What "lucky" actually means to me

People assume “lucky” means I’m sitting around waiting for something good to happen.

They have it completely backwards.

People think lucky means things just happen to you. That you’re a passive participant, and all the good stuff lands in your lap.

That’s not the case. Truly lucky people are active participants in their own luck. They put themselves in scenarios where luck can find them. They make themselves available. They do the work. And when the opportunities show up, they actually take them.

It’s a little like nepo babies. The kids of celebrities and founders are often very talented, which makes sense... they’re the product of two people who were very talented or very smart. And I don’t fault them for the success they have, because they took the advantages they were born into and used them.

If you have an opportunity, why would you not take it? What you do with it is the lucky part. Being born into a certain circumstance or being in a certain room isn’t something to apologize for. Taking advantage of it is the cheat code. You should 100% do that. And that is maximizing your luck.

Take me as an example.

I was born in upstate New York to a typical middle-class suburban family. My parents had normal jobs. My dad worked for a Ford dealership, running the service department. My mom was a nurse. Neither of them had advanced degrees when I was growing up, though my mom went back to school and got her master’s when I was older.

College wasn’t a family tradition. Wealth wasn’t a conversation. None of it was accessible to me in the way it is for some people.

What I did have was proximity to ambition. My friends’ parents, my parents’ friends — I saw what hard work could build, even if I didn’t see it as a path for me yet. That’s one instance of luck.

Then I went to college for music. I was going to be a music teacher. And I had a mentor who saw my potential and said, “Hey, I don’t think being a teacher is the right fit for you. You should consider this other path in music business.” That conversation got me to New York, which connected me to the right people.

When I started working for Marie Forleo, I was lucky that I happened to be on my phone the day her team posted the job. I happened to have read something online that week that gave me the right thing to bring up in the interview.

A little luck. A little circumstance. A lot of hard work. I took every piece I’d accumulated and used it to get to the next thing.

I wanted greatness, whatever that looked like. I didn’t know exactly what that meant — I’m still figuring it out. But I always knew I wanted something more. So I was willing to take the risk. To put myself in the right places.

Have I been lucky that it worked out? Yes. But that’s also a product of hard work layered on top of the circumstance.

I have a friend who’s an immigrant, and he often reminds me — you have no idea how lucky you are that you were born here, and what that gives you. He’s right. That is a form of luck. But the success I’ve had is much more a product of hard work and taking every opportunity in front of me.

We have a whole internal manifesto for what a “lucky girl” means to us. Here are some of my favorite lines.

A lucky girl doesn’t wait. She creates the life she wants.

I didn’t always know what that life looked like for me. Part of that was self-protective — I didn’t want to fail, so I didn’t want to dream big enough to disappoint myself. Now I’m specific about what I want, by when, and what steps it’ll take to get there. Missing the target is still better than not having one. Dreaming and writing it down is the work.

A lucky girl isn’t defined by the circumstances she was born into.

I understand there’s privilege in even being able to say that. But it’s something Emma Grede talked about on her book tour — don’t fall victim to your circumstance. It doesn’t matter where you started or what has happened to you. What matters is where you want to go next.

Not everyone is going to put in the work to get there, and that’s okay. That kind of life, that kind of discipline, it isn’t for everybody and it doesn’t need to be. But for those of us who do want it, we can’t be scared off by how hard it is. We can’t stay stuck in the mindset of I can’t have X because of Y. A lucky girl doesn’t believe that. She believes she’s capable of anything she puts her mind to.

A lucky girl is a consummate cheerleader.

This one matters to me because I really believe there’s room for all of us to succeed. What success looks like is different for everyone. When you surround yourself with big dreamers and big thinkers, you push each other to do well and you celebrate each other along the way.

Find people who lift you up no matter where you are, even when they’re having a shitty day. We’re here to lift each other up. If that’s not your vibe, that’s fine — but a lucky girl believes in good karma. So spread it around.

And — a lucky girl loves an indulgence, but never to excess.

Have the fun. Enjoy your life. Otherwise, what are we doing all of this for?

12 has always been my lucky number. I was born in December. It’s a number I’ve always resonated with, a number I see everywhere, a number that’s always felt like mine.

Building this lucky universe was always part of the plan. Everyone we work with is lucky in their own way — and I want Lucky No. 12 to be a brand, a business, and a universe where luck is something we create on purpose, not something we wait for.

Work. One thing we’ve always been praised for is persistence. If there’s an opportunity I want, I follow up. I pitch different ideas. I check in six weeks later. I check in six months later. Because sometimes they’re not ready right away — and I want them to know we’re here when they are.

That persistence carries through into the actual work. We’re always on top of it. Our clients. Our goals. The small details. I want working with us to feel easy, joyful, fun, expansive, exciting — and I want clients to feel that from the first conversation forward.

The flip side: if I’m feeling real resistance about writing a proposal, doing the research, or finding a way in with a client, that’s usually a sign they’re not the right fit. Lucky girls trust their intuition.

Life. Every single time I say no to something I know isn’t good for me, something ten times better comes along. I have to remind myself of that constantly. Life is abundant. I should never, ever settle.

Settling is the worst thing you can do.

A lucky girl doesn’t wait. She creates.

If this resonated, forward it to the friend you’d call lucky. 🍀

Cheers,

Audrey