BURN THE BOATS

The term ‘burn your boats’ comes from a lesson in History going way back to the 1500’s where a Spanish expedition to conquer Mexico saw the Spanish army’s leader burn the boats they had arrived on. He realised that so long as his men knew there was a chance of retreat, they would never be able to put in 100% of their effort towards conquering the new land. He gave them no choice. Once they knew there was no way out, the men worked harder than ever to conquer the Aztec empire. The men knew that there was no alternative, the bridges or in this case, the boats had certainly been burned. This is actually where the phrase ‘burn your boats’ came from, when you know that the only thing holding you back is the knowledge that if you don’t put all your effort into something, you’ll kind of still be okay, enough to put up with it at least. I’ve seen plenty of people approach this stupidly though, quitting their jobs to start businesses rather than starting the business on the side, in their spare time while they save up enough capital to branch out on their own. I’ve seen people invest all of their life savings in one single investment opportunity which failed miserably when a bit of extra research or diversification could have prevented their massive fall. I’ve seen people take massive risks simply because they don’t want to have to plan or prepare or wait or be patient. The trick here is to create a healthy balance between risk and achievement, its dangerous betting it all on black because you may loose it all, but if you don’t bet at all playing it safe you will never gain anything so the key here is to weight the options and create a balance. You will be able to get more of an idea as to how exactly to find that balance within this book.