There are several reasons why people succeed in the world. Some people work really hard, others have had luck. However, there is a group of people who have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams because they saw an opportunity and positioned themselves to take advantage of it.

The big question is: What important and practical lessons can we learn from these type of people?

Let's examine just two very well known examples of this kind of people, namely, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com and Bill Gates the architect of Microsoft.

Even though both were in a very good position to start with, the fact that they HAD A VISION of what they wanted allowed them to identify very important opportunities that launched their careers beyond their wildest dreams, when that happened, the financial part just followed. I'm pretty sure when I assert that none of them had a clue of where they would end. They just followed their vision.

Let's look closer at Bill Gates. His belief, right from the beginning, was that the computer would be a valuable tool on every office desktop and in every home at some point in the future. This prompted him to start developing software for those computers. He founded a company and after some years the big opportunity showed itself.

IBM wanted to develop the PC and they needed an operating system for it. Bill Gates was given the opportunity to sign a contract with IBM to provide this operating system, the interesting point is that his company did not have an operating system at the time and yet, he signed the contract.

He did not have an operating system, but he had a vision. He went ahead and bought an operating systems for $50,000 from another company and used it on the PC. The rest is history.

What about Jeff Bezos? Well, in 1994 when the commercial Internet was in diapers and no actual e-commerce to speak of existed, it came to his attention that the Internet was growing at a incredible 2300 percent a year. He saw an opportunity for a new sphere of commerce, and immediately began considering the possibilities.

What did he do? Methodically, he took a look at the top 20 direct marketing businesses, and asked himself a proactive question: What type of business would work better over the Internet than by traditional means? Of course, after asking the right question, he discovered the right answer: