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Do you have the gift of prophesy? If you do, you can get very rich, very fast! But in truth, prophesy isn’t just a gift, but an art. The art consists of seeing that which is right smack in front of you. And it consists of putting two and two together. Sherlock Holmes called it the science of deduction, although it was really the science of induction, for it involves drawing inferences from certain details. For example, he could tell, by the color of the mud on your shoe, where you went walking that day.
How, then, can you profit from this art? Here’s an example. A college professor of mine told me of the time when he was a graduate student, at Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore, during the 1950s. One day, he visited one of his professors, at his home, and the two of them sat chatting together on the professor’s front porch. It was, then, that the two of them saw something that most people might not even notice or make anything of. But what the professor saw prompted him to call his real estate broker, the very next day, and to place his home on the market. If I remember the story correctly, in the middle of their conversation, the two of them — the college professor and the graduate student — saw one of professor’s neighbors leave his house to walk to his mailbox, to get the newspaper.
What was unusual, though, is that the neighbor wasn’t wearing a shirt, but rather just an undershirt. Apparently, the professor took this sartorial impropriety, on his neighbor’s part, as a telltale sign, a dark omen of things to come, for the very next day the professor placed his house on the market. The house sold fairly soon. It was a shrewd move, for within six months the housing prices, in that Baltimore neighborhood, started declining significantly. Yes, all that from just watching a neighbor get his mail, in an undershirt.
Along these same lines, perhaps there’s a restaurant that you’ve frequented, over the years. And then, one day, you notice something similar, not a man in an undershirt, but you notice, for example, that they stopped bringing olive oil with the fresh bread, when you sit down. No, you can no longer dip your bread in olive oil, for instead they just bring you some tabs of butter in those tin foil packets that you rip open. It’s just a little thing, but then within a year or so you see that the restaurant has significantly declined in quality. It’s not the same place anymore. Of course, the opposite can happen: things can improve. And what’s true of restaurants is true of all business enterprises, which is why a good leader is concerned about the details. And so, here too, little things can allow you to predict the future.
On other occasions, we perceive the truth, but because it’s incongruous with our assumptions, we dismiss it. For example, back in the 1970s, I was working as a commodities broker, on Wall Street. Those were the days when OPEC had a monopoly on the world’s oil supply. I kept on seeing the price of a barrel of oil climbing higher and higher. Everywhere I read — such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal — and everyone I spoke to predicted that the price was going to continue to climb into the stratosphere.
Well, almost everyone was saying that, for I had a client, at the time, who worked in the oil industry, out in Oklahoma. He told me that everywhere he looked he could see that Oklahoma and Texas was swimming in oil. There was a glut of oil. How could this be, I thought. Is it possible that he was right, while the prestigious New York Times and Wall Street Journal and the TV show, “Wall Street Week” was wrong?
I wished that I had listened to the fellow, for had I purchased puts on oil future contracts, I would be a rich man today. For yes, within months the price of crude oil futures started declining significantly. So sometimes, we do manage to become privy to the truth, we hear it loud and clear, but we don’t have the courage to act on it. And then the narrow window of opportunity closes.
And so, most often you don’t need the gift of prophecy to predict the future. What you do need, though, is to listen and to look, for sooner or later you will perceive the truth — it may be a truth about yourself, about other people, about life, or about an investment opportunity. I guarantee that this will happen to you, certainly in the next few years, if not this week. And so, as the Boy Scouts recommend, “Be prepared.” And then the question will be, will you trust your gut and act on what you perceive? Only be doing so, can you get rich by predicting trends.
And now it’s time for a commercial. I offer business consulting in person, in Louisville Kentucky, and I also offer it over the phone or through Skype, anywhere in the world. I also offer seminars. I can fly to your city or town to offer a seminar, if my arms don’t get too tired.
Mark Dillof
Dr. Mark Dillof is president of Sherlock & Zen, LLC, Business Consulting. In addition to extensive business experience — including having worked as a management consultant, stockbroker and executive coach — he taught philosophy and psychology for many years, wrote several books, has had a private practice as a consulting philosopher, and has entertained as a professional magician, among other things.