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How an old Chevy Impala changed how I thought about business.

This introductory story tells how I came to see the power of the little things to make the bigger things in life work and move! It relates to the necessity of connecting all the cogs that exist in the mechanics of a sale.

In 1981 I needed to fix my starter on my Chevy, or so I thought. Not being a mechanic I got down to examine the task at hand. Examining the underside of the car, I saw my problem straight away. And boy was I ever surprised and awed at what I found.

THE BENDIX AND THE FLYWHEEL

The bendix was not in contact with the flywheel. The bolts had come loose and it was not engaged to the flywheel; and when I turned the ignition it whirred away but did little else.

Well this bendix, a motor with a small cog attached to it, is supposed to mesh with a bigger cog, called a flywheel. The bendix being attached to the car battery, when you started the car, would send a jolt of wonder to the bendix and it would turn with the speed of a whirling dervish that would in then turn the big cog, our flywheel.

If all went well the flywheel would turn over. Seeing as how this flywheel was attached to the camshaft, phew more techie words!!, which was attached to the pistons which produced the power to run the engine which made the car move, I needed to make that flywheel do its one and only thing, turn.

CONTACT AND COMBUSTION

So I tightened down the bolts on the bendix and got the cog teeth on the bendix and the cog teeth of the flywheel matched. The timing was reset, by a real mechanic, and we turned the key, and…. Ignition and blast off. My Chevy was heavy again for the road.

Then and only then could I put my foot down on the gas peddle and move, drive as they say, using all the force and power of that machine to take me were I wanted to go. Phew!!!

Several things struck me about what I saw that day of car repair, and how it relates so well to small business.

THE AWESOME LITTLE BENDIX COG THAT COULD.

I was in awe of how such a small device, the bendix, with such a little cog could turn the much bigger and heavier, massive in fact, flywheel.

Just a little jolt of wonder from the battery and a whirring bendix cog had the power to turn my machine into a car!

I was awed by the fact that such a powerful machine, relied upon such a little device and its little cog to make the initial action that would allow that powerful machine to move, and move at a speed that I could control!

Small businesses are just like that Chevy Impala I owned back in the day. So many of them have a bendix that is not engaging the flywheel of their business machine, and all the whirring and starting efforts achieve the same effort, nada, ziltch.

THE INITIAL ACTION

I see the relationship between that bendix and small business today. To turn the wheel of commerce, you have to get the little cogs, just like our bendix, turning so that they will in their turn, get that flywheel to move against the wheel of commerce.

Then and only then will you and I enjoy the power to drive the massive machine that is the wheel of commerce.

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