Have you been following the saga of the 14,000 taco trucks in Los Angeles? Let’s give you a synopsis:

The County of Los Angeles has 14,000 mobile trucks that sell food in neighborhoods. They offer mostly Mexican-American dishes (e.g. tacos) that are inexpensive and simple. Well, recently, in its infinite wisdom, the county board of supervisors voted to make it a crime if a truck stayed in one place for more than an hour. This measure was supported by the local chamber of commerce, and it was passed unanimously by the 5 supervisors.

The logic was that the trucks, with their inexpensive menu and low overhead, were forcing brick and mortar restaurants to close. So, they imposed a fine of $1,000 and/or 6 months in jail if they didn’t move every hour. Armed robbery or drunk driving probably gets you 30 days, but sitting your truck in a place for an hour gets you 6 months!

The part of the story on which we want to concentrate is the economics of the situation. If government passes laws that make it harder for licensed, regulated, inspected food vendors to deliver their wares, the only loser is the consumer. Food the consumer wants would become more expensive artificially.

If a mobile vendor has determined a better and less expensive way to deliver his or her food, then let the market factors determine that. If traditional restaurants can’t adopt and adapt to market conditions, then they should go out of business. Let markets determine what consumers want, and the natural fluid conditions will make the correct adjustments.

This week one of the companies that we advise had a major technical meltdown. Their service was offline to all of their customers, and things looked like the outage was going to last for awhile. Within seconds of the outage being detected, the entire company sprang into action. All of the technical folks began working on the issue at hand, marketing began crafting a message for the press and customers, and support handled any of the incoming inquiries. This frenzied effort was wonderful to see and really showed the dedication and skill of the team. The net result of this effort were a shortened downtime, ZERO customer complaints, and a great internal sense of pride on the excellent effort put forth.

This made me think of a memorable quote that every entrepreneur should live by, “It is not important how many times you fall down, it is how many times you get up.” In running your business, you are going to fall down.  Things are going to break, you are going to miss sales numbers, bad things will happen. The key is not to worry about those things. The secret is to adopt/adapt and move forward. You will build a stronger company by overcoming problems more than you could from never experiencing the challenges at all.

Have you been watching any of the NBA playoffs? Although the games have been great and competitive, what is even more interesting is the fallout from the first round exits in the West. Avery Johnson and Mike D’Antoni were both fired when their 50+ win teams exited the playoffs stage left. These firings showed a great correlation to what life in sales management at start-up is like.

The parallels:

• You get paid pretty well (i.e. NBA coaches are all 7 figure men, and sales people usually make the most money at a company)
• When things are going well (i.e. playoff wins or lots of closed deals), you are a hero. You are almost like a god. Everyone thinks you are a genius, and you probably have the ego to prove it.
• Even when things go well, if you don’t reach expectations (i.e. not winning big games or making an inflated sales projection), you are probably in trouble.
• Expect to get fired or minimized sooner or later

Currently, I am filling the role of VP of sales at a start-up. The start-up has shown great strides the last 6 months of my involvement. Although April was the second best month ever, it really didn’t hit the expectations that I made public. Needless to say, I feel like an NBA coach today!