Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Ten Ancient Mistakes VII

Continuing our series on ten ancient mistakes based on ten business mistakes:

#7 Customer Concentration

This refers to businesses who have mainly one client and cannot support themselves when the client goes elsewhere.

Anciently there are a number of cases of this and I have a great example in press, but I will wait until that comes out to talk about it.

At the end of the kingdom of Judah, Judah relied on Egypt for most of its military power. Since the Egyptians were nearby and had actually installed one of the kings this made some sense at the time. Unfortunately, we know from hindsight that this was not wise. Egypt was not particularly reliable at the time. One of the reasons was that much of the Egyptian military at the time was made up of Greek mercenaries rather than Egyptians. When it came right down to it, Judah was not that important of an ally for Egypt and when the Babylonians came with their armies, Egypt decided to save her own skin rather than risk helping Judah. Zedekiah waited in vain for help.