you love something, do it.
Your story only ends, when you stop writing.
To quote Vincent Van Patten in this story, “Do you”.
These 10 books changed my life. I hope they’ll do the same for you.
