All being well, in August, I’ll be a Dad for the third time.

If my business fails, that’s not just me on the street, it’s my wife and 3 kids.

Compare that to when I was a drunken Uni grad paying £300 a month on rent with bugger all expenses.

Same problem → Different stakes.

Whatever stage of your business, career or life you’re at there are problems to solve.

And as you get older and wiser. It feels like your problems get bigger and hairier.

But I don’t think the problems get bigger.

I think they feel that way because the stakes are higher, we become more emotionally invested, and we don’t always have the tools to solve them.

There’re 2 sides to this.

And whether it’s loss of income, or any other [fill in the blank] type problem, you need a way of handling it.

A frame that’s been useful to me is saying to myself: “None of this is real.”

Whether this is true or not doesn’t really matter, as what I’m doing is just trying to override the fight or flight, neurotic, anxiety ridden part of my brain that’s trying to derail me all the time.

Elon Musk is on the record saying:

"There's a one in a billion chance we're living in base reality.”

Translation = There’s very little chance we are the originals, and are living in an artificially created reality.

As a die hard fan of the Matrix, I find this sort of narrative comforting.

Whether I’d take the red pill or not is another question…

If you want to follow the white rabbit, feel free to read ‘The Simulation Hypothesis’ by Rizwan Virk.

A lot of my most successful clients treat business and life as a game.

And the thought of ‘levelling up’ and completing quests is a lot more motivation than simply ‘getting sh*t done’.

Morbid as it sounds. I think about death quite a lot.

I’ve read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations 1.5 times, and I may be bastardising this quote, but it’s something like:

“You are a mere exhalation of blood.” (vivid I know).

In his view, doesn’t matter whether you die tomorrow, or die in 100 years. Because everyone dies, and nobody will remember you.

Alex Hormozi talks about this as well. He even used our late Queen Elizabeth II as an example. He asked how much we think about her every day since she died.

Ask yourself the same question, and unless you’re staring at a pound coin or note, the answer is not a lot.

There’s a reason why people who have near death experiences have this new found confidence because the perception of the stakes is lower.

At the Tokyo Olympics, Simone Biles walked away mid-competition.

She had the “twisties” - a loss of spatial awareness that makes throwing yourself through the air obscenely dangerous. She wasn’t quitting, she was refusing to turn a recoverable moment into an irreversible one. She came back, won bronze on the beam, and has since added more World and Olympic titles.

So another good question to ask: is this actually dangerous, or just uncomfortable?

Nine times out of ten in business, it’s discomfort. A lost client, a failed launch, or an awkward email. It stings, but you recover.

Real danger (the sabre tooth tiger kind) is rare.

Most decisions in life are 2 way doors you can walk back through if you f*ck it up.

Last month, my biggest client, Nicolas Boucher, called together the team to go through a problem solving workshop.

The tools was ‘Fishbone Analysis’, that he (more accurately his wife who was leading the workshop) turned into an AI prompt.

They key to all of this?

In breaking down a problem, it becomes a lot easier to solve.

Here’s the prompt:

Always start the chat by asking questions to the user to define the problem.
Continue with 2-3 follow up questions until you have a factual and concrete description of the problem”

You can find the info from the slides to add to the prompt here.

Fishbone breaks a problem down. This next one makes sure you’re breaking down the right problem.

When the masters to Taylor Swift’s first six albums got sold out from under her, the obvious problem was: “I don’t own my music.”

But that’s not the problem she solved.

She still owned the songs themselves (she wrote them), which meant she could legally re-record them. So the real problem became: “How do I redirect the value of this catalogue into versions I own?”

Cue “Taylor’s Version” - re-recorded albums, vault tracks, and an army of fans that would follow her off a cliff. Fearless (Taylor’s Version) became the first re-recorded album to hit No.1.

So do this:

Sticking with the music theme. Every industry has a “this is just how it’s done.”

Album launches meant months of singles, press and teasers. Beyoncé binned the lot. In 2013 she surprise-dropped a self-titled visual album with zero warning.

The surprise WAS the marketing.

It worked because she asked a question most of us never do: which of these steps are actually necessary, and which just exist because everyone copies everyone else?

(there's only so many proven frameworks you can follow ;))

So when you’re stuck, list the “obvious” way to handle it, then reverse it:

Arnold Schwarzenegger turned up in Hollywood and was laughed at.

Too hulkish (actually no Ferigno was the hulk - and a competitor lol), too foreign, an unpronounceable surname and a think and intense Austrian accent.

He was even taking lessons to reduce the accent - until he realised it was the asset.

The body made him the obvious pick for mythic action roles. The accent made him unforgettable. Then Twins and Kindergarten Cop used this for laughs - the intimidating giant in stupid situations. Unexpected and memorable.

So when something about you gets flagged as a weakness, Ask: where would this exact trait be a strength?

You won't win by being a slightly better version of everyone else.

You win by being the only one who looks like you.

(freakish pecs aside)

The Emotional Side (feel better about it):

The Logical Side (do something about it):

As Harvey Specter says in Suits:

As long as you're alive there will always be problems.

But as long as you're not dead there'll always be a way to solve them.

Until next time.

Adam

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