You Need All Three
At the highest level, what does it take to achieve success? What are the bare bone requirements to accomplish something meaningful? Is it knowledge and aptitude? Strategy? Speech-craft and persuasion? Is it focus, resilience, or determination? Some people would say that the keys are any or all of the above and they’re not wrong. Those things really have contributed to a lot of people’s success.
The issue is that some people who are fighting to achieve their goals are sometimes too focused on only some of the success factors that they don’t look after other important ones. For these people, it might be helpful to have a quick reminder of what it takes. Are you over or under indexing to some of the factors?
After having pains and sufferings from trying to make it throughout 34 years of living, I realized that there are 3 high-level factors:
SUCCESS 🏆 = SKILLS 🎯 x BALLS ⚔️ x LUCK ☘️
Skills is everything you can build: knowledge, strategy, persuasion, technique. Balls is the nerve to take conscious action against what you fear and to keep acting when it's hard. Luck is everything outside your control, including the aptitude and circumstances you were born with.
And it's multiplication, not addition. A zero in any one factor zeroes the whole thing. No amount of skill makes up for a total lack of nerve or luck. Not having one of these 3 will result in 3 main categories of failure: setting the bar too low, shooting in the dark, or lost to external factors.
SKILLS 🎯 x LUCK ☘️ without BALLS ⚔️ = only PRIVILEGE
This is the scenario where you set the bar too low.
BALLS ⚔️ x LUCK ☘️ without SKILLS 🎯 = only GAMBLE
This is the scenario where you shoot in the dark.
SKILLS 🎯 x BALLS ⚔️ without LUCK ☘️ = only HUSTLE
This is the scenario where you lost to external factors.
Stop for a second to evaluate how you’re doing using this framework. Are you over-indexing on honing your skills you forget to take risks? Do you keep shooting your shots without improving your techniques? Or are you sure you have the right aptitude and the nerve and now you’re just hoping for the lucky break?
