Monday Morning

Motivation    10/17/2011

THE POSITIVE PLACE. SALES MOTIVATION AND PERSONAL GROWTH

Opportunity is where you find it

I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal recently. The article was about how independent businessmen and women are using services such as Cafepress and others to create “instant” T-shirts, collectibles, and various personalized material for the 2012 US elections. When a candidate says something interesting in a Republican debate, or when US President Obama says something interesting, within a matter of minutes, it’s designed, uploaded, and ready for sale.

Along with electronic publishing and direct importing from China and other countries, there is a whole class of businesspeople who didn’t exist 10 years ago. These are those who use digital technology and expanded shipping abilities to create material and markets that would have required a much higher level of capital in times past.

As I read the piece, it struck me how resilient the people of the world have become -- being able to create markets and merchandise that were unknown and un-thought of. They have created opportunity where opportunity has never been before.

These people, though taking just a little chance, have created value out of nothing, and it’s fortunate that we all can do this as well.

As the title on this piece states, opportunity is where you find it. In times past, that opportunity lay in a more structured environment -- the opportunity lay with large companies, main street businesses, and large financial firms. But nowadays, with a little bit of skill and some capital, people can create opportunity where it didn’t exist before.

As an example, I shop with Amazon.com, as most of you will know. Often, I wind up buying older books from individuals who offer them up on the Amazon storefront. But I also wind up buying electronic parts, old music, food and gift items -- a whole number of things from corporations and businesspeople all over the country. Where I may have once gone to Radio Shack to buy an electronic part, now I buy it from some person in Nebraska or New York. Where I once would have scoured the area for a foodstuff I was interested in buying, now I buy it from the company directly through Amazon, or from a company website. These opportunities didn’t exist before the last few years, but they’re there now. I can buy regional brands of potato chips from Maine, or huckleberry jam from Oregon. I can purchase art prints from California, or candy bars from Washington State. I have been buying old, out-of-print Christmas music, and I bought a book from 1935 that happened to have my uncle’s signature inside the front cover.

All these opportunities are ones that have been identified and exploited by people just like you and me. They’ve taken a bit of effort and turned it into a viable business.

And it’s something that you and I can do, too.

It may be something we do on the side, or it may be something we do as a business, but the opportunities offered by technological changes can bring significant worth to each of us, if we look for opportunities and offer something that we can do wherever we may reside.

Copyright, 2011, by Daryl R. Gibson. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted for the non-commercial redistribution of this document as long as it remains intact with this copyright and all other lines. This license does not extend to the use of this material in a compilation, whether for profit or non-profit use. Join us at http://www.Weekdaywisdom.com.