In January of 1979, I was promoted to Food and Beverage Manager of the Bulawayo Holiday Inn in Rhodesia. The country was enduring a prolonged war, so I was privileged to work in a country at war for a year.

There are a remarkable amount of similarities between a war and a peacetime recession that we can benefit from understanding.

I arrived in the country with my young family, and instantly noticed a huge difference in the mentality and approach of people in a warring country. Most of us were armed most of the time, and we saw opportunities that would not normally be evident in a peacetime or relatively affluent society.

We had to become very creative in order to make it in business.

Things to Learn from a “War-time Mentality”

During a war, there is a heightened sense of awareness, and people live on the edge.

Our women and children were sent out of the country to safety during the transitional time when the terrorist Mugabe was put into power, and men kept trunks with guns, grenades, and other useful items under their beds. People were tough and serious about life and business.

• We didn’t take customers or luxuries for granted, and relationships were regarded as being very important.
• Thinking “out of the box” was what kept people out of other boxes, called coffins.
• People had to be resourceful and reciprocate when they received value, as opposed to the lackadaisical, lazy, and selfish attitude of entitlement that pervades a well-fed and spoiled society.

Getting Creative to Survive

Sanctions had been imposed on Rhodesia, so in order to provide shellfish, imported alcohol, cutlery, and many other commodities that are usually easily available and readily accessible to our hotel guests, we had to buy them on the black market or have them smuggled into the country. We had to bargain and wheel and deal to get good cooking oil, silver foil, and other regular things. Local businesses manufactured products we couldn’t get. One company created drinking glasses out of ketchup bottles. (Those glasses lasted forever!)

Barter as a Way of Life

Tourism all but collapsed. Barter and the trading of commodities, resources, products, and services, was the norm. We traded and sold financial currency, gold, antiques, food, and gasoline coupons, which were restricted and valuable. I traded a diamond ring for the deposit on a house, and swapped that house for a car when we left the country. That sounds crazy now, but the relative values at the time made these deals good.

Where Customers are Coming from… And Still Are.

People cut down on luxuries, and acquiring and keeping customers was not an easy matter, when many of the smart ones had already immigrated. Customers carefully considered the value they were buying before opening their wallets.

After that Year

At the end of my year-long contract with Holiday Inns, I resigned from the company and returned to South Africa, little knowing that it was destined to follow in Rhodesia’s footsteps. I will always have great respect and affection for Rhodesians of all races – I wouldn’t insult them by calling them Zimbabweans – and I learned a great deal about Joint Ventures and creative solutions to real business in the real world in that short and exciting year.

Sadly, the country has been ruined by its savage leadership, but the lessons learned there from those wonderfully creative and disciplined people have always been a benefit to me.

These were my most important lessons:

1. Appreciate the customers and business you have, and realize that you have to work on continuing to earn their business by creating added value. You can lose them in a heartbeat.
2. Be creative, and leverage resources through trade, barter, Joint Ventures, and alternatives to money.
3. Focus on integrity, loyalty, and candor. Relationships is everything in business. Passive aggression, entitlement, and mediocrity, so evident in North America, is poison.
4. Diversify, spread your risk, run clean, lean, and mean, and focus on profit instead of products. Remain liquid and ready to fold camp at any time.
5. Always carry a (figurative) gun, and be prepared to use it. There are people that will steal the milk out of your tea with a smile, if you let them. React hard and fast.
6. Think big picture and long term, and don’t sell your soul for a bowl of soup.

When you make good business decisions, you get rich.

Alan Greenspan says in his latest book that Ayn Rand has been the most important influence on his philosophy, and his philosophy drives his decisions. There are only two kinds of decisions: Those based on emotion, and those based on fact or rational objectivity.

One of the most important quotes you will ever read:

“An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man’s value premises. An effect, not a cause.

“There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between man’s reason and his emotions—provided he observes their proper relationship.

“A rational man knows—or makes it a point to discover—the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come; if his premises are wrong, he corrects them.

“He never acts on emotions for which he cannot account, the meaning of which he does not understand.

“In appraising a situation, he knows why he reacts as he does and whether he is right. He has no inner conflicts, his mind and his emotions are integrated, his consciousness is in perfect harmony. His emotions are not his enemies, they are his means of enjoying life. But they are not his guide; the guide is his mind.

“This relationship cannot be reversed, however. If a man takes his emotions as the cause and his mind as their passive effect, if he is guided by his emotions and uses his mind only to rationalize or justify them somehow—then he is acting immorally, he is condemning himself to misery, failure, defeat, and he will achieve nothing but destruction—his own and that of others.” ~ Ayn Rand.

Use this Litmus Test

When your business decisions are driven by need, fear, arrogance, pride, greed, envy, or revenge, they are emotional and irrational.  We have all compromised our values and overlooked important red flags to make a buck.

