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Building a Vision Through Pain: Turning Problems Into Powerful Futures
posted in Built For Hard
Adam Kreek
Most great visions start with pain. A frustration that won’t go away. A challenge that limits progress. A problem too big to ignore.
Pain is the spark. It shows us what’s broken and forces us to imagine something better. Without discomfort, urgency fades. Without urgency, vision dies.
But here’s the truth: not all pain leads to a vision people will pay for, support, or follow. To build a vision bigger than your personal purpose and vision. Something that matters, you need to connect the pain to a solution that excites people and drives investment.
The Four Levels of Pain
1. Societal Pain
Think of climate change, inequality, or the healthcare crisis. These are huge challenges that inspire dreamers. But they’re abstract. Unless you carve out a concrete way forward, societal pain stays stuck in speeches and strategy decks.
2. Industry Pain
Every industry has bottlenecks and blind spots. Fintech exposed the frustration of slow banking. Renewable energy companies solved the pain of expensive fossil fuels. Industry pain creates openings for scalable innovation.
3. Business Pain
A company may be losing customers, bleeding cash, or burning out its people. A clear vision doesn’t just address the pain — it redefines growth. Solving pain at this level delivers value that owners, employees, and investors feel in real time.
4. Individual Pain
Burnout. Lack of purpose. Health struggles. These personal pains often spark coaching practices, self-help frameworks, or lifestyle businesses. The key is scaling from my problem to our shared challenge.
From Pain to Vision
Dreamers often stumble here: they feel the weight of a big problem but can’t drive it into a business vision. To close the gap:
- Name the pain clearly. Avoid vague statements like “healthcare is broken.” Instead: “Working parents can’t access affordable preventive care.”
- Zoom into the payable problem. Who will gladly pay to solve this today? If no one, the vision remains a dream.
- Translate pain into promise. Define the better future. That’s your vision: Every family has access to affordable preventive care, starting with X.
- Connect vision to action. Show the concrete steps the business, initiative, or team can take.
This is the hard, practical work of turning pain into vision. It’s also the difference between a leader who dreams and a leader who delivers.
Why Pain Matters
Pain is urgency. Urgency drives change. Pain is the raw material that forces us to imagine better futures — for individuals, businesses, industries, and societies.
The real challenge is learning how to move from the pain you feel → to a vision that inspires others → to a solution people are willing to support.
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Adam Kreek is on a mission to positively impact organizational cultures and leaders who make things happen.
He authored the bestselling business book, The Responsibility Ethic: 12 Strategies Exceptional People Use to Do the Work and Make Success Happen.
Want to increase your leadership achievement? Learn more about Kreek’s coaching here.
Want to book a keynote that leaves a lasting impact? Learn more about Kreek’s live event service here.