Originally Posted by
Gunfighter
I've run into a tremendous number of "lucky" millionaires. Most of them were prepared for opportunity and knew what it was when they saw it. I've caught some great opportunities, but also missed some great ones because I didn't see them. There are numerous people, who were presented with the same opportunity (SBUX, AMZN, NFLX, 2007-2012 real estate), with access to similar financial resources, but didn't know what they were looking at.
I actually lost a friendship after handing over one such opportunity. I didn't have the financial resources and bandwidth to take on two storage facilities simultaneously, so I took the largest one I could while handing over the second. The friend passed on the deal over a 5-10% price difference, then became increasingly bitter as it became apparent he had walked away from a 7 figure payday.
Luck is often found at the intersection of Opportunity and Preparation. If you stay on Preparation Road long enough, you will reach the Opportunity intersection. It's only a matter of time.
My worst miss was Bitcoin. A friend pointed me toward it in 2011 or 2012. He wanted me to buy a thousand but I didn't really understand it and was running a business so I didn't take the time to investigate. It was trading at three bucks. That's twenty million plus today. He sold his too early but did make seven figures on the deal. I had the three thousand and could have afforded the loss.
Easy come, easy go.