Who dares wins!

Around the time when shit the size of a jumbo jet was hitting fan fast and furious in the Crimea. I advised many of my readers who were serious about striking it rich to go and prospect for business in the Ukraine.

I have always been a firm believer in the notion, crisis = opportunity i.e buy ultra low – and the lowest point in the economic bell curve is usually when the political, economic, social and cultural attributions of a locale is riven by war, sectarian divide or when no one in their right mind wants to touch it with a barge pole.

Seven men took my advice. They went there with two cents and the loose idea to prospect for business in the Ukraine – today they’re millionaires.

As a Chinese firm bought over their land concessions for 7,000% profit (tax free).

Fortune will always favor the man who is courageous enough to go where angels fear to tread.

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‘In 2008, UAE brought 324 hectares (1.25 square miles) of land in Pakistan. A year later, South Korea bought nearly twice that amount in Sudan. This week, China announced the biggest land lease ever: 3 million hectares (11,500 square miles) of Ukrainian land. Or put more simply: 1/20th of all Ukraine.

I don’t need to be Nostradamus to tell you where all this is going.

We are constantly told….the road to prosperity is to brain out the next new thing to pique the interest of the public. Presumably so that they can vote for us with their wallets. As a consequence, a whole generation of men and women spend their time these days trying to invent the next ipad or facebook platform. A few succeed. But most fail. What’s even worse is we have manufactured on an industrial scale, a human being who is addicted to familiarity, risk adverse and can only function in an conditioned environment. To put it another way, a sort of half man who cannot bear uncertainty, strife and hard physical work. The anti-thesis of the frontier uber man – the super man.

I have always believed in the simple idea, the rugged individual is capable of accomplishing anything he puts his mind too – to me, the quientessential frontier man is a much more reliable being to produce the good life for himself and his family when compared to half man that I have just described.

Unfortunately these days that sort of man is frowned upon in polite circles. In very much the same way Cortés who conquered the Aztec Empire and Pizarro who led the conquest of the Incan Empire are considered pariahs today.

They are frowned up as many would have us all believe the age of exploration and conquest is well and truly over and the only ladder for one to get up in life is to join the rest of humanity in the rat race.

But I have never believed in that stupid idea. Never so much as once. My life is the very living personification of my unfailing conviction in the rugged individual.

As I have always believed steadfastly in the notion – the age of exploration has never been more present in this timeline when compared to all other periods in human history.

Not many men know of this. The irony is not many choose too. They much prefer to play it safe by sticking to yellow brick road – to do what most people do…to work, live and play by some rule book that keeps them running and panting in perpetuity in that dreaded hamster wheel – they choose to call life.

But for those few who believe in the indestructibility of this idea of the rugged individual and what he is capable of accomplishing with so very little and who have ventured beyond the tried and tested path to discover the road that they can call their own – they all know, what I have said to be true…the age of exploration is very much alive. It is not dead!

And I will alway count myself privileged to be in the company of such men.’