Transcriber: Stacy Wong Reviewer: Ariana Bleau Lugo
Hello. Well, it's an absolute pleasure to be here today.
My name is Bruce Walker and I've been invited here today
to talk about the theme of entrepreneurship,
or more specifically, young entrepreneurship.
There's a theme through my journey as an entrepreneur.
And this is the idea of luck.
A lot of entrepreneurs think they're quite lucky.
They're lucky to be where they are.
And a lot of friends have said to me,
as their organisation becomes more successful,
"You're so lucky to be doing what you're doing.
You've got a great job and you're really lucky
to be going to all these cool places."
So I guess they're right.
I start thinking I am pretty lucky. I'm feeling pretty lucky.
A quick question I'd like to ask everyone in the audience is,
"How do you feel about luck? Are you feeling lucky?"
A show of hands. How many people believe in luck?
That's interesting, that's a vast majority of people.
I had a little look online and conducted a survey on debate.org
and these are examples of some of the items that people consider lucky.
You've got the four-leaf clover, the horseshoe, the lucky tie,
and of course the classic lucky pants.
But according to debate.org, only 56% of people said
that they think luck exists, I thought that was interesting
considering most people in the room believe in luck.
Considering most of you believe in luck,
how many of you consider yourself to be lucky?
Again, the majority of the room. Interesting.
According to debate.org, of the vast majority of the general population,
only 29% of them consider themselves lucky.
And I think that was quite staggering for me
that 71% thought they were unlucky.
So what happens when you feel unlucky?
You're more likely to be unlucky.
I wanted to pull this back to business, back to entrepreneurship.
There's these two very famous business people,
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
A lot of people, after they get to a certain stage in their career,
the media turned on them a little bit.
There's a lot of press about these two individuals,
they've said that a lot of their success is just down to luck.
Bill Gates pretty much grew up with computers his entire life.
He's one of the only people to be near a supercomputer his entire life,
so he was bound to be a really successful entrepreneur
in the technology industry because he always had a computer.
Steve Jobs, he's just incredibly lucky that he met Steve Wozniak.
People say that Steve Jobs, he didn't know how to code.
Wozniak was the brains behind it, Jobs was just a face.
But what they start to forget is they start to discredit all the work
they've put in over their long career, the hard work they've put in.
So, I wanted today to give you my perspective on luck
and how I think it influences my life, my journey,
the entrepreneurships we work with all over the world,
and how that affects them.
I think that Sir Richard Branson makes an interesting contribution
to these discussions today.
He says the people and businesses considered more fortunate or lucky,
are those of the ones who are considered to take the greatest risks.
And by admission, they are also the ones that often fall flat on their face and fail.
That's because success often creates more success,
but success can also create failure.
They come hand in hand.
You can only really succeed if you experience some kind of failure.
I certainly know that I've definitely failed in my journey.
When I first left school, I tried to start a business
and I very naively went into a sector of the market
which was hugely crowded and hugely competitive.
At 17 I didn't know that, I thought I was going to give up then
and lost loads of money.
Several thousands of pounds at 17, which actually happened to be
the money my parents have saved for my university.
So you can tell they were absolutely thrilled when I said,
"Sorry mom, I've spent all that money."
But I've also had a lot of success.
We've now built an organisation
which helps people all over the world to start up businesses.
We've worked with some of the biggest brands in the world.
It's incredibly enjoyable to help and support entrepreneurs.
Certainly a lot of fun.
But that only happened because of a lot of hard work.
It wasn't necessarily because it was down to luck.
And I think that there's 5 key areas
that I think contribute to being more lucky, or successful.
If you've had a vision, you've already been working towards something.
You had to have that goal in the distance. That's what I want.
You had to work really really hard to get there.
And hard work's definitely the next one.
I think that luck is about 1% of the opportunities,
99% execution.
You may be lucky to sit next to someone on the train
who might end up being your next investor,
but it's 99% of what you do with that 1% lucky situation.
And definitely, it's the harder you work, the luckier you become.
And people, you've got to have the right people behind you.
That's the linchpin of what makes you successful.
Or the wrong people can really hinder you.
If you get the right people behind you,
then your luck starts to increase quite considerably.
And opportunities. You've got to seize theopportunities that come to you.
That's what makes you lucky, what makes you successful.
When an opportunity comes your way, you don't pass it by.
You seize it, you have to go for it.
And happiness, sometimes overlooked. You've got to be happy with what you do.
You've got to enjoy what you do. I've great fun with what I do.
That's why I'm happy to get up everyday and work really hard to get it.
Because you can't really fail
if you're enjoying and you're happy with what you're doing.
You need to go out and create your own luck.
People don't fail because they set their ambitions too high or the dreams too big.
People fail because they set their ambitions too low
and then they hit them.
That's failure.
I want everyone in this audience to think about their dreams and ambitions.
What is it you want to go and achieve?
And then raise it, and then raise it again, and then hit it,
and then exceed it.
That's the only way you're really going to create your own luck.
Do you want to see that new client, or get that new car, or that new job?
What is it you want to achieve? There's no one stopping you but you.
You need to go out there, you need to seize it
and create your own luck.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)