#growth How do you cultivate opportunities? There's an old adage that says "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity". The implication is that luck is more than just random chance, we have some control over it. It's clear we can control our preparation, but can we control our opportunities? Maybe not entirely, but we can increase our odds of finding opportunity. Opportunity bites when someone recognizes the value you can bring to their problem. ### Threads When more people know the value you can bring to the table, the more people there are who can offer you opportunities. It's really that simple. And this is the idea of "threads". The more people you reach out to, the more that know about you. The vast majority likely won't have any opportunities to throw your way, but you won't know if you don't ask or don't mention it. Social media does this extremely well, but only if you already have a network to reach out to. But cultivating threads of opportunity, one by one, can also be extremely rewarding. It's a lot of time, but the personalized connection has a much stronger impact than a broad dissemination. (Keeping in [loose touch](https://firstround.com/review/how-to-make-connections-that-count-advice-from-a-silicon-valley-veteran-and-introvert/) with the people in your network is a tried-and-true way to maintain it.) <!-- There's a threshold at which reaching into your bowl full of opportunities switches from "unlikely to find something" to "likely to find something", and that's when your situation changes from unlucky to lucky.--> tldr: Reaching out to people, whether it's people you know or new people, about the things you are interested in doing creates threads of opportunity. The more threads you have, the more opportunities will come your way. At some point you will reach an [[Scarcity to Abundance|abundance]] of opportunities, when there are too many great things to do but not enough time; that's a good sign that you have many on-going threads. <!--There's a link somewhere in this note to omens (being able to see opportunities, and hear the unspoken language), and to entrepreneurship.--> ### Snowballs Once you have an opportunity, there is an unfairness to life that you can harness. One opportunity handled well, even if not perfectly, snowballs into more opportunities. This is simply because your demonstrated success in one situation causes people to [[Trust|trust]] you in other, similar situations. You can snowball your life by harnessing opportunities. Your early opportunities lead to noteworthy accolades that provide proof of your accomplishments. Other people see these accolades and entrust you with new, bigger opportunities. The sequence of events snowballs until you have more opportunities than you have time to handle. But how do we snowball? We start by creating many different threads, beginnings of snowballs, and some of them will pick up steam. For each opportunity you take on, do good work that resonates with people and [[Work in Public|work in public]] so others can see what you're doing and what you're interested in doing. Some of your threads will pick up steam and turn into snowballs. Some will not. #### Snowballing Financially You can snowball your financial life as well. Financially, you can create revenue streams that snowball without your own work - but rather by participation of other people in the product/environment. This is part of the business model of all social media platforms, but it is not exclusive to them. Investing in low-maintenance stocks is another example of financial snowballing. ### Context I thought about the financial side of snowballing after reading this comment: [Overall, most “how to get rich” books and principles out there simply educate you on how to create a snowball effect with leverage.](https://old.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/ioxfcs/reflections_on_entrepreneurship_education/)