David Rockefeller said once, “Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.”
If we think about it a minute, we’ll find that it’s true. Even in times of economic crisis, people have to live and push their businesses forward. It’s done through hard work, being disciplined to do the work necessary, and training ourselves to learn more and become better.
John David Rockefeller was born and lived in New York, and his goal was to go into business for himself. Even as a young man, in his teens, he saved all the money he got from a bookkeeping job, and went into the farm equipment and fertilizer business with Clarke, his first business partner.
He was successful, but set his sights on much higher achievements, being a crude oil business owner. He saw an opportunity, sold his business and invested in oil and oil refineries, and became the first man to make more than a billion dollars. Sure the opportunities were there, but he spent hours of hard work achieving these. He’s quoted saying, “I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.”
He was good at using logic to create solutions. His problem in the oil business was that it was much too expensive to move oil to his Cleveland refineries. So, he used his business sense and negotiated an exclusive deal with the railway company to transport his oil. This was a cunning move; his competitors were affected and he had monopoly – In 1896, Rockefeller was worth 200 million!
There are so many opportunities out there, and to be successful, we must save our money, like Rockefeller did, and invest it in a worthwhile venture. Don’t be happy with just bare minimum, work hard and make your own prospects to be successful.
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