After college, I went to work for a big local company.
The pay was low, the hours were long and some of the things they wanted you to do to get ahead seemed ridiculous.
Example: One time in a performance review, a boss told me the ‘company’ was concerned about my loyalty because when they asked me to go out of town and miss my first year wedding anniversary, I told them I wanted to check with my wife first. 😕
Example 2: A friend & co-worker was told that to get promoted, he needed to get spandex shorts, a racing bike & a book on Lance Armstrong because that’s what the VP of sales was into. 😬
In short, I had a big problem called a Job.
So when a friend asked me if I was open to looking at a way to make a lot of money helping people, I said “Heck yeah!” and that’s how I found & joined my very first home business.
Moral of the story: My problem led to cash for someone else because they showed me a solution to my problem.
Problems Into Profits: 5 Great Truths
If problems = profits, we’d all be swimming in money because problems are everywhere right?
See, that’s the thing… Problems are everywhere but it’s not problems that ring the cash register, it’s solutions.
Here are 5 great truths that successful people use to profit from problems.
Big Truth #1 – everyone’s got em’.
You got a problem?
Congratulations, so does every other human on planet earth.
People love to run around and talk about their problems with others.
Newsflash: this is not profitable.
Complaining about problems all the time is repulsive to success oriented people – so this is like spraying yourself with “Success repellent.”
Have you ever heard someone complain about how bad things are these days?
Paul Harvey once said,
“In times like these, it’s always helpful to remember that there have always, been times like these.”
Jim Rohn said, in 4,000 years of recorded history, the story hasn’t changed.
Opportunity mixed with difficulty.
That’s what we’ve got to work with.
‘It isn’t going to change.’
Big Truth #2 – they give meaning to life.
In order to profit from problems, you have to flip the script on the way you look at them.
As mentioned, most people hate problems, complain about them and wish them away.
To profit from problems, we must not view problems like most people do.
An attitude of gratitude towards problems helps you to begin to see them in a higher light.
Try this…
“I’m so thankful for problems because they give me a chance to learn.”
“I’m so thankful for problems because they give me a chance to strengthen my faith.”
“I’m so thankful for problems because they make life interesting…”
What’s the last movie you watched that had zero conflict and everyone was “Happy ever after” right from the start all the way to the end?
Exactly. There isn’t one because you couldn’t imagine anything more boring than that.
Problems do the same for the story of our lives and the sooner we begin to see them for what they are, and shift our energy toward them, the sooner we’ll be able to profit from them.
Big Truth #3 – The problem is not actually the problem
John Maxwell writes “There is a world of difference between a person who has a big problem and a person who makes a problem big.”
I worked in customer service for years before I went full time in my home business and one thing I learned from taking a lot of phone calls, is that people love to take their “problem” and turn it into the world’s biggest disaster.
Was it the problem that was the problem or was it the way these people were reacting that was the real problem?
Every single ‘problem’ they brought to me was solvable.
I learned that just because someone says there’s an emergency – doesn’t mean there is one.
In fact, in the vast majority of cases, there isn’t.
If you want to learn to profit from problems, step one is,
“Don’t panic.”
Problem solving requires clear, level headed thinking and emotions hijack this asset.
Don’t be “That guy” or “That gal” that turns every little thing into a monumental issue.
Get good at turning mountains back into mole hills where they belong.
Big Truth #4 – Not All Problems Are Solvable
If I can’t do something about a problem, it’s not my problem; it’s a fact of life.
-Fred Smith
I like to tell myself that “All problems are solvable” because this helps me cultivate mindset of being solutions oriented.
That being said, I also know that not all problems are solvable by me, and not all problems are solvable by me right now.
I’ve heard it said that the goal of the news is to make every problem in the world, your problem.
What good does that do?
Can you solve every problem in the world?
No you can’t.
We all have a limited amount of time to do things that matter, and it’s important that we figure out which problems we’re gonna care about and which ones we’re going to put on someone else’s ‘to care‘ list.
Big Truth #5 – You see what you’re looking for
Remember the image of the lady? What do you see?
Young lady or older lady?
The truth is both are present in the image and you can train your mind to find one versus the other.
Problems are like this too. We can train our minds to see all the downsides, but guess what, all the upsides are there too, we’re just not seeing them, and that’s a choice.
And vice versa, it’s a choice to see the tree in the seed, the opportunity in the problem, so on and so forth.
We can train our minds to…
- Be thankful for problems versus complain about them “Blame and remain, praise and be raised.” -Brett Hudson
- Appreciate the meaning problems give to our existence
- Always remember that our problems are small (not big) especially compared to problems others in the world are facing
- Choose the problems that are meaningful to us to solve, and release all the other ones from our “to-care” list
- Remember that we always see what we’re looking for so we can train our minds to look for the good
Thanks for reading & whatever you do, always go for your dreams,
PS: This last year one of our developers told us he wasn’t going to help us anymore. That was a problem. 7 months later, we’ve completely rebuilt our products & residual income system from scratch, and made a decades long dream come true. I
It has everything we’ve always wanted & we’re now fully empowered to make it better each and every day.
Just yesterday we implemented dark mode based on customer requests.
Check out what a couple of our members said…
So, was the note I got from our developer back in March of this year, a problem or a path to a better future? 😉
PPS: IMO, one of the BEST things you can do that helps turn problems into profits, is to prepare yourself each day via a proven routine designed to unfold your vision and strengthen your inner resources.
This is the thing all of us should do, that very few of us actually do.
This is why I put together this free training, in the hopes it can inspire more people to make the difference that actually makes the biggest difference, in how your life works out over time.