Published January 10th, 2008 by
'Something Amazing Is About To Happen…' – E-Wealth Report
Alan R. Bechtold has released the latest issue of E-Wealth Report. This featured article is titled “Something Amazing Is About To Happen…”. [E-Wealth Report]
Alan Bechtold has released the latest issue of ‘E-Wealth Report’ Newsletter.
Something Amazing Is About To Happen…
I hope the title caught your attention. Please don’t dismis this as just so much hype. You’ve probably seen plenty of similar statements in your E-mailbox, on Websites, in the mail and everywhere you look these days.
You probably found yourself nodding as you read the title of this week’s issue, thinking, “sure — again.”
It’s the absolute truth. Something absolutely amazing IS about to happen — and I personally guarantee with absolute certainty it’ll make a gigantic difference in your life.
If it doesn’t happen — or if it does and your life isn’t affected, I’ll personally buy you dinner out for two at a local steakhouse.
I’m making that guarantee because I’m so sure what I’ve said is the absolute truth.
I also know exactly what’s going to happen. I’d give my left upper molar to know WHEN exactly it’s going to happen — but I can even predict with reasonable certaintly it’ll happen very soon. Before 2008 is over. Most likely WELL before.
Before 2009 is here (I’m guessing long before), an opportunity is going to present itself to you. If you live, eat and sleep marketing and business the way I do, there’s a good chance you’ll be presented with multiple opportunities. One of them (if not all), will have a tremendous impact on your life.
This is a pretty safe bet for me to make. It’s a brand new year. I’ve lived 55 of them now. Every year is filled with opportunity. Now that I’ve learned to spot them, I can clearly see there are far more opportunities presenting themselves to me everywhere I go, regardless of what I do, than I could ever take full advantage of in a lifetime.
The problem is seeing an opportunity for what it is.
Case in point:
Back when I was still operating in the dial-up computer bulletin board industry (the online world that pre-dated public access to the Web by more than ten years), I published a monthly tabloid trade journal for operators of dial-up computer bulletin boards.
Back then, we called a dial-up computer bulletin board system a “BBS” and the operators of those systems were referred to as “sysops.”
While I was busy proudly announcing the launch of my new monthly journal, “Sysop News…and CyberWorld Report,” in a booth at a nationwide BBS convention in Washington, D.C., I received a phone call.
I’d brought my first-ever cell phone with me to the show. Does anyone remember those early “case phones” that came in a zippered bag you carried with you? I remember it even had a regular handset with the coily chord connected to the bag…
Anyway — I thought it was so cool that I could forward my telephone from my office back in Kansas to my new portable phone, and answer while I was in D.C.
I think it was on the last day of the show that the phone rang. This wasn’t a particularly unusual event. It had rung a lot while I was there. Most of the time, I was simply too busy to answer, so I would let it take a message, then call people back.
I thought that was pretty cool, too!
This time, however, there was actually a lull in visitors to my booth. It felt like the entire exhibit hall had gotten quiter the moment the phone rang. Still, I stared at the phone for the longest time — and I almost let the answering system take the call again.
I was exhausted. I don’t know if you’ve ever manned a trade show booth at a busy trade show for three days solid or not but, by the third day, everything pretty much dwindles down to a blur. You’re running on automatic. Your system wants to completely shut down at the first opportunity. It’s a unique fatigue that is difficult to explain in words.
Suffice to say I was really, seriously tired.
The primitive caller ID service I had on this new-fangled phone displayed to me that it was a call from Kansas. Something in my gut told me to check out this call.
Through the haze, ignoring the opportunity to grab a moment of mental and physical rest, I forced my hand to pick up the receiver as it rang again.
It was T.J. Rohleder, co-founder of M.O.R.E., Inc. in Goessel, Kansas (a quaint burg located just a stone’s throw from Wichita). He sounded shocked that I answered the phone myself (my company was still quite small — just me at the time). T.J. proceeded to introduce himself and he told me he’d read my articles in the various newsstand BBS magazines that were published at that time, and he was surprised to see I hailed from Topeka — just a couple of hours up the
highway from Wichita.
