A good piece of business advice, that I’ve heard from several places and I can’t remember which was first, is to start hanging out with people at the level you want to reach. So instead of just frequenting the new-to-business forums and meetups and clubs, start reading and emailing the people you admire and want to emulate.

I’ve found this to be enormously helpful. I’ve also made good friends this way. And I recently had a real-life metaphorical experience that backs it up…in a backwards kind of way. Well, maybe. Bear with me while I tell a little story…

Necessity is the mother of experimentation

I needed a pickup truck.

Just for a day or two. See, one of the 4,032 things on my list of stuff to do before I head off to SOBCon was to pick up some furniture my brother was getting rid of. His old couch is going into my office, and his old loveseat is going into Genius Daughter’s room.

This furniture influx also required a corresponding outflux: We gave away our old couch, a dresser, and a rocking chair to a friend who’d recently moved into the area from across the country. Everybody wins!

So I called up my local car-rental place and reserved myself a Dodge Ram 1500.

The rigidity of self-description

To understand how ludicrous this seemed to me at first, you have to consider that I am really not a pickup-truck kind of person. In fact, I am annoyingly smug about my small, nimble, fuel-efficient, low-emission Honda Fit (her name is Bridget. As in Bridget Fonda the Honda. Ask nicely and I’ll tell you about my previous cars’ names…). It costs me about $30 to fill her tank, she can fit into squeezy parking spaces, and I don’t really care where she was made as long as she’s safe and reliable. Which she certainly has been so far.

So this beast of a truck is the opposite of my regular car in many ways. I didn’t go so far as to name him, as we were only acquainted for 48 hours, but he was definitely male. Climbing up into the driver’s seat was like scaling a ladder. He felt like he was twice as long as my little Bridget, and he was quite a bit wider as well (there was room for an entire pizza box on the seat between the driver and passenger! Astonishing!).

I was actually a bit concerned about driving something so large — would I underestimate my size and end up smashing into things? Would I be able to parallel park? What if I made some novice-pickup-driver error and, I don’t know, killed someone??

But I had to scramble up into that sky-high driver’s seat in order to get the furniture delivered. So, after adjusting the mirrors, reminding myself not to grope for the clutch whenever I slowed down (because this was an automatic transmission and I’m used to my stick-shift), and making sure I didn’t accidentally turn on the windshield wipers whenever I wanted to flick the turn signal, I shifted into D and we were off, my rental Dodge and I.

And you know what? I was fine.

I mean, at some level, driving is driving. And although I quintuple-checked before changing lanes, and I proceeded pretty gingerly when edging into a parking space or backing up, my supposedly non-pickup-person self managed to drive around in one for two days without any problems whatsoever.

A hatchback blog trying on a pickup-sized business

So naturally I was blown away by the metaphor I was living.

Here I was, actually enjoying being at the wheel of a behemoth I’d probably never consider buying (my 5-year-old son asked, with wide eyes, “Mom, is this a monster truck?” and wanted to ride with me all weekend). This was a vehicle that would not even fit into my garage.

Here I was, eye-to-eye with all the SUV- and pickup-driving environment-destroyers I’d previously zipped around in my earth-friendly hatchback. I was having fun looking down on all the little cars from my my gas-guzzling Ram.

I could get used to this, I thought.

This new perspective. This power. This having-room-to-carry-almost-anything. Yep, I could see myself someday owning, maybe not this particular truck, but maybe a midsized, good-safety-rating SUV. Huh. How about that.

And I thought, is my business acting like a low-horsepower hatchback when it wants to be a monster truck? Or even the reverse — what if my blog is trying to be a Hummer when really it’s got the heart of a Smart Car?

What if I tried something new on for awhile, like renting a car that you’re considering buying? What if I hung out with the pickup-driving crowd for a bit, or got friendly with my local Smart Car dealer, just to see what it was like?

What if?