Books

Can You Learn to Be Lucky?

Reviews

Karla Starr's Can You Learn to be Lucky is a rollicking journey through the land of luck—an entertaining and insightful tour of stories and science that explores the origins of luck, why some people are luckier than others, and how we can all raise our chances of become luckier by design. A wonderful book that manages to be fun, smart, and important all at once.
Adam Alter
NYU professor, NYT bestselling author
Luck seems elusive, a force well out of our control. But in this fun and persuasive book, Karla Starr explains how the choices we make that shape our fate — and offers smart, science-based advice for making luck break our way.
Dan Pink
NYT bestselling author of When and Drive
A clever, captivating read on how seemingly random events sometimes have predictable patterns behind them. If you believe chance favors the prepared mind, this is the book to prepare your mind.
Adam Grant
NYT bestselling author of Give and Take, Originals, and Option B with Sheryl Sandbergn, Layers
Karla's charming wisdom offers lessons for improving nearly every aspect of life. If you can’t find a leprechaun, buy this book!
Chris Guillebeau
NYT bestselling author of Side Hustle
Getting lucky is not about luck. It’s about being prepared and having the right attitude. Based on years of research and decades of hard-won experience, Karla Starr reveals how to navigate social judgment, find your own hidden talents, and “kick ass” at life—all with wisdom and humor.
Matthew Hutson
Author, The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking
“I don't know when I've been so wowed by a new author.  Karla Starr explains how "lucky" can be learned using credible social science and captivating stories, leavened with keen humor that had me laughing on a plane (apologies to the guy in 6A!).
Chip Heath
NYT bestselling co-author of The Power of Moments and Switch
It’s a time-honored truth that we make ourselves miserable trying to change things we can’t. But as Karla Starr shows, many of the things we don't bother trying to control – because we assume they’re a matter of luck – are actually subject to strategy. Luckily for you, this insightful and frequently hilarious book is the perfect guide to understanding how.
Oliver Burkeman
Author of 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Well.. can you?

Luck isn’t magic—it’s math, mindset, and messy human behavior. Can You Learn to Be Lucky? blends behavioral science, psychology, and storytelling to answer one question: why do some people seem to win more often than others?

Drawing from years of research and real-world experiments, I uncover how optimism, risk-taking, and social connection turn randomness into opportunity. This isn’t about superstition or positive thinking. It’s about building a luck-ready life: noticing patterns, taking intelligent bets, and creating environments where serendipity can find you.

The book has been featured in outlets from Fast Company to Forbes for its surprising, data-driven take on chance. Readers come away realizing that luck isn’t handed out—it’s cultivated. And, yes, you can get better at it.


Explore Frameworks

Making Numbers Count

Make Numbers Make Sense

We live in a world of big data, but the human brain is terrible at big numbers (or any numbers, really). Making Numbers Count is a handbook on the art and science of translating abstract data into meaning that sticks. Through hundreds of examples—from billion-dollar budgets to the calories in a cheeseburger—we show how to turn complexity into clarity using vivid comparisons, analogies, and storytelling.

Because Chip Heath and I aren't delusional, our goal wasn’t to make people love math. It was to help leaders, communicators, and educators make people understand what numbers mean. Period.

The book became a go-to resource for data storytellers, nonprofits, and Fortune 500 teams trying to make metrics memorable. Because in the end, no one remembers “7.8 billion.” But they do remember “everyone on Earth standing shoulder to shoulder around the equator twenty times.”


See Storytelling Tips
image of a bookshelf with finance books

The Experiment

A Field Guide to Debugging Your Operating System


A 12-month social experiment in honesty, reinvention, and systemic unlearning.

Most adults aren’t broken—they’re just running outdated survival code. The Experiment is what happens when you stop “self-improving” and start testing the stories that built you.

Premise
Through a series of real-world experiments, author Karla Starr investigates the hidden operating system behind modern adulthood—how the same traits that once kept us safe (achievement, control, performance) now keep us numb. Each month becomes a live test of a different belief, blending data, comedy, and behavioral science to uncover what actually creates aliveness and authenticity.

‍Tone
Funny, philosophical, emotionally intelligent. Atomic Habits meets Everything Everywhere All at Once.

What You’ll Learn
How to detect when “motivation” is just social compliance. Why comfort is the most expensive currency. How to debug perfectionism, burnout, and meaning collapse using experiments, not advice.

‍The Big Shift
→ From “Why am I like this?” to “Who taught me to be like this—and do I still believe them?”
→ From self-help to self-research.

image of brainstorming session with sticky notes (for a b2b saas)

Soft Skills for the Apocalypse

What to do when truth is relative

How to Human in a Post-Truth World

Big Idea / Positioning
A field guide for surviving reality distortion, attention collapse, and emotional burnout—not through bunker-building, but through re-humaning: clarity, adaptability, empathy, and meaning-making when nothing makes sense.

Think: The Artist’s Way meets The Road, but funny.


image of brainstorming session with sticky notes (for a b2b saas)