Transcripts

Eileen Shapiro:
Arnold Palmer was asked whether he believed in luck and he said, "Sure, I find the more I practice the luckier I get."

Eileen Shapiro, author of the book, Make Your Own Luck, believes individuals and companies can be a lot more strategic in creating luck and here's the perfect illustration…

If you're stranded on a deserted island and your genie comes and says you can choose one person to be with you, who would you choose? Almost everyone chooses their spouse or the person they live with or their best friend.

But a very clever person came up with an answer that is all about creating your own luck.

When Dean Kamen was asked that question- he's the guy who invented the wheelchair that climbs stairs- multi, multi-millionaire… thought for a minute and he said, "the world's best boat builder." He was able to orient his bets correctly, because he wants to get off the island.

Conventional wisdom is that in order to generate luck and get higher returns you must take higher risks.

It's just totally untrue, if you think about your best strategy for getting a good job when you're in school, is your better strategy to party, or to study every night? Studying is low risk and high return. So, what you really want to do is to begin to say, how can I structure my bets to have lower risk and higher return for where I'm trying to go?

At somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.