Brian Balfour: belief

Transcript context

…What is lesson number three? Ooh. Lesson number three is one that I've learned the hard way, and I'm still trying to improve that myself. And this one's very much for founders, which is just, 'problems never end, and that's okay. ' Here's what I've personally experienced, and I've talked to a lot of founders about this as well, where I think historically I've gotten really caught in this trap where at any moment in Reforge, it's like, "Ah, if I just solve this one thing that's X problem, everything's going to get easier. " That might be landing some big hire, some executive hire, figuring out some major lever or defining some strategy. But the reality is that the opposite is true. The more problems you solve, you just end up taking on bigger and bigger problems over time. And hoping it gets easier is the thing that just sets you up for this frustration, this anxiety, this stress. And I think switching to that mentality of getting rid of that hope and more of like, "Hmm, if I solve this thing, I get to take on an even harder thing," I think is the thing that actually reduces the stress. And so this was one that I've also felt for many, many years, but had a tough time finding the words for, and then Ray Dalio had this passage in one of his books that just hit the bullseye. And so his passage, which we've actually worked into the cultural values at Reforge, is, "Every day there's going to be problems. Some big, others small; sometimes in waves, sometimes slowly. But they're never going to end. The more successful we are, the bigger our problems will be, and how we react to those problems is up to us. To achieve our goals, each individual must be a problem solving machine." He calls it the 'problem solving machine'. I think there's some adaptations in there, but I thought that captured it so well. And when I find myself getting caught in this, oh, if we just solve this one thing, life will be so much easier. I kind of return to this statement. Not only to remind myself that that's not true. But to try to switch my framing around of how to think about the problem. But learning this, it's a grind. It's a hard mentality switch for I think a lot of founders. This reminds me a number of things. One is just I heard someone describe basically any leadership job as your professional firefighter, you're just putting out fires all day.…

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