059 - Accepting and Appreciating the Role of Luck
When it comes to the topic of luck, our culture tends to have two polarizing views. One perspective is luck is totally random and completely unpredictable.....kinda like a lottery ticket. The other perspective is luck doesn't exist....."I earned it!" Here's what we believe: sometimes we get lucky.....and that's ok! In today's episode, host Travis Shelton reflects on a handful of his lucky moments in life (there are several, and they are life-changing) and explains why he's not afraid to admit the role of luck in his life. After all, we don't believe luck is totally random. We have a role to play along the journey, and if luck strikes, embrace it with gratitude and humility! Let us know: when have you gotten lucky along your journey?
You can find the Meaning Over Money podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, including:
If you have questions or would like to connect with us outside of the podcast, here's where you can find us:
Online Course: www.meaningover.money (podcast listeners can get 25% off by using the promo code "podcast25")
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCasnj17-bOl_CZ0Cb9czmyQ
Instagram: www.instagram.com/meaning_over_money
Travis's Instagram: www.instagram.com/travis_shelton_
Travis's website: www.travisshelton.com
E-Mail Us: meaningovermoneypodcast@gmail.com
Full Transcript:
There's a proclamation I hear over and over and over in our culture. Sometimes it’s said to me, and sometimes it’s said to others. You are lucky, you're lucky, or you're just lucky. And it's a comment that acknowledges success. But it minimizes somebody's role in that success. Because when we can minimize their role in their success, it's easier for us to live with ourselves for not having success.
So first I need to name something. I'm just going to name it. Let's just put it out there. It's the elephant in the room. And I think in transparency, we just have to talk about it. I'm lucky. I am. I've been. On many occasions, I've told the story. I think back to when I was in college and I didn't like mock interviews. I felt mock interviews felt fake or pretend.
So instead of doing mock interviews, I went and actually interviewed for a few companies that I didn't care about as my practice. And lo and behold, I received an offer. I accepted an offer the next day for an internship in Memphis. For a job that I didn't really care about and a city that I knew nothing about, but I knew Memphis had barbecue and Elvis, and I thought, why not?
Why not go to Memphis? And so that's what I did. That felt lucky. That situation. It felt lucky to me. Fast forward into my career. I've shared the story of how everybody in my company got fired, except for me. That was a very sad and profound moment in my life, but the bright side is, for me, I received an offer to move to Des Moines, Iowa, to continue doing what I was doing.
And it was a combination of a few things. It was a combination of me being one of the few people who knew our entire real estate portfolio and the fact that I was still pretty cheap. I was a lot cheaper than some of the other people who knew the portfolio as well. So I got lucky. I gratefully took that luck and kept a job in the recession. When so many of my friends were becoming unemployed, hat was luck.
Fast forward, many more years. I remember I was talking to my boss at the annual review and he said, “Hey, Travis, what do you want? What's something that you care about?” And I said, “You know, honestly, I would really like to manage an international client.”
Up until that point, I had been managing portfolios of real estate investments for US-based clients, but I always kind of thought the idea of managing a non-US client sounded really fun. So I just threw that out there to him and he said, “Hey, thanks for sharing Travis. You know, maybe an opportunity over the next few years will come up, and I'll remember this. And maybe we can find a way to get you involved in that. So thank you.”
Well, it was probably not much more than three to four months after that conversation, when lo and behold, an investor from London stepped forward and wanted to invest with us. So my boss said, “Travis, we want you to take this.” There was some luck in that timing.
I was grateful for that. You know, this opportunity that I had to go help run an organization in the Southeast Asia. You know, that really stemmed from a chance meeting I had with a gentleman, who's now a friend and a mentor of mine, Dr. Gary Hoag. I had this meeting with him organized by a friend of mine. He had me over for dinner when he was around. He was doing a speaking engagement and then he and I ended up spending an afternoon together.
Just talking about this idea of generosity and stewardship. Then that led to a few months later, getting a phone call from him saying, “Hey, Travis, are you interested in coming to Hong Kong to interview for a board position?” So in a way I think that was luck. There was a lot of luck involved in that.
And again, I'm grateful for that. And then even Meaning Over Money. The whole thing was born out of it. My business partner, Cole, approached me in the beginning of COVID and said, “Hey, Travis, I'm not making any film right now.” He goes, “I know you're not speaking right now. Do you want to do something together?”
He said, “I've always dreamt of creating a video course, but I never knew what it was and now I do.” He goes, “I want it to be you. Can we talk about this?” Thus Meaning Over Money the course was born. Fast forward. Not that long, the Meaning Over Money podcast was born. And so there was some luck in that and I'm grateful for that.
Look, all of these things have an element to luck and all these things changed my life. These things played a big role in my life. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with luck having played a role in my journey. Sometimes I say it's better to be lucky than good. And sometimes I feel like that statement is the hallmark of my life.
That it's better to be lucky than good, but here's the problem with our culture. We believe that it has to be one way or the other. Either it was luck or it was work. That leads us to deny the role of luck, which can breed arrogance and ego. And I think a lot of men struggle with this. I think I struggled with this for a season of life because we don't want to admit that luck played a role.
