I was listening to a podcast the other morning on my bike ride.

And they started talking about different types of luck, a concept I'd never really heard mentioned before.

I knew about "increasing your luck surface area," which is basically doing more things to give you a better chance of success in a particular arena.

But this was a deeper dive on that concept.

The concept comes from a book written by neurologist Dr. James Austin (Chase, Chance, & Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty).

He broadly classifies the 4 types of luck as follows:

1. "The good luck that occurs is completely accidental. It is pure blind luck that comes with no effort on our part."
   ​
   Example: winning the lottery.
   ​​
2. "Something else has been added—motion...A certain [basic] level of action 'stirs up the pot', brings in random ideas that will collide and stick together in fresh combinations, lets chance operate."
   ​
   Example: this is the luck surface area comparison.
   ​
3. "[Luck] presents only a faint clue, the potential opportunity exists, but it will be overlooked except by that one person uniquely equipped to observe it, visualize it conceptually, and fully grasp its significance."
   ​
   Example: Warren Buffet picking another winning stock to invest in because of his advanced knowledge of markets, while a first-year trader picks 99 losing stocks before he finds his first winner.
   ​
4. "[Type IV Luck] comes to you, unsought, because of who you are and how you behave...the links of [Type] IV can be drawn together and fused only by one quixotic rider cantering in on his own homemade hobby horse to intercept the problem at an odd angle...[This type] favors those with distinctive, if not eccentric hobbies, personal lifestyles, and motor behaviors."
   ​
   Example: Being approached by a total stranger as a potential business partner because you've previously been successful in the same realm.

These will all play out in some capacity at some point in your life.

But for now, I want to focus on the third type of luck, which Dr. James Austin dubs "Luck from Awareness."

You can only achieve luck from awareness when you have such an advanced understanding of a certain topic that you see opportunities that the average person might otherwise glaze over.

Example:

A brand came to me after 3 years of working with various agencies and freelancers.

They couldn't figure out what was wrong, despite all these SEO experts telling them that "it just takes time."

Bullshit.

When I stepped in, I increased their YoY traffic by over 100% in the first 3 months of working together.

I saw tons of things that the other agencies and the brand themselves missed.

My luck surface area was massively larger than all of the previous agencies and freelancers combined.

Which meant I was poised to get lucky from awareness.

I capitalized on these missed opportunities, and I doubled their YoY traffic in a single business quarter.

It took me 3 years to get this lucky in SEO. It can take you just 5 hours.