This is really embarrassing, but it did happen. While leaving Melbourne very early in the morning, I filled up my vehicle with fuel. Even though I have been driving diesel vehicles constantly for 40 years, I accidentally put ULP into my diesel vehicle. No excuse for this, besides complacency. Luckily, I recognised what I had done before I had completely filled the tank and – most importantly – before I started the engine.

There were a couple of lessons here for me.

Firstly, take note of what you are doing. Secondly, there are always opportunities from misfortunes. While my mishap didn’t have any long-term ramifications, besides dented pride and the cost of getting the tank drained, this isn’t always the case in a farming context. Complacency in farming can have long-term consequences. I am thinking particularly about work health and safety issues.

We have all – including me – put our bodies in harm’s way when operating heavy machinery, such as grain augers etc. In the vast majority of cases, it’s a near miss and no harm done. Inattention can manifest in many ways on a farm. Not being focused on the job at hand can lead to a task taking much longer than it needs to, or not being done to a satisfactory standard.

This is where having a goal in mind will assist. Just cruising through life will always lead somewhere, not necessarily to where you want to go though. The other lesson from my fuel faux pas, was the business opportunity one person saw from these situations.

Bearing in mind it was 5am when this happened, and I wandered into the servo, I’m sure looking quite forlorn. The attendant handed me a business card of someone that offers fixed priced solutions to my particular problem. In a city the size of Melbourne, I’d imagine it happens a lot!

It did say 24/7, so I called the number and Peter answered. By 6.15am, they were there in their fitted out van, draining my tank. In the next 60 minutes it turned into a Q&A session, with me firing questions to the unsuspecting technician. He said very few customers were as objective as me in this situation. I just said that ‘what’s done is done, and we are working on the solution’. His customer service skills were exemplary and he knew how to market properly.

As you would imagine, most of these incidents happen at service stations, so his main business referral source is the service station staff. He puts aside a certain amount of time each week to visit servo’s throughout Melbourne. There are always lessons to be learned from other industries.

In lots of ways the fundamentals of business are very similar for all sectors. There are always take home lessons from any interaction. The key is to be open to this and, most importantly, to listen.