The result of compromise is guilt, and guilt causes self-sabotage. In other words, you will lose a lot more than you gain. Ayn Rand:

“A chronic lack of pleasure, of any enjoyable, rewarding or stimulating experiences, produces a slow, gradual, day-by-day erosion of man’s emotional vitality, which he may ignore or repress, but which is recorded by the relentless computer of his subconscious mechanism that registers an ebbing flow, then a trickle, then a few last drops of fuel–until the day when his inner motor stops and he wonders desperately why he has no desire to go on, unable to find any definable cause of his hopeless, chronic sense of exhaustion.”

What “Being in Harmony” Means

When you do business according to your philosophy and remain true to your values and philosophy, you’ll be happy and you’ll get rich, as long as you have the right philosophy.

When your philosophy is one of collectivism or mysticism, your business decisions will be flawed, and they will undermine your business.

“The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.” ~ Ayn Rand.

When business owners sell their souls for money, they start to become conflicted about money. So they start projecting their dishonesty and condemning the very purpose of their business:

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.”  ~ Ayn Rand

What Makes Good Business Decisions

Good business decisions are the result of careful, level-headed thought. Ayn Rand again:

“Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.”

Choose your philosophy very carefully, if you want to succeed in business. You have to learn to say “No”, even when it costs you money. The more defined and sophisticated your philosophy, the more selective you will become, and the more success you will enjoy.

Try This Analogy

A good analogy is a cheap watch versus an expensive watch. When you buy an expensive watch, you make sure that the person working on or servicing it is well qualified and licensed or authorized to do so. You don’t take your Rolex Presidential to someone who is not an authorized Rolex dealer, any more than you would take your Rolls Royce to a backyard mechanic.

Your business is a reflection of YOU. Who you are, your values, your philosophy – everything that you are is reflected in the way you do business.

Understanding Cause & Effect in Business

Every decision has ripple effects and long-term consequences, so it is important to think about the base and foundation of your business decisions and to determine to disciple yourself to live strictly according to your objective philosophy.

Compromise and concession are the cancer that kills businesses.

Operate with Like-Minded Individuals

Those who use their minds to make good business decisions find it easier to operate when supported and surrounded by like-minded, ethical Joint Venture partners, hence the importance in DollarMakers Joint Venture Forum to attract and retain only those whose integrity is beyond question and whose philosophy is one of capitalism.

Your mastermind, your inner circle, your team, and your family, affects every business decision you make. Be aware of that.

I went to the jewelry store to buy my wife a piece of jewelry. The sales clerk showed me the cheapest item in the range to start with. I said I wanted to see the most expensive item, since my wife deserves only the best.

When I had purchased the item, I asked the clerk why she offered me the cheapest piece, and she replied that she would rather have a bird in the hand than two in the bush.

She didn’t’ understand how to “drop down”, but she also didn’t understand that you get what you ask for, and you will be surprised what you will get, if you just ask for it.

Think abundance, not scarcity.

You Literally have Access to UNLIMITED Resources

You can go to the beach with a teaspoon and a cup and get some seasand, or you can go with a forty-gallon drum and fill it with sand. Or you can take a dump truck and fil that – the sand won’t run out. You can take a train and fill it with sand. Sand respesents, in this case, money.

You can make as much as you like if you simply offer a great product and service and then go ahead and ASK.

Be audacious, be courageous, and expect great wealth.

Mark These Words

“I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store.
For Life is a just employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.
I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have willingly paid.”

Adjust Your Estimation Skills

Bamboo grows more rapidly than any other plant on the planet. It has been clocked surging skyward as fast as 47.6 inches in a 24-hour period.

We’ve all heard, “First year it sleeps, second year it creeps, third year it leaps.” Bamboo trees grow very little for the first 4 years. But then, suddenly in the 5th year, they grow 80-90 feet tall.

We tend to overestimate what we can do in the short term, but we vastly underestimate what we can do in the longer term. Be the bamboo!

How to Double Your Sales Immediately

I once had a life insurance salesman ask me how he could double his sales. I answered, “If you’re presently asking people to buy $200,000 worth of life cover, start asking them to buy $400,000 worth of life cover. It’s that simple. But you should start off by making sure that YOU personally have at least $400,000 worth of life cover.”

Think BIG. Expect great things. ASK.

• What is it that dilutes, undermines, and sabotages one’s success as a Joint Venture Broker?
• What subtle poison will attenuate, enfeeble, and warp your progress?

The malignant venom that is so popular in our compromised and weak society that is corrupted by politically correct, creeping collectivism is so pervasive as to be almost invisible; we don’t see the proverbial wood for the trees.

Ayn Rand declared:

“I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between.”

