Opportunity Overload (How to Evaluate Opportunities and Make Good Choices)

Have you been in a situation where you have so many things that you could do and you don't know how to choose which one? You know, you've got lots of opportunities because, you know, you're smart, you're driven, you're working hard, and today there's so many opportunities of businesses. You can start franchises, you can get involved in things you can participate in online, you can be selling T shirts online, you can be, you know, selling your voice online. You could be doing anything to today. The opportunities are overwhelming, and they are everywhere. But it's usually not a lack of opportunity for people because we can all make our own opportunities. What it is, usually is it's a decisiveness issue. Like, I'm not sure what I really want here. I know I could do all those. It's kind of like if you ever went to college and, you know, you show up your first day in college and they're like, what's your major going to be? And you're like, I just got here, dude. And they're like, well, here's a book of the 500 different majors you can have. And they're like, of course you should know it. You're 18. You're like, dude, I don't know. And it's such a struggle. Well, I really believe that challenge only amplifies the older that we get, you know, the older that we get, the more people know who you are, know what you're skilled at, know what you've contributed in the past. Your resume gets a little bit longer, maybe your skill sets get a little bit deeper, and suddenly there's a lot of things you can do. Which one and which one first? Those are difficult. What I'd like to do today in this episode is talk about how to evaluate two different opportunities when both are good, you know, because, you know, the easy decisions in life are right versus wrong. The tough decisions in life are right versus right. Both opportunities could bring you benefit. Like, you could do your cost analysis benefit. You know, draw that line, pros and cons. And you can see, like, both opportunities are great, and you can't decide, well, let me give you a couple new areas to think about that might help you make that determination. I'll give you five areas that come to the top of my mind every time I think about an opportunity. And the way that I've been doing this, probably for, I think, seven years personally, is I have this sheet next to my computer, and it's got these five areas on them, which I'll give you. These are the Areas that you would use to evaluate opportunities and what I do. For each of my opportunities, let's say I would have one piece of paper here and one piece of paper here. On each of those I'd write these five categories, but for each of them I'd give a rating of 1 to 10. So 1 being not much there, 10 being absolutely 10 is awesome. One sucks. Okay, so here's how I do that. First, anytime I'm evaluating an opportunity, someone is pitching me an idea, wants me to invest in them, wants me to do something with them, or brings me a project or a new potential client or some new thing I can go do with my life. I always look at this very first thing I think about, okay, what would I have to put into this? And if I was going to get more out of it, what would it be? And here's the five measures I use to evaluate that. The first one is roi. Return on investment. If someone wants me to participate in an opportunity, I think, okay, if I participate, if I give that my blood, sweat, tears, time, money, resources, emotional energy, will the return on all of that be significant in the next 12 months? That's return on investment. Like, do I get my return on the investment fast? One would be a no. 10 would be absolutely. Okay, one is a no. 10 is absolutely. So I look at first and foremost the return on investment. Will there be one? Can I reasonably assume that there'd be a good return here? 1 out of 10? 1, no. 10, yes. Okay, so that's my first evaluation of my two opportunities. Like opportunity A is good. Opportunity opportunity B is good. How would I measure each on return on investment? The second category, I consider each of them and I give myself a scale of 1 to 10 is on future value. If I engage with this opportunity or this opportunity, how much would I get in future value from that? Not just an immediate return on investment, but does that position me well in the future, a year from now, two years from now, three years from now? Does the future value I get from that, either emotionally or in terms of skills training or true financial abundance, does it help me achieve a specific goal later on? Does it put me in the right network of people later on? That's all future value. Can I see that or is this just a short term win? See a lot of people, because they're evaluating opportunities based on retirement return on investment only, and they're not thinking about future value, they're usually making the wrong decision. They're going for a short term win versus the long term gain. And so combining Those two will help. So return on investment gets a score of 1 to 10 in each of those opportunities, and future value gets a scale of 1 to 10 in each of those opportunities. You're with me so far. Now, the third category that I measured though is is PD personal development. Engaging in this opportunity, does it challenge me? Does it stretch me? Does it help me improve and forge a better character? Do I deepen my skill sets, my knowledge, my talents, my abilities? In other words, do I develop a greater amount of competency and confidence in life because I went for this opportunity? Or is this opportunity just easy for me? Is this opportunity something that is way beyond? Is going to be more. Is this way too challenging? Way outside my comfort zone? These are things you should take into consideration. So personal development is a rating that you give yourself. If opportunity A gives me more personal development than opportunity B and they're equivalent on their return on investment and future value, I'm going to go with the one that's going to give me more personal development. Make sense. Like, that's absolutely important to me. Really important to me. Am I going to grow from this? Am I going to master my craft from this? Is this going to help me? Truly? Then after I've considered personal development on a scale of 1 to 10 on each side, now I consider another really important one. Lots of people don't think about lifestyle. Does this opportunity improve my lifestyle? Because, look, think about those top three measures, okay? It could give a return on investment. Awesome. Lots of people say yes. It could be an absolute amazing future value. Awesome. They go for it. It would stretch you, challenge you, grow. Awesome. They go for it. Lifestyle, it destroys your life. You have to work