If you’re busy growing a business (for longer than 18 months, and you’re older than 21 years old) without $2 billion to show for it – you might ask what’s going on here…
Is the Luck in Luckey’s name more reality than virtual reality? Here’s my take on it: The rapid success Luckey has had IS down to Luck – but the kind of luck we can create.
I’ve always seen Luck as the product of four things, and here’s the journey Luckey had through all four:
L.U.C.K = Location, Understanding, Connection & Knowledge
LOCATION
Location is about being at the right place at the right time – where you try and solve a need that you have. Luckey’s need was finding a good pair of virtual reality goggles. He remembers when he was 16, in 2009, “My goal actually wasn’t to make something. It was actually just to buy something – I assumed there must be something out there that was really good that I could use for gaming.”
Luckey took odd jobs to buy all the virtual reality goggles he could find: “I started to collect them and bought a lot of them from government auctions and industry equipment liquidation sites and all kind of fun places. I took them apart, looked at how they worked, tried to learn what do they do right, what do they do wrong… and over time it became clear that the only way to make something that was really good would be to throw out the design book that everyone else had used and start from scratch.”
Like a lucky footballer knowing that luck starts when you get on the football pitch, Luckey decided to get on the pitch and play the game…
UNDERSTANDING
It’s one thing to get on the pitch. Another to kick the ball. It takes understanding to know where the flow is and where to kick it. Luckey had heard of Kickstarter and, at 19 years old decided to use crowdfunding to test his idea.
As he recalls, “My plan was to do a Kickstarter for about 100 of these things… I figured it would be a really cool thing to have a couple of VR nerds toying around with.” He posted a video and fundraising campaign for a prototype on Kickstarter in August 2012 to raise $250,000. By September, he had raised $2,437,429…
It was time to get serious, quit journalism college, and start a company…
CONNECTIONS
You can get on the pitch and kick the ball, but you can’t win a game until you have a team to kick with. Luckey regularly posted in online forums with other Virtual Reality enthusiasts. It’s where he collected his team:
“I actually started the forum called ModRetro. It’s an electronics enthusiast community that focuses on modifying vintage game consoles. I started that site when I was 15. ModRetro was actually founded by myself and one of the people that currently works as an engineer at Oculus. So we’ve stuck together.”
Luckey got a big name supporter in a similar way. Game Developer, John Carmack (who’s behind games like Quake and Doom) met Luckey through these forums. As Luckey remembers, “He started posting because of his own virtual reality project… But he ended up seeing my head-mounted display work and asked me, ‘Hey – is there any chance I could buy one?’ He’s John Carmack! I just gave him one instead – you can’t turn him down.”
That led to Carmack demoing Luckey’s headset with a version of Doom 3 at the big E3 Electronics show in 2012. From there, interest took off and Luckey attracted a team and further funding. Today Carmack is CTO of Oculus VR.
KNOWLEDGE
Being on the pitch, kicking the ball and having the team to win with still doesn’t mean you’re going to win – Especially not at the $2 billion level. But when you build your knowledge and know how to play and the stakes you are playing for, things can rapidly multiply.
With the exponential growth in data flow online, it’s only a matter of time before the entire Internet becomes an immersive, intelligent, virtual 3D experience. The visionary companies with the deep pockets, like Google and Facebook, are already positioning for this. Luckey’s early start with virtual reality, with rave reviews of his prototype at recent shows, has made him an attractive buy.
Just 18 months after his Kickstarter campaign and before a working retail version of his VR goggles has even been launched, Mark Zuckerberg this week bought his company for $2 billion.
How can you grow your L.U.C.K. today, by investing more of your own time in growing your location, understanding, connections and knowledge?
That was Luckey’s success. He didn’t have any head start over you or me. As he says, “My dad was a car salesman, my mum was a stay-at-home mum. I was home-schooled for a long time. I’m a pretty regular Joe.”
He even sees his spectacular journey as being equally unspectacular: “There’s no Facebook-style story… No tales of parties and crazy stuff going on that was really a highlight. It was just kind of a slow plod towards making this thing a reality.”
And that’s how success becomes a reality.
Or, in his case, a virtual reality.
Fast Forward your Business 2014 slides
I just wanted to say how grateful i am to each and every one of you who came for our Australia FFyB event and making the tour such a success!
The feedback has been amazing!
We love to hear such inspirational stories from people that are already out there in the Business world making great things happen! Here are the slides from the FFyB Australia tour.
A Special Invitation to join me in Bali
iLab Accelerator 2015
Imagine this Roger, waking up in paradise, going for a yoga or exercise class, having a swim then relaxing back with a delicious healthy breakfast each morning.
Then, prepare to be inspired by experts showing up each day, just for you, mentoring and training you on how to build yourself a truly global business.
Have the time to implement powerful systems, marketing campaigns and creating products that will have you and your business far more leveraged.
Then enjoy massages, adventures and connecting with inspiring entrepreneurs whom are all working on the same objective as you, living, learning and earning from your own Island Paradise.
We have great group of entrepreneurs and mentors visit iLab every month. To checkout some of the photo’s from our past iLab programs click here.
Benefits of the iLAB incubator include:
>> A focused resort-style working environment to get a taste of work life balance in paradise
>> Surround yourself with dynamic entrepreneurs and experts for instant support & feedback
>> Training sessions on how to work remotely & build a global, anytime-anyplace business.
>> Tap into experts on list building, translation, Internet marketing, online best practices
>> Hands-on assistance in refining your message, creating your videos, media & web sites
>> Mix work with adventure, relaxation and fun, and learn the skills to work from anywhere
Interested to find out more? Send us your contact details and we’ll call you.
Affiliate and Resellers Training Calls
We have recently added a new support team for our growing no. of affiliates and resellers. The facebook group has been buzzing with some wonderful interactions and updates. In our pursuit to provide high level of support to our partners, we are introducing free bi-monthly training calls.
The upcoming training call is on Thursday, 3rd April, 8.00 AM (Singapore time).
To know what time it will be as per your city, click here
Topics we’re going to cover over the next few months are:
- Your affiliate back office
- Targeting
- Building a list of responsive buyers
- Social media marketing
- Getting ranked in the search engines
- Sales funnels
- Copywriting
- Branding & Messaging
- Goal Setting
- Tracking/Knowing your numbers
- Email marketing
- Content generation
- Product development
Discover what industry leaders and experts are using in the industry right now to get results in their business.
Are you ready to take your business to the next level? Get registered for the upcoming webinar.
Make sure you bring paper and a pen & be ready to take notes!
Get your own Wealth Dynamics Affiliate Site
This ready to use personalized website is an approved Entrepreneurs Institute site for Wealth Dynamics Affiliates and Practitioners to provide entrepreneur tools, mentorship and training to their network. You can start using this site in minutes. The best part, it comes pre-loaded with learning content and your affiliate links. Once you activate your site, it will send you a username and password which you can use to edit basic elements on the site.
Below are two of the how to videos
Enjoy exploring and setting up this site and let us know what you think of it.
Genius Test Video: Your Losing Formula
This is a key one. Have you ever been put in a situation that takes all the energy out of you, gets you all stressed, and you keep working hard trying to get out of the situation. I am pretty sure it has happened to all of us. This video is exactly about those situations and how the Geniuses feel out of flow when they are told to do totally opposite of what makes them happy.
In this video i will go through your destructive cycle, your losing formula. If you’ve seen the video about your winning formula, this is totally opposite of that.
I share my personal story of the time when i moved to Singapore from London and how things started changing when i focused on my Genius and my winning formula. It also has the story of how i created multiple businesses and have successfully sold some of those to venture capitalists
Watch this video and see how by making few changes in your life, you can start living the life you love and avoid getting trapped into your destructive cycle
Your daily dose of super-useful news
Are you overwhelmed by the amount of information thrown at us each day? I am. So I created my own daily news that gives me the most relevant articles around the world from the people I trust and respect. They include articles, videos, photos and links. Have a look at these brilliant news pages by clicking on any of the three links below. On the right hand column of the news page you will see a subscribe button. Click on it, and you’ll receive your own daily dose of the same super-userful news I’m looking at each day.
The Fast Forward Daily – Trends to watch
The Wealth Dynamics Daily – For entrepreneurs
The XL Nation Daily – For changemakers
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