Ep 44 Your career: Luck has nothing to do with success or creativity

In this episode of The Crazy One, Stephen Gates debunks the myth that success is about luck, revealing the real factors that create opportunities and drive achievement. Dive into what people actually mean when they say “lucky,” explore how preparation plays a pivotal role in success, and uncover the habits that set “lucky” individuals apart. Tune in to learn practical steps for creating your own opportunities and achieving lasting success through intentional habits.

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Stephen Gates : 0:00

What's going on everybody, and welcome into the 44th episode of The Crazy One podcast. As always, I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is the show where we talk about creativity, leadership design, and a whole host of other things that matter to creative people. Now today, we're going to do something a little bit different, we're going to change up the show format just a little bit. Usually, I try to keep these shows between we'll say, like 40 and 50 minutes long, because I think it's a good balance between a depth of content, but just not making them so long that they drone on and on. And it's just not something you can listen to in one shot. But the thing that I found out is that I've gone through and as I've worked out the topic for the shows, not all of them need to be that long. So for the first time, I'm going to start doing a little bit shorter shows. So if we would think about a normal show can be a full meal. This is going to be a little bit more like a shot of espresso, it's gonna be a little bit shorter, hopefully just as strong and just as impactful. Well, today I want to talk about luck. And this is a topic I've thought about talking about for a while and I think Before we get into it, let's actually define what I mean whenever we're going to talk about luck today. Now, I don't mean that whenever you're about to go off and do something new, and people say, Hey, man, good luck with that. That's not what I'm talking about. Because that's manners that's wishing somebody Well, that's something that Lord knows the the world could use a lot more of right about now. Now, what I'm talking about is the times whenever maybe you've experienced this, I know that I've experienced this. But whenever you will go through and talk about something that you've done at work, talk about something that you've done with your creative process. And I'll be honest, that I hate whatever people's reaction to that is, man, you're lucky. That's what I want to talk about today. And because I think that the thing is, is that whenever people say, Man, you're lucky. I think it betrays a real problem with the way that people think i think that it betrays and shows a real challenge that a lot of us are up against, because here's the thing is that If I'm gonna be brutally honest. And the interesting thing is, as I look at the comments, people seem to really enjoy it whenever I'm brutally honest about this stuff is that whenever somebody walks up to me and they say something like, Man, you're so lucky to have worked with Apple. The reason why that irritates me is twofold. The first is because I can guarantee you that I can speak for me, I can speak for a lot of my friends, I can speak for other people that I admire that luck had absolutely nothing to do with the outcome of that work. Luck had nothing to do with that opportunity coming along. I didn't enter the damn lottery and somebody pulled my name out of a hat. I got that opportunity. My team got that opportunity for a real reason. And we'll talk about that more in just a second so I can explain what I mean. But I think that the other thing and the other reason why it irritates me is because like I said before, it highlights a problem that I see in the way people think, because if I'm gonna be brutally honest, what I would say is that if you're talking about luck for me That really is more of a highlight of your shortcomings of the way that that person perceives their career, that they don't think that this is work that they think that somehow luck is involved. And you may be saying to yourself in your head right now, Steve, look, you're being too harsh. You're being too hard on these people. It's just a phrase. And look, I get it. And and I know that for some people, maybe that's true. But one of the things that I've definitely found working with creatives, one of the things that I've definitely found leading teams, is that in so many cases, these innocuous comments, these things that you could so easily overlook, are often true bellwethers of a much bigger way of thinking, because if you ask me luck, in whatever form it is, is the residue of skill. It's the residue of a hell of a lot of hard work, then you can say to yourself, look, success can be from a lot of different factors. Can it come from great education, of course, can it come from opportunities, of course, can come from a lot of different places, sure, but the thing that I'll tell you Is that in the end of the day, whenever I look back over my career and the people that I've worked with, to be honest, some of the worst people, some of the most useless people that I have ever worked with, came from what are supposed to be some of the best schools out there. The Princeton's the Harvard's, those of the world have honestly been some of the worst leaders, they have been some of the worst people to work with, that I've ever found. But some of the most creative people, some of the ones who I think are the most successful, the ones who I envy the most, well, a lot of them came from community college or they came from no college or they came from no money, they, they just simply understood that you have to make your own luck. And that that is really what I want to dig into just kind of quickly today. Because I think that I see too many people, I talk to too many, especially too many young creatives, who are simply sitting around seeming to be waiting for this