One thing I’ve noticed about the general business environment worries me a bit and that is how there seems to be an invisible force at play which perpetuates the doctrine that it’s every man for himself. One against the other. In order for me to eat, someone else has to starve and that is most certainly not the case in reality.

When a market leader which is active in a specific field of business realizes a resounding success, the most natural instinct is to expand and try to make even more money. They look towards something like an acquisition or entering into a new market, all in the name of profit and this tends to take place at the expense of everything else.

The antithesis to the every-man-for-himself doctrine is the doctrine of peerpreneurship, which is basically just a concerted approach to business. Society as it is shaped today teaches us that we earn money on our own and that financial success is a one-man quest, while the exact opposite of that, i.e. spending money should be a series of social events. Think about it.

You invite as many people as you can when you throw a party, but how many people show an interest in buying your product or service when you offer one through your business. Chances are given half a chance, those people who truly care for you and call themselves your friends would support you, however the societal conditioning of it being every man for himself instills some shame in anyone starting their own venture. This shame prevents you from approaching the people who care the most for you and asking them to support you in a manner that won’t take anything away from them.

I dream of a day when people realize just how much power they hold in their hands, as long as they decide to come together to pursue a common interest in business. For example, your network of contacts has the power to churn out businesses like clockwork. Nobody even needs to spend a single cent more of their money than they already do and all it takes is a decision to take it in turns to designate each network member as the supplier.

To give you a simple example, wouldn’t you raise enough money, effectively out of thin air, if just for three months you were tasked with the collection of all the money each individual in your network would spend on something like the toilet paper you all use and then going to the wholesaler to stock up on that toilet paper at cost price? The difference is what you get to keep as your startup capital.

Is there anyone in your network who loses anything? No. Did you have to go to a bank to borrow some money which you’d subsequently have to pay back with interest to start your business? Again, no!

That is the power of peerpreneurship and its effects will be at their most potent if the whole doctrine is formalized and the economic advancement is seen as a group effort.