Opportunities are a master of disguise. They cleverly camouflage themselves so as not to stand out, but they are everywhere. Seriously, they are! Take a look around. There is probably one stalking you right now and you don’t even know it. And if you missed that one, there will be at least a dozen more that will cross your path before the day ends.
But most of us won’t see them. In fact, we hardly ever see them.
Why? Because spotting an idea is like trying to find the elusive g-spot. If you don’t know where to look, you are never (and I mean never) going to find it.
Think like a Virgin…
Richard Branson is the head honcho behind the Virgin brand and an idea producing machine. A guy who dropped out of school when he was 16, he has gone on to amass a personal fortune of about 2.5 billion. But one of his gifts is the ability to see opportunity where others simply see a problem.
Back when Branson was about 20, he was at a Caribbean airport when he learned a flight he desperately needed to take, had been cancelled. There were no other flights leaving the island that day.
Now airports are a wonderful place to observe people at their worst. A cancelled flight invokes tantrums one would get from a kindergarten class that has just been informed cookies and milk have been replaced with steamed brussel sprouts and juiced wheatgrass shooters.
So while most of Branson’s fellow passengers were progressing through the various stages of personal meltdown, Sir Richard walked to the other end of the airport and inquired about the cost to book a charter flight. Then using a portable blackboard, he went back to his gate with the following message…
“Seats to the Virgin Islands $39.”
He sold enough seats to cover his costs and eventually made it home that day without a hitch.
So what is the lesson here? We need to understand the birds and the bees of how an idea is conceived.
Problems are ideas in disguise. When freak outs occur, when meltdowns are brewing, and minds are about to be lost, realize you are sitting on a potential goldmine.
So quit missing those hidden opportunities. When the subway is temporarily shut down, when a seemingly inflexible law is introduced or a lifelong client has just abandoned ship wade out beyond the mass hysteria and latch onto the opportunity that exists.
To ideas worth quitting,
Dean
ps…Did this make you laugh? See an opportunity that you never knew existed? Question the meaning of life? Remind you that you no longer know how to solve a quadratic equation? If so, consider forwarding this to a friend. They may love you for it and it might just be the message they needed to get today.
