Quote: JerryChicken "Having run my own businesses since 1984 I can assure you that any company who has a long history and an honest proprietor will be able to point at past accounts and show you exactly where they hit the bad luck and where the good luck kicked in, if they aren't so honest or have an ego to feed on TV they'll try and take the credit for their own inbuilt genius.
I've done business with many wealthy company owners over the years but none prove my point more than the hotel owner who invited me to his hotel, spa and golf course development in Barbados five years running, the land alone with its beachfront was worth millions.Then 9/11 happened an Americans stopped flying for 18 months (or more), I'd call that bad luck and the last time I saw him back in the UK so did he -I checked his property on google earth last week, its a flat concrete base where a hotel used to be now.'"
I have run my own companies since 1979 and still have two now in supposed semi-retirement. I have agreed that luck can play a part in all of life with business no exception. But you claimed business was about 5% hard work and 95% luck which is arrant nonsense.
Quoting one instance of bad luck proves nothing. In my own businesses I have experienced both success and failure but when hit by bad luck the true entrepreneur just starts over again. If it was a one off 9/11 type experience then he cannot fault himself. If he had made errors he knows what not to repeat.
I would estimate the luck element in business at no higher than 20%-30% the rest is down to sound business principles and hard work, or the eureka moment of true invention. It is often said that the harder you work the luckier you get