Letting someone know that you hope things go well for them is a kind and generous act.
In a world of self-promotion and individualism, taking the time to tell the people you care about that you have their best interests at heart is a beautiful way to find connection.
It is easy, particularly in a professional environment, to let competitiveness and jealousy cloud our judgement and make us bitter.
Try to resist that urge, and, whenever you have the time, to wish people the best!
If you want to tell someone in your life and that you are wishing them every happiness in their marriage, the best for their future endeavors, or success for a particular business project but aren’t quite sure how to phrase this, the list below can surely offer you some guidance.
21 ways to wish someone success
- Congratulations on this exciting new phase of your career. You deserve all the success in the world.
- I would wish you good luck on your new business venture, but we both know you don’t need it. I look forward to celebrating your hard-won success with you.
- I can’t wait to watch your star rise. You deserve every exceptional achievement that’s coming to you!
- You are living proof that hard work pays off. I hope this new project brings you prosperity and happiness.
- Behind every overnight success are ten years of hard work, and you have more than put in your grind time. Now for the success! Wishing you all the best for your new business.
- All the best for your new and exciting venture! May you never have to respond to a bad Google review 😉
- Thinking of you as you start this new phase of your career. Wishing you all the achievements and successes you deserve.
- Good luck starting your new position today. I hope everything goes well for you and that you find this role exciting and fulfilling.
- Wishing you all the success under the sun as you begin your new job. You have worked so hard to get here and nobody deserves this exciting achievement more than you.
- I wish you all the best for this new professional move. I have no doubt you will perform exceptionally—they are lucky to have you!
- Good luck today! I hope this job is everything you’ve hoped it would be and that it provides you the opportunity to accomplish your professional goals.
- Wishing you all the achievement you deserve after this period of hard study!
- May those examiners shower you with all the success you’ve earned!
- These exams are no match for you. 99th percentile, here you come!
- I know you’ll do brilliantly on your finals today. Get in that exam hall and accomplish your goals like only you can.
- I have no doubt that you’ll knock it out of the park! All the best for your final exam.
- Congratulations on this happy union. May your wedding (and your marriage) be everything you’ve ever dreamed of.
- Best wishes for the beautiful commitment you’ve made to each other today.
- You’re tying the knot! Wishing you every success and years and years of happiness!
- Congratulations, newlyweds! May your marriage be as beautiful and successful as the two of you.
- I wish you a marriage of happiness and fulfilled dreams. May you support each other through thick and thin and love one another for a lifetime.
How to wish someone success in business
Starting a new business venture requires a considerable investment of time, effort, and capital.
Whether someone is striking out on their own in a field they are already well-established in, is making their side-hustle their full-time gig, or is founding a new firm and partnership, they will probably be nervous about the things that could go wrong.
No matter how confident we are about our own leadership abilities and skillset, there are always going to be market factors beyond our control that could affect our business’s performance.
One of the only things that can help calm understandable anxiety about how a business will do, is hearing that you have the support and good luck wishes of the people around you.
1. Congratulations on this exciting new phase of your career. You deserve all the success in the world.
This straightforward message of congratulations expresses excitement about the addressee’s new venture and tells them that they deserve success.
Telling someone they deserve success instead of just wishing them success can boost their confidence. It will make them feel that all the effort they have put in to get to where they are has not gone unnoticed or unappreciated.
No one doesn’t like responding to a compliment, so you’ll be sure to get a happy (if slightly embarrassed) response.
2. I would wish you good luck on your new business venture, but we both know you don’t need it. I look forward to celebrating your hard-won success with you.
Telling someone they don’t need luck is way of saying that you have so much faith in their ability that luck doesn’t even come into it.
Saying you look forward to celebrating someone’s success as a way of wishing them well will surely put a smile on their face.
3. I can’t wait to watch your star rise. You deserve every exceptional achievement that’s coming to you!
Again, this way of wishing someone success on a new business venture talks about their doing well like it is a foregone conclusion.
You are telling the person striking out on their own that you are confident they will achieve what they have set out to.
If you don’t want to use the word success, because it feels too loaded with implication, check out one of these alternative ways to say success.
4. You are living proof that hard work pays off. I hope this new project brings you prosperity and happiness.
This expression of good will for someone’s new business project begins by complimenting their work ethic.
Now, even if you aren’t the gushy type and don’t like to give people too many over-the-top compliments, there are certain moments where it is appropriate to step out of your comfort zone and express things you might not otherwise feel comfortable expressing.
If someone close to you is about to open their own store, launch a start-up, or found a firm, now is the time to get over your qualms about expressing emotion.
Telling them how much faith you have in them at this pivotal moment will not go unremembered, and they may need to draw on memories like the one you’re about to give them when the going gets tough.
5. Behind every overnight success are ten years of hard work, and you have more than put in your grind time. Now for the success! Wishing you all the best for your new business.
