When I was running Diversified Industrial Staffing and the Great Recession hit Detroit, I had what looked like a very clear problem: no revenue. Unemployment went from 4% to 15% almost overnight. Nobody was hiring. We didn't need a recruiter. We needed a miracle.
I spent a lot of time trying to fix the money problem. New banking relationships. Adjusted margins. Different sales approaches. Nothing worked. It wasn't until my coach, neuroscientist Dr. Daniel Friedland, got through to me that I finally understood what was actually happening.
"That's not your problem," he kept saying. "That's the result of a deeper issue."
He was right. The real problem — the thing driving all the others — was that I was still trying to solve an external business issue with internal tools I'd never examined. And until I could see that, I'd keep patching symptoms.
The problem is never what you think it is. Never.
What "Never" Actually Means
Most entrepreneurs are pattern-solvers. We see a gap, we add structure. We see a problem, we create a system. And that wiring is enormously productive in a business context — until the gap or the problem is coming from inside us rather than from outside.
The money problem is real. But it's downstream of the behavior that created it. The client who keeps leaving is a real pattern. But it's downstream of how the founder shows up in client relationships. The team that won't take initiative — that's real, too, and it's downstream of whether the founder has created conditions where initiative is actually safe.
Going a level deeper doesn't mean blaming yourself. It means taking responsibility — which is a different thing. Blame is a dead end. Responsibility is a door.
The Active Learning Cycle
Dr. Danny used a simple four-point cycle to move out of panic and into problem-solving. Think of it as the hands of a clock.
At twelve o'clock: name what's not working. Be specific and honest. For me, during the recession, it was simple: we were in debt, the business was losing money, and we were 60 days from running out. That's the reality. Name it without softening it.
At three o'clock: set an intention, not an expectation. This is the move that changes your brain state. An expectation is a demand you're placing on reality — and when reality doesn't comply, you're in conflict with it. An intention is what you're committed to bringing to whatever shows up. Neurologically, an intention moves you from the amygdala — where fear, fight-or-flight, and the impulse to blame live — to the prefrontal cortex, where judgment, strategy, and creative problem-solving live. I didn't tell myself I'd be out of debt by a specific date. I set an intention: I'd like to be out of debt someday. That shift was enough to restore my capacity to think.
At six o'clock: strategy. Try something. Act. At nine o'clock: gather feedback. See what's shifting, what isn't. Adjust.
Then rotate.
We ran that cycle four or five times a day at Diversified during the worst of it. We started a "failure of the week" campaign — instead of celebrating the best idea, we celebrated the worst one and used the whole team to pressure-test it. And out of that process came the question that changed everything: when companies start hiring again, what's the first position they'll fill? We started tracking the answer. We started recruiting those people during the freeze, building inventory nobody else had. When the market recovered, we were the only firm with a deep bench. The recession happened for us because we stayed in the cycle.
The Plant Manager Who Almost Got Fired
I had a client — a manufacturing owner, classic old-school leader, Vince Lombardi on the wall, on-time-is-late philosophy — who had hired a new plant manager as part of a succession plan. The plant manager had left a six-figure job to take this role. He was supposed to be the future of the company.
Then he was late three times in his first five days.
My client called me on Thursday: "He's got to go."
I asked if I could talk to the man before lunch on Friday. He said, "Waste of your time, but fine."
I got there early and walked the floor with the plant manager. He was lit up about the place — clients lined up, three million in potential new business he was already cultivating, excited about the succession path. Nothing looked like someone who was checking out.
Then I asked: "How are things at home?"
His mother was in hospice. He'd been late because the hospice worker took public transportation and needed extra time to get to the house so he could leave. He had a scheduling problem. He hadn't said anything because he didn't know how to bring it up and hoped nobody would notice.
My client, when I told him, started to cry. He'd recently lost his own mother. He believed deeply in hospice care.
We didn't have a core values violation. We didn't have a disrespect problem. We had two middle-aged men who weren't talking to each other.
The solution: a rental car for the hospice worker. Problem solved in an afternoon.
Two years later, that plant manager was announced as the new president of the company.
The problem was never the lateness.
