Opportunity Knocks

I found this article on another blog yesterday and it relates quite well to us I think. For those that can't be bothered to read the article features Doug Richard, formerly one of the Dragons on Dragons' Den, talking about the way luck plays a part in business success. It's a concept that should be familiar to anyone in the world of the lazy. Sure, we want to spend our time doing nothing, but sometimes opportunities come up and you have to move fast to seize them. I guess everyone has heard the joke about the guy trapped in a flood?

A guy is caught in his house in a massive flood, maybe it's New Orleans and he's too poor to get evacuated with the rich folk. So anyway the flood waters are rising and when the water starts to fill up the ground floor of the house. Then a man in a rowboat rows past and asks "Need any help?"

But the guy in the house said, "Nope, the Lord'll take care of me!" Anyway it's a long joke but a few other people come along and try and help him but every time he says "Nope, the Lord'll take care of me!" Eventually the guy drowns and goes to heaven and when he gets there he says "God! Why didn't you save me?" and God says, "Well, I sent two rowboats, the navy and a helicopter!"

Anyway, for the lazy it's extremely important that you take your opportunities when they come along, after all, you're not out there making your opportunities for yourself are you? When I was at university the uni had a policy that in the first year it'd endeavour to provide all first year students with a place in university accommodation, but in your second and third years you were pretty much on your own and had to find private accommodation. I got together with a couple of friends and we agreed we'd find a house to share. Now, of course, we were really lazy and did nothing whilst everyone else spent a great deal of time searching and dealing with dodgy private landlords.

A lot of time passed and it was getting perilously close to the time we really needed to have somewhere sorted, and we'd done literally nothing. We were going to end up with a complete shit hole in the middle of nowhere, miles from college, which is pretty disasterous. Then we got word from a friend of ours about a great opportunity. The university actually had some houses that it managed on behalf of private landlords for second and third years to rent. You had to get in really, really early to register on their lists to get to pick from these and obviously we hadn't managed it. At this late stage though, there were still a few houses up for grabs, and we got wind from a friend of ours that the houses were going to be released to the general population on a certain day, so we got down there early and nabbed a brilliant house, miles better than anyone else that we knew had got, cheaper, and only an 8 minute walk from my bed to my lecture theatres. Once again being lazy had paid off handsomely.

So, I totally agree with the article, the secret to business success, or achieving your adequacy with ease is that when you get a bit of luck like this you have to make sure you take full advantage of it otherwise all the benefits of your lack of effort will slip through your fingers!