It’s time to stop telling cute stories about success.

You know what I mean:

-→ “I sold an NFT for $1M by following five easy steps, and you can too!”

-→ “I built an audience of 1,000 followers and now I make six figures with my newsletter!”

-→ “I started investing with $1. One year later, I’m up to $500k!”

Stories like these always make the path to success look like a hockey stick. “It was all up and to the right. That was my strategy. It was in my pitch deck.”

Sure it was. Cute story, bro.

Isn’t it funny how we forget about all the lucky breaks, good timing, and random chance?

Or do we actually leave those out on purpose because they don’t fit the narrative we’ve constructed?

After all, it's important that everyone knows how much we deserve our success.

…

The problem with these cute stories is that people actually believe them.

They even try to follow the same steps to achieve the same results.

Guess what—they don’t achieve those results.

And then—what’s worse—they end up blaming themselves.

You see how damaging that is?

You see how much harm cute stories cause?

…

Here’s a true story:

I’m a kid from the hills of Utah.

I got into financial advice by accident.

I started blogging on a whim.

One day, someone I never met before emailed a piece I wrote to The New York Times.

The editor just happened to open that particular email (among hundreds he got that day)…just happened to like what he read… just happened to give me a chance.

And that just happened to turn into a weekly column which I wrote for a decade, which just happened to translate into major book deals, public speaking engagements around the world, and the career I have today.

You know what I call that?

Some talent, some hard work, and a lot of luck.

…

It turns out, there’s a lot more to success than talent and hard work.

In fact, every “successful” person I know can point to two or three life-changing events that simply boiled down to flat-out-bald-faced-dumb-luck.

Things they couldn’t repeat themselves if they tried.

If they couldn’t even repeat their own path to success, how is someone else supposed to?

Maybe the cute stories aren’t so cute after all…

Maybe we should stick to the truth.

[NOTE: When you collect the NFT below get a hold of me and I will get you a numbered, high-resolution, file to use. None of this right-click-save stuff around here.]