The little risks you can take to increase your luck

Luck is rarely a lightning strike, isolated and dramatic -- it's much more like the wind, blowing constantly. Catching more of it is easy but not obvious. In this insightful talk, Stanford business school professor Tina Seelig shares three unexpected ways to increase your luck -- and your ability to see and seize opportunities.

I've spent nearly two decades

observing what makes people
luckier than others

and trying to help people
increase their luck.

You see, I teach entrepreneurship,

and we all know
that most new ventures fail,

and innovators and entrepreneurs
need all the luck they can get.

So what is luck?

Luck is defined as success or failure
apparently caused by chance.

Apparently.

That's the operative word.

It looks like it's chance

because we rarely see all the levers
that come into play to make people lucky.

But I've realized, by watching so long,

that luck is rarely a lightning strike,

isolated and dramatic.

It's much more like the wind,

blowing constantly.

Sometimes it's calm,

and sometimes it blows in gusts,

and sometimes it comes from directions
that you didn't even imagine.

So how do you catch the winds of luck?

It's easy, but it's not obvious.

So I'm going to share
three things with you

that you can do to build a sail
to capture the winds of luck.

The first thing you want to do

is to change your relationship
with yourself.

Be willing to take small risks
that get you out of your comfort zone.

Now, when we're children,
we do this all the time.

We have to do this if we're going
to learn how to walk or talk

or ride a bike

or even quantum mechanics. Right?

We need to go from someone one week
who doesn't ride a bike

to, next week, someone who does.

And this requires us to get
out of our comfort zone

and take some risks.

The problem is, as we get older,

we rarely do this.

We sort of lock down
the sense of who we are

and don't stretch anymore.

Now, with my students,

I spend a lot of time
giving them encouragement

to get out of their comfort zone
and take some risks.

How do I do this?

Well, I start out by having them
fill out a risk-o-meter.

Now, it's basically a fun thing
we developed in our class

where they map out what risks
they're willing to take.

And it becomes clear very quickly to them

that risk-taking is not binary.

There are intellectual risks
and physical risks and financial risks

and emotional risks and social risks
and ethical risks and political risks.

And once they do this, they compare
their risk profiles with others,

and they quickly realize
that they're all really different.

I then encourage them to stretch,

to take some risks that get them
out of their comfort zone.

For example, I might ask them
to do an intellectual risk

and try to tackle a problem
they haven't tried before;

or a social risk, talking to someone
sitting next to them on the train;

or an emotional risk,

maybe telling someone
they really care about how they feel.

I do this myself all the time.

About a dozen years ago,
I was on an airplane,

early, early morning flight
on my way to Ecuador.

And normally, I would just
put on my headphones

and go to sleep, wake up, do some work,

but I decided to take a little risk,

and I started a conversation
with the man sitting next to me.

I introduced myself,
and I learned that he was a publisher.

Interesting.

We ended up having
a fascinating conversation.

I learned all about the future
of the publishing industry.

So about three quarters
of the way through the flight,

I decided to take another risk,

and I opened up my laptop
and I shared with him a book proposal

I put together for something
I was doing in my class.

And he was very polite, he read it,

and he said, "You know what, Tina,
this isn't right for us,

but thank you so much for sharing."

It's OK. That risk didn't work out.

I shut my laptop.

At the end of the flight,
we exchanged contact information.

A couple of months later,
I reached out to him,

and I said, "Mark, would you
like to come to my class?

I'm doing a project
on reinventing the book,

the future of publishing."

And he said, "Great. I'd love to come."

So he came to my class.
We had a great experience.

A few months later, I wrote to him again.

This time, I sent him
a bunch of video clips

from another project my students had done.

He was so intrigued

by one of the projects
the students had done,

he thought there might be a book in it,

and he wanted to meet those students.

I have to tell you,
I was a little bit hurt.

(Laughter)

I mean, he wanted to do a book
with my students and not with me,

but OK, it's all right.

So I invited him to come down,
and he and his colleagues came to Stanford

and met with the students,
and afterwards, we had lunch together.

And one of his editors said to me,

"Hey, have you ever
considered writing a book?"

I said, "Funny you should ask."

And I pulled out the exact same proposal

that I had showed his boss a year earlier.

Within two weeks, I had a contract,

and within two years, the book had sold
over a million copies around the world.

(Applause)

Now, you might say,

"Oh, you're so lucky."

But of course I was lucky,

but that luck resulted
from a series of small risks I took,

starting with saying hello.

And anyone can do this,

no matter where you are in your life,

no matter where you are in the world --

even if you think
you're the most unlucky person,

you can do this by taking little risks
that get you out of your comfort zone.

