How to Explore Great Business Opportunities

Have you made the huge mistake? Have you discounted ideas, suggestions, opportunities because they didn’t seem applicable to your business? Have you considered the real cost of not listening to other opinions, especially ideas that come from outside of your own industry. This article, the second of two parts, tells you how to overcome the huge mistake and watch your business grow.

The Huge Mistake, Part 2
By Dan Kennedy; based on a discussion @ Gold/VIP-Millionaires Group 2006

Back to “The Idea That Doesn’t Fit”: the McDonalds example is only one of hundreds I personally know of, and, I’m sure, tens of thousands I don’t. So one thing to keep in mind is that it is, more often than not, The Idea That Doesn’t Fit that turns out to be the real breakthrough in a business. Beyond that, remember that business is about change of two kinds; evolution and revolution. Your business is a living, breathing, changing organism in a fast changing marketplace. What didn’t fit five years or five months ago might be the perfect fit now. Or might be five months down the road.

This does not mean I advocate embracing every wild hair idea that comes along or every suggestion anyone makes – even a bona fide expert. I don’t even advocate embracing every truly good idea, every viable opportunity. The more successful you are, the less new stuff you can embrace, or you’ll drown in too much opportunity or be paralyzed by too many ideas. Just because it can be done in your type of business doesn’t necessarily mean it should be done in your business. There are many considerations other than practicality and profit, including your own personal preferences, comparative size and value of each opportunity, degree of difficulty, etc. But too quickly, easily, cavalierly, thoughtlessly say “that does not compute” is The Huge Mistake.

As a matter of fact, most people don’t actually reject The Idea That Doesn’t Fit. They don’t hear it at all. In our meeting, when I returned to this an hour or so after the incident, the recipient of the suggestion couldn’t even tell me what the suggestion was that had been made, that he’d brushed off. He knew he’d done it. But he didn’t know what he’d rejected. Truth is, he never really heard it. What happened was more like the old game “name that tune”; he’d only heard the first few bars before swatting it away.

There are a number of times I’ve heard a suggestion I immediately reacted negatively to, because it did not fit, but by letting it roll around in my subconscious for a day or night or a few days and nights, I found merit. In a few cases, this has produced a great deal of money. You’ve probably had such an experience too. But you have to wonder, how many times haven’t you had this experience when you might have, due to such an instantaneous “doesn’t fit” reaction that the idea never had a chance? Gotta give ‘em all a chance.

It happens all the time in coaching group settings and when I’m consulting privately; my suggestion or someone else’s get swatted away without even having a chance. Most of the time I no longer fight it. I’m just not up for the fight. But this time I did. And I’ll tell you the same thing I told the group: try catching yourself at this. Be consciously aware. Make a point of writing down every idea and every suggestion before “crossing it off”.

By the way, at that same meeting, another Member was clearly tempted to instantly reject an apparently impractical suggestion – but fought back the urge and instead explored it. At last count, he was over $200,000.00 ahead.

Stop. Listen. Write. Explore.

© 2006/ Dan S. Kennedy, dankennedy.com