– By Daniel Sweet –
There is a familiar piece of advice we hear whenever we’re chasing something difficult: Don’t give up. You’re closer than you think.
It’s encouraging. It’s hopeful. And sometimes it’s even true… But sometimes it isn’t.
Sometimes you work hard and still fail. Sometimes you stay focused, make sacrifices, practice, learn, try again and keep believing… and the thing you desperately wanted still doesn’t happen.
I know. I’ve done it. The road of hard work, heartbreak, and failure is my life story. (stay with me here, keep reading… it gets better!)
And strangely enough, looking back now, I’m beginning to understand that failure may have taught me something about success that success never could have.
Sometimes Hard Work Doesn’t Pay Off
That’s not something you’ll see printed on many motivational posters. We’re usually told the opposite: Work hard enough and you’ll succeed.
- Believe in yourself.
- Hang in there.
- Stay focused.
- Never give up.
- Your breakthrough is right around the corner.
Maybe it is…. And maybe it’s not. I think we do a disservice when we pretend those precepts are guaranteed.
- There are many extraordinarily talented musicians, in every city of the world, who will never become famous.
- There are wonderful original bands playing to nearly empty rooms.
- There are gifted songwriters writing songs few people will ever hear.
- There are singers with remarkable voices who will never receive the opportunity that someone with half their talent receives.
Hard work matters. Discipline matters. Persistence matters. Talent matters. But so do timing, relationships, opportunity, circumstances and sometimes plain old luck.
You can do many things right and still not get the outcome you wanted. So if success isn’t guaranteed, why keep trying?
That’s where this gets interesting.
The Road to Success that I Didn’t Take
When I was younger, back in 1986, I had the dream of becoming a professional rock star.
To achieve that dream, I wanted to attend a music college in Hollywood that include all aspects of music performance and production – Musician’s Institute. They had a specific program, called Guitar Institute of Technology (GIT), that I was particularly interested in.
To me, it represented exactly where I wanted to go: into the professional music world. Hollywood. Musicians. Recording. Performing. Connections. An environment filled with other people trying to build careers doing exactly what I wanted to do.
But I didn’t go. I was scared. Overwhelmed at the idea.
I was only 20 years old at the time. Been playing guitar for 2 years, no band experience, other than saxophone in my Junior and High School marching bands. Never lived on my own before. I could not afford the steep cost of tuition either.
If I went there, I’d have to move to Hollywood, and rent a place… but where? How can I pay rent there, support myself, and also pay tuition? Go to school full time for a year while also working full time to afford it… and still find time for playing live.
Instead, I took music classes at a community college. Stayed home, lived with my parents. Joined a couple local bands. I took the easy road. I learned things there. I studied music theory and audio engineering. I became a better musician.
But it didn’t lead where I wanted it to go. It didn’t launch my career.
Dealing with Regrets
For years afterward, I wondered about that other road. What if I’d raised my courage, taken the risk, and gone to Hollywood? What if I’d surrounded myself with musicians who were every bit as serious as I was? People who were also scared, trying hard, and hungry for success?
What connections might I have made? What bands might I have joined? What doors might have opened?
My life, and my music career, would have turned out much differently.
I beat myself up over it for a long time. Wishing I had chosen what seemed at the time to be the hard road, going to Hollywood.
As it turns out, as challenging as it would have been for that short while at GIT, it would have actually been the easy road in the long run. By choosing the safe road of staying home and going to community college, I unknowingly chose the hardest road of all. It was the most expensive road, and also most time consuming too.
It’s tempting when looking backward to rewrite our lives so every decision becomes exactly the decision we were “supposed” to make. I don’t believe we have to do that.
Sometimes we make choices we later wish we’d made differently. Sometimes we miss opportunities. Sometimes a door closes and doesn’t reopen again, ever.
That’s life.
We can’t go back in time and choose another road. So the the real question, the useful, productive question is: Where do we go on the road we’re walking now?
12 Years of Trying and Failing
The community college decision wasn’t the end of my dream. Not even close. For roughly twelve years, I was absolutely convinced I was going to become a professional musician, be a bona fide rock star.
Not casually…. Not, “maybe someday.” But soon.
