How to identify opportunities in life

In this article we will learn the following

-6 mindset-beliefs - we need to have - to be able to recognize opportunities - whenever they arise

-34 tips on How to convert an adverse-situation or any-situation into opportunities business-wise and How to identify opportunities in life

-3 cases of Apple-Google-Yahoo - illustrating - people who missed remarkable opportunities [taken from internet]

-6 Rag-to-Riches stories [taken from internet]

How to identify opportunities in life

Want to conquer your life and be a winner and champion - then dare to hunt for opportunities - or you would become a pedestrian and see your life pass you by without feeling joyous.

Opportunities never comes knocking loudly and keeps banging our heads till we recognize that it is an opportunity.

Most of the time – opportunities will rarely look like an opportunity.

Opportunities will only become visible – if we take action at the right time - and follow the basics laws of success.

This famous saying is very-true - "opportunities comes to those who dare to attack.

Those who wait - they too get the opportunities – but only the ones which are left over by those who attack".

In fact creating opportunities out of thin air – is not a merely a proverb – but a philosophy to imbibe as your mindset.

We need to constantly look-out, experiment and try-out - whichever things makes you feel excited - testing and validating our hunches.

If you look around for the success stories – you will can find millions of business success-stories just by type the word success-stories.

But we need to search for - the stories of individual-triumphs where people overcame their debilitating scary-odds and hardships by digging-deeper and get the complete-true-real background of how they did it.

All of us have similar opportunities available - for creating major improvements - in all aspects of life - be it our relationship, wealth, health, personal & professional triumph, business, promotion, growth, parenting, developing self, utilizing our potential etc.

Many of you may realize in hindsight that too - much later- which opportunities you did miss in your past.

I remember an advertisement from the time I was in class 10^th – which has created lasting impressions on me.

In this advt. - they show a boy in 10^th standard saying that "I am enjoying life" then again they show him in class 12^th & he says "I am having good time" - then it proceeds through various stages of his life - till reaching his state of being jobless at 29 years of age & he says "I am watching my friends [who put lots of efforts in their studies while this boy was enjoying life] having good-time"

Can you see the opportunity that boy missed by not taking the right action in the past - at least studying when he was in school and college.

At his current age of 29 years – if he is very dissatisfied with his current life BUT determined to make his life better – then this too could be an opportunity - to still make it larger and bigger– if he starts taking the right actions.

This is the time of VUCA - volatile, uncertain, complex & ambiguous AND blink-of-eye technological-professional-business changes and disruptions.

That is why - as per the law of phenomenal success – today in this global environment also have immense potential and opportunities for those who have big dreams or those who are not satisfied with status-quo and want to make their life better.

Because of this we have in this today's world - 25 years old running companies successfully as CEOs - 15 years olds becoming millionaire-business-persons – who employ many people with fantastic education & experience - much higher that these youngsters.

They simply had a thought - but they did not let that thought and its initial energy evaporate - instead they went all out and experimented - then tested and kept their efforts till they made it big.

You too can do this - if you want to.

6 mindset-beliefs - we need to have - to be able to recognize opportunities - whenever they arise

• 1.Whenever you are stuck – it is an opportunity - to explore if finding solutions for this problem can help others too
• 2.Whenever you fail - it is an opportunity - to correct the mistake and maybe rebuild something bigger
• 3.When you are dis-satisfied with your life or feel tied-up or feeling void in any part of your life - it is an opportunity
• 4.When you feel something significant is missing in your life - but don't know what - exploring this could create an opportunity
• 5.When you are feeling restless doing the same job very-well unconsciously - then it is a call for going for next higher-levels
• 6.Look at your frustrations-irritations-shames-guilt-anger - identify causes which creates these emotions

34 tips on How to convert an adverse-situation or any-situation into opportunities business-wise

• 1.Find out besides you how many people are facing similar situation and are finding it difficult to continue and want to change – the bigger the mass that will get benefit from an effective solution - the better
• 2.Talk to the actual user – get their feedback - on anything that you are working on or working with
• 3.Identify-brainstorm-think of - all the unconventional ways this can be solved – focus on how it will make life easier for people
• 4.Try the solution on yourself first – if it is a product or service - then as a consumer
• 5.Now make as many people try what has worked for you - note down and gauge the impact as well as their feedback
• 6.Keep improving your value-addition offerings - till they feel awed by the positive difference it has created in their life
• 7.Identify and choose - the simplest business model that can make you serve your consumers most effectively– [e.g. Google, WhatsApp free business-model]
• 8.Create a robust revenue-model
• 9.Consolidate and upscale your business - by slowly expanding
• 10. You will also need to the following qualities and characteristics – to identify, recognize & utilize the opportunities
• 11. You have to keep Yourself constantly aware of shifting trends -changing needs of yourself - your family - your society - your country, the changing global as well as local business-scenario etc.
• 12. You also have to learn to recognize that with each new trends and technological and other transformative changes – the humans are becoming slave to laziness, comfort, outsourcing, getting multiple things done at snap - THIS IS AN HUGE OPPORTUNITY.
• 13. You have start listening to the signals which are weak but are have not yet become the noise - that is you have to be able to see a change happening - even if it is in totally different field that yours
• 14. Needless to say you have to have ambitions - larger than life
• 15. Become a visionary and change-creator
• 16. Before saying NO to any offer – explore whether it is an opportunity - please step back – if everyone says it is an opportunity – it cannot be an opportunity if the masses sees it - remember that most of the ideas bubble burst
• 17. You have to look for opportunities proactively – by making your mind to ask always – what can I do differently to get better result
• 18. Innovate innovate innovate – you have to really put your creativity enhancement on war footing
• 19. Be goal focused
• 20. Firing self-motivation
• 21. Creating habits & mind-set of bouncing back, resilience
• 22. Develop perseverance & habit of not giving up
• 23. Working hard
• 24. Taking calculated risk
• 25. Be not afraid to make mistakes -to quote Michael Dell - "recognize that there will be failures, and acknowledge that there will be obstacles. But you will learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of others, for there is very little learning in success."
• 26. Challenging yourself to become better & better everyday
• 27. Identify and have few role models - identify the qualities that you like in them and practice imbibing them in yourself
• 28. Again like role-models enroll coaches and mentors who are expert in their areas
• 29. Create and maintain good relationship with your support group
• 30. Make your life simple - focus on basics of happiness-success-relationship-growth
• 31. Create a disciplined regimen of learning and upgrading
• 32. Ditch-mediocrity, let-go of perfectionism - focus only on excellence
• 33. Have a team which is smarter - better qualified - more knowledgeable - have wider experience than you
• 34. Create passion for making positive meaningful difference and helping others grow

