“THE RECIPE – OWNING THE FUTURE”
From “www.bizwave.co.za”
“I started with a bank overdraft, literally with no job and had to create my own future. No one else wanted to do it for me! In the process, I created a number of businesses, sold most of them with handsome profits, lost a bit of money on one and even “killed” a good one deliberately (Yes, I really did. Morally it was the right thing to do). Today I am the CEO of Bizwave (Pty) Ltd, a company started with multi million Rand start-up capital, living my dream and also, most importantly, owning my own future. “ – Gert M Bosman 2008
“The new millennium will not belong to the conglomerates or global institutions alone. It will belong to entrepreneurs - individuals who have the courage to dream and develop compelling visions - individuals who can see opportunity and match it to an idea - who can ultimately turn their dreams into reality.” – Janssen Davies (CEO, SAGE life)
When I first read the above paragraph, I froze, literally. I did not move. I don’t think I could move. Something struck me - and I did not even know what. I just sat there... my mind in a frozen state. For how long I don’t remember. It might have been a few minutes, a few seconds. I don’t know. Then slowly a little heat started creeping in and my mind thawed. The paragraph, is how Janssen Davies, the then CEO of SAGE Life, used to open his article on a need for an entrepreneurial revolution. Yes, it is a great paragraph, but really, it is not that great, or is it? Something compelled me to read it, read it again and again. I sat there and read the paragraph more than twenty times, and since then, perhaps more than hundred times – each time slowly – and it has not lost its magic for me. One paragraph, a new future. He tried to tell me something, but I was not sure what. I’m a bit of a slow thinker and it took me a while – and then I got it!
Janssen Davies gave me the recipe to own my own future – in one single paragraph. He wrote it for me. I knew I was the person he wrote it for. At least that was how it felt at the time. A simple recipe, one that I understood. He gave me the recipe to own my own future in a few simple steps.
That was quite a while ago!
Over the last few years, “the recipe” really worked overtime for me! I refined and expanded it to reflect my own experiences and the results of quite a bit of research I performed. Today, I know that everyone has the ability to spot opportunities almost “on demand” and turn the best ones into reality....to create, build and own your own future.
Some people will tell you that opportunities are all around us. Some will tell you that there is an opportunity in every crisis. Some will even tell you that they find it difficult to attend to all the opportunities they see. Some even blame opportunities for distracting them from their current actvities, chasing after so many that they hardly catch any. If there really are so many opportunities around us, why is it that we have such a high unemployment rate, why so little entrepreneurial drive and initiatives, why don’t we hear about all these opportunities?
I would like you to verify a point for yourself. Get a pen and paper, (or open your word processing program on your PC) right now. Note the date and time on the paper. Then read the next paragraph and do what it asks you to do after you’ve read the complete paragraph.
When you get to the end of this paragraph, give yourself about five minutes and look around you. Jot down two or three keywords for every business opportunity that you see around you. Don’t worry about the feasibillity, the size or even if you would like to persue the opportunity. However , it should be at least an opportunity that you believe someone might be interested in persuing within the next few months or so. After the 5 minutes, also jot down two or so keywords describing your emotions or feelings. You may start now.
Let us look at the two possible outcomes of this “see the opportunities” exercise. The first might be that you experienced frustration, irritation, helplessness or dissappointment and even consider the exercise as a “painful” experience. Apart from that, you might not even have identified many business opportunities. Perhaps even none. Well, if this first case applies to you, I have good news and bad news for you. First the good news: You experienced the exercise no different than the majority of people in South Africa would. You are definately part of the majority. Most of us have difficulty in identifying business opportunities, especially when we’re caught off-guard, as when in a crisis. Most of us think about the situation or the crisis and who should be to blame, rather than seeing the opportunities flowing from that. We tend to think about who should have prevented the situation, rather than actually doing something about the situation. Sometimes we even play the “silent democracy” card, when we are required to do something, but we actually have absolutely no idea how to do it.
This really was the good news. Now the bad news. To own your future, you have to be able to see business opportunities whenever you want to see them. It is as simple as that. Without seeing opportunities you cannot own your own future. To see an opportunity, or even many opportunities, is a crucial ability you just have to acquire.
Without seeing opportunities, someone else might very well see you as an opportunity and start exploiting you! They might realise that you are not in control of your own future, and available for exploitation. So, if you think you are exploited, it most probably is because you allowed it to happen, because you did not see, or act on, any opportunities to escape from your exploitation. Now, without going into the ethical side of this, and staying within a hard and practical environment, this will happen to you, and most probably has happened to you somewhere, sometime, even perhaps right now. To escape exploitation, you have to own your own future, and identify opportunities to do so. Luckily, all better employers realise that people are getting “opportunity savvy” and would not allow themselves to be exploited to the point where it is detrimental to themselves. These employers creates oportunities not only for themselves, but also allow their employees to benefit, becasue they are working on the same dream, and all should benefit from that.
I deliberatly painted a dark picture if you found it hard to have identified opportunities. Remember the previous chapter? Have courage to dream. Courage. If you percieve danger or risk, it’s good. It allows you to build confidence in yourself and demonstrate courage: To do something in the face of risk in order to achieve your objectives. You should now have the courage to dream. To think of yourself as a master opportunity spotter. To spot opportunities whenever you want to spot them. Because you can, and I’ll show you how in a little while.
I assure you that you will start seeing the an incredible number of opportunities around you. You will start seeing the opportunities in every crisis. And yes, you most probably will end up with so many opportunities that you really will have to prioritise them.... and yes, once you start seeing them, they definately might distract you from your current actvities.
That was the first possible outcome of the “see the opportunities” exercise. On the other hand, if you experienced the exercise as exciting, challenging, and a “felt alive” exercise and you ended up with so many business opportunities that it actually took you more than five minutes to jot down, there are also good and bad news for you. The good news: It is excellent that you experienced the thrill of “seeing” opportunities and identified so many opportunities. That definately puts you ahead of most people in South Africa to own your future. You already acquired the skill to identify opportunities when you want to identify them. That’s magnifcent. After the bad news, you definately may skip the rest of this chapter, as you most probably do not need it. You already acquired the skill.
But now the bad news: Not many people have the ability to see opportunities the way you do. What do you do with all the opportunities you identify and see? Just leave most of them? Or perhaps leave all of them because you’re happy and content to “waste” them? Or perhaps you’re a thinker and not a do-er? Or do you cherry pick only the best and leave the rest? Whatever the case might be, you are offcourse entitled to do with the opportunities you don’t pursue as you wish. But, for a moment, just think what it cost you to saw the opportunities you don’t pursue. You wasted your valuable time ! And that should indicate a definate opportunity for you! - Would it not be great if you could share them with the other people who might percieve it as great opportunities for them? I believe that would be the right thing to do. To share those opportunities – you have much more to benefit, than just to waste the opportunity. Even in the knowledge that you contributed to the benefit of someone else, lies a little silent happiness.
You can benefit from shared opportunities on www.bizwave.co.za. Register for free and you will have access to new opportunities every day.
Source: http://www.ArticlePros.com/author.php?Thea Els
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