That's a quadratic equation; get everything on one side and factor:
With a negative constant term, the factorization has to be of the form (x+a)(x-b); so we need two numbers whose product is 108 and whose difference is 3 -- 12 and 9.
or
Check to see if both solutions to the equation are solutions to the original problem:
x=-12: 3x+x^2 = -36+144 = 108 check
x=9: 3x+x^2 = 27+81 = 108 check