Why Some People Spot Opportunity While Others Don't
Published October 2026
Have you ever noticed how two people can look at exactly the same situation and see something completely different?
One sees risk.
The other sees possibility.
One immediately finds all the reasons something might not work.
The other starts wondering what might happen if it does.
Neither person necessarily has more information than the other.
They're simply asking different questions.
We See What We're Looking For
I spent 29 years working for BT.
For much of that time, like millions of other people, I thought about income in a fairly conventional way.
You worked.
You got paid.
If you wanted to earn more, you either progressed within the company, worked more hours or found a better-paid job.
There's nothing wrong with that model. It supported my family for many years.
But it also shaped the way I looked at opportunities.
If somebody had shown me something that didn't offer a guaranteed salary in exchange for a defined number of hours, I might once have regarded that as a disadvantage.
Today, I'd probably notice something completely different.
I'd ask whether it had the potential to create an income that wasn't permanently tied to those hours.
Same opportunity.
Different question.
Experience Changes What You Notice
This happens everywhere.
A property developer can walk past a tired house and see potential where somebody else sees a wreck.
An experienced mechanic hears an engine noise differently from the person driving the car.
An entrepreneur may look at a problem and immediately wonder whether there's a business hidden inside it.
It's not necessarily because they're smarter.
They've simply learned what to look for.
I think opportunities work the same way.
Sometimes we reject them not because we've examined them carefully and found them wanting, but because they don't fit the model we already understand.
The Problem With Needing Certainty
There's another difficulty.
Opportunity usually arrives before certainty.
If the outcome were already guaranteed, everybody would recognise it.
Starting a business, learning a new skill, changing career, investing for the future or building an additional income all involve making decisions before you know exactly where they'll lead.
That doesn't mean blindly saying yes to everything.
Quite the opposite.
Good judgement matters.
But there's a difference between asking:
“What could go wrong?”
and asking:
“What would I need to learn to make this work?”
The first question is useful.
The problem comes when it's the only question we ask.
Five Conversations Aren't Evidence
I've seen this particularly clearly through building a business with Utility Warehouse.
Someone can start with absolutely no previous experience, speak to a handful of people and receive responses that are less enthusiastic than they'd hoped.
It's remarkably easy at that point to conclude:
“This doesn't work for me.”
But what have they really discovered?
Perhaps they've spoken to five people.
Perhaps they're still uncomfortable explaining what they're doing.
Perhaps they haven't yet learned how to handle the questions they're being asked.
Perhaps they simply spoke to five people who weren't interested.
That's not failure.
It's barely a sample.
I've also watched people start from a similarly inexperienced position, step outside their comfort zone, learn what they needed to learn and keep going.
Some have subsequently built businesses producing substantial incomes.
The difference wasn't that every person they approached said yes.
They didn't.
The difference was that they didn't treat their earliest results as a verdict on their future.
Possibility Isn't a Promise
This distinction matters.
Spotting an opportunity doesn't mean assuming it will work.
Nobody can promise that.
An opportunity is exactly what the word suggests:
a possibility.
What happens next depends on an enormous number of things — effort, skill, persistence, circumstances, timing and sometimes plain luck.
But dismissing something before you've properly tested it guarantees one outcome.
You'll never discover what might have happened.
Ask a Better Question
As I've got older, I've become much less interested in asking:
“Will this definitely work?”
Very few worthwhile things in life come with that guarantee.
I think a better question is:
“Is there enough potential here to justify finding out?”
That doesn't require blind optimism.
It requires curiosity.
Look at the downside.
Understand the commitment.
Ask sensible questions.
Then look at the upside too.
Because occasionally the biggest opportunities in our lives don't arrive looking like opportunities.
Sometimes we have to learn how to recognise them.