My first CEO job, I was supervising a contractor team drilling for water on a tangerine grove on the flank of Palomar Mountain in Southern California. A 25-year old kid on an upside down bucket occasionally barking out questions and decisions.

The men were nervous. The week before a similar rig was lost, crew and all, when a void they had unknowingly created gave way, sucking man and machine down into the soft earth.

Today I saved the entire crew from a different disaster. Read the full piece for how.

I learned three business lessons.

• The CEO has both the top and the bottom job at any startup. To start a company bring a checkbook and a shovel

• An observant newcomer can avert disasters that lifetime professionals create

• Take workplace safety seriously, please