One of my favorite machinery dealers we work with is from Brazil. He specializes in sending machine tools to South America. 

A used machinery deal is usually a challenge to close—even if a customer says they need it. Even if it’s an excellent machine that’s rare on the used market, at a good price, it is hard to close a used machinery deal.

But selling a machine to Brazil from the United States adds extra challenges. The customers usually can’t inspect the machine in person, and the Brazilian government charges more than 30% import tax on used machinery brought into the country.

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His optimism makes working with him fun, yet it’s frustrating sometimes. Once I told him that his constant excitement for deals that were going to happen, was starting to make me skeptical when he would tell me about his next great prospective buyer.

He smiled and told me that to succeed in the machinery business, which is often fueled by finding equipment or customers seemingly by chance, you have to be optimistic. If you seldom believe deals will succeed then it’s not a good business to be in. If you don’t believe that someone in another hemisphere will pay good money for a dirty, 20-year-old Walter CNC grinder that somehow you stumbled upon at an auction in Rockford, Illinois, it will be hard to make it in the used machinery business. That was a good deal we did together.

I discovered the podcast coaching program I recently joined from a paid ad while scrolling through Instagram late on a Saturday night. When the program, Grow the Show, was pitching to me, they told me my show’s listenership would likely grow 10- 20% in the first month. They said within a year it could be bringing in $100,000 in revenue. 

I was seduced by these optimistic claims because they gave me hope, even though I knew deep down I should keep my expectations tempered. After all, they didn’t know me nor my podcast audience. They also didn’t know how much time I would have to put into their program.

But I allowed myself to buy into their optimism and made the significant investment to try it. 

I’m happy to say in the last six months the podcast has grown a significant amount in listenership. Not yet to the extent that they sold me, but I’m pretty sure it would not have grown much at all if I didn’t take a chance on the program. Seeing that Instagram ad turned out to be serendipity. But only because I was optimistic it would work.

I met my wife, Stephanie, on an internet dating site. That became serendipity because I was optimistic enough to believe it was worth the time to meet her for a drink.

Maybe your machine shop is taking on an exciting new type of work for a customer you stumbled upon at a trade show. Maybe you’re thinking about hiring someone you met randomly working at Home Depot because they seemed sharp. To make those chance discoveries mean something, you must be optimistic that they will lead to something successful.

This is Seeking Serendipity.

Question: What are you the most optimistic about in your business?