Category Archives: Opportunities

Getting out there

July 11, 2015 6:33 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I was chatting about work and life the other day over tea at Starbucks.  The conversation drifted in the direction of business networking.  Not the computer kind of network but the personal type of network.  The type that’s hard for me.

Networking really hasn’t changed at all since the first business office was set up.  Having a wide circle of friends and acquaintances always pays off.  Although we may live in an interconnected world of instantaneous communications we still have to initiate contact with other people in order for it to work.

I don’t mean just send emails back and forth or maybe even have a phone conversation but actually “talk” to the other person.  Whether that person is a client, a colleague or even a competitor at another company.  Being more than just a contact card in an email directory is important.  It means that you’re an actual human being that the other person might think of when it comes time to ask for a job, a business opportunity or an introduction to someone else.

Initiating contact doesn’t have to be a big production involving flowers or lunch or whatever.  You can just initiate contact by asking the other person how they’re doing during the course of your regular work exchange.  Do some “industry gossip”.  Talk about that other third company that has nothing to do with you or speculate on the future of your field.  Ask about their goals and plans.

The main thing is that you become a known quantity, that you have a personality, and that you’re a factor in their life.  Not a giant factor but a factor.  You’ll never expect them to break down and cry on your shoulder and you should not expect them to lend you money but at the very least if things go bad you can send out resumes to them, you can ask them if they know about any open bids, you can query them about some job applicant that they may know.

This is the way that the business world works, folks.  It always has and always will be this way.

Posted in: business, career, friends, goals, jobs, opportunities, plans, relationships, social networks, standards and practices, work

Living a life the best way possible

June 15, 2015 6:25 AM , Leave a Comment ,

It’s easy to quit and despair.  It’s easy to say “well I gave it my best shot but it didn’t work” and just give up on trying to move ahead.  It’s quite another thing to see a failure or a difficulty and to shift gears out of one venture and go into another.

This last week the world lost Sir Christopher Lee.  While most of the world knew him as a long time actor, very few people knew about his other exploits before becoming an actor or his other ventures and honors that he accumulated over a lifetime.  I could do a list of all of these things but I think there are plenty of websites and articles out there that do a fine job of this.

Looking at his life in a totality however it is worth noting that he never had an easy or obvious path to success.  This was an individual that faced setbacks and failures quite a few times over the course of his life yet he never allowed this to slow him down or stop his progress.

What’s more he was an individual that actively went out seeking new opportunities and interests on his own.  You would think that someone who had difficulties in his life might be content just to “break even” or just be a little better off but in his case he did not wait for these new ventures to present themselves.  He either went looking for these new ventures or he created them himself.

Like I said above, it’s easy to despair. Despair is easy to do.  It’s comfortable, it can be done at a moment’s notice, and requires little to no investment.  Despair can be such a hard temptation to resist sometimes.

But lifting yourself up, having the presence of mind to look around and plot your next move, getting on with your life as it stands after a setback, that’s hard.

I think that’s something that a man like Christopher Lee can teach all of us.

Posted in: activities, advice, attitude, life in general, opportunities, thought

plans vs pipe dreams: Knowing the difference and leveraging them anyways

April 20, 2015 6:39 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Just as we also have carefully thought out plans, we also have pipe dreams.

We all have those wild and crazy ideas that would be nice to achieve but we “know” just won’t ever work.  These are ideals that we may dream about at bed time or just after lunch one day.  You can think and even see them but the rational part of your mind knows that they’re impossible so it discounts them as just impractical fantasies and generally forgets about them.

On the flip side we have those carefully worked out plans that we think and re-think all the time and we “test out” and know will work because we’ve put in the time to manage expectations and to make sure they can be implemented before anything happens.  We work and live through these every day.

Obviously, it’s bad to get hung up on a pipe dream and obsess over it to the point that you can’t function.  Unfortunately I see this type of behavior too much among some of my peers.  Obsessing about some material item, over some sort of achievement, over some love that got away from them.  Many people chase these unattainable goals to the point that they disregard some or all other important aspects of their lives.

On the other hand it’s equally as bad to just live out a carefully scripted and planned life.  If you only live a planned out existence you may find that opportunities that suddenly appear and offer themselves to you will be ignored or denied because they don’t fit in with your current plans.  You may find that you deny yourself an advantage or may find that your original plan may actual be detrimental to you just because it didn’t fit in.

I think most people can tell what a plan looks like.  A pipe dream is more difficult.  We can often fool ourselves into thinking an outlandish pipe dream is really a reasonable plan.  If we sit down however and look at it carefully and analyze it bit by bit we can often see the faults in the “reasonable plan” and see it for what it really is.

But like I said above, living only a planned life can be equally bad for you.  So how can we live a balanced life where we keep our hopes and dreams alive but allow our plans to carry us ahead?  We have to strike a balance.  Live the daily life within our plans but always keep those pipe dreams at hand.  Don’t totally deny them or discount them.

Even if you do chase after your pipe dream and ultimately fail, the journey, the process of trying to achieve that pipe dream may yield unexpected benefits, may open up new vistas and worlds that you didn’t previously know about.

Pipe dreams are sometimes the only things that can keep us moving forward when things are tough.  Learn to control them, learn to tame them.  But never let them die.

Posted in: advice, goals, life in general, motivation, opportunities, plans, thought

If it was easy everyone would…

November 5, 2014 6:50 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve been getting an education these last couple of months into some of the inner workings of real estate and banking.  I have a real estate side project that has finally begun to get going after being stalled out for a couple of months.

Sure it looked simple and easy in my head.  Just sign a couple forms, a little paperwork, and suddenly all your plans will move ahead and before you know it you’ll be a real estate tycoon.

HA!

I thought some of the terminology in my line of work was esoteric.  Well.  It is.  But it turns out to be nothing compared to all the terminology used in the real estate game.  More than once I walked out of my realtor’s office with my head spinning from all these new terms that my realtor was throwing out at me.

Then there was the lovely business of securing a home equity loan.  Bouncing back and forth between lenders till I had them pinned down to their final and best offers.  Free hint.  They will never give you the best offer on the first go round.

Never.

Then you have to let go of one lender and they react as if you’re breaking up with them.  Not fun.

Then of course the reams of paperwork at the title office attesting to this that and the other thing.  Everything copied, notarized and duly delivered.  I sign and initial here, there, and everywhere.  In the back of my head a quote from the play Faust keeps repeating over and over.

“did we force ourselves on thee, or thou on us?”

So finally it’s all in and now the fun part starts, right?  Now comes haggling with property owners, finagling with contractors, paying for a dozen little items here and there that you hadn’t considered.  Crossing your fingers that you find a tenant.  Doubly crossing your fingers you find a tenant that won’t wreck the place.

No, not that simple.  But is it worthwhile?  Ultimately only time will tell but I think it’s something I had to do and I wouldn’t have done it if I had not thought it wouldn’t succeed.

My hope for this first time out (besides the hope of making money) is that I will be better prepared for the next time that I do this and better mentally armored for this type of business.

 

Posted in: business, opportunities, thought, work