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Oscar-winning filmmaker Spike Lee knows first-hand that success doesn\u2019t come easy\u2014<\/strong>after early rejections from film schools, he spent decades fighting for his place in Hollywood. Now, speaking on Michelle Obama\u2019s podcast, the Oscar award-winning star is warning Gen Z not to fall for the myth of overnight success, but instead to focus on perseverance and finding the career that gets them out of bed without hitting snooze.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n To the outside world, success can look deceptively effortless\u2014leaving aspiring leaders desperate to find the shortcut to the top. However, according to the Academy Award-winning filmmaker Spike Lee, the fast lane is all a lie<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no such thing as overnight success, because a lot of people, they say that, but they want to leave out that they were giving blood,\u201d Lee recently revealed on Michelle Obama\u2019s podcast, IMO<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even the former first lady<\/a> backed him up, noting that \u201cthey don\u2019t tell you the back story, the dark side.\u201d<\/p>\n For Lee, the battle with success is personal. Even though he\u2019s known today for being an Oscar and Emmy award-winning filmmaker\u2014directing hits like Malcolm X and BlacKkKlansman\u2014it took decades of fighting tooth-and-nail for his seat at the table.<\/p>\n And because people tend to agree it takes 10 years to become an \u201covernight\u201d success, the true secret to standing out may lie in finding a job that fuels passion every day for years to come.<\/p>\n \u201cI tell my students, [the] first day of class, \u2018I hope you are here because this is what you want to do the rest of your life because you want, because this makes you happy,\u2019\u201d Lee explained on Obama\u2019s podcast.<\/p>\n Once you\u2019re able to find that lane, getting up every morning and chipping away at success won\u2019t feel like a hassle\u2014it\u2019ll feel like a joy, he added.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you have a job occupation that you love\u2014that\u2019s a home run, that\u2019s a three-pointer, that\u2019s an 80-yard field goal\u2014you don\u2019t need to hit the alarm four times to get up. You do that when you hit a job you hate. When I\u2019m shooting a film, I don\u2019t have an alarm.\u201d<\/p>\n As a student himself, Lee faced setbacks left and right. After graduating from Morehouse College in 1979, he decided to pursue film school, but he quickly realized the path many Hollywood stars took wasn\u2019t going to work for him.<\/p>\n \u201cThat whole thing of\u2026moving out to L.A. and working your way up from the mailroom, that don\u2019t work for Black people,\u201d he told LinkedIn<\/a> in 2023.<\/p>\n Lee was rejected from film schools on the West Coast, including the University of Southern California and the American Film Institute. He eventually landed at New York University to work on his master\u2019s in fine arts (MFA), but even then, he admitted<\/a> he was almost shown the door in the early 1980s after poor evaluations for his short film addressing racism in the industry.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not like you\u2019re just out there, and the hand of God is going to come down from the heavens and say, \u2018You are the next one.\u2019 That is BS,\u201d he added in the LinkedIn<\/a> interview.<\/p>\n Instead, hard work is what pays off\u2014and it did for the 68-year-old. After making a name for himself in Hollywood working with stars like Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson, Lee rose to become one of the nation\u2019s most well-known filmmakers. By 2014, he was named a tenured professor at NYU, and he is now the artistic director for the school\u2019s graduate film program.<\/p>\n Looking back at Lee\u2019s story, it might seem that discovering his passion for film early made his path to success easier. But that\u2019s not always the case\u2014many of today\u2019s leaders spent years searching before finding their true calling and seemingly being \u201covernight\u201d successes.<\/p>\n For example, Amazon<\/a> CEO Andy Jassy<\/a> first worked in sportscasting and music management before joining the tech giant as a marketing manager seven years after obtaining his undergraduate degree. The company\u2019s founder, Jeff Bezos<\/a>, also had a nontraditional start to success: flipping burgers at McDonalds.<\/p>\n Bob Iger<\/a>, the CEO of Walt Disney<\/a>, spent his career\u2019s early days predicting the weather for a local news station in upstate New York before later finding a passion for media management.<\/p>\n Ultimately, no matter how long it takes for you to discover and reach your career goals, Lee said it\u2019s paramount to never give up just because it gets hard.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are going to be times where you want to cry and you want to quit,\u201d Lee said at the LinkedIn summit. \u201cYou can\u2019t quit. You\u2019ve got to keep going.\u201d<\/p>\nA success story decades in the making<\/h2>\n
Successful people who took the long way<\/h2>\n