This past week I listened to a podcast with Casey Neistat on Flagrant. Casey is a creator I admire greatly and every time there's an opportunity to listen to a long-form conversation with him, I come out with notes from his journey that are applicable to my work.
At the very start of the conversation, one thing that stood out was how connected Casey had been with culture and understood attention long before his YouTube success. For most people, he is known as a YouTuber who used to have a daily vlog and a tech company but he has been able to captivate attention since the early noughties. This takes me to the meat of today's note.
When we look at successful people we often assume they have been great from the beginning. We usually catch them at their best and assume, they have always delivered at the same level. Of course, that is not the case. Those who are working at the highest level have years and decades behind them mastering their craft. Most likely, their early efforts have been just as lackluster as ours tend to be when we get to do something for the first time. True, there are singular exceptions with talent that transcends everything else, but these are rare. It is much more common to observe a path of struggle, self-doubt, and critique if you look at the early days.
We used to have a podcast - The Early Days, where we talked to the people currently in the trenches. Those were no famous entrepreneurs but everyday men and women who had decided to create their own trajectory. In all those episodes, they would often share a ton of useful advice but it was also apparent that their journeys, which had barely begun, were a combination of some lows, a lot of mundane, and an occasional high. That's the entrepreneurial journey though. It is nothing to be ashamed of and it is often overlooked when sharing stories once success has been achieved.
Nothing is as it seems.
Repeat that to yourself the next time you read someone's success story.
