Are self-made people really self-made? Or just lucky?

[CalH]

I'm not arguing that fate or some weird magic potion makes successful people, well, successful. But I find it hard to believe that sheer talent and hard-work actually does as much as it is supposed to. Or am I wrong?

I know that those that work hard for thier success deserve it - but is it really them that have tipped the tide - or is it really just plain old luck that everything works out for them?

And what proportion of success would you say was attributable to luck, and what proportion to hard work?

For example;

70% hard work + 30% luck = 100% Success?

[Oy!]

I think it's impossible to come up with a percentage, but I will say that I consider hard work to be a necessary, if not sufficient, condition.

Luck? Ceratinly helps. But also intelligent choices - which may look like luck from the outside. Behind those intelligent choices? Lots of hard work.

[Wesley Clark]

All the 'self made' people i know were lucky

they met mentors who were already successful
they got into the right business at the right time

Granted, talent and skill can cause these thigns to happen but they are largely luck. I currently know a guy who has over $10 million in real estate, and does work with pharmaceuticals on the side. Just 4 years ago he was an IT guy who was unemployed, he just happened to meet the right mentor by accdent.

Another self made man i talked to, who had a net worth of $7 million, admits he was lucky. He just built the right business in the right place at the right time.

I can't give a figure. I would say w/o luck to open the right doors, all the talent and hard work in the world will not matter much.

[Lamar Mundane]

Another self made man i talked to, who had a net worth of $7 million, admits he was lucky. He just built the right business in the right place at the right time.


"just built the right businesses in the right place at the right time." That is not luck. Starting a business is about the hardest work there is. The guy was probably just being modest. Anyone who has started a couple of businesses is, I guarantee you, a hard worker. Even if you are brilliant and come up with a guaranteed winner of a product, bringing it to market takes all kinds of hard work.

[LSLGuy]

It's a lot like surfing.

If you don't paddle like hell, every wave that goes by will pass you by. All the luck in the world won't get you even a single ride.

And if 10 people paddle like hell on 10 waves, out of those 100 opportunities a couple of folks will get good rides. Which people and which waves make it are essentially luck.

But paddling like hell is 100% required.

[Wesley Clark]

"just built the right businesses in the right place at the right time." That is not luck. Starting a business is about the hardest work there is. The guy was probably just being modest. Anyone who has started a couple of businesses is, I guarantee you, a hard worker. Even if you are brilliant and come up with a guaranteed winner of a product, bringing it to market takes all kinds of hard work.

Many businesses fail in their first year, his managed to be worth several million. He admits it was luck that that happened.

True he (probably) worked hard, but so have endless streams of people who have run failed businesses.

[Evil Captor]

So for every 2 or 3 happy millionaires, you got 98 bitter, burnt-out failures trying to make the next payment on the hot plate so they can cook food in their rented room.

Hail capitalism, the most efficient system yet devised!

(And to hear free marketers tell it, the most efficient system that ever will be devised.)

[Julius Henry]

I'm reminded of the old saying, "All men are self-made, but only the successful will admit it."

I've always believed that getting a hole in one in golf is a matter of luck, but that Tiger Woods is going to be much luckier at it than I am. I'm sure a few people have gotten successful through a lot of luck and little hard work. But for the most part, a lot of hard work precedes some luck. Your percentages will vary.

[yosemite]

But paddling like hell is 100% required.Ain't that the truth.

This isn't quite what the OP is asking, but some people think that "talent" is luck. As in, "Oh, I could never do that. I'm not so talented like you. You're so lucky—you're talented." Oh, spare me. It's not just "talent," it's hard work. I can frickin' guarantee that there are many more people out there with more "talent" than I have, but if they diidn't paddle like hell and I did, so guess who looks like they have more talent now? It's not those who didn't do a lot of paddling, that's for sure.

Yes, talent exists, just like luck exists. Some of us are doled out more talent, and/or more luck. But without "paddling like hell," neither of these things will very likely amount to much. I suspect that this is true with self-made men. They had luck, perhaps even more than their fair share of it—but they worked like hell and knew what to do with their good fortune.

[kung fu lola]

The fact is, hard work and smart choices are things that humans can control - short of being intellectually stunted, pretty much anyone can choose for themselves what path they will take and how hard they will work. But luck is the variable. Take two people with the same intelligence, ambition, talent and discipline, and luck is the only thing that can explain why one becomes a millionaire and another ends up looking like one of the 98 in Evil Captor's post.

This is why they invented the saying; "Life isn't fair".

[Harriet the Spry]

For a serious, research-based look at this question, I recommend the book The Millionaire Mind. I'd say in general the findings supported the theory that hard work is a necessary but not sufficient condition. The self-made wealthy people the author surveyed tended to take smart risks, have long-term successful marriages, avoid highly competitive fields, make the most of their education without becoming overeducated and have great people skills.

Some things the author found did not work were marrying for money and most education beyond a bachelor's degree.

