So my boy is now 1.5 years old and we play with LEGOs regularly. He loves playing with them as much as I do.

Now, I have played with LEGOs so many times in my life that I understand that in order to stack one piece onto another, they need to be perfectly aligned. Otherwise, they don’t stick together.

My boy doesn’t know that yet. He has only played with LEGOs a few times and often wonders why the parts don’t stick to each other and the tower falls over.

I often catch myself saying things like “That’s very good but maybe try a different angle”.

Every time I say that, something strikes me.

We are often trying new things, and when they don’t work, we get stuck.

One important thing that I have learned in my years in business is that looking at things from a different perspective or angle often helps removing the obstacle pretty fast.

Raising Money for a New Venture

I recently started working with a very successful serial entrepreneur who founded a new venture that is now in Series A funding and they were stuck with getting to the right types of investors.

It’s not like the founder had not done this before. In fact, he raised more than $60 million for previous companies and is very good at it.

However, this venture was significantly different in terms of business model and how investors could engage with it. So it was basically a new thing from that perspective.

They needed a very specific type of investor, an impact investor who shared their vision for the future in the same ambitious way.

When I started working with them, we worked on clarifying the WHY behind what they are building and within a few hours, we got immense clarity.

We also uncovered some deep fears and addressed them in practical ways. 

The outcome was an intense workshop where at the end of the day, the team was so inspired and engaged that within one week, they lined up conversations with several interested impact investors. In that one week, they achieved more progress on the investor side than in the previous months.

I believe the reason is because they gained a new perspective. They were so focused on the WHAT and the HOW that they forgot about their WHY. Re-igniting that was the spark needed to perform miracles.

Investment vs. Expense

I love learning from people who have achieved great things and inspire me. I always learn invaluable lessons when talking to them.

So I recently asked a very successful serial entrepreneur who built & sold several companies in his career, what his secret was.

He thought for a moment and said “I think one important aspect is that I always bring the very best people on board from the beginning, no matter the cost”.

That’s an interesting perspective. Because it’s easy to fall into the “We don’t have the money right now so we will hire cheap people who can still do the job” trap.

If you hire cheap people who can still do the job, you treat people as an expense. 

If you hire the best of the best, you treat people as an investment.

The difference is huge.

If you see people as an expense, you do everything wrong that a manager can do wrong. You micromanage people, fit them into boxes and tell them what to do.

If you see people as an investment, your commitment is so high that it would make no sense to micromanage them, fit them into boxes and tell them what to do. That would completely undermine your decision of bringing them on board in the first place.

Interestingly, the difference between the two is merely a change in perspective.

You could say “but lack of money is a real issue” and we could argue for hours on that. I believe lack of money is a lie that society tells us and we then tell ourselves so many times that we finally believe it.

Every great entrepreneur will tell you money is cheap. And every great investor will tell you that it’s harder to find great investments than it is to find money for them.

Next time you get stuck, ask yourself these simple questions.

What’s a different angle I could look at this from?

What would one of my role models do in this situation?

What’s a better question I can ask myself in this situation?