Your Brand, Work Ethic or Luck?

I know a lot of people who work hard but who haven’t made it big yet.  It makes me wonder what truly breeds success: is it work ethic or is it luck?

I listen to Gary Vaynerchuk religiously (@garyvee on Twitter).  He talks about hustle and how work ethic is what you need to be truly successful.  If you work hard enough, anything is possible.

I then look at two of my close friends, Neil and Sean; they don’t necessarily have the hardest work ethic, but they have become pretty successful in life so far.

Sean came back from a Europe trip one summer with a European license plate.  He bought it oversees and decided that it was so cool, he had to get one for his car.  During the next couple of weeks, at least 12 people asked him where he had purchased the license plate.  After realizing that he had just referred 12 customers to the company that sold him the license plate, he decided to create his own website to sell them.

It was as if the opportunity had been magically given to him

Neil was a college student who had a previously failed business.  During his business, he had learned internet marketing in order to market his product.  During the online marketing presentation that he gave to his class, one of the students stood up and said that his uncle’s company needed some internet marketing consulting. Neil realized that companies desperately needed someone to teach them how to market their products online, and that he could be the guy to teach them.

It was as if the opportunity had just sprung out of no where

So what does this mean?  Is luck really all you need?  Are the rest of us screwed until we get lucky?

From analyzing my friends’ experiences, I have realized great success is the result of a marriage between hard work and luck.

Neil and Sean are not lazy people: Neil had worked extremely hard on several failed businesses before he got his lucky break; Sean had to learn how to build a complete website and how to market a product online before he could start selling license plates over the web.

The qualities that separates the average people from the truly successful ones are the ability to see an opportunity when it slaps them in the face AND the guts to act upon it.

Opportunity slaps all of us at least once in our lives, but most of us are too scared or too stupid to seize an opportunity when it spits right on our shoes. The people who work hard, who hustle every day of their lives are given the opportunity more than once.  But even then, hard work isn’t enough.  You need the intelligence and vision to see that opportunity and take it to the next level.

We all are lucky at least once in our lives. If you keep working hard, if you keep setting yourself up for the opportunity to be lucky, then one day opportunity will come knocking at your door.

Will you have the guts to shake its hand?

Author:

Jun is the Founder and CMO of Future Delivery where he is the host of Awesome Bloggers, the show that interviews the best young bloggers.  His personal blog, Become a Young Successful Entrepreneur, gives a real, unfiltered view of the Startup Life so that current and aspiring entrepreneurs can learn from his successes and mistakes.

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