[Doomtrain]

I think luck plays a factor in anything, at least in my experience. I just got a job, for example. I got the experience to get the job through 4 or 5 years of pretty hard work. However, the reason my resume got a serious look was because I "knew someone who knew someone", which got my resume in front of the right person, which I'd call luck.

[Darkhold]

The old saying goes

The Harder I plan the Luckier I get.

I suck at planning so I'm 'unlucky.' My brother who has more determination and has an innovating personality is insanely 'lucky'.

[Oy!]

I think luck plays a factor in anything, at least in my experience. I just got a job, for example. I got the experience to get the job through 4 or 5 years of pretty hard work. However, the reason my resume got a serious look was because I "knew someone who knew someone", which got my resume in front of the right person, which I'd call luck.

But that's more than luck too. I'm not willing to build the social contacts I'd need to be really successful - to me, it's too much work. As it is, I've been lucky enough to fall into a field where I could make a comfortable living by working moderately hard and being pretty good at what I do. But if I were willing to do the networking, I could be making quite a lot more than I am.

There are a lot of different flavors of hard work. One of the keys is to find something that, while it may be exhausting, doesn't feel like hard work to you. If you can do that, you may or may not make a lot of money. But you've got a very good shot at happiness, which is a lot more important.

[Qadgop the Mercotan]

In the long run, I think we make our own luck, for better or for worse.

When I spent years avoiding doing the necessary hard work, choosing the softer, easier path for myself, my luck was bad. I still worked fairly hard, but only at some of the things that were frankly easier and more pleasant for me to do.

When I bit the bullet and consistently addressed the difficult issues in my life and career instead of avoiding them, my luck got better.

One has to work hard, but one also has to work hard on the right things.

[RealityChuck]

Working hard and being persistent are the two major factors. Then, when the right circumstance (i.e., luck) comes around, you're prepared for it.

This is, BTW, exactly what Horatio Alger wrote about -- not that you would rise to the top through hard work, but that if you worked hard, you'd be able to take advantage of a good break. Alger's heros would work very hard -- but wouldn't succeed until they saved the runaway horse carrying the millionaire's daughter.

There is a tendency for people who succeed to ignore the luck that was involved.

[ftg]

One of my parents' family were literally Okies. Headed west with 6 kids (7th to be born later) in a Model A flatbed truck. Started a farm, pulled sagebrush and lived in a tent.

Out of that family, 3 of the 4 boys have graduate degrees and became leading educators. The "7th" kid is president of his Alma Mater.

In the next generations are dozens of successful educators, business leaders, preachers*, and such. I have cousins that have been president of national organizations or have won national championships in sports. One cousin was a cofounder of a major tech company and became quite rich.

All these people were raised with the understanding that they could, and therefore should, be successful.

It is hard to imagine that luck made all that happen. It's hard work, good parenting, etc.

Luck does enter the equation. I don't think I would have become so famous so soon if my advisor hadn't joined my CS department my 2nd year of grad school. A long series of weird events then lead to The Thing That My Name Is Attached To. But, basically, I could not be held back.

So luck mainly tends to show up in the type and timing of success. It only has a small effect on the fact of success.

*Yes, I consider being a good preacher a success. In addition, one of my relatives became head of the family church's western region. I.e., the top guy in half the US. So you have that too.

[TVeblen]

So for every 2 or 3 happy millionaires, you got 98 bitter, burnt-out failures trying to make the next payment on the hot plate so they can cook food in their rented room.

Hail capitalism, the most efficient system yet devised!


The most efficient systems aren't fool proof, EC. Or a much better word is "guaranteed". I don't think simple philosophical labels actually cover the essence of what the OP is asking. Your point's a valid spin-off debate, but not the core of the discussion at hand. Right now the discussion's on personal qualities needed, not the economic environment.
IME, at least a healthy dose of luck is required, if "luck" means applying a great ideas under exactly the right times and conditions. I stongly suspect such luck amounts to little more (or less) than an unusually clear understanding of realities. No amount of vision or hard work will compensate for that. Mangling analogies, Okies starved and sufers drown, overwhelmed by misunderstood realites.
That said, I've never yet met a self-made person who didn't work hard. The really successful ones--financially AND emotionally rich--loved what they did. They found just as much reward in the journey as the destination. Some who settled for grim slogging-for-big-bucks ended up with just that: solid money that bought stuff that didn't compensate for the lost years and joy.
So...I think it's a mix, with no magic formula.

Veb

[The King of Soup]

"A simple rule that every great man knows by heart,
"'It's smarter to be lucky than it's lucky to be smart.'"

That said, if luck is the impact on someone of events they do not control, it probably counts for a lot. If you stretch the definition of lucky to include " bad things that might happen but don't," we're all luckier than we are smart. But even if some or most success comes from luck, that doesn't have much significance. It's better to be lucky. It's also better to be smart, hard-working and polite, regardless of the externals, so any answer to the question leads to the same prescription for our own behavior.

