Working Smarter With Walson’s Law

Most of us want to make lots of money to get the best out of life. Yet, just as I have, we can get stuck breaking our backs in low-paying jobs just to make ends meet, leaving very little or nothing left over to enjoy ourselves with. However, there is a solution to this seemingly endless cycle. 

If we take a look at the many philosophical epigrams that have been collected over the years we can find some laws of life that can help us with our struggles of hard work and low wages. Sometimes, it is all down to us whether we progress in our careers or not, we just need to have the right mindset and look at things in a different way.

A Law of Life

“Put information and intelligence first, and money will come rolling in”

• S.M Walson, American Entrepreneur (Walson’s Law)

In basic terms, Walson is saying “work smarter, not harder.” That is not to say that you shouldn’t work hard in life, just that knowledge can go a long way in making things easier when it comes to your career. In fact, knowledge can make most aspects of life a lot easier when it all comes down to it. However, we are focusing on making money in this article.

A Basic Example

An example we could look at in terms of this law is that of John and Harry in Florence U.S.A. They began their jobs at a vegetable trading company at the same time. However, after three months, it was John who had already begun getting promotions and a pay rise. Harry was confused and angry as to why John was moving up the career ladder and he wasn’t. Since they had started working there at the same time, Harry felt that it was unfair that John was progressing in the company and he wasn’t.

When he questioned the boss, he was sent on an errand. The boss told him that they needed to make an order for a new batch of potatoes and that Harry should go and look for somewhere to get them. Harry left and came back within a half hour. He told his boss that the potatoes were sold in the wholesale vegetable center.

The boss then said the same thing to John about needing to make an order for potatoes. John replied by saying that there were three potato sellers in the wholesale vegetable center 20 kilometers away and that two of them sell for $0.09 per half-kilo and the other sells for $0.08 per half-kilo. He also added that the cheaper potatoes were actually the better quality of the three. 

Having the information about the market without the need to go and enquire meant that John was the better employee without question.

To seize an opportunity, you must first find them and gain the right knowledge. If you have all the information before everyone else, it won’t be that difficult to succeed. This can be applied to life in general, not just to your career goals.

Walson’s Law Case Studies

There have been many examples throughout the years when people have achieved great wealth just by gaining the right knowledge and using it to their advantage. Further proving that working smarter has far more benefits than just working harder.

Duobochuan the “Diaper King”

Duobochuan started out as the chairman of a small company that produced umbrellas. It was only by chance that he had seen a census report. From that report, he learned that there were 2.5 million babies being born in Japan every year. That lead him to think about the commercial need for diapers. It was a small product with a huge potential market. If the minimum use of diapers were two per baby, per day, per year, it would become 5 million diapers needed per year in Japan. Also, if sold on an international scale, the potential would be huge. 

Once he had thought about all this and calculated the potential sales, Duoboshuan made the immediate decision to switch his company’s product to diapers, selling them both nationwide and worldwide. Today, the company makes up ⅓ of the total sales of diapers worldwide.

Jianlibao – Oriental Magic Water

The day before the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic games, the directors of Guangdong “Jianlibao” considered it to be a major marketing opportunity. Various efforts were made and Jianlibao was chosen by the Chinese sports delegation as the beverage of the choice for the Olympic games.

It just so happened that it was the first time that Chinese athletes had major athletic achievements during the Olympic games. Asahi Shimbun, one of the four largest newspapers in Japan, was the first to publish a special Olympic article titled “China Relying on Magic Water to Accelerate Attack.” Other large world-class newspapers also published similarly prestigious articles. This made Jianlibao known worldwide as the “Oriental Magic Water”, gaining fame and reputation everywhere.

Jianlibao seized the opportunity just in time and used it to make great success for the company and its directors. When the market changes and new managers are presented with new business opportunities, they should take this advice. They can either be slow to react and dismiss the opportunities ahead of them, or they can be smart about it and adapt to grasp every opportunity before someone else has the chance to snatch it up.

Creating Articles

We’ve seen some examples of how Walson’s law works when it comes to climbing a career ladder and seizing opportunities. But I think it is worth mentioning the example before your very eyes, this article. In fact, the example is within many articles that need to be written. 

When given a task to write an article about a certain topic, we don’t just start typing straight away and make it up as we go along. Yes, there is a word count goal and deadlines to meet, but if you do not know what you are talking about in your article, then all that work is for nothing. That would mean you spent time out of your daily life writing a piece that has no relevant information if any at all. What is worse, your client won’t be happy with the piece you wrote and you won’t be paid for the time you spent on it. 

