Bellerbys Economics - Mr Stephenson

Thursday, July 19, 2007

How To Get Rich

"How can I get rich?" one of my students asked me yesterday. Well, not by asking a poorly-paid teacher for advice might be one answer. Another might be "It depends what you mean by being rich" - teachers are all rich people because they share their lives in a fulfilling environment and so on.

But of course, we all know he meant, "How can I make money?"

There are long-term standard solutions - negotiating the property and securities markets for example. There are easy solutions - get born in a rich country, preferably to a rich family.

For more immediate, practical advice, I would recommend "How to Make Millions with your ideas" by Dan Kennedy. Dan starts in the same way as we do in the Bellerbys Business Club by saying there are four basic ways to make money:

* Make and sell
* Buy and sell
* Provide a service
* Organise an event

What Dan then does is put his own particular spin on the deal by focussing on the information age; developing value-added products; saving people time and reducing people's costs.

He uses practical examples eg. he knew an ex-criminal. This ex-criminal knew all the different ways an employee could steal products from a store. He wrote some material and was selling this to store managers for $50 a go. Dan worked with him - expanded the document into two sets of course material - beginners and advanced; developed a one-day course built around the material for store managers; made a DVD version of the lecture, developed his direct marketing technique. The 'course' now sold for $1250, an investment that the store managers would reclaim within about six months from reduced theft - everyone was happy. Dan's friends sales rose from $30,000 a year to $300,000.

One of the most honest books is Felix Dennis 'How to Get Rich'. Unlike others, Felix - a self-made multi-millionnaire - points out that what you need most of all is commitment. He also points out that if you are starting from nothing, as he did, it's really not going to be easy. BUT, if you keep working and follow some basic rules which he explains, your effort and vision can often pay off.

We had a student here two years ago who made some money selling beauty products on e-bay. She bought them in Lithuania from a local well-established company and sold them to customers
in the UK and US at a very high profit margin. Another student, a friend of hers, caught on to the idea, and started selling ornamental clocks from Tatarstan. In both cases, the secret was that they didn't buy the products until they had found the customer - they even arranged for the producer to dispatch the products direct to the customer. Unfortunately, they had to close their businesses in order to study for their exams - so schoolwork stopped them getting rich - there's a moral there somewhere....

If you would like to read the books mentioned above, Pat - our ever-helpful librarian - would be pleased to order them for you.

If you have any business ideas of your own, I would be pleased to help you get started through the Bellerbys Business Club, part of our ever-expanding student development programme!

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