There are so many out there pitching their own version of what it takes to become successful. The current A-list gurus pitching their success secrets, according to this list of the top 101 self-help experts, are many.
Why so many?
Because, in the self-help industry, what sets self-help experts apart from each other, and how they make their money, is their formula for success. Each self-help expert has their own proprietary “formula” for success. But, none of those experts will ever admit one simple truth – that success in life ultimately comes down to creating opportunities in which luck can occur.
According to my five-year study on the daily habits of self-made millionaires, success boils down to doing specific things that increase your chances for luck to occur. What are those specific things?
Step #1 Pursue a Dream
Step #2 Create Specific Goals Around That Dream
Step #3 Create Daily Habits Around Each Goal
Step #4 Engage in Those Daily Habits
Step #5 Get Lucky
Without luck, success is impossible. The only “formula” that works, is the formula that helps you create opportunities in which good luck can happen.
Mark Zuckerberg is rich because he got lucky.
MySpace had millions of users long before Facebook. Facebook was hatched on February 4, 2004 while Zuckerberg was a nineteen year old Psychology major at Harvard University. The site became an instant hit among Harvard students. After one month, more than half of the undergraduate population at Harvard had created a Facebook profile Soon, other college students around the Boston region began signing up and Facebook caught fire. In September 2006, Facebook was extended beyond educational institutions to anyone with a registered email address.
Zuckerberg tweaked MySpcae by adding a few features. Facebook allowed you to use your own name, allowed you to add a picture of yourself, included a relationship status classification (i.e. “in a relationship”), and the infamous “like” button.
While MySpace had a lot of things, they didn’t have any of those things. How did Facebook know adding those things would catapult it ahead of MySpace and help it gain 1.23 billion users?
They didn’t. Facebook was one big experiment. Mike Jones, former head of MySpace, in an interview with Business Insider, said MySpace put up certain barriers on member use that Facebook didn’t have.Those added features made Facebook more interesting than MySpace.
How is that luck? Its luck because it was completely unexpected. Read anything about Zuckerberg and Facebook or just watch the movie The Social Network and you’ll learn that he had no idea Facebook would become so successful. He got lucky because, it turns out, people just liked Facebook’s added features and its ease of use.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google, are rich because they got lucky.
Google was born in 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin Ph.D., students at Stanford University. Page and Brin created an algorithm to rank Internet pages, called PageRank, to return more relevant results than other engines. They did this by ranking pages based on patterns of hyperlinks on web pages, rather than looking at the text of web pages, and then assigned a PageRank score. Then they designed a blank white page, with the now infamous Google search box. In December, 1999 PC Magazine remarked that Google had “an uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results”.
How is that luck? That fortuitous little bit of publicity caught the eye of some influential PC magazine readers, namely Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, two powerhouse Silicon tech investors. They fell in love with the white page and superior search results and quickly became early Google investors. Soon thereafter, Main Street USA would also fall in love with Google.
Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors is rich because he got lucky.
There were many other car manufacturers out there making electric cars, long before Tesla arrived at the scene. In fact, the electric car pre-dates the combustion engine. But the big manufacturers could never get the electric car off the ground. GM’s EV-1, which cost $1 billion to make, failed miserably. They were slow and their range was too short, about 100 to 150 miles per charge. Plus they looked clunky.
Tesla was actually not founded by Musk. In 2003, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning created and electric car they called the tzero. The tzero was fast. It could go from 0 – 60 in under four seconds. In 2004, Musk, flush with $200 million in cash from off the sale of his interest in PayPal, helped secure financing for Tesla and joined the board of directors as Chairman.
Tesla’s flagship Roadster, was introduced in 2008. It was sexy, fast and had a range of 250 miles per charge using a patented lithium battery as its power source. But it was expensive. It cost over $100,000 to purchase. So, Musk targeted rich people.
How is that luck? It turns out, rich people like sexy, fast electric cars, so long as they get 250 miles per charge.
Without luck, there would be no Facebook, Google or Tesla.
But their luck was luck that they created by virtue of chasing a dream. The individuals behind Facebook, Google, Tesla and every famous brand out there all had one thing in common – they engaged in repetitive action around their dreams. Those repetitive actions ultimately created the opportunity for good luck to occur.
From the very first days of preaching about the Rich Habits, I’ve never wavered. Right out of the gate I addressed the #1 important facet of success – Luck. In fact, in my first book, Rich Habits, you see that the Rich Habits Training Program begins with a discussion on the importance of luck. Why? Because without luck, success is impossible.
None of the success formulas in the world will produce success unless the formula provides you with specific action steps you need to take in the pursuit of a dream. That is why I focus so intensely on habits. Habits are repetitive actions, thinking, emotions and decisions. Good daily habits put you on a path towards success. They automate success. There’s no thinking involved with respect to habits. There’s no need for motivation or inspiration. Habits are automatic.
Because habits are repetitive, you mathematically increase your chances of realizing success when you engage in good habits that are built around your dreams and your goals. Habits, due to their repetitive nature, statistically increase your chances of good luck eventually happening, but only when they are the right habits.
The Rich Habits I often talk about are specific habits that I uncovered in my five year study of self-made millionaires. These rich people, I found, forged specific habits around their dreams and their goals. Eventually, those good habits resulted in good luck. Their good habits mathematically increased the opportunity for good luck to occur in their lives.
About Thomas C. Corley
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