You need to gain the relevant knowledge to make a success with your article. I certainly didn’t know anything about philosophical laws when I was offered the job of writing this article. Sure, I may have heard about them back in high school all those many years ago, but I definitely didn’t have any knowledge of the topics off the top of my head. Writing something down and hoping it makes sense and looks good isn’t enough when creating decent content for an article. And this isn’t some school essay where you can just throw bits and pieces together and hope for anything above a fail. 

When I was given this article as an assignment, I was told what the topic was going to be and that was the basic information that I had. The rest was up to me. Of course, the first step was learning the definition of Walson’s law and building from there. Without the research, I would not have had any knowledge of the topic I was assigned to write about. Without the knowledge to write this article and the intelligence to structure the information accordingly, I wouldn’t get paid for my work. As a writer, I take much pride in my research knowledge to create pieces like the one you are reading right now. As Walson states “Put information and intelligence first, and the money will come rolling in.”

Now, I am by no means saying the money is exactly rolling in. But I am getting paid due to my quality of work and the information I can supply to potential readers. I don’t think you as a reader would appreciate me rambling about something completely off-topic when you wanted to learn about Walson’s law, more so if I gave information that was completely false and made up.

A Wider Perspective

Mostly, we’ve talked about how to think of this law as a way to bring you monetary wealth. But wealth has different meanings, depending on the way you look at it. It shouldn’t just be all about money as there is more to life than that. Look at this law as a way of pursuing a wealth of knowledge. When Walson says “money will follow” it doesn’t necessarily mean financial wealth, but meaning a reward. Life can be full of rewards if you set your goals to pursue and hone your knowledge and skill.

We often lose sight of the important things when our goal is just to make money in as little time as possible. Yes, I can even say I’m guilty of that. When I started out writing articles, I took on as many jobs as I could to get all the money I could in a short amount of time. I didn’t take the time to research or hone my skills as a writer. I was just lucky that I’m a fast learner in that regard, but there was an awful amount of work to be done and my first load of articles didn’t pay as much as I’d hoped. But now, I consider myself to be skilled in my writing and I can now use that knowledge to my advantage. Knowledge itself can be a type of wealth, one that can be more useful to us than some pieces of paper with numbers on them.

When we use the term “money” in this law, we mean it as “the reward will come rolling in”, as long as you focus on your job/task and use intelligence to gain all the information you need. Students will get good grades from working hard and using their knowledge, while scientists are successful by rigorously trying their experiments. Athletes win medals by practicing and bettering themselves everyday, Actors master their act to the best, and it results in a lot of fame and fan following. Likewise, Walson’s law has many practical implications and it is not just restricted to money.

How Useful is Walson’s Law

From my own personal experience, I find Walson’s law to be very helpful indeed. The idea of putting information and intelligence first is basically what I do on a daily basis to create articles. 

I also believe that many people would benefit from Walson’s law if they understood it correctly. Again, look at it as “work smarter, not harder” and it gets simpler from there. A lot of people rush into “get rich quick” schemes, and many people spend years in a job with no progression, even after working long and hard hours every day. 

No one is saying that applying this law to your daily life will magically make everything easier. It doesn’t work that way. And no one is saying you will never have to work hard when using this mindset. It just means that if you’re smart about things and gather all the information you can, you will be able to seize more opportunities for succession. If you are going to put time and effort into something, you might as well put your mind into it as well and do it right.

In conclusion, Walson’s law is very useful. It is one of those life experiences that we learn as we go. As humans, we seem to love complaining about our lives and how unfair life is in general, but it doesn’t have to be that hard. You can keep complaining about going nowhere in your job, or you can pick yourself up and find out why that is and what you can do to change that. Humans have these amazing and incredible minds, we might as well use them. Once we get ourselves on the right track, we are in a better position to avoid failure in the future. 

Walson’s law is one of the top unavoidable laws of life. Whether we intend to or not, we experience it at some point in our lives. So, let’s learn from it. Let’s put our amazing human intellect first and then ride the success train to the bank.

It’s also worth mentioning that this law is useful to every form of business. Companies and organizations need to use their intelligence to further their knowledge to get the best quality, becoming a monopoly in their product. Because they had the know-how to get the best product, customers will come flowing in to buy from them, keeping the money rolling.

What We’ve Learned

• Walson’s law states “Put information and intelligence first, and the money will come rolling in.”
• This law originates from an American entrepreneur named S.M Walson.
• It is one of the top philosophies of life.
• It can be used to better succeed in your career and life in general.
• It can be used to create a mindset to adapt and seize every opportunity.
• Some problems in life are unavoidable, but this law, along with others, can help us through them.
• This is yet another law that has helped with the creation of this very article.
• This law isn’t just about money as there is more to life than that.
• Walson’s law when applied for Students, Scientists, Athletes, Actors or to say any profession, the end result or desired goal will follow in, if they focus on the efforts and skill