Smart or Lucky?
by Seth Godin 
Conventional wisdom tells us that people who succeed in business, get great jobs or build great companies are special. They’re smart. We should envy them, copy them and read about them in magazines.
But what if they’re just plain lucky?
What if the entrepreneur who hit it big on the Internet or the ad agency VP who’s pulling down $660,000 a year are just lucky gamblers?
Note: The lucky part of that phrase doesn’t matter an awful lot. What matters is the second half -- the gambler.
Let’s take a look at nature. Are penguins and squirrels smart because they didn’t turn out to be rats and slugs? Probably not. It’s just the way it happened. They evolved differently even though they started from the same raw material as their less cuddly cousins.
Should they brag about their cuteness or success at evolving? Not really. Along the way, they got lucky. They had some good mutations and evolved into creatures little kids adore.
The Same Thing Is True of You and Your Career
You’re evolving. Every day at work, you’re becoming a different sort of employee. You make decisions and take chances, and the outcomes create a different you. Perhaps it creates a you who is less talented, less optimistic and less flexible than previously. However, it just may create a you who is far more likely to succeed.
These decisions are yours. It’s up to you to choose what chances to take, which interviews to go on, which products to launch and which resume to send out. But once you’ve done your best, it’s all you can do.
So, Smart or Lucky?
You need to be smart to be lucky. You make your own luck by following three basic principles:
Only choose to compete in areas where you are significantly better than the competition. Prepare in whatever way necessary to be over-prepared for the first principle. Set up your life so you can happily survive to try again if you fail at being #1. Michael Dell built a great company in his dorm room. Part of what qualified him to even attempt to build his company was his ability to focus and deliver on his promise to customers. Microsoft, Apple or IBM could have easily crushed him. They didn’t -- that part was luck. The rest was Dell’s ability to take the chance. If he had failed, he wouldn’t have given up. He’d probably use the experience to try something new. Dell qualified because he was really good at step one. And he survived, because he prepared himself with step three. (When you start a business in college, your overhead is a lot lower than IBM’s.)
All too often, people with great attitudes forget about step two. They believe that just because they’re willing to try, they have a shot. That’s not a plan, it’s a dream. You won’t get lucky unless you prepare for luck, and you do that by training like a maniac to be better than anyone else.
As you go about your job search, find opportunities where you’re asked to take a chance, but where the chance won’t kill you if it fails. In fact, the best chances are the ones that not only don’t kill you, but that improve your skills and credentials for the next chance.
What this usually means is you need to make a lifestyle adjustment -- a smaller house, a smaller car, fewer restaurants. Building up your nest egg while you can makes it more likely you’ll take the chances you need to get where you want to go tomorrow.
So here’s how you get smart: Plan on getting lucky. You get lucky by cutting your overhead so the bad breaks don’t wipe you out of the game, and by studying and learning so you’re the best at what you do. Then roll the dice enough times until you win.
The world has changed dramatically. The great jobs don’t look great. And the great opportunities are the ones with the least security, the lowest pay and the most risk. Are you ready for that?
Seth Godin is the bestselling author of Survival Is Not Enough.