A Simple Formula To Determine If You Should Take An Opportunity Or Not

Lauren: You’re a high octane business owner. You’ve got a team on paper. It looks like you’re rolling in success, but there’s a voice inside of you. Whisper, screaming, This isn’t sustainable. Something feels off and I’m gonna lose it all. Sound familiar? That’s where I come in.

My name is Lauren Goldstein and I’m the CEO at Golden Key Partnership. I help top level executives like you avoid burning out and burning down as you’re scaling up. How? By harnessing your superpowers, finding and hiring your ideal team. And then simplifying the heck out of your business operations. That was easy.

It’s my mission and the mission of this podcast to help you see operations in a whole new light. To help you diagnose the real root cause of your company challenges, and to bring your business back to a healthy flow and profit. They call me the Business Doctor, and this is The Biz Doctor Podcast.

Welcome back. In today’s episode, I’m gonna share something that will help any entrepreneur cut down those shiny object or squirrel moments. You can keep creating magic and momentum without getting quote off track. I actually see this quite a lot, especially with founders and business owners that are very creative.

We love, love. And also sometimes it’s a little hard for the team because every opportunity that comes along gets you really excited, and then you’re off to the races. So today I’m gonna talk about how you can use four, maybe five criteria for opportunities to help you stay on track. The first criteria is this something that follows my path.

So this requires you actually knowing where you’re. Which is another subject entirely , that I have touched on on previous episodes. But it’s very important for a business owner to have the end goal of where you’re taking the business and the team. So once you have that, your future vision, ask yourself, is this opportunity that I’m about to pursue something that follows my path, does it fit within the next 12 months in the future?

Because the biggest cost of taking an opportunity is opportunity cost. The analogy actually I like to use with my clients is, let’s say you wanna ride the Orient Express through Europe, but you’re getting anxious, angsty, whatever, because the train’s running a little bit behind. So you decide to get on the milk train that’s currently in the station because you think you’re gonna get there faster now, as soon as you get on the milk.

Low and behold, as it’s pulling out of the station, the Orient Express is pulling in, and so now you’re just chasing the Orient Express all across the country trying to get on and trying to get the trains to match again. The same is true. If you take an opportunity that doesn’t actually fit with your future vision, it actually derails you and.

Make you lose a lot of time and energy chasing your tail. So get really clear on does it fit with my future vision over the next 12 months? Does it get me closer or farther away? And be brutally honest with yourself because if you’re too busy with the wrong opportunities, you’ll miss the good opportunities that really are gonna catapult you forward.

The second question is, is this something that I can add value to? Now, I know you’re probably thinking, Well, of course Lauren, otherwise it wouldn’t take the opportunity. But don’t get me wrong, sometimes we think we can add value and maybe there is a little bit of value that we’re adding, but the value we add might not be what’s worth the time suck.

That’s created. What I mean is if you have a greater amount of value that’s gonna pay you dividends later, by all means do it. But if you’re doing it just to do it and there’s only a small amount of value that you can add, chances are you’d be better served staying in your lane and doing what you’re doing.

Now, somebody actually once told me a while ago when I was volunteering for everything under the. . She said, Lauren, why are you doing this? Like, I know you like to volunteer, make a difference. Donate all the things, but like really, why are you doing it? Because yes, it’s making a difference. Yes, you’re adding value, but it just seems like you’re running around like a chicken with your head cut off.

And the truth is I was, I was very burned out on doing other opportunities outside my business that weren’t actually aligned because I thought that, you know, it would make me feel a certain way or create some sort of result. But when I actually look at these five criteria, they didn’t fit. So once I understood this formula, I started calling out things.

And I got happier. I got more successful, I got more impactful. And the places where I did invest my energy, the opportunities I did go after, got more of me and I had a bigger impact. So really get clear on is it something that follow my path? Is it something that I can add value to? And then this is a good one.

Is it something that I can leverage? So I know leverage sometimes can be a term that gets everyone’s cackles them. I’m not saying like the kind of leverage that’s the bad leverage. I’m talking about making everything positive, not distracting. So by doing this, we all benefit. A great example of this is, I myself was part of a book of many different authors.

