As told by Lucy Kellaway: (emphasis mine)

The first and most important is luck – yet it never gets a look-in in books on the subject. You need to be as wildly successful as Warren Buffett to admit that the biggest thing he did right was being born white and male in the US at that particular time. Most successful people have had big lucky breaks at birth and a succession of smaller ones thereafter.

The second law is ambition. Everyone who I have met who has been successful in business has really, really wanted that success. From this wild desire almost everything else that you need flows – hard work, thick skin and ruthlessness. Otherwise I can only think of one other thing that is vital to success, at least in some lines of business: good looks. If you are an Anglo-Saxon businessman it is fine to be (fairly) ugly. But if, like Money Honey, you are female and want to make it on television, beauty is essential.

Ain't it the truth.

And on a related note (I read a lot of random crap), I ran into this article which tied your name to your attractiveness. The most attractive names? Ryan and Sophie. Don't think I've met a Sophie yet...