Codie SanchezFounder @ Contrarian Thinking

As the saying goes... Stay small enough long enough, you’ll be big enough soon enough

25 Sept 2026 · 1 min

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Codie Sanchez on why most founders quit too early. She describes a 10-year grind with a sudden breakthrough, explains that success isn't linear, and shares the near-quit moments that almost stopped her before it worked.

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How long did it take you to become successful? I mean, define successful. But I guess if you mean the moment everything changed, it's really usually one day. I don't think you're broke. You're just early. Like, you eat glass for a decade. Everybody thinks you're kind of crazy. And then in one weird year, you make more than you did in the last 10 combined. So I just kept swinging. It took me 10 years to get here. But the timeline to success, it doesn't go like this. It's not linear. You don't make a little progress every day until one day you cross the finish line at the end. It doesn't work like that. You kind of grind in the dark for years. Nothing changes. You question everything. You almost quit like 4 or 5 times, and then something shifts. And in a single day, you achieve more than you did in the 10 years prior, it feels like. So how long should you expect? I don't know, way longer than you want, shorter than you think you can survive, somewhere in there. So I think you save this for the day the slow part feels like too much, because you remember that even those of us who have had some degree of success, it took us forever until it took us a day.