What does it take to become a multi-millionaire?
Most people would say ‘Win a lottery?’ But how many people do that – very few.
Maybe the chances are 1 in several million. Then you could always try the ‘get rich quick schemes’ where the only people who make the money seem to be the promoters.
Of course, you could always do day trading on the stock exchange where it seems 99% of the traders lose their money and only a very small number manage to make an average salary.
You could always do some property speculation but few people would take that on after the horrendous losses over the GFC. Some do take a lifetime to build a rental portfolio and that does show that a long and consistent pattern of investment can make a difference but few have the discipline to see it through.
What is interesting is to look at the data. Who are the multi-millionaires (if we exclude the insignificant numbers of lottery winners, gamblers and speculators)?
The data is revealing. Only about 0.7% of the populations of the USA, UK and Australia have net worth of US$1 million dollars or more. However, these days $1
million doesn’t achieve much. Where you need to be is in the multi-millionaire group.
Clearly that percentage is going to be much lower. (Source: World Wealth Report 2010, Capgemini)
Those who inherent wealth only make up about 5% of the wealthy. The next largest group are those who have accumulated wealth through high salaries. They make up 15%
of the wealthy. But, by far, the largest group are those who have made their wealth by building a business or in participating in the exit of a business – a trade sale or an initial public offering. This group make up 80% of the multi-millionaire class.
According to Fabio Marciano in his paper ‘The 21 Habits of Multi-Millionaires’ :
“While 20% of the wealthy are retirees, more than 2/3rds of the rest own their own businesses. The self-employed are four times more likely to be millionaires than those who work for others.” He also states “Usually the wealthy individual is a businessman who has lived in the same town for all of his adult life. This person owns a small factory, a chain of stores, or a service company.”
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(source: www.fabmansecrets.com)
Who are these people?
Generally the people who make money from the sale or listing of a business represent several groups of people.
• Founders – those who start new ventures. These are the entrepreneurs.
• Senior Executives – these are the individuals who have equity or share options.
• Key Employees – a few critical employees will have shares or options.
• Investors – these are founding investors, angel investors or venture capital fund managers and investors.
So it is not just the entrepreneurs who cash up, it is also often those who are in the management team and their investors. Even a small firm of 30 staff might have 3 – 5 individuals who cash out at multi-million dollar values. The others might also have shares or options which provide them with payouts in the tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.
What is the probability?
Actually the chances of being part of a private business which has a value in excess of a few million dollars is reasonably good compared to the chances of winning the lottery.
If we assume that any business which employs more than 20 people has a value in excess of $2 million, the probability of at least one individual receiving $2 million or more is good. Data from both the USA and Australia show that the number of firms exceeding this threshold is about 10%.
The US Census Bureau data for 2008 estimates there are a total number of firms of 5,930,132, of which approximately 524,000 firms have between 20 and 99 employees (8.8%) and a further 89,000 have 100 – 499 employees (1.5%).
(Source: http://www.sba.gov/advocacy/849/12162) In the ABS report for 1997 there were 78,304 (9%) businesses with 20-199 employees and 5,876 (<1%) businesses with 200 or more employees.
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Only 121,557 (6%) businesses had turnover above $2m per annum.
(Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics 8165.0 - Counts of Australian Businesses, including Entries and Exits, Jun 2003 to Jun 2007)
Working out how many millionaires this sector of society could generate is somewhat speculative but worth a guess. There are about 7.8 million households in Australia for a population of about 22.5 million people. Let us assume that 15% of these households are retired folks. That leaves us with about 6.6 million households with employed adults.
If each of our businesses with more than 20 employees contributed 3 millionaires, this would give us about 252,000 millionaires for our 6.6 million households or a probability of 3.8%. So you have a 1 in 26 chance of becoming a millionaire. Compared to the general population, this gives you a 4 times better chance of making it into the Millionaires Club. That certainly beats the lottery, gambling or day trading.
What do you need to do?
• Start a business
• Join a business as a senior executive.
• Become a key employee.
• Invest in a startup business.
• Become an angel investor.
However, being in business is not without its risk which is why few attain the size needed to provide their stakeholders with significant wealth on exit.
The ABS data provide the following rate of exits of new ventures; 18% exit after 2 years, 24% after 3 years, 35% after 5 years, 55% after 10 years and 65% after 15 years.
(Source: 1997 ABS report of business exits in Australia) However, while this data generally refers to failures or business closure, an exit could include the sale of the business, so these probabilities somewhat overstate failure rates.
