Create Your Own Luck
Ep11
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Audra Dinell: [00:00:00] Hi, and welcome back to a lot with Audra. If you are watching this on the day that we are releasing the recording, it is St. Patty's Day. Happy St. Patty's Day to all who celebrate. And we have a themed episode that will totally be relevant if you're listening to this any other time outside of St. Patrick's Day. And it's called Creating Your Own luck. Obviously I've been having a little bit of fun with themed episodes lately.
Last week we talked about 10 ways to infuse joy in your life for Spring, because it was [00:01:00] episode 10, and this episode came from really just thinking about the past four and a half years. The ride I've had since moving back to my hometown, since becoming an entrepreneur full time, and it just worked out so well that we're recording on St.
Patty's Day. So welcome, welcome, glad you are here. I used to be the type of person, and maybe you can relate, who would look at someone else who had something that I wanted, whether it be the best clients or getting to do something they loved for a job or a beautiful home. And I would think, wow, they're so lucky.
Have you ever done that? Have you ever looked at someone from the outside? Definitely not knowing their struggles and their whole situation and thought, man, they're so lucky. I used to kind of had my head down working quietly on my life [00:02:00] and would not be putting myself out there in ways that would bring me luck.
So today I really wanna bust the myth of luck and talk about how we can create our own luck, and I'm excited to share my experience, share my research, share some stories here, but also I'm just so excited because this is gonna be such a good reminder to me. I'm grateful for what I've achieved and I've got big, big dreams for myself and my family.
This is gonna be such a good reminder episode to me of how to continue to create my own luck in bigger and bigger ways. So even though people believe luck is purely random, science actually shows that it's not. There's a psychologist named Richard Wiseman and his research show that quote unquote lucky people share common traits.
They're open to opportunities, they take action, and they maintain a positive mindset. And so what's [00:03:00] so crazy about this is when I had the idea for this episode, you know, I quickly jotted down a high level outline and thought, you know, if there's anyone out there who's looking at me the way I look at others or the way, I definitely used to look at others much more passively and think, oh, they're so lucky.
When I was creating this high level outline, thinking about what is my experience with creating my own luck. Those were the three things that I wrote down. I wrote down work on mindset. That was a huge one for me, taking action and just being open to opportunities. So it was wild to start digging into the research and show, oh my gosh, that is what science shows
creates our own luck. So exciting. So if you believe you are lucky, you're gonna have behaviors that make that luck happen. I have this friend who wins almost every contest she enters, like she's the person who sees something [00:04:00] on social media, or she'll be at an event and they'll be doing a drawing, and she always puts her name in the hat and she has won.
So many times I lived in the same town as her for about four and a half years, and I witnessed her win over and over again, and I just thought, oh my gosh, this is crazy. And when I was digging into the research on how we can create our own luck, I also stumbled across my favorite entrepreneur.
Sarah Blakely. She owns Spanx. If you are a woman, you are familiar with her company. She has been an entrepreneur that I have just loved to follow and been so inspired by just in my own journey of entrepreneurship. She's a mom to four. She's married to a fellow entrepreneur. But I don't know if you know about her story.
So let me share with you a little bit about Sarah Blakely and how she can be our example that we're looking to of someone who totally created her own luck. Before I do that, I came across this quote that says, luck often happens when preparation meets opportunity. And I feel [00:05:00] like that really sums up her story well.
So Sarah Blakely's, the founder of Spanx, and many people look at her like she's a very lucky entrepreneur. She's a self-made billionaire. Her success story is the shining example to us fellow entrepreneurs who want to create her own luck, who want to go for it. But here's how she started, and many of us know if you know her story, she wanted to go to law school, but she failed the LSAT a couple of different times, and so she pivoted.
She ended up selling fax machines door to door for seven years before she had the idea for Spanx. So she got rejected multiple times on this path that she thought she was laying out for herself. Then when she one day figured out that pantyhose created a smoothing effect under these white pants she was wearing, she realized she had a great idea and had no experience in fashion or manufacturing, but she researched the industry and kept [00:06:00] cold calling people until she got her first break from Neiman Marcus.
