subject: Bill Bartmann Wealth Strategies: What Business Should You Be In? [print this page] Bill Bartmann Wealth Strategies: What business should you be in?
The neat thing is we get to pick our wealth strategies and the business we want. Let me give you a clue, it shouldn"'""t be the business you think you may make a lot of money in. That should be the last reason you get into business. That sounds inconsistent and contradictory to a lot of Bill Bartmann"'""s philosophies, but you"'""re going to see that it is absolutely consistent and not contradictory.
If you get into a business just to make money, you almost always will fail. Almost always. Among all the wealth strategies, the best one is that you should get into a business that you love, that you"'""re passionate about, that you already know something about. It should be something you"'""re good at, something you have a skill or aptitude for. Then, do that so well that you will make a ton of money.
There is a chicken or there is an egg in this example. Most people get it wrong and that"'""s why businesses fail at an astounding rate. We see other people being successful in a business, whether it is real estate or the oil and gas industry or the widget manufacturing business. We think that is great and we think we can go out and do the same thing they"'""re doing. Maybe we can"'""t. Maybe they have a skill, an aptitude, an attribute, experience, or relatives in the trade. Maybe they have something we don"'""t have. Well if they have something we don"'""t have, what are the odds of us replicating their success? It"'""s pretty small; it shrinks rapidly.
Assuming we can do what somebody else can do rarely works. What we need to figure out is what CAN we do? What are we good at? What do we already know, what do we like? What would we enjoy? For example, the business Bill Bartmann is in works for him. He loves it and finds it fun, exciting, and gives him enjoyment. He gets up early in the morning and stay up late at night, and he does this all day long. If he was in a work environment he didn"'""t like doing, it would kill him. He"'""d be under so much stress and anxiety he"'""d be pulling his hair out. Instead, he"'""s figured out the lessons of life that you should only do the things you love doing. Then, do them so good and so well that you make a lot of money. Quit thinking about how to get rich and think about doing something you love. Find out what you"'""re talent, skill, attribute, or experience is, because we all have one. Every one of us is unique. Every one of us has a unique set of skills, attributes, talents, or gifts. There are six and half billion people on the face of this earth, and no two of them are alike"'"not even twins.
What are you good at? What do you know? What do you like to do? What do you enjoy? If you can answer that question, then do you think you would be better at that than somebody who didn"'""t like it, somebody who didn"'""t know it, somebody who didn"'""t enjoy it? Of course, you would. Now, we"'""ve got to figure out how to make money at the thing you love, the thing you enjoy, the thing you know something about. You want to make money doing the things you already know how to do, the things that you"'""re already good at but you need to get some more skills; you need more business skills. You need to now find out how to make money doing those things, and it doesn"'""t matter what industry it is. It doesn"'""t matter whether its retail or wholesale or you"'""re in the manufacturing business. Sit down with an entire list right now and say, "'"Here are three or four things that I am pretty good at. Here are some things that I know something about. Here are some things I really enjoy doing. Here are some things I really love."' Find those things. Then we"'""ll show you how to apply the business principles that anybody can learn, to those things.
To give you some flavor to how there are no rules on what business you should be in because there are thousands and thousands of businesses available and they are all making money"'"some more than others. Regardless of where you live, get the phonebook out and look at the yellow pages. Look at all the kinds and types of businesses that exist in your hometown. See which one of those you think you could do. It might be something you know or something brand new that nobody else has thought of. That"'""s great. But 99.9% of the time in business, we will start a business that somebody else has already done once. We will.
Bill Bartmann, for example, started a debt collection business. There were 6,000 competitors in the business the day he started. Debt collection has been around since Cain and Abel, that"'""s probably what they were fighting about. So you don"'""t have to go out and make something brand new that nobody ever had. He turned that company, as you know, into a three-and-half billion dollar business. How and why did he go out and start something in an area with so many competitors? Because he was passionate about it. He didn"'""t know how to collect a loan. He wasn"'""t good at the function of collecting a loan, but he was passionate about changing the industry. He was passionate about not letting debt collectors beat up on people. Cathy and Bill were in the middle of bankruptcy. They were getting beat up every single day, by almost every single collector in the United States. We had threatening phone calls all the time. Bill collectors called them at weird hours of the night and day, yelling and screaming and threatening and doing all kinds of nasty stuff.
It was then that they wondered why somebody couldn't do this right. Why can"'""t somebody just start a debt collection company and treat people with respect? So even though he didn"'""t know a lot about debt collecting, he had a passion for it. He had a love for it. He had a desire for it. He had a thing that was going to make him get up early in the morning and stay up late every single day because he wanted to change an industry. He wanted to go out there and not have people beaten up at the head and shoulders just because they owed money. For that reason, we started a company that changed the industry today. USA Today and The Wall Street Journal on the very same day published stories about how we changed the entire collection industry of America.
So when you"'""re looking at who you are, it doesn"'""t matter your history, it doesn"'""t matter your background; it doesn"'""t matter how many times you have failed. Bill was in bankruptcy. He had gone broke in an oil and gas business and from that humble beginning, he found out what it is he knew more about than anybody else. Even though he didn"'""t know the mechanics, he knew that people were good and decent, that people really wanted to pay even though they financially couldn"'""t. He knew that in our hearts and minds that there were a lot of people like Cathy and him out there. That if somebody would create a company that would do it right and create a company that treated people with dignity and respect, he believe that most people would reciprocate. They would pay their bills timely.
Were they right? They were wildly right. They took a base idea and turned it into an actualization. That"'""s what you need to think about. Within 6 years, they were making a billion dollars a year in revenue. Nobody had ever done 25 million and they did a billion. Why? Because their hearts, it was all about changing an industry. They knew they"'""d get paid, they didn"'""t know how little because on day one they never thought they were going to turn this into a billion dollar company. They thought they were going to feed their family, they thought they were going to make some money, and they thought they were going to change an industry.
That"'""s what they really wanted to do, and they started doing it so well and so right because they were so passionate. Bill and Cathy didn"'""t know the mechanics, but they had it in our hearts to do this thing and they learned the mechanics. The mechanics are teachable, it"'""s the passion you have to find within yourself in order to have wealth strategies that will manifest your financial dreams.
