The Luck Equation: If you don’t ask, the answer is always no

First things first, welcome to Connection Pending. Apparently someone had a trademark for Social Currency so I had to change the name.

You know when you come across a concept, and you can’t stop thinking about it? For me, that’s ‘increasing your surface area for luck’. I first came across it via James Clear a while ago, who explains it using this nice analogy: “The forager who explores widely will find lots of useless terrain, but is also more likely to stumble across a bountiful berry patch than the person who stays home. Similarly, the person who works hard, pursues opportunity, and tries more things is more likely to stumble across a lucky break than the person who waits.” Obviously, some of us are born with a lot more privilege than others, and it doesn’t all come down to luck. That said, focusing on what we can control, I really like the luck equation:

Luck = Preparation + Opportunity + Action.

The concept has had a recent resurgence on social media, and there are many inspiring adjacent takes out there. Startup founders have moonshots and BHAGs (big, hairy, audacious goals). Manifestation fans have Lucky Girl Syndrome. It even appears in chemistry in the form of collision theory. In non-scientific terms: for a chemical reaction to occur, the reacting particles must collide with one another in the right way. Only a small number of collisions lead to the desired reaction, so increasing the frequency or energy of these collisions speeds up the reaction rate (which is a good thing). It’s the same with networking — the more interactions you have, the more likely it is that you’ll meet some great people with whom you can potentially work or collaborate or whatever it is you’re trying to do.

Sometimes, aiming for the moon feels easier than aiming low. I’m not entirely sure why that is — perhaps it’s because you think the email to a celebrity will just get lost in a bottomless inbox, so you’ll never have to get a rejection, or maybe because the potential upside is so much greater that the adrenaline carries you through the cringe (I promise I’m fun). There’s a book I loved called 10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less which explores this idea. In simple terms, the book’s thesis is that to 2x your work (whether that’s working with 2x the number of clients, or 2x-ing your income), you focus on working harder and doing more of the same. To 10x (i.e. working with 10x the number of clients, or 10x-ing your income, you need to radically shift everything from your systems and process to your mindset, which will lead to exponential growth.

This is why The 100 Connections Challenge works so well: while it might seem intimidating to meet and chat to that number of people, at the end of the challenge you’ll be flooded with opportunities. It really does work. My favourite category of the challenge is the Wildcard section: the idea is that you reach out to 20 people who have nothing to do with your goals or industry but who you find interesting, it could be very long shots, or it could be famous people. The point is to keep it fun, and to get used to sending messages even when there’s a 1% chance they’ll reply, because you just never know…

Years ago, I was organising a European Youth Parliament conference for young people, and we wanted to get Nick Clegg, then the Deputy Prime Minister of the UK, as our Patron. As an enthusiastic 19 year old, I didn’t spend much time contemplating how much of a long-shot this was, and fired off a LinkedIn message to his personal assistant. She passed along the message, and he ended up accepting our request, acting as Patron of my concert and filming a video speech for us to play at the Opening Ceremony. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. And even if you ask and they say no, that’s not necessarily a no forever — it’s just a not right now.

Similarly, when I was 18, I wanted to be a journalist, and decided I should write an article for The Guardian (why not, right?). I literally emailed the hello@ inbox one night in late December, and they replied the next day accepting my pitch. Within a couple of months, my article about studying in The Netherlands had gone viral, it had been translated into Dutch for the local press, and the Dean of my university had referenced it in his commencement speech — all because of a 3 line email I fired off in bed one evening. Of the 100s of pitches I sent at the time, I got my break because I followed the luck equation of preparation + opportunity + action.

This isn’t to say I haven’t received a thousand (or more?) “no” emails in my life, I just try not to let it stop me. I got rejected from my Masters program twice because I didn’t meet the admission criteria of having studied finance, but kept emailing until they accepted me. They finally relented when I pointed out that Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates also wouldn’t meet the criteria, since neither of them had completed their Bachelor degree (a bullish approach, even by my standards, but hey it worked).

So back to increasing your surface area for luck. For me, that looks like taking a multi-pronged approach to work and networking. Just as The 100 Connections Challenge encourages you to split your 100 conversations into wildcards, friends of friends, and people tied to your goals, I try to keep an open mind when speaking to potential clients. When I was starting out, I had pigeonholed myself into content for female-founded brands, or whatever was in vogue in 2019. Niching can be great, but for my career, I’ve had the most success (in terms of bank account and fun, my two main criteria) when I was open to trying out different things, working on different types of projects, and meeting different types of people. I’ll often hear people tell me they don’t want to have a coffee with person X, because they don’t think they’ll be able to help them. That’s totally the wrong approach: you just never know where your next opportunity will come from. Stay open and excited about exploring all paths — or as James Clear says, forage widely — and you’ll find opportunities you didn’t even know existed.

If you’re hovering over ‘send’ on a scary email, here’s some encouragement to shoot your shot.

• No isn’t always a no forever — it’s just not right now.

• If you never shoot, you’ll never score.

• Really, what’s the worst that can happen?

• They probably won’t reply anyway… so just send it.

• Everything you want is on the other side of a scary email.

On the Connection Pending Substack, we unpack the art (and science) of connection: from who to meet and how to meet them, to building your own ecosystem and creating those right-place-right-time moments that spark opportunity, whatever your goals in work of life. Expect interviews with people who do it best, practical hacks you can put to work immediately, and recommendations on tools, events, and strategies to grow your own network. You can find Phoebe at the imaginatively named phoebedodds.com.