The Cow Story

This is a short story from Brad Blaze’s book “TRAILBLAZER – Uncommon Adventures and business lessons from a travelling entertainer”.  Buy the electronic version (for IPAD, Kindle or as a PDF) from Smashwords – all sales go to Variety, the childrens charity.

THE COW STORY

It was a most unusual request: “So the final painting of the night Brad… what we want you do is… Well we want you to paint a giant cow!”.

The event was the annual Queensland feedlot convention with about 800 people, and this was certainly an unusual request. “Yeah, no problem” I responded, as I began to wonder how I could paint this cow in four minutes, and more importantly, how on earth I could make it exciting for the audience.

It was certainly a busy time of the year for me and I had been planning a number of events around it. The same week I was painting a CEO in Singapore and then painting a female award winner, also in Queensland. With a few jobs on in the same week, it is a case of a bit of preparation, getting photos of the subjects for the portraits, mixing music for shows and generally working out how to add some sizzle to the show.

So a few weeks went by and I was planning the shows out. I had requested a photo of the CEO from Singapore and the award winner from Queensland and now focused my attention to the feedlot convention. You see, the client had a particular cow scene in mind. “These farmers know their cows, they want you to paint a particular cow with its markings, so I will send you through a photo now!”.

Five minutes later the phone rang. “Hi brad.. It’s Tom from the association. I just want to confirm that you received the photo on the email”. I quickly refreshed my email and the photo of the cow appeared. I clicked on the attachment to see a great big black and white spotted cow. “Great photo,” I said jokingly. “What a great looking cow!”. The phone went silent for a few seconds. “Well some people call her a cow!”.

All of a sudden it dawned on me. I was speaking to a representative of the company that was giving the award to the female employee and not the feedlot association.

Tweet