Albert Einstein lived a vibrant life filled with one success after another, yet for every success attributed to his genius he faced many of the same setbacks common to the rest of mankind.

It is reported that Einstein had a speech impediment and at least one teacher thought he may be too ill equipped mentally to attend school. However, his genius was soon discovered and he began to learn at a rapid pace.

Einstein was trained to be a teacher, but ultimately he accepted a job in the Swiss patent office because no one would hire him as a teacher. What he learned in the patent office had some bearing on some of his later theories. In effect every event that happened in his life had the potential to move him toward a greatness he may not have expected nor was it the path he original chose.

In so many cases we find that the man who said, ?In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity?, would live up to the words he spoke.

For Einstein the challenges of life were the catalyst he used to explore the possibilities of answers yet to be discovered ? questions yet to be asked. What some might not realize is that Einstein was offered the Presidency of Israel, but declined the offer.

It may be thought that this was an opportunity he should not have passed up, yet it was his love of science that provided both the difficulty and the opportunity he was most interested in ? the very thing that brought purpose and passion to his legacy.

In essence, Einstein was so well acquainted with his personal passion that he could do no less than develop a life focus around that passion.

As a business owner you too are presented with both difficulties and opportunities and as Einstein so succinctly states. It is the difficulties we face that bring about the opportunities.

We can become so fixated on the problems we encounter that we fail to recognize the opportunity.

Plato once said, ?Necessity is the mother of invention?. I think he and Einstein would have gotten along. Too many individuals do not recognize difficulty and opportunity are close companions and one rarely goes anywhere without the other.

If you were to read virtually any business biography you would find both the difficulty and the opportunity that were ultimately the catalyst in the development and growth of a great business idea.

Too often we want to ride the coattails of other successful business owners. We want them to provide an easy step-by-step guide to business and financial success without struggling through the issues ourselves.

When a business owner bypasses the ?struggle? it has the tendency to encourage them to fold up their tent and move along when they do experience their first difficulty.

Perhaps the best advice in this article is to learn what you can going into a business venture and then study every difficulty that comes along to determine the opportunity locked inside.