It's so true! Fixating on luck (or lack of it) isn't very productive from an individual stand point.
To disregard luck though is to be blinded by survivorship bias. We never hear the stories from all the people that work hard, do the right things, but don't end up with the big results our culture applauds and focuses on. I agree with Kyle that for those who have found success to dismiss or underplay it when sharing their narrative feels disingenuous.
Thank you for sharing this Kyle. It's a nice reminder that there are many factors playing into the success of a business offering. It's the reality of business and certainly of a creative business. Anywho, onward we create! -TeMika
Great post, Kyle. Man, reading it reminds me of the time when people really supported each other on social media. I'd love for it to get back to that! Remember Follow Friday on Twitter?
Starting out in illustration I tried to copy the way a lot of illustrators were promoting themselves, but it really works differently for everyone.
Kyle, thank you so much for this post! I really appreciate your sincerity on that topic. I was one of your happy customers when I purchased your beautiful brushes before they was available as Adobe default. And still use ‘em, your brushes are still the best. Xoxo G. In Italy
Thank you for this post Kyle! I agree with you in that there needed to be a perfect goldilocks environment for your business to succeed, and all these markers where outside of your control. But you still showed up where it mattered - you worked on the brush and put it out there and responded to all the people that where commenting on how great it was! You could have easily postponed making the brush because the laundry needed to be done or you decided that your favourite tv show was a better way to spend your time. It's a symbiotic relationship, I guess, of being in the right place at the right time but also doing the work. Your post reminded me of Cal Newport's book - So good they can't ignore you (which I warmly recommend). Thanks again!
Thanks, Joanna. I’m proud of the effort and time I put into the brush business and sometimes I may have worked too much on it when I could have been spending more quality time with my family. I don’t know — I saw that the conditions were amazing and I had a brief window of opportunity, so I went for it. Lots and lots of luck.
Perhaps that is exactly the situation we brand as "luck" - although the word seems unsuitable here. Seeing the conditions are amazing for something, having that brief window of opportunity and going for it. We will never know how many other people have seen what you've seen because they didn't take advantage of the situation. And those that saw it and didn't do anything about it can easily say "it was a lucky" because they know deeeeeep down, they could have been that person but instead they chose to do something else. Maybe this is getting a bit too philosophical ! Either way, well done on the work - you should be proud - and the quality time with the family can be anytime, there's nothing that can be done about the past. Thanks again for your words and thoughts.
Thanks Kyle for sharing this story about your experience. I think you hit the nail on the head with this one. As an American who grew up hearing “you can be anything you want to be” or “you just need to work hard, and good things will come”, I would say that those ideas can lead to a false sense of reality. We are only in control of a small number of factors in the world. If they are not in our favor the results of ignoring them or being naive can be devastating. As a parent of a teenager right now I think you example would be a great message to the youth of today to hear.
I used to read biographies of successful entrepreneurs. One of the key things I picked up was that luck played a part, often a big part, in their success. Quite often the first lucky event was being born into a reasonably wealthy family.
Richard Branson is often held up in the UK as a successful entrepreneur and the fact that he had several failures before his first big success is highlighted. It’s true that he had failures, but he came from a reasonably well-off family so there was never any concern for him about the bills being paid, getting fed or having somewhere to sleep. Any debts from the businesses he started were covered. He also had family members who could help and advise, or provide introductions to people who could help and advise, on the legalities and ‘boring business stuff’ of starting a business. Similarly, Amazon, like most other businesses (around three quarters of small businesses fail within two years), famously nearly failed in it’s first few years, but Jeff Bezos’ parents stepped in and kept it going.
Other people got lucky early on, right idea in the right environment at the right time. Before J K Rowling wrote Harry Potter there had been a number of books published in the same vein, one similar enough that she was sued because it was suspected she’d plagiarised a series from a decade before. Her series just happened to hit the zeitgeist at the right moment and took off.
Sometimes it’s about the right person championing you. Both Gene Rodenbury and Rod Sterling owe a big part of their success to Lucille Ball, were it not for her spotting their ideas, liking them and deciding to back them we wouldn't have Star Trek or The Twilight Zone.
The way I figure it for every big success you hear about there's hundreds who worked just as hard but the time, the environment or the product wasn’t quite right, or they ran out of money before they could make it a success.
That’s not to say don’t try, don’t work hard. But, failure is not the personal failing it’s often made out to be.
All it takes is hard work and luck. I only have control over one of those, so that's all I try to focus on.
I mean, this comment could have been my entire post!!! You're right, Jake. That's really the whole thing in a nutshell.
I appreciate your post! Made me stop and think for a minute about where I was putting my attention.
It's so true! Fixating on luck (or lack of it) isn't very productive from an individual stand point.
