In my opinion, one of the worst and most destructive trends in Western society is that entrepreneurship has become a lionized mysterious pursuit.
There’s nothing magical about it. You get some inputs (your time, knowledge, resources, goods, whatever), you add some value to it by improving or rearranging the inputs, and you sell them for more than it cost you to get them. Profit.
“Oh, but it’s so hard! And I have no money! What will I do?”
Okay. Here’s a can of Club Soda (actually, two cans of club soda, to be precise):
The price of a can of Club Soda is 4500 VND, which is about 25 cents USD.
No matter how poor you are, you can find 25 cents if you live in Vietnam, or $1 if you live in the USA. Then you buy a can or two of club soda. You go somewhere where it’s hot and people are thirsty – a tourist area, the beach, the park, whatever. You sell the can of Club Soda for 10,000 VND for a 100% profit. You go back to the store. Buy two cans. Sell those.
Maybe you mix in other kinds of soda, juice, snacks, whatever. Maybe you try to buy the stuff in bulk to get it at a lower cost. Maybe you go to a business that’s already selling successfully and offer to buy cases of soda and deliver to them, still cold, for a small markup and they sell it. Maybe you find some space that’s open and offer the owner a percent of the profits to let you set up a table there and sell.
You can do this. It ain’t so hard.
I have no idea why this isn’t taught in schools. Anyone can sell. You get some inputs, you do something to make it more valuable (transporting the good somewhere where it’s more desirable, in this case), and you sell for a profit. BAM, value created. The person is happy they get a cold drink, you doubled your money. There’s many times I’d been on a beach or at a park that I would have been very happy to buy a drink that had been marked up in price a little bit.
I plan on doing this with my future kids. We’ll go to the discount store, buy some sodas and snacks, go to the beach and sell. They can learn how to pitch to people, build their confidence and defeat insecurity, how to handle rejection, how to give good service, and they learn how to make a profit by helping people have what they want. You can do this. Anyone can do this. Find some inputs, make them more valuable somehow, sell them at a profit. BAM, you’re an entrepreneur. Feels good, huh?
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Motivating post! I think that’s how Warren Buffet made his first money as well.
By the way, I just found your blog a few minutes ago and I really enjoy reading your post. Inspires me to do the same, thanks!
> Motivating post! I think that’s how Warren Buffet made his first money as well.
It amazes me how much opportunity is just sitting there, waiting for people to pick it up. Sometimes I wonder if we’re actively trained not to take risks – maybe by school? It seems against human nature.
> By the way, I just found your blog a few minutes ago and I really enjoy reading your post. Inspires me to do the same, thanks!
Cheers! I hope you find some good stuff that serves you here :) Thanks for the comment.
Do you have any posts on passive income? Lately the idea of passive income has been floating around in my head. Your blog, for example could be a great source of passive income if you wanted it to be (some people are against posting ads on their sites).
Another example would be writing a book.
Do you have any thoughts on that? It seems to be very intense work and focus up front, but then afterwards, you make money while you are sleeping.
> Do you have any posts on passive income?
Not yet, because I currently don’t have any! But I will, I’m working towards it. I’ll keep everyone updated as I do, I know how desirable of a thing it is. After it gets to a certain level, you’ve got a lot of freedom.
> Lately the idea of passive income has been floating around in my head. Your blog, for example could be a great source of passive income if you wanted it to be (some people are against posting ads on their sites).
I will do so, yes. I think I can probably monetize better than ads, unless they were really classy. I wouldn’t put Adsense up. I’d put ads from TheDeck up though, those are always solid. Or sell inventory myself to companies I respect – I wouldn’t take any ads from liquor or tobacco companies since I’m against what they sell, but I’d take it from travel, scuba, adventure gear, time management, books, martial arts, things like that. Haven’t gotten that far ahead yet… I’ll keep everyone updated when I do, I know it’s a hot topic.
> Another example would be writing a book.
My first book’s done! Working out the editing and aiming for ~30 September as a ship date.
> Do you have any thoughts on that? It seems to be very intense work and focus up front, but then afterwards, you make money while you are sleeping.
I have a few thoughts, and it’s something I’m currently working on. In fairness, I think passive income is partially a myth and can be a fool’s errand if you’re not careful. You can usually get 10% cash on cash if you have big enough dollar amounts and you’re willing to research. So you can probably buy $10,000 of passive income per year for $100,000 with real estate and a property management company. At least 5% cash on cash, definitely… so I think if you’re able to bill out your time at $200/hour, you might be better off doing that and just buying property than jumping into a domain you don’t know or aren’t good at.
Also, there’s very little “pure” passive income. You need to manage things a little bit, but yeah, the time per dollar can get pretty low I think. I’ll be exploring this more very shortly, so I’ll have some thoughts for you. Here, I’ll email you too and ask what your interests are, maybe I can give some thoughts on your specific discipline. Good question/comment, look for an email from me momentarily.
> It amazes me how much opportunity is just sitting there, waiting for people to pick it up. Sometimes I wonder if we’re actively trained not to take risks – maybe by school? It seems against human nature.
Actually I think that not taking risks lies in our human nature. The ones that defy this nature are the few that succeed! I think people just generally think too much rather then actually do something, I myself am cursed by this as well. I always catch myself thinking “what if?”.
> Cheers! I hope you find some good stuff that serves you here :) Thanks for the comment.
Yeah, so much good stuff around here! Thank you!
> Actually I think that not taking risks lies in our human nature. The ones that defy this nature are the few that succeed! I think people just generally think too much rather then actually do something, I myself am cursed by this as well. I always catch myself thinking “what if?”.
That’s a very, very good point, yeah that makes sense.
> Yeah, so much good stuff around here! Thank you!
Man, I love it. Thanks for the kind words. Y’know, Tokugawa Ieyasu is an inspiration for me, and he says you should be patient and not give in to emotions like joy. I’ll have to work on that later, because I think it’s very cool that people are coming and visiting, learning, commenting, sharing.
If you have any questions, if there’s anything I can clarify, if you need anything, anything – please feel very welcome to ask in a comment or shoot me an email. Thanks again for more kind words (I gotta cut out my liking of them, but for now I’ll enjoy it) – and welcome aboard :)
I got quiet a bit of knowledge out of this post! Demystified the whole buisness thing really. Thanks a lot!
Matt
The business part is straightforward. The guy with the gun who says you can’t do that without a licence and paying me 10% because I have the gun- that is the problem…
just saying.
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