We all tend to look at the newest social media influencer or banking mogul and imagine that they just got lucky.
We think, “They must have been in the right place at the right time.”
But the truth is, to get to the right place at the right time, you must be able to read the room (or the boardroom, in this case) correctly. And often, the process of learning how to do so takes years of effort.
If someone you know is embarking on an enterprising entrepreneurial journey that you have high hopes for, you can remind them that they have put in the hard work to get themselves to where they are.
This will help them if they ever start to doubt whether they deserve to be successful.
6. All the best for your new and exciting venture! May you never have to respond to a bad Google review 😉
This is a funny way to wish a close friend good luck with a new shop, restaurant, or salon they are opening.
Responding to a bad Google review is every business owner’s nightmare, so this little joke makes light of the realities of being an entrepreneur.
How to wish someone success in their new job
If a friend, family member, or former colleague is beginning a new job, they will be delighted to receive messages of support wishing them success in their new position.
Walking into a new office for the first time can be an intimidating and highly stressful experience.
New employees must learn all the logistical realities of their new workplace, meet their coworkers, and come to grips with what doing their new job on a day-to-day basis involves.
Knowing that the people in our support system have our back and want the best for us can give us that little boost of confidence that helps us keep our handshakes firm and determined.
Help your friends and loved ones out by wishing them success on their new job with one of these encouraging messages.
7. Thinking of you as you start this new phase of your career. Wishing you all the achievements and successes you deserve.
Referring to someone’s new job as a “new phase of your career” can help them think about what they’re doing in the context of their past and future work, instead of seeing it as an isolated and wholly new experience.
Remembering that they have built up a successful career and are qualified for the job they are beginning can help during moments of doubt in the early stages of taking on a new role.
8. Good luck starting your new position today. I hope everything goes well for you and that you find this role exciting and fulfilling.
There is a reason why one of the most common interview questions around is, “what does success mean to you?”
It is because success is subjective. For some people, being successful means making as much money as people.
For others, being successful means living a balanced, healthy, happy life.
When it comes to the workplace, many people consider success being able to do something that challenges and fulfils them.
So, to tell someone that you hope they find their new position “exciting and fulfilling” is a great alternative way to wish them success in their new job.
9. Wishing you all the success under the sun as you begin your new job. You have worked so hard to get here and nobody deserves this exciting achievement more than you.
Referring to starting a new position as an achievement might seem strange.
However, getting a new job is exactly that: an achievement!
Ask anyone mid-way through the application process who is struggling to figure out the meaning behind job application statuses, and they will tell you that getting a new and exciting job is the only achievement they currently dream of.
10. I wish you all the best for this new professional move. I have no doubt you will perform exceptionally—they are lucky to have you!
Referring to a new job as a “professional move” implies that it is a strategic decision in a broader long-term career plan.
This way of thinking about work is a reminder that no job is the be-all and end-all of one’s work life.
It can be easy to become completely absorbed by our new professional environment when we start a job.
For this reason, it helps to be reminded that we are choosing to be there and that there are always other moves, so-to-speak, that we could make if we stopped feeling fulfilled.
Reminding the person you are wishing success for that their new employer is lucky to have them will help them enter their new workplace full of confidence in their own abilities, which can enhance their performance.
11. Good luck today! I hope this job is everything you’ve hoped it would be and that it provides you the opportunity to accomplish your professional goals.
Instead of wishing someone success, which is so often associated with prosperity and money, try telling someone that you hope the job they are starting is everything they hoped it would be.
Framing a wish for success as one related to the accomplishment of professional goals can help remind the person you’re talking to why they got into the field they work in in the first place.
How to wish someone success in exams
Anyone who has been through a period of intensive exam prep knows how brutal the weeks before the big day can be.
Our bodies are jittery from the amount of coffee we’ve been drinking to try to keep our eyes open, we fall asleep on the pages of the books in front of us, and, at any given time, at least one of our items of clothing is inside out.
And you can forget about the laundry pile.
If someone you know is currently preparing for their end of year exams, they will surely appreciate you reaching out to wish them success.
What is the difference between wishing someone good luck and wishing them success, you might ask?
Well, in practice, not much. People will largely understand that you wish them well and are hoping they perform well.
However, technically wishing someone good luck is telling someone that you hope the unknown factors work in their favor—you hope the test questions are the ones they happen to have spent a long time studying for, or that the moderator is a kind and warm presence.
Wishing someone success, on the other hand, is telling them you are directly wishing for them to get a good score and to achieve highly.
While both wishes will go over well, since what you probably literally mean is that you wish the person in your life about to sit an exam actual success, try out one of these ways to say so!
12. Wishing you all the achievement you deserve after this period of hard study!
This is a straightforward way to wish someone success on their exams. It references the period of hard study they’ve just endured and tells them you think they deserve achievement.
