Lets face it, we all have problems and the number of them grow over time. Health problems, family problems, problems in business or your career. The focus of this post is really about professional problems, but for the others, my opinion is that they are typically symptoms of something broken in system. If you can find and fix them before they become “terminal”, you can transform your reality in ways you don’t see yet.

In my professional life, it turns out that I tend to seek out problems. I’ve complained and I’ve suffered through them – skimping on meals to support my startups struggling with cash flow, or staying up all night wondering how to move a key strategic partner who has become a bottleneck and is killing my momentum. And unfortunately, as my ambition grew, and my impact in the business world grew – so did the quantity and magnitude of my problems.

As time passes, and as I’ve seen some successes at the end of my struggles, I’ve started to view problems very differently – as simple things that show me where opportunity lies. And often the big, most consuming problems – represent the biggest opportunities of them all (if it is not too late to fix).

If you think about it differently, finding and solving problems is the actual goal of businesses. If you’ve improved a workflow or adapted your product or business to deal with a pressing problem, you’ve likely just created tremendous value – something will will likely be financially or personally rewarding. I’d venture so far to say that in my opinion, the pursuit of success is pretty much the pursuit of more problems for yourself. And I can’t speak for anyone besides myself, but while a part of me craves a peaceful life, I know that if I found a life without daily struggles, I’d feel like I wasn’t living up to my potential.

In summary, there seems to be a universal law where one’s success is directly correlated to the volume of problems one has solved – you only need to look to people like Elon Musk and the cash flow constraints at Tesla or SpaceX, or the constant legal battles to see a manifestation of that.

So I wish you bigger professional problems, and also the fortitude and creativity to solve those problems. Because when you get over the initial frustration and find a way to solve it – you’ll likely make yourself, your net worth, and the world a little bit better.

… And if you have a particular professional problem that you’d like to brainstorm – don’t hesitate to reach out and I’m happy to see how we can untangle it together.