She saw that mediocrity is the poison to avoid if one wants to reach the summit of success. The majority chooses the colorless, humdrum existence over real success.

The Poison of “Part Time”

The first question I am asked by those who would aspire to become Joint Venture Brokers is, “Can I do this part time?” This is a world in which we celebrate the undistinguished, unexceptional, unremarkable, and unrepentant pursuit of concession, comfort, and corruption.

“Don’t work too hard” – “Don’t be a fanatic” – “Don’t pressure me” – “Don’t be so idealistic” – DON’T SUCCEED.

Don’t become a threat to the seething herd of sheeple.

Only Dead Fish Go with the Current

The tall trees catch the wind. The nail that stands up gets hammered down. If you’re successful, you become a mirror in which the losers see their own miserable faces, and they have to break the mirror and attack your virtue. You cannot allow their fear to stop you. Ayn Rand said:

“Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees.

Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current.

Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.”

Eagles don’t flock. Warriors don’t flinch. And winners don’t forsake their goals or forfeit their dreams.

Real Men…

Real men don’t sacrifice their values or surrender. They don’t desert and they don’t decamp – they attack and they demand success.

The insidious poison of popularity and insecurity will steal your success as surely as the sun will rise.

Think of champions like Patton, Thatcher, Churchill, Rand, Hitchens, and the like; they never hesitated to do what they believed in and they never left a back door open. General Patton said:

“Don’t Delay: The best is the enemy of the good.  By this I mean that a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.

War is a very simple thing, and the determining characteristics are self-confidence, speed, and audacity. None of these things can ever be perfect, but they can be good.”

Become a Fearless Fanatic

Full time, full throttle, total commitment, no compromise, whatever-it-takes, 24/7/365 is the mark of a winner. Scrape the opinions of the masses off the bottom of your shoe and courageously force your way through every barrier on your way to realizing your magnificent obsession. By all means, become a fearless fanatic; you’ll be in good company.

If you wanted to learn how to succeed in battle, would you ask a rookie soldier or a seasoned, decorated veteran? Would you trust battle scars or certificates on a wall?

If you wanted a good lawyer, would you find some apathetic academic, or a newly qualified lawyer, or an experienced, successful lawyer who had battled with giants over the years and won?

How to Succeed Against All Odds

I once had the privilege of spending time with a real business warrior, who was also the Sheriff of Pretoria, the city I lived in. He was a fellow Director in our Rotary Club.

When we had ordered our lunch, I asked him the burning question:

“You have succeeded against all odds, in varying business climates, you have a sterling reputation, and you have become wealthy. What is the secret to your success?”

His answer has always stayed with me. Here is the gist of it, as I remember it:

“Robin, there are two responses everyone must choose to ANY challenge or circumstances – fight or flight.

I deem it my responsibility to succeed, to react positively, and to take the fight to my enemy, whether that enemy is money problems, a business opponent, or any other challenge.

Many people see hardship as an excuse to retreat and fail. They welcome any circumstance that will offer them a way to hide and defect. I don’t believe I have an option – I INSIST upon success, whatever the cost. I believe that saying, ‘For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.’

To me, my friends and family rely on my success, and I don’t make or accept excuses for failure. I’m like a boxer that keeps getting up off the mat UNTIL I win.”

His favorite quote was by Friedrich Nietzsche:

“Courageous, untroubled, mocking and violent-that is what Wisdom wants us to be. Wisdom is a woman, and loves only a warrior.”

Difficult Times Call for Action

That little pep talk before a delicious peppercorn steak was worth a hundred hours of anemic blather from academics.

Difficult times are a reason to take deliberate, brave action, not an excuse to stay at home and play video games while your wife supports you. Financial challenges are not solved by hiding and wallowing in self-pity, but by rising like a phoenix and going on the offensive. Instead of crying and cringing, get creative and courageous. Excuses are for losers. Carlos Castaneda said:

“To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.”

There are few worse or more frustrating things than a smelly, clogged up drain. The buildup of biofilm gets to a place where the water can’t flow through, and at that stage you need a good drain cleaner. Most drain cleaners are pretty toxic, but they do a good job.

Losing Money Over an Unhappy Customer

I once had a friend call me and leave a message on my voice mail to complain that an unhappy, negative customer of his was calling his other customers and badmouthing him, telling lies. He said he was going to lose money, and he wanted to sue for defamation of character. I was busy, and I couldn’t get back to him for two days. When I did call back, he was out of the office. Eventually, we got to talk a week later, and I learned a great lesson from him.

A Blessing in Disguise

He explained that a business is like a water pipe, and the cash flow is like the water going through the pipes. The pipes get clogged up with blockages, usually bad systems, but toxic, mostly bad people – employees and customers who are unproductive, negative, whining, blaming, difficult, and looking for a reason to leave.

