Last weekend, I had the chance to join Team WILLIAMS CRAWFORD LIMITED, fellow entrepreneurs, at the XX Rally Isla Mallorca, to support them with local knowledge and as a freelance junior mechanic. The team entered the rally with five cars: three Porsche 911s, a Ford Escort, and a Mitsubishi Lancer EVO. This experience gave me some important learnings I want to share.
My role: refuelling mechanic. More precisely, driving to the assigned petrol station between the rally stages, waiting for an hour or so for our team cars to arrive. And once they were there, quickly doing the refuelling. Opening the fuel tank, which was a little bit different on each of the cars as you had to open the bonnet to access those homologated fuel tanks, but still light-years from being rocket science. For any of our team cars, the operation took no more than 1-2 minutes per refuelling, which is nothing compared to the standby time, waiting for the cars to arrive.
I guess at this point you start to ask, why am I telling you all this boring stuff? If someone, like me, likes cars so much, drive one. Yes, that would be an exciting experience to talk about. Or at least go and watch them on stage, take video and share, even that is far more interesting. Any of those actions would be by far more interesting than just driving from one petrol station to another.
Honestly, my initial impression was similar. When accepting Adrian's and Richard's (owners of Williams and Crawford Ltd.) invitation to join their technician team, I was expecting something "exciting". If looking at the situation only through the lens of my own ego, it seemed like: I’m a business owner joining other business owners who drive 911s in a rally. I deserve to be treated like a VIP. For my ego, it was kind of a (W)whiskey, (T)ango, (F)oxtrot moment.
However, once putting my ego aside, I discovered a great learning. Being of use to others is the greatest thing we can do in life and business. Often, we look at life through the lens of "What’s in this for me?", completely forgetting about the other side. "What’s in it for Them?" is the correct approach if you want to succeed. This phrase I borrowed from one of the most sought-after marketers, Joe Polish, who even wrote a book called "What’s in it for Them?".
Once I stopped listening to my ego devilishly whispering in my ear: "I deserve more", I started to enjoy this simple action: refuelling rally cars when required. It turns out I indeed had the opportunity to be a VIP. Exactly the same way the pilots and co-drivers were VIPs. Like every technician in the team was a VIP. I was a refuelling technician, and I was a VIP. Those were my actions of being of use to others which made me a Very Important Person for the general success of the team.
Very often, we believe that we must be treated like VIPs because of who we are and what we have achieved in the past. But by doing that, we are losing our opportunity to become someone’s VIP because of our actions towards others, being of use to someone else. The best summary of the weekend was when Richard said during the after-party: "Thank you, Kris, for your support. After being so stressed during the stages, it was so great to see familiar, smiling faces at stops in petrol stations".
The "What’s in it for them?" approach is at the core of our business at Iberian Yacht Solutions - Locally Excellent Superyacht Experience. We are a boutique superyacht concierge agency with a mission to make crew life easier. That means being available day-by-day and of use to our customers - the superyacht crew, to help them bring smiles to the yacht owners' and guests' faces.
Are you a Captain planning to visit Spain this season? Get in touch with us at info@iberianyachtsolutions.com or +34 647 728 807 to let us know how we can become your VIP’s and be useful for you and your crew.
Kommentare