The Onassis Method

Last week I started telling you the story of a young man who asked me for some financial advice. His questions and what I had to tell him was too good not to share. Supercharging your goals is something we can all benefit from.

As I mentioned last week, you must first firmly set your financial goals and then write them down with a time deadline. After that, you can supercharge and speed up your success by following these few easy tips:

1. Go out and find a mentor — mentors are a must!

2. Get your feet wet and get some experience with a few small financial deals.

3. Go out and make yourself the best calling card possible.

4. Use a “Partner Path” to supercharge and speed toward your goal.

Anyone who has followed my blog over the years knows that I became as financially successful as I have by wisely using leverage to buy real estate. I started with small houses, duplexes and small apartment buildings [usually ones that needed to be fixed up] then I rented them out and/or sold them.

Just look at these numbers and the return on investment and you can see how a person can make a fortune in a short time by using ten to one leverage and selling property for, let’s say, a 10% higher price than the price paid for it. This can give a 40% or 50% return on the total money you invested, maybe even more, because of leverage.

So, with this as the basic game plan I advised the young man to start on the list I just gave you. First, we talked about mentors.

A mentor should be someone that has done what you want to do and has been successful at it. I encouraged this young man to meet with his mentor frequently and to pick his or her brain as often as he could.  He was already doing that with me but with how much I travel back then, he was going to need at least a back-up mentor.

But, how do you find a mentor and, more importantly, how can you get them to agree to be your mentor? Well, my advice is to use what I call the Onassis method. This follows what Aristotle Onassis did many years ago when starting out to meet the perfect contact so he could import cigarettes from Greece to South America.

When Onassis was a very young man — long before he made his fortune — he wanted to meet this particular top guy in the cigarette business that he thought could help launch him into his first business deal importing cigarettes. So, basically, Onassis just pestered the guy. He simply stood out in front of this man’s office every morning then by his gate at night. He didn’t say anything.

Finally, after about 2 weeks, this very influential cigarette executive stopped and said to Onassis, “Who are you and what do you want?” Finally having his chance, Onassis started talking. Because of that conversation, this top executive told him to go see his main buyer and use his name as a reference. From that simple strategy, Onassis began his road to become a billionaire. 

I used a similar but easier tactic to meet with Ray Kroc, the billionaire founder of McDonalds. I called his office almost daily asking his secretary for an appointment and after many, many phone calls she said that Ray would meet with me but for only 10 minutes. I flew to San Diego and met with Ray Kroc walking out of his office 2 hours later. Hey, what can I say? I just asked him to tell me why and how he became such a great success in life and business and as it turned out he loved talking about himself. Who doesn’t?

There are three more items you will want to implement in order to be super successful but let’s save those for next week. In the meantime, think about who you would want as a mentor. Who is doing what you want to do in a very successful way? And what would it take to get a hold of that person and have them mentor you?