If you put yourself in certain situations, opportunities may present themselves, but it’s up to you to recognize them and act on them. For example, I used to be an Estate Agent years ago as one of my first jobs. After I started the job, all of a sudden I started seeing “for sale” signs everywhere!
I had a similar experience about a month ago. It turns out that I had never been to the House of Commons before, which was a little embarrassing, considering I live only about nine kilometers away from it! For some reason, the thought occurred to me that I should probably visit the House of Commons — and suddenly, I had not one, but three opportunities to do it!
First, a chap I met through the mastermind group GKIC London popped up and invited me out of the blue to go to the House of Commons. He had recently bought a company called Who’s Who, a publication for the country’s successful businessmen and women.
After buying it, he started to develop it, and one thing he developed was the “Champions of Change” award, where successful people could put themselves forward for the success they’ve achieved in their line of work. The first of these Champions of Change awards was to be presented by MP Zac Goldsmith in the House of Commons to Nicola Horlick, a big player in The City — and the gentleman who owned Who’s Who invited me to go along there and be one of the guests!
Shortly after that, again completely unexpected, I got invited to the House of Commons by a financial publication. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go because of a train strike, which caused absolute mayhem in London. But I found it unbelievable that it happened so soon after the first invitation, and so soon after I had decided on my own that I ought to see the House of Commons.
A little while later, it happened yet again! It turns out, my wife bought me, 
as a surprise for my birthday, a tour of the Houses of Parliament — she didn’t know I was going to be invited over and over again. Ultimately, in a matter of weeks, I was given the opportunity to visit the House of Commons three separate times!
My belief is, when you put yourself in a situation and position yourself in that way, you get invited to places and events, and things start to happen.
Here’s another fun example: My wife and I like to go to a lot of shows in the West End. For a long time, we’ve been nagged to go to see the Jersey Boys, a musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Recently, we decided to just go directly to the ticket office to see if we could get in. Lo and behold, a couple of tickets were available that same afternoon, near the front. If you focus on something, you can make it actually happen.
Here’s one more great example. About two or three weeks ago, I had booked a couple of tickets to an online marketing conference, a three-day thing in London. A couple of guest speakers came over from the States, including keynote speaker Frank Kern. I dragged my wife along, even though she’s not a big fan of these events.
Frank Kern got up and started talking about all these different techniques to market your business. One thing he mentioned was becoming a consultant for high-quality clients. I told my wife, “Why don’t you do this?” She’s a teacher who works with specialneeds kids. She demurred. But by the time he’d finished, I’d convinced her to buy this product on consultancy, and as I write this, she’s actually working on setting up her special needs consultancy!
The message is this: Be alert to opportunities when they present themselves. Keep your eyes and ears open. When opportunities show up, act on them! A door will open, leading to a completely new horizon and taking you in a totally different direction, which can be exciting and interesting. Are you going to step through that door?
Steve Lazarus
