OPPORTUNITIES

I hope it’s not too late to wish you a Happy New Year! Well January felt like a year on its own, just ask salary earners. So Happy New Year! I know people have resolutions or big plans for the New Year. So what are your plans? What steps are you taking to actualize those plans? How feasible are your plans? These are questions you might have asked yourself by now. If you have; good! If you have the answers; better! And if you haven’t; well you can start.

Today i want to talk about something we all want, something we all hope for, and something I think we all need to get by. You must have heard people say “opportunity comes once in a lifetime, if you don't take it now you might never get another one.” IT’S A LIE! There are opportunities around us every day they just come disguised and then we miss them because we can't see what they really are. Sometimes they come disguised as hard work, a punishment, something boring or things beneath you or sometimes as things that interest you or even your hobbies.

But they are always there, every new day you wake up, every breath you take, there are countless opportunities around you YES! Even in Nigeria. It’s left for you to see what's around you as an opportunity and make the best of it. So opportunities will not always come smiling at you like a pretty girl and say Hi! I’m opportunity. Grab me! -Okay girls don’t really do that but you get the picture- An opportunity will not always present itself to you; you have to be able to see the opportunity around you and grab it.

There is a popular saying that while you are complaining about the traffic jam the guy selling gala and lacasera sees an opportunity to make money. We've even heard rumours in Lagos that some of these guys supposedly dig portholes on the road so cars can slow down or cause traffic around them. It's a rumour o! Don't quote me. Now I'm not saying you should do something illegal to create opportunities. But all I'm saying is just because everybody complains about it or they don't see the opportunity in it doesn't mean the opportunity is not there. It’s left for you to see the opportunities in the everyday situation around you and take advantage.

Still on the gala case for example, do you think gala will sell that much if it was just sold in shops rather than in traffic? No! And now we have at least four other types of sausage roll trying to compete with gala. They are obviously making money. There was actually a time they don’t sell gala in traffic. Someone saw the opportunity and now the rest is history.

At about 13 years old Bill Gates' school had a machine you could call a computer and he took a special interest in programming. In fact he spent most of his time on the system that he got excused from maths class. He wrote his first computer program on this system, a tic-tac-toe game. He wasn't the only kid in the school or the only one that had access to the machine but he had a special interest and he saw something other kids didn’t see. Simply put he was fascinated by the machine. He saw an opportunity and he grabbed it.

There is this story about how Bill Gates and 3 other friends were banned from a ‘computer center’ for the summer because they exploited bugs in the operating system to get free computer time. -Trust me I can relate, I went to a café with my friend and the attendant didn't even allow us enter because my friend once hacked their timer- After their ban, Gates and his friends came back to offer their services by helping the center find bugs in their software in exchange for computer time and Gates spent his time studying source codes for various programs. Trust me this guy is smart and he didn't magically become a billionaire. He had it coming. He knew how to take his opportunities. Today you know who Mr. Bill Gates is but he was not born a billionaire.

So start doing something, dream big; its allowed and recognize the opportunities around you. Until next time I leave you with the words of Henry Miller “The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”