What more could anyone want to hear before entering an exam hall to sit their finals?
13. May those examiners shower you with all the success you’ve earned!
This way of wishing someone success on an exam is most appropriate for a situation in which someone is heading into an oral exam on which they will receive feedback right away.
Whether they are defending their PhD or taking an oral exam at a foreign university while studying abroad, wish the person in your life sitting an oral exam success with this expression of good will.
14. These exams are no match for you. 99th percentile, here you come!
Telling someone that something difficult they have to do is no match for them is a kind way of acknowledging their nerves.
You are knowingly showing them that you understand how hard the thing they are about to do is but telling them that you still have the utmost faith that they will perform excellently.
What does it mean to be in the 99th percentile? Well, it means you scored higher than 99 percent of people who took a test. Not bad, right?
Telling the person in your life who is sitting an exam that they are headed for an excellent score is a great alternative way to wish them success.
15. I know you’ll do brilliantly on your finals today. Get in that exam hall and accomplish your goals like only you can.
If someone is uniquely determined and always seems to do well at whatever they set their mind to, you can express that you know you’ll do brilliantly.
Reference their excellent track record of success by telling them to accomplish their goals like only they can.
This way of wishing someone success in exams––which doesn’t mention the s-word once––manages to perfectly express the sentiment behind wishing someone success without sounding generic.
16. I have no doubt that you’ll knock it out of the park! All the best for your final exam.
This would be a cute thing to write on a card to leave with flowers or a box (or heck, a bar) of chocolate for someone who is currently studying for a last exam.
People in the final throws of exam prep may not be great company.
If you try to speak to them, it would not be unusual for them to be tapping their foot, waiting urgently for you to leave.
For this reason, it can sometimes be better to show your support for them by leaving a card or a little gift. And this way of wishing success makes the perfect inscription.
They will surely come back to you later, once their exam is done, and thank you for checking on them and caring enough to leave them a card.
How to wish someone success in marriage
People mostly wish others success for professional endeavors, but there are also situations where it is appropriate to wish someone success in their personal life.
For example, you might wish a couple success when they get married or move in together.
It is customary to give a gift and a card at a wedding, or at least to send a card when responding to a wedding invitation, even if you can’t make it.
Knowing what to write in a card to congratulate a couple on their marriage can be intimidating.
One nice idea is to wish them good health and happiness. Another is to actually spell out what everyone is thinking, and to wish them success in marriage.
After all, having a successful marriage is hard work, and 50 percent of marriages end in divorce.
So, wishing the happy couple success is not only a kind and symbolic gesture, but can also be a way to express the genuine hope that they manage to love and care for each other for a lifetime.
Here are a few ways you could phrase this wish.
17. Congratulations on this happy union. May your wedding (and your marriage) be everything you’ve ever dreamed of.
This makes a beautiful inscription for a wedding card, or a nice sentiment to express at the end of a best man’s speech.
Professional success is one thing, and there is nothing wrong with the fact that most people associate it with the figure in their bank account.
But what does personal success mean? Well, in a marriage, it probably means that it turns out how you dreamed it would.
Everybody has a unique vision for their unique relationship, and there is no one-size-fits-all way for a marriage to succeed.
So, if you are wishing someone a successful marriage, you could express that you hope their wedding and marriage is everything they dreamed it would be.
18. Best wishes for the beautiful commitment you’ve made to each other today.
You don’t have to come out and use the word “success” when talking about a marriage in order to get across the point that you hope a couple stays together and that you wish them happiness.
Saying “Best wishes for the commitment you’ve made,” essentially means, “I hope your marriage is successful.”
Of course, it just says it in a far more poetic and romantic way.
19. You’re tying the knot! Wishing you every success and years and years of happiness!
This would also make a great inscription for a wedding card. Saying you wish a couple “every success” is nicely ambiguous.
It can refer both to their relationship, or to the life they build together (which includes their careers and having children).
This is kind of the perfect catch-all way to wish a couple success for their life together.
20. Congratulations, newlyweds! May your marriage be as beautiful and successful as the two of you.
This is a cute way to combine the wish for a couple’s personal happiness in their relationship with a compliment about their looks and professional success.
21. I wish you a marriage of happiness and fulfilled dreams. May you support each other through thick and thin and love one another for a lifetime.
Wishing a couple a marriage of happiness and fulfilled dreams is a sweet way to express that you hope their love stands the test of time.
They will surely want to thank you for your support of their relationship and appreciate that you are wishing them well.
Hey fellow Linguaholics! It’s me, Marcel. I am the proud owner of linguaholic.com. Languages have always been my passion and I have studied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics and Sinology at the University of Zurich. It is my utmost pleasure to share with all of you guys what I know about languages and linguistics in general.