Opportunity: a possibility due to a favorable combination of circumstances. If opportunity were to knock on your door would you answer? Most would answer, “Yes” to that question. But when you ask those same people, “What is an opportunity? What does an opportunity for you look like?” Their demeanor will change to becoming perplexed because they do not know the answer. It is a similar quandary to asking someone what they want in life. Most will have a quick answer like, “I want to be rich.” Ok, define rich. What is rich to you? The perplexed look will once again cover their face. Why? They never defined rich. How can you know you have achieved it if you have not defined it? Back to opportunity, how will you know what an opportunity is unless you have defined it? You cannot define it, for your circumstance, unless you know where you are and where you are going.

Opportunities are never missed, they only pass onto someone else. If you are unprepared, opportunity will knock and you will not answer because you will not know it is an opportunity. That may sound strange. But the statement is true none the less. Using a simplistic analogy, if a person wanted to be a carpenter and someone offered to sell him a brand new 22 ounce framing hammer for $10 – would they know it is a good deal? If they are unprepared, they would not know that brand new framing hammers are at least $25. They may not recognize that they have an opportunity in front of them. Similarly, many entrepreneurs are faced with great opportunities and never recognize them. You hear about entrepreneurs being offered or finding a great opportunity and becoming monetarily wealthy. They knew how to recognize the opportunity when it presented itself.

So, how do you recognize an opportunity? Be informed and be prepared. You have to stay educated about your industry to take advantage of industry specific opportunities. You need to have an informed professional team that will contact you when your entity can take advantage of an opportunity that they became aware of that is specific to their industry: accountants with new tax breaks, attorneys with beneficial legislation, etc. You must also be prepared. In order to make preparations, you must know where you are and where you want to go. Spend some time evaluating where you are in the stage of your business. What do you already have? In addition, spend some time evaluating and planning where you want to go. What do you need? Simply figuring out what you have and what you need will be a great start on finding out where you are and where you want to be. Take note, when I say “What do you already have? And what do you need?” I am not referring solely to your physical possessions. I am referring to processes, team members, etc.

Be prepared and stay informed so when opportunity knocks, you will be able to answer. The more informed and prepared you are, the less time you have to wait for opportunity to happen upon you. You will be able to start effecting change that leads to your own creation of situations that lead to opportunities. If you have difficulty defining where you are, what do you already have, where do you want to be, and what you need to get there, contact me.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 8:41 pm and is filed under Entrepreneurship, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.