Talent Meets Opportunity

Where your talent meets a need in the marketplace, there is opportunity.

Most people start with looking for the opportunity.
They look for a job.
They seek a career.
They search for work.

In other words, they search outside themselves.
They look to the market, to a company, an industry or a sector in order to find their place. They look for a job, or a place on the corporate ladder, or the org chart, wanting to find their spot.

Once they identify what they think they want to do or where they think they might fit, then they go into the marketplace to compete with others for these predefined boxes.

Is this what you are doing? That’s the old way of doing things. There is a better way.

Start with you and what you have to bring to the marketplace.

Your search begins by looking within yourself and determining what you have of value to offer the marketplace. Instead of looking at the market and trying to fit yourself into a sector, an industry, a profession, a career or a job – and this is what we were taught to do – look instead at what you have to offer the market.

What need can you fill?
What problem do you solve?
Who can you help?
What can you create?
With whom can you partner?

Look within yourself.
What do you like to do, love to do?
What brings you joy?
Where do you get in the zone? Doing what? (Answering these questions can give you clues to finding your talent and your brilliance.)

Here are some questions to get you started with figuring out what you have to offer the marketplace:

What do you do really well?
What do you love to do?
What do you do that enables you to get results?
What results do you get?
What are your talents?
What are your skills?
What has your experience been?

When you can answer these questions, you’ll be closer to understanding what you have to offer the marketplace. And, when you know what you have to offer the marketplace – your talent, skills, and proven experience – then you can go out and make things happen. You’ll be able to create work around what you have to offer. You will be able to “make opportunity.” At the intersection of talent and market need, there is opportunity.

Don’t look for opportunity. Make it happen. It starts with you…