Timeless Advice for Success: Create Your Own Luck

When Greenwich resident, Chuck Standard, recently shared his story with Patch, one memory was immediately relatable.

“A while ago, my wife and I were driving past Riverside School wishing we could find a house, when we saw a little Cape across the street. ‘Why can’t we find something like that?’ I asked her.”

As fate would have it, the modest house on Druid Lane came on the market a few days later.

“But it was hard to get a mortgage because the bank said we were overpaying.”

Familiar Greenwich scenario? Indeed. But the year was 1954.

Standard said, “Back then Bramble Lane, the street adjacent to Druid Lane, only had a few houses. It was a dirt road they sprinkled with oil to keep the dust down. And there was no Hearthstone Drive, just a swamp and some woods.”

Standard bought the house with the help of a 3 percent G.I. mortgage, but, being averse to debt, paid it off in just a few years.

While some people appear to have charmed lives, some prodding usually reveals the secret of their success. Though he survived dangerous missions as a WWII Navy pilot in the Pacific and enjoyed a successful career in advertising, Standard insists he has always benefited from good luck — a How-to-Succeed-in-Business-Without-Really-Trying series of happy accidents. Fortunately, Standard let slip a few tips for creating your own good fortune.

• Know What You Want – Then Go After It
As a young boy who “never took even 10¢ from my parents,” Standard was a self-starter. At the tender age of eight, he was chomping at the bit to start working as a golf caddy at the local club. It took a full year of perseverance to wear his parents down.

Caddying from nine years old, Standard remembers the player he first caddied for. When the young caddy fell back several yards, the player carried his clubs up to the green for him. At the next hole, just by the pro shop, the player, who had a sense of humor, picked up his clubs as well as the wee Standard, carrying him in his arms like a baby. “What kind of caddies do you have at this club?” the golfer asked in the pro shop, and everyone broke up laughing.

• Be Innovative
The year was 1938. Standard was a freshman at Purdue University and needed to pay his way through school. In a business venture that foreshadowed the Internet, Standard printed up timely information on 12” x 18” cards including movie listings and handy phone numbers for campus spots like sorority and fraternity houses. He surrounded the content with paid advertising for businesses like record companies and restaurants. Every Sunday he would go around campus on foot placing updated cards inside telephone booths. “This way you could call and arrange a date and suggest a movie and time on the phone,” said Standard. Eventually, he had the idea of getting a cab company to drive him around in exchange for free advertising. Standard not only paid his way through college. He graduated with savings.

• Take Things in Your Stride and Do What You Have to Do
Standard was drafted into the Army between his junior and senior year. Knowing he wanted to finish college and be a Naval aviator, he asked the university president for a deferment, suggesting he could take his preliminary flight training at the Purdue Airport during his senior year. The president agreed, and Standard completed his preliminary flight training while still at Purdue. He graduated on May 3rd and was in his Navy uniform on May 21st, 1942. 

In 1944, as a dive-bomber attached to the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Yorktown, Standard fought in the Pacific. In one of his most dangerous missions, Standard was sent to bomb the Japanese fleet, which was beyond his plane’s gas range. While dodging “ungodly amounts of flak,” and not noticing the enemy plane that was on his tail, he dive-bombed a heavy cruiser at just 2,000 feet. As he dove into heavy five, the enemy plane veered off and Standard scored a direct hit. Flying back to his carrier alone in the pitch-black night, Standard’s fourth and final gas gauge was bobbing on empty. Anticipating a watery, shark-infested grave, and overhearing radio chatter from other pilots in the last moments of their lives calmly saying things like, “So long guys, I wish you luck,” he spotted the U.S.S. Cabot, a jeep carrier. As he landed, the engine shuddered to a stop. Out of gas. The Cabot, having no space for Standard’s plane, threw it overboard.

Standard received the Naval Cross medal acknowledging his extreme bravery in this most dangerous mission.

• Don’t Quit A Job Until You Have a New One
Everyone has a bad boss at some point, including Standard. His advice is not to quit. It’s ideal to have a mentor on a job, but it’s important to bide your time, even with a bad boss. It may take a while to find another job. You may even outlast the bad boss. Either way, Standard’s advice is to stick it out.

It’s no surprise from that the young man who traipsed around campus posting information sheets in phone booths went on to a successful career in advertising sales at NBC in Chicago, and later, in Manhattan. He also worked for Ad Week and Meeker Associates.

These days Standard is a busy volunteer with Community Answers, the Retired Men’s Association and the Race Committee at Riverside Yacht Club. His ready smile and quick laugh are reminders that a positive attitude results in many doors opening. That, and a little luck, of course.