Welcome to this week’s episode of Sniffing Out The Bullsh*t, where I will be talking about all the people who have become an overnight success and how you can too!!

Yeah right!!!

Switch off now if that’s what you’re here for.

There is no such thing as an overnight success! Sorry to disappoint you.

And that is the end of the world’s shortest podcast episode! OK not quite, but I wanted to bring that up right away, because I’m so sick of hearing about it.

If you look at the content that seems to perform well on social media, it’s the stuff that gets results quickly:

– Make more money
– Get more followers
– Save you hours of time

Everyone is getting more and more impatient these days. They want instant results. We get instant answers from Google, one-click shopping from Amazon, food delivered to our door from Uber Eats or Deliveroo. So, why not instant business results too?

So, let’s talk about some people who are considered to be overnight successes. Because you probably don’t quite believe me yet.

I’m gonna start with the number one guy you probably listen to as an entrepreneur… Steven Bartlett.

Steven is one of the hottest names in business at the moment. He’s on what feels like every Top 10 list.

He’s got the number one business podcast in the world; he’s one of the top UK entrepreneurs and he’s definitely one of the youngest multi-millionaires.

A couple of years ago, many people never heard of him, and suddenly he’s on Dragon’s Den and he’s one of the most sought-after business speakers.

Surely that’s the definition of an overnight success?

NO! Please remember that there is no such thing as an overnight success. What really happens is that the market only suddenly realises the value of these people.

So, they’ve been plodding away for years and years, but people suddenly catch on to what they’re doing and their hard work finally picks up like wildfire and their popularity increases… leading to the so-called overnight successful.

Steven actually launched his first startup in 2013 – an online messaging board called Wallpark. Ever heard of it? Nope? Well that’s not because it was a failure, but he evolved that business into Social Chain – the fast-growing social media company that you know him for today.

He and his co-founder Dominic McGregor saw the value in social media for business before many people did.

Steven also spent time posting to social media each day with thought leadership pieces. I remember following him back in 2017 when he was just starting out.

I loved seeing his content come up on my feed each day and admired how dedicated he was to his work.

But no one really knew who he was back then. I’d go to a networking event and be like “Oh did you see that post by Steven Bartlett the other day?” They’d reply with “Who??”

He was a nobody.

Then, in 2017, he created a podcast – again, a little ahead of the time. Nowadays, everyone seems to have a podcast. Look at me! I even have two!

But in 2017, not many people had podcasts. He started off with it just being his own ramblings (better than these ones, of course!), but then he started to bring guests on. He gradually got bigger names to come on the podcast and eventually it became the huge success it is today.

Back to his company, Social Chain… in February 2023, it got acquired by Brave Bison. I’m not going to discuss the numbers around the sale as I know there’s still controversy around that.

And no, I actually don’t like controversy! I just like to sniff out the BS. I don’t know enough around this sale and the figures to call BS anywhere, so I’m gonna skip past that!

BUT, this means Steven’s overnight success really took 10 years… which I’m pretty sure is what Jeff Bezos said!

There are tons of quotes like this, but I believe Jeff Bezos said “Overnight success actually takes 10 years.” I’m pretty sure someone else also said that it takes 20 years!

I know Steve Jobs said: “If you look really closely, most overnight successes took a really long time.”

I mean, in fact, Steve Jobs was considered to be an overnight success himself. He’s the genius behind the iPhone, right?!

One moment there was no iPhone, and the next, the world has changed!

Well, Steve Jobs co-founded Apple back in 1977 with his pal Woz, and then less than 10 years later, he was fired!!!

He was essentially the biggest failure, but then managed to come back to Apple 12 years later and completely transform it to the brand we know and love today.

But his overnight success took about 30 years!

However, many people had never heard of Apple before the iPhone. Or maybe they did when the iPod came out. But there certainly weren’t many Mac users back in the day.

Windows completely dominated the market.

On that note, let’s talk about Bill Gates for a moment. He was the richest man on earth for a while and many people called him an overnight success as he just “created this simple computer program” and became super duper rich.

However, in 1972, him and Paul Allen (the other dude who formed Microsoft with him) actually started a company called Traf-O-Data, which made traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor (which is an early 8-bit microprocessor).

The problem is, that company did not make any money!

But Gates and Allen learned a tonnnnnn from that experience and so they were able to make improvements and start Microsoft in 1975.

But again… Windows wasn’t actually released until 10 years later in 1985.

So maybe 10 years is the magic number!

