What’s the ingredient to success nobody wants to talk about?
There's a major ingredient to success in business that we often don't want to talk about.
I mean, half of all new businesses fail in the first 5 years.
60% of new restaurants fail in their first year.
75% of TV pilot episodes never turn into series.
85% of new CPG product launches fail.
Often, the reason for their failures — and other companies' success — is a big, fat, steamy scoop of luck.
But we don't like talking about luck in business.
Why? Well, for several of reasons:
🍀 CONTROL. We don't like the idea that our fate might be out of our control.
🍀 CAUSATION. Our brain craves cause-&-effect explanations. Even nonsensical ones (lucky socks, superstitions) are better than nothing. So business success must have a concrete cause you can point to..
🍀 HARD WORK. When we bust our ass, we want to get credit for our success. Indeed, most business success stories include a ton of ass-busting. But for every entrepreneur or actor or chef who's busted their ass to make it big, there are maybe 100 or 1,000 who have worked just as hard and didn't succeed. Hard work is usually a necessary factor, but it's often not sufficient.
🍀 ADVICE. "Just hope you get lucky" is not something a Motivational Thought Leader will make money telling you.
🍀 FACE. It can be embarrassing to luck into great success, especially if you inherited it. Many people who were "born on third base say they hit a triple." or downplay the help their status or inheritance gave them. (I started with “a small $10MM loan from my dad…”)
🍀 MYTHOLOGY. Especially in the US, we're steeped in the classic rags-to-riches, pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps, "Horatio Alger" story of success.
🍀 MOTIVATION. This one's big: if you think success is mostly due to luck, you're not very motivated to work hard, or try new things, or take risks.
So some lessons:
Realize luck is a huuuuuuuuuge factor in most success stories.
Be wary of people pointing to a specific cause that a business boomed.
Nonetheless, keep believing you do have control over your future.
Keep busting your ass. *sigh*.