Why Aji? To Survive, Be Free and Live a Good Life [7 pages]

An excerpt from

Aji, An IR#4 Business Philosophy written by Toby Hecht

THE FOCUS of my career for almost 40 years has been on earning a living or becoming rich in The Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR#4) for the sake of being able to survive, adapt to life’s always changing circumstances and live a good life with my family. I’ve fulfilled my intentions by helping over 4,000 businesspeople fulfill the same intentions for their families.

In a marketplace full of loud, political, competing, shallow, misleading, obvious, angry, cynical, disingenuous and often meaningless arguments about what should be important to businesspeople, earning “enough money” to fulfill my marriage vows and commitments to my children has been my ideological and moral center.

My business philosophy and my businesses have always been a practical manifestation of the vows I made to my wife, Linda, the day we married, and later of the commitments we both made to avoid becoming a financial burden on our children and their spouses when they became adults. Nothing else makes sense to me.

How could I let someone I care about deeply, whom I’d promised to love, honor and cherish in front of our families and friends, and who gave me her trust, casually face a future in which she and I would run out of money during our old age?

How could I raise children and then thoughtlessly compel them and their spouses to support Linda and me, reducing their ability to take care of their own children?

This may sound corny, simplistic or hopelessly naïve to people who feel there are more important and sophisticated intellectual, social, entertaining or political agendas than earning and saving enough money to live a good life with my wife while raising our children and during our old age. But I’m unapologetically simpleminded and idealistic when it comes to taking care of my wife and children. It’s what I promised them I’d do. It’s my most important, practical and dignified commitment. It gives my life meaning.

From my childhood memories, as well as my common sense, I know that real life without enough money is harsh, inescapable and miserable, and not an adolescent, television or political fantasy that can be ignored, trivialized or dismissed. When people run out of money, practical breakdowns and chronic financial stresses grab hold of them, dominate them, wear them down, trigger despair, thwart their intentions, make them sick and ruin their lives.

Without “enough money” it isn’t possible for human beings to survive, adapt to life’s always changing circumstances or live a good life, especially when they are old. They can’t afford the goods and services we all need to take care of our most fundamental human concerns, such as housing, food, medical care, transportation, family, play and dignity.

Many businesspeople, reporters and politicians act as if this claim can be denied or ignored and isn’t important enough to speak about. They act as if businesspeople and their spouses can somehow live good lives without burdening their children or suffering chronic financial stresses in their 70s, 80s and 90s when they run out of money.

The claim is the truth.

Knowing this made it impossible for Linda and me to ignore the consequences of any business or financial actions that would thwart our intentions to earn enough income to take practical care of our children and ourselves. And it drove us to learn so we could increase our competitive advantages, productivity, value, income and savings.

Even in our twenties we began to realize the financial actions we would have to take throughout our careers to earn and save “enough money” to avoid betraying our commitments.

When we met with our accountant at that time, the truth about how much money we really needed to earn and save began to unfold. We took a big gulp as she told us the financial truths we faced without a pension if we wanted to live a good life together until we were at least 90 years old.

She said we needed to save at least 20% of our pre-tax income in after-tax dollars just to get started, which meant we had to save roughly 50% of every paycheck. Then she told us we’d need to readjust our thinking after we had children. Yikes!

The new financial obligations the IR#4 marketplace had produced were a real shock to both of us, of course. We were raised in The Third Industrial Revolution (IR#3) “to get a job” and use hard work, determination and common sense to earn a living, end of story. After we got a good job everything was supposed to simply work out as we wanted it to. Neither of us was raised to be financially responsible for our old age. Because no one ever spoke about this financial obligation, we never saw it coming.

Despite the shock, it did not occur to us to deny the truth. Denying it to have what we wanted when we were young and strong in favor of running out of money when we were old and weak seemed absurd, immature and undignified.

What would we say to one another when the moment of truth arrived as the math predicted it would? What would we say to our children and their spouses the day we ran out of money?

Where was the dignity for a married couple, or any adult, in pretending to be “fine” financially when we were not yet able to earn or save enough money to live a good life together our entire life?

Our commitment to deal responsibly with our newly discovered financial situation produced deep and real adult meanings for our finances, marriage, parenting, careers and businesses. At the same time it stressed us.

It meant our conversations together and with our friends and business colleagues, including customers and investors, were real, practical, adult and responsible.

This made them deeply meaningful, which mattered to us, rather than shallow, immature, irresponsible, superficial, full of entertaining, political and intellectual distractions, and certain to produce suffering for everyone in the future.

Later we discovered that our willingness to accept and deal with financial realities honestly, honorably using our best efforts, and straightforwardly without pretention, produced respect and admiration with our children, which was also very important to us.

It’s no surprise to any of us that the baby boomers who blew off their financial, marital and familial obligations are the generation most disliked by their children, are divorcing in record numbers and face a future in which they are certain to run out of money before they die if they live a normal lifespan.

We saw this coming and didn’t want to be part of it.

