When Preparation Meets Opportunity

Before we get

too deep into this episode,

I want to let you know that opportunity does not change your life.

An opportunity is only as valuable as what you bring to the table.

If you show up halfway committed, even the easiest opportunities become harder than they need to be.

But when you show up prepared, focused and ready, even the smallest opportunity can be a game changer.

I remember a story my grandmother used to tell me about my great-great-grandfather, Lewis Smith.

He spent the first 20 years of his life enslaved.

Bondage was all he knew.

The idea of American dream wasn't even a possibility.

And then almost overnight, everything changed.

Freedom gave him something he'd never possessed.

The opportunity to determine his own future.

But his freedom alone didn't guarantee his success.

The road ahead was filled with obstacles, poverty, discrimination from a society that offered very few advantages to the newly free black slave.

Now he could have stayed on the plantation working for the same slave owner.

He could have settled for survival instead of significance.

He could have allowed his circumstances to dictate his future or blame a system that had given him every reason to lose hope.

Instead, he chose to pursue his American dream.

So he worked splitting railroad ties.

But every day he carried a vision that stretched beyond the work.

He didn't see a paycheck.

He saw a possibility.

While others might have focused on today, he was invested in tomorrow.

He saved faithfully, dollar by dollar, until his savings became land, and the land became home, and that home became a legacy.