Luck vs. Hard Work

“You’re so lucky you own your own business”

“You’re so lucky you can choose who you work with” 

“You’re so lucky you can work on your own time” 

And the list goes on! We have literally heard every “You’re so lucky…” statement under the sun, and there is no doubt we are thankful for all of the above facts, however, it is important not to romanticize the luxuries we have worked so hard to create for ourselves. 

With each year it seems there are more people on the internet barking the next get rich quick scheme at you. It is only natural to look at these people and form a romanticized version of what it takes to be an entrepreneur. We are here to tell you it takes a lot of hard work and a dash of luck on your side too!

We will not deny that there were plenty of things that had to fall into place for Cobalt & Sapphire to become what it is today. First, Sofia took an extra year to transfer to Berkeley, meaning she was now in the same graduating year as Carolline. We had to both pick the same exact marketing class, with the same exact discussion session. We had to both arrive early and decide to sit next to each other, and you know how the rest goes. As superstitious people, we understand that there was a lot that had to fall into place for us to be positioned to become Carolline & Sofia: Co-Founders!

The problem with today’s view on entrepreneurship is that people think the story ends there, when in reality, we took that serendipitous part of our life and turned it into the foundation we built our business off of. Since starting Cobalt & Sapphire in our dorm room, we have been dedicated to working our a**es off. The pure nature of entrepreneurship is that there is no handbook, you are creating it, and in order to create that handbook you have to work, make mistakes, have wins, learn from them, and grow. Sure, it may have been pure luck that I met someone sitting next to me on a flight who needed a website, which turned into one of the first websites we built, that turned into more client business, and so on. But our hard work is what allowed us to get the job done, kept the client happy, and ultimately grew our business by that much more during that time. One could argue that almost every client interaction had some luck to it, and they wouldn’t be wrong. The one caveat is as an entrepreneur you have to be willing to work hard, with no promise of a reward. So for every “lucky” client interaction we have had, we have also had some not so lucky ones as well. Understanding this caveat means we tried really hard not to let the not-so-lucky interactions get us down for too long, resulting in our small business continuously growing for the past 4 years.

When looking at entrepreneurship, it is important to take off the rose-colored glasses and understand that yes, luck does play a part in your journey, but the biggest role will always belong to hard work.