DON'T WAIT FOR LUCK TO FIND YOU!
- Tony Ilbery
- May 23
- 3 min read
Luck is real, but most people completely misunderstand how it works.
People talk about luck like it’s some mystical force randomly handed out to a chosen few.
Lucky break.
Lucky opportunity.
Right place, right time.
Overnight success.
The more I experience life and see luck first hand, the more I realise luck absolutely exists.
However so does timing, randomness, chance and opportunity. The world is not perfectly fair and success is rarely perfectly logical. But you can absolutely play a role in improving your luck. In reducing the chaos around it. In increasing the chances of opportunity eventually colliding with you.
It’s amazing how much good luck hard work brings. Because while you cannot control the final outcome, you can control how many opportunities you create for luck to find you.
Most people emotionally attach themselves to one giant moment.
One meeting.
One client.
One job.
One opportunity.
One role.
And when that single thing doesn’t happen, they emotionally collapse because they incorrectly believe the entire journey failed.
But success is almost never one single moment. More often, it’s hundreds of tiny things quietly combining together over time.
Small moments.
Small risks.
Small conversations.
Small attempts.
Small acts of courage.
Small wins.
A client pitch might not have gone to plan, but that moment only existed because of a long line of successful moments before it.
Sending the email did.
Taking the risk did.
Learning to handle rejection did.
Finding confidence did.
Those things matter.
That’s momentum.
Imagine standing on a pier throwing out one fishing line hoping to catch a fish. You might catch something. You also might catch nothing. Emotionally, that one fishing line becomes everything. Your entire sense of success depends on that one line getting lucky.
Now imagine lining up 100 fishing rods and throwing out 100 fishing lines. Suddenly your odds change dramatically. You’re no longer emotionally attached to one outcome because you’ve created movement, momentum and probability. Now you’re creating your own luck.
You don’t even know what you’re going to catch anymore. Maybe something small. Maybe something incredible. Maybe exactly the thing you were hoping for.
The point is: you’re fishing. Most people spend their lives standing on the pier thinking about fishing.
The same thing applies to life, business, creativity and opportunity. You cannot guarantee ultimate success, but you can absolutely improve the conditions around it.
You don’t control:
who says yes
timing
trends
algorithms
public opinion
luck
But you do control:
preparation
consistency
storytelling
courage
visibility
relationships
effort
All of that creates momentum. And momentum is motion. And motion matters. Because lucky people are often just the people who stayed in motion long enough for opportunity to eventually collide with them. This is especially true in entrepreneurship, startups, small business and creative industries. Waiting to be seen, supported, believed in and discovered is not a strategy anymore.
Today, digital and social media give us more ways than ever to throw lines into the water, widen our presence and control our own story.
Build your presence.
Create your ecosystem.
Collaborate.
Learn.
Show your work.
Take shots.
Create momentum.
Not because it guarantees success. Nothing does. But because every small step increases the surface area for luck to eventually find you. And when you keep doing that long enough, people eventually look at your life and say:
“Wow… you got really lucky.”
Without ever seeing the thousands of small steps that quietly created the conditions for that luck to arrive.
Momentum rarely appears all at once. More often it's built quietly over time through perspective, decisions and consistent movement.
Learn more about Tony Ilbery Private Advisory
