Opportunity’s Knocking. Are you home?

Posted on | August 1, 2007 | No Comments

I live in a very politically and socially active neighborhood comprised primarily of empty-nesters and young families.   Recently, parts of our usually Rockwell-esque have experienced a mini crime wave, mostly due to its proximity to public transportation and a slightly depressed local economy.  As expected, my neighbors sprang into action, organizing neighborhood meetings and town halls meetings, bringing in our local city councilwoman and police chief to discuss crime prevention and intervention strategies.

In the midst of it all, I wished I owned a home security or private security guard company or could teach self defense.  While I was thinking, one of my neighbors was way ahead of me.  He made his move swiftly.  He offered to teach free one-hour classes on “do-it-yourself home security”.  A nice way to demo his expertise and find clients for his upstart consulting and installation firm.
By our second meeting, he’d whipped up a Powerpoint and worked out a class schedule to coincide with our monthly neighborhood crime prevention council meetings (thereby hedging his bets on attracting a larger audience).  He’d also crafted his brand story.  It was nothing exciting; he’d experienced a similar wave in a prior neighborhood sparking his interest in becoming a home security expert.  He threw in a spot-on story about being on vacation, having a scare and logging into his security system via his cell phone to find that his did-it-myself alarm system was still armed.  Sweet relief.

I have to admit that I was a little put off by his opportunism in the face of our neighbors’ suffering.  But, I also have to admit that I was a little jealous that he’d gotten there first, and a little proud of him that he heard opportunity knocking, disarmed his homemade security system and let it in.

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