O is for Opportunity

Opportunity is not always where you look, but where you find it.

That sounds like a quote, doesn’t it? I’m sure there’s something like it out there, but I’m sticking with it. I’m talking more about opportunity that’s a bit out of the box, not on the main road, the opportunity that’s not even there at first glance.

My wife is extremely good at finding opportunities where others see challenge or even impossibility. She’s at a restaurant for work and she’ll enquire about the possibility of them donating a gift certificate to our kids’ school. She didn’t call, didn’t research, but she asked the manager. What do you have to lose?

The Secret of Kite Hill

With the book I just published together with my kids, one angle could be exactly that: the story of how a father and his two young boys published a book together. The high points, the challenges, what we learned, maybe even something of a quickie manual on how to accomplish it. Could even position it with a twist about strengthening the bond with you and your children beyond the playground. We had to actually work together, towards a goal, with a deadline, and depended on each other. Yeah, that was interesting. But that’s the point: it was interesting. It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t always fun, I certainly learned a thing or two about my kids that I never would have known. How cool is that? So I could promote the book (or maybe a new book about the process?) with that angle. Or at least as one angle of many.

How many angles are there? What opportunities are out there? The answer is only as wide as your imagination.

Can you see the same solution through a different lens?