Opportunities

For me, opportunities are like biometric lockers. That’s may sound strange but I’ll explain why.

First of all, the definition of opportunity is: A set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something. And that’s when things start to connect. I see clear similarities between biometric lockers and opportunities: both lead you to something—a locker lead you to another room or environment and an opportunity lead you to a change, an improvement. Another aspect is that on both cases you, and only you can make it happen. Only your hand can open the door, only you can clear the way to go to another environment and with opportunities only you can seize it, only you can take the chance offered to you and make something great. To prove that I’ll show you a business example of the impact of an opportunity.

Former Blockbuster workers all over the world must cringe every time they hear the words "online streaming" and "on-demand." That's because back in 2000, Reed Hastings approached former Blockbuster CEO John Antioco and asked for $50 million to give away the company he founded—Netflix.

It was really a great time going to Blockbuster, having some candies, grabbing some movies but the company was completely destroyed by the convince provided by Netflix. On another aspect delivery apps fulfilled the “gastronomic” field of watching movies.

The opportunity to watch thousands of movies from your sofa while paying one membership is much better than the effort of going to a physical store and having to pay for each rental.

In this case Blockbuster didn’t shown not only a lack of flexibility not creating a online platform but mainly they didn’t seized the opportunity to buy a potential competitor, which left Blockbuster with only one store.

This shows the importance of business flexibility and adaptation to new markets and trends. But the more important, make clear one of the main characteristics of a good entrepreneur/manager: VISION, to identify and work on an opportunity.

Not only businesspeople, but everyone needs vision and the energy to turn opportunities into reality. Opportunities appear many times on our day. Some opportunities are not so clear like the opportunity of waking up earlier and having a good and healthy breakfast to start your day. The opportunity to change that hour that you spend in front of the television into a hour of exercise. The opportunity to be kind with people and be happier by seeing how you make their life better and how they can help you. Opportunities also show up in bigger forms like a job promotion, or maybe a course to show you how to invest on the stock market and multiple your money. Even a bad situation can turn into an opportunity. The end of a relationship can means the opportunity of go to new places, to do new things, to maybe find the real love of your life.

A fundamental aspect on opportunity is the “butterfly effect.” Briefly explaining, the butterfly effect is how a small choice that you make can have a great impact in your future. The examples like increase your happiness due to an improvement of health, maybe an internship due to a recommendation from your professor to a friend, who has a large company, because you did more than the expected in your projects during his class. What that means is, even though the environment that you live may restrict the amount of opportunity that you may be offered, the courageous and proactive personality of seizing opportunities make new opportunities come to you. It’s like a cycle. You commit yourself to accept new challenges and opportunities, then you really prove that showing up and making these opportunities reality, so new opportunities appear in consequence to your positive action when facing past opportunities which make you more committed to seizing new opportunities and so on.

Remember, we are all blessed with opportunities and hard work. It’s up to you to step up and show the world what is your potential. Start today, start right now, commit to little things and then bigger things will come to you, and you are going to be ready, because you have prepared for that, you trained your mind and body to seize every single chance that you have to make your life and other people life’s better. Benjamin Disraeli once said: “The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes.”