In 2001, I (Mike) took a big risk. Over 12 years I worked my ass off. I saw a market opportunity and went for it. I recruited a great team and we beat the odds. We went public and made lots of money. A lot of doubters said I would never amount to anything – and I proved them wrong. I got very lucky along the way.”
CUT! STOP FILMING! HIT DELETE! HOW DID THAT LAST LINE GET IN THE SCRIPT? WHO WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT LUCK?
The funny part of this is that *every* part of the above statement is a 100% accurate depiction of what has happened in my professional career. I am very proud of what I accomplished and the hard work that went into building something unique and special. But I have been really, really lucky (that is me below, with the Tiger Woods’ fist pump).
So I want to introduce a new concept for any successful leader, executive or entrepreneur who has obtained some level of financial and professional success – GO LUCK YOURSELF! Here’s how:
Take a minute, jot down the top ways that luck has helped you get to where you are and savor the moment. This exercise isn’t meant to take anything away from your success – hell, you earned it.
Rather, my “Go Luck Yourself” challenge is intended to help you take stock of all the factors that led to your success. Not only will it help you feel deeper gratitude for the ground you’ve gained – and help you fully appreciate the present moment – it will give you a better understanding of how your success was affected by thing NOT within your control.
As a person naturally wired to consider all factors affecting any outcome, I’m guessing you’re capable of assessing the forces that played into your success. It’s not that you can plan for or even anticipate how luck will play into future endeavors, but having gone through a deliberate process of listing out all the luck you encountered on your path will give you a more discerning, clear lens to look through going forward.
What, Go Luck Myself, You Say? I will, thanks!
Here are the top 10 luckiest things that happened to me (in my professional life) to date:
1969. Being born in American during a time of relative peace and prosperity.
Genetics. I was blessed with pretty good intellect, good genes and health. Hard to imagine being much luckier than that…
Having a mother who pushed me hard to always do my best in anything I pursed. She was a single mom with limited resources and education, but she managed to see some potential in me that wasn’t easily apparent in the early days. Thanks, mom!
Getting into a good college at a time (1987) when it was still possible for a kid with only slightly above average grades to do so. P.S. – thanks to Joe Wetli, I haven’t spoken to you in years, but thanks again for waking me up from my drunken slumber on the front law at that graduation party and reminding me we had to take the SAT the next morning. Talk about lucky…
Law school. Or, more accurately, lack of law school). Fortunately the deans of admissions at every one of the top 15 law schools in the U.S. all chose not to let me into their respective universities in 1993. Perhaps they saw that my true calling was entrepreneurship instead of my early dream of being the next Leigh Steinberg or Scott Boras…
Early employers like Ernst & Young (1991) and Lehman Brothers (1994) amazingly hired me based on personality rather than stellar qualifications. I am not sure how I got into these two great organizations other than pure B.S. and lots of luck – and while I hated both of these jobs with a passion, I did learn some pretty important business skills during this time in my career.
Location. Living in Silicon Valley since 1998. Hard to imagine being luckier than growing up professionally during what has arguably been the greatest period of innovation in the in history of mankind. Just look at this graph on Moore’s Law to get the picture.
Marc Andreessen. In 1999, I randomly got assigned to help him raise capital for a company he had just founded called Loudcloud. I met him; he liked me (at the time) and recruited me to help him and Ben Horowitz build a startup focused on cloud computing (in 1999!). The lessons I learned about being an entrepreneur from him and Ben – like the hard thing about the hard thing – were invaluable when I struck out on my own.
A friend of a friend. In 2002, that’s how I found out about a company called ServiceSource – a super startup that needed capital and management. Fortunately, my partner at the time (David Kennedy, lucky Irishman now at Serent Capital) and I were able to provide both and it turned into a rocket ship. ServiceSource’s first office space in downtown San Francisco – AKA the Purple Place – circa 2002:
3,000. That is the number of employees that were working for me at the time of my retirement from ServiceSource in 2014. Those employees – and all the others along the journey – were absolutely amazing, and I am lucky to have been a part of this company.
Yep, I worked my ass off, took a lot of risk, and made some really smart decisions along the way. I feel great about it and I am proud of all that I have accomplished. But I feel even better when I remind myself just how lucky I have been along my entrepreneurial journey. And I also feel like that honesty with myself makes me an even more evolved force to be reckoned with in business going forward.
Try it! I think you’ll find that you’re even happier with the strides you’ve made along the way when you acknowledge and appreciate how luck played into the equation. And when you find yourself in a full sprint against the competition sometime in the future (tomorrow, perhaps), your understanding of how luck plays a role in success just might give you the competitive edge by letting your relax just enough to get in the zone.
GO LUCK YOURSELF!
