If you’re looking for some very literal sound advice on fundraising, listen up to Isaiah Chavous, CEO of Noctal, an AI-powered sound design platform with a human touch. Noctal offers a library of 200,000+ sound effects cleared for commercial use — curing a massive headache for digital creators.

With a seed round of $2 million and a previous track record of brokering deals with Michael Bay, Elton John, and Snoop Dogg, Isaiah knows how to convince people that his vision is worth believing in. Recently, he joined us on How Success Happens to share his formula for staying calm under pressure, bouncing back from devastating disaster, and building something bigger than yourself. Listen here and read on for three game-changing insights from our conversation.

Three Key Insights

1. Transform Anxiety Into Your Secret Weapon

When facing high-stakes pitches and moments of intense pressure, Isaiah shares his best advice: stop fighting your nerves. “Converting the idea or the feeling of anxiety into excitement is the first thing to do,” he explains. “And then the other part is just having absolutely blind confidence in yourself for a moment in time, even if it’s manufactured. Telling yourself that you can do something often means you can.” 

Takeaway: Don’t try to eliminate fear — reframe it as fuel.

2. Redefine Rejection as Redirection, Not Rejection

One of the toughest parts of entrepreneurship is hearing “no.” Isaiah’s breakthrough? Changing how you interpret it. “If you actually care about what you’re building, you’ve created something from a personal place. It’s your brain child. It’s your baby. And so hearing no is often taken in the same way, very personal,” he says. But here’s the reframe: “Start with the understanding that everyone’s going to say no and then start with the idea that it’s not personal. It’s not an attack on your vision. It’s just simply somebody who’s not a part of it right now.” When you finally hear “yes,” everything shifts.

Takeaway: Before pitching, remind yourself that a no is a “no for now,” not a final verdict on your vision.

3. Your Team Is Your Resilience Plan

When Isaiah’s house burned down in the Palisades fires during the critical scaling phase of his company, everything changed. But what saved him wasn’t his product or his pitch deck — it was the people around him. “I realized that building something with people who are your support systems, both creatively, socially, mentally, or practically, is really what matters.” Isaiah’s proudest 2025 moment came when his team locked themselves into an Airbnb for two weeks to launch Noctal’s beta. “An idea that started as an abstract thought turned into a group of unwavering, very talented, important people all working together for one mission. And that’s surreal.”

Takeaway: Build your company around people who have unwavering conviction in your vision—when your energy dips, they lift the load, and vice versa.

Two Great Ways to Learn More

1. Follow Isaiah Chavous on Instagram and check out Noctal’s 200,000+ sound library.
2. Learn how another entrepreneur turned his obsession with sound into a big business.

One Question to Ponder

Do you have a mindset strategy that helps you cope with rejection?

Send your answer to howsuccesshappens@entrepreneur.com and your response might be featured on a future episode of How Success Happens.

About How Success Happens

Each episode of How Success Happens shares the inspiring, entertaining, and unexpected journeys that influential leaders in business, the arts, and sports traveled on their way to becoming household names. It’s a reminder that behind every big-time career, there is a person who persisted in the face of self-doubt, failure, and anything else that got thrown in their way.

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