We love to believe business success comes down to strategy, hustle, and execution. Work hard, follow the right steps, and you too can build something successful. It’s a comforting narrative.
But also wrong.
Building a successful business involves an enormous amount of luck. But not the kind most people think about.
I’m not talking about getting lucky with a viral TikTok or randomly meeting an investor at a coffee shop. I’m talking about the luck that determines your starting point long before you ever launch anything.
The Deceptive Simplicity of Business
On the surface, building a business is laughably simple. The formula goes like this:
- People want something
- You create what they want
- You let them know that you have it
That’s it. That’s the whole game.
(Note: There are other easy breakdowns we can do for how business works but let’s go with this one.)
So why can’t everyone just do that? Why do most businesses fail if the formula is so damn simple?
Because knowing what to do and actually being able to do it are completely different things. And that gap, between understanding and execution, is where circumstantial luck plays out.
The Starting Line Isn’t Equal
Some people start the race at the 50-yard line without even realizing it.
If your parents were entrepreneurs, you grew up seeing what’s possible. You watched them solve problems, take risks, bounce back from failures. You overheard conversations about profit margins at the dinner table. You absorbed an entrepreneurial mindset through osmosis.
Business feels normal to you. Not easy, but normal.
Compare that to growing up with parents who dragged themselves to jobs they hated, complained about “the system,” but told you “that’s just how life works.” You’re starting with a mental handicap that most business advice never acknowledges.
You don’t just have to learn business skills. You have to unlearn an entire framework for how work and money operate in the world. You have to overcome the voice in your head that says “people like us don’t do things like that.”
That’s not a small hurdle. That’s a wall.
The Neurological Lottery
Try building a business when you’ve got undiagnosed ADHD.
You keep following advice for neurotypical brains and beating yourself up when it doesn’t work. “Just stick to a routine!” they say. “Follow these exact steps every day!” “Be consistent!”
Meanwhile, nobody’s told you that your “flaws” could actually be strengths if you built a different kind of business. One that leverages your ability to hyperfocus on things that interest you, your creative connections, your energy for new projects.
I spent years trying to force myself into systems that were never designed for how my brain works. Wasted a lot of time feeling broken before I realized I just needed different tools.
The neurological lottery extends beyond ADHD. Are you on the autism spectrum? Do you have anxiety? Depression? Each of these means standard business advice might be actively harmful for you.
The luck isn’t in finding customers. It’s in finding the truth about yourself early enough to do something about it.
The Mentor Lottery
Some people have the luck of meeting the right mentor from day one. Someone who sees them clearly and guides them toward strengths instead of trying to fix “weaknesses.”
Others get stuck with mentors who project their own bullshit onto them. “You need to wake up at 5am and follow this exact system!” when maybe you’re a night owl who works best in creative bursts.
“You have to niche down and only do one thing!” when maybe your advantage is in connecting multiple domains.
“Just follow my proven formula!” when that formula was built for someone with a completely different set of strengths and circumstances.
The wrong mentor at the beginning of your journey can waste years of your life. Years of trying to be someone you’re not. Years of forcing yourself into a business model that fights against your natural tendencies rather than leveraging them.
Invisible Mental Blocks
Then there’s the money blocks. The invisible scripts running in your head from things you heard when you were 8 years old.
“Rich people are greedy.” “You have to work hard for money.” “Who do you think you are?” “There’s not enough to go around.” “You don’t deserve this.”
These will sabotage you forever if you don’t even know they’re there.
You can know the perfect business model, have the perfect product, understand exactly who your customers are and still fail because some part of you doesn’t believe you deserve success.
Or because you unconsciously associate wealth with becoming someone you don’t want to be.
Or because you’re running your grandparents’ Depression-era scarcity mindset in a time of unprecedented abundance.
The Luck of Awareness
The real luck is encountering something, a person, a book, an experience, that makes these invisible things visible to you early in your journey.
Or being born into circumstances where these obstacles never existed in the first place.
Some people have the incredible fortune of stumbling across exactly the right insight at exactly the right time. They read the book that addresses their specific mental block. They meet the person who recognizes their unique brain wiring and shows them how to work with it instead of against it.
Others spend decades banging their head against the wall, trying harder, following all the advice, and still not breaking through – because they’re trying to solve the wrong problem.
Creating Your Own Luck
I’m not saying this to discourage you. I’m saying it because acknowledging these hidden factors makes it clear what you actually need to do if you weren’t born with these advantages.
You need to actively hunt down your blindspots. Question everything you believe about work, money, and success. Be ruthless about examining where those beliefs came from.
Are you carrying your parents’ limiting beliefs? Your culture’s? Your socioeconomic class’s?
Find people who think differently than you do. Not just about business tactics, but about how the world works. People from different backgrounds, different industries, different neurotypes.
The path isn’t about finding the right marketing strategy. It’s about finding and removing the invisible barriers you didn’t even know were there.
Practical Steps for Overcoming Circumstantial Bad Luck
Here’s what to do if you suspect hidden blocks are holding you back:
- Self-inventory your money beliefs. Write down everything you believe about money, success, rich people, work, and what you deserve. Then ask for each one: “Is this actually true? Where did I learn this? Who taught me this?”
- Examine your models of possibility. Who showed you what was possible in life? Were they entrepreneurs or employees? Optimists or pessimists? Risk-takers or security-seekers? Understanding your models helps you see what you need to unlearn.
- Consider your neurotype. If standard productivity advice has always made you feel broken, you might not be neurotypical. Learn about how different brains work. ADHD, autism spectrum, anxiety – all require different approaches to business.
- Seek diversity of thought. Deliberately build relationships with people who think differently than you do. People from different socioeconomic backgrounds, different industries, different perspectives on money and success.
- Study your patterns of self-sabotage. When things start going well, what happens? Do you get overwhelmed? Lose interest? Create drama? Pick apart your success patterns to find the hidden blocks.
Master Yourself
The real work of building a business isn’t mastering Facebook ads or writing the perfect sales page. It’s identifying and dismantling the invisible barriers that hold you back from executing on the simple formula: make something people want, and let them know you have it.
That’s the real work. And yeah, sometimes finding the right guide for that journey comes down to luck.
But once you know what you’re looking for, you can create some of that luck yourself.
The surface-level simplicity of business is both its most appealing and most frustrating quality. Because when you can’t execute on something that seems so straightforward, it’s easy to blame yourself.
But maybe it’s not your fault. Maybe you just started from a different place. Maybe you’re playing a game whose rules were written for a different kind of mind.
The good news is, once you see the real obstacles, you can finally start removing them.
And that’s when the simple formula finally starts working.