Wow. Talk about creating your own luck. Okay. Then she got on Oprah's favorite things list in the year of 2000, and how did she do that? Some might call that lucky, but no, she personally sent a gift basket to Oprah's team and followed through to make sure it got into the right hands. That's how she got on that list.
She had no investors when she started Spanx. She's famously talked about how she took $5,000 of her own money and it was close to her last 5,000 in savings and launched this massive brand and maintain full control without investment, which is just wild. She embraced failure and she took risks. Becoming the youngest female billionaire, she always talks about the importance of failure.
She has this story where she talks about how her dad at the dining room table would encourage her by asking, how did you fail today? I [00:07:00] think she is one of the ultimate women entrepreneur mother figure that we can look to and say, oh my gosh, Sarah Blakely, how lucky.
But you can actually break down how she created that own luck. So that was so encouraging to me. She created her own breaks by being prepared and taking action. She embraced failure instead of fearing it. She put herself in the right places ensuring that when opportunities arose, she was ready. And she maintained a resilient mindset, and that's something I can only guess because obviously I don't know her, but you know, if you are continuously failing on your path and if you know nothing about the industry you're getting into, if you're cold calling, I mean resilience is building up in you.
Okay, so how can we, now that we know luck, luck is a myth. We have an example of someone big, big time who did it. How can we [00:08:00] create our own luck? Well, I think the first thing that we can do is to stop waiting for good things to happen and shift our mindset by asking how can we create the opportunities we're looking for?
So let's say that you are an artist and you are wanting to work with commercial designers. Well, instead of just sitting around and hoping people notice you on Instagram, you can go into their galleries. You can connect with interior designers that you know you can tag on Instagram, you know those type of businesses in your posts.
Instead of waiting to be noticed, let's go out and figure out how we can create opportunities for ourselves. And so often, I don't know if you're like this, but I know I am. Sometimes we wait for the. Perfect opportunity to present itself and the perfect opportunity is just never there. We have to just take the opportunities that are in front of us and take [00:09:00] imperfect actions.
There is an organization that I really respect and it's a local organization to the Midwest, but they do global work and they were looking to add speakers and coaches to their team. So I threw my hat in the ring. I have a history with this organization. I know many people within the organization know me, but instead of waiting for them to come ask me to be a part of their team as a speaker, I threw my hat in the ring.
Spoiler alert. I did not get that opportunity, but what did I do? I said, thank you so much for even considering, how could I be better prepared when this opportunity comes around again? I got some direct feedback and I'm literally putting that into action this year. Okay, so we can't really talk about how we can create our own luck.
I'm gonna talk about our main three things that I outlined at the very start of this podcast when I was high level planning for it, mindset, action, and being [00:10:00] open. We can't really talk about how we can create our own luck until we talk about the power of belief and growth mindset. So I've talked about this book before, but in 2020.
I chose my word of the year to be mindset. Now, I did this in January. Little did I know what was gonna happen in in 2020, starting in March, as none of us did. But my word of the year was mindset. And so one of the first resources I checked out was the book called Mindset by Carol Dweck. And I may have talked about this before, but it was really foundational for me
especially in that year when during a global pandemic, our mindsets were more important than ever. I downloaded this book on Audible. It's very research heavy, and so I found it easier to listen to it. But in that book I learned about what is called a growth mindset, and basically it's believing in possibilities that will make a difference.
So there's a [00:11:00] growth mindset which believes something along the lines of, I don't know how to do that yet. And then there's a fixed mindset, which means I don't know how to do that. So the way I think about growth mindset is that growth mindset believes that I can gain the skills and the abilities and the knowledge along the way.
I can grow. Nothing is fixed. Whereas a fixed mindset is, that's not me. I'm just not into that. That's not my skillset. I can't do it. And what I have learned about. Our neuropathways is that psychologists used to think that they were formed fully in our twenties, but actually newer research is showing that they can continuously be formed these ridges in our mind throughout our life, so we can cultivate a growth mindset.
When we believe that luck is created, we start seeing opportunities everywhere. We start having a positive. Open [00:12:00] perspective. We start being grateful for what we have while visualizing what we want. So we've got one foot firmly planted in contentment, and we have the other foot planted in ambition. I do a lot of visualization.
