Mariah Carey has a place in my life. I have her Greatest Hits. Everytime I look at my collection in iTunes Mariah Carey’s Greatest Hits really stand out.

Never mind I bought it by accident.

Serendipity can lead to great things. In business this can mean the difference between going under, just surviving or hitting the big time. Serendipity isn’t all about luck though.

I spend a lot of my time with people content to do things by the book. I can almost believe their idea of nirvana is dotting all the “i’s” and crossing all the “t’s”. For them thunderous glory is to be had for a good day’s stacking things into neat piles where nothing really changes.

A lot of businesses seem to operate that way. A lot of businesses seem to either just survive or go under. What works for people in salaried jobs just aint good enough for the self employed.

To coin a few cliches you have to see opportunity in adversity, you have to embrace change and you even need to question the status quo. I dare say a few clients of Bernie Madoff would agree with that last one.

Being self employed is about taking risk. Sure you can take on a few contracts and maybe have a part time job to help with the tough times. But in the end the ones who succeed are the ones who can cope with disorder and change. They are the ones who can see good where others can only see the bad.

I may never play those Mariah Carey songs but they do include a cover version of a song the name of which I couldn’t remember until I saw it in Mariah Carey’s Greatest Hits. I now own the version of it that I like.