If You Want Peace, Prepare for War

What separates the truly great from the mediocre, the winners from the losers, the pretenders from the contenders? What is it that spurs certain people on to magnificent achievements while others choke bitterly in their dust? There’s an old and true, military motto, “Si vis pacem, para bellum” from Flavius Vegetius Renatus circa 375 AD: “If you want peace, prepare for war.” When you want something badly enough, you will fight for it. It’s the old, “Live free or die” kind of approach. Watch what people do and you will see their true level of commitment.

Ayn Rand spoke about this kind of bulletproof resolution. “There are two sides to every issue” she said, “one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth…” Fence sitters and cowards exist in a moral fog where they never really commit to anything but their hatred of success. Achievers are prepared to fight to the death. Sidney Sheldon put it best: “The foolish think the Eagle weak, and easy to bring to heel. The Eagle's wings are silken, but its claws are made of steel.”

Roosevelt said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Winners don’t cut and run. They are in the fight until the end. They stay the course. They know that anything worthwhile will take a bit longer and take some doing. They understand that they will face a few detours, disappointments, and distractions.

They expect the unexpected. They are warriors who realize that war is war. They don’t make excuses or expect the state or mommy to help them. They don’t find the strongest people to blame for their inadequacies, spinelessness and weakness. They bounce back courageously and fight on. They are the “Steel fist in the silken glove” – when you push them, you find out whom you’re really dealing with.

During my years working with entrepreneurs, I’ve learnt an important lesson: You can put a loser into the best business with excellent products and a great market and he will fail miserably. But you can put a winner in a failing business with no hope and he will turn it into a wonderful success story. It has very little to do with your circumstances – winners can turn lemons into lemonade, every time. It’s who they are.
This is the Entrepreneur’s Credo:
I do not choose to be a common man -
It is my right to be uncommon … if I can.
I seek opportunity … not security.
I do not wish to be a kept citizen,
Humbled and dulled by having the State look after me.
I want to take the calculated risk,
To dream and to build. To fail and to succeed.
I refuse to barter incentive for a dole;
I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence;
The thrill of fulfillmentTo the stale calm of Utopia.
I will not trade freedom for beneficence
Nor my dignity for a handout
I will never cower before any master
Nor bend to any threat.
It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid;
To think and act for myself,
To enjoy the benefit of my creations
And to face the world boldly and say:
This, with God’s help, I have done.
All this is what it means to be an Entrepreneur.
(Excerpt from Common Sense, written in 1776 by Thomas Paine)

If you want peace, prepare for war; prepare to fight for it. And peace will be yours.

Robin J. Elliott www.DollarMakers.com

Unlimited Potential

Wrap your mind around this one: If every car that crossed the Port Mann Bridge each gave you just one dollar per MONTH, you would earn $300,000 per month. Every driver could afford one dollar per month, and all you would have to do is give him a reason to pay you. When we look at the amount of potential surrounding us, we realize why some people become fantastically rich, while others battle to merely survive financially. The “Toll Booth” analogy works well when you think of the richest man on earth, Bill Gates – he gets paid on each transaction. Like royalties to recording artists or authors. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do – all you need to do to partake in profuse and proliferate prosperity is to set your tollbooth up. Once you understand the mindset, it’s easier than you might imagine.

First, you need to find traffic – like the cars going over a bridge, a stream of people buying at a certain place, a flow of distribution, (like a river, where you simply divert the flow through your bank account and back into the river again) or a movement or process of business. Then, think of a logical addition of value to that group, product, or process. For example, a thousand cars park all day, every day in the sun while the drivers leap onto a train to go to work in the city. That’s the flow. What do they need / want? How can you add value to them? Perhaps they need those windshield sun protectors so they don’t get into steaming cars and their car interiors are protected. That’s the value.

Next, you need access to those people. For this, we use Joint Ventures. I might want to skip off to the nearest dollar store and buy a few hundred sun protectors and then sell them to the drivers as they head for the train, but I might need permission to talk with them. I could arrange a profit sharing deal with the person who can give me this access / introduce me to the drivers. Then, I need to remove risk, cost and time from the Joint Venture opportunity. I don’t want to be stranded with five hundred sun protectors that I can’t sell! Could I take orders for the sun protectors or get them paid for in advance or get them on consignment? That way, I don’t sell any, I don’t lose anything. I could Joint Venture with the person who owns the dollar store, right? And to remove time, could I have someone else do the actual selling and share the profits with them? This is a simple example, but the principle works with million dollar deals as well as with small businesses.

Finally, how can I add to a successful Joint Venture? I now have a captive audience / database. What else do they want and need? There are millions of dollars and opportunities and underutilized resources just waiting for you to take advantage of them. Once you realize that you can create bridges and set up tollbooths at will, in any area, industry, or situation, with no cost or risk and very little time, you can remove all financial barriers from your life. You can create multiple streams of passive income by understanding the power of Joint Ventures. To find out more, please visit www.dollarmakers.com/ now.
Robin J. Elliott