Maximize your luck surface area

We've heard the cliché "luck is when opportunity meets preparation" many times growing up.

Some of us are even familiar with the concept of "maximizing luck surface area," basically things we can do to become luckier.

My favorite definition of "luck surface area" is this:

It's when you're sufficiently doing and sufficiently telling about what you're doing.

Sounds simple enough, but most of us either lack in the doing, lack in the telling, or both.

Doing more than telling - what's wrong?

We're mostly solopreneurs/entrepreneurs, so I'll keep it to the context of business.

When you're creating (doing) more than marketing (telling), you're not harvesting the value you created.

Your market/brand presence is abysmal, nobody knows about you, and consequently, your revenue growth will be stunted.

But that's not even the biggest danger.

The bigger danger is that you're creating value that the market doesn't demand for.

If you're a creator, you have zero idea if the assets you create resonate with your audience.

If you're a software builder like me, you know building features blindly without consulting your users is the most common way to fail.

You need to tell people what you're doing just to even know if what you're doing is even worth doing.

Telling more than doing - what's wrong?

The reverse is rather common as well:

Entrepreneurs who insist on marketing and promoting a product that's not ready or simply not good.

If George Bernard Shaw said, "Youth is wasted on the young," well I say, "Good marketing is wasted on bad products."

When you aren't adequately focused on building a killer product that changes the game for your customer, your marketing will be wasted effort.

You're not a trillion-dollar tech company who can shove bad products down people's throats; your product needs to be able to sell itself and stand on its own merit.

Otherwise word will get around fast that your product is mediocre -- the response will be lukewarm, there will be negative online reviews, and guess what, your revenue growth will also be stunted.

Constantly telling when you're not doing enough or not doing it right creates more harm than good. Period.

The litmus test

Here's a simple litmus test to audit where you're lacking at the moment:

What do you dread?

Do you dread creating your books, courses, templates, artwork, videos, software?

Do you dread the long hours, the painstaking research, the compilation, the editing, the nitty-gritty of creating sellable assets?

Or do you dread putting your creations out in the world, approaching people, selling to people, and making a lot of noise on social media?

It's like working out in the gym -- whatever you hate is exactly what you need to do more.

Nothing is more urgent and important than what we naturally detest and procrastinate away from.

Pour conclure

This email isn't about creating luck out of thin air.

It's about knowing what to do with luck when luck presents itself.

Do, tell, do, tell, do, tell, there's no other way.

Keep grinding away, soldier. 💪

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