4.1 Carpe diem - seize the day!
Miss Fortuitous *
Miss Fortuitous is a niece of Lady Luck and Lady Fortuna, as shown at section (5) of IV. The Strategy Journey.
The Outcome
The day the young Californian entrepreneur arrives in Rio de Janeiro he goes to the beach, Copacabana or Ipanema. He notices a cute girl in a nice bikini running to the waves. When she comes out of the water, he strikes up a conversation with her. Her English is excellent. What does she do anyway?
She is the secretary for the CEO of one of Brazil’s leading swimwear companies. Oh, good, just the man he needs to see. She arranges a meeting. The CEO likes the designs. Three days later a licensing agreement is signed, and he flies back to San Francisco.
The Aftermath - Lessons Learned
He complained that if he had only realized international business were so easy, he would have started with it directly instead of wasting six months struggling to get domestic sales going. He was flying to Australia next. Lots of beaches, lots of sun, good potential he thought. Of course he was not going to waste any time on pesky market research. He’d just talk to a couple of girls on the beach there about where they had gotten their bikinis when he saw some he liked. He’d see the president of the company that made them, show him his own designs, sign a licensing agreement and return home, a no-brainer.
Relevance
Sometimes the Nike slogan is right after all: "Just do it!"
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