Looking to attract new clients, a better job or influential joint venture partners? Then don’t make this rookie mistake.

If you’re looking to grow your cash, the last thing you’d do is stuff it under your mattress.

Any smart investor knows that the key to financial growth is to leverage the power of compound interest by investing her money in a diverse portfolio.

Over time, her money grows exponentially as each stock or asset she invested in earns interest and then the interest earns interest.

That’s the beauty of compound interest – there’s a “piling on” effect which grows your initial investment quite beautifully.

Unfortunately, many people fail to use the “compound interest principle” when it comes to growing opportunity.

Rather than planting many seeds, they plant one or two and hope for the best.

For instance:

  • A job seeker looks for a new position by browsing a couple of career sites and firing off resumes.
  • A business owner struggling to find clients focuses all her efforts on a newspaper ad campaign that gets minimal results.

In Dan S. Kennedy’s brilliant book How to Make Millions From Your Ideas (an oldie but goodie must read for entrepreneurs), he tells the story of a highly successful dental surgeon who did many times the business of his competitors.

People kept asking the surgeon the same question: “How do you get so many clients?”

His response was roughly this: “You want me to tell you the best way to get 100 clients. I don’t know a single way to get 100 clients. I know 100 ways to get 100 clients.”

The dental surgeon posted signs, created referral programs, advertised in the local newspaper, did media interviews, looked for speaking gigs plus one hundred other things to try and attract clients.

Each of these efforts brought in a trickle of clients. Those clients told other clients and within a short while he had an absolutely crackerjack business happening.

That’s the beauty of compound interest.

It’s a simple concept, but so many people forget to apply to their own opportunity attraction efforts.

Why?

Because it’s not a magic bullet.

Most of us are time-starved and bordering on overwhelmed.

We want a single strategy to bring us the clients or job offers we desire.

And while you can, on occasion, hit on a single strategy that brings in buckets of opportunity, it’s exceedingly rare.

So whether you are looking to attract new clients or find a great new job, remember that you want to plant as many seeds as possible.

What does planting seeds look like?

If you’re looking for a job, planting many seeds might mean:

  • updating your LinkedIn profile and spreading the word via social media
  • making a list of everyone you know who might be able to help you
  • approaching as many people as possible on that list to tell them you’re on the hunt for opportunity and asking them to either refer you or make an introduction to someone else who might know of opportunities
  • researching 10 organizations you’d love to work for and checking to see if anyone in your network can introduce you to someone who works there

If you’re looking to attract clients, planting many seeds might mean:

  • picking one social media platform and updating it multiple times per day with information that entertains and educates your audience
  • traditional advertising
  • approaching other businesses for cross-promotion
  • creating a referral program
  • sussing out speaking gigs
  • hosting a free introductory workshop
  • blogging
  • etc.

Do you have other tips for attracting opportunity? If so, leave them in the comments section below.

Happy opportunity hunting!

Eleanor