On a recent trip to Santa Barbara, my son showed me his local break — 40 people paddling into a single narrow take off point and a lot of closed-out sections.
“Wow, it looks pretty crowded, do you get a lot of waves here?” I asked.
“I surf at the fourth break to the left, that’s empty,” he said.
I realized that he saw a section of the break that I could not see and other people missed.
Surfing is often used as a metaphor for business. Catch the wave of a new trend and score the benefits.
In both surfing and business, there are opportunities that other people miss. Find those opportunities and score as much rides as you can handle.
Why People Miss Opportunities
People look at the crowd and stare at waves. The crowd is at the best-shaped and most consistent break. It’s also the break that has 7 people scratching for every wave.
Most people looking for a chill session will look around for a section or shoulder that is less crowded. They’ll look for the right and and left break, then study the inside reform. This is what everyone else is doing, looking at the crowd and spreading their mind out from there.
In surfing and business, this technique of starting at the crowd and then expanding the search beyond the crowd will yield some opportunities, but you’ll miss the best ones.
Don’t Follow the Crowd
The obvious thing to do is to look up and down the beach and study the breaks to the far right and far left of the main peak. While you’ll find additional opportunities, you’ll still miss the real gems. Although you think you’re being creative in thinking of new locations, there are three factors that you’re not considering:
- there may be a cliff near the water that obstructs your vision and prevents you from walking down the sand to get a better view
- if you’re scoping out the breaks from the water, you’re seeing the back of the waves that are closer to shore. You can’t see the shape of the wave
- there’s different ocean swells that are hitting the reef or shelf at different angles, so the hidden break may not be firing when the main peak fires
Move and Play in Different Places
The main way to find these hidden breaks is to move around and try different locations at the same beach. This involves a love of the waves and the fun aspect of the sport. If you’re just trying to score the max number of waves, you’ll fight it out with the competition at the main peak.
Finding the best session and the best opportunity for you requires a deep appreciation of the waves at a spot. You need to enjoy sessions when other surfers are getting into better waves and more waves. Eventually, after many sessions of moving around and trying different spots, you’ll start to see the opportunities that other people miss.
In business, to have the guts to move around, you need to love what you are doing. If you enjoy your daily actions, you’ll find joy in trying new things even if it doesn’t work out. Eventually, you’ll find the business opportunity that is right for you, an opportunity that everyone else missed because they were busy fighting it out with the crowd.
