Recently things have started going well for my business. 🥳

Well enough for me to finally create a LinkedIn company page. I was hesitant to do this until I knew that the business would succeed.

Paradoxically, my recent success came out of me getting to a point of desperation. My desperation resulted in me noticing opportunities, and more importantly resulted in me acting on them.

I’m now at a point where my business will be at capacity until the end of the year. 😌

The challenge of spotting opportunities

In my mind the most famous, and important, example of someone uncovering an opportunity out of something inconspicuous is Alexander Fleming getting curious about a moldy Petri dish from a failed experiment. Ultimately Flemming’s curiosity resulted in the discovery of Penicillin.

Personally I think I would have thrown away that Petri dish.

One challenge that I have noticed with spotting opportunities, is that they often only become apparent to me with hindsight. Many great opportunities emerge out of little things that initially did not seem like anything special at all.

For example, my favorite employment came out of me attending an interview for a job I initially didn’t want. I even considered declining the interview. The opportunity only revealed itself later once I understood the company and the role better.

The challenge of acting on opportunities

However, spotting an opportunity is not enough. One also needs to act on it.

This is where I’ve found that I am my own worst enemy. I find it all too easy getting sucked into a negative head space: “I don’t like this aspect”, “what if this goes wrong”, etc.

I believe a lot of my issues are to do with fear. Fear of change. Fear of the unknown. Fear of looking like a clown.

I also think this is why I only managed to get unstuck once I got desperate. The desperation resulted in a fear of failure that was greater than the fears that were holding me back from acting.

Getting better at seizing opportunities

So, as you gather, I don’t think that I’m particularly good at seizing opportunities. However, I think I’m better at it now than I was one year ago.

Below is a list of things that have helped me — beyond getting desperate.

• Paying attention to the people around me, noticing instances when they acted on opportunities, and admiring their courage. I can’t remember where I learnt about this habit, but studying the behaviour of successful people is quite common advice.
• Finding positive people to bounce ideas off, and get ideas from.
• Asking my wife for “permission” before discarding opportunities — she helps keep me accountable, and has rescued me from discarding opportunities out of various forms of fear.
• Studying the principles of Appreciative Inquiry — a model that puts the focus on what is working well, rather than fixating on problems, here is a link to a PDF describing Appreciative Inquiry produced by NHS England.
• Reading T. Harv Eker’s famous book, “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind”. Although the title is so bombastic I almost feel ashamed to put it in writing, the book is actually great. Reading this book I realised that I needed to shift my mindset from focussing on obstacles to focussing on opportunities.

In summary, Cyborg Interfaces is now officially a self-sustaining company providing scientific computing services! Woohoo! Please contact me if you’d like to work together.

And I hope this post helps you (and me!) get better at spotting and acting on opportunities as they present themselves in the future. 🙂

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