If you were in the Olympic Athletes Village area two Saturdays ago you would have seen a funny sight: a big man (me) on the sidewalk with pail, broom and house. I was scrubbing bird s**t off the sidewalks in front of the #Patterson office. Why? Well, it’s disgusting for one. Secondly, it was literally covering every square inch of the sidewalk. Lastly, I wouldn’t ask anyone else to do it.
The bird s**t was embarrassing before, now nice & clean!
I spoke with the City of Vancouver, the Landlord and the owner of the giant lake adjacent to my office but they all denied responsibility for the crap-strewn sidewalk (the lake is home to Canada Geese, which are the source of the s**t). One thing entrepreneurs realize early is: while organizations hide behind policies, procedures and legalese – if you want something done fast, Git’r done!
Heat-shrunk (in cooler times pond was 3X bigger) Goose Pond adjacent to our office. Developer Bruno Wall owns this property but claims they ain't his Geese.
I know that some entrepreneurs say that it’s better to hire someone to do these lowly jobs. Since our time is better served building business. I agree to a certain extant. Still, some jobs you can fit in on a Saturday morning and save a few bucks so why not? We have staff but I wouldn’t want to ask them to such a crappy (pun!) job. If it was two hours before a major event and I was stuck I would ask.
I’ve had this blogpost ready to publish for two weeks – honest – and it is eerily similar to this post by respected the network hub. Please share below with an example what makes you the Cook and Chief Bottle Washer in your enterprise:
Comments 4
Thank you Rich for the kind mention! It’s true as an entrepreneur, you sometimes got to do what you got to do for your business… literally getting your hands dirty 🙂
Nice post. I like your willingness to lead by example. I get into trouble for doing $12 an hour jobs, when I should be doing more important things, and I’ll fess up that sometimes, the scolding is justified.
But, your post reminds me of those old sayings:
“First Impressions Count”
or “You Never Get a 2nd Chance to create a good 1st Impression”
Your business frontage is your advertisement to the world that passes by. It’s like ‘Curb Appeal’ or like investing in a proper Detail before advertising your car for sale.
What if someone had slipped on all that Goose Poo? Would you be held responsible, like snow sidewalk injuries?
As for an example? I’ll admit, I’m not the world’s best delegater. Another old saying:
“If you want something done right, do it yourself”
2 winter’s ago, I was shovelling snow off the sidewalk in front of a Dealership I was working at. I was hot, sweaty, runny nose, covered in snow. People came to the dealership, I welcomed them in, exchanged some small weather chat, and went back to the snow.
10 minutes later, they came back outside and asked what I did at the Dealership. I told them I was the Sales Manager. They thanked me for clearing the sidewalk, and left. That afternoon, they came back, asked for me, and said they wanted to buy one of my cars.
During the conversation I had with them while we did the deal, the gentleman told me that they had visited other dealers and none of them were concerned about their customer’s safety, their sidewalks were deathtraps. They came back to see me, because they felt I cared.
$12 an hour jobs are important, just as important as many high paid jobs.
Your frontage is also important. We wax lyrical about online branding and image, but sometimes if our offline image is a turn off, all that hard work online goes to waste.
Jerry: thanks for the comment and for reading our blog. Glad you liked the post. I like your story about sidewalk clearing — so important for safety and it turned into a sale.
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