{"id":4546,"date":"2013-12-03T16:22:09","date_gmt":"2013-12-03T08:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elijahconsulting.com\/?p=4546"},"modified":"2016-11-08T14:23:49","modified_gmt":"2016-11-08T06:23:49","slug":"is-business-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elijahconsulting.com\/is-business-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Business War?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/voy1CUJvOoQ\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Download the <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Is-Business-War.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">pdf<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Hi, this is Elijah Lim. Today I would like to ask the question &#8220;Is Business War?&#8221; And most of us have of heard of expressions like this: &#8220;Business is war&#8221;, &#8220;Business in the trenches&#8221;, &#8220;We have to outperform the competition&#8221;, &#8220;We have to kill the competition&#8221;, &#8220;We have to absorb them&#8221;, &#8220;We have to grab our share of the market&#8221;, because there is only so much pie to go around, and we want to get the lion&#8217;s share of the pie.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"line-height: 1.5; color: #000000; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Business-War.jpg?ssl=1\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"5863\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/elijahconsulting.com\/is-business-war\/business-war\/#main\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Business-War.jpg?fit=640%2C427&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"640,427\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Business War\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Business-War.jpg?fit=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Business-War.jpg?fit=640%2C427&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-5863 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Business-War.jpg?resize=300%2C200&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Business War\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Business-War.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Business-War.jpg?resize=600%2C400&amp;ssl=1 600w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Business-War.jpg?w=640&amp;ssl=1 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a>Words have power. If we think of business as war &#8211; one of the expressions that is commonly used, that I have heard, and that I have seen written about, is &#8220;Business in the trenches&#8221;. Now, that&#8217;s a symbol for fortifications, which include trenches and pillboxes and things like that. Now if we say that our business is in the trenches, then we will have a trench mentality. And the first thing that comes to mind are the trenches of the First World War. And you know exactly where that led the Allies and the Germans &#8211; it&#8217;s attrition warfare, it gets you nowhere.\u00a0 It only gets you somewhere if it&#8217;s temporary, you&#8217;re stopping there for a while, you&#8217;re stopping to consolidate your position, so that you can do something else elsewhere, or even from the trenches. That&#8217;s fine. Otherwise you go into things like price wars. You go into things like unscrupulous commoditization, which is not very good for ALL aspects of any business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"line-height: 1.5; color: #000000; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Now, it is also a mindset like this that spawns things like CSR, Corporate Social Responsibility. Nowadays people call it CR, Corporate Responsibility, as though by transacting our business &#8211; the business is somehow taking from the geographic location, taking from the society in which it runs. And therefore the business has got to &#8220;give back&#8221; to the society. And I submit to you that that&#8217;s nonsense, because if the business that we are transacting isn&#8217;t increasing value all round in the society in which we are placed, then we ought to ask ourselves &#8220;Should we be in business in the first place?&#8221; Perhaps we could change our words, change our thinking&#8230;instead of thinking of business as war, think of business as opening up farms. You know, farms are always associated with plenty, with producing something, with abundance. And I think that&#8217;s the key difference &#8211; having an abundance mindset versus having a scarcity mindset. After all, why do people go to war? It&#8217;s a scarcity mindset! You want to get more land, you want to get more resources, you have a growing population, you want to cater for their needs, you want to become richer, and you don&#8217;t want other people to have what you have. That&#8217;s a scarcity mindset. But an abundance mindset says there is always enough for everybody, if we would all chip in, if I could teach you how to grow your own stuff, you know, you could be as good as I am, and then I move on, I become better, and so on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"line-height: 1.5; color: #000000; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">So I do encourage you to think about farms&#8230;think about your business, rather, as farming, rather than as war. And see if that changes things for you. I know that if you&#8217;re in a large corporation, then this is pretty much entrenched in the minds of big corporations, but if you&#8217;re a medium-sized, small business owner, think of your business as farming. And perhaps see a change in the way it turns out. Well, this is Elijah Lim, talking about &#8220;Is Business War?&#8221; Thanks for watching, and have a good day, have a fruitful business. Thank you!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Download the pdf. Hi, this is Elijah Lim. Today I would like to ask the question &#8220;Is Business War?&#8221; And most of us have of heard of expressions like this: &#8220;Business is war&#8221;, &#8220;Business in the trenches&#8221;, &#8220;We have to outperform the competition&#8221;, &#8220;We have to kill the competition&#8221;, &#8220;We have to absorb them&#8221;, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Is Business War? Then just join the Armed Services, why bother being in business? http:\/\/wp.me\/p2EiEv-1bk","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5,402,9,13,17],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Business-War.jpg?fit=640%2C427&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2EiEv-1bk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4546"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4546"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8407,"href":"https:\/\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4546\/revisions\/8407"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elijahconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}