If You Really Want Success, Go through Unpeopled Ground

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu says, “To go one thousand lives without fear, go through unpeopled ground.” To me, this means when you go forward, you should move through open space that is undesired or uncontested. When you move in this way, your movement will not be challenged by others and you will experience success. Several years ago, I was an asphalt tar contractor in Detroit doing very, very dirty work. It was strange to me this work was so profitable and so easy. Literally no one was interested in doing the job. One of my main projects involved heating up tar to 250+ degrees in a cauldron that I towed behind my truck, using a crack router to clean out cracks on roads and parking lots, and filling the cracks with sand and hot tar. When I was working for a federal judge in Michigan, I got a call from one of my customers, Tony Randazzo, who owned a giant apartment subdivision in Rochester Hills, Michigan. I’d filled all of the cracks in the apartment subdivision, charging less than half the going rate for this work, giving Tony an outstanding deal. For the next six months, Tony sent me a check every month to pay for the work I had done. Those checks ended up being more than I was receiving for my work with the judge each month. Keep in mind getting the job with the judge [Read more]