How To Create Your Own Luck

January 23rd, 2012

Field of shamrocks

A few nights ago I was talking with my wife Kookkai about goals and plans. What I told her was that I have a single long-term goal and many short-term plans. My long-term goal is to create as many opportunities for she and our daughter Palamee as I possibly can. How I create those opportunities can change, which is where having short-term plans come into play.

The adage “luck is where preparation meets opportunity” is one I live my life by.

In order to create your own luck you need to stay prepared through forward motion, continual learning and assessment of self and environment.

How I Built A $500,000 Business In Less Than Two Years

More than a few years ago I was minding my own business in one of my computer science classes as Rollins College. My friend Bill Brasher walked up to me and asked me if I’d heard about this hot new web framework called Ruby on Rails. At the time I was a PHP developer and hadn’t heard of what most simply call “Rails.” Bill said I should look into it.

At the time I didn’t think about it too much.

Then a few months later as I was wading through some horrendous PHP code I yelled (to myself) that there had to be a better way. That’s when I remembered what Bill had said about Ruby on Rails. And that’s when my life changed, big time.

Within six months I had enough work to quit what would be my last IT job and go full time with my web development business – Atlantic Dominion Solutions.

18 months later the company had 9 full-time employees and was grossing more than $500,000 a year in revenue. Not bad for no formal business education.

How My Luck Was Created

I won’t bore you with the years of events that led up to that single mention by Bill that forever changed my life, but needless to say I recognized that Ruby on Rails would be huge, and I was fortunate to get in on the ground floor. That’s the opportunity.

In my previous IT business I determined that whatever business I built next I had to be able to do from anywhere. That led me to another level of geekery – programming. After a few years of teaching myself how to program with PHP and building a number of applications for clients I was looking for something better. That was the preparation.

I wish I could sit here and tell you that I had planned the whole thing but that would be a load of crap. Life events led me to be able to take advantage of an opportunity which I took big time.

That’s luck.

So the question now is how can you create your own luck?

Make Fewer Goals, Ask More Questions, Keep Your Eyes And Ears Open

Goals: gotta have them. Or so we’re told by pretty much everyone in our lives. But hey we’re entrepreneurs! Let’s challenge that status quo and see things a different way.

For me that different way is this: make fewer goals, have more short-term plans, and ask more questions around your business. Then aggressively seek the answers. And as you continue your forward motion continuously review what you’ve learned, and keep your eyes and ears open to what others are saying and what’s going on around you.

Work with your subconscious to connect the dots between the disparate bits of information you gather. Not sure how to do that? We’ll talk about that in an upcoming post.

Prepare yourself, look for opportunities, and when they appear jump on them. That’s luck calling.