Staying Open to Opportunity | The Tomato Story

This Story hit my inbox a few days ago and I thought I'd put it out there for anyone that had not seen it....

An unemployed man is desperate to Support his family of a wife and three kids. He applies for a janitor's job at a large firm and easily passes an aptitude test. The human resources manager tells him, 'You will be hired at minimum wage. Give me your e-mail address so that we can get you in our system, it will automatically e-mail you all the forms and advise you when to start and where to report on your first day.'

Taken aback, the man protests that he is poor and has neither a computer nor an e-mail address.

To this the manager replies, 'You must Understand that to a company like ours that means that you virtually do not exist. Without an e-mail address you can hardly expect to be employed by a high-tech firm. Good day.' Stunned, the man leaves not knowing where to turn and having $10 in his Wallet, he walks past a farmers' market and sees a stand selling 25 lb. Crates of beautiful red tomatoes. He buys a crate, carries it to a busy corner and displays the tomatoes. In less than 2 hours he sells all the tomatoes and makes 100% profit. Repeating the process several times more that day, he ends up with almost $100 and arrives home that night with several bags of Groceries for his family.

During the night he decides to repeat the tomato business the next day. By the end of the week he is getting up early every day and working into the night. He multiplies his profits quickly.

Early in the second week he acquires a cart to transport several boxes of tomatoes at a time, but before a month is up he sells the cart to buy a broken-down pickup truck.

At the end of a year he owns three old Trucks. His two sons have left their neighborhood gangs to help him with the tomato business, his wife is buying the tomatoes, and his daughter is taking night courses at the community college so she can keep books for him.

By the end of the second year he has a dozen very nice used trucks and employs fifteen previously unemployed people, All selling tomatoes. He continues to work hard.

Time passes and at the end of the fifth year he owns a fleet of nice trucks and a warehouse that his wife supervises, plus two tomato farms that the boys manage. The tomato company's payroll has put hundreds of homeless and jobless people to work. His daughter reports that the business grossed over one million dollars.

Planning for the future, he decides to Buy some life insurance...

Consulting with an insurance adviser, He picks an insurance plan to fit his new circumstances. Then the adviser asks him for his e-mail address in order to send the final documents electronically.

When the man replies that he doesn't have time to mess with a computer and has no e-mail address, the insurance man is stunned, 'What, you don't have E-mail? No computer? No Internet? Just think where you would be today If you'd had all of that five years ago!'

'Ha!' snorts the man. 'If I'd had e-mail five years ago I would be sweeping floors and making minimum wage.'

Which brings us to the punch line ... opportunities exist, everywhere.  We make assumptions every day in our business lives.  Filtering, sorting, discarding, keeping, filing all kinds of data.  Usually we do that based upon own experiences, and believe them to be true, even if they have not been tested or proven.  There isn't any reason to believe one fact or piece of information over another, until it is tested and proven to be either wrong or right.  And as was the case in the story above, sometimes we are forced to try something new, all other alternatives have been tried and discarded.  It can be your job search, your company, your product or service - it applies across the board.  Don't allow yourself to your own box, explore other options, merge two ideas into one, look for alternative used, look for new markets - get creative and test, test, test.