How to Manufacture Your Own Lucky Break

It seems like virtually all successful entrepreneurs have at least one story about how they caught a lucky break. They were in the right place at the right time and now they’re rich and famous.
It’s certainly true that luck plays a major role in almost all success stories, but that doesn’t mean that we should attribute success to randomness. Luck doesn’t just happen, it’s manufactured. Here are some ways you can manufacture your own luck:

Get started….now!

Do you know what every lottery winner has in common? They all bought lottery tickets. Obviously I’m not suggesting you literally go out and buy a lottery ticket, but my point is that you can’t win a game if you don’t play.
The first step to success is getting started. You can spend all the time in the world planning and brainstorming, but your business can’t get lucky if it doesn’t actually exist.

Cast a wide net

When you’re fishing, the bigger your net is, the more likely you are to find an area with lots of fish. Finding fish is still somewhat random, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t stack the odds in your favor.
If you’re promoting your business, try as many different avenues as possible. In the end, you won’t care about the thousands of strategies that didn’t work — You’ll just care about the one strategy that did work.

Interact with as many people as you can

Most stories about luck involve getting help from already successful people. If you’re a blogger, your lucky break might be getting a link from a major blog. If you’re in a band, you just need to make friends with the right producer. If you run a restaurant, one positive review from the local paper could be all it takes.

I’m really shy, so I’m not very good at traditional networking, but that doesn’t stop me from interacting with lots of people. I’m working to reach out by posting comments on blogs, contributing to message boards, and participating in social networking sites. The key is to be genuine. People can tell if you’re just trying to sell them something.

So what do you think? Is luck totally random, or is it inevitable if you take the right approach? I’d love to hear what you’re doing to manufacture your own lucky break in the comments. To get you started, I’ll tell you the most recent thing I’ve done to cast a wide net and interact with new people: I just guest posted on this blog.