Make Your Own Luck: Be Your Own Evangelist
You know that line from Goodfellas where Henry says, “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster”?
I can’t claim that level of vocational certainty. But as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to achieve something big. I was competitive, serious (awkwardly so), and determined to become the best, which, in grade school, meant embracing my potential as a huge, insufferable nerd.
When I was seven, our second-grade class played a game called “math around the world.” The goal was simple: go desk to desk, beating each opponent in a rapid-fire multiplication duel. If you answered correctly first, you advanced. Orbit the entire classroom, and you won.
I loved this game. The rules were clear, as was the connection between effort and performance. Work hard, memorize your times tables, and most of the time, you’d win. I had a knack for arithmetic, sure. But the real difference was that I cared a lot more than the average kid. Winning was everything to me, and I wasn’t afraid to be caught trying. That delta in effort created a delta in results.
Every successful person has these stories, which punctuate their careers over decades, ultimately leading to some big success. I recently heard journalist Lydia Moynihan, who covers “power,” asked what unites exceptionally successful people. She essentially said, ‘They’re obsessed with work.’ The same is true of the founders, CEOs, and executives I know. They vary in talent, background, and temperament. But nearly all of them share one thing: drive. They toiled in obscurity for years, sometimes decades, until sustained effort produced outsized results.
I’ve been thinking about this because I spend my days in the business-media ecosystem, where wildly successful people love to insist, as the final humble-brag flex, that they “got lucky.”
There’s truth in that. If you were born in America, you’re lucky. Born into an affluent, educated family, luckier still. But as a blanket explanation for extraordinary success, “luck” is both wrong on the merits and counterproductive for anyone still climbing.
On the merits, Seneca said it best: Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. There’s randomness in any big break. But the break is never the beginning. It’s the culmination of years of effort.
A CEO recently told me his company changed trajectory when a top-five retailer reached out after an executive there heard him on a podcast. Was that lucky? Maybe. But he only got invited on that podcast because he’d been grinding for decades, making thousands of good decisions that led him to that precise moment.
That’s what “luck” actually is: being in the right place at the right time because you walked yourself there.
As for the impact of all this “I just got lucky” modesty, it backfires. The intention is humility: ‘I’m not more special than you.’ An admirable impulse. But the effect on anyone who’s working their ass off is deflating: If you succeeded because of luck, what hope do I have?
If you tell me you succeeded because of drive and skill, both developable, I can work with that. I can train. I can learn my times tables. If you tell me you succeeded because of luck, I’m helpless. I prefer to believe we largely control our own destinies because, in my experience, we do.
Which brings me to the second reason this has been on my mind.
When it comes to marketing — my metier and the commercial function that builds attention, trust, and demand, the lifeblood of your business — you don’t need luck. You can manufacture it.
You do that by becoming your own evangelist.
Show up every day on the platforms your customers already go to for their information (in the case of B2B tech, that’s LinkedIn and X). Comment thoughtfully on the posts of the people who drive conversation in your space. Share what you’re learning. Build relationships one comment at a time. Do it for a year, and regardless of your starting point, you will see an uptick in inbound.
Be like the founder whose company inflected after a retail exec heard him on a podcast: Put yourself in the conversation. Share your message. Create your own luck. Then, once you’re successful, you can perform the ritual humility and pretend it was all chance.
One last memory from math around the world: I’d get so intense before each showdown that I’d assume a little fighter’s stance — fists clenched, body splayed. My teacher once called me out for caring too much. It was the first of many times someone has tried to embarrass me for trying hard in public.
But I kept grinding anyway. So did the many readers of this newsletter I admire who are more successful than I am.
In business as in life, success is not random. It’s a consequence of consistent action. Make your own luck. Generate your own awareness, trust, and pipeline. Be your own evangelist.
