For most people, becoming successful in photography is a slow build. You get an assignment, and you work hard to make it great, and just maybe they'll hire you again. But even if they don't, if you made a good picture or two, you use that to secure other work.

Unfortunately, the public and the media often focus on the "Cinderella Stories" where someone becomes a seemingly overnight success (like Irving Penn, or Ryan McGinley), but that's not how it goes for most photographers (even the successful ones).

For most people it will take 10 years from when you're first getting jobs to when you feel any outward sense of success, like being known by peers outside your immediate friend group.