I’m sick of the phrase, “KILL IT!” Or “STOP WATCHING & START HUSTLING!” Or “TO WIN THE GAME YOU HAVE TO PLAY IT!”
I am sick of business inspirational slogans. They don’t work. They aren’t true.
I have lost all of my money listening to them. I bled out my mouth in the street trying to die because of them.
Oh man, I just read the comments underneath the slogans. The masses are fooled. “I want it!” or…”I want F U Money!” And on and on. Hundreds of comments.
Here’s another one, “Be happy, then your business will grow!”
Really?
I don’t know. Maybe all of the above is true. But I doubt it.
Truth: you have to be stupidly optimistic to win at business since most of the odds are against you.
But you can mitigate those odds.
First off: Don’t be an ‘Elon Musk.’ You aren’t sending a spaceship into the Sun. Or making a bracelet that will cure cancer.
Just stop it.
A friend of mine has a $100,000 and is thinking about how to “kill it!”
Here’s one idea. There are many ideas. I will describe the outline of the idea and then how to do it.
Find an undervalued business.
Check to see if the business is under performing.
Borrow money to buy it.
Turn the business around (since you’ve identified how it’s underperforming) and use new cash flows to borrow more money to start with the top and repeat (buy another underperforming business).
Keep building.
Sell the business.
That’s what she should do. That’s ‘killing it’. That’s how you get F-U money. It’s very hard but it’s also that simple.
A) Find an undervalued business.
A business is undervalued when the owners are dealing with Death, Disease, Divorce, or Debt.
For instance, if the owner died, the children will sell at a discount. If the owner just came down with cancer, he will sell at a discount. And so on.
By the way, this takes a lot of work to find an undervalued business.
B) Under performing.
This is very hard. Usually you have to have experience in the industry or a mentor.
Let’s say you want to buy a laundromat (a great, cash generating business, that can’t be outsourced to India).
Underperforming might mean: poor marketing, expensive outsourcing (for higher-end clothes that go to a laundromat), antiquated machines, unpredictable return times, no delivery, etc.
Read every laundromat magazine and interview 20 successful laundromat owners to learn the business. Or work at a laundromat for a year. This is called ‘killing it’.
This is ‘hustle’. This is the answer to ‘how bad do you want it?’
One friend of mine bought a chain of under performing pizza stores.
“The pizzas weren’t round,” he told me. “All I had to do was make round pizzas and deliver on time. Profits were up 100% in a year.”
This is hard to find. You have to look at 100+ businesses to find undervalued and underperforming. This is called working hard. It’s not called being happy.
I am happy right now. I am in a hotel eating a fruit plate writing this article. I should be looking for laundromats to buy. Or oblong pizzas. I am not a qualified killer at the moment.
C) Borrow money.
Why not? Interest rates are near zero. Always use other people’s money rather than putting your own personal freedom at risk.
Are you willing to bleed out your A** for a dream?
With the bank, you can demonstrate cash flows, what you would do to turn around the business, and you can borrow money.
Often you can also arrange owner-financing – meaning you don’t have to pay off the entire business right away.
Do it.
The rest is self-explanatory. Use the increased cash flows to find more businesses (equally hard work as before).
Buy them and consolidate back office (e.g. get a bulk discount from the laundromat you outsource to, etc) and now you have even better cash flows and can buy more businesses.
Here is my advice: when you can make your first million or two from this: sell the business. Start over.
Why?
A billion dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A million dollars.
The reverse of the above phrase is in a popular movie. The actual true phrase is in reality.
This is Main Street. It’s not Silicon Valley and it’s not Wall Street. It’s how people make money without having a corporate job.
There are other ways to do this. The internet is a great way to make money. But this is about hard-core real ways people make money and build businesses.
You don’t need to build a space ship or a time machine. You don’t need to make augmented realities of Pokemon’s.
And you don’t need to respond to all the pseudo business-inspirational stuff I see on BS websites. Find a laundromat.
Don’t go to an “entrepreneur” conference unless you want to meet a bunch of drug addicts trying to sell you a $30,000 course.
I’m going back to reading “Journey to the End of the Night” and “The Road.” I’m enjoying them. They are better than the newspapers (“Sanders!” “Hilary!”) or the social media feeds (“KILL IT TIL YOU DRILL IT!”)
I don’t have enough hustle in me.
By the way, I did the above. I wouldn’t write something unless I actually did it and, also, screwed it up so bad I had to do it again.
A friend of mine was potentially going to have a divorce. Her husband was having trouble with his business using antiquated technologies.
I bought in. I turned the business around by upgrading the service we offered. And a few years later I sold it. The couple retired and saved their marriage.
That’s how I made my first million.
Here’s how I lost it… I bought into a business that was a scam. Because I suddenly thought I was smart when i wasn’t.
So I had to start over. And I did and I did and I did. I was miserable almost the entire time.
Now I think I am OK happy. Because of money? No. Because I’m about to hit ‘publish.’