To our surprise, our seriousness created a group of friends and customers who were equally serious and unable to tolerate denying their financial obligations to their spouse and children.

To our even greater surprise, simply having character to accept the truth about our financial situation and dealing with it practically as best we could and with dignity produced a degree of trustworthiness, value, authority and leadership that created competitive advantages and opportunities to make a great deal of money with these friends and customers.

Now they, too, are rich and very, very happy about it.

Shortly after we opened the first chain of retail computer stores in Silicon Valley I found myself in the situation I invented “Aji” to solve. I needed to earn a living. I had to use my computer to do it. And, I was clueless about how to think about it.

I had two advantages that helped me solve the problem.

First, it was easy for me to see that businesspeople who had degrees in computer science and used mainframe computers to help businesses make money bought their personal computers “strategically”, which is how they had to use them in order to make money for their employers. They knew how to choose the computer and software programs that could best help them design and execute action plans to build their businesses and make money.

And, second, it was just as easy to see that regular businesspeople with no knowledge of computers whose orientation was task-oriented, labor-based and commonsensical would never be able to compete against the “strategists” successfully. How could they when they thought learning how to operate their new software programs was “cool” and all they needed to learn?

But it wasn’t until the internet appeared that I began to have the insights I needed to see how to exploit personal computers’ strategic and competitive possibilities.

I’ve already spoken about the first insight:

Businesspeople can’t count on employers and the government to be responsible for their survival the last 25+ years of their lives, as they did in IR#3. Now businesspeople are responsible for funding their old age, as Linda and I recognized almost 40 years ago.

Businesspeople need to accept that the meaning of “earning a living” has changed in IR#4. This change requires them to learn new ideas and skills to be able to succeed.

Adults who are serious about taking care of their spouse and children need to change their thinking and practices immediately to increase their productivity, value and incomes to include saving enough money to afford 25+ years of unemployment during their old age.

The longer they delay learning how to increase their incomes, the harder it becomes every day to recover.

To survive, adapt to changing circumstances and live a good life with their spouse throughout their entire life in IR#4, businesspeople need to earn and save enough money during their 40-year careers to afford the goods and services we all need until we are at least 85-90 years old.

The math to calculate how much money is enough to afford 25 years of old age with one’s spouse is so simple and compelling Linda and I just assumed everyone we told would thank us because it would help them avoid suffering, chronic financial stresses and despair later in their life.

Nope. But we found the integrity, courage and commitment of the businesspeople who did thank us very appealing.

The second insight makes strategic and competitive sense of computers and the internet but is a bit difficult to grasp at first because the philosophy and concepts needed to explain it are new, and because they only work with computers and the internet.

They are not difficult to learn, but they are a very, very different way of thinking about how to make money in IR#4.

They form the basis of “Aji”, which is a business philosophy whose intent is to help businesspeople earn a living or become rich in IR#4 to take care of their families.

I call the philosophy “Aji” after the term used in the 4,000-year-old game of strategy, Go, to mean “having the potential to win”. (I explain more about “Aji” in the introduction to the book.)

The second insight is this:

“Regular businesspeople” — business owners, executives, managers and individuals — can and must learn how to exploit the new strategic and competitive possibilities computers and the internet bring into existence to earn a living or become rich in the same ways large global competitors do, such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Google.

Everyone with a computer is now free technologically to design and execute their own fresh, new, highly valued and scarce offers, practices, narratives and strategies, including goods and services, to fulfill their financial, career and business intentions.

For the first time in history businesspeople have a tool they can carry with them wherever they go and use autonomously, strategically and competitively to increase their competitive advantages, productivity, value, incomes and savings, and fulfill their new financial obligations.

To use computers and the internet to compete successfully, businesspeople also need to have a competitive fundamental strategy and the strategic knowledge to execute it effectively, strategically and competitively.

I began inventing “Aji’s” two components, (1) The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy and (2) The IR#4 Strategic Knowledge needed to execute it, shortly after opening our computer stores in Silicon Valley. I have been refining them for the past 30 years.

We have shown for decades, and with thousands of businesspeople, that they can double their incomes if they learn “Aji”, or how to execute a competitive, fundamental strategy … and quit using IR#3’s labor-based business knowledge, task-oriented work ethics and reliance on common sense.

“Aji” has helped Linda and me meet our financial obligations many times over. As businesspeople in our networks began to see how well Linda and I were doing financially, they began to ask us to help them meet their financial intentions and aspirations.

We were happy to tell them about “Aji”, or how to use their computers and the internet strategically and competitively, instead of with task orientation.

They never expected to hear what I told them about a completely new business philosophy that enables businesspeople to compete successfully in the top 1% of the marketplace to produce incomes between $400k-$4m and that only works with computers and the internet.

Their financial, career and business success using the philosophy formed the foundation for our next business, The Aji Advantage, where over the past 30 years we’ve helped thousands of businesspeople take care of their spouse and children meaningfully and with adult dignity.

I hope you can use “Aji” to help you take care of your family, too.

– Toby Hecht, Inventor of Aji