The one thing that runs this world except people

This world is run by people foremost, but there is one thing that governs how these people run things. That “thing” is agreements. What the agreement says is what goes. Or actually “the way people intepret agreements is what goes”.

Why discuss legal stuff? Because it is so important. If you are not skilled in writing and interpreting agreements, you will lose. You may not do business with sharp guys today, but you will someday do business with such guys. Perhaps not because you want to, but because you are actually forced to. Don’t believe you will fall into that situation? Think again.

Many entrepreneurs I have been in contact with has this naive view of business. They think everyone is nice and trustworthy. That it is all about the product and that it is all about the creative design. It is actually more about the agreements you strike with people and how you secure cashflow from those agreements than anything else. The product or service is just something to use to get to the dollar (a bargaining chip of you will). Always will be. Just as agreements is the “thing”, the same goes with your market offer. The market offer is actually much more important than the product you have. I mean you can have a simple piece of stone. On the face of it, it is a bloody stone. Nothing else. But then, involve smart agreements and that stone can suddenly become a million dollar asset. And the agreement you reach always stems from the market offer you can come up with for that ordinary stone.

Many entrepreneurs are so tone death to business that they can’t see this flow of melodies. Few of those who start out as tone death become skilled in hearing the music. But many of them do not.

What I want you to think about and actually practice after reading this post is the following:

Find something. Find anything. It can be any kind of crap you can find. Then look at it, create a smart market offer for it. Then create an agreement for that crappy shit you have and find someone to sign that agreement of yours. Then collect the money. Ask any professional marketer and he will tell you that you can promote most things with a compelling offer. The offer sells, the product/service just comes along most of the time. I have seen one guy on TV who lives in New York and he fills these transparent boxes with litter from the streets of New York City and sells them online. He sells garbage at a premium. I mean, come on. If he can sell crap for a lot of money, then you can sell a stone or even rent it out. Right:)? We all can do that.

Now that I think about it, and I am pretty sure that all of you business junkies out there can relate as well, many big investment banks and big corporations usually buy their big clients some drinks at strip clubs and what have you and then have them sign their agreement while they are intoxicated. I know, ugly stuff. But I mean, that is how business is conducted in the real world. In the fantasy world many internet guys live in this notion that everything is fair and nice and I think they are foremost cheating themselfs on how the reality really looks like and they also cheat those who follow them. I just wonder how they even survive with their strange fantasy ideas. I really don’t get it. I wouldn’t survive a day if I was that unaware of the reality. I really wouldn’t. I learnt my stuff on the “street” as they say. I don’t have an MBA and never will have one. Why would I want to have such a crappy paper in my drawer when I know how to survive without it? It would only be a waste of precious time. In the time those people study for that MBA they could have made their first $10 Million. And they would be saner as well.

Yes, I have something against MBA guys. I think they have a screw loose. If some of you readers have an MBA and you read this and don’t have any hugh trouble accepting my truth, then more power to you. I consider you one of the smart MBA guys;). I really do. What you need to know is that there is a big gap between what the books tells you and what reality really looks like and I hope you are aware of that. If not, you will certainly find out sooner or later. It’s a bad wolf world out there and the sharp ones are the ones that will win. Fair or not.

If you would even use a fraction of all that MBA crap in the real “street” world you would be very dissapointed and very hungry. If you start from scratch and you are in debt as I was, then you have no options but to play to win. And you win by being clever and sharp with those papers called agreements and you play it to the hilt. But always inside the law. If you play outside the law, then bu-hu for you. Hope you enjoy the orange suits in jail. Unless you get away with it. If that is the case, then try doing it legally next time so you can sleep like a baby as well. No need to break any laws. I mean laws usually have such big loopholes in them that I don’t really understand why anyone would willingly break them.

What I talk about here has nothing to do with being criminal. Far from it. You do things that reach the goals, but you never break the laws. That is counter-productive no matter how you look at it.

If the agreement says” This and this is the deal”, then those things are the play rules between you and the other party. After that it is all about gaining as much as possible from that agreement by interpreting it in a way that is most satisfactory to the goals you have set out for yourself and your company. You can be sure the other players will do this as well. Why wouldn’t they, unless they are brain dead or something. Play inside the rules, but do it cleverly. Use your brain, that is, after all, your best asset. That goes in anything in life.

You may have heard lawyers say “that agreement has so many loopholes in it that you can drive a big school bus through it”? Well that is a lawyers way of saying, you are screwed unless you become very sharp and exploit what you can exploit. Be sharp about the creation phase of the agreement. Before you sign, find every way of getting out of the deal lawfully. Find every loophole you can think of so you know how to hide and how to play the other party for as much gain as possible. Once again, play lawfully. No need to break rules.

I usually have a motto that goes something like this “Rules and regulations are there to be used cleverly by you”. And it’s true. Capitalists, I mean true capitalists, not socialists posing as capitalists (there are plenty of those morons around), always try to outsmart the system with legal means. Ask any true capitalistic soul and he will tell you ultimately that business is a game. It’s like Monopoly. A true capitalits looks at most obstacles as challenges to be overcome. They find the rule book and beat it or end up owning it or whatever. He uses the system against itself and gains. And such acts should be encouraged. They should really teach school children this. Teach them how to have the employer give the best deal or beat the employer with his own cleverly constructed employee agreement:). If the school taught these things, then we wouldn’t see so many jobless people we do see today and will continue to see tomorrow. I would be willing to guarantee it. The reason so many people work for capitalists or the goverment is not because they always want to. Many times it is because they have no other options. Or they can’t see these options themselfs due to lack of understanding of agreements and how they could have these agreements work to their own benefit.

Just take those myriads of financial companies that exists today worldwide. There are so many rules and regulations in the financial sector and the reason is pretty simple, because there are so many capitalists daily trying to outsmart the system and also succeeds. Until the system creates additional rules and regulations. When the new rules and regulations are in place these capitalists will find new ways of circumventing the system legally and cleverly so as not to be tied down in the same mold as everyone else. By now you should know that you have to create a competitive vaccuum for yourself. You need to operate in a vaccuum and let the competition work out a sweat inside the mold.

Agreements are the tools that can make you very rich fast and with relative ease. I can go around here ranting for a long time about this. As you may have noticed already. It is a subject that is very elastic and easy to discuss in eternity.

In it’s simplest form: Create an IOU, write that someone special is indebted to you, they owe you, say, $1 Million. Then let someone write their signature on it. Making a million bucks is not that hard really. It’s more the convincing part to have people sing that piece of paper that can be tricky. But once you have their indebtness on paper, be happy. Why not buy them a couple of drinks and have them sign it while being drunk;)? Just kidding, no hate mails needed.