This is an excerpt from this month’s newsletter that goes to the printers tomorrow.
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A Lion, a Fox and a Donkey are out on a rabbit hunt.
As the day draws to a close after a successful raid in the forest, the lion tells the donkey to split the catch into three equal piles.
The donkey, nodding enthusiastically, goes ahead and creates three even piles of rabbits.
One for the lion. One for the fox. And one for himself.
The lion approaches the first pile scanning it quickly to see how many rabbits he could count.
He approaches the second, making sure there was the same amount of rabbits in both.
He then approaches the donkey, who was standing next to his pile grinning ear to ear.
When the lion gets within reach, he leaps forward, sinking his claws into the donkey’s neck and ripping his head off with his bone-snapping jaws.
Spitting out his skull on one of the piles, the Lion wipes his mouth clean and says to the fox:
“I was never a fan of sharing with a donkey… go ahead and create two equal piles for you and I”
The fox goes ahead and returns the three even piles back to one large mass of rabbit carcases in the middle, taking with him a measly rabbit in his mouth as he scurries away into the forest.
The lion shouts to the fox: “How did you learn to count so well?”
The fox replies: “I learnt from the donkey.”
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I like this parable because it reminds us that business isn’t fair. As much as we’d like equal piles of wealth & prosperity, the market simply doesn’t work that way. The market always gravitates towards the best they can find.
It also teaches us that there is madness in the crowds. And while I won’t spill it all here (that’s for the Newsletter subscribers after all), I will say this:
The best bet you have for putting the odds of success in your favour is to learn from those that are further ahead than you and have done what most others have not.
The Fox knows that the best way to thrive is to let others do the hard work so the Fox can take the cliff notes.
That’s exactly what the Alley-Oop is for.
This edition goes to print tomorrow. It’s got the answer to this parable, along with many more nuggets of gold, like:
- How to build a business in a recession that even Warren Buffett might buy.
- The checklist for understanding if your business is fragile and susceptible to negative market forces… and how to bulletproof your business so it can weather any storm.
- The little-known Disney recipe Walt wrote on the back of a napkin which reveals an incredible secret to brand building we can all learn from.
- The personal litmus test that Warren Buffett uses to decide if a company is worth investing in (and how we can flip that test on its head to build a business that’s actually worth something…)
- The FIRST thing you need to ask yourself every day when you wake up in the morning.
- The three most important words in investing, right from Warren Buffet himself that when applied, give you a ridiculous competitive advantage.
If you’re not on the list in the next 24 hours, you’ll miss these nuggets of gold (and many more).
– Karl Goodman
