This episode reframes luck as collision probability—pockets of opportunity exist in space, but only directional movement through “intelligent and inspired action” creates contact points. The Mario hidden coin block analogy illustrates how static positioning guarantees zero luck encounters regardless of potential.
Key Takeaways:
- Luck requires spatial movement Sitting on sidelines eliminates both good and bad luck exposure—taking action in informed directions increases probability of hitting favorable outcome pockets that would otherwise remain undiscovered.
- Directional action beats random motion Moving forward with learning and strategy (like progressing in Mario) differs fundamentally from random action (like repeatedly pulling slot machines)—intelligent direction compounds luck probability.
- Action absence guarantees zero upside While inaction might avoid bad luck, it definitively prevents good luck—the only certainty is missing every opportunity pocket that requires reaching out to discover.
Listen to understand how the Tennessee auction property’s 1% success probability was manufactured through aggressive action despite overwhelming odds against profitability.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to get serious. wanted to share another analogy I was thinking about recently. So thinking about luck. A lot of people really want to discount it. Some probably put too much weight on it. I think that any success that somebody, you know, obtains in their life, you know, pretty much always has some healthy dose of luck, you know, whether that’s
uh, you know, where you were born or, um, you know, what type of genetics you might’ve had, um, or just, uh, timing luck when you were born in, the world, in which case, like pretty much all of us were extraordinarily lucky to be born now versus, you know, a hundred years ago, 500 years ago, 2000 years ago, 5,000 years ago, um, when you put it in a direction.
like that. you know, those are a lot of kind of inborn pieces and then, you know, just kind of opportunities within life, just being in right place at the right time or having the right person come into your life. or, you know, just sometimes, the dice, landing in, in the right direction for you that, could have easily been, the opposite. you know, so many different examples of
types of luck in the world. when you kind of boil it down like that, I think it’s really hard to deny that there is inherent luck. I some people might use other words, blessings.
what have you, I’m actually struggling to think of another route to consider it, something that might is just like a little bit more ephemeral, it’s hard to put your finger on, that kind of leads to, yeah, fortune, good or bad fortune, that can kind of happen in your life that’s, again, kind of tough to rationalize or repeat.
or, plan out for it to happen again, because otherwise it wouldn’t necessarily be lucky. so with that in mind, it’s just like, cause I’ve, I felt I’ve just had such an extraordinary share of mostly good luck. I’d have to consider that I’ve had a lot of bad luck too, but like mostly good on, on the whole, if we’re looking at, you know, the balance in my life, you know, in so many of those different directions, both where I was born, resources, family structure.
Um, so much of that, being healthy more on, on average. Um, but then someone, so much other circumstantial luck like that, you know, Tennessee auction property that, um, I’ve remarked on a lot that, you know, probably 99 times out of a hundred should have been a big loss. And we came away with a profit. Uh, like, seriously, I think it was like a 1 % chance that it actually worked out in our favor, maybe even less than that. Um, so.
you know, it’s just inherently lucky, but we also like really pushed, tried to find a way to generate that lock. And so that’s what I’m kind of getting to here is that, you know, most of the folks who seem to be luckier are just consistently taking action. But I think you’ve needed to find the type of action because you could also like take a ton of action. You just like keep going back to the roulette wheel or the slot machine and just, you know,
keep pulling, keep pulling, keep pulling. But, you know, that’s probably overall negative luck, right? Like look at the casinos, the house always wins. But if you take intelligent and inspired action, again, going back to one of my core mentors, Coach Trevor McGregor, if you keep learning as you’re taking action for more, again, intelligent and inspired in that capacity, that tends to bring
more good luck your way. Not always, it’s entirely possible you could just roll a wrong set of dice for the rest of your life. But at the same time, if you don’t take action like that, you’re not going to encounter any good luck anyway. It’s possible you might miss out on a lot of bad luck, but you’re not gonna get the good luck either. And so, you know, to really now boil down the analogy, it’s like, you know, if you’re really taking action,
You know, you can kind of imagine yourself kind of floating through a certain space if you’re not doing anything you’re just like hey I’m just gonna be sitting on sidelines Too fearful to do anything. I just I don’t want to risk the downside You’re never gonna hit these, you know pockets of luck that just might be existing out in the universe that if you just reached out your hand you might just happen to hit this this pocket and
But you know on the flip side, it’s like, okay if I’m trying to do things and trying to be smart about the actions I’m taking but you can just imagine I’m gonna grasp in this direction. Maybe that didn’t really work. I’m gonna try this. You know, that didn’t really work here. You know, so I’m just gonna keep on you know, trying things but learning and heading into the directions that I think are more likely to work out for me and
you know, sometimes I’m just going to be lucky and I’m going to hit that little pocket of luck. I was, wow, okay, that actually really, really worked out. I’m not always going to be repeating that. But it wouldn’t have happened either if I wasn’t taking any action at all. Or I might be dating myself a little bit, but you know, if some of those or some of you had ever played
you some of the old Mario games on like the NES or some of early Nintendo systems. You could jump up with Mario and you know, sometimes like in the air there would be, you know, some hidden blocks with coins. And of course, if you play the game a number of times, like, you know where the blocks are. So then all of sudden it’s not luck, but like the first time, whoa, what just happened here? That that’s kind of like what I’m trying to convey here is just like, yeah, you just, you’re moving, you’re taking some type of action.
And all of a sudden, hit that coin that’s just like, okay, something working in my favor that would have been impossible to get if I didn’t take any type of action, especially positive in the right direction, because similar to like Mario, yeah, can’t just sit at the home screen or just take random little directions. You kind of got to move in the right direction forward. And I think that that’s the key, again, really to move intelligent, inspired action. You have to have some directional.
to where you’re going that that’s gonna refine my analogy a little bit here and then you know just in that certain direction that you’re moving okay sometimes you’re gonna hit those pockets of luck maybe no guarantees right it’s impossible it’s possible you’ll just never have any good luck never any bad luck even if you’re moving or it just be pure bad luck as well too that’s just the nature of game but again for certain though you are not gonna have any good luck if you don’t move at all I think that is the takeaway
message here that I wanted to convey. so I was trying to boil down, how do I really think about luck here and convey it in a more tangible measure? And I think this is starting to do the trick. Working through this analogy, just because I think it’s such a core part of life that we should just accept. And I mean, who doesn’t like a little bit of luck in their lives anyway, especially when you hit the
the good luck, I don’t know for, again, those of you who ever read like Harry Potter, I one of the best chapters is that Felix Felicis, he drinks the potion and just everything Harry does, like he’s just subconsciously being led to, this is gonna be like the perfect action I can do to just set up a crazy lucky circumstance. Like it’s such a unique take on, again, kind of making luck more tangible and just could be.
super, super powerful, right? So obviously that’s just make believe here, but it’s like, again, how do you try to recreate that as much as possible? And the only way you get that is by taking the requisite actions to hopefully hit those lucky streaks. Cause maybe you do just hit luck, luck, luck, luck, luck, luck, luck, times in a row. And it’s just like one of the greatest days ever. And again, you would never experience that if you didn’t
do anything at all. hopefully this was a fun one for you all this Mindset Sunday. SeriousLand.Capital for any of your funding needs in the land industry. And we prefer 50K minimum, 150K purchase price and up is our preference. And then Land Daily Diligence Facebook group, zero cost review of your land deals and LandPricer.ai for the most reliable land pricing tool on the market.
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