How Do You Start Building Great Wealth?
If you want to build something great in the world of business, you basically have two choices.
One, you can wait for the next Google-type idea to come along and jump aboard–that is if they let you. However, this is a long shot. There’s only one Google, only one Microsoft, only one Apple, etc. Yes, they are all replaced eventually by an upstart but it’s a bit like waiting for Halley’s Comet to come along. In the meantime, life is passing you by.
Two, you can accept that much of business, just like sales, is little more than a numbers game. If you’re a so-so salesman who just happens to make a lot of sales calls and presentations, you are highly likely to do well over the long run. This approach holds true in most of life. Recall the famous story of Babe Ruth who in his day was not only the home run king but also the strike out champ. In fact, he struck out twice as many times as he had home runs. However, history remembers him for his successes not his failures.
It’s All About Cookie Cutter Systems
If you study the paths followed by most billionaires, you quickly discover that most went with the second strategy. Specifically, they got into the game of acquiring assets, lots of assets. By assets, I mean mostly operating businesses. They began slowly while they learned the angles and then started designing and implementing systems which allowed them to accelerate the pace at which they swallowed up assets. These include systems for identifying and screening the right types of opportunities, systems for determining the valuation of a target, systems for putting together the leveraged financing, and systems for increasing the value of acquired assets.
If you have cookie-cutter systems in place it becomes relatively easy to acquire assets at a rapid rate. While a few may turn out to be duds, over time this approach will lead to great wealth.
The only other requirement for success is a team. Look at any billionaire and you will see that he is surrounded by a team consisting of possibly a few other billionaires and, at the very least, centi-millionaires. You need a team to help you design and run your systems for buying businesses.
This is the proven system dating back to railroad tycoons of the 1800s. It worked back then and it works today.
If you want grow big fast using this time-proven strategy, you just need to add a pinch of aggressiveness to get the ball rolling. (Most people never even take the first step.)
This line by writer Mark Robichaux about cable company TCI (“Comcast”) sums up the strategy quite nicely:
As the 1970s began, TCI had gobbled up so many new cable systems that it was like the winner in a pie-eating contest—victorious, but a bit woozy from the pace of integration and a little anxious about keeping it all down.
Thanks to its systems and team, the company was successful in keeping it all down.
If you want to learn more about how great wealth is really made, study the likes of deal-makers like Ted Turner, Kirk Kerkorian, John D Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, etc. These are the men whose secrets the course reveals.
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