WHAT IS THE BIGGEST SECRET TO GETTING RICH?
Dec
4
2018
Peter Answers
Forget about passive investing. You will be lucky to make 4% per year on your money unless you combine your investments with personal efforts, talent and expertise. Don’t ask for handouts or expect to get rich on freebies.
No one is ever going to walk up to you and say, “You look like you could use some money. Here is a million bucks.” This just doesn’t happen. In fact, you’ll rarely get anything in life if you don’t and here comes the “secret…”
Look for opportunities & then –> Find a need and fill it. Don’t be afraid to ask people to buy your product or services. Nothing will happen if you never ask at all. Let’s get specific!
Almost everyone knows the story of how the Levi Brothers started what is now the huge worldwide enterprise that has made “Levi Blue Jeans” the single largest selling item of clothing in the world. How did it start? Levi, who had been a tailor, joined hundred of thousands of young men who sailed to California to seek their fortunes in the California gold rush of 1848. But when he arrived, instead of buying a pan, a donkey and a shovel to dig for gold, he noticed several things:
The new arrivals were all wearing city clothing totally unsuitable for their ambitions. Durable work pants and overalls were needed. They also needed heavy-duty canvas bags to transport the gold dust or ore they hoped to recover.
He also noticed that there were hundreds of abandoned ships in the San Francisco Bay harbor with plenty of canvas from their sails available for free. To make a long story short, he identified or “Found a Need & Filled it. He had the ability as a tailor. There were free materials to fill those obvious needs.” Jeans and bags put together with copper rivets were the answer. He set up a stand at the port, and hawked his products to the arriving fortune hunters.
Other individuals like Levi also made much more money from serving the new arrivals than most of the miners did. How? By using the abandoned materials (wood, nails and glass from the ships) to to build homes, taverns stores in San Francisco, Virginia City and other Gold Rush towns.
Wells Fargo was started by a chap named Flood, to provide transportation, to assay any gold actually recovered, and to provide banking services like loans and fund transmission services. In short, the serious money was not made by the thousands of miners who made nothing. How about the 1% who actually found some gold?
The few gold diggers who actually did strike it rich usually/promptly blew their “winnings” on booze, prostitutes, mansions and the usual other toys and pleasures of the newly rich. Most died broke.
The lesson?
• Provide needed goods and services; use your profits to expand your own businesses
• Don’t be a consumer or look for a wage slave job.
• Never do what everyone else is doing
• Seek out your own special niche –preferably one where your personal expertise and talents can limit effective competition and be put to their highest and best use.
And so it came to pass that I arrived in Manila, Philippines this week.
I noticed right away that there were many spanking new new tall office buildings. Inquiry revealed that many —if not most – were built to house a big, relatively new industry in Manila: Call Centers.
The ambition of many young Filipino men and women is to land a job at a call center where they could earn almost double the prevailing wage for unskilled labor. Actually, this is not very much by USA or European standards — maybe US$350 per month to start and $500 p/m after being able to work effectively and unsupervised.
Needless to say, a would be tycoon or entrepreneur would always look for ways to maximize the return time and effort -– preferably without any monetary investment aside from his/her time and abilities. Your ability can be in administration, salesmanship, marketing, accounting, law, deal-making, research — anything.
If you want to get rich, just never do what everybody else is doing –i.e.
Don’t look for a “job.”
Think like a Tycoon!
If you think like a tycoon or entrepreneur you’d ask yourself ….
“What do the OWNERS of these call centers need?”
“What needs can I fill?”
I came up with a long list:
(1)They need computer savvy kids who can work nights to answer telephone calls for customers of companies like Microsoft and Apple, seeking answers to (usually) very simple questions. Can I provide trained employees with the needed skills & appropriate American Accents? Specialized short Training courses that the candidates pay for. Employment Agencies that will collect big placement fees for providing suitable employees?
I could start small with one student and gradually hire more teachers till I had hundreds of students in my schools and plenty of skilled call center workers to place.
(2) Call Centers need new large scale customers. Can I poach new customers for the Philippines from other call centers (Think India?).
Anywhere that existing call center customers are not as satisfied will serve as my happy hunting grounds. Snagging one new client could give me a six figure commission with renewals for years.
