Before directing and producing movies including Invictus, Million Dollar Baby, Sully and American Sniper, Clint Eastwood was a Hollywood star and Oscar nominee in his own right.

In his 1971 film Dirty Harry, where he plays Harry Callahan, a cop who doesn’t follow the rules, he has a bad guy on the ground and has his enormous revolver aimed at his head and delivers one of that decade’s most memorable movie speeches.

It’s a slow delivery through clenched teeth spoken with a lopsided sneer. He appears to be chewing a toothpick while delivering it.

“I know what you’re thinking. “Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?”

Luck is a great intangible. Some people appear luckier than others. They seem always to be in the right place at the right time and somehow they are more successful than their peers.

How much of what the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and Koos Bekker achieved was the result deep deep strategic intent, and how much was as a result of their being born with particular genetics, in the right place at the right time, into the right families who sent them to the right schools to make the right connections which set them up for a charmed life?

There is no denying that successful people are hard working, diligent and clever, but it is also true that not all hard-working, diligent and clever people are successful.

I have spent my carer studying success and share the lessons I have learned in my brand new keynote: How to Get Lucky: Where Opportunism, Strategy and Grit Collide.