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What is clearly obvious is that people who get involved in early stage firms have a much higher chance of gaining significant wealth. This does not only apply to the founding entrepreneur but to those who actively support him/her during the early phase of the venture. There are many examples of successful entrepreneurial ventures where tens and hundreds of employees and investors secured signifiant wealth. Even in smaller enterprises, several individuals can walk away with multi millions. The decision is yours
- but don’t hestitate. This is a great opportunity to change your life forever.
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THE 101 TIPS FOR SUCCESS
While failure rates for early stage ventures are reasonably high, most fail because they lack the fundamentals of a good business. Most businesses fail because the business idea was never properly researched, the founder lacked any business training or they had inadequate funding to see their business through the early development stage.
Avoiding the basic mistakes, ensuring you have some business education and learning from the mistakes of others, substantially increases the likelihood of success.
In this book I have set out what I consider to be the 101 rules for survival, growth and profitability of a business. It comes from twenty years of practical experience in a series of early stage ventures, a deep understanding of entrepreneurship from seven years as a Professor of Entrepreneurship and many years as a mentor and coach to a wide range of entrepreneurial ventures.
Your best chance of joining the Millionaires Club is to be part of an entrepreneurial venture and follow my 101 tips for success.
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1. Begin With The End In Mind
There are many things we do in business which take years to come to fruition. Without a plan to make it happen it is highly unlikely we will achieve our personal and business objectives. Start with what you want from the business – security, status, wealth, interesting and challenging activities and so on. With the end in mind, you have a way of judging every decision you make. Does it advance you towards your goal or is a distraction?
You need to set out what you want the business to look like in 1, 3
and 5 years time and then build a plan to get you there. Even if it is your intention to sell the business, work out who the best buyers are and what you need to do to make it a great deal for them. Make your goal realistic but challenging. Set out the intermediate steps you need to achieve and use these to measure progress. But don’t be a slave to the plan. If a better opportunity comes along, be open to evaluating it against your prior goal.
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2. Hire The Best
Good people are hard to find and often difficult to hold onto. But good people are effective. They get the job done, often in half the time. They need less supervision and often take initiative. They don’t leave a mess behind them which wastes your own time fixing. They are good to work with as they get on with the job. They lift the productivity of those around them and make being in business worthwhile.
On the other hand, there are people who you put up with. They scrape through, never doing the job really the way you would like, requiring a lot of hand holding and leaving a few problems in their wake. You often wonder why you put up with them but you accept that they are better than no one. In the end, you compromise your business because you end up with accepting mediocrity. In hindsight, the best people are worth having even if they only stay for a short period.
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3. Share The Wealth
Entrepreneurs create organizations which, if they are successful, are only so because of the combined efforts of all the employees. Rewarding those who contributed is a great way to say thanks. It also is a motivating force for all those who turn up every day to make it happen.
The values which underpin an organization says a lot about the founders and much about the way in which the organization works. There is a big difference between working for ‘you’ and working for ‘us. You need to ask yourself what you would like to happen if times were tough -
will everyone pull together or will people desert for the security of a larger company?
What reputation do you want as an entrepreneur? Remember that the successful ones will often have more than one venture. Imagine how much easier it will be to recruit the right people when you have a reputation for sharing the wealth.
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4. Have A Consistent Message
Have you ever taken a good hard look at your marketing and sales literature and asked the questions ‘Who are we?’ What do we do? and ‘Who are our customers?’. You will be surprised how confusing the messages are. Different people over time make up their own version of the corporate message creating a very confusing picture.
If your own people can’t get the message right, imagine how difficult it is for your customers, suppliers, service providers and recruiters.
Consider the potential customers - what do they see as they review your marketing material?
You need to move to a state where the messages are consistent in all your published material but also your stakeholders all have the same view of what you do.
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5. Keep Fit and Healthy
Creating a successful business is a marathon not a stroll in the park.
Not only do you have to survive the experience to collect the rewards and enjoy them but you carry the responsibility of everyone who works for you every day. You owe it to your family, employees, customers and shareholders to be available to do your job, You also need to be alert and have the energy to cope with the stresses which come with the job.
The journey of the entrepreneur is a roller coaster and it will have more than its fair share of challenges. There will be long days and nights, times of stress and despair but interspersed with moments of sheer joy when things go right. While you don’t need to be a gym junkie or a health nut, you do need to acknowledge that a lot of people depend on you for leadership, vision and support through the good times and the bad times.
