Last week, Goodword took over the Favorite Daughter boutique on Madison Ave for an evening of conversation with three women whose success looks more inevitable in hindsight than it actually was. The event was called Create Your Own Luck — a title chosen deliberately by Alex Chung, Goodword's Head of Growth, to get beneath the surface of those stories.

"Every woman up here has a story that from the outside might look perfect or like perfect timing or good fortune," Alex told the packed room. "But when you really dig in, it's about the relationships they built, the bets they placed on themselves, and the rooms they had the nerve to walk into."

The panelists — Emily Hochman Mueller (Managing Partner, Bolden Advisors), Liv Schreiber (Founder, Camp Social, Hot and Social, and Social, Hot and Single), and Erica Wenger (Founding GP, Park Rangers Capital) — were candid about how it all actually happened. Here's the story. 

The moment everything changed: it almost always came down to one honest conversation

Emily's origin story begins not with a business plan, but with a candid answer she gave a board member at the tech company where she worked.

He asked what she really wanted to do. She could have deflected. Instead, she told the truth: she wanted to start a company.

"I could have easily said, 'Oh my God, I can't tell this board member what I actually want to do because I work for this company,'" Emily said. "But I was honest."

He offered to write her first angel check. Nine months later, he followed through — and became one of her most important mentors. The whole relationship was built on a single risk: saying the true thing out loud when it would have been much easier not to.

Stop waiting to be ready, because you never will be

Emily's advice for the room was simple: whatever you're thinking about starting, you're already late.

"If you are thinking about something and it is beating at you and you're like, I just gotta do it — you are already too late," she said. "The best products in the world, you should be embarrassed by, and that is okay."

The polished version of what you see on someone's LinkedIn came after a long string of imperfect early attempts. Build the website. Send the email. Post the thing. The feedback you collect from starting imperfectly is worth more than the time you spend waiting to be ready.

Make the ask — even when it's uncomfortable

Erica spent a stretch of her early fundraising getting on calls with investors, asking for advice, and hoping they'd offer to write a check. They usually didn't. It took her a while to realize she'd never actually asked.

"I would end the week thinking, 'Huh, I wonder why X person didn't offer,'" she said. "And you know what I realized? I never even asked."

Once she started making the direct ask, things moved. She also noticed that the male GPs she was competing with weren't waiting to be invited — they were asking directly, as a matter of course.

"Do not expect people to read your mind," she said. "Please make the ask. The next time you're in an uncomfortable spot — 20 seconds of cringe. Go with it."

It applies well beyond fundraising. The ask is almost always the missing step.

Lead with gratitude, especially when it's hard

Liv Schreiber answered one question on Instagram about making friends after college and watched it become a movement — Camp Social, Hot and Social, 400K followers, sold-out events, brand partnerships with Dunkin', Amazon, and Saucony. But she was clear-eyed about what sustains it.

Her approach when things get hard — and they do, regularly — is to come back to where she started. "I come from a place of gratitude in dealing with any type of human interaction," she said, "and really remembering when your email inbox is literally at zero and all you wanted was for anyone to send a message."

The through line

Alex closed the evening with an observation that tied all three stories together: none of this was accidental. These women showed up, reached out, followed up, and kept going.

Luck, it turns out, is a lagging indicator. It shows up after you've already put in the work, built the relationship, made the ask, or taken the honest risk. It shows up looking like a breakthrough. What it actually is, is compounding.

This is part of Goodword's Women's History Month series. Want to try Goodword? Start your trial →