I wanted the whole thing. A real band. Play my own original music. Record deal. Touring. A professional career in music on a big stage in front of 1,000s of screaming fans. Appear on night time talk shows and in magazine interviews. Retire in my mid to late 40s both rich AND famous.
I had the dream. I had the Rock & Roll mindset. I had the ambition. I had the determination. I had an abundance of never ending high energy…
What I didn’t have was a band that would stay together long enough to see anything good happen.
Again and again, I’d put something together. Musicians would come and go. Personalities wouldn’t work. Priorities changed. People lost interest or moved out of town. Something else fell apart.
Start over… New musicians… New attempt… New songs… New hope.
Something else fell apart > Start over again…. over and over. It was exhausting. Can you relate? Have you ever been in a similar situation? I can almost see you nodding your head yes…
This went on for years. It became disheartening. How could I become a touring recording star when I couldn’t keep a band together long enough to play more than a few months worth of local gigs?
Eventually, 12 years later, I had to face something I didn’t want to admit… I had failed.
Consider the Journey
Did I really fail? Maybe I failed in achieving the original dream I held. It was tight and rigid, not much room for sideways movement into other possibilities. But did I fail in the long run? Nah… Years of experience tell a different story. Think about your own experiences:
Every time you practice something difficult, something happens: You get a little better.
Every time you perform, something happens: You become a little more comfortable onstage.
Every time something goes wrong during a show and you figure out how to recover, you get it, something happens: You become a better performer, and more confident in your abilities.
Every unsuccessful audition teaches you something. Every band teaches you something. Every musician you work with teaches you something. Every terrible gig gives you a story. Sometimes that’s all it gives you. But even that counts.
The problem is that we’re often looking for progress in the wrong place.
We look at the destination. Did I make it? No? Game over?
Maybe a better question is: Am I becoming better… Am I growing?
Persistence Doesn’t Mean Standing Still
There’s another problem with the mantra of “Never Give Up”: Sometimes you should. Not on yourself. But perhaps on the particular way you’re trying to get somewhere.
There’s nothing noble about repeatedly doing something that clearly isn’t working simply because someone told you winners never quit.
Persistence isn’t stubbornness or trying harder. Sometimes persistence means changing the plan and trying something different.
Trying another approach. Learning another skill. Joining another band. Writing different songs. Taking a break. Walking away from something that isn’t working. Or realizing that the dream itself has changed.
Sometimes perseverance isn’t continuing down the same old bumpy road. Sometimes it’s finding another road to travel.
No One Owes Us the Dream
This may be one of the hardest lessons in any creative life: You can love something with everything you have and the world still doesn’t owe you success at it.
- The audience doesn’t owe us attention.
- A venue doesn’t owe us a booking.
- The industry doesn’t owe us a career.
- People don’t owe us recognition simply because we worked hard.
- Buyers of music don’t owe us purchases of ours.
That’s uncomfortable. But I also think it’s freeing.
Because once success stops being something we’re owed in exchange for effort, we can start asking a different question: What am I getting from doing this right now?
Maybe you aren’t playing arenas. But you’re playing music with people you care about.
Maybe your original song didn’t get a million streams. But someone heard it and told you it meant something to them.
Maybe the gig wasn’t packed. But twenty people had a fantastic night.
Maybe nobody noticed the hundreds of hours you spent learning your instrument. But you noticed the moment a certain riff that once seemed impossible became easy.
Those things count too. We tend to notice the result because the result is visible. The work underneath it usually isn’t. And that’s unfortunate, because the invisible part may be where the most important things are happening.
The Dream Can Fail Without the Dreamer Being Finished
This is the part I couldn’t have understood during those 12+ years when I was trying desperately to make an original band work. At the time, success had a very specific definition.
Professional musician. Recording. Touring. Career. Fame. Fortune…
Anything short of that felt like failure. And by that definition, I failed. I’m not going to rewrite the story decades later and pretend otherwise.
But here’s what I didn’t understand:
Failure wasn’t the end of the story.
Everything I learned about music was still there. Everything I learned about performing was still there.
- The music theory.
- The audio engineering.
- The rehearsals.
- Live performances
- A bedroom AND garage full of equipment.
- The mistakes.
- The bands that didn’t work.
- The musicians I worked with.
- The people I met.
- The friends I stayed in touch with.
- Memories of good times, and bad times too.
- The experience of trying to make people work together.