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6. Hire Slow – Fire Fast
The hardest lesson to learn in business is that not everyone you hire will work out and that sometimes you need to let some go. After you have worked up the courage to confront the issue and finally taken the hard decision to fire someone you usually get a very positive reaction from their co-workers. In fact, the usual comment is - ‘Why did you wait so long?’ Almost without exception, the co-workers have recognized that the individual was not pulling their weight, undermining the group culture and productivity and a millstone on everyone.
The lesson is always to recognize when you have it wrong and act quickly. Your employees will usually thank you for doing so. On the other side of the coin, take your time before you add a new employee. Too often we hire without checking the references properly or don’t ensure that the individual will fit into the culture of the organization. Also recognize that a new employee adds costs to the organization and you need to be confident you have the business to support them even when the going gets tough.
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7. Create Deep Expertise
Too often we think of competitive advantage as just being formal Intellectual Property (IP) such as patents, brands, trademarks, licenses etc.
But, in fact, one of the best and most enduring sustainable competitive advantages is a deep expertise in a niche market problem.
There are numerous advantages of deep expertise. It takes a long time to develop and operationalise which means that a new entrant to your sector has a long hard road to go before they catch up with you.
You develop economies of scale and learning curve effects which makes your operations more cost effective and more productive. You engage with customers in their own language which earns you respect and reduces their perceived risk of working with you. Your competitive advantage through deep expertise will reduce your sales cycles, improve your margins, reduce your competition and create more resilience in your business through repeat sales and referrals.
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8. Someone Has To Be The Boss
At the end of the day a business is not a democracy and someone has to be the boss and take the hard decisions. You can’t have a situation where the employees don’t know who has the last say or where several people say they are in charge. When they disagree you have a dysfunctional business.
Even if you start the business with several others, each with an equal share, the business will only operate effectively if one person is given the task of leader. There are simply too many times when there is no right answer and someone has to make a judgement call in order for the business to have some sense of direction. Pick the person who people respect most for their wisdom, leadership and vision and make it work.
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9. Define What Problem You Solve
Ask your typical entrepreneur to describe what problem their business solves and you will get a dump on products, services, features and functions, but you won’t find out about what problem they solve.
Entrepreneurs are especially bad at describing the need they fill or the problem they solve. They also can’t tell you who their ideal customer is.
If the business cannot clearly articulate what need they address or problem they solve, what will they be setting out in their marketing collateral and what will their sales staff be saying to prospective customers.
If we can’t say what we do and who we do it for - why would we assume that those with the need we address will be able to find us so they can buy from us?
Ask your current customers what need or problem you addressed for them and check this against your own marketing literature to see if you have a disconnect. Getting this right is fundamental to effective marketing.
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10. Stick To What You Know Best
Failure rates for startup ventures is quite high - generally estimated to be about 50% in the first 6 years of the venture. That being the case, the more you can do to improve your probability of success, the greater the chance of survival. What is obvious from observing many businesses over several decades is that it usually takes a new business about 5 years of operations before they really become effective in a new sector. It simply takes a long time to understand how a marketplace works, to know where the risks are and how to manage them and to build a network of contacts within the sector.
What is obvious from this insight is that you can gain a considerable advantage by developing a business in a sector in which you already have considerable experience. If you already have the connections, know how business is done and have existing relationships with potential customers and suppliers, your risk exposure is considerably reduced. We should never underestimate what we don’t know about a sector and we should, at the same time, acknowledge the advantages we have from our prior experience.
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11. Chase The Money
Money in your bank is worth a lot more to you than in the hands of your customer who is neglecting to pay you on time. What we know from hard earned experience is that ‘the longer it takes the customer to pay, the more likely they are to default’. Basically, you never stop collecting and you should be insistent that the payment is made on time. Even if they can’t pay everything on time, you should ask for partial payment.
However, make sure you have right on your side when you insist on payment. Ensure you have delivered what you said you would and that it is of merchantable quality and fit for purpose. It is very hard to push for payment when you are in the wrong. Get the invoices out quickly and request confirmation of payment. Ask again just before payment date and keep asking frequently thereafter. There is a lot to be said for taking care of the squeaky wheel.
You have to be paid to pay others. You owe it to yourself, your staff and suppliers to do the right thing by them and pay them on time.
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12. Obtain The Best Advice
There are many risks to manage in a business and the last thing you can afford is to be exposed because you failed to address a problem correctly or to ensure you had adequate protection in an agreement. Basically, if you pay peanuts for advice you will get monkeys doing the work for you.
