a big difference

[greenoak]

i think ive figured out a pretty big difference between me and a millionaire buddy who likes to talk business with me when he comes thru the store..... its not work, i probably work harder, i dont think its brains,,, ...
the thing that has sunk in from him is;;;i think i would work a lot harder for a lot less than he would..... he draws the line at a lot higher profit point than i do.....he would laugh at the work i do for the profit i sometimes get.... when he picks a project he would not even consider a lot of the projects that make my business money...and he will take a lot of risk....of course he has a more money to fall back on...and a great record of risking right.....

he is in a very flexible position...alone and used to big real estate deals and building businesses and selling them.... he finds all kinds of possibilities in his realm of interest....junk yards and real estate....
he makes fun of me for owning a valuable highway property and not using it ....he would use it ...somehow....but i cant see how.... to him things are always possible.....he rolls his eyes at me because we have never solved it.....
hes a real charmer...
we own the property and it would be a great place, a much better place for our store....but we have our store already and to replace it on the highway would cost 2 or 300k...so i cant get my head around it at all... also the highway is going to be closed off sometime in the near or far future...the gov wont say when...
anyway knowing him and thinking about this a lot...when i make decisions i try to
realize that our efforts are finite and are we doing the best with them? or are we wasting time on something below what we should be doing....i thnk about him and try to raise the bar on what i work on...
but im big and bulky, with people, hours, consensus..... and he is fast and wiley...
and im in retail in a depressed area...dang!!! and i dont want to change that...

[Spider]

Here's a way you can benefit from your friend's acumen.

Keep talking to him, and exchanging (or asking for) ideas, making the conversation light. This way you keep his interest and have him thinking for you. Then, whenever you have a business decision, ask yourself, "What would my friend do in this case?"

You don't have to do it, but by asking yourself what you think he would do, you are opening yourself to new possibilities. You can tell him what you are doing to get more feedback - "I had to decide xyz, yesterday, and I decided to do ..this.., but I asked myself, 'what would YOU do? and I figured you would do ..this... Did I guess right?"

Now you involve him in thinking about your business on your terms. I'll bet you will get some great ideas from him - ideas that are more appropriate for your business because he is now thinking and answering in terms of his thoughts/your business.

Does that make sense?

[greenoak]

thanks spider , thats how i look at it too....and i do try and do that with him when i can.... ..
.but he cant see my terms too well...hes kind of an egomaniac...but suprised at our store maybe... and how busy we are....
. he kind of sees lots of potential and rolls his eyes when i dont go for it...like the highway idea...
he makes a lot bigger deals thatn we do and we make a lot more deals than he does...
you know me i love hearing a different view of the world.... so interesting.... hes sick tho and cant solve that...hes barley 50...

[huggytree]

the longer im in business the more i see its the little things which make you succeed and prosper more than the other guy....its barely noticeable when you first go into business.....then you learn how to use a small personality trick as a salesman and you notice your sales go up by just saying a few words or noticing something about your customer and reacting to it in a certain way....

you may be referring to the 'sweet spot' with your friend...he knows where it is for his business....the product or type of job which makes him the most money...for me its medium sized remodels....i can make 40 percent profit on some of them....while new homes are only 10-15 percent.....the market just seems to have a higher profit on certain jobs and i dont exactly know why...but those are the ones i want

ive been raising my prices through the recession and will be this June.......

what is the sweet spot for antiques?

you can sell 100,000 products for $1
or
sell 100 products for $1,000......many times its much easier to sell the 100 for $1,000 than try to scrape 1 cent per sale for 100,000 sales

i think alot of people go after the volume concept...i think its a failure unless your Walmart...the further you can get away from the 'volume' sales idea the better

[greenoak]

i hear you huiggy....thats w hy i do the 80 /20 thing....to remind me not to work so hard on the bottom 20%%%.
..i think our swet spot is the repurposed furniture...and the big piles to dig thru....

[Harold Mansfield]

With anything you are going to become more efficient the longer you do it. When I first started as a limo driver, I used to bust my butt and work ungodly hours to make a couple hundred dollars. As I learned, even though I worked long hours, I worked smarter hours for 3x's the money.
Where as before I wouldn't notice a big hit, and would grind it out. as I got good I could spot a prime opportunity in seconds and capitalize on it.

I'm finding business to be the same way. Learning how to work smarter and recognizing opportunity.

