Duplicating Success

 

As I mentioned last week, I love a good success story and have often tried to get to know these big successful people. In a few cases, they even offered to be my mentor. I really believe that the mentoring was one of the most important contributors to my financial success.

I’m also a huge believer in seeing what other super successful people do and then going out and doing the same thing. I did it with my first book after seeing what Joe Karbo, author of The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches, did to sell his books. I got to know him and then did the same things he did, selling 2 million copies of my first book.

And a long time ago, I read of a guy that converted his apartment units into condos, selling them to existing tenants or new buyers. I took that idea and converted 70 plus apartment units I had in Pennsylvania to condos, quickly selling out to most of the renters who were already in them and, wow, did I make a quick profit of over $7 million! Did that surprise me and please me? Oh yeah… big time!

I also looked to other people when I started fixing up houses. Realizing that the decorating part wasn’t really my thing, I picked other people’s brains to get the ideas I needed. Picking people’s brains is pretty easy since people like to talk about themselves and what they do for a living. I would simply take designers, architects and other professionals to lunch and get ideas for the cost of a meal. I would also look at other nicely fixed up houses. I have gone so far as to exactly copy the look of a neighboring house I was fixing up because I wasn’t sure what to do with it. That little bit of copying got that house sold super-fast!

It’s amazing when I travel to new and different countries too. I see a lot of ways people in other countries are being successful and not just when it comes to making money. For instance, in Europe, people eat much smaller portions, have tiny refrigerators because they buy food fresh so often, and they take time to relax when they eat. We could learn a lot from the way they eat over there that would be healthier for us all.

All of these things are something that anyone can copy and, yes, that means you! Keep your eyes and mind open and you might just see things you can duplicate to make a better life for yourself and maybe even make a fortune.

More Ways to Make Big Bucks with Existing Ideas

There’s no question that fortunes are made every year by people who come up with new products and services. Whereas many of these new products are totally new and different than anything we’ve seen before, there are just as many or even more products that are copies of existing products with some changes, a recombination, or additions that make it virtually brand new.

Take for example, the common product—the suitcase. They have been around for many, many years. It used to be such a tiresome thing to lug our heavy suitcases or trunks through the airport or into a hotel. Of course, there was the ever-present bell boy to help and get a tip for doing so but it was still difficult to get around with those bulky cases.

Another product that most of us, since we were little kids, have seen or had a bit of fun on ourselves are roller skates and skate boards. These had nothing to do with suitcases, not until someone said to themselves, “Hey, wait a minute, why don’t I put some small wheels on my travel bags, suitcases, and heavy trunks? It can’t be that hard to do.” Even if you didn’t have any skill to put those two things together, you certainly could find a mechanical type person to do it for you. And now I can only imagine how much money was made from that simple change.

That was a pretty simple little invention made by putting two known products together in a new way. If we take the time to observe and study familiar inventions and products and then thinks through how to put a couple products together we could, no doubt, come up with a brand new idea.

To help facilitate this, you could gather together 5 or 6 people you know that are creative thinkers. Put them together in a room and give the group a big list of products then ask everyone to brainstorm and throw out ideas on which products might be put together in a new way. Surprising things can come out of such a brainstorming session.

Or if you are a creative thinker, use that same long list of products and brainstorm on your own and see what you come up with. You can do the same thing to come up with a new service, as Uber did, though the taxi industry certainly didn’t like it. However, I don’t think the owners of Uber, a multibillion dollar company, were very bothered by that.

My first venture into mass marketing was done by copying someone else’s formula and it lead to millions of dollars of profits. As a stock broker manager, I discovered that several of my employees had purchased a book from an ad in the newspaper with the headline “The Lazy Mans Way to Riches”.

That got my attention to the point that I called the author, Joe Karbo, repeatedly until he agreed to meet with me in his California office. When I discovered how many thousands of books he’d sold from that simple ad, I burned the midnight oil each night to write my own book and when I finished I sat down and studied the style, sentence length and tone of Joe’s ad and made my ad as much like his as I could without copying his exact words. So yes, in a way I copied, but did it legally and the big money rolled in beyond my expectations!

There are many, many more fortunes to be made by observing what is happening in the markets and what products, ideas and services exist and then by coming up with something different enough to be seen as brand new. And if you do it right, soon enough, you’ll see the money flowing your way.