What percentage of success can be attributed to luck?

I had a conversation recently with an entrepreneur who sold his business for a life-changing amount of money in his 40s. I asked him what the biggest takeaway has been from growing, scaling and selling his business.

Now that he was out of the business and had millions in the bank his biggest realization was how much luck was involved in his success. Yes, he worked hard, but so do a lot of other people.

I appreciate his self-awareness and humility. It’s easy to deny how much luck plays into the outcomes of our lives when things go our way.

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“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”     

I take this Seneca quote to mean that there is an equation to create more luck.

Sahil Bloom has a phrase that sums this concept up well - increasing your luck surface area.

So what is the equation to increasing our luck surface area?

Preparation

The ideal life is an endless cycle of becoming the person you want to be. The balance of being content but never complacent puts us in a place of continuous growth.

The starting point is a clear definition of what success means for us. From there, we determine the direction we want to go - who we want to be in the future.

Then we hone our skillset to enable us to move in that direction.

Opportunity

Opportunity is a more difficult variable because it’s further from our control. But I think the reality is that we are often the ones who are creating our opportunities. 

Good opportunities initially pay us less than we think we’re worth. Or require us to invest upfront before we have a chance to earn anything from them.

Good opportunities are often small. Sometimes they look like work. 

Equation for Luck

If luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, I would venture to guess that luck makes up ⅓ of our success in life.

When you look back on the great stories of successful people there are chance encounters with the right people, a great parent, being born in the right place at the right time and a ton of other small but very significant elements of luck that take place in their lives.

These things are out of our control, that’s why it is called luck. But we can increase our luck surface area by knowing where we want to go and seek out every opportunity to help us get there.