(3) Can I help the existing call centers set up better quality control and customer/employee retention?
What will I learn if I ask the heads of these new enterprises (an d/or their employees) for their wish lists? Answer? I will discover more needs.
4. Can I help builders get new call center tenants? Can I build one myself with borrowed money?
5. Or can I negotiate (for a commission) big construction loans based upon the reliable cash flow that the call centers will provide?
6. Can I find or train and provide supervisors, architects, janitorial services.
7. How about window washing?
No, you won’t do it all yourself.
You organize the equipment & provide the people to do the work.
People with organizational talent and good ideas are the 1%; The successful, rich and powerful people who bring higher standards of living to all. They are the “movers & shakers.” Without entrepreneurs and tycoons free to do their thing under some form of capitalism, people would be living in “paradises” like Venezuela, North Korea and other primitive societies.
Back to our story and concrete ideas for YOU:
If you have paying customers, it is easy to lease equipment with “no money down.” If you have jobs and can employ people, in the 3rd world—places like the Philippines with 50% unemployment, THEN you will easily find good workers. But of course they need training, motivation and supervision. That’s where you come in. ASK!
Other ideas:
(1) Can I provide services to the call center employees who because of their night-shift hours have special needs: Stuff like dinners or afternoon snacks when most restaurants are serving breakfasts.
2. Food trucks maybe?
3. Consumer goods delivered –without the hassles of shopping.
4. Dorm type housing nearby.
5. Training & placement for supervisory positions.
What you should NOT do! Buy a scheme to make money with “passive investing” or buy a course in making money in a certain way that is being sold to hundreds or thousands of other people … Why not?
Anyone who simply buys a step by step course or outline on how to make money or do a certain business that is being sold to hundreds of other people is almost certainly doomed to failure. Why? Because the waters are going to be muddied by too many competitors who have bought the same book or plan – all attempting to do the same thing. There are only a few situations where there seems to be room for everybody– real estate rehabbing, building, buying and selling.
Why? Because there are very few people who continue very long in the real estate game after reading a book or taking a course. Most will quit after they have a few rental properties. To get seriously rich requires persistence and dedication. Dilettantes don’t make it big in any business. But many of my readers have acquired real estate and have thus provided for their future financial independence and security. Property is one easy, lazy man’s way to avoid the financial death of a thousand cuts that comes with a mere wage-slave job. Why wait 40 years for a payout from a pension fund that most likely won’t pay? Or quit making loser passive investments like bad gambles on stocks, in Forex or option trading schemes. Quit trying to be an “armchair investor.”
My idea is to do what Levi did: Identify what is (preferably) a new market opportunity. Then serve the needs of those running the show and possibly the needs of the masses who are newly employed.
Why seek out a new market?
Because in any big industry that has been around for years, the service providers are going to be well established. For you to carve out a niche, you will have to innovate and work much harder to find & fill a need than in a relatively new and booming sector. Take something like tuna fishing. Those who supply the needed replacement boats, nets, motors, repairs have well established relationships. You probably can’t break into a business like those without working for someone else in an existing enterprise. It is much easier to find unmet needs elsewhere.
I arbitrarily zeroed in on call centers but there are thousands of other businesses EVERYWHERE that can use the services of an enterprising entrepreneur. The first step is to Think like a Tycoon! Yes that’s the book I wrote many years ago. But mere thinking won’t make you a cent. The next thing you must do is to implement. If Plan A doesn’t work after reasonable efforts are made, tweak it or switch to Plan B and Plan C. Persist until you create a profitable niche. Then persist some more and expand. Eventually go international.
To summarize, in a new city, anyone who thinks like a tycoon or entrepreneur should within days, be able to discover hundreds of opportunities and unmet needs. He or she would then choose those things that are relatively easy to implement, are not capital intensive, and provide the most profitable returns for input of time and effort. Forget about passive investing. You will be lucky to make 4% per year on your money unless you combine your investments with personal efforts, talent and expertise.
Category: Peter Answers
By P.T.
December 4, 2018
Source : http://www.petertaradash.com/what-is-th ... ting-rich/