His unhappy, poisonous customer who was badmouthing him turned out to be a drain cleaner! Those who were looking for an excuse to leave, got their excuse, albeit based on lies and fabrications, and when they left, they unblocked the pipe and were replaced by good, positive, accountable, productive employees and customers. Cash flowed stronger than ever after the cleanup.

Never Fear Losing the Losers

There is an abundance of opportunities and there are many fish in the seas.  There is no shortage or scarcity.

• Good people will stay with you, produce, contribute, innovate, weather the storms, and in the end reap the rich rewards of their loyalty persistence…
• …while the losers and victims will come and go and take their friends with them.

Some of your Joint Ventures will work, and some won’t, but there is an unlimited amount of opportunities to do JV’s. Spring clean your garage, and you will find treasure hidden under the junk, while making place for shiny, new toys that bring you much joy.

Kick Your Garbage to the Curb!

Don’t hesitate to divest yourself of negative customers or employees, and realize that they will help you by taking people like themselves with them. Keep on weeding the garden of your business to protect the beautiful flowers. Drain cleaner is a wonderful thing.

A question I was recently asked was, “Why did we choose the name, ‘DollarMakers’, for our business?”

Our mission is to help people make money.

That simple. Not to steal it, inherit it, or borrow it, but to make it.

To create value that will result in money – capitalism.

We help people adjust their philosophy so that making money is a natural result, and we specialize in the use of Joint Ventures to accomplish this result. Joint Ventures is the most sophisticated, leveraged, elegant way to create wealth that I have found.

Four Things About Money:

• Better to have it than not have it.
• Better to have more of it than less of it.
• Better to have it sooner than later.
• And no matter how much you’ve got, you could always use a bit more.

Ayn Rand said, “So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money? Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.”

Read the full excerpt of “Francisco’s Money Speech” from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged here.

The key to being a successful Joint Venture negotiator is to have the ability to walk away at any time during the negotiations, and if you threaten to walk away, you have to do it.

There is also a spirit to negotiating – if one party is continually taking and not giving, unreasonably inflexible, arrogant, or “talking down” to the other party, the JV will never work.

Changing the Agreement is Dishonest

Also, remember that changing the rules or moving the goalposts, in other words not honoring what you previously agreed to, is not negotiating, it’s simply being dishonest. Anyone who promises and doesn’t deliver isn’t negotiating; they’re stealing and lying. And if they can steal a few hundred dollars, they will steal millions, too – it’s who they are.

Watch out for cheap, tightfisted people.

Only Talk to the One in Charge

Negotiating with a middleman – especially one who hides behind the authority which they represent, seldom works; try to work with the person who actually has the authority to make decisions, instead of a puppet.

Look for Clues

During negotiations, you can get an insight into the character and values of the person you’re dealing with. Look for patterns, clues, honestly, small lies, and passive aggression. Con artists use greed (the big carrot), threats, bullying, and lots of details to confuse honest people.

Watch Your Emotions

Remain objective and emotionally detached during negotiations. Maintain a healthy dose of skepticism. Business, after all, is a game. You can remove the two emotional issues – risk and cost – with good negotiating skills. Watch your own “Greed Meter” carefully.

Walk Away When Your Gut Says

When you get a negative gut feeling about the other party, don’t bother to continue with the negotiations.

I recently made that mistake by getting involved with religious fundamentalists – they proved that they were totally irrational, and could justify the most ridiculous assumptions and blatant dishonesty by hiding behind their religious delusions. I will be more selective next time. One’s philosophy will drive ones choices and actions. We continue to learn. You can learn from my mistakes.

ALWAYS IN WRITING!

Finally, JV’s should be comfortable, fun, profitable, and very clearly communicated, which means IN WRITING. After a meetings, send the agreements in writing and make sure everyone understands the terms and conditions.

Months down the line, people get selective memory and amnesia. Each party is solely responsible for themselves, and the “blame game” can be avoided if these responsibilities are clearly defined – in writing.

You have millions of options in the world of Joint Ventures – be selective, because you can afford to be. An ounce of discipline is better than tons of pain down the line.

If you’re unsure about how to do this, read this page about how to write a Memorandum of Understanding, otherwise known as MOU, which is a basic Joint Venture agreement.

Why It Pays to be Generous

If someone is comfortable with 10%, don’t try to negotiate 15% – they will be uncomfortable and sabotage the deal or undermine it. And if they’re happy with 10%, offer them 12% – the pay-off to generosity can be massive when dealing with the right people. Test your deals in a small way before launching them in a big way – “Take time to know her”, as the old song goes.

You Can Make More Money Walking Away Sometimes

Remember: You make more money by walking away from money when it’s “dirty” money. By that, I mean you can only earn dirty money by compromising your values and overriding your better instincts. If you’re not comfortable, don’t walk away – RUN – towards better deals!