If It's Not Raining...It's Hailing

Speaking to a client of mine this morning, the city in which they live recently got smashed by a huge hail storm. The requests that are coming in for repair work are within their scope of works but not their bread and butter business. My client mentioned that this opportunity has the potential of providing 12 -18 months work and while looking promising, they are cautious about not undermining their current business and customers. A genuine concern.

Here are some questions to ask when faced with opportunities that arrive but are outside of your current work.

• Does this opportunity sit within your capacity, skill set, strengths etc?
• How can you take full advantage of this AND build your current business at the same time?
• What are the downsides and how can you mitigate associated risk?
• What do you need to put in place to capitalise fully on the opportunity? eg. Short term funding, recruitment and/or allocation of existing people to the different departments.
• What is the expected duration of this opportunity and how will you survive it in terms of personal energy, cash flow demands, staffing and so forth?

Taking full advantage of opportunities that come our way and that exist within our strengths and skill sets can take business and organisations to a whole new level.

Opportunities can either find us or we find them. We often think of hail storms as a negative which in many cases they are. But, the astute business owner knows that there are sunny skies above the threatening storms.

Rain is great, hail can sometimes be better - just depends on how you look at it.