opportunity to come along. That's going to be the big break. It's going to be the thing that they've been waiting for and talking about and thinking about, and then very quickly, they get very frustrated whenever that doesn't mature. Realize, why is that or just Why? Why do people struggle with this so much, and we've hit on this in other episodes, but I think it's worth recapping here. For me, luck and the way that I think most people would define it, I would say is just simply being prepared when an opportunity comes along. Now, the catch with that is that I think that most people only start to work, only start to grow, only start to think only start to prepare, when an opportunity is in front of them. The people that I know that are the most successful, I think, and I've said this very openly, I'm not the smartest guy out there. I'm not the most creative guy out there. I'm not the best leader out there by a longshot. But I think that what I do is I'm able to compensate I'm able to overcome that for the fact I'm willing to work my ass off. Because what I'm willing to do is that I'm willing to constantly prepare for an opportunity that I don't know when it's actually gonna show up. If I'm only doing that work, and it is thankless work. It is hard work. But if I'm only doing that whenever I see an opportunity, well then what's going to happen is that that up He's gonna pass me by, because I'm not going to be ready. The in those moments in those windows when there is something there, if you aren't ready to take advantage of it, then that passes you by and then most people will deem it as luck. Because that's what I've seen are so many people who get such great opportunities, and they just let it pass them by they're not ready, they weren't willing to take that risk aren't willing to do that work. None of the most successful people I know, are lucky. They're constantly working for that opportunity. Let's actually use a very tangible example here for what it is that I mean. Now, most of what people know are the probably what is my most, I don't know what notable project was the work that I did with Apple on Apple Watch. We were one of the three featured launch apps we were in every single keynote, we were in the TV commercials were tons and tons of stuff. And I'm like, Man, you're so lucky, man. That was so great. Let's look at what actually luck meant or what led to luck in that case. And if we're going to talk about this, what we actually need to Start someplace totally different. We don't need to start with talking about Apple Watch where we need to start is talking about actually Google Glass. And a year earlier whenever glass was announced. Now, the reality was, is that at that point, I didn't think that you had to be psychic, to see that glass was going to have serious issues, it was gonna have a serious issues because of the way that they constructed the beta program where they gave it to a few people and basically let it become this douchebag status symbol of what a lot of people were around and saying that I have 1500 dollars and access to things that you don't, but I'm not going to make any tangible contribution to this. You didn't have to be psychic to be able to see that from a sociological standpoint, a lot of people are gonna have a huge problem with people walking around with a camera plastered the middle of their face. And you also didn't have to be psychic to know that people were gonna have an issue with the fact that there was a screen that only one person could actually see but two people were aware of. So there was a lot the glass had going against it. But it was the first wearable from a major company. That hit the market. And so in my view that this was something that we needed to work with, we needed first hand knowledge in designing for this new form factor. Because there were tons of rumors that were out there about the fact that Apple had been working on a watch. There were other kind of different wearables that were in the market. Many of them were still black and white, they weren't too good. But you could see the train starting to leave the station. Also, because I felt like it was an interesting experience or an interesting way to also start to experiment with voice driven navigation, because glass was all voice driven. So there was a lot of learnings you could get out of that. So we worked with Google for months on this app. And it was beyond frustrating to be honest. We had to completely redesign it completely rebuild the app three times before it even launched, because Google kept going back and re deciding changing their mind about what was the system that glass was going to sit on. But the thing was, is that we learned a lot. We learned a lot about wearables about voice navigation about How could we take the app that we had for Star Wars and translate it into wearables, we learned that what we could do is that we had to shift the mindset that it wasn't just about what you did in an iPhone app that with wearables, it was much more about what you're doing in the moment. So there's a ton of stuff that we learned from that. Well, then what we did, I guess what I did was then I took those learnings and it's a next Worldwide Developers Conference that was in San Francisco with Apple. I took the initiative of going up to a few of the people that I knew with a list. And what it was it was a list that I had put together of what were ideas, what were things, what were things that we thought might work really well, if the rumors that we had heard about a watch were true. And that's all it was, was just going up and saying, look, if this is true, we want to be in the running. Now the reality was that I we only had those relationships because I and my team and my peers and everybody I'd worked with had worked their ass off over the last couple years to get to a place where people would listen to us. We had gotten to that place. Because we had leadership that trusted us to take those risks. Now, that may be the closest thing I would say in