What Matters Isn't What You Can Solve, It's What You Let People See First
“If you climb the mountain to chop wood, chop wood to build a fire, and build the fire to cook dinner, then the whole process is painful.”
“Climbing is just climbing. Chopping is just chopping. The fire is just the fire. Feel only the present.”
What matters isn’t what you can solve. It’s what you can let people see first.
Mark studied art as an undergrad, then came to the UK for a master’s. One thing he said left a deep impression on me:
The world doesn’t lack ways to make money. It’s just that a given way may not suit you.
After coming to the UK, Mark worked all kinds of part-time jobs. He waited tables at a Korean restaurant, ten hours a day. I asked him why he pushed so hard. “To save up and travel around Europe and America.”
He plays hard and works just as hard. Last time he spent a week in New York and slept less than 30 hours in total.
The money he earns the hard way, he spends where it counts.
I met Mark by chance at an event. As we talked, the conversation turned to working together, and he made an interesting point.
He said people like us, with a science-student mindset, “always want to get a clear requirement from the client first; once we have the requirement, we can go solve it.” But clients don’t think that way. What a client wants to see is the product placed right in front of them. There has to be something striking about it first; only then does anything else follow.
Think about it. A big client already has their own suppliers and their own products. Why would they start from zero and gamble on a new supplier they have never met?
What matters isn’t what you can solve. It’s what you can let people see first.
He loves the education business he is in now and wants to keep going deeper. “You have to find the thing you’re good at, and then live in the present.”
He told me a saying.
“If you climb the mountain to chop wood, chop wood to build a fire, and build the fire to cook dinner, then the whole process is painful.”
“Climbing is just climbing. Chopping is just chopping. The fire is just the fire. Feel only the present.”
Wherever fate takes him, that is where he settles in and lives well.