The hidden truth about success stories

The most expensive mistakes in business don't come from being wrong — they come from following advice that was right for someone else.

Recently, I saw some content from a founder go semi-viral.

His 'simple path to success' was pretty compelling: quit your job, ignore the skeptics, trust your gut, yada, yada.

The result? A seven-figure business.

But there was a bunch of information he didn't mention, that I learned through the grapevine…

He’d saved $200K from his high-paying tech job, came into entrepreneurship with a network we’d all envy, and has a successful wife who covered their living expenses during the first six months of his journey.

The story wasn't false — just incomplete.

To be clear, this guy’s advantages are not bad things! But they’re definitely an important part of the “hidden story.”

The Hidden Story

The internet is full of successful entrepreneurs telling you how they made it:

"I built everything without a business plan!"

"I quit my job with no savings in the bank!"

"I ignored all the experts and did it my way!"

"I went viral on social media in 90 days!"

Sometimes these stories are true. Not everything is BS.

But behind a lot of these viral success stories are invisible advantages: family wealth that provided a safety net, high-profile networks that opened doors, hard-earned lessons from previously failed businesses, or deep expertise developed over decades in the workforce.

I'm not suggesting these people are lying or being intentionally misleading. My instinct is to always assume positive intent.

But the narrative doesn’t account for all of the others who made the same choices and failed.

The Real Cost

Selective storytelling creates an incomplete picture of how success really happens.

And for every entrepreneur who quit their job, went with their gut, and succeeded — there are hundreds who did the same thing, and didn’t succeed.

But of course, those stories don't go viral. Those people don't get to speak at conferences. And they’re not online all day talking about the great choices they made.

When I first started my business, I almost fell for the selective storytelling. I started copying another entrepreneur's 'proven webinar strategy' until I learned the full story: 15 years of industry experience, an extensive network of connections, and enough savings to experiment for a decade.

That doesn’t mean he was disingenuous or a scam artist. He’s 100% not. He was (and still is) an excellent entrepreneur. And his strategy wasn't wrong. It just wasn't right for me.

The truth is, most successful businesses are built on advantages you can't see from the outside. And the more I study this, the more I realize that copying someone's path without their context is a very bad idea.

What Actually Works

Instead of trying to copy other people’s success stories, here's what I think works better:

Study patterns, not paths.

Look at multiple examples of success in your field. Find the common principles, patterns, and tactics that show up, regardless of someone's advantages.

And don’t forget to pay attention to failures. When someone fails doing exactly what another successful entrepreneur did, that's important information too. It means there's more to the story than what you’re seeing.

What works for a 23-year-old engineer in Silicon Valley might fail completely for a 45-year-old teacher from Ohio. Your situation matters and you should always be cognizant of that.

Now, the intention of this lesson isn’t to get you bummed out or to give you an excuse. I see plenty of people use this to say, “must be nice”, when the truth is — entrepreneurship is hard even when you have advantages.

And some people will always have advantages, fair or not. So we all have to find what works for us in order to play the game to the best of our ability.

So, the next time you see a success story online, I hope you’ll remember that you're watching the highlight reel, not the behind-the-scenes documentary. The real story is always more complicated. And your job isn't to copy someone else's path — it's to understand your own advantages and limitations, and build something that works for you.

I hope this resonated. And that’s all for today.

See you next Saturday.