Breakthrough Opportunites

Mar 27, 2011 by Rebecca

We’ve all heard of stories of someone starting a business, then they got picked up by Oprah and  were instant successes.  The problem is to get picked up by Oprah, to get interviewed for your amazing dream job, to reach any amazing goal takes work.  Lots of it.  It is not easy to get a breakthrough opportunity.

There is a balance that needs to be achieved when setting your expectations. If you set your expectations too high and you aren’t willing to do the work that would be required, then you are doomed to mediocrity.

I know that this sounds like common sense that no one needs to be told, and while it may be common sense, many people are not very good at applying it to themselves.  They set expectations without really factoring in the work required.  They hope that they will get lucky, but they won’t do the work required to get lucky.

Breakthrough opportunities take lots of front-end work that few people ever see.  These opportunities rarely happen purely because of luck.  They happen because of a tireless marketing campaign.  This is equally true of the dream job as it is of the small business.  The people that get these opportunities have laid out extensive groundwork to line up the opportunity.  They have sent out countless emails, made plenty of phone calls, developed through marketing plans.

The people that are most likely to have one of these breakthrough opportunities have had lots of failures,  phone calls and emails that were never returned, and been flat out told no plenty of times.  They kept with it until they were told yes.  They knew that in order to have the breakthrough moment, they had to keep going.

It wasn’t luck, it was work.  All you as an outsider is ever seeing is the positive outcome of extensive work.  Don’t leave your own breakthroughs to luck, because that is a sure way to lose.

 

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Photo by Kelley Boone