Why successful people run toward problems

Somebody asked me a question I love: what challenges do I actually appreciate having in my life? What makes it interesting? Most people would never ask it that way, because they think of challenges as the thing standing between them and the good life. I think the challenges are the good life.

Here is a picture of what I mean. In my companies we run on statistics, and a stat that is climbing is a rocket ride. It is challenging because rockets do not just keep going up; sometimes the whole thing falls out of the sky, and we even have a name for that moment on the graph, because it is the sound you make when you see it: whoa. A line that was doing really well hits a holiday week and falls apart, climbs back up, and crashes back down again.

That graph does not upset me. I choose the battles I want to fight, and that changes everything about how the drops feel.

I get to go help somebody

I have a company in America called American Power and Gas, the most amazing place I have been around in this lifetime. And now I am working on building another one in Italy with my business partner. We believe we can create a monster of a company there, help thousands of people across Italy make a better living and raise the quality of their lives, and for the ones who really go to work at it, change their lives completely, to where they are earning alongside the top earners in the country.

That is what gets me up in the morning. I have all these problems, all these barriers, everything coming at me at once, and I go, okay, but I get to go help somebody today. Last week 251 people had extra money in their pockets because they did a bit of work with us and earned well for it. So the question running through my head is simple: how do I get that to five hundred a week, then six hundred? How do I get everything getting better?

Get over it

People get frustrated with things being difficult. It is the wrong viewpoint. The difficult part is exactly where the prize is: if you find what is really going on behind the difficulty, and you go in there and rip it out of your life, you come out the other side with a better quality of life.

But I meet so many people who start complaining. This is wrong, that is bad, this is hard. Get over it. That is life. If you think for one second you are going to escape problems, you are mistaken.

The more you want to have, the bigger the problems are going to be. That is the price of admission. You can decide to put a bag over your head and hide in a closet to get away from it all, and even then you cannot do it. The problems will find you in the closet. So since there is no escaping them, pick problems worth having.

The people around you

This is what keeps my life alive: I work very hard to surround myself with really cool people, and I mean I work at it. I am constantly aware of what is around me. Am I dealing with people who are bright, who are intelligent, who have a zest for life like mine? People who care about getting something done, who are willing to work hard, who can actually make something occur and move the needle? Those are the people I want around me, because with them a problem stops being a burden and becomes a game I can actually play.

Right now I am building up a financial services business with a handful of employees bringing in clients, and in my head I am already asking what it looks like with five hundred clients. How do I make it bigger? How do I make it grander? How do I conquer that mountain?

And it does not matter what industry it is. Home services in the UK, wedding venues around the world, the energy business in America and in Italy, a digital advertising agency. These businesses are completely unrelated; one has nothing to do with the other. But the same few principles I hold dear carry me through every one of them, and they keep me involved, keep me moving, keep me hustling, so I can have the quality of life I want to have.

Run at it

So that is why I keep doing it. That is why I keep bringing these challenges to me instead of waiting for them to find me. I do not run from problems. I run at them, I conquer them, and then I go find the next one, and the next one after that. I promise you, it keeps life exciting.

And I will tell you the other half. The level of success I have gotten from life came because I am willing to run at these problems, embrace them, find them, and solve them. I get the spoils of a life well lived, and I can pretty much have anything I want to have. That is not bragging; that is just what comes to the person who stops complaining about the mountain and starts climbing it.