3 cases of Apple-Google-Yahoo - illustrating - people who missed remarkable opportunities - I have taken this information from internet

1. The apple story

• I.Nolan Bushnell – he founded Atari & he turned down the opportunity of investing $50,000 seed money in apple which could have given him 1/3^rd share of around $ 150 billions
• II.Ronald Wayne, apple's third co-founder, sold his 10% stake in apple for $800 two weeks after launch. He later got $1,500 for renouncing all claims to ownership. If he had kept it, it would be worth about $40 billion today.
• III.Steve Wozniak worked for Hewlett-Packard designing engineering calculators. In his spare time, he created a pc that would later become the apple 1 computer. Five times - Woz begged the executives at HP to manufacture his PC. They said no - then he left HP to start a company called apple with his buddy Steve Jobs.

2. Facebook story

• I.Mark Zuckerberg's college roommate - Joe Green, turned down an offer to help Zuckerberg start Facebook
• II.When they were at Harvard - they created a website called Facemash - which landed these two in trouble with the university officials.
• III.When Zuckerberg asked green to help him with Facebook- Green's dad discouraged his son from doing another project with Zuckerberg.
• IV.Facebook got its start in Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room - And it might have remained in the Boston area - if battery-ventures - a venture-capital firm based there - hadn't walked away from negotiations with Zuckerberg back in 2004.
• V.Stuart Ellman, co-founder and managing partner at New York venture firm RRE ventures, could have been the guy that gave seed money to Facebook back when Mark Zuckerberg was still working from his Harvard dorm room - but he did not

3. Google story

• I.David Cowan missed his chance to seed google - Cowan's college friend Susan Wojcicki - had rented her garage to Sergey Brin and Larry Page as the first office for google- Susan tried to get Cowan to meet Sergey Brin and Larry Page - instead Cowan avoided the garage and these two.
• II.VC James Altucher didn't back google because it was 'too small an opportunity
• III.The yahoo story - Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang infamously turned down a $31-a-share, $44.6 billion offer from Microsoft in 2009 - few years later it was sold for a fraction of what he could have got with this offer
• IV.There are many such stories – of Blackberry, Kodak, Indian Ambassador and Fiat cars, Nokia etc. - who kind of vanished after becoming an icon globally – simply because they either did not recognized the opportunities for change or were arrogant that nothing can displace them

6 Rag-to-Riches stories [taken from internet]

• 1.Pierre Omidyar - a computer programmer started auctioning off stuff on his personal website. Auctionweb - as it was then known in 1995 - it was actually a personal project, but, when the amount of web-traffic made it necessary to upgrade to a business internet account - Omidyar started charging people for transactions - then he hired his first employee to handle all the payment checks -The site is now known as ebay.
• 2.Howard Schultz- a trip to Milan gave this young marketer working for a Seattle coffee bean roaster an idea for upscale espresso cafes like they have all over Italy - His employer had no interest in owning coffee shops but agreed to finance Schultz's endeavor -They even sold him their brand name - Starbucks.
• 3.Konosuke Matsushita way.in Japan in 1917, a 23-year-old apprentice at the Osaka electric light company with no formal education came up with an improved light socket. His boss wasn't interested so young Matsushita started making samples in his basement. He later expanded with battery-powered bicycle lamps and other electronic products. Matsushita electric, as it was known until 2008 when the company officially changed its name to Panasonic, is now worth $66 billion.
• 4.I realized there had not been a sole female Founder-CEO of a multibillion-dollar technology company - I didn't believe it. I still don't believe it said Elizabeth Holmes – founder of Theranos wellness centers worth around $4.5 billion dollar – first young self-made billionaire
• 5.Oprah Winfrey is the richest African American of the 21st century, and with a net worth of over $3 billion, she is regarded as arguably the most influential woman in the world – this from being teased at school because she used to wear dresses made from potato sacks.
• 6.J.K. Rowling -today J.K. Rowling is a household name today for fans of the beloved Harry-Potter book series - J.K Rowling was at her rope's end before her misfit gang of witches and wizards saved her. Before her bestseller cast a spell on readers - J.K. Rowling was living on welfare and struggling to get by as a single mother.