The True Cost of Opportunism

Today I have a very disappointing but real example of someone I know not being opportunistic, this is the story of how my best friend’s grandfather missed out on becoming a billionaire. It might sound crazy but his grandfather had an opportunity to invest/become part owner of McDonalds. His grandfather was a friend of Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonalds, and could have invested in the beginning when McDonalds was a new company. To think that if his grandfather would’ve invested with Mr. Kroc, I would never have met him because he would’ve been living a dream life with all the money his family could ever need/want in some mansion in Beverly Hills. This story is definitely a prime example when someone didn’t act opportunistic because he was faced with a very hard decision of investing almost all he had with Ray Kroc and found the company known as McDonalds. One might think that he was incredible stupid not to take up on that opportunity but he made a decision that I feel many people would struggle with and contemplate if this would be a smart move. Obviously someone looking back would say imagine if he would’ve invested all he had and think that now his family would be rich beyond their wildest dream. 

I believe that he made his decision based off of the risk of losing everything, a concept that many people worry about when they make a large investment. While this opportunity wasn’t unethical at all it still resonates with the concept of risk/reward. This idea of risk-taking is a big reason why people contemplate their decisions many times in their head and end up either making a lot of money or losing a lot of money. While I’ve never really had a long conversation with his grandfather I can definitely see why he made the decision he did, while I might disagree with that decision, I haven’t been in his situation before and haven’t needed to make such a risky decision that could’ve crippled him financially. In addition, risk-taking is sometimes seen as gambling, which is a difficult think for a new businessman to rationalize because an investment can be gone as quickly as the company starts to take off. I admire his decision to think before he invested a lot of his money, however as I feel I am a risk-taker, I believe I would’ve invested even though the risks were very high.

This story to me tells a real story about opportunism because every day people are faced with risky decisions and whether or not to either invest in the stock market or make a less sever decision like whether or not to go to a certain school over another. This story just makes me wonder what opportunities will come my way and how I will make decisions to either go with the higher risk decision or not. I hope that you guys reading this will just picture in your head what life would’ve been like for my best friends family if his grandfather would’ve went with the risky decision and invested all he had into McDonalds.