Life Creates Unfortunate Tragedies And Inevitable Opportunities

Right now, if you own a construction company in New York or even a dump truck, you are making more money than you've ever made in your life...because your skills and resources are more needed now than ever before. If your expertise is disaster cleanup, you are making a fortune. There was a report on the news of one company that was given a $10 million contract just to clean up all the apartments in buildings surrounding the World Trade Center that had been filled with the ash cascading from the collapsed buildings.

The cost of this terrible tragedy in terms of human life has been incalculable, after all, what price can you put on a life? But in purely economic terms, the cost of rebuilding the World Trade Center towers has been estimated at $100 billion dollars. Here's something I realized: as much money as has been donated and will be spent to help the innocent victims of this tragedy (an estimated $ 1 billion), there will be hundreds of times that much money spent to rebuild the city and re-establish the more than 14,000 businesses in the WTC that were totally and partially destroyed.

While this tragedy has destroyed many businesses (14,000 at last count), whether we want to acknowledge it or not, it will also be the foundation upon which many new businesses and fortunes are built over the next decade. It's a fact of human existence that tragedies - as hard to deal with and as sad as they are - catalyze opportunities as well. Earthquakes and fires caused the rebuilding of cities like San Francisco, Chicago and even New York into the great metropolises they are.

So in my planning to establish this million dollar business, I have learned that if the products and services that I offer satisfy or service or fulfill a basic human need or want for the moment or long term, whether out of the normal circumstances of living or because of a short-term or long term situation, my business will have a better chance for long-term survival. I can't plan for those special circumstances, but I can be ready and in position to respond to them when they happen.