Getting lucky
How to make your own luck
I know most entrepreneurs may not admit this but there is a certain amount of luck that goes into what we do. While hard work, thinking smart and determination has a lot to do with our success, they are not stand alone factors.
After all, today’s society is full of people who work themselves to death, and still fall short of achieving whatever they set out to achieve. So I am not above admitting the role luck has played in my career; it has landed me jobs, a good support system and two startups.
Hard work is an essential part of any business success story, but if you really look back on the big turning points in your career you will probably realize that it was luck or some kind of X Factor that made the difference. That being said, luck doesn’t just fall on your lap either, most lucky breaks come to those working towards them or to those who know how to use luck to their advantage.
After having a long look back at my own streaks of luck, I came to the conclusion that there had to be a method to this madness, a way in which someone can work towards luck or learn to utilize it when it presents itself.
I know I got you there 🤣 with that Clickbaity title. I apologise for the misleading title. While I can’t get you laid 😔, this will help you get lucky on your Business 🤠!
My experience with luck 🍀
My career has been a series of unexpected turns, moments in time when everything abruptly changed and helped me move on to the next level. Something I noticed was that most of these changes came from the outside, with my hard work only playing a supporting role.
Lets take for instance CabbageApps; we managed to hit our lucky break early on, with our very first customer bringing in two projects. The opportunity this created allowed us to run the company for a while without having to worry too much about our cash flow. This was something none of us expected, or at the very least a level that we did not expect to reach so soon. And by the end of 2017- I was raising capital for my second venture, Alakazam via CabbageApps.
This is when my next lucky break came in. Around the same time I was raising capital for CabbageApps, I was also speaking to investors with regards to funding Alakazam. I probably spoke to 20 or 30 investors who ended up turning me away because they did not understand Software as a Service or subscription economy, nor did they understand content marketing; they were more interested in traditional business ideas.
A few months passed, and in February of 2018 I came across an article while browsing the news about an investor who had funded several startups in Sri Lanka. This piqued my interest, so I decided to give the guy a shout on my LinkedIn; a surface level gesture which had very little thought put into it. However, this random choice ended up with us meeting and Alakazam went into its fundraising phase by the first week of April.
Looking back on my 10 year career, I noticed similar moments of luck that defined my career path forever. So this got me thinking, is there an actual art behind getting lucky?
The Art behind getting lucky 🤹🏾♀️
Right off the bat, I realized that getting lucky in business has two main variables, the right place and the right time. While these are not the only variables, they are definitely the most important ones. So what do these two variables mean?
Right Place 🏦
For me the ‘right place’ represents the ecosystem you live in; this could include the place you work, the company you keep, and where you hang out on the internet. It’s all about creating an ecosystem that will stimulate your chances of being in the ‘right place’ and who you meet once you’re there.
Right Time ⌚
This brings me to the next variable, the ‘right time’. Now this one is a bit trickier to emulate since it’s purely based on randomness. The best thing to do here is to focus on the ‘right time’ when it presents itself to you. For me, optimizing this right time meant accelerating my own timeline, instead of changing it. However, for this to work you need to have already put in a significant amount of time and effort into your craft, so that when it is the ‘right time’ you are able to make use of it.
At the end of the day, it is not only about these two variables, but also the work you’ve put in prior to them and how you can use them when they present themselves.
As the saying goes “When the student is ready, the Master Appears”.
I will be going deeper into how you can get your workflow to a level where you are able to reach that ‘right place’ in a future article.
If you’re a founder looking for advice from someone who has been in your shoes, follow me on my LinkedIn and get updated on more entrepreneurial hacks that will aid your business.
