If there is one idea underneath everything I’ve learned about careers, business, investing, relationships, and opportunity, it’s this:
Most opportunities are discussed before they exist.
Not announced.
Not posted.
Not launched.
Not funded.
Discussed.
The distinction matters more than people realize.
For most of my career, I thought opportunities arrived fully formed.
A company raises a round.
A role gets posted.
A client hires an agency.
A founder starts a business.
An investor makes an investment.
An executive gets hired.
The opportunity appears and people either seize it or miss it.
That’s the story most of us tell because it’s the version we can see.
But the more time I spent around founders, investors, operators, executives, and people who seemed unusually good at finding opportunities, the more I realized I was looking at the wrong part of the movie.
I was watching the ending.
They were watching the beginning.
A company gets funded.
What nobody sees are the dozens of conversations that happened befor…
