You all seemed to enjoy my story about falling down a mountain, in fact, it brought back some memories of your own falls which you were kind enough to share. Your comments made for some entertaining reading, for sure!

Anyway, when you live in Colorado as I did, you usually wind up with more than one story about falling down a mountain. Well, I’ve got several, so I think I’ll run a series. Do these stories have any connection to small business sales and marketing? Well, if it’s good business to get up after you stumble, consider these posts teaching by example.

SKI - DADDY!

When I was in high school, I should not have been allowed on the ski slopes. I was a football player with a deadly combination of physical attributes — I was big (240 lbs), strong, and clumsy. This can be a problem on skis, as you will see.

One time the family was up in Vail, and my brother, five years younger and a graceful, effortless skier, goaded me up to some very high, very narrow, and very hard ski run. My brother and everybody else up there looked like the guy in the picture. I had a mangy beard, a knit hat that looked like something you’d wear to track grizzly bears, and a puffy, green parka that made me look 340 lbs. Now, I was barely out of the “snow plow” stance, where you point your ski tips together so that your skis form an arrow, and I had absolutely no business on this particular slope. Well, I had to get down, so I pointed myself in a direction, closed my eyes, and let gravity take over.

When I opened my eyes a few seconds later, I saw that instead of heading straight down the slope, I was rocketing toward the edge, which was marked by a line of very large and very solid trees. Now, a halfway decent skier would simply shift his weight and change direction. That luxury wasn’t available to me. I was heading for the trees and there was nothing I could do about it.

Then I noticed there were a couple of older women off to the side of the slope, standing close together poring over a map. They were maybe 30 yards away, and I realized I was heading right at them! I started screaming at them to get out of the way, but they weren’t paying any attention. At the last second they both looked up, and there I was, a bug eyed, bearded monster doing a snow plow at full tilt, screaming and staring right down their throats. What a sight that must have been for those poor women!

BAM! I smacked into them like a bowling ball picking up a 4-5 split. The women, who probably weighed all of 110 lbs each, never had a chance. They went flying in opposite directions, and I went face down, but didn’t really feel a thing. I got up and start apologizing, seeing if they’re OK, with my brother nearby, no doubt smirking. The women took it rather well, and in retrospect, it was probably a good thing I hit them instead of one of those trees. (A good thing for me, anyway.)

Well, after this you’d think I’d have had enough smarts to give up skiing. But no … hence the series of falling down mountain stories.
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You ever see something coming and know there was nothing you could do about it? What was it like?