Quintessential Careers:
Career Intensity: Create Your Own Luck
by David V. Lorenzo
Editor's note: This article is an excerpt from Lorenzo's book,
Career Intensity: Business Strategy for WorkPlace Warriors and Entrepreneurs, Ogman Press, 2006.
Have you ever wished for that one lucky break that would allow your dreams to become a
reality, or reflected upon someone's success and envied their luck? If so, you're not alone.
It has almost become a cliché to say someone is lucky. There is a degree of chance that is
involved in everything in life. It seems that everyone is chasing luck but only a select few ever catch it.
A survey conducted by the Consumer Federation of America and the financial services firm
Primerica revealed that 40 percent of Americans with incomes between $25,000 and $35,000 --
and nearly one-half of respondents with incomes of $15,000 to $25,000 -- thought that winning
the lottery would give them their retirement funds. Overall, 27 percent of respondents said that their
best chance to gain $500,000 in their lifetime was via a sweepstakes or lottery win. Even more
astonishing is that this survey was conducted in 1999, during the stock market boom of the dot-com era.
Untold numbers of people were becoming rich overnight by investing in the stock market or by
starting up companies in their garages, yet a substantial portion of the American public still thought
they could rely on luck to make themselves successful.
To become successful, you must make a decision to pursue success. You can't leave it to chance.
People who have Career Intensity make personal choices that are in line with their passion, their
goals, and their tolerance for risk. They break through limiting beliefs and realize that they always
have choices. Before you can move forward, you must give yourself the permission and the
willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve your goals. Then, when you create the conditions in
your career that will help you capitalize on opportunities as they arise, you will be in the position
to reap the rewards of your journey.
Four Qualities that Attract Success
Louis Pasteur, the famous French scientist, said, "Fortune favors the prepared mind." In order to
prepare yourself to welcome success, you need to replicate the mindset of high achievers and create your own luck.
Over the years, I have found that top performers -- whether they were entrepreneurs, company
executives, superstars of the academic world, or emerging leaders in business and public service --
share four common qualities that draw opportunity toward them. Although these traits are often
dismissed as being soft, they are the common denominator in those individuals who appear to be lucky,
but who in fact attract success like a magnet. In sum, they take calculated risks; they create a positive
environment for themselves and everyone around them; they work hard at making things simple;
and they follow the 80/20 rule.
I: Take Calculated Risks
There are certain types of risks that you can almost never proactively address. These are the risks associated
with accidents, natural disasters, or another unexpected calamity. To address these issues, you transfer
the risk by purchasing insurance. Super-achievers have emergency plans in place to deal with the aftermaths
of these types of situations. They review them on a regular basis and they assess their insurance coverage
to make certain that it is up to date and sufficient for their needs.
The type of risk that most people and most businesses face each day is the risk involved in making
decisions. This is referred to as speculative risk because the possibility exists that the outcome could
be either favorable or unfavorable. The risk taker is speculating on the potential result of the decision.
Successful individuals win these situations most of the time; the outcome is favorable more often than not.
In order to win they use a four-step process to aggressively evaluate each opportunity.
II: Creating a Positive Environment
There are two main ingredients necessary to create a positive attitude. To truly be a positive person -- a person
who will welcome success and make your own luck – you must create a positive internal environment as well as
a positive external environment. This means that you must not only surround yourself with positive people and
reminders of your unlimited potential, but you must also master your internal self-dialogue. You cannot afford to
have a single negative thought in your head. Just as negative people can drag you down, negative thoughts can
become embedded in your unconscious mind and undermine your attempts at success.
People like to be around those who are kind and fair. They like to be near people who offer them hope and who
view the glass as half-full instead of half-empty. People like to be around others who laugh and enjoy life. All of these
things are part of having a positive attitude. In being positive, you project an image that attracts others to you.
A positive environment is one in which people feel good about themselves and the work they are doing. They enjoy
working with one another and look forward to coming to work. A positive environment is one where people give of
themselves not only to make money, but also because they have a sense of higher purpose -- a sense that they are
contributing to something that is larger than their individual needs.
One of the best ways to create a positive environment in the world around you is to give of yourself to others.
Many highly successful individuals give huge sums of money to worthy charitable causes. A large number of these
folks make their contributions anonymously. They do not want to be publicly recognized for their giving. They give
because it makes them feel good about themselves. It helps them influence their environment in a positive way while
allowing them to give something back to the community.
Beyond making a financial contribution to a worthy cause, many top achievers give their time and expertise to
others. Those who feel most fulfilled give as a part of their everyday jobs. Many business leaders view teaching
as leading and they help foster a positive attitude in their organizations by requiring knowledge sharing, both formally
and informally.
Kindness is a very powerful way to create a positive external environment. This is a word you do not often hear
in the corporate world. It is much more popular to be a tough guy and to give the impression that you don't take
any crap from people. While it's true that you should never allow others to take advantage of you, your family,
or your company, and that you should crush your enemies, those two principles are not at odds with a philosophy
of kindness. Kindness and living a positive life or career will provide you with the strength to help you defeat
people who have malice in their hearts – people who want to take what you have earned.
