Successful people hear it all the time:

“How did you get so lucky?”

“How did you succeed so quickly?”

“What’s your secret?”

From an outsider’s perspective, it’s almost as if they gained their fame overnight.

One minute they’re “Guy Walking In Background #4” to having the lead in their own movie.

And honestly, I share the same opinion. I truly believe in what people call “overnight success.”

But what a lot of people don’t know is that there’s a lead-up to it.

Take Stephen King for example.

While going to college, King worked as a janitor at Brunswick High School.

At this point, he’d been writing short stories for years, but sadly, he had more rejection letters than signed checks.

That was until he had an idea for his next story.

While cleaning the rust stains off the walls in the girls’ shower, he had an idea about a story of a girl using telekinetic powers to get back at her bullies in the girls’ bathroom.

Kind of a weird spontaneous thought to have, but he’s the professional, so who am I to talk?

Immediately, he got to writing. And within a few months, he had an entire manuscript of a story called Carrie.

And shortly thereafter, his manuscript was accepted by Doubleday, one of the largest publishers of literary fiction in the US.

At this point, all he could do was wait to see if it would move forward to publication.

But while he waited, King, his wife, and their newborn baby were living in a ninety-dollar-a-month apartment barely making ends meet.

In other words, he needed this now more than ever.

Months had passed since hearing anything, and King was alone in his apartment while his wife and child had left to visit her mother for the afternoon.

Randomly, he got a call.

It was his agent Bill at Doubleday Publishing, and his first words were…

“Are you sitting down?”

“No.” King replied, “Do I need to?”

“You might,” he said. “The paperback rights to Carrier went to Signet Books for four hundred thousand dollars. And under the rules of the road, two hundred thousand of it is yours. Congratulations.”

King practically slumped himself against the doorframe and proceeded to ask Bill half a dozen times if he was sure, to which every time he replied, “Yes.”

After about 30 minutes of asking the same question, King finally hung up the phone and found himself shaking.

Shortly after, his wife came back home and made her way to the kitchen to unpack the baby bags.

King walked over and took her by the shoulders and told her about the paperback sale.

At first, she didn’t seem to understand. So he told her again. His wife Tabby stopped to look around their tiny apartment, and began to cry.

And just like that, their life changed overnight.

But as I said, in order for this type of explosive success to happen, there has to be some type of lead-up.

And for King, that was years of writing and rejection letters.

His life kind of looked like this:

For years, King resided in the Valley of Disappointment. A type of zone where you lose your enthusiasm and constantly think about quitting.

But through the power of compound interest, you’ll eventually shoot through the valley and start seeing results within days because everything you’ve done has been building up to this moment.

So remember this next time you feel like you’re failing.

That one day it’s all going to make sense. That one day, everything you’ve gone through will be worth it.

As James Clear says, “You’re not failing. You’re just in the middle of succeeding.”

So hold out just a little longer. Because you never know, all it could take is a simple phone call.

Let’s just hope you’re sitting down when the time comes.

Until next time,
Isaiah Taylor

Dive Deeper

What I’m Currently Reading - I’m now reading Seneca’s book Anger, Mercy, Revenge. A collection of some of Seneca’s greatest work on overcoming what the Stoics call Passions.

Quote Of The Week - “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” — Lao Tzu