In fact… on that note, let’s talk about another classic “overnight success”.

Mr. Jimmy Donaldson.

Many may not even know who I’m talking about when I say Jimmy Donaldson as the world knows him as Mr Beast.

Of course, one of the world’s most famous YouTubers is also one of the biggest overnight successes.

But let’s see what really happened.

Jimmy started making videos when he was extremely young, and he started his YouTube channel when he was just 13 years old, under the name MrBeast6000.

He was consistently making videos, but they weren’t really getting many views. At this point, many people would have given up.

After all, social validation is the reason why many content creators post. They want to see the vanity metrics go up, like followers, likes, views etc.

If they don’t get those, then what is the point of making content?

The difference is, Jimmy LOVED making content, and he wanted to be the BEST at it. So, he worked day and night at it.

Then, one day, a video popped off. He finally went viral. And guess what it was for? Counting to 100,000. Yup – that’s it.

He sat there and just counted to 100,000. Unbelievable.

So, you absolutely never know what type of content the world will respond to!

But this video was released in 2017 – more than FIVE YEARS after he uploaded his first ever video.

He STILL didn’t actually reach the mainstream stardom he enjoys now until his later videos. For example, in November 2021, he made a video of a “real life” Squid Games, off the back of the huge, controversial Netflix show.

He got over 130 million views in a week and suddenly people were talking about Mr Beast everywhere.

For me, that was when his overnight success happened. Because I heard his name mentioned in circles I never would have expected.

Sure, he may have been popular to thousands of others before then, but he really hit the mainstream media and became a household name then.

I mean, that’s when my parents heard who he was, so to me… that means they’ve made it! ????

Alright, let’s talk about a different type of overnight success – one before the days of social media.

James Dyson. Sorry… I should say SIR James Dyson, as he was actually knighted back in 2006! It’s weird, because I don’t hear people refer to him as sir that much!

Have you also noticed I’ve selected three British entrepreneurs? Usually Americans get all the limelight and are used as great examples, so I wanted to show how amazing Brits can be too!

So, James Dyson was considered an overnight success, because in 1993, he launched his first vacuum cleaner which very quickly became the biggest selling vacuum cleaner in the country.

However, James Dyson had been inventing things for decades before that! In 1970, he helped design the Sea Truck… a watercraft made from fibreglass. He did this as part of his final year’s project at the Royal College of Art.

His first original invention came just 4 years later when he invented the barrelbarrow – which was a wheelbarrow but used a ball instead, making it easier to manoeuvre.

This invention was actually a commercial success! However, he had investors for that business and he no longer had control of the company and it was sold against his wishes.

He was definitely determined to not let that happen with his new business!

What I love about Dyson’s story is that people know him as the tycoon who swooped in one night and just made this vacuum, charged tons of money for it and suddenly became one of the country’s richest people.

However, he famously said that he made 5127 prototypes of the vacuum before he got it right.

In fact, let me read out his exact quote around failure, because I really love the sentiment.

“I made 5,127 prototypes of my vacuum before I got it right. There were 5,126 failures. But I learned from each one. That’s how I came up with a solution. So I don’t mind failure. I’ve always thought that schoolchildren should be marked by the number of failures they’ve had. The child who tries strange things and experiences lots of failures to get there is probably more creative.”

Just love it.

There are plenty of people who think failure is a sin and you cannot talk about it when you fail. However, when you fail, you learn… and when you learn, you improve.

We should always be striving to be better every day, and we cannot do that without failing from time to time.

So, in business, there is no such thing as an overnight success, as you just don’t see what goes on behind closed doors and all the failures that are never mentioned. Maybe they come onto your radar suddenly, but they’ve usually been around for a while.

OK, there are definitely some people who went from zero to something overnight, but that’s usually due to an accidental viral episode and is very rare.

Reality TV stars also see this level of fame, but in a way, they’ve also been priming themselves up for that for years.

Those who go on reality TV shows often say in interviews that they have always wanted to be famous and they spend years researching how, making sure they look amazing, rubbing shoulders with the right people etc.

So, they’ve been mentally preparing for their overnight success for years too.

If you’d like to go on reality TV because you want to get famous, then please be my guest! It will probably work. You will get lots of followers on social media and people will hang off your every word.

But that’s not what I want to be known for.

I love entrepreneurship and I want my business to be successful, and I plan to do that the right way.

If you do too, stop looking for the overnight success strategies and start mapping out the long ol journey to success.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s episode of Sniffing Out the Bullsh*t – I will see you next week for another episode.