The 3 tops

Joe bought two different tabletop puzzles as birthday gifts for two of his friends. However, he switched the box tops prior to wrapping them for his buddies. You can imagine the confusion as the recipients tried to put the puzzles together. The pieces didn’t fit into the big picture. If you, your business, family, employees and community are going to flourish, it’s essential to understand three different box tops, so to speak. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs do not.

The entrepreneurs’ box top

Green industry entrepreneurs need to do three things to in order to understand their business and flourish (be profitable). This has become my three-fold mantra. You need to: Price it (products and services) right. Produce it right. And produce enough of it. Number one is about bidding products and services accurately. Two is about job costing and three is about volume. If you do these three things, you’ll thrive financially.

The founders’ and framers’ box top

For your business to flourish, you also need to understand capitalism. The founders of the United States understood that commerce was key if the country was going to prosper financially.

As such, they adopted an economic system driven by supply and demand, or capitalism. Our Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and so forth were formed to promote commercial success by means of free enterprise. Thomas Jefferson wrote in the DOI, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”

Also included in these rights were freedoms of speech, assembly, the press, religion, property rights, self-protection and so forth. Property rights (the right to keep and maintain your wealth without unwarranted government confiscation), were critical. They knew that citizens would not create wealth by means of commerce if the government could, willy-nilly, confiscate it from them.

I used to think “the pursuit of happiness” was a very superficial term. That is until I learned that the definition of happiness was very different in the late 1700s. Then it had a much broader meaning. It meant not only to flourish economically but also to flourish in all areas of one’s life.

If you don’t understand and implement the principles outlined in our Constitution, DOI, BOR, etc.; chances are you’ll fall victim to and endorse the principles found in Marxism and/or Socialism. As a result, you probably won’t flourish economically.

The founders realized that they did not invent these unalienable rights, or the market-driven system known as capitalism. The obvious question then becomes, “Where do these rights and free enterprise / capitalism come from?”

The ultimate box top

Jefferson realized and wrote in the DOI the following, “…(We) are endowed by (the) Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” Many or most of the others agreed with Jefferson. They believed that capitalism and the other basic human rights were not created by government but from a much higher source.

The founders realized that the raw pursuit of wealth without reference to its proper context (a right bestowed by the Creator for the purpose of individual flourishing) would produce materialism (the idea that nothing exists except matter and material agency). They also believed that individuals were free to think and do as they wanted as long as they did not infringe on the rights of others.

Conclusion

If you want to flourish as an entrepreneur, you need to understand and implement box top # 1. If you want to flourish as an American citizen you need to understand and accept box top # 2. If you want to flourish as an individual, you need to understand box top # 3. To do so fully, I’d encourage you to obtain and study three books. First is Senator Rand Paul’s book, The Case Against Socialism. Second is Mark Levin’s book, American Marxism. Third is Sacred Rights of Conscience edited by Alan L. Dreisbach and Mark David Hall. It’s a compilation of the writings of the founders and framers.

If you ignore box top # 1, you may go broke. Doing so regarding box top #2 will probably drive you to materialism. The catch phrase for those who ignore box top # 3 usually becomes, “He who dies with the most toys — wins!” To be a truly successful entrepreneur and to flourish in all areas of your life, it’s important to understand the big picture. The founders did. We’d be smart to follow in their footsteps.