Prepare to be Lucky

I’ve written and spoken a lot about the importance of preparing for encounters with life’s “inevitable unexpected events.” Some have wondered how you can prepare for something about which the nature and timing is completely unknown? Isn’t one’s ability to make beneficial decisions at these moments of truth just a matter of luck? I think not. A widely cited quote on luck that has been attributed to Louis Pasteur is something to the effect of “in matters of observation, chance favors the prepared mind.” I couldn’t agree more.

I was reminded of this when recently watching an interview of the prolific YouTuber Casey Neistadt by Steven Bartlett titled “Why I Quit YouTube and What I’m Doing Now.” If you have a half hour to spare and are interested, I’d recommend watching at least the first 30 minutes of this video.

I don’t want to be a spoiler (so if you prefer, watch the video before reading any further), but in case you’ve never heard of Casey, or don’t know his background, he is a 10th grade dropout who runs away from home, gets his girlfriend pregnant, winds up with a child at 16, and continues pushing towards his dreams, eventually going on to be a prolific YouTube creator and personality, and one of the first to generate substantial wealth through the content he has created and shared with this platform.

The interview starts with his upbringing, including what I just described. Then they get into some very insightful conversation around how one learns from failure, and how unexpected events come up all the time (what I’d call inevitable unexpected events).

Not using exactly these words, many of the approaches Casey speaks about are similar to what I try to illustrate in my upcoming book, Can’t Tame a Mongoose. A key message is that if one incorporates certain key practices and skills into their lives, including confidence, optimism, building a strong foundation, developing an extensive network of relationships, and embracing persistence (patience), then the chance of navigating past unexpected events can be enhanced (challenges overcome, opportunities leveraged), and you have a better shot at achieving your goals.

Not everyone is, desires to be, or can be, a successful creator/entrepreneur. That’s perfectly fine, because the world needs all of the other people playing other roles in life. Succeeding in any particular role defined by others (society) isn’t what really matters anyway. The only goal anyone should be thinking about is what brings them happiness and fulfillment. That thing, that goal, can only be defined by you.

If you are trying to be a successful entrepreneur, however, Casey’s single biggest piece of advice is that persistence is key. He likes to think of this as “patience,” which he says “is less sexy, but essentially the same thing. No matter what unexpected things may come up, just be patient and don’t let anything stop you from pushing towards your goal. Either achieve it, or die trying.” 

Bartlett wonders if perhaps it’s simply the case that if you just stick things out long enough then sometimes you get lucky. Casey’s response is my favorite quote from this video: “Yes, I got lucky” he says. “I was patient, and one day preparation smashed into opportunity.”

I know just what Casey means! Bringing us back to the world of life sciences and healthcare, I’m reminded of a time during the growth of Transplant Genomics when we were running low on cash, had to put some of our employees on a furlough program (and lost a few who simply couldn’t afford to defer a big chunk of their pay), and things looked pretty bleak. As I described in my upcoming book:

Though venture investors viewed the MDx sector as toxic, we had admirably drummed up interest from high-net-worth individuals, family offices, and strategic investors. Nonetheless, they all wanted us to meet several key milestones before agreeing to invest further. We needed to show the results of independent, external clinical validation studies confirming that our test worked as well as the initial discovery studies indicated. We needed to show progress toward securing a reimbursement decision with CMS. We needed at least one partner with a big presence in the field of transplant medicine to lend more credibility to our technological approach and commercial plans. Our senior team was laser focused on addressing all these points.

Our big breakthrough came in mid-2016 when I received an unsolicited inquiry from Keith Stewart, who was leading the Mayo Clinic’s Center for Individualized Medicine. Mayo had established the group with the intent of showcasing how novel approaches to personalized medicine could be applied to benefit patients across the entire Mayo Clinic system, which included hospitals in Minnesota, Arizona, and Florida. One of our early collaborators and scientific advisors was Ray Heilman, a transplant nephrologist at Mayo Arizona, who proposed to Keith that an ideal case study would be the use of our TruGraf blood test applied to surveillance of kidney transplant recipients. Keith and his colleagues were intrigued by the idea and proposed a partnership that involved an investment from Mayo into TGI, a large-scale multiyear study of TruGraf on patients being treated in all three of Mayo’s transplant programs, and a related technology development and licensing agreement. This represented an incredible opportunity for TGI and was instrumental in enabling us to emerge from the challenges we had been facing.

We got lucky. Or as Casey would say, one day preparation smashed into opportunity.

In this case we navigated past the challenge we were facing by having invested the time over several years prior in developing close relationships with key opinion leading transplant programs. We didn’t have in mind the particular opportunity with Mayo that eventually emerged. What we did have was a strong enough relationship in place such that, on seeing a relevant opportunity, Ray would reach out to us, already being up to speed on what we were doing, and knowing we were a good fit for Keith’s program.

It wasn’t a matter of having to scramble and consider whether we knew anybody who could be helpful. Likewise, from Mayo’s side, Ray didn’t have to scratch his head and wonder whether he knew of anybody that would be a good fit for Keith’s program. As part of our preparation, our practice, our approach to business, we already had been cultivating these types of relationships for years.

I enjoyed the Neistadt interview so much because the thoughts Casey shared exemplify many of the key messages in Can’t Tame a Mongoose, and I hope they resonate with you too.