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October is my favorite month of the year.

The leaves start turning incredible colors around my property.

And although this is the month when temperatures start to drop, it has not gotten to the point where you feel like you have to be trapped indoors.

As an added bonus October is the birth month of several people who are near and dear to my heart (topping that list is both my daughter and fiancee who  coincidentally share the same birthday).

But the thing that truly takes October over the top is Halloween.

I have been known in the past to have adorned some pretty outrageous costumes to work, some built from scratch such as my blue man group costume I built with PVC piping and blue face paint.

I also consider myself an aficionado of the various haunted woods and haunted house experiences that can really get your heart pumping as you go through them.

My daughter apparently shares the same affinity for these scream-inducing escapades and as such we try to hit at least one or two haunted venues during the month of October when they seem to pop up everywhere.

My daughter acts brave while waiting in line to buy tickets but invariably, when it is time to enter, it is I who ends up leading the group of 5 or 6 individuals through the twists and turns along the marked path.

As a veteran of these haunted activities, I have begun to pick up on a pattern that I may or may not share with my daughter.

Although being at the very front of the group and making your way down the darkened corridors is not without its own feelings of peril, I have noticed that most of the truly scary moments, whether it be from live actors or triggered mechanical props, tends to target the middle portion or stragglers in the group.

In fact in my latest adventure a few weeks ago, I decided to test this theory and confidently walk from one section of the maze to the next as the group leader.

By doing this I would often catch some of the actors trying to get into position for their scare tactics (which they subsequently unleashed on my daughter and the other people in our group).

Of course I was not completely immune and would occasionally get the brunt of the unleashed terror they had in store, much to the delight of my daughter.

But overall I would say that it was at least a 1:4 ratio of me getting nailed as the forerunner compared to the rest of the participants.

I could end with just this little tidbit for others to hopefully employ if they find themselves in a similar situation, but I take great pride in trying to turn a life experience into a financial lesson whenever possible.

[Take for instance the financial epiphany I had just from mowing the grass.]

My financial take.

I believe that fortune tends to favor the bold, the innovators, the individuals who pioneer a typical niche or space.

It is always advantageous to establish a brand that captures market share from being the first.

Companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi have become the beverage behemoths that they are because of establishing early dominance.

Competitors come and go and often fall by the wayside because the public has already established a long standing connection with these companies.

Sure there can be an amazing product developed later by a competitor in the same niche that can have success.

But it takes a much larger effort to make inroads and carve out some market share because of the late entry.

On a personal level, entering fairly late to the physician blogging arena in mid 2018, makes it near impossible for me to achieve the heights of those who have paved the way before me.

Who knows what might have happened by even getting a two year head start if I had just committed to blogging when I first thought of it rather than procrastinating as long as I did.

However I still abide by the philosophy that it is better to be late than never.

And even if you find yourself as the last person in your Halloween group (a position I think is far more frightening than being the first), I would choose that position any day rather than sitting on my couch at home.

Note:

If you are in search of financial help, please consider enlisting the service of any of the sponsors of this blog who I feel are part of the “good guys and gals of finance.”

Even a steadfast DIY’er can sometimes gain benefit from the occasional professional input.

-Xrayvsn