I woke up this morning and realize that the usual saying in Nigeria "opportunity comes but once" which is from the idiom opportunity knocks but once.
You will only have one chance to do something important or profitable.
This saying may not be entirely true as I've found that the more consistent you are in what you do, the more you are likely to run into more opportunities.
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People who are a proponent of this idiom tend to go overboard when that opportunity present themselves. For instance, you are suddenly given a public office to manage, because you believe that opportunity knocks only once, you grab that opportunity to loot the whole treasury.
I would illustrate that consistency pays with two short stories.
Kaka's Story
First I would start with the story of Kaka.
Kaka was a secondary school leaver from the Southern part of Nigeria. He was a guy that had the opportunity to be given an extra in a movie, known popularly here as waka pass role since they walk pass in scenes.
He was excited for that opportunity to star in a blockbuster movie. He was given a three-second acting role as an extra, which he could only point out to his friends by stopping the movie.
Here is an opportunity to be a big-time Nollywood actor but to survive in that industry, he would need an education which unfortunately he does not have much of.
He decided to relocate to his home state and started entertaining people on public gathering for free.
He has his paid side gig which was MCing in weddings and other events. He is even a better orator that he is an actor. Ordinarily, people use to laugh at his jokes when he talks. He is now leveraging on that to make people laugh even at burials. That makes him an essential item at a boring political rally. He would go to a political gathering, uninvited, and mount his public address system and start telling anyone that cared to listen funny jokes.
He did it consistently with little success for four years. He was still running his side gigs of MCing in events.
He was growing popular, within a short time an ex-governor noticed his act and took a liking to his ability to get people to listen when he's either telling a joke or making a speech.
The ex-governor invited him to his house. He went and they became friends, he now speaks at major political events and is getting well paid.
He recognizes even though opportunity may knock on your door, if you are not qualified for it, you are better off doing another thing. His consistency and passion for public entertainment made him not give up those years when he was just another voice in the crowd giving free shows.
Peter's Story
Another story was that of Peter. Peter grew up too with only primary school education. He realized in time that school is not for him as he has zero aptitudes for scholarly things. Most of his classmates used to make fun of him calling names like Coconut Head, Dumb, etc. He used to get into fights a lot because of these name calling. As time passes he now ignores it. He left school after primary school and went to the next city, Aba in Abia State of Nigeria, known for their small-scale enterprises such as shoe manufacturing and clothing designs.
He started off as an apprentice, a job he stayed at for seven years. He was later free to open his own shop. Like his boss, he was just getting enough to get by. He was not comfortable either. He continued with the clothing line, sewing things for customers.
One day he decided to sell some of the produced clothes to neighboring states. He started by getting two of his friends who are both tailors to make the cloth while he sells it. Within months he was getting others that his two friends could not handle. He needed more tailors dedicated to sewing for him. He started traveling to further states like Lagos and Abuja to supply clothing boutiques. He used to enter Night buses because it is cheaper and guarantees he gets to the next the next morning at the open of the business day.
He consistently does this for months before he upgraded his transport to flight. He was excited and now has over fifty tailors working for him. He flies around the country making deliveries of clothes made.
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He decided to take it up a notch and now supplies same clothes outside of Nigeria. He now flies to Dubai monthly to see his customers. He even has some outlets in other countries. The "dumb" boy is now a rich boy. He is still consistently looking for new grounds to conquer.
You may say these are rare cases, but over time it's been proven that people who are consistent in what they do and never compromise on the quality of their work had been known to be successful.
Opportunities is directly proportional to preparation(aka hustling).
The more you work on something the higher the opportunities you see, so if you miss one today, another one will come tomorrow.
Also, you gotta keep working on a particular stuff, if your attention is scattered that opportunity that comes will become rare
So frequency of opportunities depends on you staying power on any particular venture, no matter how mundane the venture or activity is.
Your intelligence or IQ does not matter much, the stamina, passion, and consistency matters.
Regards,
