Once upon a time there was this quaint little village. It was a great place to live except for one problem. The village had no water unless it rained. To solve this problem once and for all, the village elders decided to put out to bid the contract to have water delivered to the village on a daily basis. Two people volunteered to take on the task and the elders awarded the contract to both of them. They felt that a little competition would keep the prices low and insure a back up supply of water.
The first of the two people who won the contract, Ed, immediately ran out, bought 2 galvanized 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 labored 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 hard work, but he was very happy to be making money and for one having one of the two exclusive contracts for this business.
The second winning contractor Bill, disappeared for a while. He was not seen in months, which made Ed very happy since he had no competition. Ed was making all the money.
Instead of buying 2 buckets to compete with Ed, Bill had written a business plan, created a corporation, found 4 investors and employed a president to do the work, and returned 6 mths later with a construction crew. Within a year his team had built a large volume stainless steel pipeline which connected 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 the dirt in Ed's water. Bill also announced that he could supply the village with water 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Ed could only deliver water on the weekdays... he did not 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 for the faucet at the end of Bill's pipeline.
In order to compete, Ed immediately lowered his rates by 75%, bought 2 more buckets, added covers to this buckets and began hauling four buckets each trip. In order to provide better service, he hired his 2 sons to give him a hand for the night shift and on weekends. When his boys went off to college, he said to them, "Hurry back, because someday this business will belong to you."
For some reason, after college, his 2 sons never came returned. Eventually Ed had employees and union problems. the union was demanding higher wages, better benefits, and wanted its members to only haul 1 bucket at a time.
Bill, on the other hand, realized that if this village needed water then other villages must need water too. He rewrote his business plan and went off to sell his high speed, high volume, low cost and clean water delivery system to villages throughout the world. He only makes a penny per bucket of water delivered, but he delivers billions of buckets of water every day.
Regardless of whether he works or not, billions of people consume billions of buckets of water, an d all that money pours into his bank account. Bill had developed a pipeline to deliver money to himself as well as water to the villages.
Bill lived happily ever after and Ed worked hard for the rest of his life and had financial problems forever after.
Does this story sound familiar to you ? Are we guilty of carry buckets ?
This story is taken from Robert Kiyosaki's book Cashflow and it has opened up my mind to different perspective which I have never thought of before.
Therefore, I hope to strive towards building a pipeline and I hope this story inspires you too. =)
You can begin building a pipeline today just by clicking HERE. May you achieve success in building your very own shiny pipeline ~!
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