As most of you know, pre-covid, I spent a great deal of time in other cities. I don’t remember where I was flying to but I recall a conversation that is a perfect example of being in the right place at the right time. A CEO of a produce company and a grocery store manager ended up sitting next to me on the plane. They had never met before. Eventually introductions were made and “grocery” talk commenced.
Toward the end of the conversation the grocery store manager spoke about a farmer she knew that had grown 100’s of acres of apples and because of some issues this farmer was left with 1000’s of pounds of apples. Long story short, this CEO made a verbal commitment to buy all the apples. How is that for being in the right place at the right time.
As I think about this conversation, it is possible the grocery store owner could have never brought up the farmer. Possible, yes, but in that case this would have been one of the five hundred conversations I had on an airplane. However, the conversation did happen.
You may ask, how does this happen? How do certain people get to be that lucky. I would like to be a bit more practical in answering this question and maybe try to not make luck such a huge part of how opportunity knocks. First off, what knowledge or skills does the opportunity need to have in order for something like the above example to happen. It seems to me that you would want to be in the right environment.
This may come across as sarcasm, however, a dumpster is not an place to wait for an an “ideal” or “legal” opportunity to happen. I think part of having a good opportunity come your way is consistently being in the right place. A good example of this would be a business owner being part of one or more business networking groups. Once you become a frequent attendee I would say your chances of an opportunity knocking could be good.
On another note, a great skill would be the ability to convey who you are and why you are at that particular networking event. I would think if you were consistent and clear in conveying your ask or your why that eventually could open an opportunity. I think if you sat down and really thought about it you could add on to the ideas I already mentioned.
I would invite you to take 20 minutes after reading this and jot down what knowledge, skills or experience you would need to have in order to increase the chances of you having opportunity knock on your door.
If you want to chat more about it, I offer a 37 minute free chat/consult. I would be happy to brainstorm or help you to come up with some ideas.