What rampaging bullocks in your garden can teach you about business

Oné of the most surreal things you can ever see out of your office window is a man chasing bullocks around your garden.

I speak from experience, because that’s exactly what happened on Saturday.

There I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business and herd of bullocks goes charging past my window, closely followed by a bloke in a white T-shirt waving his arms and shouting.

It’s testament to how well I’ve fitted in to rural life around here that I just raised my eyebrow and turned my attention back to my computer. I admit, I did sigh a little.

Now, the question you might be asking yourself is what the hell was a herd of bullocks doing in my garden in the first place?

Well, therein lies the lesson. It’s an important one, too.

Here’s the story, as I heard it from Sarah later on in the afternoon: my neighbour was moving the bullocks from the field at the top of the lane to the field at the bottom. And to help him he had a few bods to wave arms or whatever — one of them had a sack of cattle feed, too (remember this — it’s important).

Anyway, they all come mooing and bellowing down the lane lured on by the guy with the cattle feed, and prodded from behind by the others.

And at the bottom of the lane where it meets the road, they were all meant to turn right.

Only… the guy with the cattle feed went left because he needed to secure the tape they use to guide cattle along the lanes hereabouts.

And bullocks, being neither coöperative nor particularly bright followed the guy holding the goodie-bag.

The result?

Chaos.

Cuz the guy with the food realised the bullocks were following him and going the wrong way. So he kinda panicked, dropped the bag and started waving his arms, chasing them back the way he wanted them to go.

Trouble was, the blokes doing the prodding and poking from behind were now milling around in the middle of the road, meaning the hairy beasts were trapped between the mad waving-arm man and a bunch of pokers and prodders.

So they did the thing any bullock would do in the circumstances and cut a sharp hairpin turn into my garden.

The rest, you know.

So what’s the Big Lesson here?

Well, there are two.

1. The most obvious one is this: plan ahead. A simple strip of the tape across my drive would have stopped the wee beasties from coming into my garden.
2. And the less obvious, but probably more important one: the bullocks were always going to follow the guy with the food!

In just the same way as your market follows what it wants the most rather than what YOU want to give it.

Tagged as: bullocks, direct response marketing, entrepreneurship, irish business, lead generation, marketing, small business marketing