We want to believe it was all us. Everything we did was ours. I earned it. It's all me. But luck does play a role or it can lead us down a road where we believe everything is the flip of a coin. So why bother doing this? Either I'm going to get lucky or I'm not, and that can breed laziness and inactivity.
So here's what I believe. I believe they go hand in hand. I believe luck and hard work are closely connected. There's a quote that I've always loved. And I think I've internalized it more and more over the years, but the quote goes something like this: “Good luck is when opportunity meets preparation while bad luck is when lack of preparation meets reality.”
Putting in the work creates opportunities for luck. You know, you look back at the examples I brought up. You know, the Memphis situation I got lucky. I stumbled into this interview that I didn't even care about. And I was offered this cool internship in Memphis and the rest is history. And some of my closest friends come from that experience.
That was luck. But I had put in the work in my education up to that point. I had practiced interviewing. I had prepared. I had done the hard work so that when I walked into that interview, I felt like I gave it everything I could. I really did. And I didn't know how good that was, but I really believe that I put everything into that. When my company shut down and everybody was fired and I was made the offer to move up to Iowa, that was preceded by four really hard years of work and dedication.
I poured everything into that company, and I'm not saying the other people didn't, they did. We were like a family. We were in on this thing together. And so when that happened, there was luck, but I did what I needed to do before that to create that opportunity. Had I not performed well, had I not done a good job?
I would have been cut so fast. I might've been the first one out the door..
Or when my boss connected me with an opportunity to serve a non-US client, the London-based client, that was the culmination of almost a decade of my career. There was a track record. I had a strong performance, and I had a reputation for serving my existing clients. Had I not served my existing clients well, there's no chance that I would have had an opportunity to serve that client in London.
Or when I met my friend, Dr. Gary Hoag and this crazy opportunity to help run an organization in Southeast Asia came about that wouldn't have happened. Had I not put myself out there with him relationally. Now I didn't do any hard work in that, but there was an opportunity for me to spend some time with him. And I put myself out there. I was vulnerable. I was eager to learn and grow, and I really felt like I was humbled in that conversation. And I approached it with a humble heart. Had I not done that, that future couldn't have happened. It wouldn't have happened.
And Cole coming to me at the beginning of COVID. Now it was kind of luck that COVID shut down both his work and my work, and then he approached me, but it wasn't a coincidence. It was luck, but it wasn't a coincidence. I had equity with Cole. I've been coaching Cole and his wife, Kate, for a few years before then…..creating trust.
Cole believed in what I was doing, because he was experiencing it on his own journey. We were not necessarily friends yet at that point, but we liked each other and we trusted each other. That's what created that opportunity. Now luck struck and I'm grateful for it. Work and luck go hand in hand, but we can't dismiss it either.
And I'm not alone in this as I'm sharing this story. I hope you can look at your own journey humbly to acknowledge where luck played a role. If you ask any successful business owner or professional athlete or leader, and if they're honest, luck played a role and that's okay. Just because they were lucky, it doesn't negate the tens of thousands of hours that they spent learning and putting shots up in the gym, hitting the weight room. Luck doesn't negate that, luck comes because of that.
And I think this concept is especially relevant with my Christian friends. There are so many Christians who believe that we just need to have faith. God will provide. Yeah, he will. I believe God's going to provide, but when God provides it might not look like what we think it's going to look like.
And typically God providing looks a lot like us doing our role, us doing our part. He's probably not going to honor us if we don't even put in the work. If we just sit idly and we just say, “all right, I'm just going to stay and sit here. And sit here and wait and trust you will provide.” That might not go well.
I don't think that's the intent of this having faith piece. We need to put in the work. We need to do our part. And as we're doing our part, I believe that God's going to do his part. And remember that his part might not look like we think it will look. It will most oftentimes look different, but it will be better.
So as you're on your financial, your career, your life journey, embrace your part in this. Stay persistent, stay disciplined, do the hard work, keep doing the right things for the right reasons. That's all we can do, the right things for the right reasons. And it's amazing how good luck can strike us when we're busy doing the hard work.
And sometimes we don't even think about luck. We're just busy doing the hard work and luck finds us. That's a beautiful thing. And when it does hit us, when we get lucky, whether it's small luck or big luck, don't dismiss it. Don't negate it. Don't downplay it. Call it what it is. Enjoy it and make the most of the opportunity.
It doesn't minimize your hard work. It's often a product of hard work, and this is also important when somebody else gets lucky and it's all around us. We see it everywhere, especially with social media. When people around us get lucky, celebrate. Embrace it, encourage them, affirm them. It's not about you.
Somebody else's luck doesn't have a cost to you. When Cole or one of my clients or somebody I have the privilege of serving has something really lucky happen to them, that's worth celebrating. It's not worth being jealous of, because them winning doesn't mean I'm losing. So let's encourage each other.
Let's push each other. And when somebody gets lucky, let's pat them on the back, congratulate them. Be that friend, be that person, because they don't have a lot of that. People don't have a lot of people truly, genuinely celebrating them when they're succeeding, especially when they're lucky. So go celebrate the luck that you have, celebrate the luck that others have in knowing that work and luck go hand in hand. That's all I have for today.