Why Every Problem Should Excite You: The Most Vital Skill for Entrepreneurs

Kasim: 00:00:11

This video might be a little over the top, so my ask of everybody,

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especially my long time subscribers,

is to maybe protect me from myself and

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let me know whether or not this is the

type of content you'd be interested in.

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Let's calibrate together.

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You can say, hey dude, you're, you're, you

know, you're sharing a little too much.

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Why don't you peel it back and

talk more about Google Ads?

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That said...

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I have a topic that I was inspired to

write about on my Twitter thread and

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now I'm shooting a video on it which is

one of the most important lessons I've

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ever learned as an entrepreneur is the

ability to reframe and I'll give you my

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journey towards learning that lesson and

then, and then maybe some other examples

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that might be a little more sterile.

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I was raised by a blind single

mother on social security disability

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in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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And I've probably said that

sentence a hundred million times.

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Because I, was obsessed

with that narrative.

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Me and my little brother were

effectively welfare babies and

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I loved telling people about it.

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I loved telling people how poor

we were and, how hard things

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were and, it was my identity.

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I was wrapped up in it, and it was wrapped

around me, and I used it as a shield and

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a sword and because I was a poor kid,

there were just things I couldn't do, and

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it held me back in ways that I'll never

even begin to articulate, probably in

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a bunch of ways I don't even understand

still it was my excuse, It's amazing

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opportunity that was thrust upon me.

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I ended up I was 19 years old and I made

friends with a gentleman Who's my now

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business mentor of 20 years and he and

his wife took me to Egypt for a wedding

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He had a friend who's getting married and

he said hey, why don't you come with me?

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I'd never traveled internationally and

barely traveled out of the southwest

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And all of a sudden I find myself

in Cairo sitting at This little

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table outside of a bazaar having

amazing tea, but I'm surrounded by

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while a beautiful country, Egypt doesn't

have the strong social safety nets that

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the United States has for various reasons.

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This isn't an indictment on anybody,

but, you know, there are these little

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five and six year old kids running up

to us asking for money, and they're

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literally sleeping on the streets.

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And I realized right away, oh, I'm not...

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I never was poor.

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maybe we were beans and rice or ramen

family, but we never went to bed hungry.

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Never slept outside.

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And it shattered my illusions immediately.

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It was such a blessing.

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Just to realize how lucky I was and that

was the reframe that was the reframe

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any one of those kids could have been

and probably was smarter than me more

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industrious than me More capable than

me and they didn't have what I had.

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I had Effectively a trust fund Maybe not

in the traditional sense But the United

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States Social Security Administration was

a trust and an entire nation of people

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had more or less voted on Providing for

me and my little brother and giving us the

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opportunity to have opportunities and that

was a massive reframe that led to so Many

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I couldn't have done anything that I've

done since without first understanding

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that and that's the funny thing about

entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship is a

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contradiction in terms Entrepreneurship

It's about solving problems.

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In order to do that, you have to perceive

the opportunity within the problem.

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And for most of us, we're trained

to see problems as problems.

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And rightfully so, by the way.

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That's how problems should

be perceived by most people.

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But most people aren't entrepreneurs.

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And if you want to be a really

good entrepreneur, every problem

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has to be an opportunity.

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First.

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Every problem has to be an

opportunity first before you

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can go and solve that problem.

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And before you can, build a

business grow and expand and

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make money and be successful.

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So learning to reframe Might be the most

important skill you can cultivate as an

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early stage entrepreneur And i've got

a couple of really specific examples

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that maybe aren't as sad or depressing

as mine the first one is airbnb the

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founders of airbnb Were having trouble

paying their rent I mean you want to

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talk about an amazing reframe here

are a couple of guys who are like, We

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don't know where we're going to live.

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But you know what?

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Other people have this problem too.

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And I've been couchsurfing

for the last couple of weeks,

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and that's actually really...

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Helped you scratch that itch.

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I wonder if we don't build a website

that lets people rent off the the spare

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room or their spare couch Like what an

amazing way to make lemonade out of lemons

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slack same thing In terms of the reframe

slack was an internal communications

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tool built by a gaming company To

keep the remote employees engaged.

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Here's what's funny the gaming company

failed So, imagine you're the owner of

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that company Stuart Butterfield, and your

company goes down in a ball of flames.

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Most of us would just sit there self

flagellating in a bathtub of gasoline

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lighting matches like, woe is me.

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But this cat was like, you know what?

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We sure do talk good.

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You know, like, wow, reframe to take

something out of the embers and the

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ashes and turn it into such a powerful

tool that literally everybody uses.

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Not literally.

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I gotta stop using that word.

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So incorrectly Instagram,

Instagram was a pivot.

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Instagram started as a failing

location based social platform,

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never gained traction.

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And then Kevin, I don't know, I'm

going to pronounce his name right.

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Kevin Systrom turned it into a photo

sharing platform, perfect reframe.

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And I think that if you and I, and

the rest of the entrepreneurial world

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can begin to cultivate this, ability,

and you already have it by the way,

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it's why you're an entrepreneur.

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You wouldn't be an entrepreneur

without this ability being innate.

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But you want to, find it and

you want to isolate it and you

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want to build it like a muscle.

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Every, every setback is an opportunity.

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Every disadvantage is a

potential strength to draw from.

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And if that sounds like hoorah horse

shit, then I don't think you're paying

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attention and I think you're wrong.

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Like, you really have to believe that.

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You have to integrate

it on a cellular level.

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Get excited about challenges.

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Like, train yourself to

get excited about problems.

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And if you can do that, you'll

start to see the opportunity

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in literally every problem.

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And I'd love to know if

you agree or disagree.

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You know what I'd really love to

hear, especially because I was super

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vulnerable at the very beginning and

I gave you more than I usually share.

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I'd love to hear yours.

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What are the reframes?

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What brought you here?

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What are the things that you thought were

challenges but actually ended up proving

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to be massive, amazing opportunities?

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I'll add to mine, having grown

up poor, Relatively poor.

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I'm amazing with money.

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I really value it.

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Not obsessively.

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Not, like in a Scrooge McDuck way.

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I don't have it all in an

empty pool that I swim in.

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But there's just things that

I don't need that a lot of my

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friends really seem to need.

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or, a minimum, there are

things that I can go without.

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And, I don't know that I would

have gotten this far had I not been

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really good at the game of money.

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and I've seen some people that

early stages were making way

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more than me and were way more

successful than I, than I was.

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But they had a, a lifestyle

threshold they had to maintain

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that kept them from being able to

invest and reinvest and go without.

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Really set me ahead.

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you know, there's another reframe there.

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There's a problem that became

an amazing source of strength.

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And I want to know what yours are, truly.

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You'd make me feel better about

what's going on with this video.

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Hit me in the comments.

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Let me know what your reframes are.

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Let me know the struggles that

turned into successes into strengths.

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And, if this video was helpful like and

subscribe, and I'll see you tomorrow.