The best way for some wage earners to achieve financial success and security is to go into business for him or herself. We all know the time worn adage, “You can’t get rich working for someone else,” Well, that’s not entirely true. We’ve all heard the news that today’s CEO’s and some other top officers of the world’s largest corporations can make tens of millions in salary, bonuses and perks. But they represent less than 8,000 of America’s 155 million person workforce or about 0.005%. The odds are seriously against you becoming one of these folks (1 chance in 19,375), not only because of the knowledge, experience and skill sets required, but also because of the politics and gamesmanship inherent in the climb. You may also have values and scruples that work to preclude you. For comparison, there’s a three times better chance (1 in 6,250) that you will be struck by lightning during your lifetime and there is a 6,375 times better chance of a high school varsity athletes (about 1 in 300) being drafted onto a professional team albeit the vast majority end up on farm or minor league teams.
Look around you. Who own the major share of the nicest homes in your community? The odds are they are owned by business owners and professionals who own their own practice. So, for most people with otherwise good credentials, going into business for yourself, is the time honored path to creating personal wealth while preserving your independence and your soul.
Who makes up the major share of business owners and practice owning professionals? Answer: people whose father or mother is a business owner or practice owning professional make up the largest segment. They were inculcated and educated into their ownership culture by their parents. But what if your parents were wage earners? You can still make it. The odds are about 1 in 10 for starting and sustaining a successful business, about 1 in 300 for sustaining a success level that puts you among the nation’s wealthy versus the astronomical odds against other success or wealth creation paths. It’s not sufficient to just dream about being your own boss. Your challenges are severe but overcoming them is possible and can be made even probable by taking the right steps.
So what are the right steps?
First comes discipline and training. Chances are you will need to modify your patterns of thought and behavior (owners’ values and behavior are very different from employees). Also, time needs to be invested in the development of certain required skill sets that vary somewhat by the type of business but will usually include leadership, sales & marketing, finance, quality control, etc.
Second comes expanding and deepening your understanding and appreciation for the principles of leverage, particularly: financial leverage (making each dollar do the work of many); electronic leverage (moving electrons instead of physical resources to increase your reach and decrease your costs); and standardization and systematization (allowing for replication and scalability).
Third comes developing and in fact perfecting a vision of your perfect end result (a vision of your business structure and purpose that is so compelling, other want to join you).
Don’t let the words scare you. Some of the wealthiest business owners in America can’t pronounce some of these terms, but they have learned to do them either on purpose or by accident. Bottom line… the chances are… you can too!
The next thing you need to understand is that, other than inheritance, there are essentially two ways to become a business owner. You can either start up the business from scratch. Or, you can acquire (buy) someone else’s already established business. Early on, you should decide which one is right for you.
Again, let look at the odds. More than 60% of all start-up businesses fail before their second birthday. 80% fail before they are three years old. By the fifth year 90% are toast. By contrast, more than 80% of acquired businesses are still successful two years after acquisition. Five years later, more than 75% of them are still up and running with good profits and strong positive cash flow. Perhaps that’s why the field of business acquisition is also known as “business opportunities” or “biz ops” for short.
I know what you’re thinking – “Sure it may be better to buy an established business, but that takes cash and I don’t have enough to buy a meaningful business.” This simply is not the case. That’s why I founded Bizar Financing, to train entrepreneurs how to buy great businesses with little or no cash of their own. It’s all a matter of know-how.
Shark Tank has become one of my most viewed television shows. It’s not just entertainment. It serves up some incredible life lessons. I continue to marvel at how many people sink their life savings, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, into starting a business only to end up broke and groveling to give away control of their company for a pittance from one of the sharks. In most cases, I could have shown them, how with a fraction of the dollars blown on start-up, they could have purchased an already successful similar or complimentary business that has the infrastructure and resources to bring their product or service to completion and distribute it successfully into the marketplace. They could have owned and controlled it all with lots of cash left over.
I have dedicated the last 30 years of my life to training, coaching and mentoring people to become successful business owners. I actually gained the title of Mr. LBO by training more than 300,000 entrepreneurs worldwide to buy up companies, using the company’s own assets and cash flow to create all of the cash necessary to fully finance the purchase. I’ve been credited with popularizing and literally creating the leveraged buyout boom of the 1980’s. There is only
so much of my know-how that I can share you with you here. So take a moment now and click on this link to my Getting Rich Your Way Video. See for yourself what my methods and techniques for no cash business acquisition can do for you.
