Concerning those "free lunches"............

Whether it’s the lotto or the stock broker or the fantasy sports leagues or Las Vegas, someone is always ready to take advantage of your desire for a free lunch. The sooner you start picking up the tab for your own meals, the better off you will be.

If you want anything — especially something lots of other people want, too, like money — there is a simple formula that few really want to hear about. It’s no secret. In fact, it’s fairly obvious. All you need to do is work your tail off; be smarter or at least more insightful than your competition; treat every task as an opportunity to enhance your reputation; exercise good judgment; have great patience; be attentive to what matters and what doesn’t; develop social skills; learn what motivates people; avoid getting sidetracked by distractions and nonsense; continue to learn; have valuable, marketable skills; and occasionally, get lucky. Just apply some combination of the above for a few decades, becoming more efficient and productive and luckier as time goes on.

-Barry Ritholtz, as culled from here