lightning strike | David M Masters

Turn Windfalls into Lasting Prosperity with Lightning Effect

Every so often, someone is struck by an unexpected windfall—a sudden surge of financial opportunity that seems like a dream come true. Whether it’s an inheritance, winning the lottery, a business breakthrough, or simply being in the right place at the right time, these moments of fortune feel like being struck by lightning.

Yet, as history has shown time and time again, many of these individuals find themselves right back where they started within a few short years. Some lose everything in less than three years; others manage to stretch it out a bit longer. But few continue to prosper and grow beyond that initial stroke of luck.

Why?

Because they were unprepared for the lightning strike.

Yes, there are always exceptions—those who make wise choices and transform their good fortune into generational wealth. But for the majority, the windfall becomes nothing more than a fleeting moment of excitement, a memory of their “fifteen minutes of fame” before they return to their previous financial standing.

But what if it didn’t have to be that way?

What if you could not only be prepared for your moment of fortune but also harness the energy of that storm, ride it hard, and maximize its potential? What if you could turn a single moment of success into a lifetime of prosperity, building a legacy that outlives you and benefits future generations?

When people suddenly come into money, they often experience an emotional high. They feel invincible. They believe that their fortune will last forever or that they have all the time in the world to figure out what to do with it. In the excitement of newfound wealth, they:

- Spend lavishly without a plan.
- Make impulsive, high-risk investments.
- Give too much away without considering sustainability.
- Trust the wrong advisors or manage everything alone.
- Neglect personal growth, financial education, or future planning.

It’s a dangerous illusion. Money, when not properly managed, disappears faster than most people expect. And once it’s gone, the hard lesson sets in: money itself does not create security—alignment, knowledge, and strategy do.

This is where my work comes in. I help my clieexpertnts prepare for their moment of fortune before it happens—or, if they’ve already received their windfall, I help them harness it effectively.

Success, like wealth, isn’t just about luck. It’s about preparation and execution. If you are truly ready when fortune strikes, you won’t just experience a fleeting moment of success—you will turn that moment into a powerful, lasting transformation.

Here’s how:

1. Find Your Life Purpose

Money without purpose is like a ship without a rudder. Before you ever receive a financial windfall, you need to define your mission. What do you want to achieve? What impact do you want to make? How can you use money to fuel that vision rather than simply spend it?

1. Align Your Projects, Purpose, and Energy for Maximum Flow

Success isn’t just about effort—it’s about alignment. When your projects, finances, and decisions are in harmony with your deepest values and personal truth, everything flows more easily. Instead of exhausting yourself by forcing things to happen, you create a resonance that attracts the right opportunities, people, and results.

Alignment creates efficiency. When you focus on projects that are in sync with your:

- - - Core beliefs – ensuring your wealth is used in ways that feel meaningful.
    - Personal values – directing your energy toward what truly matters to you.
    - Life purpose – ensuring that every investment, business venture, and financial decision supports your long-term mission.
    - Natural talents and passions – working with your strengths instead of against them.

When all of these are in alignment, less effort is required, yet greater results unfold. You’re not just chasing success; you’re attracting it because your work, your resources, and your purpose are vibrating at the same frequency.

1. Establish Yourself as the Expert in Your Field

Long-term prosperity isn’t just about having money—it’s about being valuable. If you position yourself as a leader in your field, your opportunities will multiply, and you’ll continue generating wealth beyond your initial windfall.

By leveraging your expertise and aligning your public image with your core purpose, you create sustainable influence and financial security.

1. Maximize Your Prosperity for Future Generations

True financial success extends beyond personal wealth—it builds a lasting legacy. That means:

- - - Setting up structures that protect assets and allow your wealth to grow.
    - Creating businesses or investment vehicles that generate long-term income.
    - Ensuring that your financial decisions reflect the energy of abundance, not scarcity.
    - Mentoring others, including your family, to sustain and grow the wealth.

The Cost of Not Being Ready

I’ve met many people who had the chance to work with me before their moment of fortune arrived. In the moment, they felt confident they didn’t need my guidance. They sought advice elsewhere or, worse, assumed they could manage on their own.

Three years later?

You already know what happened.

Some managed to stretch their fortune a bit longer, but eventually, the money was gone. They had fun while it lasted, and many don’t fully regret their choices—but if given another chance, they would have done things differently.

Most people don’t get a second lightning strike. When fortune arrives, you need to be ready to seize it, control it, and transform it into something greater.

The best time to prepare for success is before it happens. The second-best time is right now.

If you’ve already experienced a financial windfall, you still have the opportunity to redirect your course and build something lasting. But if you’re waiting for your moment to arrive, don’t wait passively—prepare actively.

Seek guidance. Align your projects with your purpose. Operate in flow rather than force.

Because when lightning strikes, the only question is: will you harness its power, or will you let it fade into a distant memory?

Choose wisely. Your legacy depends on it.

