When you or your business are faced with key decisions, using your ability to leverage your available assets (i.e. capital, people, etc.) will save you time and money. Sometimes it is difficult to view tough choices as opportunities, but they always are. To build your lifestyle around a successful business, you need to know how to leverage your resources for these opportunities prudently and as early as necessary. Developing the skills to turn your challenges into opportunities will enable you to build a lifestyle and legacy for which you may be proud.

The difficulty for most businesses is making the judgement between allowing a situation time to develop organically or to intervene by driving forward when progress is not satisfactory. There is no signal that automatically alerts you that an opportunity is upon you, and it is time to intervene. The skills to make this judgement will come partly with experience, and partly with the use of certain proven methods derived from the experience of others.

The object is to save you both time and money. This balance may not always seem simple on the surface. But early action is the most crucial element for efficiently converting a seemingly complex situation into a manageable series of routine tasks and a system to assure the business operates as expected. As with anything else in life, it is best to take remedial action early and avoid problems rather than to attempt to contain problems later on. and with that in mind, these two skills can be used to help you with forecasting as well as immediate judgement.

One of the key skills in determining when it is time to intervene in a process is simple opportunity cost analysis. Put simply, opportunity cost analysis is the system of analyzing the cost of making a decision, measured by the estimated cost incurred by not taking it. For example, someone withdrawing funds from a savings bank is incurring the estimated cost of the lost interest on the savings. That is the cost of taking that opportunity.

You can use this methodology to determine when you need to take action in business. By examining the potential opportunity cost of not taking action, you can determine whether it is necessary or too early.

If this method seems difficult, then a simpler version is to simply analyze the costs versus the benefits. This is as simple as it sounds, when deciding whether you need to make a serious intervention in your business, you should examine the potential costs balanced against what you hope to gain from making that intervention.

It may initially seem that these methodologies are virtually the same, but it is important that you understand the differences between the two. A cost-benefit analysis is a relatively simple assessment of the pros and cons of a decision about early intervention. An opportunity cost analysis is a more sophisticated analysis of the costs of not doing the next best thing, and should set you on the path of a better understanding of your business.

These skills are something you should regularly practice, not just in relation to tackling difficulties in your business, but on any business decisions you encounter. Doing this will help you keep these skills sharp, and you will be better able to deploy them when encountering a critical decision.

Balancing a time/money decisions does not require you handle such matters on your own. Leverage the resources and assets that are available to you. Leveraging capital, knowledge, skills and experiences can help you navigate through a number of difficult decisions in the years ahead. Leveraging opportunities effectively will build an enduring lifestyle and a proud legacy to enjoy.