We Will Figure It Out

I spent most of my working life in sales.

And I hated it.

The strange part was that I was good at it. Really good at it.

I knew how to talk to people, build relationships, handle objections and close deals. There were months when I was the top salesperson in the company. My name would be at the top of the board, I'd get congratulated, maybe get an email recognizing me, and for about five minutes I'd feel proud.

Then Monday would come.

Another sales meeting. Another conference call. Another manager asking what I sold yesterday, what I had in the pipeline, what I planned on closing this week and why something hadn't closed already.

I fucking hated those calls.

I'd sit there smiling and giving all the right answers.

"Absolutely."

"I'm on it."

"Should close this week."

"Yes, I'll follow up."

Meanwhile, deep inside, I wanted to push everyone off a ten-story building.

Not literally, obviously.

But anyone who has spent enough years sitting through sales meetings probably understands the feeling.

The managers weren't necessarily bad people. Most of them were just doing their jobs. The problem was that I had never been built for that kind of life.

I've always been someone who wants to do things his own way. I don't like answering to people. I don't like somebody asking me what I did today or telling me what number I need to hit tomorrow.

Yet somehow I had built an entire career around doing exactly that.

Why?

Because the paycheck kept showing up.

That paycheck was dangerous.

It didn't make me happy. It made me comfortable enough to tolerate being unhappy.

And comfort can be a strange prison because the door isn't locked. You're just scared of what might happen if you walk through it.

For years, I'd think about starting something of my own. I'd get excited about an idea, imagine what it would feel like to build something for myself, and then almost immediately start talking myself out of it.

What if it doesn't work?

What if I don't make enough money?

What if I leave my job and regret it?

What if I lose everything?

So I'd convince myself that staying was the responsible thing to do.

Then I'd wake up, put on the same fake smile, join another sales call and repeat the whole thing.

Eventually, I met the person who changed that.

He was an immigrant from Iran with a heavy Persian accent and an attitude toward problems that was almost completely opposite to mine.

His story wasn't some overnight-success bullshit.

He had started his business when he was around twenty years old.

And nothing about his beginning was glamorous.

At one point he was so broke that he lived out of his car for about a month.

When he told me that, I remember thinking about what I would've done in his position.

I probably would have panicked.

He didn't.

He just kept going.

That was the thing about him. The guy was fucking unstoppable.

A problem could happen that would have me thinking about the seventeen different ways everything could go wrong, and he'd barely react.

He had one answer for almost everything.

With that heavy Persian accent, he'd look at me and say:

"WE WILL FIGURE IT OUT."

That was it.

Not a thirty-minute motivational speech.

Not a business seminar.

Not some quote he had read online.

"We will figure it out."

And somehow, he always seemed to.

A year after sleeping in his car, his life looked completely different. He had his own house. Cars. Watches. His business was doing well.

But what impressed me more than the things he owned was the way he moved through life.

He wasn't fearless.

I eventually understood that.

He simply didn't require an answer before taking the first step.

That was completely foreign to me.

I wanted guarantees.

He wanted movement.

We became good friends, and eventually I asked him what exactly he did for work.

He explained his business to me and then casually said something that would end up changing my life.

"I can teach you."

You'd think I jumped at the opportunity.

Of course I didn't.

I immediately became the same scared version of myself I'd been for years.

"I don't know, man. I have a job. I need to make sure I'm making money."

He looked at me like he'd heard this excuse a thousand times.

"Don't worry. Go for it."

Then came the words I would hear from him over and over again.

"We will figure it out."

Eventually, I believed him enough to try.

He gave me his business blueprint.

And I mean that literally. He showed me what he did. He explained what worked, what didn't, how he found business, how things operated, where mistakes were usually made.

There was no jealousy. No hiding information because he was afraid I might become competition.

He opened the book and handed it to me.

I took what he taught me and applied it directly to my own business.

And something happened that I had spent years being too afraid to seriously imagine.

It worked.

Not perfectly.

There were problems.

There were days when something went wrong and I'd call him already halfway into panic mode.

"This happened."

"We will figure it out."

"What if this client doesn't pay?"

"We will figure it out."

"What if I made the wrong decision?"

"We will figure it out."

"What if—"

"We will figure it out."

Sometimes it used to piss me off.

