306 - How Opportunities Are Lost?

0:00I want to give you some examples of how opportunities are lost. We are all going to have opportunities that we don't take action on or we miss, and those are lost opportunities. But there are oftentimes reasons why they don't have to be lost. And primarily, the top of that list is usually procrastination. I won't end up calling that person. I won't end up sending that email or making a cold call or doing a marketing piece, whatever it happens to be. We choose to do something else. Sometimes that doesn't matter. It doesn't harm you. Sometimes those are opportunities lost. So I want to give you some examples in history of opportunities that are lost.

0:48And then I want to give you a couple of examples in my mentoring. Okay, so here are some names. Ronald Wayne. He was missed opportunity on Apple. Ronald Wayne was one of the original co-founders of Apple, along with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. However, he sold his 10 % stake in the company for just$800 in 1976. Today, that stake would be worth tens of billions of dollars. Ouch. Blockbuster Video, you may not even know what that is. John Antiaco missed the opportunity to acquire Netflix. In 2000, Blockbuster had the chance to buy Netflix for$50 million. The Blockbuster CEO, John Anticato, turned down the offer considering Netflix a niche business.

1:44Blockbuster, which again you might not even know the name of, eventually went bankrupt. They did VHS, or tape rentals, to watch movies. while Netflix became a global entertainment giant. Kodak, interesting one, missed digital photography. Kodak actually invented the first digital camera in 1975, but decided not to pursue digital photography, fearing it would cannibalize its film business. The decision led to the company's decline as digital photography became mainstream. I mean, Ross Perot, he was not alive anymore, but he ran for president a while ago as the third party. He was really the start of the third party candidate runs.

2:34But Ross Perot had the opportunity to buy Microsoft. In 1979, Ross Perot, the billionaire founder of Electronic Data Systems, was offered the chance to buy Microsoft for$60 million. He declined, and today Microsoft is worth over$2 trillion. DECA Records signing the Beatles was their missed opportunity. In 1962, DECA Records had famously turned down the opportunity to sign the Beatles, saying, quote, guitar groups are on the out. The Beatles went on to become one of the most successful and influential bands in history. James Howell, name I didn't know, losing millions in Bitcoin. Well, what happened?

3:22In 2013, James Howell accidentally threw away a hard drive containing 7 ,500 Bitcoins, which had been mined in 2009. Today, those Bitcoins would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Walt Disney, we all know who he is, letting go of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Never heard of that. What happened in the 1920s? Walt Disney lost the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, one of his first cartoon characters, due to the contract loopholes. This setback led Disney to create Mickey Mouse, but the loss of Oswald was a significant early blow to his career. So I think those stories highlight the importance of recognizing and seizing opportunities when they arise as the potential long-term consequences of missed chances can be significant.

4:15I'll give you a couple examples in this business acquisition. I had a mentee who was doing outreach in home health care. He contacted and talked to a woman who said, yeah, this sounds interesting. Why don't you call me in two or three weeks? I can't remember which one it was. So he got busy. He wasn't using a CRM or not efficiently anyway at that time and said oh I remember I never called that woman so he called her back and it was significantly after the two or three weeks and said I'm just this is so and so she said oh yeah I wonder why I never heard from you and he said well I just wondered if we wanted to continue that discussion about acquiring your business and she said no no you really opened my eyes, and since we talked, I've acquired two businesses, and you want to kick yourself when that happens.

5:11He eventually went on to pivot to another industry, did acquisitions in that, and became successful, but that was certainly a lost opportunity. I had another mentee who thought that she had a deal that was going to close, so she stopped her pipeline, reach out. The deal fell apart. She did collect a pretty hefty breakup fee, but we're not in the breakup fee business. And as a result of that, she then had to restart her outreach. And when she started doing that, she said it was almost like a dagger in the heart how many times she had heard, oh yeah, well no, I'm not interested anymore because I sold that already.

5:54And way back when, an example is when I was in the property tax business, there were what's called grievance days. Once a year in New York, you had the ability to file a grievance on your property taxes, school of property taxes. And if you missed that date, you couldn't challenge them for another year until the next year. So we had clients that we gathered during the year. These grievance dates were all over the place in different municipalities, which had different dates. You had to keep track of that and if we had lost a opportunity to file a grievance we could have lost especially with the business customers or clients that we had millions of dollars in savings so we came close didn't miss dates we came close though because we would say well we'll do that we'll analyze that case tomorrow and then time became shorter and shorter so I want you to think about the opportunities that you can have that you might not take advantage of, whether that's making the calls, following up on those opportunities, follow-ups, super important, or whatever it is.

7:07But keep that activity moving. Keep moving the ball closer to the goal lines. Will you, in any event, miss some opportunities? Sure. But the goal here is to minimize those and to present you with opportunities such that you can take advantage of them. So hope that helps. If you're looking for the steps, which are really important to follow, go over to BruceWhipple.com, grab the Acquisition Advantage Bootcamp. You'll be able to talk to me once a month in a group live Q &A. If you're looking for how to start conversations with board members, banks, professionals, grab the conversation starters. Again, that's over at brucewhipple.com.

7:50Just enter your email and you'll get those. If you want to go there directly, brucewhipple.com forward slash free course. In talking about opportunities lost, there are some opportunities to join the VIP Mastermind with some people that have completed their term there. So send me an email, bruce at brucewhipple.com if you want to be on the waiting list for that. I'll be filling some spots before too too long here. And you can see what the VIP Mastermind entails by going over to brucewhipple.com. All of those are opportunities that I hope you do not miss. Okay, take some action, and I would love to hear how things are going for you.

8:36Send me an email. Let me know the successes you've had. Those are great to share and also may put you in a position where you can join the Pantheon, which is my Hall of Fame.