Entire universes exist between perception and reality. 

The life of an entrepreneur seems glamorous. Think of Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos’s fortune. 

To judge them based on their outcome alone is like knowing someone only on social media– it’s a highlight reel, not real life.

The real-life of entrepreneurs is gritty. When you think of Amazon, you think of one-click shipping, $580 billion in revenue in 2019, its over 600,000 employees in 2018, and a customer service policy better than any company I’ve ever experienced. 

What you don’t see is Bezos trying to sell books in 1995, working out of his garage. 

Not exactly what most people picture when you think of someone with a $150 billion net worth. 

Those digits don’t show risk. Over half of startups in the U.S. fail.

In 1994, Bezos convinced 20 people, including family members, to invest $50,000 in his company, which he left Wall Street to do at age 30. 

It would have been a tense Thanksgiving joking how you lost $1 million betting on the future of the internet when dial-up internet took ten minutes to load half of a page. 

For context, only about 23 thousand websites existed then, compared to nearly 300 million today. 

Success never happens overnight. Bezos spent decades plotting Amazon’s success, something he explained at a 2019 private talk in New York , according to Businessinsider.

“We’ll announce our Amazon quarterly results, and [people will say], ‘Great quarter, congratulations!’ And then I say, ‘Thank you,’ Bezos said. “But what I really think about is [how] that quarter was kind of baked and done 2 or 3 years ago, and right now the senior executives at Amazon are working on a quarter that’s going to happen in 2021, 2022 — that kind of thing.”

This is what success looks like broken down by year. 

Real success means waking up every day, even when you can’t see the finish line. It means pushing through wins and losses to reach your goal. 

Bezos’ plan is evident in retrospect, but hindsight is 20:20. The internet provides an unchained level of freedom. People with remote jobs can now travel the country, see family, and even make money while sleeping. 

The only way to greatness is to slog through the mire, after which people will call you an overnight success, not knowing the amount of work dedicated to achieving your dream.