- All the successes and even the disappointments.
None of it disappeared simply because I didn’t become the person my younger self imagined I would become. Those experiences came with me. And eventually, some of them became useful in ways I never could have predicted at the time.
Sometimes the dream doesn’t come true. Sometimes life answers it in a language you didn’t know how to understand yet.
My story is not over yet…
After my disheartening realization of my “failure”, I took a 16 year hiatus from music. During that time I made and grew babies with my wife, together we saw them become happy and healthy adults, ran several (non music related) businesses, continued my education in several different subjects, embarked on 3 different career paths, learned a lot along the way.
In 2016 I returned to music. Bringing all my growth and experiences with me into my new approach to it. By 2026 (time of writing this article) my band Kisstroyer USA has 9 years together and a long string of adventures and awards and lots of positive social recognition too. No record deals, no national touring…. but that’s okay. My goals have changed.
I’m getting from music what matters most to me now: Connection, self fulfillment, and fabulous experiences.
To me, that’s a huge win! And there’s a wonderful irony here: The young musician who dreamed about someday being interviewed in magazines… Decades later, instead of merely appearing in one, he created one, SoCal Music Scene Magazine.
And you know what? I’m not done playing yet, not by a long shot. And the magazine is just getting started… So there’s more experiences and wins and good times to look forward to.
It All Adds Up
Maybe that’s what perseverance really looks like. Not an endless straight line toward one predetermined and rigid definition of success.
Maybe it’s accumulation.
- Hours of practicing alone.
- Every band rehearsal.
- Each new song you write or learn.
- All the shows.
- Many mistakes.
- A few high quality friendships.
- More disappointment.
- A hard lesson.
- Every small victory, and a couple big ones.
- One spectacular failure.
- Another attempt.
- And then another…
It all adds up.
Not necessarily into fame or big money. Nor into the exact life you pictured when you were much younger.
It adds up inside you.
- Knowledge
- Experience
- Wisdom
- Confidence
- Perspective
- Relationships
- Stories
- Skills
- Resilience
And perhaps most importantly, a clearer understanding of who you are and what actually matters most to you.
The truth is… nothing worth having comes easy.
The road gets long. The grind gets heavy.
But every inch forward, drop of sweat, every small victory, and every tear you shed, every setback, every moment you choose discipline over comfort…
It all adds up.
Where Focus Goes, Energy Flows
Keep your eyes on the goal.
Block out the noise.
Show up every day, even when it’s hard… especially when it’s hard.
Keep Going, But Keep it Real
So yes, keep your eyes on the goal. Block out some of the noise. Show up. Practice. Work. Be disciplined when discipline is needed. But don’t confuse exhaustion with progress.
Don’t believe changing direction means you’ve failed. And don’t assume that because something hasn’t happened yet, you’re secretly guaranteed a breakthrough if you just suffer long enough.
There are no guarantees to success – There never were any. Instead, pay attention to what the journey is building.
Ask yourself whether you’re learning. Whether you’re growing. Whether you’re connecting. Whether you’re becoming better at what you do. Whether you’re enjoying the journey. Whether the thing you’re pursuing still matters to you. And when the answer is yes… keep going!
Not because anyone can promise you where the road will lead. Not because success is waiting around the next corner. Not because you’re necessarily “closer than you think.”
Keep going because every worthwhile mile changes the person walking it.
Some dreams come true. Some don’t. Some change so completely that years later we barely recognize them.
And sometimes the things we thought were taking us nowhere were quietly preparing us for somewhere we hadn’t imagined yet.
It all adds up.
You can give a dream everything you have and still watch it fail. Hard work is not a guarantee of success, and persistence doesn’t always lead where you thought it would. But that doesn’t mean the years were wasted, or that the dreamer failed with the dream.
Every attempt, setback, lesson, skill, relationship and mile traveled becomes part of who you are and what you’re capable of. Sometimes the dream doesn’t come true. Sometimes it changes. Sometimes it leads somewhere you never imagined. The destination may be different, but the journey still matters.
You can lose the thing you thought your life was supposed to become and still have an exciting life ahead of you worth becoming.
It all adds up, and before you know it, you’re overflowing with a life full of rich experiences, deep friendships forged in fire, and more than enough memories of good times and fun stories to last you a lifetime.
Return to September 2026 Edition
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