The one thing I find about speaking with successful people who have taken their business to the next level, is that they never really tell you everything. Many times they leave out key details that can make a big difference.

I also notice that a lot of successful people would have you believe that everything was done with hard work and they all pulled themselves up by the bootstraps without a dime in their pocket. They always seem to leave out facts such as maybe their parents had a good relationship with a banker, that's how they got a loan. Or their first big account was a family friend.
No one ever admits that they had a hand up, or help in their success.

A good friend of mine who does pretty well used to always act as if he did it all by himself. As I got to know him I started learning things like, his parents paid for his education and he never had any student loans to pay back. Or that his dad fronted him $300k for his first real estate deal. To hear him tell it to others, "I scraped together $300k and took a chance".

Not that he didn't have the talent and created his success from hard work, but it's not always as it seems with some people who make it look easy...or better yet act like it's easy.
That's not to say that you can't learn. You can always learn from those that have gone before you, but you only really learn if they are honest with you about how it all REALLY began.

[Dan Furman]

That reminds me of Harvey Mackay, Harold. I was a fan of Harvey Mackay years ago (the swim w/ the sharks guy). Good advice for CEO's/higher level managers, but just marginal stuff for bootstrap entrepreneurs. Harvey talked about how he bought his envelope company at 21 (or some ridiculously young age)... ok, who can buy an envelope company at 21? Harvey talked about how his father setup a meeting for him w/ the vice president as a kid. Again, who does that? It's clear family connections / money were pretty important in his career. Still, I liked his books (About 20 years ago, I wrote him a letter telling him I was starting a business - he sent me balloons and a handwritten note telling me I was an exceptional letter writer. Nice guy. He was right too - writing letters for businesspeople is a good chunk of what I now do for a living.)

Trump is another one - it's a lot easier to be successful when your father was a real estate tychoon. Yes, the Donald made it much bigger, but still, it's not like he really had to sweat student loans while making 3.35 an hour.

[Harold Mansfield]

Exactly!
I watch a lot of MSNBC. 'American Greed', 'Biography' and pretty much any special on businesses. A lot of times they always leave out a crucial step in the development process. It always goes from, "..and after working 60 hours a week in a hamburger stand, by age 20 he opened his first Fried Chicken Restaurant"...wait a minute! How?
What happened between working in a hamburger stand and opening his own restaurant? How did he get the money? What kind of hurdles did he face? Did he have a genie or something?

Then they move straight to .."..and in 3 years he had 300 locations." Hold up! I know that there is no way possible that one stand grew enough to open 300 locations that quick without some other seed money, loan, lucky real estate deal, partner, investor..something. What happened between then, and here?

That's the most important part!

[greenoak]

i think you are bing pretty hard on self made men....i know 3 who arent like you describe.all 3 are more like macho guys who dont care for a lot of show and are very sure of themselves and all kind of wild and fast moving......i know what you mean tho.... .
my guy really did start poor.. thats kind of a plus for becoming really good imho..or at least it can be...... i know lots of folks born with money and not getting very far..and folks from rich families who made it but many think it came from the rich back ground when it really didnt...
i think my guy started out making little car deals in his teens, and with that money got into junk yards , buying and selling all the time, and then got into bigger and bigger real estate....starting with junk yard money....he has a passion for cars and motors.... and just being a cowboy and buying stuff; cars or real estate...i like him...he never worked for anyone...
my dad really made it from nothing too....

[billbenson]

I look at it differently. If you want a fast car, do you pour money into your Ford Pinto to make it go faster or go for the Porsche? Most of us have business models that will be unlikely to make us millions.

I have a friend who starts businesses from scratch and sells them for a few $M in a couple of years. He's been doing it for 30 years, has the contacts for VC, manufacturing, engineering, whatever it takes. His first business right out of college was a failure. Since then, he has had failures, but recognized them early on and cut his losses. He's a millionaire. He had no contacts or knowledge starting out. He just set his goals there.

I went to college with him and 30 years later we are still best friends. The difference is I spent 30 years in sales. I'm a good salesman. He spent 30 years learning how to build businesses and then sell them. He's very good at that.

IMO if you want to make 100k a year, do something that makes that. If you want to make 1M per year pick something that can do that. But don't do something that makes 100k a year and try to make it the 1M a year business. Sure you may be able to do it but... Same as the Pinto / Porsche analogy.