What It Means To Be A Mercenary In Business (And Why You Should Be A Missionary Instead)

Mercenaries have secrets.

Mercenaries tend to “build in stealth.”

Because they are capturing value, not creating it. (Which makes their business easy to copy by other value-capturing mercenaries.)

Mercenaries seek to protect their every advantage because, on some level, they understand they are playing a game of stealing resources, not creating net-new resources. They are racing against the competition. They are fighting for market share. They are waiting for the perfect opportunity to go to battle — because their task at hand is not to create a new and different kingdom, but to try to steal the kingdom (or, more usually, an under-resourced province) from the ruling king.

Meanwhile, missionaries are going door to door, loudly knocking, shouting with enthusiasm, “HAVE YOU HEARD THE GOOD NEWS?!”

If you are a mercenary, you live life with the fundamental belief that there are only so many resources in the world, and your job is to compete over which ones you have versus the next person. You look for where someone else is creating value and scheme to scrape a little out for yourself. The “better” you are at the game, the more resources you accumulate. And as you accumulate more, that means (by…