I’ve also seen other business owners, co-author books. It’s something that follows your path. It’s something that it can add value, and it’s something you can leverage by having a book. It’s a win-win where you all benefit, but not all opportunities are created equal. So you wanna make sure that it creates leverage and things that you can use.

To benefit your business, your relationships, the world, et cetera, across the board and the number four. This is great, especially considering a previous episode, which I recommend you go listening to about failure if it fails. Am I still motivated? This is really interesting cuz it goes back to the psychology of people who are committed no matter what, or people who are committed.

So if you sign up for an opportunity, let’s say it’s a new business venture, which we know that the statistics of new businesses thriving and growing past year five are pretty low. So let’s just use that as an example. If the business or venture or opportunity that you are about to embark on fails, are you still motivated or is it something that’s going to devastate you to the.

Where it actually stops your progress and might throw you off kilter. If it’s the latter, don’t do it. But if it’s the former and it actually again gets you closer, you learn great things, great connections, et cetera, some sort of win-win, then by all means do it. And then the other side of that same coin is if it succeeds, does it inspire?

The reason I love these two questions is so often we think about opportunities just in terms of tangible things, connections, money, business deals, influence, et cetera, whatever. But a lot of times we actually forget about is this actually inspiring me? Am I gonna be motivated because. To take on an opportunity, just to take on an opportunity isn’t enough to keep you inspired or motivated when the times get tough, because trust me, the times are gonna get tough.

So you wanna make sure that you are creating opportunity for yourself and for others that not only follow your path, something that you can add value to, something you can leverage in your journey. If it fails, you’re motivated. If it succeeds, it inspires you to create even. So this is really a holistic approach to opportunities that most people don’t talk about.

Cuz sometimes it’s just like, is this a good or bad opportunity? And we use good or bad as a way to judge, but we don’t actually have any criteria to judge against. Well my friend now you have five. So then in addition to the five criteria, I want you to think about triangulating time and the future that you’re.

And what that looks like is expectations, success and failure. You guys have heard me say this time and time again, but unshared or mismatched expectations are nothing more than premeditated resentments. It will break up relationships hands down in an instant, and this is talking about business relationships, but it also creates all the problems in business.

If you think about it, most of the problems you see in your team and your relationships come down to one thing, mismatched expectations. When you triangulate time and figure out what your expectations of the opportunity are, that’s one part. Then you need to look at what success will look like at the end of this opportunity.

What am I really basing success on? How will I know it’s a success? And then in that same vein, what does failure look like? How do I know when we’re failing? When it might be time to hit that eject button? Because sometimes, sometimes it just fails and you gotta let it go. Sometimes it’s just the dip, which we all know about.

Thanks to Seth. Go. Did so the next time a shiny object or a squirrel moment pops into your view? Ask yourself those five questions and triangulate time in the future that you’re creating by again. Is this something that follows my path? Is this something I can add value to? Is this something I can leverage if it fails?

Am I still motivated? If it exceeds, am I inspired? And then ask yourself, what are the expectations of me and this opportunity? What are the expectations of the other people in it? What does success look like and what does failure look like when you’ve got all of those things mapped out? Clearly, objectively and preferably without emotion.

Cuz we all know that making decisions based on emotion is not always the recipe for success. Then you can say yes. So that’s it for this week. I hope you enjoyed this little golden nugget because trust me, when you can objectively start realizing what opportunities to take and what opportunities to leave, it will change a lot.

And if you don’t believe me, then believe Warren Buffet. He says The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything. Trust me, this is probably one of the hardest skills to learn as an entrepreneur, but it’s gonna pay dividends.

So let me know how it goes for you. That’s it for this week’s episode. Please take a moment to subscribe so you get notified first when our next episode drops, and I’d also love to hear and connect with you with your biggest takeaways or anything that’s going on in your business. So please tag me or DM me on Instagram at its Lauren Goldstein or LinkedIn or wherever you hang out on the intro webs.

Thanks so much for listening, and we’ll see you next week. 

So which part of your business needs love and attention? You might be wondering that. Hmm? Here are your next steps.

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