Work or Luck?

One of the reasons I finally started Snow Bakery was the confidence I gained from listening to the podcast How I Built This. Host Guy Raz spends each episode interviewing the founder or founders of wildly successful companies; my favorite episodes are Spanx, Chobani, and Chicken Salad Chick.

Each founder details problems they encountered along the way to building their businesses and how they solved those problems. They talk about the mistakes they've made and people who've helped them. Every story inspires me, and some stories bring me to tears. When I listen to the podcast, I'm constantly in awe of people's creativity and grit. I think, "This. This is what the world is for. It's for people to learn and grow and experience happiness and success and take an original idea to it's inevitable end."

There's just one uncomfortable point for me, though. At the conclusion of each episode, Raz asks the founder(s) one final question: "How much of your success do you attribute to hard work, and how much do you think it had to do with luck?" Now, I think I've listened to maybe 30 out of a couple hundred episodes, but so far, the majority of founders have answered "hard work." And I question them every single time. Of course I know how important work is at accomplishing goals and achieving success. I know that both goals and success require work. But "hard work" isn't an answer that sits well with me. Every time I hear that answer, I mull it over in my mind, and I wonder what I would say if I was ever interviewed by Guy Raz. If Snow Bakery was a huge success, and Guy Raz asked me whether it had more to do with hard work or luck, what would I say? What would I say?!?

Well, I finally decided. I would say it was luck. Again, work is a necessary ingredient to most fulfilling things in life, and it's certainly necessary to build a business. I cannot deny, however, the enormous luck that is being born into a white middle-class American family in the 1980s. Honestly, my luck could end there, and I'd still be better suited than most to start and run a bustling business. But my luck did not, in fact, end there. Here are just a handful of other lucky things in my life:

• Surviving my first two months. (I was born prematurely.)
• Getting through grade school, college, and graduate school with relative ease. I didn't struggle with a learning disability, new material came fairly easily to me, and I learn well in a classroom.
• Tangentially knowing someone who was able to pass my resume along to a hiring manager at Google.
• Getting an email from a Qualtrics recruiter a mere two weeks before being laid off at a different Utah company.
• Meeting someone who was financially stable enough to allow me to pursue a dream.

All of those things were lucky and without them, I would most definitely not be in the position I'm in today, even if I had worked more than anyone ever has in this world. The work of a hundred lifetimes would never amount to anything, were it not for luck. I suppose one could argue that the luck of a hundred lifetimes would never amount to anything, were it not for work, but from my perspective, luck is what kickstarts work. Luck takes precedence over work.

Thing I'm thankful for: besides every thing I listed above . . . painkillers.

Note: After discussing this post with Daryl, I think I need to say that while both work and luck are key to the most successful life, if pressed to choose just one, I would say luck.