LETTER 02
Luck depends on planning.
Everyone is a designer and architect of his own destiny.
I do not live by God-given luck, but I do-so by planning luck.
When waiting for luck, you must know how to guide luck; to design luck is to design life.
(He who marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.)
January 20, 1900
Dear John:
Some people are destined to be dazzling Kings or great men, because of their extraordinary talents, for example, Mr. McCormick, who has a head of luck and knows how to turn a harvester into a sickle for harvesting banknotes.
In my eyes, Old McCormick has always been an ambitious and commercially capable industrial giant. He used harvesting machines to liberate American farmers, and he also rose to the ranks to become one of the richest people in the United States. The French seem to like him more and praised him to be "the world's greatest contributor". Oh, this really is an unexpected reward.
This business genius, who was once just an ordinary farm tool merchant once had an esoteric saying which went: "Luck is the remnant of design."
This phrase does sound quite brainy. Does it mean that luck is the result of planning and strategy? Or does it mean that luck is what remains after planning? My experience tells me that these two meanings exist. In other words, we create our own luck, and no action can eliminate it. Luck is the gospel that is difficult to get rid of in the planning process.
McCormick saw the true meaning of luck and opened his door to it. So, I am not surprised that McCormick harvesters' product can be sold all over the world.
However, in this world of ours, it is difficult to find people who are good at planning luck like Mr. McCormick, and it is difficult to find people who do not believe in yet understands luck.
In the eyes of ordinary people, luck is always innate. As long as they find out someone has attained success or have been promoted, they will say casually, with contempt: "This man's luck is so good, it is luck that helped him!" Such a person can never have a peek into the truth that makes one successful: everyone is a designer and architect of his own destiny.
I admit, just like a person cannot have no money, a person cannot have no luck. However, if you want to make a difference, you cannot wait for luck to patronize. My credo is: I do not live by God-given luck, but I do-so by planning luck. I believe that a good plan will affect luck, and in any case, it can successfully affect luck. My plan to turn competition into cooperation the oil industry justified this.
Before the plan began, the oil refiners fought for their own interests, which led to a devastating competition between them. This kind of competition is certainly a boon for consumers, but falling oil prices are a disaster for oil refiners. At that time, the vast majority of refiners were a loss, and were successively sliding into bankruptcy.
I am well aware that if we were to be profitable again and make money forever, we must tame this industry and have everyone act rationally. I regard it as a responsibility, but it is very difficult to do, it requires a plan - a plan that places all the oil refining businesses under my control.
John, to be a good hunter in a profitable hunting ground, you need to think hard, be careful, be able to see all possible dangers and opportunities in things, as well as study all kinds of strategies that could endanger your dominance like a chess player. I thoroughly researched the situation and evaluated my strength. I decided to use the base camp of Cleveland as my first battlefield to launch a war in order to rule the oil industry. After conquering more than 20 competitors there, I moved quickly to open up a second battlefield until I conquered all of their opponents and established an oil industry and a new order.
Just like a commander on the battlefield, you must first know what kind of firearm to choose in order to be the most effective, before choosing your target. In order for me to successfully realize my plan to place the oil industry under my command, a thorough solution is needed. That's money. I needed a lot of money to buy those refineries that overproduce. But the amount of money on my hands was not enough to realize my plan, so I decided to form a joint stock company to attract investors from outside the industry. Soon we registered a standard oil company in Ohio with millions of assets, and the capital expanded significantly within three and a half years but deciding when to do it is a matter of knowledge.
Visionary businessmen are always good at finding opportunities in every disaster, and that's how I did it. Before we started our journey of conquest, the oil industry was in chaos and there was no hope at all.
Ninety percent of the refiners in Cleveland had been crushed by the increasingly fierce competition. If they did not sell the factory, they can only watch themselves go extinct. This was the best time to acquire an opponent.
It seems unethical to take an acquisition at times like these, but it really has nothing to do with conscience. An enterprise is like a battlefield, and the purpose of strategic goals is to create the most beneficial state for oneself. For strategic considerations, the first target I chose to conquer was not a small company that was vulnerable, but the strongest opponent, Clark Payne. This company was well-known in Cleveland and were ambitious, as they wanted to acquire my star oil refinery.
But before the opponent decides, I will have to strike first to gain the upper hand. I took the initiative to meet the largest shareholder of Clark Payne, my old friend in middle school, Mr. Oliver, Payne, and I told him that the chaotic and sluggish era of the oil industry should end in order to protect the industry that countless families depend on for survival. I wanted to build a huge, high-performance oil company, and welcomed him to join. My plan impressed Payne, and finally they agreed to sell the company for 400,000 dollars.
I know that Clark Payne is not worth that amount at all, but I did not reject them. Acquiring Clark Payne meant that I would gain the title of the world's largest oil refinery and will also serve as a strong pioneer in the industry to efficiently bring together the refiners in Cleveland.
This trick really worked. In less than two months, there were 22 competitors under the leadership of Standard Oil, which eventually made me the big winner of that acquisition battle. This gave me unstoppable momentum. In the following three years, I conquered oil refiners in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore successively, and became the only master of the oil refining industry in the United States.
Come to think about it, I am lucky if I were to only lament-on-my bad luck at that time and follow the crowd, I might have been conquered. But I planned my luck.
Anything can happen in this world, but nothing can happen without doing anything (reap without sowing). Those who blindly follow the crowd and rules, I view them with disdain. Their brains are entangled with wrong thoughts, as they think that it is worth being complacent just by being able to withdraw themselves.
John, for our good luck to continue, we must carefully plan our luck, and planning luck requires a good plan. A good plan must be a good design, and a good design must be able to play a role. You need to know that when designing a good design, you must first consider two basic prerequisites. The first condition is to know your goals, such as what you want to do or even what kind of person you want to become; the second condition is knowing what resources you have, such as status, money, interpersonal relationships, and even abilities,
The order of these two basic prerequisites is interchangeable. You may have an idea and/or a goal before you start looking for goals that can be achieved from these resources, or you can also mix them together to form the third and fourth methods, such as having a certain goal and a certain resource. To achieve your goal, you need to selectively choose and create some resources, and also own some resources and a goal, to which afterwards you can adjust your goals accordingly.
After adjusting the goal according to the resource or the goal, you have a foundation you can conceive the design structure, and the rest is up to you to fill it with your means and time, while waiting for luck to come.
You need to remember that my son, designing luck is designing life. So, while you wait for luck, you need to know how to guide your luck. Give it a try.
Love,
Your Father
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