Would you rob a bank alone?

Millennium Cargo

Would you rob a bank alone?

As you know, I’m not a big fan of the news. I take great care of my mindset and I believe that everything we read, watch or listen to has an impact on our way of thinking.

The newspapers here in the UK are packed full of doom and gloom, super-biased propaganda. But every now and then there’s something in them that catches my eye - like the bank robbery in Brazil.

Now, just to be clear, I’m not at all condoning this robbery. People died, hostages were traumatised and damages were caused at a significant cost to society.

The bank robbers are bad people and I hope they are caught.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from them. While the crime they committed was terrible, their planning and execution of the heist was something else.

They didn’t just rob a bank, but they planned and executed an exceedingly detailed heist that was - for them - a huge success.

With a team of over 20 people, they successfully broke into two banks in the city of Araçatuba in São Paulo state, damaging but failing to gain access to a third.

They cut off key access roads into the city with burning vehicles and attacked the local military police station to prevent the police from being able to respond fully to the robberies. They used drones to monitor the police response and strapped hostages to their getaway cars to prevent them from being fired on while they drove away at a leisurely 30mph pace.

They thought about every single element and put a plan - and person - in place to mitigate the risks.

Now, it’s not yet publicised just how much money they made off with but I’ll bet it was a profitable venture.

Again, I’m not condoning what they did, but there’s some lessons to be learned from how they did it.

As a business owner, it can be tempting to think we can do it all alone. That no one understands our business like we do and that if you want something doing well then you’re best to do it yourself.

But in reality, if you want to get some serious results you’ve got to put a team in place to support you. Too many business owners handicap themselves by trying to do too much alone.

Here at Millennium, we’ve had a crazy busy summer. We’ve all been working flat out to keep our customers happy and we’ve seen some great success.

But if we want to keep growing we need more people. We need the right team in place to make sure our plan can be executed and our goals achieved.

I mean, you wouldn’t rob a bank on your own, would you? So why would you try to run a business without the right help?