3 success-mindset lessons from “90 Day Fiancé” creator Matt Sharp:

• When a business or career goal falls short of expectations, pay close attention to why, to identify opportunities that reflect a more authentic fit. ‘The jobs that don’t work out are just as valuable as the ones that do,’ he said.
• A harsh inner critic can lead to quitting. ‘Sometimes the biggest enemy of your project is you,’ Sharp said. Instead, tolerate the discomfort of doubt to see a project through.
• Recognize the business possibilities staring you right in the face — and maximize them. ‘Sometimes you need to bring all your talent and energy, and creativity to [where you are] … and good things will happen.’

Matt Sharp’s entrepreneurial impulses seem etched in his DNA.

The media mogul behind the “90 Day Fiancé” hit reality TV series on TLC has been building his creator-meets-business-hustler bona fides since his days selling candy at soccer camp in the 6th grade.

For Sharp, a lifetime of lessons learned hawking gumballs, running small businesses like a window-washing service in high school, and honing his entertainment-industry craft to follow his muse—rising from a CBS page to a writer for the network—proved critical to building Sharp Entertainment, the multimillion-dollar media empire behind the “90 Day Fiancé” franchise that’s now part of Sony Pictures Television.

Here, Sharp shares with CO— the critical experiences, bold pivots, bouts of crushing self-doubt, and hard-won epiphanies like, “Every opportunity you need is where you are right now,” that ultimately led to business success.

Bit by the business bug at soccer camp: ‘I was selling more candy, and I was obsessed’

In the summer of his 12^th year, Matt Sharp and his mother made a pitstop to a Wegmans supermarket on their way to soccer camp. She was feeling generous. “My mom said, ‘Hey, get some candy from the bulk section,’” Sharp remembered. “So, I got this huge bag of candy thinking I was going to have it at soccer camp, and what I realized is that I could sell it.”

Sharp started selling fellow campers fistfuls for 50 cents a pop.

“It was bulk candy, so there was a profit margin on every handful, and soon everybody was stopping by my dorm room at soccer camp,” he said.

That summer, Sharp’s mom effectively became his supplier, “and I was selling more candy, and I was obsessed,” he said.

The takeaway: Don’t be held back by the notion that ‘I don’t know how to do this’

That sweet success whet Sharp’s appetite for more. When in high school buddies got jobs at the mall, he started window-washing and driveway-sealing businesses. “I was a kid working with adults negotiating contracts,” he said.

Then came a T-shirt venture in college that crystallized his love of both business and creativity —designing clothing, in this case—where he intuited a market opportunity. “I was selling Grateful Dead T-shirts at the University of Vermont,” Sharp said. “I knew my audience.”

There were valuable lessons in how to maximize events, like planning T-shirt sales around parents’ visits, and facing business risks. He thought then: “‘I really hope we can sell these because they’re costing me $4 apiece.’” (The business ended up making Sharp thousands.)

Be it selling T-shirts or washing windows, Sharp hatched these businesses with zero expertise. “Some people are held back by the notion that, ‘I don’t know how to do this,’” he said. “I guess I had the confidence that I could,” he said.

[Read: How 3 Franchise Entrepreneurs Built Multimillion-Dollar Businesses]

Flipping the script to follow his muse and hone a craft: The law ‘was not what I wanted to do’

In his free time as a young man, “I was always making videos with friends,” Sharp said, including “montages of us performing various dunks on a dramatically lowered basketball hoop edited to music.”

But he couldn’t imagine that buzz from creative play could ever be more than a hobby.

The plan was always to go to law school. In college, Sharp landed a prestigious internship with a New York State Supreme Court judge. “What I realized was it was not what I want to do,” he said. “I probably wanted to work in television.”

Sharp ceded to his muse and moved to New York City. He secured an internship as a CBS page, a coveted right-of-passage for many a TV-industry hopeful. He worked the internship in the mornings and the “Late Show with David Letterman” in the afternoons, “juggling two jobs to get the experience,” he said.

Months later, Sharp got hired as an assistant at CBS News, where he moved up the ranks in producer roles at newsmagazine shows including “Public Eye with Bryant Gumbel.” “It was very exciting,” he said.

The takeaway: The plans ‘that don’t work out are just as valuable as the ones that do’

The clarity that came from closing the door on a law career freed Sharp to pursue a private hankering to work in TV. “The pivotal moment for me — and I always tell people and my children this — is the jobs that don’t work out, where you realize this is not what you want to do, they’re just as valuable as the ones that do.”

‘I’m really in the deep end of the pool … I’d never been a writer before’

But while the TV business excited Sharp, “journalism wasn’t entirely [his] passion,” he said.

And when the Gumbel show ended, “I was in a rut,” he said. “I felt like I wanted to write, although I’d never been a writer before.”

Sharp managed to land a writing job at VH1 for Video Timeline, writing biographies of music artists during the heyday of that kind of programming.

“I was hired, and I immediately felt, ‘Wow, I’m really in the deep end of the pool.’”

The showrunner assigned Sharp his first script — a bio of either Mariah Carey or Peter Gabriel, Sharp can’t remember which. But he does remember the dark night of the soul he spent writing it, badgered by a harsh inner critic.

Working on it, he thought, “This is garbage, this is so cheesy, this is awful,” he said.

Nonetheless, he handed in the script at 3 a.m.

When the showrunners summoned Sharp to a meeting that day, “I thought I was going to get fired,” he said. Instead, they said, “‘This is the best script we’ve ever seen,’” Sharp said. “That was a turning point.”

The takeaway: Pushing through debilitating self-doubt to see a project through

Of course, not all projects will turn out that well, but that’s almost beside the point, Sharp said. “The doubt that makes you say, ‘It’s bad, I’m going to quit,” is all too common.

“When you’re working on something, sometimes the biggest enemy of your project is you,” he said. The idea is to tolerate the discomfort “and persevere through it.”