Has this ever been said to you? When you tell someone about a problem you’re facing right now, something like….
…you’ve got too many prospects to follow up on, and they’re all good.
…your offices are getting too small, because you’ve been growing so fast and there are too many team members now.
…you’ve been asked to speak at too many events, and your diary is filling up so you can’t fit in the work you need to do.
And you’re struggling with it, and trying to figure out whether to say no to prospects or make them wait, and view new office premises, and decide whether to rent or buy… and you mention it to someone and they say:
“Well that’s a nice problem to have!”
And then you feel…
Guilty.
Like you have nothing to complain about, because some people don’t have any prospects or any team members or even a business at all. Some people have huge VAT bills to pay or a family member in hospital and “they’d love to have your problem”.
Perhaps that’s true. Perhaps they would love to have your problem.
But they don’t.
You do.
And although it’s a “nice problem to have”…
..it’s still a problem.
All I want to encourage you with today is, it’s totally okay to recognise it’s a problem. And to be a little frustrated or discouraged or exhausted or confused or worried.
That’s part of having a problem, whether it’s nice or nasty.
You can still choose to be grateful. You can be grateful for whatever you have that has contributed to this problem – a growing business, an efficient team, excellent clients, new opportunities – but that doesn’t mean you have to act as if your problem is nothing.
You still have to decide.
What to say to the prospects. Which events you’ll go to and which ones you won’t.
You still have to find the new premises – or make some other decision.
Otherwise things will get worse. The offices will get crazy crowded and people will be bumping into each other and getting annoyed and they won’t love their work and start arguing about whose desk is whose when…and that will be a very un-nice problem to have.
Your problem will go from a nice problem to a nasty problem.
And no one will be envious of it then.
So don’t worry if someone tells you that’s a nice problem to have. Agree with them. Say it is a nice problem, but it’s still a problem…and then use that as an opportunity to ask what they think, or what they would do, or if they’ve ever had a similar situation.
Share what you are grateful for.
And get on with getting your nice problem solved.
(These Notes are emailed out every Saturday. If you’d like to be on the list, sign up here.)
