 The world is full of opportunities. Are you waiting for them to come to you, or are you going to go out and make them for yourself? Welcome back and congratulations on taking one more step towards becoming one of the great leaders of tomorrow. So many people are waiting for that one opportunity to come along and supercharge their careers and their lives. Today I've got four tips for you on how to make that opportunity happen for you and not wait for opportunities to happen to you. And stay tuned to the end. I'm going to give you a link to download our free leadership development plan workbook that'll help you set your career goals for the next two, five and 10 years and build a plan to achieve them. We're all hoping that something will come along and change our lives for us. Some great opportunity that'll give us the chance to really show off what we have to offer and show how we can be successful. And I know that I've thought about that in my own business where I've said, if I could just get one great client or I could just get one great opportunity, I could really show what I could do and I could make my business well known and successful and popular and I'd have all the work that I could handle. But the reality about opportunities is it's not enough to just sit there and wait for them to come to you. You've got to go out and do things and make it happen for you. So in these four tips today, I'm going to talk about some ways you can be on the lookout for opportunities. And when you see opportunities come along, just take those small steps that'll get you moving towards getting that opportunity to happen for you. Tip number one is to keep your eyes open. Probably the biggest challenge with taking advantage of opportunities is recognizing they're there because they don't usually just fall on our lap. Boom, here's an opportunity. That's not how it works. What's more typical is they start out as a really small observation of a problem that we can solve or a role that we can fill in our organization to make things better for everybody. And the other trick with these opportunities is a lot of times they might be a little scary. They might be outside of our comfort zone. They typically come in as a small idea and then they grow and as they grow, we start to get scared of what they're turning into. So if you see that small opportunity, that small way you can fill a role and it starts to grow into something that's a little bit out of your comfort zone, don't discount it. Don't throw it away because it's scary. Embrace it and see if it's really something that can be an opportunity for you. Taking on that new job in a new city or doing that six month overseas trip for work to a not so pleasant part of the world. Those can be really scary things, but the expertise and the experiential gain from them as well as the knowledge and the connections you'll make are certainly great opportunities for your career in the future. Now that you've found that tiny little observation of a role you can fill or something you can make into an opportunity, tip number two is to do the homework. Before you go dive into this, before you go all in, do a little bit of research. Find out who the industry players are. If this is a new industry you're going into, you've had a new idea for a business, find out about this new industry, how it works. It may be vastly different from the way you think it is when you start to see this opportunity and that doesn't mean it's bad. It just needs to go learn how things go. Find out who the influencers in the industry are. Find out who your competition is, whether you're applying for a new job in a new city or for a new company or you're starting a new business. Really get to understand that competition and just because there's competition or someone else has the same idea doesn't mean that's necessarily bad. There may be enough roles or maybe enough differentiation for you to take a role in that as well and there may be someone out there who's looking for someone who can execute on the idea you've got. They may have a similar idea but just don't want to put the time and money and effort into it and that could be a huge opportunity for you to partner with someone. Tip number three is to follow through and this is where most opportunities fall by the wayside because people don't follow through on them. They don't take that one simple step of following through whether it's taking a look at that research and taking that step to go file for that business license or whether it's going to meet that person for coffee who you met at an event a couple nights before. We don't ever call them or we don't ever reconnect with them again and we miss that opportunity and this comes down to basic fear. This is just basic human fear of the unknown and I've got it. I'm probably the biggest culprit out of any one of this where I meet someone, we have a great conversation, we talk about hey maybe there's something we can work on together, something we can collaborate on and I just never follow through on it so I'm as guilty as everyone else but I'm trying to be better about it and honestly my business wouldn't be where it is today if I didn't take those small steps if I didn't push through that fear and follow through and so to really take advantage of opportunities to make things happen for you it's not enough to just recognize the opportunity and to do the research you've got to go through and do the follow through and sometimes that means taking some unpleasant actions or having some scary conversations with people but in the end it's absolutely worth it. Finally and this tip weaves through all the other three tips, enjoy the ride while you're searching and working on these opportunities. You're going to meet some great people, you're going to make some mistakes, you're going to have some fun adventures and that's what makes it all worth it. Opportunities rarely turn out in the end to be exactly what we thought they were when we first had that little inkling of maybe there's something I could do here a problem I could solve or a role I could fill. Very rarely does it ever turn into exactly what we thought it was going to be but that doesn't mean it's not worth pursuing it usually turns into with working with other people and learning about what we're doing it turns into something even better and exceeds our expectations even though it was different and honestly following up on opportunities is a lot of hard work but like I said it's totally worth it in the end. So there are four tips for taking little ideas and turning them into big opportunities that happen for you instead of just waiting for someone to bring opportunities to you. It's so important to be on the lookout for those little tiny ideas of a role we might be able to fill or a problem we might be able to solve and to fan that spark into a flame of a big opportunity that can propel our careers or just make us generally feel more fulfilled and satisfied in life. It's not all about money or career sometimes sometimes it's just like I'm much happier in my job because I took advantage of this opportunity. So do the work look for the little ideas do the research follow through and I promise you'll get something out of it even if the whole idea goes to crap you'll get something out of it the next time you pursue a big opportunity. If you found this helpful please like comment and share it with a friend or co-worker click on that link below in the description that'll take you to where you can download our free leadership development plan workbook and that'll help you walk through setting your career goals for the next two five and ten years and build a plan of action to achieve them. If you have any business or leadership questions leave us a comment we'll answer you right there or email us at info at evilgeniusleadership.com. Evilgeniusleadership.com is also where you can find out about all of our coaching and training programs so if you're looking for a little more one-on-one training on your leadership style or your leadership skills get in touch with us there we'll set you up with a free consultation and show you how we can help you become a better leader. Thanks for watching today I really appreciate it remember the future is out there. Lead the way.