Opportunities often feel like this abstract, esoteric idea that comes up a few times in a lifetime. You also hear things like a person “created his/her opportunities,” or this is a “once in a lifetime opportunity.”

People often spend most of their lives looking for opportunities through traditional methods, such as looking at job postings or looking through items at a store of something to wear. I’ve also taken this conventional method of searching for opportunities for business ideas. 

I’m always on the lookout for a new business idea, where I want to put my full force in to solve the pain-point.

I would get down on myself sometimes and start comparing myself with other people. I would ask myself why this person has been able to find an opportunity that is not typically known and create a compelling product to solve for it, while I can’t.

I came across this illuminating interview by Real Vision for an investor named Tony Deden. Tony is the chairman of Edelweiss Holdings and manages a fund that invests generational money into overlooked long term investments. He doesn’t invest in publicly traded stocks or other traditional investments. He invests in private businesses in which he finds owners with a long-term view that even surpasses the owner’s lifetime. 

At 2:06, Tony says, “It’s not important to be looking for opportunities. We don’t do that. What is important is to acquire an understanding so you can recognize then when you see them.”

This quote home hit home for me.

Perhaps, this is basic for most people, and I’m late to the game, but I always viewed opportunities as something you search for and create after hours of deliberating ideas. 

However, what Tony articulates is that it’s essential to spend time reading books/articles, discussing ideas with colleagues and experts, and, more importantly, live through a scenario to help develop the understanding to recognize opportunities as they come up in your purview.

For example, if you want to develop a business idea that helps optimize real estate transactions, you must have done the following:

• Bought a house
• Conducted diligence on properties before
• Discuss real estate transactions with buyers, agents, title companies, etc..

It’s essential that you not only understand how the process works today but also bring new concepts into the mix, such as artificial intelligence and software development, to recognize an opportunity to develop software that helps a buyer and seller go through the end to end process an easy to use the software.

A secondary component to “acquiring the understanding to recognize the opportunities” is to put in the time and repetitions.

For example, suppose you are a VC, you must put in the time to understand the market and review a LOT of deals to help develop your intuition to spot opportunities before other investors do. A VC would likely have to discuss a market/pain points/solutions with multiple entrepreneurs, reading a LOT about different components/pain paints today, and writing a lot of memos to structure your thinking. 

Another example is that we all read or watch the same content. For instance, I can watch The Black Panther with a group of friends, but my group of friends all likely have different thoughts/ideas based on our understanding of what is happening in a scene. Therefore, what is unique is not the content but the content processing to form new ideas.

Our intuition and previous expertise are what separates us from recognizing new ideas and opportunities.

I know I’ve been discussing the idea of recognizing opportunities, but a subset of this is to acknowledge also high-quality resources. As you develop an understanding of a specific topic, you also gravitate to high-quality content. Digesting high-quality resources is extremely important, especially in today’s world, when there is a bunch of content laid out all over the Internet. There’s a vast difference in understanding a company from reading their S-1 vs reading a Bloomberg article.

Garbage in, garbage out.

In summary, it’s not about looking for opportunities, but about putting in the time to acquire an understanding of multiple subjects that help us develop the ability to recognize opportunities as they appear.