Make Your Own LUCK

You can create your own luck. I think you need to put yourself in position to receive the luck. So I get a lot of business through my YouTube channel as an example, and I've gotten deals with Microsoft and Sage and big companies through my YouTube channel. I've gotten speaking gigs, I've gotten the book deal, mostly through my YouTube channel. Is it lucky that people happen to search something on YouTube and one of my videos comes up or it shows up in the side and then they click on it and they like it and they contact me? Sure. I mean, think about your experience. You found me somehow, somebody told you about it, or maybe you're just doing a Google or YouTube search and one of my videos showed up and you watched it and you liked it and you subscribed. So there's a bit of luck to it, but I give myself the best chance at it. It's because I'm producing 3 to 4 videos a day. It's because I love the content that I'm creating. It's because I'm proud of what I'm doing. It's because I'm pouring my heart into making stuff that I want to show my grandkids and hopefully you guys are enjoying and finding value in too. So is it a little bit of luck that people find myself? Sure. I'm giving myself the best chance possible and not just chilling back and blaming the fact that I don't have any good luck. I think people use luck as a crutch too often. I think people blame bad luck on their circumstances, and then that's the story that they tell themselves for the rest of their life. I'm from a poor country, so, you know, I have bad luck and I won't be successful. Or my parents, you know, I don't have the right parents, so that's my bad luck. Or I didn't go to the right school, and so that's my bad luck. And that's the story that you tell yourself for the rest of your life, and then you never break free. Like, as long as you believe that, if you believe you have bad luck, then you're never gonna break free, you're never gonna be able to do something amazing. And too many people use that as a crutch instead of going out and chasing their dreams. I look at where I'm from, sure, I'm lucky to live in Canada, I'm lucky to go and have the parents that I did, I'm lucky to have gone to university, and I'm lucky to have the upbringing environment that I've had. But I created a lot of that for myself. And if, you know, a nuclear bomb dropped on Toronto— please don't do that— and I somehow managed to survive, no matter how, you know, badly beaten and bruised I was, I would still go and get mine. It doesn't matter who wins the next presidential election, if it's Trump or Hillary, I'm still gonna go and get mine. It doesn't matter if they raise taxes 100%, I'm still gonna go and get mine. The things that you blame stuff on, the outside environment, that you call bad luck, I'm still gonna go and get mine. And if you look at people who've had massive success, they don't blame their circumstances, they don't blame— like, you can look at somebody and say, "Wow, that person's had so much bad luck." You look at Abe Lincoln, who ran for office like 7 times and failed, whose first love of his life died, whose 3 of his 4 kids died before they hit adulthood, whose second wife had depression and had to go to a mental asylum, who Abe Lincoln himself had depression. Like, all this bad luck that happened to him, he could have easily believed that and then that's it, give up. And no, then he decided, "I'm gonna run for president." And by some accounts, the greatest president of all time, or at least in the top 5. Because of all that bad luck, you look at John Paul DeJoria, who was homeless, who, you know, his parents gave up on him, who had to go to shelters, who joined a gang, who did drugs, who had crappy jobs, and now he's a billionaire. You look at Oprah, who was made fun of as a kid, who was so poor that she wore potato sacks as a dress to school. Can you imagine wearing potato sacks as a dress to go to school? How much she'd been made fun of by the other kids. Got molested and abused by her family and their friends. Had, you know, ran away from home. Had a teenage pregnancy that didn't work out. Like all of this bad luck that happens to these people and yet they still turn it around because that's not their story. They refuse to believe that they're just unlucky and they're not going to do anything about it. So what if you come from a poor country? So what if you feel like you're disadvantaged? Like you're gonna get beat down so many As an entrepreneur, you're gonna get punched in the stomach hard, and then as you're like wobbling around and trying to shake off that first punch, boom, you get hit with an uppercut and you're down on the mat. Like, that's entrepreneurship. That's life for a lot of times. And so what do you do? Do you just stay down on the mat? Do you get up? You have to get up. If you have the big dream that you want to chase, you want to go after, you have to get up and stop blaming bad luck. You look at people who've made it, who've had success, most of the time it's They started as nothing. They were self-made. And if you look at businesses where the founder spent decades building something, pour everything they had into it, started from nothing and built this amazing enterprise, and then they hand it off to their kids, what happens most of the time? The kids run it into the ground. The kids who had all the luck in the world, had parents who cared about them, grew up in a business environment, had mentors to learn from, had all the luck on their side, and they run the business into the ground. It happens So often. So it's not about bad luck. And if you believe that you just have bad luck and blame it on that all the time, you're never gonna go out and reach your goals. Your mindset should be, no matter what happens in my external environment, I am going to go get mine. That's my take.