Thursday, February 15  

How A Screaming, Crying, Bleeding 12 yo Boy On the Side Of The Road Is A Perfect Business Example

How do you do business successfully?

This morning I did a 50 km bike road up the Coast - check out the photos below I took as I went along.


Wrong Side Of The Road, A Bus, A Parked Car & A Kid On A Bike

As I was nearing home I have to ride up quite a steep hill - it goes for about 400 metres. Down the bottom of the hill is the local High School.

Anyway, heading towards me coming down the wrong side of the road was a kid on a BMX bike. A bus overtook me and was trundling up the hill.

There was a car parked on the side of the road.

This kid was flying down the hill on his old bike - must have been doing 40 km. He saw he had nowhere to go between the parked car and the bus, got the speed wobbles and crashed.

I Was The First One To Him

I was the first one to him and by this time he was a screaming, crying and heavily bleeding mess of a kid. He had taken a huge amount of skin off both elbows, shoulders, knees and has a mess of his mouth.

His head was okay because he was wearing a helmet.

I did what I could, a heap of other people then stopped and lots of mum's dropping their kids of to school were comforting him. An ambulance was on its way.

And no, I didn't have the heart to pull out the camera and take some shots!

This Kid Is A Perfect Example Of Doing Business

I was thinking later as I had my shower that this kid is the perfect example of doing business.

You see, it's all about risk assessment/management and Cost/Benefit analysis.

In business, you look at each situation and assess what the benefit is to you.

"If I do this job I'll make $X and have another happy client who might want more business or who might refer me more business."

You also look at the risk.

"What if the client doesn't pay...."

Then you work on minimising that risk. That might be taking a 50% deposit.

This Kid Riding His Bike Isn't Good At Assessing Risk

But kids aren't good at assessing risk. And that's because they don't have the benefit of experience.

It might seem cool to go fast down a steep hill, on the wrong side of the road at 40 km/hr on an old bike.

But I'd be willing to bet that kid doesn't do it again because he now has the benefit of experience to better analyse his risk (and benefits) of what he does. And he knows that if things go wrong - and a lot was against that kid - then the consequences aren't worth the potential benefit.

Just like business.

Cheers

Brendon

Labels: business marketing