Be prepared for opportunities

TUNDE OYEDOYIN  

Tunde Oyedoyin is a London-based personal finance coach and founder of Money Intelligence Coaching Academy, a specialist academy of personal finance. He can be reached as follows: +447846089587 (WhatsApp only); E-mail: tu5oyed@gmail.com

I will prepare and make myself ready, for my opportunity will come — Author unknown

Not everyone who’s an investor or entrepreneur can be a household name like a Mike Adenuga, Jr, a Femi Otedola, or an Aliko Dangote. You can fly under the radar like Cole Hocker did at the Stade de France last week. Only a few athletics fans had heard that name before the Olympics.

But that didn’t stop him from putting in the effort and preparing himself since arriving in the French capital with the rest of the American team. Though he wasn’t beating his chest and announcing that he was around, nor wanting the sort of attention that the global stars in team USA were commanding, he knew he wasn’t in Paris for holiday. He came to look for an opportunity. It might interest you to know that the Otedolas of this world are always still looking for opportunities. You heard it here.

In other words, you can start preparing for the opportunities that will throw themselves up next year by chipping your ten or fifteen thousand naira monthly savings away from this August. That may be your pathway to being a double breasted suit farmer or laying the foundation for owning your business. Tell you what? If you had prepared, you could have, with just twenty thousand naira, responded to either the Fidelity Bank or AccessCorps shares offers and television adverts before they close their doors this Monday, August 12.

Meanwhile, prior to the final of the men’s 1500m on Tuesday, August 6th, Great Britain’s Josh Kerr, told everyone that cared and didn’t even care that he was ready to be crowned as Olympic champion over that distance. Before heading to the greatest show on earth and also after landing, he told people to mark the date and time in their diaries. Yours truly himself knew the date and time.

Having beaten Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the Norwegian reigning and defending Olympic champion at the World Championships in Budapest last year, the Scotsman thought it was a two-horse race. He was of the view that he had his arch rival and everyone’s number. He wasn’t quiet about his intention. You can’t begrudge him for thinking it was his coronation night.

When the starter’s gun was fired at the arena, Kerr would surely have thought that in less than four minutes, his dream of becoming the successor to Ingebrigtsen would have come true. For a man who had said “why not me?” It appeared he was going to pull it off with every metre covered.

As the race unfolded and the jostling progressed, the bookmakers must have been tempted to increase their odds of a Kerr’s victory. He was walking the talk with less than a hundred metres to go. Then came the championship distance in the home stretch. As Ingebrigtsen tired out, Kerr was right there on his shoulder. He went past the man he had openly said he was going to wrestle the crown from.

Kerr was finally less than thirty metres away from Olympic glory. it appeared the Scotsman was playing out the script exactly the way he wrote it.

But hang on a minute, Hocker had prepared himself too and didn’t think it was a two-horse race after all. “I felt I belong in the race too,” he later revealed.

That he saw the opening on the inside lane was one thing, but it was the preparation and effort he had put in place that mattered. As it turned out, it was what kept him in the mix. He drove himself, went stride for stride with Kerr and just before the world champion could reach the line, the ponytail man crossed to immortality. Folks, be prepared.

How do you prepare in our context? Open your eyes. Be observant, be attentive and be in the know of what’s happening in your surroundings like Hocker did. Above all, make the effort to put something aside every month. That’s how you position yourself. The opportunities will surely come like it did for others and Hocker at the just concluded greatest show on earth in Paris.

More importantly, unlike in athletics where it could be a winner takes all affair, the opportunities to stay under the radar as you put things in place abound. Just keep preparing and open your eyes. You may not own a stake in an Okada or be a mere employee in a law firm, but be prepared. Your own opportunity will surely come.

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