this entire story to luck, because I do know that finding leadership that does that and finding peers who will support that. That is an incredibly hard thing. And probably yes, in that case probably is lucky. But the reality was, is that we have circulated that list, put it out there said, Look, we're thinking about this. We're ambitious about this. It's on our minds, here's what we think. And we waited. And months later, the call came, and that we went out and spent a certain amount of time going out there working with them that obviously led up to the launch since we had an app that was on stage whenever it was announced. We obviously had been doing that work. But this was the thing is that that got us the opportunity, but then meant that I then got to spend months away from my family working in Cupertino, doing 14 hour days, six or seven days a week trying to get to that place. And I got to do it while working basically in the Hunger Games. Because as you can imagine, Apple is not exactly calling out the people who are just going to be the ones mailing it in. You're out there obviously competing against some of the As creatives in the world, there wasn't luck involved in any of that, there was just a lot of really hard work. There was hard work to do that for glass to actually get that out the door, there was hard work to have the ideas and then there was the hard work to have the follow through to actually then be able to go on that journey with them to get the Apple Watch out the out the door. And this is the whole thing. This is why people will talk about they've worked their whole life to be an overnight success. Because that was the problem is that year, year and a half worth of work that nobody saw that culminated in that moment on stage in the keynote, whenever they actually announced it whenever they showed our app whenever the room stopped and applauded a year and a half worth of work for that one moment. Here's the thing with this. We made our own luck. We went out and we were not going to leave it to chance we were going to go out and work our asses off. We're going to go out and put in the time and build the relationships and spend the time to do the right things to get us that quote unquote luck. But that's the problem. Most people they don't want to make their own luck. What they want to do is gonna take the easier route, they want to take the easier decisions, and then they want to sit around and moan about why didn't they get quote unquote, lucky? But that's the thing is what what are actually the habits? What are the things that these lucky people do? And I sat down and tried to think about this and say, Okay, look, if you were going to think about this, if you caught yourself saying something like this, what are some of the things that you should be keeping an eye out for? What are some of the things that is going to turn that around so that you can actually start to make your own luck, because you've heard me say this before, is that success is a choice. This is what that's based on. This is where that comes from, is the fact that look, if you want to be lucky, you got to work hard, and I'm sorry, there is no way that I know around that. You've got to go out and put in the time and put in the thinking. And it's like I said, You know what, I'm not the most creative guy out there. I'm not the best leader out there, but I will work my ass off to overcome that, because I'm aware of where my shortcomings are. So I'm willing to work to do that. I'm willing to not just sit around to complain, I'm willing to be a part of the process, I'm willing to do something like taking a risk on glass spending the political capital going out. And because the reality was, was that the way that that app got done was it was me and another developer who basically did it on nights and weekends to get a proof of concept before the company would even buy in. So this was not just sitting there complaining not bemoaning why the company wouldn't let us do it not sitting around going, oh, what's somebody else's fault? Fuck that. No, you know what it was, it was our fault. It was our fault if we weren't willing to put in that time if we weren't willing to take that shot. And if we did it in the company, students support it. Well, then you know what, we probably need to go find a different company. But that was the thing is it wasn't sitting around just complaining. It was about leading. It was about helping to teach ourselves and teach other people what was going on. It was about sharing what that information was. And ultimately, it was also about sharing credit. There was not any one person that was responsible for any of that there are a lot of people who sacrificed a lot to make all that happen. That's true of any great project that we went out and we did a lot together and that we should The credit, we shared the celebration in that, that it was one of those things where as you did that, though, you also knew that no matter what the success was, that to be lucky, and to be able to build those relationships, whether it was Apple on our own team or anything in between, to be kind to be humble, to be somebody who can learn and to actually show gratitude whenever those opportunities come along. But like I said, don't get this twisted. At no point during that work, they put a bunch of names in a hat and then just pull them out and have some sort of lottery about who is going to be the lucky one and all this. So that's the thing. And that's the bottom line here is that you need to go out and you need to make your own luck. And this is why I say this. And this is why I continue to say this, that success is a choice. Because Are you going to be the person that puts in the hard work, are you going to not take no for an answer? Are you going to find a way to get it done whenever so much stands in the way because that's the problem is that I'm incredibly well aware that most any company whether it's been an agency, whether it's been client side has a ton that is going to stand