To disregard luck though is to be blinded by survivorship bias. We never hear the stories from all the people that work hard, do the right things, but don't end up with the big results our culture applauds and focuses on. I agree with Kyle that for those who have found success to dismiss or underplay it when sharing their narrative feels disingenuous.
It’s so easy to feel like we have failed if we haven’t reached great summits, been recognized by our peers, etc.
This is the culture.
So much luck, so much chance.
Thank you for sharing this Kyle. It's a nice reminder that there are many factors playing into the success of a business offering. It's the reality of business and certainly of a creative business. Anywho, onward we create! -TeMika
Yes, TeMika - hopefully we all have some luck along the way but it certainly isn’t guaranteed.
Great post, Kyle. Man, reading it reminds me of the time when people really supported each other on social media. I'd love for it to get back to that! Remember Follow Friday on Twitter?
Starting out in illustration I tried to copy the way a lot of illustrators were promoting themselves, but it really works differently for everyone.
‘Twas a brief but beautiful time, indeed! My, how it fell apart.
Yeah, every path is different— took me a while to figure that out!
Kyle, thank you so much for this post! I really appreciate your sincerity on that topic. I was one of your happy customers when I purchased your beautiful brushes before they was available as Adobe default. And still use ‘em, your brushes are still the best. Xoxo G. In Italy
That’s very kind of you and thank you! The artists who supported my work early on made all the difference. I appreciate each and every one of you. 🙏🙏
Thank you for this post Kyle! I agree with you in that there needed to be a perfect goldilocks environment for your business to succeed, and all these markers where outside of your control. But you still showed up where it mattered - you worked on the brush and put it out there and responded to all the people that where commenting on how great it was! You could have easily postponed making the brush because the laundry needed to be done or you decided that your favourite tv show was a better way to spend your time. It's a symbiotic relationship, I guess, of being in the right place at the right time but also doing the work. Your post reminded me of Cal Newport's book - So good they can't ignore you (which I warmly recommend). Thanks again!
Thanks, Joanna. I’m proud of the effort and time I put into the brush business and sometimes I may have worked too much on it when I could have been spending more quality time with my family. I don’t know — I saw that the conditions were amazing and I had a brief window of opportunity, so I went for it. Lots and lots of luck.
… and I will check out that book!
Perhaps that is exactly the situation we brand as "luck" - although the word seems unsuitable here. Seeing the conditions are amazing for something, having that brief window of opportunity and going for it. We will never know how many other people have seen what you've seen because they didn't take advantage of the situation. And those that saw it and didn't do anything about it can easily say "it was a lucky" because they know deeeeeep down, they could have been that person but instead they chose to do something else. Maybe this is getting a bit too philosophical ! Either way, well done on the work - you should be proud - and the quality time with the family can be anytime, there's nothing that can be done about the past. Thanks again for your words and thoughts.
Thanks Kyle for sharing this story about your experience. I think you hit the nail on the head with this one. As an American who grew up hearing “you can be anything you want to be” or “you just need to work hard, and good things will come”, I would say that those ideas can lead to a false sense of reality. We are only in control of a small number of factors in the world. If they are not in our favor the results of ignoring them or being naive can be devastating. As a parent of a teenager right now I think you example would be a great message to the youth of today to hear.
I used to read biographies of successful entrepreneurs. One of the key things I picked up was that luck played a part, often a big part, in their success. Quite often the first lucky event was being born into a reasonably wealthy family.
Richard Branson is often held up in the UK as a successful entrepreneur and the fact that he had several failures before his first big success is highlighted. It’s true that he had failures, but he came from a reasonably well-off family so there was never any concern for him about the bills being paid, getting fed or having somewhere to sleep. Any debts from the businesses he started were covered. He also had family members who could help and advise, or provide introductions to people who could help and advise, on the legalities and ‘boring business stuff’ of starting a business. Similarly, Amazon, like most other businesses (around three quarters of small businesses fail within two years), famously nearly failed in it’s first few years, but Jeff Bezos’ parents stepped in and kept it going.
Other people got lucky early on, right idea in the right environment at the right time. Before J K Rowling wrote Harry Potter there had been a number of books published in the same vein, one similar enough that she was sued because it was suspected she’d plagiarised a series from a decade before. Her series just happened to hit the zeitgeist at the right moment and took off.
Sometimes it’s about the right person championing you. Both Gene Rodenbury and Rod Sterling owe a big part of their success to Lucille Ball, were it not for her spotting their ideas, liking them and deciding to back them we wouldn't have Star Trek or The Twilight Zone.
The way I figure it for every big success you hear about there's hundreds who worked just as hard but the time, the environment or the product wasn’t quite right, or they ran out of money before they could make it a success.
That’s not to say don’t try, don’t work hard. But, failure is not the personal failing it’s often made out to be.