I'd be looking for a detailed answer and this guy would give me the same five words.

But then we'd figure it out.

Every fucking time.

Maybe not the way we'd originally planned. Sometimes the solution cost money. Sometimes it required working harder. Sometimes we had to change direction completely.

But there was always another move.

That's what he was really teaching me.

Problems weren't the end of the road.

They were just the next thing that needed to be handled.

My business kept growing.

Eventually, I started doing better than the guy who had taught me how to do it.

Think about that.

For years, I was afraid I couldn't survive without a paycheck.

Then someone gave me a chance to bet on myself, and I discovered I had been underestimating myself the entire time.

But apparently I still hadn't completely learned the lesson.

Even after the business started doing really well, I was living in the same apartment.

My rent was around $3,200.

One day my friend came over and basically told me I'd outgrown it.

"You need a bigger place."

Immediately, my old brain returned.

"I don't know, man. My rent is pretty low here."

He looked around the apartment.

"Bro. Please. Let's go find you a house."

I started thinking about the money.

Of course I did.

What if business slows down?

What if something happens?

What if I take on too much?

He already knew where my brain was going.

"We will figure it out."

About a month later, I was living in a bigger, better house in a nicer part of Orange County.

My rent went from roughly $3,200 to $6,500.

I remember looking at that number and thinking:

What the fuck did I just do?

Then something interesting happened.

I worked harder.

I started thinking bigger.

The responsibility that I had been afraid would crush me actually pushed me.

I saw what I was capable of doing, and once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it.

And guess what?

We figured it out.

Again.

I never went back.

Looking back, I realize my friend gave me something far more valuable than a business blueprint.

He changed my relationship with fear.

Before meeting him, I believed successful people somehow knew everything was going to work before they took a chance.

They don't.

Nobody knows.

That's the secret.

You take the step without knowing exactly where your foot is going to land.

Then you deal with what happens next.

And then the next thing.

And the next.

Eventually you look behind you and realize you've traveled farther than the person who stood still waiting for certainty.

I will always be grateful to that crazy Persian immigrant with the heavy accent who refused to let problems impress him.

He taught me business.

He taught me to take chances.

He taught me to believe in myself.

But the lesson that stayed with me most was five words.

"WE WILL FIGURE IT OUT."

I've carried those words with me ever since.

And the older I get, the more I believe them.

I've had things happen since then that scared the hell out of me. I've lost things. I've made mistakes. I've had plans completely fall apart. I've had moments when I genuinely didn't know what I was going to do next.

And somehow, eventually, I figured something out.

Maybe it wasn't the answer I wanted.

Maybe life didn't return what I lost.

Maybe the next chapter looked completely different from the one I had planned.

But there was a next chapter.

That's what I want someone reading this to understand.

I'm not telling you to quit your job tomorrow. I'm not telling you to double your rent because some guy on the internet did it. Taking chances doesn't mean being reckless. People have children, mortgages, medical bills and responsibilities. There are times when being cautious is exactly the right decision.

But don't let fear disguise itself as logic for the rest of your life.

Don't spend ten years saying, "Maybe next year."

Don't automatically assume you're incapable of something simply because you've never done it before.

Don't wait for the moment when you're no longer scared.

That moment might never come.

Sometimes you have to be scared and move anyway.

You might fail.

You might lose money.

You might make a terrible decision.

You might have to start over.

And sometimes life will hit you with something you couldn't possibly have planned for.

When it does, remember something a Persian immigrant who once slept in his car taught me:

You don't need to have every answer today.

You just need enough courage to deal with today.

Tomorrow?

We'll figure that out tomorrow.

I spent years choosing security because I was terrified of saying, "Oh well, I tried and it didn't work."

Now I understand there was another sentence that should have scared me much more:

"What if I had tried?"

So take the chance when the chance makes sense. Believe in yourself enough to find out what you're capable of. Work your ass off. Get knocked down. Adjust. Learn. Try again.

Choose "OH WELL" over "WHAT IF."

Because life is going to go wrong sometimes no matter how carefully you plan it.

And when it does?

I can still hear my friend saying it in that heavy Persian accent like the answer was the most obvious thing in the world:

"WE WILL FIGURE IT OUT."

And somehow...

we always do.