The HUGE Business Lesson A Squirrel Taught Me
My daughter got a treat this morning, I got a business lesson.
There was a squirrel trapped in our screened in pool area. We watched the poor guy run around frantic for about 30 minutes. We weren’t being cruel, we actually though he would leave the same way he came in, except he didn’t.
Instead, he just kept running around doing the same exact things again and again. It was actually a frustrating thing to watch.
He’d get so close to the entrance/exit then turn around and start climbing the screen again. He kept climbing up to find an exit, which was not the right way at all. Or, so I thought…
The squirrel in my pool
Eventually we got bored
Our boredom finally set in… That, and my 7 year old was very concerned for the poor little guy. So, I opened the other screen door to increase his odds of getting out before my dog decided to take notice. I watched for a little while longer and he finally got out, but it wasn’t through one of the open doors…
The little bastard ripped a hole in my screen!
All that climbing ‘up’ he was doing was to get to a small hole, which he made bigger until he could fit. Now I get to fix a whole 8' x 8' section of screen because I was trying to be nice instead of playing target practice with my BB gun!
Yes, somehow squirrel issue = business related to me!
How many times has this happened to you? Sure, it probably wasn’t a squirrel punching a hole in your awesome fence, but how about a hacker punching a hole in your security? Or, a customer punching a hole in your bulletproof plan? I’ve seen it more times than I can count:
- Needing to relax security for a business reason,
- Getting frustrated with something not working and finding a ‘hack’ around the problem,
- Changing something else that only masks the actual problem,
- Spending way too much money to get something done.
The lesson I learned… (Squirrels with light-sabers!)
I’ve been here too many times to count and you’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now: My problem is X and it’s possible that Y and Z are the fixes.
Sure, X & Y might have worked for the guy that posted on Stackoverflow or Superuser, but every situation is different. In someone else’s pool, that squirrel would have ran out the open door, problem solved… but not mine!
It’s sad that it took a squirrel to remind me of the lesson I learned a while ago: Look at your business issues through your own lens to find a solution, not someone else’s.
Your income, resources, assets, systems, and customers are likely very different from the guy that wrote the blog post you’re reading… except this one! ;) How someone markets, sells, distributes, makes, refers,… whatever is going to be slightly different for you. I really don’t think there are any cookie-cutter approaches out there. Sure, you may take a bit of X advice, mix it with some Y input and create Z… but you’ve made something that will work for your needs.
