Every Failure Has Tenants

On Christmas Day, a frozen sprinkler head sent water through the second floor of my house. A complete mess — and the holiday spent mopping instead of celebrating. It reads like a house story.

But it's really a business story.

A house has systems that fail, and someone has to deal with it. A business is the same — except the failure has tenants. When a rental goes down, it isn't just a repair. It's someone's ruined trip, and the person who owns it has to own the consequence.

That's the difference between property and a business: the human cost is external and immediate. A house that fails is your problem. A business that fails is everyone's problem — the customer, the team covering for it, the reputation taking the hit.

The tenants dislike it too.

The field-notes version — with the video — is on WanderingCTO.