"It May Be Lucky, But It's Not an Accident"

“It may be lucky, but it's not an accident.” – Chris Sacca

I think it's safe to say we've all known someone or been the one who talks about how lucky someone successful is.

Like if you were to look at someone like Chris Sacca, a very successful investor, and saw that he invested in Twitter, Uber, Instagram, etc., you might say he got really lucky.

The problem is, we usually don't know how much failure led to the success someone has.

We see just the highlights in their Wikipedia page or their Instagram feeds, and think they just got lucky or never make a bad decision. It's a completely false narrative.

Success is a numbers game in most cases

Can we get lucky? Yes, but it's more of a numbers game than anything else.

Unless you're born with parents who make you an instant millionaire or something, you have to play the numbers game to get lucky.

What does that mean? It means you have to work a certain amount on the right things before you find that big breakthrough.

Examples:

You need to read and learn a certain amount on a given subject you want to master.
You need to put in a certain amount of hours to get the necessary experience.
You need to stick with something long enough to develop the right habits.

Volume is something a lot of people fail to mention when it comes to getting lucky on a business deal or investment.

Instead of thinking people just get lucky, look at it like odds. Your odds will never be perfect, but you can do everything in your power to improve them to make good luck more likely.

What improving your luck boils down to

After beating my head against a wall for a few years before finally finding success in the blogging and YouTube worlds, I believe you should work on two main things daily to increase your odds of being successful:

Education
Work experience

If you become more intelligent in a field and gain valuable experience on a daily basis, you will dramatically improve your likelihood of getting lucky.

Chris Sacca will probably tell you the same thing. There are many investments that turned out great for him, but there are also many that failed.

I encourage you to listen to him (or any other successful person) talk about that in any long-form podcast episode or interview. Here are two interviews with Chris Sacca from the Tim Ferris Show:

You'll learn a lot and realize that you don't have to rely on getting lucky. You can just increase your odds of success a little every day.