An Entrepreneurial Shift After a Near Death Experience
A Second Chance
Not many people have a second chance at life. Those that do, make a conscious decision to live better, make better choices and make it count. This was no different for William Lang who survived a plane crash in 2002 and was one of the 96 survivors. He was one of the lucky ones, 83 passengers and crew lost their lives that day when his plane took off from the wrong runway, hit a construction site and split in half. This was certainly a wakeup call for Lang who decided to do things differently from that moment on, closing his current business and deciding to launch his new venture Vizio, a company that specialised in consumer electronics, particularly high definition TV’s and wireless audio equipment.
A New Focus
At the age of 14, Lang migrated to the US with his parents, despite struggling with the language and assimilating he was able to graduate from engineering school. It was after the crash Lang reassessed his life, realising that everyone would die at some point, he made a decision to refocus his life and focus on things that mattered, his family, a new business venture. Lang recognised that people were important and satisfying customer needs was crucial for a successful business. To ensure his customer’s needs were satisfied, he acknowledged that teamwork was required from all sides, staff, suppliers, consumers, basically everybody involved in the process.
“In a sense they are all our customers… and so it is our job to make everyone happy.” William Lang
Lang put his customers before his business ideologies and before the company profit. Any profit that was acquired was reinvested back into the company to further enhance his customer’s needs. By honing in to his customer’s specific needs Vizio grew to be a successful business. The reason for Vizio’s huge triumph was that whilst many organisations considered customer service to be a focal point for their business, Lang prioritised customer satisfaction and delivered.
New Beginnings
Lang’s story has a happy outcome, he was able to live his life doing what he enjoyed, spending time with his family and creating a thriving business that truly focused on delivering customer satisfaction. We all get second chances in life, the moment we wake up each day to do something different, to better ourselves, to serve others, to make a difference. We do not require a near death experience to reassess our lives, we can choose to make that decision right now, today. What are you choosing to do?
