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Recognizing opportunity
Opportunity: Everyone is looking for it, but not everyone knows what it
looks like.
Have you ever noticed how much more difficult it is to find something when
you don’t know what you’re looking for? Jerry Seinfeld comments that, when
experiencing car trouble, most men have the proclivity to open the car hood and
stare blankly at the engine, hoping the answer will be obvious—that there will
be a giant on/off switch somewhere.
The problem is that most of us know little or nothing about the way a car
works, so when we look for the reason it’s not working, we don’t have a clue.
Opportunity works the same way. I am constantly amazed when I see people
who are attempting to function in an entrepreneurial capacity completely miss an
opportunity directly planted in front of their faces.
The most blatant example I’ve seen recently was when I received an e-mail
threatening me with a lawsuit if I didn’t remove a joke from my Web site. The
sender informed me she was the author of a humor book in which the joke was
published and stated I was in copyright violation by having the joke posted on
my Web site.
Holding several copyrights myself, I am the last person to even think
about stealing someone else’s material. I wrote her back, apologized and
informed her that the joke was being removed.
I also made a suggestion. Since she was an author and was no doubt trying
to gain exposure for her work, I offered to keep her joke on my site, credit her
and add a link from my site to hers. She wrote me back, flatly refusing,
demanding again that the joke be removed or else.
Do you see the opportunity she missed? Shortly afterward, I discovered her
joke had made its way onto 40 or 50 different Web sites. What if, instead of
taking an adversarial position, she had contacted all of those sites and made an
agreement with them to link to her page? If she had done so, she would have
instantly added 40 or 50 new doorways to her Web site!
Instead, she walked right by the opportunity in front of her because she
was more interested in protecting her material than selling it. I can’t help
wondering what contacts she missed. How many book sales never made it to her
site? What agent or publisher would have liked to have heard about her? She’ll
never know.
Obstacles rarely look like you think they will. Often they appear as
threats, aggravations and even catastrophes. What objectionable situation is
parked in front of you right now? The answer might be an opportunity in
disguise.
© 2004 Charles Marshall. Charles Marshall is a motivational speaker, motivational author and president of M Power Resources, LLC. Visit his Web site at www.MPowerResources.com or contact him via e-mail at charles@MPowerResources.com.
