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A slideshare on Rogers Rules, which are still in effect today and always will be!
Part of Who Dares Wins: Special Operation Strategies for Success and The Green Beret Survival Guide.
Robert Rogers was a colonial farmer from New Hampshire who was recruited by the British in 1755 to serve in the French and Indian War. Over the course of the following years he formed a unit of colonials called Rogers’ Rangers, the first Ranger unit. Unlike the Redcoat British, they wore green uniforms and utilized unconventional tactics, many of which were written down as Rogers’ Ranging Rules, some of which are still used in the current US Army Ranger Handbook, called Standing Operating Procedures (SOPs). I’ll post on Rogers Rules of Rangering in a week or so.
The most significant engagement the Rangers fought was with the Abenaki Indians in Canada. This tribe had been raiding the colonies and was credited with over five hundred kills, mostly of civilians, during the war. A Ranger force of two hundred marched into Canada and destroyed the Abenaki village, a feat shown in the 1940 movie Northwest Passage starring Spencer Tracy. This was a case of thinking outside of the normal parameters on Rogers’ part. Conventional wisdom at the time dictated being on the defensive along the frontier. Rogers realized that would be futile and leave the initiative in the hands of his enemies. The frontier was simply too large to be adequately defended with the scant forces he had.
He decided that the only way to stop this scourge was to go to the source, which others told him was impossible as it was too far inside enemy territory. He turned that thinking around, figuring that if the other side thought that too, it would increase his odds of success as no one would consider the raid a real possibility and be prepared to defend against it. This open-mindedness is something is one of the seven character traits of the elite. An elite individual is someone who finds new ways to tackle problems. I discuss this in detail in Who Dares Wins Special Operations Strategies for Success.
The Rangers also fought in General Wolfe’s campaign against Quebec and the subsequent one against Montreal in 1760. After the war, Rogers repeatedly petitioned the King to fund expeditions for the Rangers to explore from the Mississippi to the Pacific, almost fifty years before Lewis & Clark. Think how history might have changed if he had done this (which gets my brain working on a possible mission for a future Time Patrol book). Unfortunately, the King turned Rogers down and his persistence in trying to launch his own expeditions caused him to be arrested on charges of treason. So much for loyalty from top to bottom, a key to effective leadership. There are some who say the seeds of the Revolution were planted among the ranks of the Rangers because of this. Despite their excellent service, the Rangers were treated with contempt by the British and in 1775 some of the men who fired upon the British at Lexington and Concord were former Rangers.
As part of this focus on Spec Ops, I’ve put together three discounted Special Ops bundles on Amazon:
Special Ops One: Green Berets Cut Out and Shadow Warriors: The Line
Special Ops Two: Green Berets: Chasing the Lost and The Jefferson Allegiance
Special Ops Three: Green Berets: Eternity Base and Shadow Warriors: Omega Sanction
Tomorrow I’ll post about Rogers Rules of Rangering, which we still use today!
The headline screams: LOCAL AUTHOR GOES OUT OF BUSINESS!
Ever see that? How about a blog titled: “I Can’t Make A Living Writing Any More”?
Hmm. Nope.
Writers are strange creatures. I have complete strangers hit me up on twitter asking me publicly if I’d recommend an agent for them. Or look at their queries. Even their manuscripts (nothing compared to what agents get hit with). Next brain surgeon I see on twitter I’m going to ask him for some free surgery, since my brain seems a little off. Seriously.
Ever have someone ask what you do, and when you answer that you’re a writer, they say: “Never heard of you.”
My reply is: “What’s your name?” and when they tell me, I say: “Never heard of you either.”
Nah. I give them my card, a book if I have one handy. Every person is a potential reader.
Writers, we tend not to value themselves. And one of the rules my wife has taught me is: We teach people how to treat us.
I just realized I’m writing this blog after writing yesterday’s blog about Bernie Madoff. The mind works in mysterious ways. Real subtle, there, Bob.
Back to teaching people how to treat us: when I do consulting or keynoting for Who Dares Wins, outside of the world of publishing, I quickly learned that when asked my fee, if it were too low, I might not get the gig as they then felt I wasn’t very good if I didn’t charge much. Almost the opposite of being a writer, who will give away their first born to give a talk, somehow thinking they will eventually sell books.
You have to consider not only the actual talk, but your expertise. When I present Who Dares Wins, I’m not just giving a company a two-hour presentation. I’m giving them the benefit of decades of experience as a Special Forces student, team leader, operations officer, commander, soldier, instructor at the JFK Special Warfare Center and consultant to previous organizations. Also, being a NY Times bestselling author who has sold millions of books and started up a successful publishing company that has thrived through extreme turmoil in the entertainment business. That stuff is hard to come by. Rare. It’s worth something.
I do feel uncomfortable when someone asks how much I charge for a talk, particularly in the writing world when I know money is tight for the organizations. I remember, though, what I was told one year at the Maui Writers Conference. A CEO of a very successful company told me that in the corporate world, to get the kind of high level expertise that was being given at Maui one would expect to pay tens of thousands of dollars. And all these best-selling authors were getting was a plane ticket and a hotel room for their collective experiences and expertise.
I believe writers should value their expertise. If asked what you charge, consider who is asking, what is being asked, and what value it will have to those who receive your expertise. Remember, all they can do is say no, or tell you what they can pay. Or you can always negotiate. One technique I use for some of my day long presentations is give a percentage of my book sales at the event back to the organization. This is a win-win situation.
Remember: if we don’t value ourselves, no one else will. List to Harlan Ellison — Pay The Writer (warning language)
Write It Forward!
Shadow Warriors: Omega Sanction is .99 today only.
I wrote this book while war-gaming various threats that could occur outside of the ones people usually think of such as nuclear. What’s really scary are developments in biological warfare. For a long time biological warfare has been inefficient because it targets indiscriminately. So the threat is as exposed as the target. But science is now allowing biological weapons to be targeted for certain gene patterns, which raises the specter of biological genocide.
Sadly, I believe such a weapon will be deployed, because man has this strange bent: if we can invent it, we can use it. In Omega Sanction my Special Forces hero has to stop the threat; echoing what is happening out there in the real world, where the true heroes operate in the darkness with little thanks and recognition.
(Don’t forget to sign up for my mailing list on the right because we’ve got some developments in the pipeline for some great giveaways via the mailing shortly!)
Stay warm and safe!
