Celebrity gossip sites, Instagram and the tabloid press are a constant reminder to us all of other people’s success.

If you’re waiting on success it’s worth keeping yourself in check and remembering that it doesn’t happen overnight.

Often a long and gruelling process.

Take for example the hit TV show ‘Mad Men’. Its 92 episodes ran for seven seasons – reaching audiences across the world.

It’s widely considered to be one of the best TV shows ever made.

But, Mad Men’s success wasn’t sudden. It took a long time.

The show’s head writer, Matthew Weiner, had been working on the concept for ten years before the pilot aired.

He was working as a researcher and staff writer for other people’s TV shows. 

But all he really wanted to do was work on his own series.

The future wasn’t looking good though. Weiner faced rejection after rejection. 

Company after company telling him that they didn’t think audiences would want to see a show about advertising executives.

So, night after night, once he’d finished his day job he’d sit in his study working on his ‘advertising project’.

Legend has it he’d even carry a copy of the pilot script in a briefcase with him wherever he went. Just in case.

Often he’d attend dinner parties and socials with his successful wife. 

When he’d tell her friends that he was a writer, they’d ask if he’d written anything they might have seen…his answer was always no.

And then…quite suddenly…after talking to enough of the right people…his script landed on the desk of someone who liked it. An influential someone, at that.

The rest was history. TV history. Now, Matthew Weiner is one of the most successful TV writers of all time and has definitely written something that you’ll have heard of.