Try this exercise and tell me if it improves your attitude; Each day, take 15 minutes to write at least one note to
someone in your address book or email contact list. In this handwritten note, make sure you identify something
that you like about them and at least one reason why you are grateful for them being associated with you. Not
only are most people genuinely touched when they receive such a note, but the process of writing it allows
you to reflect on the positive aspects of your relationship with this particular person. When you engage in this process:
III: Working Hard to Make Things Simple
You have already simplified your life by creating and focusing on your goals. This will help you streamline you
approach toward your career. Simplicity plays an important role in creating luck through your interactions with
others. There are three ways successful people make sure their relationships are uncomplicated:
IV: Follow the 80/20 Rule
The underlying theory is that a few (20 percent) greatly influence the outcome of a situation and the many (80
percent) have a limited impact. When he applied this theory to manufacturing, Juran discovered that 20 percent
of the defects in products were causing 80 percent of the problems for customers. In working on a project, you
can almost always predict that 20 percent of the work (the first 10 percent and the last 10 percent) will take up
80 percent of your time. There are literally hundreds of examples of the few requiring more resources than the many.
Although this law should not be interpreted literally, a successful individual uses it to her advantage every day.
She focuses her time and effort on the vital few things that influence the greatest results. She uses this as a form
of mental leverage. She focuses on the most productive aspects of everything she does and works around or
delegates the least productive aspects of her work. Perhaps the greatest proof of this principle lies in your own life.
Think back to something that you are particularly proud to have accomplished. On a sheet of paper, write down
all the tasks that you performed in order to bring about this achievement. As you look at those tasks, think about
those that were high value tasks and those that you could have avoided. You will find that consistent effort focused
on a few critical tasks helped you achieve your desired results.
The best way to use this principle in a forward-looking manner is to examine any particularly difficult task on
which you're currently working. Look closely at the desired outcome and make a list of the steps necessary to
achieve that result. As you look over your list, analyze which tasks will provide you with the best results (both in
quality and quantity). Once you have determined which tasks are the vital few, attack them with all of your effort.
You will often find that the momentum of attacking the most critical items at the beginning of a project will help
sustain your effort to complete the project in a shorter time period than you originally anticipated.
Sales professionals often talk in great detail about the 80/20 rule. They regularly tell stories of how 80 percent
of their business comes from 20 percent of their customers. People often encourage them not to waste their
time with the remaining 80 percent, but to focus on the 20 percent that is drives their business. This could lead
to trouble. While focusing on the 20 percent of the customers that currently provide 80 percent of the value
in your portfolio, you need to make certain that someone is mining the 80 percent to look for additions to your
20 percent. In other words, you must continually work to enlarge the pie, rather than take a larger percentage
of the smaller existing pie. For example, 20 percent of 300 is double the size of 30 percent of 100.
The 80/20 rule will continue to work for you if you always look to enlarge the universe in which you are striving
to achieve the 20 percent share. You need to be creative and always expand your operating universe.
Questions about some of the terminology used in this article? Get more information (definitions and links) on key college, career, and job-search
terms by going to our Job-Seeker's Glossary of Job-Hunting Terms.
Search Quintessential Careers:
Successful people take risks -- the possibility of damage, injury, or loss -- in order to capitalize on
opportunities. Risk-taking is a part of everyday business and everyday life. If you are a strategic
thinker (as discussed in Chapter Three of Career Intensity), you are already contemplating the
potential consequences of every decision and have prepared contingency plans that you can put to
work if things don't go your way.
In discussing success with the leaders of every field of endeavor, they all mention creating a positive environment
and having a positive attitude as necessary prerequisites for success. These leaders often say that most of their inner
strength comes from the positive feelings they engender when doing things for others.
Have you ever met someone who loves to complicate things? They relish showing you how smart they are
by making a concept or procedure so difficult that only they can understand it. These people don't get very
far in business and often become politicians. In truth, it is much more difficult to simplify than it is to complicate.
Although the word "simple" often gets a bad rap, since it is often used synonymously with "inferior" and
"substandard," making things simple is one of the qualities that can help you create your own luck.
Many people call the 80/20 rule The Pareto Principle, since it is often attributed to Italian economist
Vilfredo Pareto. He created a mathematical formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his
country (as measured by land ownership). Pareto observed that 20 percent of the people owned 80 percent
of the land. In the late 1940s, Dr. Joseph Juran took Pareto's name and his description of the economic state
of Italy in 1906 and used it to describe his "theory of the vital few and the trivial many."
David Lorenzo has more than 20 years of business experience as a successful
corporate executive, entrepreneur, strategist, author, and speaker. His
latest book is titled: Career Intensity: Business Strategy for Workplace
Warriors and Entrepreneurs. David's speaking topics include:
The Art of Rainmaking: Five ways to supercharge your sales career;
Managing Superachievers: Develop and lead a team that will crush
your competition; and Customer Tsunami: Create a storm of customer buzz that will make
your business number one. Dave also coaches executives and teams on professional development and
performance improvement. To contact Dave call: 1-888-dlorenzo or e-mail:
dlorenzo@dlorenzo.com or visit his website:
CareerIntensity.com.
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