in Your Way, budget is gonna stand anyway, time is gonna stand in your way roadmap is gonna stand in your way people who don't have vision are gonna stand in your way and inability to get it done, there is going to be a laundry list of why things can't or shouldn't be done. But there's a way, there's a way to make your own luck, there's a way to find a way through it, to build that trust to be able to get that confidence for people. So you can start to take more of these risks. But this is the other part of it is that luck, takes patience to it means you have to build something, it means you have to invest in something. And that's why I said is it took us a year and a half to get lucky on the watch, to spend the time with Google to go through that frustration to launch that app to go through to come up with the idea. So do all the work behind the scenes to do a lot of that stuff. That at any point, quite frankly, might not have ended in the fairy tale that it did. There were a lot of moments when it could have gone very differently when we could have been sent home when the app wouldn't have been featured when our thinking wasn't good enough, but the only constant through that was our dedication to each other and the hard work and that that What created our luck? So that's what I want you to think about is to think about your career, think about what it is you're working on, think about your job. And to try to separate, what are the actual barriers that are real, that you actually they're not going to give you more money no matter what you do. What are the things for the projects that there is literally no way for you to get it done? But then to also step back and say, Look, is that really the case? Is there a different way if I put in time on nights and weekends, if I build that prototype, if I do something else to show them what that idea is, because this is the thing is don't have the arrogance of assuming that everybody can see what you can see. Because that's one of the things that I've had to learn the hard way is that not everybody can see it. Not everybody wants to take the risk. Not everybody is wired the way the creatives are, to be willing to go out and to take these risks to do these things. To see what is out there just barely lit in the darkness. When all that everybody else sees is just simply the darkness, they don't understand it until they can see it and hold it and try it and do something with it. It Only then can they buy in. So to make sure that you are taking the risk and doing the work and to make sure that success is a choice, that is the outcome that you're going to get. Not that a whole list of excuses of why you couldn't do it is what you're going to get. Because that's what I'm seeing too much of. I'm seeing too many people that their greatest accomplishments are the rationalization for why they're not doing the work they want to be doing. And it's all the rationalization about why they aren't happy and how that is somebody else's fault. Because that's the thing is that there is too much talent, we're in a time we're creative is too valued. For us to sit around and feel sorry for ourselves when things don't go our way. What we need to do is we need to go out and to make it a choice, we need to make it the outcome that we want. And that's the thing is I just want to share this because for everybody who just thinks that it was lucky or that somehow it happened, trust me, it didn't. And that it is something you have to go in every single day because any part of the success, leadership creativity, it is not about a big moment. There's not a big bang, there's not one thing that's gonna make you successful. What it's gonna be is a lot of little things there. add up to something big. Again, it's a year and a half of work that led to that one great moment, when everybody knew all along that we were going to pull it off and be smart whenever I can guarantee you that they didn't. But that's the thing is that success is a choice. So take some time and think about the choices that you're making. Look at your day to day decision. See, are you setting yourselves up to be successful to make sure that the outcome you want is the outcome you get? Not that you're simply going to be hampered, and to be accepting of all the reasons I'm going to push back at you. That's it. And like I said, much shorter format, we're going to pull in an under 20 minutes. So hopefully this was just as strong that a shot of espresso is just a regular show. If you got anything out of it. Do me a favor, take just a second head over to iTunes, head over to your favorite podcast platform and please leave a review makes a big difference partially because it keeps me motivated but also brings a lot more people to the show. If you want to find out more about the podcast if you want to look at some articles I've written if you want to get notes or a transcript of this show, head over to podcast Stephen Gates calm Stephen as always STV ph n. Gates gtas just like Bill Gates, but no, there is no relation. And please don't send me jokes about that. I've heard it for over 40 years and it still isn't funny. If you like the show, if you have a question if there's something that you want to talk more about, if there's something you want to hear me talk more about, head over there typing The Crazy One podcast into Facebook, give the page a like, send me any questions. I'm posting articles. It's kind of the place where we are trying to build a community around the show. As always, the boys down illegal want me to remind you that all of us here on my own, they do not represent any of my current or former employers. This is just me out here talking. And finally I say it every time because I mean it every time. But thank you for your time. I'm always incredibly humbled that you want to spend any of your time with me because I know that time is truly the only real luxury that any of us have. So hopefully this shot of espresso was as good for you as it was for me and until next time, stay crazy.