if you're willing to spend 10 years working on a thing persistently and thoughtfully and curiously all along while talking with people and updating what you know based on new information, you basically become top 1% of whatever that thing is. even if you're not an A+ performer,

the knowledge n experience you accumulate from all of that trial-and-error is incredibly valuable, worth sharing, an act of public service. it could be anything. 10 years of working out. 10 years of playing guitar. whatever it is, if you're conscientious, deliberate, experimental

10 years of honestly-and-critically examined failure is its own kind of success. i should probably caveat that theoretically there might be some subset of people who somehow find a way to refuse to learn or grow from any of it...

the important thing is to take notes as you go, report your findings, your hypotheses, your beliefs, expectations, assumptions, what went wrong, what surprised you, etc