Many of the successes I’ve had in my life have been due in part to my ability to “see” things that others could not see. And likewise, many of the opportunities that I’ve missed in life have been missed due to my lack of ability to “see” things that others could see.
My situation is far from unique. In fact, many of the world’s great success stories are grounded in someone having had the ability to “see” huge opportunities that nearly everyone else missed. Examples from the business world include: George Soros and the impending devaluation of the English Pound that he capitalized on; Bill Gates and the future strategic importance (and value) of operating systems that he capitalized on; Google’s founders and the importance of organizing the internet which they continue to capitalize on.
I’ll share two (smaller scale) stories with you from my own business career about this phenomenon:
A time that I saw something: In late 2007, I was able to “see” the impending stock market collapse quite clearly. In particular, the (now widely appreciated) unsustainable private sector debt bubble that was building and about to pop, along with its implications, were both somehow clearly visible to me. Now, the truth is that, having been regularly informed by many experienced investors that I didn’t know what I was talking about, it would probably be more accurate to say that, at year-end 2007 I was more “fearful” of a stock market collapse than confident. As such, rather than actively betting on the stock market collapse (which I now wish I had done), instead I just bought gold and cash equivalents – thus generating a modest profit for my family in 2008 while the financial gurus who thought I was stupid lost their shirts. Needless to say, this one thing I saw saved me a lot of money in 2008.
A time that I missed something: About 8 months ago I was presented with an investment opportunity in a company that sells a very cool product to health insurance companies. (I can’t tell you more about this company because I signed a confidentiality agreement with them.) During his fund-raising presentation to me, the CEO of the company mentioned that he thought his product might be sellable in the hospital sector. I decided to pass on the investment opportunity, with almost no consideration, because: (a) I believed the selling price for stock in the company was too high, and (b) I and my partners would not have been able to take a controlling position in the company (which was a deal breaker for us). Four months later a friend of mine (another seasoned entrepreneur) called me up to tell me about this deal (which I, of course, recognized). My friend, having heard the same presentation as I also declined to make the investment – but instead of walking away, he offered the CEO a proposition where they would do a joint venture in which my friend would get an exclusive right to distribute the company’s product to hospitals in exchange for a percentage of the sales he generated. When I heard this idea my immediate thought was “Oh Shit,” because (understanding the product’s strong marketability to hospitals) I could immediately see that my friend was likely about to make millions of dollars with essentially no work or capital investment (because he will be outsourcing the hospital sales function to others) – and that I could have easily done the same thing four months earlier had I simply been able to see the opportunity in front of me.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this phenomenon of “seeing” lately and, in particular, I’ve been wondering how you and I can train ourselves to enhance our seeing ability. Regrettably I don’t have a good answer to this question (and if you do, I’d love it if you could write to me or post a comment.) With this said, let me please direct you to a terrific (now ancient) blog entry from Phillip Eby called “A Spooky Mind Hack” in which my sense is that there might be a very good clue available to us, addressing this very important question, if we can only “see” it.
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