Castro - Hidden solutions all around you : why some people can see them and some cant

What Readers Are Saying About

Hidden Solutions All Around You

Read this book and you will start seeing opportunities that are invisible to your competition. This is a tremendous advantage.

Barry Burgdorf

Corporate Attorney, Entrepreneur, Strategist

Dan Castro provides a guidebook for those who want more from life and their business. This in-depth exploration of the psychology of the great innovators in history will kick-start your brain to go places you never dreamed you could go.

Kevin Ready

Serial Entrepreneur, Author and Contributor to Forbes Magazine

This book is filled with great stories of innovation and entrepreneurship that will inspire you to discover the hidden opportunities that truly are all around you.

Gary Hoover

Founder of BOOKSTOP, Hoovers, Inc. and Bigwig Games

Amazing book! It will lead you to many aha moments. After you read it, you will start connecting the dots in new ways.

Selene Benavides

CFO/COO, National Society of Hispanic MBAs

I really, really like this book. It hits creativity, innovative thinking, entrepreneurship, and thinking outside the box. Dan Castro nails it.

Orrin Woodward

New York Times best-selling author of
Launching a Leadership Revolution and LeaderShift

Become the kind of person you read about in this book. This book will shift the way you go about solving problems.

David Bernert

Zen Restaurants

This book is really going to help a lot of people overcome financial difficulties and get where they want to be in life.

Carl Stanley

CEO/Founder of Rising Point Solutions

Copyright 2015 by Daniel R. Castro

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher.

Beartooth Press

7800 Shoal Creek Blvd.

Suite 100N

Austin, Texas 78757

First Edition

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication

(Provided by Quality Books, Inc.)

Castro, Daniel R., 1960

Hidden solutions all around you : why some people can see them and some cant / Daniel R. Castro.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

LCCN 2014903166

ISBN 978-0-9914564-0-6

1. Creative ability. 2. Entrepreneurship.

I. Title.

BF408.C37 2014 153.35

QBI14-600013

Book design by Janice Benight

page 1 image source istockphoto, Zakai

page 338 image source istockphoto, Rawpixel

Manufactured in the United States of America

ISBN: 9780991456499

Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now,

bump, bump, bump

on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin.

It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs,

but sometimes he feels that there really is another way,

if only he could stop bumping a moment

and think of it.

A.A. MILNE

Winnie-the-Pooh

To all those who were born to walk alone.

Misunderstood.

Reprimanded as children for coloring outside the lines.

Rejected by their peers.

They were mocked, ridiculed, and scorned.

They were considered weird.

Yet, they continued to follow their own path,

blazing trails through dark jungles,

surging forth into the heat of a battle they could not win

when everyone told them they were crazy,

and emerged from the fight,

beat up,

filthy,

bloody,

but joyous

with the heart of the enemy in their teeth.

DANIEL R. CASTRO

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

I would like to say a heartfelt thank you to the following people who gave of their time and brain cells to pour over my manuscript and provide valuable feedback and insights. Because of you, this book is what it is.

Selene Benavides

David Bernert

Barry Burgdorf

Laura Fowler

Mark LaSpina

Robert T-Ray Manley

Kevin Ready

Christopher R. Webb

Orrin Woodward

Rose Castro

Heather Mauel

MANY THANKS !

Daniel R. Castro

Introduction

How Far Will Your Arrow Fly?

T he next time you are tempted to say, Im out of options. Im defeated. There is nothing left that I can do, step outside on a clear, starry night. Look up. Recall that at one point in time, humans believed that all that existed was that which we could see with our own eyes. The earth, the sun, the moon, and a sea of stars.

As you look up at the stars, single out one star among all you can see. Focus on it. Zoom in on it with your minds eye. Now mentally transport yourself to it and stand on it in your very own specially designed space suit. Look deep into space. Deeper. Into the inky black night. Isolate the darkest spot in the night sky.

Now let your mind wander through that dark spot to the furthest edge of space you can imagine. Stand there at that edge and reach out your hand. What do you feel?

While standing at that edge, pull out an imaginary arrow from your quiver and notch it in your imaginary bow and draw back on the string. Let the arrow fly. How much deeper into space can it fly? Will it hit anything, or will it keep flying forever?

If it hits something, go stand on that something and let fly another arrow.

Until it hits something.

Then go stand on that something and do it again and again and again.

Then you will know that even with the most powerful telescopes we have sent into outer space, we have seen but a fraction of all that exists.

Who knows what exists beyond the reach of our most powerful arrow? Beyond our most powerful telescopes?

Who knows what possibilities exist beyond that which we can see or even imagine? You see, every day scientists, anthropologists, oceanographers, and astronomers discover things that were there all along, but which we simply never saw.

Do you really think the options you are considering right now are really the only options that exist?

When you contemplate the vastness of the universe who are YOU to say, I am out of options?

DANIEL R. CASTRO

CHAPTER 1

The Question Is Why?

I n the early 1960s, in the City of Schertz, a small rural town outside of San Antonio, Texas there lived a young Hispanic woman named Rosie Gutierrez. Rosie was poor, but she wanted more than anything to put her children through college so that her children would not have to grow up poor like her. She prayed with all her heart to find a way to earn enough money to put them through college. One day, she got up off her knees and wiped her tears with her apron. Then, she looked outside her window and saw what she had never seen before. She saw a huge pile of trash in the neighbors yard. Yes, the trash had always been there. But on this day, she saw something she had never seen before, she saw a problem that needed a solution. On that day, Rosie made what would turn out to be a life-changing decision: She offered to carry the trash to the dump for a dollar. She piled all the trash into the trunk of her car and carried it away. This was a dirty, thankless job, but it was sorely needed in that community. Back then, the City of Schertz did not have municipal trash pick-up. Everyone was on their own. Other neighbors began asking for her services as well. She became very busy doing what no one else would do.