I Was There It Could Have Happened but I Blew It

If this has happened to you, you know how it feels to have been so close that you could taste it, then look back at that rarest of moments, when everything could have lined up perfectly and your life could have been propelled into an entirely new more prosperous direction and you’re left uttering those words, “I was there! It could have happened, but I blew It.” regrettably.

These rare moments are what I refer to as “lightning strike” moments, and if you are ready at the moment of that strike of lightning, you can benefit greatly. Lighting, as rare as it is, can be capitalized upon if you are ready, and it has been going on for years, from the ancient healers who would watch a pond of water atop a hill, waiting for lightning to strike, so he or she could retrieve healing lightning water to be used as an antibiotic for the tribe, to the mid-1700s when Benjamin Franklin conducted his famous kite-and-key experiment that led to the invention of the Tesla coil, an electrical resonant transformer circuit, by inventor Nikola Tesla in the pre-1900s, and countless other developments by which many have profited wildly.

I believe that this could happen to you, not to be hit by physical lightning but to be visited by that moment that comes without warning and by which you will be likely unprepared to profit from that particular moment in time. If you are not ready, the moment will slip by, unnoticed by your friends, family, or others, who may only hear of it by your telling of the moment that you could have made it had you only known or been better prepared.

Lightning Doesn’t Strike Twice?

I have many clients who were visited by such a moment and want to be ready if it ever happens again. Oh, you say, you could never be hit by lightning twice. Right? Say that to Roy Sullivan who was hit by lightning 7 times and lived through each strike. Say that to Deborah Brown who won a single lottery 30 times in one day. Or Richard Lustig, who won seven lotteries between 1993 and 2010, and continued to cash in on those concurrent lightning strikes by writing his book, Learn How to Increase Your Chances of Winning the Lottery. I know two people who have won the lottery twice.

A Moment on TV

Bobak Ferdowsi, AKA The Mohawk Guy — The Mowhawk Guy

You just never know when or where it’s going to strike. Like the guy who was working for NASA in the summer of 2012, who accidentally was caught by cameras during the Curiosity landing, sporting a mohawk haircut with stars carved into the sides. That was it. Next thing you know Bobak Ferdowsi, AKA “The Mohawk Guy” is pals with the President and First Lady, featured in national historical events, becomes a TV show and movie actor, and a spokesperson for the youth of the world to take an interest in math, science, and space technology.

Not unlike my being a “witness to a burning building” example, a young man, Antoine Dodson, is featured in a newscast following the breaking and entering and attempted rape of his sister which Dodson interrupted as the assailant fled the scene. His statement to the camera was all that it took.

The Gregory Brothers captured the vocal track and featured it in, “The Bed Intruder Song” and they split the writing credits and royalties with Dodson. Dodson parlayed his earnings into online retailing, created phone apps including a sex offender tracker, is featured in commercial advertisements, and a reality show. Kevin Antoine Dodson, the American Internet celebrity, singer, and actor has moved his family from “the projects” in Huntsville to LA.

A Post Goes Viral

Then there is the foodie columnist who writes a review about Olive Garden in 2012 that goes viral. Later, on August 27, 2013, Marilyn Hagerty releases her book, Grand Forks: A history of American dining in 128 reviews, a no-brainer, method to follow up on the media sensation, as it was only a reprint of her original reviews, but she was ready. There are so many countless examples of someone putting something out there, with no intention of it going viral, but it does.

Be Ready

And that, my friend, is the point, the readiness. Be ready for when that lightning strike happens. And that is exactly what I do with my clients, to ready them in such a way, that benefitting massively from the lightning strike is a part of the plan. So, you never have to worry about thinking, “I was there! It could have happened, but I blew It.”

Oh, and get this, my plan is so good that you don’t even need the lightning strike to make it work.

Your Great Idea

You wake up at three o’clock in the morning with an innovative, most amazing idea. You ask yourself, “Why didn’t I think of that before?” There’s nothing like it available on planet Earth, and this one thing would make life so much easier and the world a better place. You have received a gift from the universe, and go back to sleep.

In a universe where anything is possible, it was assumed you were the right person, in the right place at the right time, to receive this fantastic gift. What will you do about it?

After you get up in the morning, the idea seems just as good as it did in the middle of the night, and you think, “This really would be a great improvement in the world.”

Later that day, you tell the idea to a friend, who enthusiastically reinforces what a great idea you have. The friend says he/she wants to buy one when it becomes available. even knows someone who might be willing to invest in your idea, if you pursue it and congratulates you on potentially being the next millionaire.

This could be it, your golden ticket. After work, you meet up with a trusted friend and tell him/her about your idea. In this instance, you are cautioned that your idea is so good that you should never mention it again because if anyone ever heard about it – they would do it without you – and you’d end up with nothing.

You are asked, “Do you have a patent?” A patent attorney will run about $5,000 to get started… Is it worth $5K to pay, so that you can talk to someone about your idea without fearing losing it? Do you have the money to defend your patent if someone steals your idea?

