Start Seeing Opportunities Everywhere

You know how once you start looking to buy a certain type of car you suddenly see that a lot of people just bought that same car? This is an illusion. Those people didn’t magically read your mind and then rush out and buy the same care you were just about to buy. You just didn’t notice that the car was already everywhere until you started thinking about buying one yourself. Our minds can’t handle everything around us, so we pay attention to those things that are most important, or that we think are most important. But this can cause us to miss a lot of opportunities. To further demonstrate this, here’s a fun experiment. Watch the brief video below to get started (no sound required).

About 50% of people see the gorilla the first time, and 50% don’t. I didn’t see it the first time. I’m not sure what that says about me, but the point is all of us miss things that are right in front of us, at least part of the time. However, if I had told you, prior to you watching the video, to keep your eye out for the gorilla, you definitely would have seen it. What opportunities are you missing to grow your business? I asked myself that question, and it prompted this email to my team at MWI:

There are other hidden opportunities around MWI all the time, and you can help MWI grow by doing nothing more than seeing them and passing them along to the right people. A few examples:

Kickstarter marketing. We’re seeing a lot of interest in Kickstarter marketing, that is, using Kickstarter to get marketing attention (see How to Use Crowdfunding to Generate Major PR Buzz). The great thing about using KS as a marketing tool is that it doesn’t cost our client a dime. That is, they recoup the full cost of their investment, and then they make a few hundred grand on top of it. Yes, they need to put some cash up front ($50-100K) but they’re going to sell $1M in product within a few months.

The trigger for “spotting” a potential KS client is if they have a product, especially a clever product with cool features. If we have a client that has a cool product, or could create a cool product, let me and Seth know about it and we can tell you if it has potential. Some examples we’re working with or will be working with soon:

• A clothing company that has created men’s slacks for wearing in a corporate environment that are as comfortable as sweatpants.
• A smart alarm clock company.
• An internet connected dartboard.
• A headphone company that is making high end $300 bluetooth headphones that don’t have any wire connecting them (one bud in each ear).

Hiring. Know someone who would be a great addition to the MWI team? Maybe you do but you’re just not looking out for them. We’re looking for front end devs, social media experts, SEOs, growth hackers of any sort, content creators, designers, writers, journalists, bizdev, and more. We want to develop lots of relationships. Ideally we would have three fantastic candidates for any position we want to fill, and we would have a chance to get to know them months ahead of when we need them.

Blog posts. We talked about this a little bit on the company call. Just sent a client an email explaining something? There’s probably a blog post in there. There’s at least a topic, if not a complete rough draft. Don’t want to write it up yourself? Send it to me, Seth, or Jordan and say “Hey, I get asked this a lot by clients, think it’s worth doing a blog post on it?” Then we can finish writing it up and put it up on the MWI blog with your name on it and make you famous. Here’s a blog post I wrote on this topic (see How to Create Content Marketing Success From Old Emails). The more blog posts we create answering common questions about the work we do, the more people will find that content, like it, and then trust us enough to contact us.

I’m a skater, so I see the world differently than everyone else who has never been a skater. Everywhere I go, I’m thinking “There’s a skate spot, there’s another skate spot, oooh, that would be a great skate spot.” I see skate spots everywhere. That’s the result of years of training, but for a lot of opportunities it doesn’t require any time or training beyond thinking about it for a few seconds. All of you can help MWI grow by quickly training your minds to see potential clients, hires, and content opportunities. When you see something, say something. You don’t even need to do any of the work, just pass the word along to the right person.

Thanks!

This email was my way of telling my team, “There may be a gorilla right in front of you, keep an eye out for it.” Often just mentioning that there is a gorilla is enough to get people to see it. There is no special “gorilla sighting training course” to take.

How does this apply to growing yourself as a speaker, writer, and entrepreneur? What opportunities are you missing out on? What opportunities is your team missing out on? Could you see dramatic improvements in your efforts by taking a moment to think about them, or by sending out a brief email to your team?