Sometimes Success Is Subjective.

Trophies Do Not Always Go To The Best One, Just The Winner.

Sometimes winners do not seem to deserve it.  I have played on sports teams that have proven that fact more than I can count.  The hero of a particular game was the one who was out all night drinking beer and carousing around.  He was hung over and a mental mess during an important game in which nobody else on the team had brought their "A" game.  Yet, out of nowhere, he did the right things at the end to save a win.  Objectively, it should not have ended this way.  Amazing enough, it did.  The hero was the one who least deserved it.  Sometimes success is subjective.

I have known people who got busy with doing other things in their life, sidetracked enough that they did not have time to prepare their soil for planting a spring garden.    They procrastinated too long to get their seeds in the ground and failed to complete the irrigation plans to make sure enough water helped the seeds grow well.  Yet in the end, I have seen their garden look the best of anyone else who followed all of the right rules.  Sometimes success is subjective.

I am sure you can think of other situations similar to those two.  When someone you know does not follow the right steps to secure success and wins despite doing all of the wrong things.  The ball just seemed to bounce their way.  Sometimes success is subject, it seems biased and unfair.  Some winners win despite the obvious fact that they do not deserve to win.  It happens.  How many times has someone said they were very lucky to get out of this one with a win?  How many times has a bunch of bad sportsmanship players on a particular team come back to win a game they should have lost and because they did not deserve the win, you felt awful when they won?  Their victory left a big hole in the pit of your stomach.  You know down deep that they did not deserve to win, but they did.  Sometimes success is subjective.

Business can be exactly like that.  A competitor who has a nasty way of competing can constantly draw the most success and it can begin to irritate you.  Somehow that nasty competitor steals your business in an unfair way.  It begins to get your goat.  I have had it happen.  I caught a competitor one time placing live mice around the perimeter of one of my business buildings.  We had just purchased a vacant building across the street from our place of business and were inside one night walking around making some plans.  We were done and shut off the lights.  The moon and street lights were all we had left to illuminate our way as we finished talking about a few more things we planned to do with this old building we just purchased.  We were standing inside the old building in the dark, chatting about more plans.  Then suddenly we both spotted someone walking around the side of our business in the parking lot across the street.  We waited to see what that person was planning to do.  It looked suspicious.

We had a furniture store operation in that building.  The person outside our building had a couple of boxes in their hands.  They seemed to be bending over every once in awhile, tipping one of the boxes to the ground as if to be releasing or dumping something out.  I told my girlfriend, who later became my wife, that I would be right back.  I told her to stay in the vacant building.  I was going over to see what that person was doing.  As I approached the person, I could see they were dumping something along the side of the parking lot wall next to our furniture store building.  The person did not see me.  The closer I got the more I recognized the person.  I was shocked.  It was the owner of a furniture store competitor who had a business a couple of blocks away.  He was releasing a bunch of mice next to our building.  I could not believe my eyes.

Boy was he shocked when I called his name and asked him what he was doing.  I waved to my girlfriend across the street to come and see what this fool was up to.  It was an amazing experience.  The look on my girlfriends face, her body language told the whole story.  We were shocked and amazed.  It was an experience that gets marked down in the book of memories.

We have been through a lot of competitors in this marketplace.  Many have come and gone.  This one particular owner still stands strong as a serious competitor and still holds a fair share in the marketplace.  Sometimes success is subjective.  Sometimes owners can do many of the wrong things that do not meet the correct list of right things to do and win anyway.  Placing live mice in a competitors building is not one of those right things to do on the list of winning fundamentals to practice.  Victory still appeared.  It does not seem right.  That event happened almost thirty years ago.  Both of us still compete against each other to this day.

Dirty Rat Cheater!

That girlfriend became my wife.  I am not sure she remembers the event.  I have never forgotten it.  I remember telling my father, who was the founder of the business, what had happened.  My father went ballistic.  He had a fairly strong temper.  His fuse to that temper was kind of on the short side, anyway.  He went off like a missile when I told him what I discovered that night.  He was not a happy camper.  It was all I could do to keep him from going to that competitors home and making a bigger mess than what we might be able to manage.  It was a rough night.  Sometimes success is subjective.  Sometimes success comes with a lot of patience, a lot of endurance and a lot of things you do that nobody else sees the things you have learned how to endure.  Sometimes success comes from doing the unbelievable things behind the scenes.

I convinced my father that night to allow me to handle this unbelievable situation.  I convinced him that it would only get worse if he were able to complete the fury he was planning to engage.  He settled down and told me I had one day to resolve this issue and it better involve a lawyer and the press.

I am a second generation business owner.  The young competitor who placed the mice next to our business was also a second generation business owner.  There was one difference in that relationship when compared to mine.  He was the son-in-law, not the blood son of the owner of that competitor.  His relationship with his father-in-law was brand new.  The owner of the competition recently watched his daughter marry this fellow.  They had been married only a couple of years.  This new son-in-law was being groomed to become the new manager of the operation they owned.  What a great spot I was in.

I promised my father I would take care of this situation.  He reluctantly stepped back and kept a cooler head.  I could impress my girlfriend, my family, set the record straight, get the nasty competitor humbled and clip the wings of a competitor all in one fell swoop.  What an opportunity.

I watched how furious my father became.  I knew the original owner of our competition was exactly wired like my father.  They both had mean streaks built inside their character.  They both had short fuses and strong tempers.  They also came from the period of time when pride of 'right' ownership was a very big thing.  Watching how my father 'cooked' me when he heard the news I delivered about the mouse event gave me a great idea.  I decided to call the real owner of that competitor and tell him what happened.  I decided to make sure the father-in-law got involved.

The best way to have this news delivered was to call the son-in-law and request that he bring his father-in-law to our place of business and meet with my father.  I called the son-in-law and told him the only way I would avoid hiring a lawyer and running this story with press was to have him bring his father-in-law to my father at our store and have his father-in-law apologize to my father for his actions.  I told him nothing else would do the trick.  I told him that was his only saving grace.  I told him it had to be completed before the day came to an end.  In the meantime, I was going over to our lawyers office to describe what we were doing.  I also set up an appointment with the local newspaper to meet with them in the morning if he failed to do what I requested.

Shortly after that conversation on the phone with the son-in-law, I got a phone call from someone who claimed to be his wife.  We did not have caller ID systems back then.  As expected, she pleaded with me to refrain from making her husband do that next step of requests.  She began to cry.  Something tells me all was not well at home.  I told her it was no longer my problem.

The founders of both business models met and one apologized to the other and promised to make sure nothing like this would ever happen again.  It was an odd but cordial end to a very bad business decision.  No lawyers, no press.  Sometimes success is subjective.  Sometimes what you will be led to do behind the scenes of your business model will become unpredictable and strange.  Many business owners can tell stories similar to this one.  Our libraries of experience are filled and littered with unusual events.  If you are a new business owner, be prepared to endure some very interesting things.  Make sure you understand how sometimes success is subjective.  Once you get that understanding down pat, do not expect subjective victories to come your way while you ignore doing the right things you need to be doing.  My experience will prove that subjective victories seem to happen to everyone else.  My victories usually came the hard way.  I had to earn them over and over again.  Nothing came free.  When I got drunk the night before, my game the next day looked like I got drunk the night before.

Do the right things to ensure victory.  It works better than expecting success to come in subjective fashion.

Until next time...