Steve Larosiliere

Do you ever hear opportunity knocking and you’re hesitant to open the door?

• Maybe it’s a job
• A relationship
• A chance to travel
• Starting a business
• Doing freelance / side projects

I’m not talking about any ole opportunity. I’m talking about genuine opportunity that could change your life trajectory.

Of course there are reasons not take advantage of an opportunity. Maybe it’s too expensive. Perhaps you say, “I need to do something first.”

For me, I fall into a trap of saying “there is always next year.”  I’m never ready receive an opportunity this year.

Whenever opportunity presents itself and we shy away from it, our brain tells us that we’re not ready. 

We’re actually scared and are fearful of what it means. You might tell yourself, “I ain’t scared of no opportunity!”

Actually YES, you are. 

There is fear of the unknown. There’s fear of failure. Fear of being exposed.

To overcome the fear associated with opportunity, we need to assess certain things. Here’s a checklist that I recently went through.

1. Who am I and what are my long term goals?
2. Is this opportunity in line with the answer to question #1?
3. What will I gain/lose by taking on or passing up the opportunity?

I came up with this process when I was evaluating signing a lease to a new office for Stoked.

I knew I wanted to get a new office this year and get a space to call our own.

We’ve been subtenants of other companies for 7 years!

I’ve been looking at office spaces for the past few months, but they were either in a bad location or crappy condition.

But I found a space and fell completely in love with when I first saw it. It was a little bit bigger than our space now, but not as big as I wanted. It is the same price as our current space.

Quite frankly a place like this comes very rarely. I debated for so long. One night I couldn’t sleep, because I was evaluating it so hard. I came back to the questions above. 

These are my answers:

1. As the founder of Stoked, I want to surround myself with highly motivated community of creative individuals who want more out of life and mentor the next generation of youth to succeed.

2. Yes, because, I seek a space in which myself and my team are inspired to create daily. 

3. What we gain: A new office in which we are the sole tenants; We can build it out to our needs; We can eliminate the need for outside storage; a neighborhood of creative people. What we lose: leaving the neighborhood in which Stoked was founded; the security of being a subtenant; It’s just scary to leave familiar surroundings.

Along with a few other questions that I answered, I decided to pull the trigger and sign the lease! We move in May 1. I’m Stoked! The picture above is the door to the actual office.

Is there an opportunity in front of you that you’re fearful of? Can answering a few questions make a difference? Let me know!