Lucky Indeed
At a party for Patchen, Inc ex-employees, after the sale to John Deere, one of the wives told me that I had been really “lucky” to have created a company and successfully sold it for a sizable profit.[i]I had invested four years of my time and less than a half-million dollars of my own money, then sold the Company to John Deere for well into seven figures. I managed to restrain myself for the moment but later wished I had not been so polite. I should have told her how one goes about becoming so“lucky”.
It often begins by working one’s way through college, tending bar, and working late hours in a radio-TV repair shop. If one is also “lucky” enough to stay awake afterward to complete the day’s homework, it is possible to get “lucky” enough to learn the lesson material.
Where one really can benefit from some good “luck” is to seek out the right jobs and to do those jobs better than anyone else. But being really “lucky” starts with working hard, saving money, building professional relationships, along with the self-confidence to leverage one’s professional ability and reputation for a chance to risk everything gained thus-far on a dream.
The last “lucky” step is to mortgage the house, cash in the retirement savings, and sell everything that is not nailed down, and call on relatives and colleagues from the past 30 years to convince them to invest in your idea, risking their welfare for a stake in a dream that is not even their own.
The final stroke of “luck” comes when this “lucky” guy, battered and bruised from countless disappointments, emerges in one piece, while most around have lost hope, to see the theory predicted years earlier emerge from the Skunk Works and customers accept it.
But wait – there is a very REAL element of luck here that began decades earlier. One must have been lucky enough to be born in a free country, full of opportunity, with the courage and energy to stave off enemies, half a world away, and in a pre-woke world where creativity and ingenuity are embraced, and individual initiative is rewarded.
The final step is to have been born to parents who appreciated the need for a good education[ii]. . . no; not in liberal arts and who were willing to make the painful sacrifices to ensure their children had the best opportunities the World could offer. With a loving, caring Mother, and a Father with an insatiable thirst for knowledge – that was luck[iii]Being born the middle child might have helped a little too.
I am truly blessed to be such a lucky guy.