From that one call, T.J. and I went on to form a bond that started with a mutually lucrative consulting gig (on an ongoing basis) and, eventually, resulted in a single joint venture that generated more than $12 million in sales that we happily shared between us.
We’ve made millions more on other joint ventures throughout the years that we’ve continued to work together.
But — what if I hadn’t answered that phone call?
I’m pretty sure T.J. would have left a message. He’s a sharp salesman. I’m sure he would would have enticed me somehow on that message to call him back. T.J. told me later, however, that he was impressed that he could call my company number and reach me personally.
But — he also told me he was even MORE amazed when I told him I was answering the phone from a trade show booth in D.C.!
If I’d let the phone take his message, his message could have been lost somehow. It happened now and then on those early cellphone systems.
Or — it could have become lost in the shuffle.
Or I might not have returned the call for a few days, missed T.J. and we failed to connect altogether.
Even if I had returned his call later and we talked — he wouldn’t have had that first impression of me talking to him from a trade show booth in D.C. That simple change could have altered the way our relationship formed.
Who knows?
The point is that I answered that call. Only one of probably 50 I received during that hectic three-day show. And it turned into much more than a lucrative partnership that completely changed my life from that point forward. It also turned into a deep friendship capable of surviving the most ecstatic and horrific of life’s events.
If I had ignored that call, everything might have been different. Answering it most certainly impacted my life in unimaginable ways. Either way, my life would have been impacted (remember — even going nowhere is going somewhere).
Today, I realize this sort of opportunity is everywhere. You just have to learn to be receptive to opportunity, to realize it’s there and to realize that the only real difference between the most successful people on earth and you is their ability to see and grasp an opportunity that you might not recognize at first when it presents itself.
And it’s so easy to open your eyes to the opportunities that occur everywhere around you, I’m almost embarrassed to write it here. You’ll probably accuse me of over-simplifying things.
Fortunately for you, I’m willing to take that risk.
All you have to do is be more receptive to opportunities. Realize they can come at you when you least expect them to. And know that they are often disguised as the most mundane of everyday events.
A phone call. A special gift to a prospect. A kindness to a stranger. A single sentence spoken during an evening out at dinner.
The only reason why most people miss opportunities their entire lives is that they aren’t fully prepared for opportunity. They aren’t willing to take the leap of faith required to believe that opportunity is constantly knocking. They don’t realize that, usually, opportunity knocks very softly.
You just have to learn to listen intently for the sound to hear it.
If you hear a phone ringing and think “Oh, God — I don’t have the energy to answer that right now,” the call will never be an opportunity for you. If you meet someone at a seminar and they give you their business card, which you file immediately in your wallet, never to be seen again — that’s an opportunity that will never happen. If you’re just shooting the breeze with your friends at a local bar and out pops an amazing idea, but you don’t write it down because “surely I’ll remember it later” — that’s an oppotunity that will never happen.
Fortunately, I have no problem believing you’ll be able to take the leap of faith that’s required. This year. Starting right now. After all, I just gave you a guarantee that the opportunities are there and that they will alter your life.
When you really do finally come to the realization that opportunity lies at every turn in the road, you’ll start seeing opportunity everywhere. If you believe the old addage that “opportunity only knocks once,” you’ll easily spend year after year missing out on more life-altering opportunies than you can imagine.
Aftar you become aware and see what I see, a new problem arises: How on earth do you decide WHICH opportunity to take action on?
I’ll cover that topic in our next E-Wealth Report next Thursday.
See you next week!
Alan R. Bechtold
President/CEO
BBS Press Service, Inc.
*IMNewswatch would like to thank Alan Bechtold for granting permission to reprint the latest article.