There is no success without struggle – The Ed Sheeran Story

A little Life Lesson – Some argue that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of your life practicing/learning something before you will become a master of it and most likely for you and I; we will have to work a crappy job alongside those first 10,000 hours but in the end you will be a master and be ready to charge people a reasonable fee for what you can offer/show/perform for them.

We wrote this article because we saw an online ‘troll’ saying Ed Sheeran didn’t deserve to be famous. It turns out Ed has done quite a bit to this point and shows just how hard some people work + how jealous online trolls can get.

Here is what Ed Sheeran did:

• Sang in the choir from age of 4
• Learned guitar from a young age (self taught for couple of years, then lessons for 3 more)
• Aged 11 met Damien Rice at a gig in Dublin, who told him to write his own music. He wrote 6 songs that night.
• Aged 14 made his first EP and played his first gig. Got a loop pedal for his Birthday.
• At 15 Auditioned & accepted for the National Youth Music Theatre and National Youth Theatre.
• Aged 16 went to London, leaving home with his guitar and a backpack full of clothes
• 2006/7 Two EPs released
• Become a guitar technician for Nizlopi (the JCB song band), sold 20 cds at their gig after warming up for them one night
• Started opening for artists such as the Noisettes & Jay Sean

• In 2009 (aged 18) Sheeran played 312 gigs and went on tour with Just Jack after his Dad showed him an article about James Morrison who did 200 gigs in a year once and told him to copy Morrison’s worth ethic.
• Feb 2010, properly started releasing EPs on iTunes, built up fan base via YouTube (SB.TV channel) etc
• Sold around £2000 from selling CDs and playing gigs but couldn’t get signed
• Spent the £2000 on plane ticket to LA, USA
• 2010 got the attention of Example who asked him to tour with him & played open mic nights across LA and got Jamie Foxx to notice him.
• Ambassador for Youth Music Theatre.
• Became successful and continued

Yes he was middle class and yes he may have had opportunities that some of us could only dream of but his parents banned him from watching TV as a kid, poor bastard! He worked long hours for years but in the end some would say it was all worthwhile.

40 minute documentary:

This article is part of ‘Improve yourself‘ a category designed to show ways people may scam you, how companies trick you and most importantly how you can improve your life by doing something you love doing.