What’s the one thing you simply can’t afford an hour before a wedding reception if you are the caterer? For the van you are driving that contains nearly all the food to break down on the way to the venue. It simply can’t happen.
But that’s exactly what happened to me.
Back in 2004, I bought an existing catering business and was working to grow and improve it. As a result, in the first six months, I did every job we had, including driving to events and working them myself alongside staff to learn the ins and outs of the business.
On this particular Saturday evening, we were doing a larger than usual wedding. I had sent one truck ahead with tables, decorations, linens, and some of the food. I took the van with the rest of the food. As I was driving on the freeway all of a sudden there was a tremendous bang from the rear passenger side of the vehicle, and it felt like the whole van hopped into the air for a second and then came crashing back down.
The van immediately started making a terrible sound and slowing down. I limped it off the freeway and into the side parking lot of the gas station that was on the corner where it completely died and refused to restart.
The reception started in just under an hour, and I had a twenty-minute drive to go, plus time to do all the unloading, setup, etc. I did not have time for this.
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I ran into the adjacent mechanic shop that was attached to the gas station and grabbed the guy there, more or less dragging him over to the van. He quickly spotted the problem. Whatever I had hit or bounced over or whatever it was (I still don’t know) had basically crushed the pipe leading to the muffler and bent the crap out of the muffler itself – which killed the engine and accounted for the horrible sound the van was making.
I ran through the options- the mechanic couldn’t fix it, didn’t have the parts, didn’t have time to come up with another solution, and basically wanted nothing to do with it until Monday at the earliest (the shop closed in less than 15 minutes).
This was before everyone had cell phones but luckily, I did, and so did the team that had gone ahead and I was able to call them. But they needed thirty minutes more to unload, then it would be a twenty-minute drive to me, ten minutes to load everything into their truck, twenty minutes back and then thirty minutes to unload and set up- making us about an hour late for serving the food. Not going to work.
Neither was there time to rent another van. Or hire five taxis. This was before Uber. I looked around the gas station to see if there was anyone with a big enough vehicle I could offer to hire for an hour but no luck.
So I went back to the mechanic who had by now returned to his garage and asked “what is it going to take for that van to drive again?” He said the van wasn’t going to move with the muffler blocked and removing it properly would take half an hour, on a lift, but his lift wouldn’t accommodate a van.
The word “properly” caught my attention. So, I asked whether there was a way to take it off improperly? He said sure, I guess you could just take a hacksaw and cut the pipe in front of where it was crushed, then bend it over so it would just vent straight into the air. I asked if he could do it. He said, “No, but if you are really desperate, I can loan you a hacksaw.” Which he did.
I crawled under the van and in ten minutes, sawed through the pipe, and then bent it out of position. I immediately then hopped in the van, and it started. I made it to the venue, and while we were still ten minutes behind in being ready to serve the food, the wedding itself was fifteen minutes behind, so no one noticed.
I’ve talked a lot over the course of this newsletter about various things that you need to be able to do well to be successful as a small business owner, but the common theme in most of it is being able to solve problems.
Everyone solves problems to some extent; the difference with an entrepreneur is that they don’t give up after two or three failed attempts. If you want to get to the X (whatever that is for you), then when a hurdle presents itself that blocks you from going straight to the goal, you won’t just stop after trying to go over or under or around.
You will try going through, you will try going way around the side, you’ll try tunneling, you will try building a catapult to launch yourself over, you will try sweet-talking the hurdle into voluntarily stepping aside. You will try a bribe, you will try a disguise, you will try going around the world in the opposite direction to get back to where you want to be.
Most people assume there are limits in a problem that aren’t really there, and that stops them from considering all the options. The mechanic assumed I wanted a muffler repair that was permanent, and safe, and street legal. But none of those assumptions were true. I wanted a solution that would let me start the van in the next five minutes, and I was happy to sacrifice all other requirements to meet that particular goal. Once that was clear, more solutions presented themselves.
The better you get at solving problems, the more you notice two things that occur. One is that you have fewer problems- you just naturally start anticipating solutions before problems even arise, and you plan for them. The second is that you stress less and remain calmer because you know you can handle whatever gets thrown at you.
Being a business owner doesn’t come with a roadmap, and not everything you face is going to have happened before and have a predetermined answer. For most employees, it’s different- their jobs are well defined, and if they do run into a problem they can’t solve, they can simply escalate it to a manager or the owner and wait to see how it gets fixed. But for owners, it’s different- there is no one else coming to save you. So, either you get good at solving problems, or you end up drowning in them while stressing out and being miserable.
In the end, not every problem has a solution, and it was possible my story could have ended differently, and we didn’t make the wedding on time. Had I not determined to try every single possible avenue to get to the wedding, however then for sure I wouldn’t have made it. Don’t give up, don’t limit yourself with assumptions, and don’t quit trying solutions until the last second runs out on the clock. Being a great problem solver will take you far in business and in life!