Taking advantage of opportunities

I went to speak to a group of relatively new business owners yesterday, who were lovely by the way and made me feel very welcome. We were talking about building your reputation in your field and they asked me what I'd done to do this. While I was talking to them, I realised that what I'd done was to take advantage of opportunities.

I said to them that we start each day with a blank page and it's up to us how we fill it. I could choose to sit working at my desk each day or I could choose, as I did to go out there, volunteer for things, get involved, build my contacts and take advantage of all the opportunities that are out there.

Let me give you an example - one of my contacts runs start-ups courses for women in schools, which is a relatively new scheme that she has successfully got of the ground. This morning on BBC breakfast news, they were saying that they were looking for schools who were doing something unique and unusual - I would be seizing this opportunity by the throat and contacting BBC telling them about what I was doing.

Another example, a couple of months ago, Steve Wright on BBC Radio 2 (seems to be a bit of a pattern here doesn't there) mentioned his 'business idea of the day' - I don't think he intended to carry this on, but I emailed him loads of business ideas of the day that he could use. Ok, nothing came of it, but you never know...

So, my challenge to you is to take advantage of the opportunities that come your way and go and see what happens. You never know what might come up.