Hard Work—Not Luck—is the Key to Success

July 30, 2019

How do successful people get to be successful? Is it because fate smiled upon them, because luck has gone their way? That’s not the case, former small-business owner Frayda Levin writes in a new Wall Street Journal op-ed: The concept of luck masks the hard work that’s essential to getting ahead in business and in life.

College students tend to think that their future success depends on being lucky. But, Levin writes, “Lady Luck has never done much for me. She never answered the phone. She certainly didn’t deal with customer complaints. I’m the one who spent weekends struggling to learn new software options, figuring out finances and taxes, and anguishing over employee concerns.” Hard work and sacrifice—working weekends to cover for sick employees, for example—are what drove her own success, and that’s a lesson that students should take to heart as they enter the workforce themselves.

Levin joined “Fox & Friends” this week to talk about her op-ed, about the challenges she faced as a business owner and what she learned from handling them. “Success is not dependent upon any one incident in your life,” she explained. “It is the result of years and years of not just working hard, but making good decisions and dealing with problems.”

And it’s important that we create conditions that allow that hard work to pay off. That’s why at the Goldwater Institute, we’re working to lower government barriers so that people can strive for success.

Through helping to pass policies that respect people’s right to earn a living, like recognizing out-of-state occupational licenses or removing the licensing requirement for blow-dry stylists, we’re helping to make it easier to translate hard work into success—luck not necessary.

You can watch Levin’s full segment by clicking on the link above, and read the op-ed that inspired it here.