What kind of Warrior are you?

Hi Craig,

Well, those who have posted already are themselves highly successful in business, so they know what they're talking about....

I've read Don Alm's posts over the years, and I ALWAYS pay attention to what he says. He's someone who's succeeded MANY TIMES in business....

Jim Straw is a HUGE success too, his many successful business ventures are well-known (just read a few of his reports).

I agree with what Joe Makowski said too -- you gotta have a backbone. But you can still be a nice person and also have a backbone too.

Even if you want to go the "warrior's" way, no country ever survived by being in a continuous war. War is draining to both parties....

Think about it -- the ultimate aim of war is peace. Continuous war is not what you want.

Someone who takes this approach will make many enemies, and I believe that's what eventually will probably be their downfall....

I've studied military strategy to a degree (out of interest), but now I believe it has only limited application to business.... The reason why is because war is a "win/lose" game. If someone wins, someone else loses.

Business is different. While there are *some* "win/lose" aspects to business, there are also "win/win" aspects too. Military strategy is not developed to recognize or take advantage of "win/win" situations, which is why it is limited in its scope when it comes to business.... Here's an example.

Why, do you think, do you often tend to find a large number of Italian restaurants clustering together in one part of town?

At first you might think this is silly to do, since each restaurant will just be taking business away from each other. These restaurants are often right next door to each other. It would seem to make more sense for them to spread themselves out among the city, so they compete with each other less.

But that's an example of "win/lose" thinking. However, it's a fact that restaurants do cluster like this.... This shows that there's some value in it.

The value is that it increases the quality of that *area* as a place to go eat Italian food. So, if someone wants to eat Italian food, they'll be willing to drive further just to eat in that particular area.

"Win/lose" thinking is about how to slice up the pie.

"Win/win" thinking however is about increasing the size of the pie for everybody.

So, let's say that if ten Italian restaurants were each in their own area, each of them would get 100 customers per week (or 1000 customers total between them all). But let's say that ten of them cluster together, the TOTAL number of people who would travel to that area specifically to eat Italian food from around the whole city might now be 1500 per week. That breaks down now to 150 customers each (if they divided themselves equally among restaurants). This is how an understanding of win/win situations could create added profits....

I don't think there's an equivalent to "increasing the pie" in military strategy, because you can't create more land. But profits is not like land, you can "increase the pie" for everybody when you're talking about profits, which is one way in which business is different....

Just my opinion.... :)

- Dien