Luck = Preparation + Opportunity

All my life I’ve been told that I’m lucky. It’s actually ironic because I’m sure I’ve had more near death experiences than the average person (I’ve been in a hurricane, tornado, 2 forest fires, deadly mud slide and flood - and lost a kidney in an accident when I was 12.) But maybe surviving when others didn’t is the part that’s luck.

Most people mean that I’m lucky because I seem to be in the right place at the right time for business. The latest example of this is my website www.TrustSandwich.com.

Megan and I are both getting calls like crazy about this new problem and solution. My personal high was when The Washington Post called. We had a solution before most people even knew there was a problem. Is that luck? No. I think it’s preparation. I found out about it before most people even knew there was an issue because I have some great contacts. It’s taken years to build up a rolodex of top notch people in a range of financial services. I help them, they help me. I strive to always have some in the favor bank with them so that when something like this happens, I’m the first person to get the call.

That’s what happened in this case. Aaron Van Trojen (Morgan Financial) gave me the heads up about Freddie Mac. I spend at least 10 hours a week researching tax and asset protection law changes and strategies, so I had to just mentally shift through some options to come up with a solution. Within an hour of talking to Aaron, I had Megan on the phone. I told her that Freddie Mac was cutting off funding and how far-reaching the issue would be. I then told her my idea for a solution. Megan said she needed the rest of the day to research the solution and make sure my fuzzy logic was indeed solid.

It was. I then IM’d Jorge at LatAmConnect and told him we needed a landing page up fast. It was Wednesday still (the day I first heard about the problem). I scheduled a conference line for a Saturday telseminar, wrote up a quick email and sent it first to my CPA clients. The next notice went to the First Class Lounge members and finally it went to my entire database. I could only have 200 people on the call, so actually the call was filled by the time the notice went to my database. But I did tape the call.

WIthin a week we had the TrustSandwich website up and it’s grown legs. People are referring people who are referring people. Megan is getting calls now from people that are out about 3 generations on the viral marketing.

And then I saw the post in another forum about the TrustSandwich. This was a conversation between programmers and Internet marketers. They weren’t talking about the content. They were talking about the huge volume of people we had that came to the site and then “converted”. Our stat is 48.6% on conversion, which is HUGE. Most websites will convert 5% if they’re lucky. One of the marketing types said that it was an anomaly. I was just lucky.

So, in my weekly rant, I want to say I was NOT lucky. I was prepared. I had a great rolodex with plenty in the favor bank and I had a big reference library in my head of possible solutions because of a personal habit of ongoing research. That’s preparation.

There will be another opportunity for each and every one of us. Maybe it’ll be today. The question is, “Are you ready?” Do you have a mastermind of top players who have the rolodex you’ll need to act fast on that next opportunity? And if not now, when will you? When is it your turn to get lucky?