Days go by, and you want to talk to someone about your idea, but you fear someone else will take it and run with it, leaving you with an empty bag. All the while, you feel that this may be the next best thing the world is waiting for.

You start to question your worthiness. Why did you get the idea in the first place? You’re not qualified, don’t have the skill set, and don’t have the equipment, raw materials, or financing needed to make it happen. You don’t know how to do it, have never done it before, can’t do it by yourself, don’t know the people who can help make it happen, and couldn’t afford to hire them if you did.

Wait, you remind yourself about a story you heard about. This person had a great idea—just a regular person, like you and me—who didn’t give up. They shared their idea with a key person who took the idea and ran with it, paying the person who had the idea millions and millions of dollars for sharing it with them.

That’s it! You think, if I could just get my idea in front of the right person, then I could bless the world with my idea and make a fortune: If I could just get on Shark Tank. You’ve heard about the show but never really watched it. So, you set out to watch a few episodes to get the address to submit your idea.

After watching Shark Tank, you realize you’re not prepared enough even to consider pitching your idea to anyone yet. Now, you’re even more confused.

You find yourself thinking about it too much and unable to do anything about it. You’ve found yourself in a state of paralysis of analysis. You are so focused on the process, the obstacles, and second-guessing yourself that you’re unable to make decisions or take action.

Finally, you’re just too exhausted from the whole ordeal. You lock away the idea and wait for someone to magically appear and offer you millions of dollars for your idea; otherwise, it is a faded memory.

Until the moment when you see your idea is now available via TV, the Internet or seeing it for sale in the store.

“Aargh!” You slap your forehead and say, “That was MY idea!”

How does it really work?

The universe longs for us to have the best life possible, so it selects someone to receive ideas that will benefit mankind and could likewise have huge monetary rewards rewarding the recipient for sharing the gift with the world.

When you are blessed with such a gift, the idea is like precognition in that you have received a glimpse of something the world needs and will have in the future.

After sharing the gift with you, the universe taps its foot and watches to see what you will do with it. If you do nothing and bury it, the idea will be given to someone else… and the process continues until someone takes the action to release it to the world.

You might consider readying yourself for the next lightning strike.

When Lightning Strikes, Will You Be Ready?

Lightning strikes the earth 100 times every second. Potential moments of mass impact strike our lives in the same way; like lightning, we never know when or where they will strike.

Will you be ready when lightning strikes?

I have been coaching about lightning preparedness ~~since (edited)~~ for a long time. Not the electrical discharges from above so much as the sudden impact of life-changing opportunity that we, as planetary participants, are infrequently but abruptly struck by without notice.

These lightning strikes come in two varieties: tragedy and potential good fortune. Both have struck my life; I’ll bet yours has, too. And chances are we will be struck again. Will we be ready?

Andy Warhol was not far off by asserting that everyone would have their 15 minutes of fame, which is precisely what happens when one is struck by the media lightning strike.

In terms of good fortune, if you desire to use the lightning strike to your advantage, you must be prepared to jump and bounce the exposure to a higher level, thereby increasing the sudden impact. This enables you to convert the strike into a wave that can be ridden for a longer duration.

If you have your ducks in a row (or stacked correctly) when lightning strikes… you will have your duck feathers everywhere!

(Oh, that was bad, Masters: Bad Masters!)

Whatever your ducks represent, they are different for every person.

I work with a lot of authors, so let’s use them as an example. At the very least, an author – or potential author – must have a written book proposal for their latest book idea(s). It is not enough to have it all in your head; you must have your book proposal in written (printed and electronic) form and be able to access it within minutes (if not seconds).

So, when lightning strikes…

BREAKING NEWS

“I’m Rikki Number with KNOW News, live on the scene where the Space Needle was struck by lightning and has collapsed into its footprint…”

The reporter, with book proposal in hand continues, “Author, Jane Dough, whose upcoming book ‘My Last Romance in Seattle’ is soon to be released, witnessed the tragedy. Miss Dough, please tell us what you saw…”

“Well, I was on my way to meet with the artist who is working on the cover art for my latest book and I saw this bright flash of light that lit up the whole sky, and the earth shook, like a bomb went off…”

No one can know when or where lightning will strike, but if you are always in a state of preparedness, you can bounce the impact of the briefest moment to your benefit.

Without the book proposal in hand, Jane Dough would have just been another generic passerby. Being an author increases her credibility in front of the news cameras, and because she was my client, she already had her name-dot-com (Masters’ Branding 101) heated up and ready for the impact (potentially crashing the server from all the instantaneous heavy traffic).

This little piece of prose fiction is just to inspire your imagination. You know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it happens every day – especially if you watch the news with any regularity – and this is just one idea.

You can probably think of examples (likely not as exaggerated as my example) that have happened to you or someone you know.

These kinds of lightning strikes happen far more often than the electrical discharges from our atmosphere.

Ask yourself: Am I Ready?

If not, it would be best to begin preparation today. Isn’t NOW the best time to get ‘er done? Do it now.