“Overnight success” is almost always a lie we tell ourselves after the fact.

In this episode, Brian McDonald revisits a deeply personal conversation about the long road behind creative work, the years of rejection, near-misses, false victories, and quiet perseverance that never make the headline.

Through stories of unfinished scripts, shelved projects, hard-earned awards that didn’t change anything, and a graphic novel that took more than a decade to finally see the light of day, Brian unpacks what success actually looks like when you’re living it from the inside.

This is a conversation about endurance, grief, belief, and the invisible labor behind work that finally arrives. Not as a miracle, but as inventory that refused to disappear.

It’s not easy. It’s not fast. But it’s real.

Let’s get started.