Luck, preparation, opportunity quote:

“The meeting of preparation with opportunity generates the offspring we call luck.”
– Tony Robbins

Different variations of the same quote:
Sometimes hearing the same thing said in a different ways gives us insights we otherwise wouldn’t get:

“Luck Is What Happens When Preparation Meets Opportunity”
– Roman philosopher Seneca

“Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation”
– Zig Ziglar

“I believe luck is preparation meeting opportunity. If you hadn’t been prepared when the opportunity came along, you wouldn’t have been lucky”
– Oprah Winfrey

“When preparation meets opportunity success is inevitable”

 This is like Malcom Gladwell 10,000 hour rule to achieve mastery.

Understand the big idea or meaning behind this quote:

Having specialized knowledge or developing some unique skills allows you to see things that others often overlook or don’t see.

People may see at as luck, but its preparation, hustle, mixed in with opportunity. You can actively develop two out of three.

A personal example:

I have been working on learning SEO (search engine optimization) which basically is how to get websites to rank in Google.

A big part of that is getting other people to link to your site (as you can imagine a very hard thing to get a website owner to do without greasing their hands).

There’s one strategy which is picking up websites that has already expired that have a lot of links already pointing to it. To a passerby, they don’t care about a website besides it’s brandable name but with some basic knowledge you can pick up a site with a lot of links for a fair price.

There are four kinds of luck:

Here’s a note on luck I picked up from Naval Ravikant in a podcast:

There’s four kinds of luck:

1. Blind luck – you just find $20 on the ground.
2. Hustle luck – through motion, work ethic, and hustle you put yourself in a position to get lucky. For example, attending networking events you may cross paths with someone who’s a great co-founder. Another case could be you test 100 different ideas you come across one idea that gets traction faster than 99 other ideas so you roll with it.
3. Specialized luck – you have some insight, specialized knowledge where you’re able to take advantage of a situation once it presents itself. (Think Warren Buffett buying undervalued companies like Coca Cola in the 90’s).
4. Luck finds you – This happens by becoming the best in your field. The idea of becoming prominent in your industry. Tony Robbins is probably the most highly regarded life-coach so professional athletes, high performers will seek him out. He no longer has to hustle, because ‘luck’ seems to find him.

Other Famous Tony Robbins Quotes:

Feel free to add or start a conversation in the comment thread below with your interpretation of this quote.

Do you agree or disagree with Tony on this quote?

What other quote comes to mind when you read this?