Many people hear and say “good luck”! You may be going to an appointment or visiting a cantankerous relative and in either case you hear good luck as you walk out the door. What is luck? Is it some sort of cosmic power source that someone is tapping for you or is it a spiritual plea to God? No, luck is really not a thing. Certainly some people may have the Midas touch and all they touch turns to gold but you can’t seriously think that there is some sort of luck god that is bestowing good fortune upon you, can you?
Here’s the truth: Luck is when preparedness meets opportunity. Seriously, do you think Richard Branson is lucky? Jeff Bezos? Elon Musk? No, they are not lucky they are prepared and when an opportunity presents itself, they take action. We all hear so many success stories about many of these highly successful people but what we don’t hear is their failures.
Success and failure go hand in hand. If you can be prepared and able to recognize an opportunity, you will be able to act on that opportunity and the odds of probability will dictate that your success will be as the foundation of their success they can add layers of preparedness to enhance success.
Take a sales person for example, They are trained and seasoned in sales and closing. They know about assumptive closes and can recognize buying signs and signals. They know not to speak as much as they listen and are able to stop talking when closing questions are asked. This is trained and seasoned and acts as the foundation. Examples of the layers they can add would be researching their prospect, what are their big projects, who are their main customers and what is their competition doing. Another layer would be to research the person, look at their social media and find out some of their interests to determine if you can develop common ground. When you walk away from the meeting with a contract then I would submit that you are far more prepared than lucky.
I will agree that a broken clock has the right time twice a day and that a blind squirrel will get luck y every now and then with an acorn but for the most part, when you are prepared for what you are doing and have the proper training, you will encounter success not luck.