It is part luck and part how good the process is. The law of large numbers suggests that in long term your luck should be about average. So if your process is solid, then a failure, or two, or even five failures in a row, are merely a delay. (This is a simplification, of course. Sometimes a series of failures is fatal, because you run out of money or time; sometimes the opportunity is unique. But there are e.g. examples of people who started a few companies, first few of them failed, and then one succeeded and they became millionaires. Or investing in index funds: some years are bad, but the trend is upwards.) The problem is, if your process is solid but fails three times because of bad luck, it looks similar to a process that is wrong and has failed three times completely predictably. If it's the former, you should persevere; if it's the latter, you should change your plans. How do you know which is which? One advice is to keep learning, for example ask people who tried the same thing and succeeded, whether they see any obvious mistake in what you are doing. Check your premises. Maybe most of your process is good, only one important thing is bad or missing. Another advice is that after failing X times, the probability of mere bad luck is f(X), which at some moment becomes smaller than the probability that your plan is just wrong. Check your excuses, how exceptional bad luck you assume. Bad luck 1:10 happens often. Bad luck 1:1000, especially happening three time in a row, is very unlikely. In some situations, you could do some form of A/B testing: do two processes in parallel (if that is possible), measure the outcomes, then spend more time doing the more profitable one.