If, on the other hand, the OP is looking for cool stories of wealth created in the apparent absence of hard work and intelligence or other marketable skills or attributes, I suppose you could look to two areas to start. One is the history of commercial fads like pet rocks and mood rings. The other, sadder one is the plethora of lucrative businesses that thrive on the exploitation of the even less fortunate, like check-cashing services. I suppose a third would be the world of crime and corruption.

It's also important to distinguish between the self-made man who starts with nothing and ends up able to buy a house and educate his children and the self-made man who builds a empire Croesus would envy, having started with only the lousy million his father gave him. The latter seem to be the ones writing all the books.

[Doomtrain]

But that's more than luck too.

Of course, I agree. It was purely luck that I wound up knowing someone who knew someone who could hire me, but the reason I wound up knowing the person (and getting hired) was the hard work I'd done. So like someone else said, the more I worked, the better my luck got.

I think it's foolhardy to not give chance some credit, but I also think there's a degree of making your own luck.

For example, your car hitting a nail in the road and getting a flat tire is bad luck. Your car having a blowout on the road because you never checked the tire pressure or the treadwear may BE bad luck, but you're also at fault for not maintaining your car properly.

[Sam Stone]

One of my favorite Heinlein Quotes:

There is no such thing as luck; only adequate and inadequate preparation
to cope with the statistical universe.

I know someone who is very 'unlucky'. Every time something bad happens in his life, he bemoans his bad luck. He uses it as an excuse to beat on himself. He's not very successful.

But this person was once given an 'in' to the family construction business, and blew it because he lost his temper and quit. He was given a down payment for his first house, but he quit his job and lost it. He fought with his wife, got a divorce, and paid alimony. He had some bad luck with his health, but on the other hand he never took very good care of himself either.

I know another guy who got a great job because a person he helped out a lot by going above and beyond the call as a salesman turned out to be hiring for his dream job. Of course, if he hadn't busted his ass to help a customer when other salesmen would just do the minimum, the 'luck' would never have happened. The same guy married a smart, beautiful girl after meeting her by 'accident'. Of course, he had spent a lot of time just before that getting himself in shape and losing a bunch of weight, so when that perfect girl came long he maximized the chance that she might notice him...

There are of course extremes. There are people who are dealt a truly lousy hand from life, and others who have silver spoons falling in their mouths despite their best efforts to spit them out. But the vast majority of people in the middle of the curve get their share of opportunities - the 'lucky' ones are the ones who, through excellent preparation and work ethic, are capable of grabbing on when lady luck goes strolling by.

[Oy!]

Having earlier come down in favor of hard work being somewhat more important than luck, I'm going to engage in a hijack here.

For "making it," hard work is necessary but not sufficient; but luck comes to (or is seized by) those who are prepared for it, so hard work is still the more important aspect.

But bad luck can screw anybody. And that bad luck can range all the way from the circumstances in which you were born and raised to a catastrophic illness wiping out everything you've got. There's a lot of things out there that all the hard work in the world can't help.

[Evil Captor]

The most efficient systems aren't fool proof, EC. Or a much better word is "guaranteed". I don't think simple philosophical labels actually cover the essence of what the OP is asking. Your point's a valid spin-off debate, but not the core of the discussion at hand. Right now the discussion's on personal qualities needed, not the economic environment.

You're barking up the wrong tree. What bugs me isn't the lack of fairness, it's the waste. Presumably, a lot of people who fall by the wayside have just as much energy and effort as their luckier brethren, I sure would like to live in a society where all that energy and effort paid off more often -- I suspect it would be much wealthier than the one I live in now.

[Nametag]

I've heard that it was Voltaire who said it, I've heard that it was Pasteur, but all I know for certain is that Harlan Ellison likes to repeat it a lot: "Chance favors the prepared mind." Lucky things happen to a lot of people every day, but it's only those with the grit and the smarts to seize the opportunity who get the benefit of that luck. Meanwhile, there are a lot of hardworking people out there, and most wouldn't know a good break if it fell on them; of those who would, most never get one. It takes all three to really make it big.

Quite frankly, it's luck that determines whether you're smart in the first place, and there's a smidgen of luck in getting parents who instill the value of hard work, but those aren't the kind of luck that people talk about much.

[Doomtrain]

seize the opportunity.

You know, that's another part of it. You have to be willing to take some chances.

I know someone who hates their job. Bloody miserable in it. Has a ton of experience in her field, well-trained, sterling work history. So it should be easy for her to find a new job, right? But...she won't move from the small town she's lived in all her life, future employers have to fit a laundry list of criteria so strict that I don't think any company actually could fit these criteria, and it can't be more than, say, a 30 minute drive from where she lives. She wouldn't even consider moving in-town, much less to another state or across the country. She also won't consider doing anything outside the 9-5 kind of requirements for her job, like going to conferences and the other kind of professional job+ kinds of things people do.

Strangely, she's having terrible "luck" finding another job.