Stop Solving Hypothetical Problems

Entrepreneurship is a never ending game of whack a mole. As soon as you solve a problem, another one, another two, three seem to sprout up to take its place. So what we need to do as entrepreneurs, if we don’t want to go insane and lose our minds, is we need to make sure that we are solving the right problems and that we’re not wasting time and energy going after the moles that don’t actually matter. So the number one rule of entrepreneurship is that we do not solve problems that do not need solving. Now, I know that sounds, like, really obvious to say, however, we do this to ourselves constantly. 90% of my coaching simply feels like pointing out that, hey, you’re trying to solve the wrong problem or a problem that is not actually a problem. That’s a lot of what I do as a coach, is just give perspective. To say that thing that you’re bashing your head against right now, you don’t even need to worry about that.

You’ve just inflicted brain damage for literally no reason. Because even if you get through that wall, it’s not the right direction. You’re going the wrong way. Right. And I was thinking about this because it came up yesterday on my walk with Jamie. We were out celebrating our 6th anniversary. We went to Stillwater, Minnesota, and just walked around and went to this cute little downtown area. It was lovely.

But Jamie has just stepped into the world of entrepreneurship. She launched her first business and around yoga, around wellness, around mindset, and they did their first retreat this weekend. She did it with another gentleman, and she was brainstorming or asking questions about, like, what to do next, how to build the momentum off the back of this event, because it went really well. People were excited. They were already asking, when’s the next one? Now she was asking me, well, what do I do? Because the guy that I’m partnered with on this right now, you know, we work really well together at the event, but we have different speeds outside the event. He’s not so organized, and he’s not so, like, he’s a little bit more free flowing and, you know, a little bit more of a sprite of the earth. And she’s like, I’m ready to start planning if the dates locked in and start running at it, but he has some other things going on in his life. So how do I.
How do I deal with this? How do I approach this? What should I do? And I just stop. Well, not in, just stopper. A lot of my job as a partner is just to listen. Sometimes it’s just to listen and go, uh huh. Yeah. Yep. But in this case, I was like, okay, you’re asking for advice. So here’s.
Here’s what I would say is that you are making a problem out of something that is not yet a problem. You’re trying to solve a hypothetical problem. And this is one of my biggest no no’s in business. We do not solve hypothetical problems. We go out there and we do the thing. We make a problem, and then we solve that problem. That’s the theory of constraints. The theory of constraints does not say that we relieve future constraints on the business.
No, it says we relieve the current constraint. What is the thing that’s restricting growth in the moment? Remove that as the constraint, and it will open up the growth. It will reveal what the next constraint is, and then we move to that one. But we do not worry about solving the next constraint or the constraint after that constraint until we’ve solved the current constraint. And in this case, it was a classic example as, like, you’re making a problem out of something that’s not yet a problem because you haven’t even talked to him yet. Right. I would say, just go put the date on the calendar, get everything organized, reach out to him, say, here’s what we’re doing. And then if there’s a problem, then we deal with it at that point.
So she comes back to me a couple hours later that night, I think, yeah. So we’re back home later that night. She comes to me. She goes, okay. I got the next event scheduled. I reached out. He’s actually totally cool and on board. I said, hey, here’s when it is.
He’s like, awesome. Perfect. And she’s like, and that was much less painful than I thought it was going to be. I was like, exactly. So we spent time and anxiety and energy. Our imagination was, like, just spinning its wheels out on solving a problem that was not yet an actual problem. And so I encourage you, take a look at your life and your business right now, and what problems are you trying to solve that are not yet problems? Or what problems are you spinning your wheels on that are keeping you from focusing your full attention on the problems that actually are within your business? Now, if you’re not sure what those meaningful problems even are that need to be tackled and in what order? That is where a coach comes in. That’s where getting that outside third party perspective, getting that vantage point where they can see the field further than you, and they can say, okay, that thing, that is a real obstacle.
We got to come over that. That one over there, that’s not a problem. So ignore that. You’re going to be tempted to try and solve that, but don’t solve that one. Just let it burn down. Okay. Cause a lot of problems can be solved simply by letting them burn down. So if you need help with that, if you need help, um, figuring out in your own business, uh, what the problems are that you need to solve in order to unlock that next level of growth, I would encourage you to go to beyond theapex.com and apply to join the apex accelerator.

This is the group, the very small group of entrepreneurs that I put together. All they’re doing between six and seven figures of revenue. And, uh, the goal is to help you maximize your return on life so that you can go out there, build a big, awesome, profitable business that can make a massive impact on the world. If that sounds like you, if you think you would benefit from that community and from personal coaching with me and the systems processes that I’ve used over the years to do the things that we’ve done a few times, then beyond theapex.com, go sign up. We’ll see if it’s a good fit. If it is, I’ll be in touch. If not, keep consuming the content until you get to the point where you are a fantastic fit. And that will do it for me.

Guys and gals, I appreciate you being here. We’ll catch you in the next episode.