Once upon a time there was a quaint little village. It was a wonderful place to live except for one problem. The village had no water unless it rained. To solve the problem once and for all the village elders decided to put out to bid the contract to have water delivered to the village daily. Two people volunteered to take on the task and the elders awarded the contract to both. They felt that a little competition would keep prices low and ensure a backup supply of water.
Working Hard: The first of the people who won the contract, Ed, immediately ran out, bought two galvanised steel buckets and began running back and forth along the trail to the lake which was a mile away. He immediately began making money as he laboured morning to dusk hauling water from the lake with his two buckets. He would empty them into the large concrete holding tank the village had built. Each morning he had to get up before the rest of the village awoke to make sure there was enough water for the village when it wanted it. It was arduous work, but he was very happy to be making money and for having one of the exclusive contracts for this business.
Working Smart: The second winning contractor, Bill, disappeared for a while. He was not seen for months, which made Ed very happy since he had no competition. Ed was making all the money. Instead of buying two buckets to compete with Ed, Bill had written a business plan, created a limited company, formed a team of like-minded people excited about their own future and returned six months later with a construction crew. Within a year his team had built a large volume stainless steel pipeline connecting the village to the lake.
At the grand opening celebration, Bill announced that his water was cleaner than Ed’s water. Bill knew that there had been complaints about dirt in Ed’s water. Bill also announced that he could supply the village with water 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. Ed could only deliver water on weekdays…he didn’t work on weekends. Then Bill announced that he would charge 75% less than Ed did for this higher quality and more reliable source of water. The village cheered and ran immediately to the tap at the end of Bill’s pipeline.
To compete, Ed immediately lowered his rates by 75%, bought two more buckets, added covers to his buckets and began hauling four buckets each trip. To provide a better service, he hired his two sons to give him a hand for the night shift and on weekends. When the boys went off to college, he said to them, hurry back because someday this business will be yours.
For some reason, after college, his two sons never returned. Eventually Ed had employees and union problems. The union was demanding higher wages, better benefits, and wanted its members to only haul one bucket at a time.
Bill, on the other hand, realised that if this village needed water then other villages would too. He rewrote his business plan and went off to sell his high speed, volume low cost, and clean water delivery system to villages throughout the world. He only makes one penny per bucket of water delivered but he delivers billions of buckets of water every day regardless if he works or not, billions of people consume billions of buckets of water, and all that water pours into his bank account. Bill had developed a pipeline to deliver money to himself as well as water to the villages. Bill and his team lived happily ever after and Ed worked hard for the rest of his life and had financial problems forever after.
The moral to the story is:
Are you building a pipeline, or do you have a job hauling buckets?
(Home, Work, Home, Work, on and on for 40+ years)
Are you working hard or working smart?
(Work smart and build a pipeline to get out of the rat race and into the jet stream of full time living)