I get a regular flow of questions from would-be entrepreneurs who don’t know what to do. Here is my answer to one
The internet is awash with lying bastards telling you can get rich easily. This is a reply to someone who has written a couple of times for advice but has no idea what he wants to sell. It is slightly edited, but what I believe. It is based on trying to make money all sorts of ways with everything from identity bracelets to fire extinguishers to newsletters.
You cannot just say I want to make money without having any idea what to sell.
Everybody wants to make money – and you are competing with all of them for the limited amount of money out there, which nobody wants to spend unless they have to.
You have to find something you know about and are really interested in – otherwise you will not succeed.
I recommend you read How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis. It’s on Amazon.
If you say you don’t read, then God help you. Nobody else will.
And by the way, the margin you are talking about is almost certainly not enough.
Anyone who promises you can get rich without knowing what you are doing and bloody hard work is lying.
I have a friend who started out cleaning toilets and now has a business employing a handful of people that turns over £24 million a year.
He came and paid me £1,000 for an hour’s advice about seven years ago, then became a client for five years. That is not why he does well. He does well because he and his wife work like hell and scheme and study constantly.
I think about my business all the time. Notice that I am writing this at 4.48 a.m. And I am 76.
I have tried to make money on all sorts of things. Mostly I failed.
“Persistence alone is omnipotent” – Calvin Coolidge
Good luck
Drayton
Good morning Drayton from the Capital of get-rich-with-little-or-no-effort, Perth, Australia. Many spruikers* of such schemes actually believe they are omnipotent. Persistance in hyperbole is their stock in trade.
* While Drayton will know what this means. it’s Australian for ‘tout’
Hello Drayton
I took a look at How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis and will include it in my bulk order from Amazon this month… saves on the shipping to do it monthly 🙂
What grabbed you about the book?
… and please stop any of this… I’m 76 stuff… I fear that you will be around for a long time yet to torment us… only the good die young 🙂
The easy way of make money is to forge it. But fake money that gets past the security checks and doesn’t lead to the forger ending up in prison is rare. That’s because just being a forger isn’t good enough, you have to be brilliant at it to be able to con the authorities. It’s the same with any crime; if you don’t want to get caught.
It’s the same with legitimate business, if you want to con the customer you have to be brilliant at what you’re about. Any inkling that you’re not on the level and people will take their custom and their money elsewhere.
Most people approach making money from the outside looking in. Dream up a product and go from there. Occasionally that’s succeed, often it won’t. My way of helping people make money is look at the situation from the inside out. Marketeers spend a fortune on the psychological stuff but they rarely get the formula right which is why despite market research 8 out 10 new ideas fail.
To look at your situation from the inside out can be challenging: you have to be honest and truthful. A difference exists between honest and truth.
Before you identify what you want to sell, you have to identify yourself. Who are you? Who are you really? What is it about YOU that can’t be found anywhere else. It’s not enough to think you’re a unique and special person, everyone is a unique and special person, no big deal. If you’re stuck for an answer, you’ll find it in all the qualities, attributes and attitudes that comprise your personality, particularly those aspects of yourself you don’t like.
Having identified yourself, the next stage is to identify your place in the world. Where do you fit in? Where when you’re there do you really feel at home. What sort of people are your sort of people?
Having identified yourself and your place in the world, the next stage is to work out how to attract enough people your way so that you can always be yourself and be where where you love to be. That’s where marketing comes into its own. Basically marketing is about communicating positioning. What is about you and what you’ve got to offer that would make others flock your way.
Once all the principles are in place, an idea will come to you. You’ll feel the need to do something with it. You may nurture and shape the idea to your heart’s content, but timing is important. Something the idea will come to you before it’s ready for others to embrace. That doesn’t mean you should hold back; on the contrary if you launch the idea before its time then you’ll have plenty of time to refine it. Bear in mind that because nowadays more and more people are looking from the outside in, others are likely to have the same or similar idea in the offing. Ideas don’t belong to people, ideas simply latch on to those people whom the ideas think will give them, (the ideas) a life of their own.
It’s not necessary to make life hard for yourself. Everyone has a natural gift, a talent for something that only that particular individual can express. You can learn about or train to do anything that takes your fancy, but there’ll be a limit to your abilities and what you can achieve if you go in the wrong direction. In your true direction, a reflection of what the whole of you has been designed for, whatever you want will come naturally to you. When whatever comes naturally to you, that means you’re made for one another.
Whatever comes naturally to you doesn’t mean you won’t have to work at it. But it won’t feel like work, at least not in the popular sense of the word. Your work involves bringing the idea into existence, in a tangible form which in reality is sufficiently appealing to attract people with money your way.
People with money? Not everyone has money. Most people earn or have enough to get by. It’s easy to get the impression from the populist media that people aren’t spending any more than they have to. If you target the masses then be prepared for depression and disappointment. In the hope of beating the system, you can blame the state of the market or the economy for your lack of success. But really all you’re doing is blaming people for choosing not to spend their money with you. No some like to be told it’s they’re fault a business has gone broke, but that’s precisely what business people do all the time. Somehow business people that think that there’s a difference between the economy and people: there’s isn’t. the economy is you, and me and everyone else.
Life is designed to be simple: most people complicate it in the way they think.
Good luck
Michael
Good advice. I’m guessing that very few people surf the net seeking accurate information on making money. Rather, they’re engaging in the Internet equivalent of playing the slot machines – hoping to get rich without working for it. “Gambling: The sure way of getting nothing from something.” – Wilson Mizner