Get Lucky: How to Put Planned Serendipity to Work for You and Your Business [Hardcover]

I have mixed feelings about the book. The authors: Thor Muller and Lane Becker in Get Lucky take the interesting topic of luck and attempt to explain its scientific principles. To get luck or find serendipitous events you should posses eight skills: Motivation, Preparation, Divergence, Commitment, Activation, Connection, Permeability, and Attraction. Each of these topics is broken down ad nauseum. Each given a chapter of their own.

Chapter two was difficult to get through. I put the book down a couple of times wondering if I would return to it. I am glad I did. Chapter three starts off much clearer and does not seem to beat every point so deeply that it gets confusing to read. After two the chapters work a little better. The writing style of the book certainly points out that there was more than one author doing the writing. Some chapters seem to get in to too much detail where others are clean and present great stories fill with sound advice.

Muller and Becker present the case the luck comes to those that are aware it exists, prepare so that it will appear, and then notice it and act on it when it arrives. Luck they say presents itself as moments of serendipity. A time when preparation meets opportunity. The book describes luck not so much as luck, but as an event that can be acted upon if it is noticed. It is in the eight skills listed above that will help you make the most of serendipity.

Overall I liked the book. It gives some good points to be aware of to make the most of good opportunities when they arrive. The book could have been cut short and, at times, seems to be full of a lot of filler. If you can separate out the valuable content you'll get some great ideas to help you grow your business or expand your personal growth and brand.

Good reading.

I've been "lucky" in many aspects of life, one of the most rewarding of which has been to work for, as an employee or independent consultant, some wonderfully creative and successful businesses. I've worked for startup companies that have grown from one-person shops to become renowned global enterprises with hundreds of employees. I've worked for self-made business owners who did not let their upbringings in humble circumstances prevent them becoming multimillionaires.

I've seen firsthand many characteristics of successful business people including extraordinary intelligence, mental flexibility that rapidly adapts to changing business conditions, highly specialized knowledge of a particular industrial or commercial niche, a love of their field of endeavor, absolute confidence in themselves and the products and services they provide, a spirit of fairness, positive expectations, a passion for excellence, and the ability to instill these qualities in a team of employees through inspired leadership.

If you break it down to the "nth degree" there are thousands of traits that work together to create a successful business. Maybe that's why there are thousands of business books that explain them. But there's one more aspect of business that doesn't get talked about a lot, and that's "serendipity." Authors Thor Muller and Lane Becker define "serendipity" as:

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The best kind of luck--that creative force known as serendipity--is the luck that we attract to ourselves. To explain how planned serendipity works, we need to start with our own simple definition of serendipity, which we'll use from this point forward: serendipity is chance interacting with creativity.
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Decades ago I heard a self-made millionaire who had risen from very humble circumstances explain it that way. He said, "Eighty percent of our product lines don't sell. Twenty percent make us our profits. We never know beforehand what's going to sell and what isn't. We capitalize on the serendipity of discovering products that appeal to our customers and then concentrating our efforts behind them."

I think he was making the point that he could only manage the inputs and the outputs of the business to a limited degree. This was a fashion business, and fashions are impossible to predict ahead of time. He succeeded because he managed everything that could be managed and then let "serendipity" take him the rest of the way.

This book defines the characteristics that are prerequisite to making "serendipity" happen in your business. Some of them are:

1. Follow your heart's desire. Each person succeeds to the maximum when they pursue their unique skills. Of course not many people pursue their true callings because that involves risk. It is less risky to work a 9 to 5 job for somebody else than to risk going out on your own to follow YOUR unique callings. But no one achieves their full measure of success unless they are willing to do so. That doesn't mean that everybody should strike out on their own business because not everybody has that calling. But those who do must have the courage to follow it.

2. Do it. You only get better by doing something. A batter learns to hit by swinging at thousands of pitches. Taking action fully engages the conscious and subconscious mind to the task. The best people in their respective fields develop conscious thoughts and subconscious instincts that allow them to raise their performance to levels they never dreamed possible. Business owners are like that too. They learn to sell their product by getting out and selling it. They learn how to advertise it by advertising it. They learn how to make it by making it. They learn to trust their own judgment by trusting their own judgment. As their experience grows they learn to make more and more correct decisions and fewer poor ones. Things that started off discombobulated and shaky merge into an integrated finely-tuned whole known as "the business."

3. Push your boundaries. Be open minded and curious. 99% of the world moves in established tracks. The pioneers who move beyond them open up unimagined opportunities. Of course the old saying is that "the pioneers are the ones with arrows in their backs." It's lonely pioneering any new endeavor, but that is how progress is made and great wealth is achieved.

4. Be yourself, not an emulation of somebody else. Each person is unique. Each business is unique. Customers sense that you are "fake" if you try to be knock off of somebody else' business. Make your own business so unique that it stands out.

5. Exceed your customers' expectations. Become so familiar with their requirements that you feel as if you are part of their business and they a part of yours. Listen to them with your undivided attention. Then work your tail off doing what your customers are paying you to do.

6. Persevere. Business people hear prospective customers say "no" when they are making sales calls a hundred times more often than they hear "yes." Successful business people keep knocking on enough doors until some of them open. Once the doors are open the business can grow as customers learn to trust it and rely on it. When a hundred prospects say "no" and the 101st says "yes," that 101st sales call might be called serendipity. But the businessperson had to have the patience to make it through those first 100 rejections. That is the way most things in life work out.

There are others, but these give a good representation of what the book is trying to teach.

This book is excellent for a budding entrepreneur who wants to know how others "did it." It took me decades to absorb these lessons by the "school of hard knocks." I now know how to succeed in the two or three fields of endeavor that I'm uniquely qualified for, but it was a long time getting there. If I had read this book as a young fellow I would have got there sooner. (Actually, I had read of these principles while young, but in a less coordinated and less meaningful way than they are put together here.)

I don't think it is at all an exaggeration to say that the practical wisdom of hundreds of business books have been distilled into this one. Yes, it's REALLY that meaningful. This is one of the very few books that I will keep going back to read and reread most every day.

Most business books are repackaged versions of the same concepts and most are fairly dry and boring. Get Lucky managed to present some ideas I'd never thought about applying to business. It got me excited to start paying attention to the ways I can increase the chances for serendipity to happen in my business and even my personal projects. I appreciated the way the book was organized and the stories presented were compelling enough to keep me engaged, and even get inspired! A quick, enjoyable, mind-expanding read. Recommended.