For every success there is story A and story B.

Story A is a tale of hard work, prescient insight and clever strategy.

Story B is how we found ourselves in the situation where story A could take place — the chance encounters, people we met, and serendipitous discoveries that put us in the right place at the right time.

Without story B, there is no story A, as my own life clearly demonstrates:

If I hadn’t met Csaba Konkoly at a party, we wouldn’t have written a book together.
If I hadn’t met Ben Smith on a project in Milton Keynes, we wouldn’t run a business together.

Story A hogs the limelight, but Story B is what makes every success possible in the first place.

That’s why increasing your luck surface area — by building relationships, paying it forward, trying more stuff, or sharing your interests more broadly — does far more to increase your odds of success than gobbling down ever more academic business advice, crafting more detailed plans, or gathering more data to analyze.

Set the stage for more serendipitous encounters in life, and you’ll be amazed at what can happen. 

This is a key theme in Mastering Uncertainty, out at the end of this month! 

Ps. Check out the UK edition hardback cover 😎 

#entrepreneurship #decisionmaking #strategy #relationships

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