The difference between smart advisors and very ordinary ones is not just a few percentage points, it is counted in multiples. Really smart people pay for themselves over and over again. It is worth taking the time to track them down and ask them to do work for you. You can tell the difference immediately. They ask different questions. Their questions are insightful, penetrating, challenging and often uncomfortable as they expose your own lack of preparation. They think about your business first and the problem you are trying to solve rather than giving you an off the shelf solution. Whatever extra they might cost is recouped many times over in the difference they make to your business.
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13. Create Interesting And Challenging Jobs
Good people are hard to find and even harder to keep. They usually have no trouble getting a new job and securing the remuneration they want. However, they are not always just motivated by salary, although it is important to pay the market rate. What they often want are interesting things to do and assignments which challenge them.
We neglect at our peril the aspirations of our staff to better themselves or to create for themselves an environment where they enjoy coming to work. While we don’t have to create a 100% interesting and challenging environment, we need to have some portion of the job in this mode.
People who are challenged and enjoy the work are more productive, more contented with their situation and tend to mix better with other employees.
They tend to stay longer, are less demanding in their conditions and are easier to work with.
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14. Use Innovation To Compete
To be successful in a sector you need to have some degree of competitive advantage. This doesn’t have to be across the whole sector but it should at least provide an advantage in the niche you target. However, just having a competitive advantage is not sufficient to drive continuing profitability or growth. For that you need to create a sustainable competitive advantage. Even formal IP such as patents expire so you can’t sit back and rely on any form of competitive advantage over time.
Basically you need to create a culture, process or strategy which continually updates your competitive advantage over time. The answer lies in developing an innovation capability. Whether it is incremental innovation or radical innovation, the only certainty you have of survival, profitability and success is to ensure that your innovative capability continually updates your competitive position. Don’t wait until you are desperate to reclaim territory, take the initiative and ensure you stay in front. Innovation is the only sure way to do that.
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15. Be Accountable To A Board
It is very easy in business when you are the founder, president or owner to become complacent and make decisions on the fly because you can and not bother to explain or justify your decisions - because you have the authority to do what you like. Big mistake! We all need the discipline of explaining what we are doing and why to someone. It is important to have a reason to think things through carefully, consider all options and control the knee jerk reactions. Being accountable for your decisions and actions, even when you don’t have to be, is a very worthwhile discipline to develop in business.
If you can’t explain why you are doing something to an intelligent and industry knowledgeable individual, you should take a step back and rethink your decision. Whether you have a formal Board of Directors or an informal coach, the discipline of thinking through the decision and how you will present it to gain approval and support is a very useful mode of operating. Consider, if it is the right decision you should gain support from them. If you can’t convince your Board or your coach, are you really sure you are making the right decision? At the end of the day, it may well be your judgement call, but it is worth gaining the feedback to ensure you have thought it through carefully.
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16. Reward Exceptional Performance
The way in which you reward and sanction behavior in your business will determine the way in which staff act. You motivate them according to what you encourage and discourage. If you want exceptional performance, you have to show by your actions that you value that form of behavior.
Individuals who contribute to the health, profitability and resilience of the business through their decisions, actions and behavior are worth keeping and certainly worth recognizing in some way. Whether that recognition is ‘employee of the month’, or a mention in the company newsletter or a special ‘thank-you’ from the president, it is worth doing.
However, don’t neglect financial rewards for exceptional contributions or time off or a paid vacation. Perhaps even ask them what would work for them - it might be an education allowance, an opportunity to work on a special project or the chance to go to an industry conference.
Your actions will convey to others in the firm the type of behavior and contribution which the firm values. By rewarding exceptional performance you will encourage others to make the effort.
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17. Set The Right Customer Expectations
While it might feel good to ‘exceed the customer’s expectation’, it is usually the worst thing you can do. Meeting the customer’s expectation on the other hand is the smartest thing you can do. So why not exceed it? The problem is that you end up resetting the expectation so that next time you have to step up to the better performance. If you cannot consistently meet the higher level of performance, you end up with a dissatisfied customer.
Customer satisfaction is directly related to expectation. A customer who receives what they expected time and again will be satisfied. The worst thing that can happen in a customer experience is to have some form of random result, whether good or bad. The they don’t know what to expect, they may prefer to buy elsewhere. If you want repeat sales and referrals, the best thing you can do for your business is to ensure your marketing communications specify exactly what you do and then ensure you deliver against that outcome every time.
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18. Plan For The Worst Case
Every entrepreneur I have talked to has told me stories of things which have gone