I don't do it on a regular cadence, but I find myself often visualizing what success would look like for me, whether it be something micro like in a day, or whether it be something bigger, like when I reach a certain goal. When I first started the Thread, my family and I moved back to the Midwest. We sold everything almost to do that.
We landed in an Airbnb. We bought a really great car, used car with cash. It was like a Honda Pilot, one owner. Super good deal. Car prices, I think were a little crazy in the middle of Covid, if I'm remembering right. And so for us, we were just like trying to hold onto cash and got this great car. Well, [00:13:00] as I started my business
one of the things I was visualizing is, okay, when I reach X amount of revenue or when I fill my first cohort, or when I'm able to hire my first person, I'm going to buy this car, and I had this specific car in mind that I wanted to buy, and I would envision myself like driving to appointments. I would visualize myself driving up to a workshop in this car and I would be getting outta this car and it, I would just feel so much like me.
So the power of belief is so huge, and when we're cultivating a growth mindset, there's three specific tips that I wanna give you on how to create your growth mindset so that you can start working towards making your own luck. The first tip is to embrace challenges instead of avoiding them, instead of thinking, this is hard, I quit.
Think of it as stretching us into a stronger version of [00:14:00] ourselves. And man, I need this reminder so consistently. This week is a week where my kiddos are home sick from school, and it's about to be a 10 day spring break that I'm really looking forward to spending with them. But my workload is just piling up, piling up.
We are in the end of recruiting for our next cohort. We've got a big event coming up open to the public and in addition to that, you know, laundry that comes with kids being sick, and it's just been piling on this week. I typically record this podcast on a Monday, and I'm getting to it now, finally on a Wednesday, as my little guys are hanging out in their bedroom and supposed to be taking turns doing what they're doing.
So we'll see how that goes. But the reason I bring this up is because when we were in the middle of Covid and I launched my business I, very specifically remember posting on Instagram about how hard [00:15:00] entrepreneurship is, and I remember why I was feeling that because it was December of 2020 and I had just put my kids into
preschool slash full-time care or part-time care? For my youngest, I think he was about to turn two. And so I was investing this money in childcare and preschool and starting my business that wasn't, you know, currently profitable and someone got exposed to Covid and the kids were home. This was December, so they're already home during Christmas, which obviously is lovely and I love that.
But they were home like an additional like 10 or 12 days. And I will tell you at the start of 2025, it's been the same. If it's not been snow days, it's been sickness or whatnot, and I love working my life around my kids' schedule. I love working my work around their schedule, but man, it can get so hard when many unexpected days are thrust upon you.
But what's different about me in 2025 than [00:16:00] in 2020 is as soon as my youngest got sick, it was Sunday night at 10 30, I had literally just fallen asleep for the night. He came in, let me know he, you know, was sick. He had just thrown up and of course, you know, you're like, oh my gosh, my baby, I hope everything's okay.
You're, you're checking. But once you kind of think, okay, this is kind of a run of the mill virus type situation and, and you know, like, okay, I think I know kind of what's going on here as a parent and you're using your gut. The first thing that came to my mind was. I can handle this, I can handle this, I can handle this.
This week was a monster week of work, preparing for all the things that I mentioned, and in 2020 it would've been so easy to just spiral and tell myself all the reasons why I wasn't gonna succeed in business because it was just too hard to be a parent and an entrepreneur. But I've worked on my growth [00:17:00] mindset so much over the years, and I'm just so proud of myself in that moment and over that night where I was barely getting any sleep to remind myself, I can handle this.
I can handle this. So another thing I'll do to practice this is to seek out opportunities that push me out of my comfort zone. So obviously I didn't seek out this opportunity of having sick kiddos during a really busy work week that's leading up to a couple of really full kind of performance weeks.
But I will push myself outside of my comfort zone. So that opportunity I mentioned earlier. That was outside of my comfort zone. I was excited to let that company know, Hey, I'm interested in working with you. And if I would've gotten picked, the tryouts would have been on Monday of a crazy, crazy for me week, right?