You start building a sail to capture luck.

The second thing you want to do

is to change your relationship
with other people.

You need to understand that everyone
who helps you on your journey

is playing a huge role
in getting you to your goals.

And if you don't show appreciation,

not only are you not closing the loop,

but you're missing an opportunity.

When someone does something for you,

they're taking that time

that they could be spending
on themselves or someone else,

and you need to acknowledge
what they're doing.

Now, I run three fellowship
programs at Stanford,

and they are very competitive to get into,

and when I send out the letters
to those students who don't get in,

I always know there are going to be
people who are disappointed.

Some of the people who are disappointed
send me notes, complaining.

Some of them send notes

saying what could I do to make myself
more successful next time around?

And every once in a while,

someone sends me a note
thanking me for the opportunity.

This happened about seven years ago.

A young man named Brian
sent me a beautiful note saying,

"I know I've been rejected
from this program twice,

but I want to thank you
for the opportunity.

I learned so much
through the process of applying."

I was so taken by
the graciousness of his message

that I invited him to come and meet me.

And we spent some time chatting
and cooked up an idea

for an independent study project together.

He was on the football team at Stanford,

and he decided to do a project
on looking at leadership in that context.

We got to know each other
incredibly well through that quarter,

and he took the project
that he started working on

in the independent study

and turned it, ultimately,
into a company called Play for Tomorrow,

where he teaches kids
from disadvantaged backgrounds

how to, essentially,
craft the lives they dream to live.

Now, the important thing about this story

is that we both ended up catching
the winds of luck

as a result of his thank-you note.

But it was the winds
that we didn't expect in the first place.

Over the course
of the last couple of years,

I've come up with
some tactics for my own life

to help me really foster appreciation.

My favorite is that at the end
of every single day,

I look at my calendar
and I review all the people I met with,

and I send thank-you notes
to every single person.

It only takes a few minutes,

but at the end of every day,

I feel incredibly grateful
and appreciative,

and I promise you
it has increased my luck.

So first, you need to take some risks
and get out of your comfort zone.

Second, you need to show appreciation.

And third, you want to change
your relationship with ideas.

Most people look at new ideas
that come there way and they judge them.

"That's a great idea"
or "That's a terrible idea."

But it's actually much more nuanced.

Ideas are neither good or bad.

And in fact, the seeds of terrible ideas
are often something truly remarkable.

One of my favorite exercises
in my classes on creativity

is to help students foster an attitude
of looking at terrible ideas

through the lens of possibilities.

So I give them a challenge:

to create an idea
for a brand new restaurant.

They have to come up
with the best ideas for a new restaurant

and the worst ideas for a new restaurant.

So the best ideas are things like
a restaurant on a mountaintop

with a beautiful sunset,

or a restaurant on a boat
with a gorgeous view.

And the terrible ideas are things like
a restaurant in a garbage dump,

or a restaurant with terrible service
that's really dirty,

or a restaurant that serves
cockroach sushi.

(Laughter)

So they hand all the ideas to me,

I read the great ideas out loud,

and then I rip them up
and throw them away.

I then take the horrible ideas
and redistribute them.

Each team now has an idea
that another team thought was horrible,

and their challenge is to turn it
into something brilliant.

Here's what happens.

Within about 10 seconds, someone says,
"This is a fabulous idea."

And they have about three minutes
before they pitch the idea to the class.

So the restaurant in the garbage dump?
What does that turn into?

Well, they collect all the extra food
from Michelin star restaurants

that was going to get thrown out,

and they have another restaurant
at a much lower price,

with all the leftovers.

Pretty cool?

Or the restaurant that's dirty
with terrible service?

Well, that turns into a restaurant
that's a training ground

for future restauranteurs to figure out
how to avoid all the pitfalls.

And the restaurant with cockroach sushi?

It turns into a sushi bar

with all sorts of really interesting
and exotic ingredients.

If you look around at the companies,

the ventures that are
really innovative around you,

the ones that we now take for granted
that have changed our life,

well, you know what?

They all started out as crazy ideas.

They started ideas
that when they pitched to other people,

most people said, "That's crazy,
it will never work."

So, yes, sometimes people
were born into terrible circumstances,

and sometimes, luck is a lightning bolt

that hits us with something wonderful
or something terrible.

But the winds of luck are always there,

and if you're willing to take some risks,

if you're willing to really go out
and show appreciation

and willing to really look at ideas,
even if they're crazy,

through the lens of possibilities,

you can build a bigger and bigger sail
to catch the winds of luck.

Thank you.

(Applause)