“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” — Mark Twain

Creating Opportunity.

Nicholas Tran
Sep 4, 2018 · 3 min read

Inspired by a recent conversation, I was motivated to create a personal challenge for myself that made the introverted self extremely uncomfortable.


Let’s back track for a bit. I recently graduated from university in May 2018, but of course to my dismay, I couldn’t find a full time position or opportunity to jump at after graduation. I ended up moving back home in a quiet suburban town feeling absolutely worthless and disappointed, mostly in myself.

After 2 or so months of searching for more opportunities, I had to settle with a 6 week position so that I wouldn’t “sit on my ***.” Within this position, I found myself realizing that I need to create opportunity for myself and not blindly hope for something to come to me.


The challenge begins…

After the 2nd day working in the position, inspired by a recent conversation, I set a personal challenge for myself outside of work obligations to meet someone new every SINGLE day within the 6 week term. (The goal was to meet at least 30 people within the 400+ employee company).

So… I have this challenge now but how did I start? Realizing that Skype is one of the many communication platforms within the company, I leveraged this in order to connect with people and schedule meetings. Not knowing anyone’s names I simply started by going through the alphabet, A-Z. I would type A in the search function and whom ever popped up, I would message them and ask for a meeting to pick their brain. Then I would type B… C… and so on.

As I scheduled the first meeting, I was fearful. But knowing that I have to commit to the meeting in order to fulfill this challenge, I simply embraced the process. Once I scheduled the first meeting and had the initial conversation, I was hooked. (As an introvert, I didn’t think it was possible for me to enjoy conversations like these.)

As more and more people connected with me, they started giving me recommendations to speak too so and so, and this was where it truly gained momentum. Every single day afterwards I was able to continue my challenge and meet someone new, it was amazing.


“Not every temp does this. What you’re doing is incredible.”

By the end of the 6 weeks, I have surpassed my goal of having meaningful conversations with at least 30 people.

I have met and connected with close to 40 interesting people by the end of my position.

I was able to meet all C level executives within the 2nd week of this challenge. (I was able to schedule all of them within a one week span. I learned something very important speaking to these people. More on that later).

My name began to be noticed around several departments. (I even got in trouble for being noticed so fast).

My team specifically, realized I was different and encouraged me to keep going. (It was amazing to see that colleagues encouraged my challenge).

I’ve created doors that weren’t there before because I set a challenge for myself that allowed new opportunities to exist.


What did I learn from this experience?

Commit to a goal and see it through, you never know what comes out of the other end unless you try. More on this in a new article…


If you made it this far, thank you. I hope you enjoyed this read as it was my first “article” written. More experiences and takeaways (what I learned speaking with C level executives, how I got in trouble and more) will be written about this challenge.

Continue to follow my content, I will be posting a lot more in order to complete another challenge I have for myself.

Nicholas Tran

Written by

Embracing passionate curiosity.

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