at it 70 hours a week. You have no time off. You wreck your family, you wreck your relationships. You are miserable, you are exhausted, and your entire lifestyle is get up, work like a cog in a machine, go to bed. That's not a good opportunity. Just because return on investment, future value, and growth are there, you still need to consider, life is short, man. I mean, people always say, well, it was okay for me to give away a decade of my life to do something I hated and was miserable. I'm like, no, no, no. Because there's so many opportunities. It just, you probably took your blinders. You need to take your blinders off and realize there's lots of good things you could be doing. There's no reason for any of us to slog through misery. It's certainly not in the more developed countries. You know, there's not abundance of opportunity Everywhere in the world, we're blessed. If you're watching this video live and it's streaming for you live, you're pretty blessed. Let me tell you what, especially if you're doing it on the phone, that's amazing that a video this long with this long winded guy could be still shouting at you on your phone. That's unbelievable. Yeah. So if that's true, that there's life is short and limited. Make sure you care about your lifestyle because your lifestyle isn't just yours. Your lifestyle affects your family, your spouse, your lover, your family, the kids. I mean, people are impacted by you. And if your lifestyle is completely out of whack all the time, work, you know, yet you're missing some of the finer beautiful moments of life. Is there one more category? I say there is. And it's really important too, because all those other things could be really high. But usually in one opportunity versus the other, this last one could help tip you in making that decision. And that is ew, which stands for emotional well being. You know, if doing this opportunity brings return on investment, future value grows me, allows me a lifestyle that I love. But it makes me insane because I got to deal with people I dislike all the time. I have to compromise on my integrity or my values if I have to do something in a way that I'm just constantly, always stressed emotionally in a horrible place, even though I'm growing, even though I'm making money in the future, even though, you know, my lifestyle is decent. But you know what? I know a lot of people, you know, multi millionaires, they're miserable because they didn't take the opportunity that made them feel fulfilled, because they weren't doing things that made them have a sense of meaning and purpose behind it. They took the return on investment, the future value, their growth and a beautiful lifestyle at the cost of their integrity, satisfaction, flow and fulfillment in life. That's emotional well being. So I think you get the point. You got five different categories. Each of those categories can be a scale of 1 to 10, right? You can a scale of no return on investment, all the way up to lots of return on investment, no future value, lots. No growth, lots of growth, no lifestyle, lots of lifestyle, no emotional well being. Lots of lifestyle, lots of emotional well being. That's five categories, 10 points each. That means each opportunity you can evaluate gives you a total of 50 possible points. Well, what I always see, one of them always wins. They are never ever equal. Unless I'm fooling myself. Look across 50 different point possibilities, 10 different ratings for each of those five categories, one of them is gonna win. When you're evaluating opportunities, and once it wins, there's one other thing you have to take into account, one other thing, and that is how does whichever one you choose impact, impact the community around you, meaning impact your family, your friends, those who are closest to you. Does it impact them in a positive way or a negative way? There's a social component to everything we do that we should always consider. There's lots of decisions we can make that would destroy the environment. There's lots of decisions that we can make that would, you know, lead us to destroying other people's lives. That's not cool. We have to decide what not only makes a difference and is good for us, but what makes a difference and is good for others as well. Once you've done that work of deciding between those two opportunities, now it's about not getting overwhelmed. When you jump into the opportunity. When you jump into the opportunity, don't forget the things we spoke about lifestyle, emotional well being. You need to bring in the energy that you want to in that opportunity. You need to make sure you set boundaries so you can have a life in that opportunity. And you need to make sure that you always know where are you marching? What is that thing that is meaningful and fulfilling to you? So that you continue to say no to other side projects to stay on path. I hope that that conversation served you in your opportunity evaluation today. Look, opportunity to overwhelm will always be there until you have your own criteria. How to say yes, how to say no. And you make that decision to stay on path. Make that decision to stay on path. More often you get to experience what we call the charge slide. Hey, my friend, it's Brendan. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Do me two favors. Number one, subscribe. Subscribe to this channel so that you continue to get updates every time I release new training for you. And number two, if you would like to get ahead a little faster in life, what I'd like to do is give you my 10 steps to achieving anything 10 times faster. So if you have a big goal, a big dream, a big mission in life, and you just like to achieve it faster, what would you need to do? You know, this is exactly what I, I keep next to my computer or next to my bed. And every time I have a big dream, a big goal, I open it up and I kind of use this as my checklist to get ahead faster. Because you and I both know if you're going to be more effective or more productive or you are going to achieve your goals and your dreams faster, you're going to have to switch your perspective a little bit on achievement itself. You have to adopt new thinking patterns and habits. You're going to have to have new daily rituals and habits. And your entire approach to learning and skill development must be better. So in order to help you do that, just go ahead and click the link in this post or go to brendan.com 10x that's Brendon B R E N D O n.com 10x and you can download this guide for free. Just tell me your name and email. I'm I'm happy to email that to you for free. The same guide I use to achieve any goal or dream faster. Thanks for tuning in. Until I see you next time, go out there every single day of your life. Live fully, love openly, and make your difference. Today.