Years ago, my dad and I were driving across his farm in his vintage Land Rover, which looks almost exactly like the one John Wayne used in the movie “Hatari.”

The heavy-duty off-road tires were having a hard slog through the mud. Dad had cut across a recently plowed field rather than taking the long way back to the road. The tires made slow and steady progress — Dad’s old Rover is a tank — and after a few minutes and probably five gallons of gasoline, the nose of the vehicle bounced up and the tires bit into the country lane that circles the property.

Dad, clearly pleased with himself for conquering the field, didn’t take his foot off the gas. We were soon going nearly 70 miles per hour down a country road with grass in the middle of it. He looked over to me and grinned.

"That’s what happens, son," he said, "when the rubber meets the road!"

It became a sort of catchphrase between us. Whenever something really took off, one of us would say, "Well, looks like the rubber met the road," and we’d both remember the roar of the Rover as we shot down the road by the farm all those years ago.

I bring up this story because it is in my mind a lot these days.

Most of you know me as the chief strategist of Game-Changing Stocks. The entire focus of my advisory — and my investment philosophy — is to find those situations where the "rubber meets the road." I’m talking about those profitable instances where a company, technology or trend is really about to soar.

And while the goal sounds noble, my earnest intentions mean nothing if I don’t have a method to fit my aims. Of course, I do have a method. And the best news is that its main tenets aren’t difficult to put to work in your own portfolio.

First, research is the only way you’ll successfully find the next big thing. Most game changers are ignored by media outlets until they’re bigger trends. By then, the opportunity for the biggest profits has passed.

And believe me, I know whereof I speak. I was a business writer and editor for years at some of the Nation’s largest papers. By the time you read a story in The Wall Street Journal or Forbes or Barron’s, the smart money is already in and scoring profits.

Now, I have a pretty big advantage over most investors. Much to the benefit of my readers, it’s my job to research these ideas. Most people simply don’t have the time.

My office is filled with clippings, newspapers, Securities and Exchange Commission reports and magazines lying just about everywhere. (I read just about anything I can get my hands on.)

But research is only one part of the process. To profit the most from game-changing ideas, you also have to be an investor.

Now, we all consider ourselves investors — after all, we buy stocks, right? That’s not quite what I’m talking about.

When you hear about game changers, I’ll bet you think of stocks that rise dramatically nearly overnight. You buy in, hold for a few weeks or days and then sell after a quick run-up. But in my experience, real game changers see strong returns for months and years.

Look at shares of Apple (AAPL). It was just eight years ago when shares traded at $27. Now they’re at about $450. That’s a gain of better than 1,300 percent.

And if you look at the biggest winners in the market’s history, then it’s the exact same story.

Wal-Mart (WMT) didn’t grow to a national presence overnight. Its shares didn’t soar for just a few weeks either. Microsoft (MSFT) may have grown quickly, but even those with the foresight to buy shares in the 1980s wish like hell they had hung on to them.

Action to Take —> As long as the trend behind an investment is still moving positively, I want to be profiting from it. And I have no problem seeing profits build year after year after year.

P.S. — The abundance of natural gas in the United States could lead to a third industrial revolution. One analyst is predicting a stock could rise $1,566 percent. Another stock has already jumped more than 1,000 percent and is expected to keep going. To learn more about investing in the natural gas boom, click here.

— Andy Obermueller

This article was originally published on Feb. 1, 2013, at StreetAuthority.com.