I Still Have That Lottery Ticket
A $25 lesson in betting on yourself
A few days ago, I got a call from a man I know who told me how he started his own business back in the 1990s.
I’d heard the story before and knew it well, but we were talking about just how hard it is to get a business off the ground when you have nothing but drive and passion, so I asked him to remind me about the details.
When he was in college, he supported himself by working for a construction company, mostly doing remodels and renovations on old historic homes. Anything they needed, he did it: roofing, flooring, electrical work, fencing, etc. He was the ultimate jack of all trades.
After finishing college, he decided to keep working in the construction industry even though it had nothing to do with his degree… construction was what he knew and liked.
He got married, had a child, and decided to relocate to a new state to be closer to family.
Essentially starting over in a new community, he got a job as a carpenter at the very bottom of the company ladder: banging nails for just nine dollars per hour. The work was dependable and fulfilling, but the pay was extremely low, and opportunities for advancement were far down the road.
After a while, living in subsidized low-income housing and trying to support a wife and three kids on such a meager paycheck was just too difficult.
Rather than ask for a raise, he decided to change careers altogether and took a job as a salesman for a huge, national company.
Taking off his nail bags and putting on a suit and tie was a massive transformation, but the biggest shift of all was going from a job that offered a payday every Friday to a job that only paid him based on commissions for closed sales.
Previously, swinging a hammer for hourly wages had been steady work but had extremely limited earning potential. Now, carrying a briefcase and working on commission was risky but had high earning potential.
The nerve-wracking nature of no longer having a guaranteed paycheck made him try something he hadn’t done before: at the start of each week, when he gassed up his truck, he’d also buy a lottery ticket. Nothing huge, just a $1.00 “Quick Pick” — the cheapest ticket possible. He’d stick it in his wallet and forget about it for a few days.
As the week unfolded, if a few days passed without closing deals, he’d start to feel the despair of another week going by without making enough to pay his bills.
When Thursday night came around, if he hadn’t hit his sales goals, he would tell himself, “Well, it looks like another bum week... but I still have that lottery ticket!”
This tiny little glimmer of a chance at striking it rich gave him hope as the week came to an end.
After six months of this ritual, he was sitting alone in his truck one Friday, preparing to go home to his wife, empty-handed, and deliver the bad news that he hadn’t made any sales that week.
Staring down at yet another losing ticket in a parking lot, he realized just how pointless this all was.
What am I doing? He wondered.
In a moment of clarity, he saw that he was betting his future on buying a lucky one-dollar lottery ticket.
This is desperate, not hopeful.
He threw away his scratch-off ticket, and that was the last time he played the lottery.
A few weeks later, he quit his sales job and went back to working in construction. But this time around, he started his own company… and that’s when everything changed.
Spending a dollar on a scratch-off card every week for six months cost him about $25 in total, and he got nothing from it.
But I think that this was actually $25 well spent on a valuable business lesson: he learned to stop waiting for luck, instead making his own.
I’ve heard this story many times, but it hits so hard each time I hear it. It’s so obviously true yet profoundly simple: by throwing away that ticket, he was really throwing away the illusion that he could succeed by chance.
That one simple act he took many years ago might have seemed very small at the time, but it totally transformed his life.
Proof: Last year, his company celebrated 25 years in business.
At the end of our phone call, he and I were both laughing at how silly people can be sometimes.
Hoping you get rich, for just a buck, with the odds of one in a million or more?
Come on. Grow up. That’s dumb.
But after our call, it did make me wonder: Are there any lottery tickets in my business? What false hope am I holding onto that I need to throw away?
He and I are both (still) in business for ourselves today, because we’re earning our success, not winning it.
That’s much harder.
Sometimes I do go home literally empty-handed on a Thursday night and tell my wife I don’t have grocery money this week. That’s an awful feeling.
But it also motivates me to work harder and keep doing what I know actually works.
It also makes the wins so much more powerful. When I tell my wife, “Hey, I just got a $15,000 signed contract!” I bang the little gong in my office, and we both shout, clap, and celebrate because it’s something I earned, not won.
Whenever I catch myself doing something dumb that has no chance of payoff, I’ll say out loud: “But I still have that lottery ticket!” and laugh at myself.
Okay, Ron, throw it away, and get back to work.