I had two clients last year with almost identical businesses.

Both ran small manufacturing operations. Both struggled with inventory tracking. Both lost about $30K a year from misplaced equipment and duplicate orders.

I built them the same system. Literally the same automation with minor tweaks for their specific products.

First client: "This is amazing. We can finally see everything. Game changer."

Second client: "Yeah, but it doesn't do X. And what if Y happens? I'm not sure this solves our real problem."

Same system. Same problem. Completely different reactions.

The Story Everyone Tells Wrong

There's this old story about a tour guide and two men.

First guy asks what the town is like. Tour guide asks what his old town was like. Guy says it was terrible, everyone was rude, nothing to do. Tour guide tells him this town is the same, don't move here.

Second guy comes in, asks the same question. Says his old town was great, everyone was friendly, just wanted a change. Tour guide tells him he'll love it here.

The part that makes the story useful: they probably came from the same town.

I hate stories like this because they usually end with some motivational garbage about "choosing happiness" or "mindset is everything."

That's not helpful when you're actually dealing with broken systems and real business problems.

But there's something here that's worth paying attention to.

What This Actually Looks Like

Back to those two clients.

The first one saw the automation as solving a problem they'd been dealing with for years. They were looking for what it could do. Every feature was a win.

The second one saw it as potentially creating new problems. They were looking for what could go wrong. Every limitation was evidence it wouldn't work.

Same tool. Different lens.

Here's what's weird. The second client's concerns weren't wrong. The system did have limitations. It couldn't do X. Y could happen in some edge cases.

But those limitations existed in their current manual system too. They just weren't looking at those the same way.

Their spreadsheet-based tracking missed things constantly. Equipment got lost. Orders got duplicated. But that was "normal problems" they were used to.

The new system's potential problems felt scarier because they were unfamiliar.

This Happens With Everything

I do this too.

Every time I write a blog post, I can either think "someone might find this useful" or "this is probably stupid and nobody cares."

Both could be true. I get to pick which one I pay attention to.

When I focus on "someone might find this useful," I hit publish. When I focus on "this is probably stupid," I leave it in drafts.

The post doesn't change. My perspective does.

Same thing with client calls. I can walk into a discovery call thinking "I can probably help this person" or "they're going to realize I don't know what I'm doing."

The call goes better when I pick the first one.

This isn't about positive thinking or manifesting or any of that. It's just noticing that you get to choose what you're looking for.

The Part That's Actually Useful

Look, I'm not saying perspective fixes everything.

If your business is actually broken, changing how you think about it doesn't make it less broken. You still need to fix the actual problems.

But a lot of the time, the situation is neutral. It's not good or bad until you decide what to make of it.

That second client? Three months later, they're happy with the system. Once they started using it and saw it working, their perspective shifted. The same limitations they were worried about turned out not to matter.

Nothing changed except what they were paying attention to.

I've caught myself doing this with Forte Web Designs. Some days I look at it and think "this is growing, clients are getting results, this is working." Other days I look at the exact same business and think "this is taking forever, I'm not growing fast enough, what am I doing wrong."

The business didn't change between those two thoughts. Just what I decided to focus on.

There Are No Problems, Just Situations

This is going to sound like motivational poster nonsense, but stay with me.

Most things that happen aren't inherently problems or opportunities. They're just situations.

You lose a client. That's a situation. You can see it as "my business is failing" or "now I have time to find better clients." Both are true depending on what you're looking for.

Your automation breaks. That's a situation. You can see it as "this doesn't work" or "I found a bug I can fix." Same situation, different frame.

I'm not saying you should ignore real problems. Some things are actually bad and need to be fixed.

But most of the time, the situation is what it is. How you respond depends on what you decide it means.

The easiest way to make your work less miserable? Change what you're looking at.

Not always the best solution. But probably worth trying first.