Nobody Wants to Hear That You Got Lucky

Spend enough time listening to podcasts or scrolling through advice from people who've "made it," and you'll notice a theme. A lot of it's about hustle, efficiency, and creating your own success through sheer will and skill. There's another strand too, albeit small, that leans toward humility and the idea that you're not fully in control of the outcome, no matter how hard you work. I've been sitting with both of these angles for a while now, not just from what I'm hearing, but from the questions I get asked, socially and professionally, about how I built what I've built. My instinct is to first point out that the question should actually focus on “we” instead of “me.” I may be the Founder, but that’s just one role, and in order for a business to develop, it requires a number helping hands along the way. Secondly, my genuine belief is that success is not a story just of skill and determination, or something that’s completely out of our control. Neither of these versions tells the whole story on its own.

I can point to a handful of moments in my business that, if you played them back, were pure happenstance. Anything from a conversation that could have gone a hundred different ways to an organization putting out a request for work that fit exactly what we offer. None of it was earned in the moment, it just happened. But none of it would have mattered either, if I had not already put in the work to be ready for it.

As a business owner, if someone hears my story and assumes I just got lucky, I would tell them, “Yeah, probably, to be honest. You’re right. I did get lucky.” And I would also go a little further to say luck and effort can be true at the same time. I think it’s important to recognize that none of this happened in isolation. It didn’t happen without other people, and it didn’t happen without circumstances outside my control that I just happened to be ready for when they showed up.

Being ready. That’s the piece I think most people skip past when they talk about luck. When I look back at moments in my business that were pure happenstance, the reason those moments turned into something tangible was that the groundwork had already been laid. The listening to podcasts, reading books, staying connected to academic research, stewarding our organizational culture and the building of our approaches. The skill to deliver was there waiting for the opportunity to show up. Luck opens the door, but it takes preparation to walk through it and actually build something on the other side

It’s those three ingredients that all have to show up together. You need luck, skill, and real clarity about where you’re trying to go (this is your purpose). Miss any one of those three and the business stalls before it ever gets moving. You can have the clearest vision in the world and every skill imaginable, but if the right opportunity never comes, none of it turns into anything. Businesses fail every day not because the idea was bad but because the cash ran out before the right person said yes, and that kind of timing is not something any of us can fully control.

Clarify Your Why

Realistically, we have to start with why am I doing this, and why does the business need to exist in the first place? You’ve likely heard of Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why” book that breaks this down, and it’s essential to have an answer before moving forward. 

Without that answer, it's easy to start saying yes to things that pull against each other. You’ll take on a client that doesn't fit or an opportunity that looks good on paper but has nothing to do with what you actually care about. A lot of our early decisions weren't really decisions, they were reactions rather than stepping stones to where we wanted to be.

The why doesn't necessarily tell you what to do. In fact, what you do can change a lot, and it should. In Ember’s case, we said for years we'd never build surveys into our work, and now we do, because we found a way to do it that's actually human-centered. Strategic planning wasn't part of the plan either, and now it's a big part of what we do. The work we do shifts, but the reason behind it hasn't. Ember exists to Spark change through human centered work.

Waiting to Feel Ready 

The sense of feeling “ready,” in my experience, is something that is tied very closely to confidence. And confidence has an inconvenient habit of only appearing after you have already done the thing successfully. So, waiting to feel confident (or “ready”) before you start is a trap with no way out, because the confidence you are waiting for will not arrive until you have already proven to yourself that you can do it.

I like Jim Collins’s analogy to Fire Bullets, Then Cannonballs from his book Great by Choice. In essence, the idea is to picture an old warship to make this point land. Imagine a fully loaded ship, cannons ready, sailing through thick fog. You cannot see the target. The instinct might be to hold everything back until visibility clears and you can fire with total certainty. But the fog rarely lifts on its own. Instead, the smarter move is to send out smaller shots, testing the water, figuring out what is actually out there. Once something connects, once you find where the real opportunity is, that is when you commit everything you have toward it.

Waiting to feel ready is really just sitting still with all your resources locked up and hoping the fog clears before you have to act. Starting, even in small imperfect ways, is what eventually gives you the information you need to know where to aim and gain momentum.

The Flywheel Effect

I lean on the Fly Wheel Effect (again, from Jim Collins). For those that are not familiar with his work, he explains how momentum builds once things start moving. Picture a flywheel, something heavy that takes real effort to get spinning. The first push is the hardest. But if you keep applying that same effort, the second push moves it twice as far, then four times, then sixteen times, because momentum starts compounding on itself.

Early on, luck matters enormously because so many opportunities have to line up just to get that flywheel turning. As a business grows and gains reach and influence, luck does not disappear, but its weight in the equation can start to shrink. The early days are the hardest precisely because there is so little momentum to lean on yet.

Recognizing how much luck plays into early success has helped me to build resilience. If I know that a big part of getting somewhere depends on catching a break, then getting knocked down just means the right moment may not have shown up yet, rather than proof I’m on the wrong path, and I keep going because it will come. That doesn't mean I ignore the signs or the data in front of me. It just means I try to stay focused on the next best step I can take today, rather than getting stuck deciding whether the whole thing is working or not based on one setback.

Both Things Are True

None of this makes for a tidy story, and I've stopped trying to force it into one. Luck got me here. So did the work, the preparation, and the willingness to start before I felt ready for any of it. I don't think you get to pick just one of those and call it the whole truth.

What I've come to believe is that the real job is three things: an unwavering belief we will succeed, the perseverance and commitment to stay ready, and the humility to recognize that we need to be lucky for moments outside of our control to show up. That belief comes from being clear on why you're doing this in the first place and it helps you to continue to put one foot in front of the other. When you know that, you can push through the hard days without needing proof yet that it's working.

Then, when the moment does show up, you're actually in a position to do something with it. That's the part within your control.