I sold [MicroSolutions] after 7 years and made enough money to take time off and have a whole lot of fun.
Back then I can remember vividly people telling me how lucky I was to sell my business at the right time.
Then when I took that money and started trading technology stocks that were in the areas that MicroSolutions focused on, I remember vividly being told how lucky I was to have expertise in such a hot area, as technology stocks started to trade up.
Of course, no one wanted to comment on how lucky I was to spend time reading software manuals, or Cisco Router manuals, or sitting in my house testing and comparing new technologies, but that’s a topic for another blog post.
Kevin Ball
on 07 Apr 11So true. Everyone sees and envies the results, few see the work required to achieve them. You work your tail off so that if there is an opportunity you can take advantage of it. The particular opportunity may be luck, but the fact that you can take advantage of it is entirely due to the hours you’ve put in preparing.
CRC
on 07 Apr 11There’s that old saying that goes something like: “The harder you work, the luckier you get.”
Don Schenck
on 07 Apr 11Wish more people understood this.
Young girl at work (to me): “You’re so lucky to be going on a cruise!”
Me: “It’s not luck! I worked and saved my money!”
Luck got me started (being born in America was beyond my doing); Hard work, intelligence and diligence is carrying me.
Mark
on 08 Apr 11I’m wondering if calling people lucky is really just an excuse we make up sometimes to let ourselves off the hook. If we consider it luck, then we can convince ourselves to go sit around and wait for our lucky break.
I’m glad to know it doesn’t work that way and hard work does pay off. Sometimes it even lands you an NBA franchise. Nice work Mark Cuban.
Mark Wilden
on 08 Apr 11Jillions of people work hard. Very few of them get rich.
Matt
on 08 Apr 11Yes it takes hard work to be successful but Mark Cuban is also very lucky.
Jason Falk
on 08 Apr 11Maybe there is just a big difference between working hard and hard work.
Dan
on 08 Apr 11There’s a very good saying that goes: “Luck is what happens when opportunity and preparation meets”.
Wayne
on 08 Apr 11@37signals
Since Cuban “sold-out”, I assume you don’t have any respect for him. Right.
Deltaplan
on 08 Apr 11Anyway, you have to admit that most people who are working hard (and indeed, most people are working hard) won’t have anything more than an “average” success in their professional life.
Hard work is necessary, but not sufficient to reach a success way above the average.
What makes the difference then ? First, working hard on the right subject. It can be a matter of luck, but it can also be that you’ve work hard earlier to determine what the right subject was. Then, it’s all about relationships, meeting the right people at the right time, etc… (and of course, this includes being born in the right country, at the right time, with the right skin color, sometimes with the right race, etc…)
I would be foolish not to acknowledge that if I wasn’t a white male, born in Europe in the 70s, I would have close to 0% chance to have achieved what I have.
Tomas Sancio
on 08 Apr 11Nowadays, Mark Cuban is considered lucky. Back then, whatever he sold to Yahoo was supposed to be worth the money they paid.
GregT
on 08 Apr 11This reminds me of a totally awesome combined Gates and Buffett talk I saw them give at the U of W. Someone asked Buffett to what he ascribed his success and he said something along the lines of ‘being lucky enough to be in the 5% of people that get born in the USA’.
(Disclaimer: I’m not American and rah-rah Americanism kind of makes me puke, but I don’t think that’s what he meant, and I don’t think there is any denying that being born there is a lot luckier than being born in, say, Somalia or Zimbabwe).
Andrew
on 08 Apr 11@GregT,
That’s partially Buffett’s style though, a sort of fake humility thing. He is right that being born in the US helped a lot, but there are 330 million other American’s not as wealthy as him.
Luck plays a role, choosing the correct market plays a role, being an intelligent person plays a role, and then there are a million other variables that everyone else has been trying to figure out for years to be successful.
Putting yourself in the right position to be successful is basically all you can do. As my father, or was that Scrooge McDuck always said, Work Smarter, not Harder. I think if you do both and your smart enough to identify future market growth, you’ll be okay.
TJ
on 08 Apr 11A lot has to come together for someone to be that successful. Some of it is in your control, and some of it is not.
Mark Wilden
on 09 Apr 11@Andrew: But most of those 300 million other Americans are better off than most of the other people on this planet (starting with the Chinese, living in a totalitarian state).
I go even farther than Buffett. I’m lucky enough to be one of a fraction of a percent of humans who is a) American, b) living in the 21st century instead of the 11th century, c) smart enough to be a computer programmer who makes lots of money having fun, d) not a member of any persecuted group…the list goes on and on.
Needless to say, I’m not a libertarian. :)
David Andersen
on 11 Apr 11That’s needless to say why? I don’t follow the connection.
Fabio Nascimento
on 11 Apr 11Here in Brazil, we have a little term for that “As pessoas só enxergam as pingas que tomamos, mas os tombos ninguém enxerga”. Let me translate, i think this will not make sense for american people, but… “everyone can see what we drinking and get drunk, but nobody can see our falls”
Mark Wilden
on 11 Apr 11My impression is that libertarians think you make your own fortune in the world; therefore, there is no need for measures to level the playing field. I, on the other hand, think that luck plays a huge part in one’s life, and therefore I support efforts to make things a little easier for the unlucky, at the expense of the lucky ones (like me).
This discussion is closed.