Every so often I hear someone describe another person’s success as luck.
“They were in the right place at the right time.”
“They happened to meet the right person.”
“They caught the wave before everyone else.”
Maybe. But the longer I’ve been in business, the less convinced I am that luck arrives out of nowhere.
What I’ve noticed is that the people who seem lucky are usually the ones who have spent years putting themselves in a position where opportunities can find them.
From the outside, success often looks sudden. From the inside, it rarely is.
Luck Likes Preparation
In the Microsoft 365 space, I’ve seen this play out countless times.
Someone appears to become an overnight authority on Copilot. Suddenly they’re speaking at events, being interviewed, attracting new clients, and building a strong reputation.
What people don’t see are the hundreds of hours spent before that point. The early morning study sessions. The testing in trial tenants. The failed experiments. The blog posts that hardly anyone read. The presentations delivered to small audiences before bigger opportunities appeared.
When Microsoft 365 Copilot became a major topic, the people who had already been investing time in understanding the technology looked lucky.
The reality was that they had simply done the work before the opportunity arrived.
Luck often arrives disguised as preparation.
Opportunities Usually Start Small
Most people are waiting for a big break.
What I see instead is a series of small breaks that compound over time.
A single LinkedIn post leads to a conversation.
That conversation leads to a meeting.
The meeting turns into a project.
The project creates a customer reference.
The reference opens another door.
None of those events look significant on their own, but together they create momentum.
I often compare it to using Copilot in Outlook. You don’t suddenly save ten hours a day. What happens is that you save a few minutes here and there. A faster email response. A quicker summary of a meeting. Less time searching through conversations.
Individually those gains feel minor.
Repeat them every day and the impact becomes substantial.
The same applies to career growth, business development, and personal learning. Small actions performed consistently create outcomes that seem lucky to everyone else.
The Work Nobody Sees Matters Most
One of the lessons that continues to stand out to me is that visible success is only a small part of the story.
The public sees the presentation.
They don’t see the preparation.
They see the successful project.
They don’t see the problems solved along the way.
They see the confident recommendation.
They don’t see the years spent learning enough to make that recommendation with confidence.
That’s why I encourage people to focus less on chasing opportunities and more on becoming ready for them.
Spend time learning.
Build relationships before you need them.
Share what you know.
Experiment with new tools.
Ask questions.
Stay curious.
In my experience, these activities rarely deliver immediate rewards. What they do instead is increase the number of situations where good things can happen.
And that’s where luck begins to appear.
Luck Is Often a By-Product
When I look back across my own career, many of the most valuable opportunities seemed unexpected at the time.
A conversation led to a partnership.
A presentation led to a client engagement.
A blog post opened a door I didn’t know existed.
None of those outcomes were planned in detail.
What was planned was the effort beforehand.
The study.
The writing.
The testing.
The willingness to keep moving forward even when there was no immediate payoff.
That’s why I’ve come to believe that luck isn’t something you wait for.
It’s something you quietly create.
The harder you work, the more skills you build. The more skills you build, the more opportunities you recognise. The more opportunities you recognise, the luckier you appear.
And from where I’m standing, that’s a much better strategy than hoping luck simply turns up on its own.
CIAOPS 