Spring break in the middle of those two big projects. But I just kind of know that when I feel in my gut, when I start feeling a little scared in my tummy and feel like I'm gonna throw up. I know that the opportunity that's in front [00:18:00] of me is outside of my comfort zone, and I just kind of have to say yes.
So that used to be a flag to me to say, no, no, no, and kind of run away when I started to feel like that. But now, once I feel that gut feeling, I know it's an opportunity that I have to say yes. So good. So good. So another way we can embrace challenges instead of avoiding them is to surround ourself with other people who are taking risks and challenges.
I heard from one of the women who was at my very first cohort that she took bigger risks in her business that paid off in the form of growing her business to seven figures. When she was surrounded by other women in the cohort. So it does matter so much who you're surrounding yourself with. If you're surrounding yourself with your neighbor who's got a nine to five and they're comfy and they're coming home every night and just chilling, nothing wrong with that.
But if you're a person [00:19:00] who wants to be an entrepreneur who wants a bigger life for yourself. You've gotta normalize that by hanging out with people who are taking big risks too. I think the biggest barrier to embracing challenges is taking that first step. And for me, I just think about that quote that all it takes is 10 seconds of insane courage to send that email, you know, to
throw your name in the hat to ask for a call to go up and introduce yourself to someone. If you can just embrace that 10 seconds of insane courage, you can figure out the rest as you go. The second way to really grow your growth mindset is replace the words I can't with how can I? So instead of telling yourself I can't do this, challenge yourself, how can I figure this out?
How can I figure out how to get everything done that needs to be done in a week where now I am parenting full-time and I need to work? Watch how successful [00:20:00] people ask better questions rather than giving up. There's always three ways to look at everything. So if you have an obstacle. Brainstorm. Okay.
What are three ways I can do this? I'll take my little example this week. Well, I can push some things off my list that aren't absolute priorities. I can turn on movies and let them just rest and chill on the couch. I can call in some support in the form of my husband or maybe a family member, or take the evenings to totally focus on work while my husband's working during the day.
So brainstorm different ways that you can say, how can I do this instead of, I can't. I can't do this. And then the third way to embrace a growth mindset is to really reframe failure as learning. So getting over failure is something that I feel like I've gotten pretty good at. I feel like I fail all the time because I like to put myself out [00:21:00] there and I just know that's part of the formula for my success, is that I'm gonna put myself
in the arena, and I'm gonna fail, but I'm gonna learn from every failure I have. My husband's really into stoicism right now and I've heard Ryan Holiday speak and we both follow him and I've read some of his books. And so I really like embracing the thought of when I fail, what's in this for me. Or when there's a challenge put into my day what's in this for me. And taking it another step,
journaling about failures is always a really good way to extract information. If you can't do it in the moment, you can always go back and reflect on how you've journaled over the month or quarterly, and then sometimes you're just far away from the challenge that you can extract lessons. Okay. I am laughing because I can totally hear my kids having fun and giggling in the background, which is such a beautiful sound.
Not exactly like the quiet I asked for, but beautiful nonetheless. Okay, [00:22:00] we're gonna move on because if we're gonna be people who create our own luck, we've talked a lot about the science behind luck. We're looking at Sarah Blakely as an example. We've talked, you know, in depth about embracing a growth mindset.
Let's talk about the next step and that is taking action. I read a book at the end of 2020 called Winging It by Emma Isaacs. And you know what's a fun thing about this story is at that time, I had started my business and I was working part-time in it while I was trying to get it up and running, trying to make it profitable.
And I had a contract with an organization in Hawaii where we moved from to do executive recruiting. I'd worked with this company while I was living in Hawaii and they let me work remotely from the Midwest once we moved. And it was just such a great company and a great culture. We did a fun little Christmas exchange and created Amazon wishlists,
and did like a secret Santa drawing. [00:23:00] And one of the things on my wishlist was this book called Winging It from Emma Isaacs. And the book is really all about how action beats planning every time. I used to be a person who would plan the heck out of things, and those plans would oftentimes go nowhere. Those plans would be elaborate and extensive and stay in a Google Doc and reading that book really kind of put a fire under my butt to plan less and take more action. You know, I think that's a certain season of business. I think we all want to be strategic as business owners, I think planning is hugely valuable and I love planning, and now I'm in a little bit more of a season where I'm bringing much more planning back in so that the action I take can be like working better or working smarter, not harder.
