Are you always ready for opportunities?

Recently, I travelled to Uganda for a conference. Before I could fly back on Sunday night, I thought of attending church service at a local parish there.

I asked the hotel receptionist to organise for me a taxi. The receptionist assured me the taxi guy would come within 10 minutes.

In fact, he arrived within five minutes and I was able to be at the parish in good time. As we were driving to the parish, I had a good chat with Julius Balinda, the taxi driver. I asked Julius about his work and business as a taxi driver.

He told me that he normally works from around 6 am and until 8 pm to make enough money to support his wife and three children. He said that when he has clients, he knocks off late.

For example, sometimes he takes his clients around pubs and night clubs waiting for and on them the whole night. In that case, he only goes home in the morning to shower and take breakfast before he could come back to work around 6 am.

Julius further told me that his business strategy was to “be around”. He gets business by “being around.” Whenever he is ‘around’, customers call him for their trips. For him, being around gives him big business opportunities.

Even when he dropped me off at church, he said he would ‘be around’ so that once my church service was over, I could call him. Indeed, when church service was over, and I called him, he promised to arrive within two minutes and he kept the promise. Julius is a master of taking opportunities by being ‘around’, being ready for the next opportunity.

I was thoroughly impressed and inspired by the strategy that Julius employs and it works. In fact, he made good cash from me because he took me on a couple of errands to shop around Entebbe. He benefitted live from his strategy of being around.

This sent me thinking about how we lose big opportunities by not being around or by not being ready for the opportunity when it comes. In fact, we have discussed it here before, that luck is defined as that which occurs when opportunity meets preparedness. By being around, Julius is perpetually creating luck for himself.

Julius’ strategy has a number of applications in our daily lives to make us successful too.

Below, I highlight three obvious ways in which his strategy has direct and general relevance to us all.

Being present: When there is an opportunity, decision-makers start by looking at who is present and around. Are you around to be considered? I have some friends who for a long time have worked at remote branches of their organisations. I tell them that there must come a time when they need to go to the head office to ‘be present’ so that decision-makers can remember them and appoint them to positions that really matter.

Being remembered: Whether you are present or not, you need to find ways of being remembered. When coaching naturally quiet professionals, I like to advise them to be going around the office to drink tea with important people as a way of being remembered. You can be working at the office and yet you get forgotten. That is dangerous. Politicians are best at this. They say they have to always be ‘audible and visible’. They ensure they show face at every event, so that they can always be remembered.

Being Ready: This sounds simple but it is perhaps the most important of all. It means you need to acquire today the skills that you will need tomorrow. This means that you must personally invest time and resources in training yourself well in advance.

This also means that your circumstances around you must allow you the mobility and agility to be able to immediately launch action or to immediately take up opportunities that arise.

If you master the above and constantly practise the principle of being around or ready, then like Julius in Entebbe, Uganda, you too will always rise and shine! Good luck!