Remain Opportunistic – Always
Stop feeding your cat for a week and just watch how opportunistic he’ll become. Before you know it, your cat will have started hunting and killing birds. He’ll start clawing through your garbage. And basically find all sorts of creative ways to stay alive.
By the way, that was just an example and I would never starve my cat. What type of young entrepreneur do you think I am?! Hehe… Ok, so back to the cat analogy that I was creating.
Now, just like how the starving cat creating opportunities to stay alive after you forget feed it, you, the entrepreneur, have to become opportunistic when things go wrong. In fact, you should be in a constant state of opportunity-seeking alertness.
A few months ago at a New Year’s Eve party, some jerk spilled an entire drink on my only computer and fried it – completely destroyed. Since then, I have yet to purchase a new computer, but that hasn’t stopped me from getting online.
Sure, it was a pretty hard blow since I was so used to being online 10+ hours a day and using all my own customized tools, software, and browser settings. But, I became opportunistic and did what I had to do to remain online.
So what did I do? I borrowed computers from my friends every time they weren’t using them. I traveled back home on occasion – 60 miles – to use the family computer, I used my former college’s computer lab, visited internet cafes, and found libraries with free internet access.
To this day, I am still using these methods to remain online until I am able to purchase a new computer. You see, you always have to remain opportunistic because you never know when something is going to happen.
The worst things always seem to happen when you least expect it – and you can go from having a wonderful day with the birds singing in your ears to absolute chaos raining down on you.
Don’t wait to become opportunistic, try to remain that way at all time. When you do that, fewer mistakes happen. Fewer accidents occur. You become more efficient. And your recovery time from inevitable mishaps speeds up.
2 Comments
Brian Lash
February 27th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Really, really interesting post Dave.
My only two computers - a desktop and a laptop - broke around the same time last summer. The hard drive was fried on one. On the other, well, I still don’t know what happened.
I only had a buddy install a new hard drive the other day - a full SEVEN months after it died. “How do you survive?!” I remember my friends asking.
But it’s like you said… you get opportunistic: I used friends’ computers. I logged on to the internet from campus labs.
And I got by
Sounds like we have a lot in common.
David Askaripour
February 28th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Thanks Brian,
Yeah, being out of a computer is never a fun thing. hehe.. as we already know. It’s all about leveraging your contacts and using the people and resources you have to help you get by.
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