But when I was at this place where I was looking at others and thinking how [00:24:00] lucky they were and I wasn't putting myself out there for all the opportunities that I could. This book Winging It and embracing the idea of taking action over planning was super, super helpful. Also, small, consistent actions create
big results. One thing that I'm really proud of in my business that we've done consistently from day one is show up on social media at least three times a week. Now, there have been times where I've been totally burnt out and doing everything myself and took a break for Christmas and you know, did a post saying, Hey all, we're taking a break for Christmas.
Enjoy the holidays. But eventually I got to the point where I could get ahead of that. Now I have a social media coordinator. We plan things out, but I'm just really proud that those small, consistent actions have led to results we hear all the time from people who say, oh, I've been following you on social for years, or I've been following you from the beginning.
So just taking that action even when I'm not sure if it really, really matters. And then another way [00:25:00] to take action is to say yes to new experiences. Luck is often disguised as an unexpected opportunity, and when you are trying to create your own luck, you seize those opportunities. Now, I will put a caveat here too.
There are some seasons in life and business that are Yes seasons. And then there are some seasons in life and business that are no seasons because you know what you're focusing on and you've gotta say no to other things that come your way. And so I don't know what season you are in, but if you're in a season where you feel like you need to create some of your own luck, I would encourage you to say yes.
Say yes to as many things as you can. I love to give this feedback to young professionals when they ask for mentoring advice. My advice is when you don't have a family, if that's a path you're gonna take or when maybe you're not yet married or when you're [00:26:00] not committed. In all the ways that we tend to get committed, the older we get, I'm like, say yes.
Say yes to every happy hour, every coffee, every early morning workout. I'm not saying don't have boundaries. I'm just saying say yes. Say yes to as much as you can because there will come a season where you're focused and the opportunities are coming your way, and you have to say no to some that you don't want to because you know you only have so much capacity.
So step number two, take action. How do we create our own luck? We have a growth mindset and we take action. Okay, the last step I wanna share that helped me is to be open. When I first moved back to my market in the Midwest, you know, I was going everywhere. I was attending all the events. I was keeping my head up.
I wasn't buried in my phone, I was talking to everyone. I told everyone about what I was working on, what I was doing. [00:27:00] And I will say I have admittedly. As the business has grown, gotten busier and busier and do go places still, but I do have to, you know, watch my capacity and don't go quite as many places.
And I often find myself like in the coffee shop line with my head, you know, looking at my phone trying to bang out one email before the barista's ready to take my order. I will say, when you're creating your own luck, that's not the thing to do. The thing to do is not to have your phone out. The thing to do is
look up, be open. Put your eyes in the room, say hi to people you know, meet new people. Start conversations. I'm never afraid to be the first to speak. I love to give people, you know, genuine compliments or ask questions that I'm curious about. Hey, what did you order? That looks great.
Or have you been here before? What's your favorite thing on the menu? Introduce yourself. So if you're creating your own luck, you're gonna be open. Okay? Those are the things I wanted to share with [00:28:00] you today. Luck isn't magic. It's gonna be a mix of mindset and movement. The more you can prepare, the more you take action, the more you are open, the luckier you're gonna become.
The reason I thought it was really important to record this episode is because I need this reminder just as much as you might. We have more agency over our life and over our future than we think. I wanna encourage you to keep showing up. Thank you so much for listening. Keep taking chances. Trust the process.
Trust the scientific process of luck. I am super grateful that you're here. If you've got anything out of this episode, would you share it on social media, share it with a friend? I'd love to hear what resonated most with you. And then I wanna give you a little hint about what we're talking about next week.
We have a big event coming up here in the market that I'm in, and we are gonna be talking next week about the art of personal style. It could be considered another [00:29:00] way to create your own luck, but it's a topic I've been diving into for the event that we're hosting. I've been doing some research on it, and I'm going to invite on our first guest.
So I'm really excited to talk to you about that next week. In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful week. It's the first week of spring. Get out there. Enjoy the beautiful weather. Go create your own luck.