Why We Get Defensive Instead of Honest
The plant manager didn't come forward because he didn't feel safe enough to. That's not weakness — that's the brain doing its job. The brain is wired to keep you safe, and in an environment where lateness leads directly to consequences, revealing vulnerability is a threat.
Humans need four things at a baseline: to be seen, to be heard, to be known, and to be accepted. When those conditions are present, people feel safe. When they feel safe, they don't fight for power and control, they don't deflect, and they don't hide the real problem behind the apparent one.
Leaders who skip "is everything okay?" before the accountability conversation lose credibility every time. Not just in that moment — but as a leader the person can trust going forward. The sequence that creates real accountability is curiosity first, consequence second.
Failure Doesn't Exist
One of the things Dr. Danny gave me that I carry everywhere: failure is a word in a dictionary. It isn't a neurological reality.
The brain doesn't experience failure. It experiences learning — rapid, iterative, continuous. Every time you try something that doesn't work, your brain builds new neural connections from the attempt. The return you get isn't failure; it's data.
In baseball, a .300 batting average is considered good. That means you fail seven times out of ten and you're excellent. There are times you hit a ball perfectly and someone makes a great catch. There are times you clip it off the end of the bat and it skips past a slow outfielder for a triple. The outcome doesn't tell you the quality of the swing.
I spent years telling myself I was a failure as an entrepreneur. The debt was real. The bank threatening to take my house was real. But the failure narrative was a story I was overlaying onto the data — and that story was costing me the clarity I needed to get out.
Replace the word failure with learning. Not as a feel-good maneuver. As a neurological fact.
Where to Look First
The next time you're up against something that isn't resolving — the same problem returning in different forms, the same friction, the same revenue ceiling — the move isn't to go harder at the apparent problem. The move is to go one level deeper.
Ask: what's the pattern here, not just the event? Where is my own behavior upstream of this outcome? What would I learn if I approached this with curiosity instead of urgency?
The problem is never what you think it is. And when you accept that — really accept it — you stop fighting the symptom and start addressing the cause. Which is usually you. And you are also, as it turns out, the solution.
If you want to understand what's actually driving the ceiling in your business, the Growth Ceiling Audit is a place to start.
With gratitude,
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do entrepreneurs keep solving the wrong problems?
Because the real problem is almost always internal, and the visible problem is external. A cash flow crisis isn't a money problem — it's the result of a pattern in how the founder makes decisions, prices their work, or avoids certain conversations. Most entrepreneurs are wired to look outward: fix the bank relationship, change the sales price, adjust the margins. But those are downstream effects. The upstream cause is almost always behavior, belief, or relationship — and until you look there, the same problem keeps returning in different costumes.
What is the active learning cycle and how does it help with problem-solving?
The active learning cycle is a four-point framework developed by neuroscientist Dr. Daniel Friedland for moving from reactive problem-solving to intentional iteration. At twelve o'clock: name what's not working. At three o'clock: set an intention rather than an expectation, which moves you from the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex and restores your capacity to think clearly. At six o'clock: create a strategy and act. At nine o'clock: gather feedback and adjust. Then rotate. The goal isn't to solve in one pass — it's to stay in motion and keep learning.
How do I know if I'm solving a surface problem instead of the real one?
The clearest signal is recurrence. If the same problem keeps showing up in different forms — the same cash crunches, the same team conflicts, the same client relationship breakdowns — you're treating symptoms. The other signal is that your solutions require you to do all the work. Real problems, once identified, often have surprisingly simple solutions because they address the actual root. The plant manager being "late" looked like a culture problem; it was a scheduling problem. A rental car solved it.
What role does psychological safety play in surfacing real problems?
It's the prerequisite. When people don't feel safe — when they expect judgment, consequences, or dismissal — they don't tell you what's actually happening. They defend, deflect, or go silent. Leaders who skip the "is everything okay?" question before the accountability conversation lose credibility every time. Curiosity is what creates the conditions where truth can actually surface.
How do I stop tying my identity to whether I solve the problem correctly?
By replacing the word "failure" with "learning." Neuroscientist Dr. Daniel Friedland was direct: failure is a word in a dictionary. The brain doesn't operate in binaries of success and failure — it operates in continuous learning loops. In baseball, a .300 hitter fails seven times out of ten and is considered excellent. The question isn't whether you got it right. The question is what you learned that you didn't know before.
