214: The Truth About “Overnight Success” Stories (And Why They’re So Dangerous)

Foreign welcome to the Creators MBA Podcast your go to resource for mastering the art and science of Digital Product Entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without the need to be glued to their desks constantly live launching or worrying about the social media algorithms. I hope you enjoy our episode today. Hi there Destiny here. Welcome back to the podcast. Today's episode has been inspired by a message I received from one of my clients that really struck a chord with me. Here's what she said. Destiny, I need to vent about something that's really annoying to me lately. Everywhere I look, emails, podcast is all about 1 million a year. After she just started. Everything is about these massive successes and honestly, it's making me feel pretty crappy. When you're inundated with emails from Kit, Castmagic and others talking about people making millions, it doesn't resonate with me anymore. I think we need to focus more on realistic wins like making one sale. It makes everyone who isn't making millions feel like a failure, forgetting that creating any business from zero is an achievement and any sale should be celebrated. When I got this message from my client, I knew that this is something we had to talk about on the podcast because I suspect many of you are feeling the exact same way. And her frustration really resonated with me personally because it's one of the reasons why I'm not on a lot of people's email list. I really do very little to almost nothing on social media because of this. These massive success stories, they're everywhere. They are highlighting extraordinary outcomes, email sequences, promising seven figure formulas, and social media posts showcasing overnight success. The problem isn't people's ambition, right? We're all ambitious, we all want to do well and I think ambition is very healthy. The problem is that these stories create completely unrealistic expectations. A lot of us feel like failures if we're just paying our bills or if we're making slow but but steady progress. But what I think is worse is that most of these stories leave out the very, very crucial details. And that might be the years of foundation building before the quote unquote overnight success. It might leave out the privilege, the connection or the advantages that that particular person started with. It most likely leaves out the failed attempts that came before that big win and sometimes even the sheer luck that was involved. And sometimes, yes, luck is a factor here. I don't think that this is only annoying, I think it's harmful because it pushes a lot of us towards unsustainable hustle culture or makes us question our worth based on our income or what we are achieving and it can lead to burnout or people giving up entirely. She did a promotion last month that brought in zero sales and another promotion for her academy. It's a membership that she has and this month it brought in one. One cell and she has a very, very strong offer. And she's been doing this for several years now. And her first reaction to this was disappointment, right? We would all be disappointed if that happened to us. The first reaction based on human behavior is to start questioning everything. Your offer, your messaging, your entire business model. When you start comparing your current situation to either your past success or some of those million dollar case studies flooding your inbox, you start questioning everything. But here's the perspective shift that I think is so very powerful. So that one sale that she got, that's a hundred percent increase from last month. That one sale represents a real person who valued what she created enough to invest their hard earned money into it. That one sale is evidence that she is moving in the right direction in what she's doing. Instead of beating ourselves up, we need to start asking better questions. What did we change between last month and in this month? What resonated with this particular customer? And how can we build on this small success? I would say that this perspective does change everything. When you look at it from that perspective, you go from feeling like a failure to feeling like scientists, making observations, testing things out, finding what works and that's what's going to help you move forward. We need to redefine success and talk about what success actually means to us. Is it making a million dollars or creating something valuable that actually helps people, building a business that supports your desired lifestyle, learning and growing through challenges, making consistent progress, whatever small that might be, maybe it's finding fulfillment in your work. I would have to say even if I was not getting paid for what I was doing, I would be willing to do it anyway because I absolutely love what I'm doing and I love working very closely with digital product entrepreneurs. Success is building something sustainable that serves every others while allowing me to live the life that I want. That might mean, okay, I see some pretty good sustainable growth there other months. It might mean that one sale that is teaching me something very, very valuable. I would say that entrepreneurs who last aren't necessarily the ones with the flashiest launches for the biggest income months. I've been doing this for many, many years and I have seen some of those big, I'll put it in Quotation marks. You don't see me doing this. But these big success stories, they're not here anymore. They closed up their business and went away to do something else. I have no idea, quite frankly, what a lot of them doing, but I have definitely seen them come and go over the years. The ones who are successful are the ones who keep showing up, keep learning, and keep making those incremental improvements every single week, every single day. What can I do to move my business forward, even if it's just that 1% improvement? So then the question becomes, how do we maintain our motivation when we're not seeing those headline worthy results which most of us aren't going to see. So here's what's working for me. The first thing is tracking your micro metrics. Instead of obsessing over how many sales you got this month, track smaller indicators of your progress. Maybe it's your email open rates, positive comments from clients, content engagement or new email subscribers. I want you to document your journey. Keep a business journal where you record what you're learning and the small improvements you're making. Just do this once a day. Here's what I did today, here's what I've learned, here's the improvement that I saw. And this will create a record of your progress that you can look back on. And it's not you measuring yourself to other people, is you documenting what's going on with you personally. The other thing I would say is surround yourself with reality. Be very selective about who you follow and what content you consume. Look for people who are sharing honest journeys, not just their highlight reels. I do that here on the Creators MBA podcast. And I want you to create your own success definition. So I want you to write down what success means for you, review it regularly because it may change over time. And then I want you to celebrate incrementally knowledge, every single step forward, no matter how small. When my client shared her frustration, she tapped into something many of us are feeling. We've created a business culture where if you are not making millions, you're somehow failing. And that is complete nonsense. The fact that you've created something, something from nothing. Like literally think about what we've done with hobby school. It was nothing. A domain name and nothing else. You've had your courage to put your work into the world and the fact that you've even made it this far, that is extraordinary. So here is what I propose. Let us start a different kind of conversation. I want us to start talking about that messy middle, the slow growth, those one sell victories. I want you to normalize building sustainable businesses rather than those quote unquote overnight success stories. Because what's going on with you and your business, it is not a failure. It is data. It is progress and it's worthy of celebration. So I would love to hear about your small wins and I want to help you celebrate them. Email me back, contact me, let me know. You can text me too from the podcast. Let me know something that you have accomplished recently that might not necessarily make the headlines but represents real progress for you. I want you to share it proudly because those incremental steps forward are what real business success is made up. I want to thank my client who inspired this episode. Thank you so much for your honesty. Your one cell victory isn't just a personal win, it is a reminder to all of us about what really matters in building a sustainable business. Until next time, I want all of you to keep celebrating those small victories. They are adding up to something beautiful. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now. Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. If you love the show, I'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.