Luck Needs Somewhere To Land.

Read time: 6 minutes

Hey, welcome back.

Last week, we talked about why failure beats daydreaming, and why you should seek it asap. You can read that (and all past issues, here)​

Today I want to talk about luck. And why some people seem to have so much of it.

Luck Has A Routing Problem

Everyone wants more opportunities. More interesting people. More "right place, right time" moments. But when you look at how most people move through the world, there's almost nothing for luck to grab onto.

Nobody knows what they're working on. Nobody knows what they're good at. Nobody knows what introduction would actually be useful. Nobody knows what room they should be invited into.

So opportunity has to do too much work. It has to find you, understand you, remember you, and route something your way with almost no signal. That's a lot to ask.

The "lucky" people I know, and I've met hundreds of them through investing and running founder communities, are just easier to route. Someone hears about a project and thinks of them. Someone gets invited to something and brings them along. Someone needs help and remembers they're good at that exact thing.

From the outside it looks like luck. From the inside it's usually repetition. They kept giving the world coordinates.

Your Life Has No Open Tabs

This is where most people quietly sabotage themselves. They keep everything private until it's perfect. They don't post. They don't tell anyone what they're working on. They don't ask for introductions. They don't follow up after meetings. They don't put themselves in rooms where the next version of their life could find them.

Then they call themselves unlucky.

Maybe. Or maybe their life has no open tabs for opportunity to click on.

When Joel and I were building Heights, we talked about what we were doing constantly. Not in a polished way. We didn't have a product yet. We just kept telling people "we're trying to understand why supplements are so bad and whether we can make something better." That sentence, repeated in pubs, at dinners, in DMs, over months, brought us our first investors, our first customers, our first advisor, and our Chief Science Officer. Every single one of those came through someone who heard what we were exploring and connected us to the right person.

If we'd waited until we had a product to start talking, none of those connections would have happened.

Be Easy To Describe

Most opportunities travel through other people's ability to describe you. One sentence from someone who knows you can change your entire trajectory.

"He's the guy who understands brain health."
"She's the one building that subscription thing."
"You should talk to him, he's been thinking about this for years."

That one sentence is how introductions happen when you're not in the room. And most people have never given anyone a clear enough picture to build that sentence.

Being "interested in everything" sounds open minded but it gives people nowhere to place you. The world has a terrible filing system. Help it out. Give people a reason to associate you with something specific.

This doesn't mean becoming one dimensional. It means leaving enough clues that your name starts appearing in the right conversations. People remember the person who is always thinking about nutrition. The friend who understands supplements. The founder who can explain business simply. Specificity makes you memorable.

A life nobody can explain is a life that's harder to help.

Give People Coordinates

You don't need to announce every ambition like a press release. You don't need to turn your lunch into a LinkedIn post. You don't need to perform certainty you don't have.

You just need to make your current interests legible.

If you care about health, talk about health. If you're building something, let people know what problem you're trying to solve. If you're learning a skill, show the process. If you want to be in certain rooms, start behaving like someone those rooms would naturally include.

Say what you're exploring. Say what you're building. Say what kind of problems energise you. Say what you're trying to get better at.

Not every day. Not desperately. Just enough that the people around you can start connecting dots on your behalf.

Do This Today

Think of one thing you'd like more of in your working life. Be specific. Then think of one person who might know where to start. Send them a message they can act on without asking five follow up questions.

You don't need to make it a grand announcement. Just give someone who already wants good things for you a clearer picture of what good would look like right now.

The lucky people aren't always more talented. Sometimes they just gave luck a cleaner address.

To being easier to find,

Dan

P.S. If someone's name came to mind while reading this, someone whose work or interests you could describe in one sentence to the right person, send them this letter. They might not know how close they are to the thing they're looking for.

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