10 years ago my life changed forever.

It was the Fall of 2013, which was my freshman year of high school.

I didn't go to school in my town. So I knew no one, and had no friends with me.

Weeks had gone by trying to find my group of people, all while navigating the confusing world of high school.

One day I was waiting outside on the steps for my bus. This was a usually busy hangout area for all the kids taking public transportation.

I overheard a few kids talking about League of Legends (which was one of my favorite video games at the time).

I was always a nerdy kid, and was embarrassed by that fact for a significant portion of my life.

I was never that good at sports, and was obsessed with the latest tech device and app.

It made it difficult to make friends.

I was terrified to expose myself as a League of Legends player in fear that maybe they were making fun of the game and not embracing it.

But, I took the risk.

I interrupted the conversation and said that I played the game too.

To my surprise-- they loved the interruption.

That risk I took turned into a best friend of 10 years.

My life would look entirely different if I hadn't swallowed the fear and took the risk.

As humans, we avoid risk because our primal brain is signaling that risk could hurt us.

We are social creatures.

Being excluded from the pack used to threaten our survival.

In modern society that is hardly the case, but our brain still operates this way.

For some its equally as hard to take social risk, as physical or financial risk.

I know it has been for me.

Emotions start to peak, we envision all the ways this could go wrong and we avoid that reality at all costs.

The problem is nothing good comes without some form of risk.

My best friend wouldn't be my best friend without that risk.

I wouldn't have my career without the risk of being rejected.

I wouldn't have met my girlfriend without the risk of reaching out to her.

Nothing in life comes without risk.

Exchanging Risk for Luck

Gary Vaynerchuk lives this message everyday. The idea that you can take repeated risks to eventually reap some benefit.

Ali Abdaal is another figure that embraces this philosophy in his video How to Become Luckier

The idea is simple: By taking more risks, you are actually expanding your opportunities to "get lucky"

Take a simple example.

If you ask one person to buy your product. You are taking a risk that you will be told no, and have a 50/50 of landing a customer.

But if you ask 100 people to buy your product. You are taking the same level of risk but 100 times. You are much more likely to land at least a few of those people.

It's the same level of risk as the first example, but you're just taking the risk 100 times more which increasing your chances of a potential yes.

I was once again confronted with this fear of risk last year.

I wanted to start a podcast, but knew that doing so would require me to promote on social.

That meant I was risking looking 'stupid', 'cringe', or 'embarrassing' to friends and family.

But that podcast turned into new friendships, 2 business ventures and a lot of laughs.

The reason things are perceived as 'risky' is because there's a chance of a negative outcome, but that also means there is a chance of a positive outcome.

Anyone who thinks great things can come without risk is delusional.

Risk is a prerequisite to success.

Failure is a prerequisite to success.

Steve Jobs was fired by Apple before rejoining the company.

Bill Gates dropped out of a college (a major failure) before Microsoft succeeded.

Tesla almost went bankrupt before succeeding.

The list goes on.

The point here is simple: taking more calculated risk increases your luck surface area.

Change you relationship with risk to also view the potential benefits instead of only focusing on the perceived negative outcome.

How to Increase Your Luck Surface Area

The concepts of risk and luck haven't change much.

What has changed is our ability to increase our luck surface.

Your luck surface area refers to your ability to "get lucky" based on what actions you're taking.

Let's use a financial example to illustrate this.

Most trading firms use leverage. If they have a book of $5 million dollars to trade with, they can use 5x leverage (given to them by a bank) to increase their book to $25 million.

The risk is that they can technically lose more money then have, and owe the bank money (debt)

The benefit is that they can now place 5x more bets to increase their chances of a good investment.

That leverage increased the trading firm's luck surface area by 5x.

Until recently financial leverage was the only form that existed.

But the digital age has introduced two new forms of leverage: technical and attention

Technical leverage is code.

Attention leverage is content.

Social media and no-code tools have created distribution channels that let anyone access these new forms of leverage.

By creating content and publishing to social media platforms, you increasing your luck surface area.

You are taking the risk of the content flopping, or your friend from high school calling you a loser.,

But you are also opening yourself to the potential benefit of that content resonating with someone, getting a new follower or a new opportunity.

I had 1 LinkedIn post that gained me 600 followers in a day.

That's how powerful social media leverage is.

The other piece of the pie is using technical leverage.

Tools like SquareSpace, Gumroad, Beehiiv, ConvertKit etc all offer ways to build and create digital infrastructure that you can use to monetize or grow.

The key perspective to understand is that you can infinitely scale your reach with content.

There is 0 limit to how many people can view your content.

You create it once and it can get distributed 1000s of times or more.

The same goes for code.

You build your website once and there is no limit to how many people can visit it or buy your digital products.

These are infinitely scalable forms of leverage.

Which means you are infinitely scaling your chance to get lucky. Multiple pieces of content have turned into business opportunities or new friendships for me.

None of those would have happened if I didn't try to increase my surface area for luck.

Now for every opportunity I have had 100s of failures:

Pieces of content that flopped

Hate comments

Feeling lost

The biggest advantage of these is that the only downside is perceived social risks.

If you create content and website the biggest risk you face is someone calling you cringe or you waste $200 bucks on your website builder.

Unlike financial leverage where you can lose large amounts of cash.

We are living in an advantageous period.

Code + Content can change your life.

They have already changed the lives of 1000s of people.

The beautiful thing is that you can get started right now.

Go make that post.

Build that website.

Start that podcast.

You're luckiness is waiting for you.

If you want to start expanding your luck surface area but aren't sure how. You can book a quick and free call with me learn how to get started by visiting the link below: