The life of Oprah Winfrey is the quintessential American success story. I agree with her when she says, "Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity." In fact, I have a similar understanding about luck from my own career, though mine is on a much smaller scale.

When success comes, it comes in different ways. Some people are successful based on nothing but hard work, though this is unusual. If your definition of success today is to move a large pile of rocks from one place to another, and all you have are your two hands, then you do not require much luck. Though it may rain or hail, you can just continue plugging along, moving rocks until you are finished with the task.

More often, though, success results from of a combination of factors. A farmer may work hard tending his fields, but he must have the right combination of sunshine and rain in order to grow a crop. A football team may do everything right in an effort to win a game, but most times the team on the losing side makes one or two mistakes as well.

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell challenges the notion of individual merit alone being enough to achieve great success. In one example, he produces evidence that great hockey players are often great not only because of their hard work, but often also because they were born earlier in the year, and youth hockey leagues base their age cutoffs on the calendar year. This gives kids who were born earlier in the year an advantage. They are bigger, smarter, and more skilled than the kids born later in the year.

Oprah Winfrey certainly prepared herself well for her career. She worked and studied hard, and gained attention early in her career. However, this preparation was not nearly enough to achieve her legendary success. She also had an historic opportunity in television, which existed only for a short time. When The Oprah