A short excerpt from a YouTube talk (Jason M. Lemkin channel) featuring Aaron Ross. Ross argues that social media and news bias toward fast-success stories, creating an illusion that everyone else achieves success quickly. He counsels that extended struggle is normal—typical real-world success often takes multiple years (about 2–3 years to see results and around seven years to substantial progress)—and that frustration can be a sign of meaningful effort.
Chapters
I'm Jason Lemkin and this is Aaron Ross. The nature of social media and news, Internet news is that we're surrounded by all these stories around people's fast success in making money and losing weight and finding love, etc. Etc. Because those are the stories that tend to be interesting. And honestly, it self selects for those kinds of stories. And the regular stories, everyday stories of struggling for years before you find the business, nailing a niche, getting revenue growth or selling, selling a business or even finding romance or whatever it is you're struggling with, those tend to be the boring stories. We see everyone else succeeding. So 95% of the stories around other people succeeding quickly. And where you, where I, we deal with every day are the problems. We're focused on the problems in the business or home or wherever. And so there's this disconnect. That's why you, like everyone else around you feels like you're failing. Like, why is it such a struggle for me when everyone else has it figured out? That's not, it's an illusion. You're not struggling. You're exactly where you need to be. And that's why I think we're. I feel like it should help you to realize it takes seven years that that's normal. You're going to struggle if you're not. In fact, if you're not frustrated every day, you're probably not pushing yourself to grow fast enough. Almost all overnight success stories are at least two to three years in the making. So that's about the fastest possible success you're going to have is two to three years until it works and another four to five years until you really make.
