In my life I have always been told that I was very lucky to have opportunities come my way early on and that not all of us are lucky enough to have such opportunities. I do consider myself lucky and completely agree that opportunities are not evenly distributed between all of us, however, I cannot agree that I was lucky that opportunities came my way. On the contrary, my life was filled with obstacles and the lack of opportunities, which is why very early on I learned that waiting for opportunities to come is like waiting to be told when to play the lottery to win. Unfortunately for you and I, life nor business works that way.
When I was very young, I was faced with the inability to work due to the fact that I was only in the states illegally. While many thought McDonalds was a joke and only a job, working there would have been a dream come true for me. Unfortunately, working a typical job was not an opportunity for me, and therefore finding a way around it was my only mean of survival.
At 14, I figured out the best way to leverage a work permit to get around the idea of having to show a non-existing green card. That opportunity was created by using my brain, and finding a way around this major obstacle early on.
By 18, I was the director of that same company and was told that leaving that job would be foolish as my pay and my position would never be matched without a degree. I applied to a banking job and was laughed at during my interview. But only to wow the interviewer by doing what no one had ever done before; getting him new customers with no knowledge of the business, product, or service.
By taking a chance, two days later I was offered a branch manager job making me the youngest bank manager that had ever been hired, let alone without a degree. By 25, I was fired from a very lucrative Vice President role in that very same bank, only to find myself unemployed and highly confused, which led me to starting two businesses that failed miserably in their very first year.
When I was 28, those same businesses were both making 7 figures in revenue and profit. I decided to change the way we think and look at entrepreneurship everywhere, and decided to do so via an online platform known as Secret Entourage. People called me and idiot, insulted me online, and reminded me daily that it was a stupid idea and name. By 32, not only was Secret Entourage a huge success but my book Third Circle Theory was on its way to becoming a best seller with over 50,000 copies sold.
You could say I was lucky in my life and that opportunities existed around me, but you can never say that opportunities were thrown at me left and right. Instead, you can say that I created opportunities when I couldn’t spot any early on. Opportunities exist all around us and continue to be no matter where you live, what you do, and what obstacles you face.
You see, opportunities are all around us and as I describe in Third Circle theory, the reason why you miss them is lack of awareness and it was no different for myself early on. Since opportunities were lacking early on in my life, I learned to create them by always finding opportunities around obstacles rather than opportunities as a whole. You, just like me, have the opportunity to create the path you choose in life, and even though you may not know what the path looks like or how to actually get through all the upcoming obstacles you face, you very much can believe that you won’t give up till you reach your goals.
By not giving up, you simply stop wondering when opportunities will come your way and instead create a way when you can’t find one there for you. So this year as you look to improve your situation, life, or business, simply remember that opportunities are usually discovered looking back at our lives rather than forward because opportunities are nothing more than doors we walk through, hand shakes we make, and connections we create on what we believe to be the right direction to succeeding.
It is only once we look back years later that we identify that those very small actions were indeed the opportunities we created but could never see.
