$3,000 to $1,000,000 in 15 months: HOW TO DO IT

OK, here's an idea for those who said "this is hard to do . . ." (and for those following this thread who want to brainstorm and share ideas):

Look on the web, and find at least 3 examples of others who have generated at least $1,000,000 in 12 months.

There are PLENTY of stories out there.

NO MLM or AFFILIATE MARKETING STORIES are allowed (My thread, my rules, 'K?).

See what you find. Perhaps after seeing the first dozen examples, this idea may seem more real-- more attainable.

Have fun!

-Russ H.

__________________
"Control everything. Own nothing." -John D. Rockefeller

"Don't confuse motion with action" -Ernest Hemingway

OK, here are some I found in 30 seconds:

1. A college student who needed some extra cash for school:

http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

2. While not technically a million dollars, here's someone who traded a red paper clip for a house. No reason you couldn't keep on going . . .

http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/

3. $60,000,000 in 18 months

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...3/b3997001.htm

4. How Radiohead made $10,000,000 in 10 days

http://www.smartbiz.com/article/articleview/2290/1/54

5. Plentyoffish.com, the story:

http://www.affiliateblog.com/2006/04...the-interview/

That's a start. Lots more out there!

-Russ H.

__________________
"Control everything. Own nothing." -John D. Rockefeller

"Don't confuse motion with action" -Ernest Hemingway

I am curious why you chose to not allow real estate ventures into this mix. It certainly seems to be one of the very vialble ways to accomplish the task.

SteveO-

Because the person who presented this challenge to me was under the age of 18, and said, upfront, that he wanted to do RE, but was not old enough.

BUT-- if you can figure out a way to do this at 16 years of age, then go for it!

My RadioHead link above also violates the rule of not having any advance experience/skills, but I still liked its audacity (bypassing the record companies).

I think it would be extremely difficult for a 16-17 year old to generate $1,000,000 in RE before they were 18, but again--it's probably doable.

I encourage out-of-the-box thinking in this exercise-- but do keep to the limits (16/17 years old, no advanced skills/experience/network of investors).

-Russ H.

__________________
"Control everything. Own nothing." -John D. Rockefeller

"Don't confuse motion with action" -Ernest Hemingway

Great Idea for a thread. I'm still brainstorming so this isn't a plan - but rather just a thought that might spur some people

It seems that there are a number of websites where a company provided an infrastructure for others to provide content. Then, make money off subscriptions, ads, etc., or just sell the site in 15 months for $1M + Think about it - Youtube, myspace, the example above Digg all created value by having others create content for FREE. Another example I have read about in the past, and I'll dig up the name was this - a guy created a website where artists could create t-shirt designs. Those designs were then voted on by users of the site and the top 10 or 20 or whatever were then created as t-shirts that could be purchased. It was a win-win-win for the "community". The artists got a cut of the sale, the purchasers got a cool t-shirt that they voted on, and the website owner got a cut for making it all happen.

From one month ago i have spent $578.48 >.<

forgot about my car too.. so +260
so a total of 858.48... whew. I dont even make that much in a month.. yikes
time to change

I am working on a business idea right now, which is almost in line with the conditions of this challenge. The difficult part is the limit of 3.000 start capital to begin with. Here I should think about outsourcing and a creative payment arrangement.

The idea is an online service where a monthly fee has to be paid. The information supplied by my online service obliges companies in certain industries, to get a membership of my service, which has this monthly fee, that Biophase was talking about earlier.

The question is one million realistic for this service?? The answer yes it is, but can it be done within 15 months... not sure but I will do my best to get it done!!

What kind of service it is, I will not tell, but I will tell you that is fills up an existing need, of a market that is big enough for me, but too small for big companies. Furthermore I am figuring out more ways to add value.

As soon as I can tell more I will let you know.

Dick
TNT (today not tomorrow)

Please keep us updated and post a new thread when you are ready -- we love reading about projects that are just starting.

You rock Russ...this thread has inspired me to find my new reality. In a different thread, I introduced myself and I've taken the first steps into becoming financially free - this is giving me the sparks of innovation to look past where I was before.

Real Estate (commercial) will still be in my plan, but as I said, your post and this thread have got my creative juices flowing!

Thank you!!

I am loving this thread. Some of the insight shared here is "worth a million bucks!" I am formulating a plan for the thread that is very grassroots -- very inexpensive. The initial idea is FREE, so the full $3k can be used for directing traffic.

The idea is so good, I'm nabbing the domain now. More details to follow...

Investment to date:

• Time: <8 hours
• Money: $10.

Wish me luck.

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OK 3k to 1M in 15 months. Well, I´ve got two suggestions:

1. Forex trading.
This is the way to go: Learn all about this particular business, participate actively in specialized forums to learn markets, language and strategies. Decide for a strategy, open several demo accounts and fine tune on leverage and money/risk management. After 3 months, yes time is running, open a real account and go for it. You still got 12 months left. Keep emotions out of the way and stick to your verified strategy. Don´t change it. If it´s working you´re on the fastlane. Nevertheless it is quite risky...

2. Wine (Yes I´m serious)
For the second suggestion I´m lacking a little vocabulary, so bare with me if it sounds funny or inadequate. It´s about one of the businesses with the most fantastic cost/profit ratios I´ve ever heard of. It is about selling "mulled vine" (thats what my dicitonary tells me) on german christmas markets. Ingredients are cheap, with 3k you could immediatly start. They are selling one cup for 2-3 Euro and the colder it gets, the more they make. People accept those prices! This means they make huge profit around several hundred percent. A single man earns up to 30k each week(!) of a christmas market. Take this as a start for the million. Should be quite a boost. The only hinderence are official licenses and the already divided markets. But maybe there is a way, or even better a possibility to go for "mulled wine franchising".

Right now I´m heading for solution 1.

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AlwaysCurious

Not to destroy your enthusiasm or anything, but expecting to receive an annual rate of return of more than 10,000% from market trading a very unrealistic, even for the best traders.

If that's your strategy, you might want to try the Lotto instead...

JScott-

Funny that Forex seems to be the latest in a long line of gazillion-percent ROI schemes.

On the RD forums, we'd see this every few months. Some folks (the same ones) kept bouncing from one to the next, never really getting anywhere.

While the traditional investors on those boards made millions-- but they did it one step at a time, over a period of months and years.

********

To RECAP: My challenge on this thread is to develop a business idea that is scalable and has a large enough market to generate 7 figures (or high six figures) within a short period of time.

Assuming your business idea is sound, even if you don't achieve $1M in 15 months, perhaps your model can get to $750,000, or to $1M in 24 months.

It's all about developing a concept that will grow exponentially, based on repeatable metrics.

It is not about being an "S" (self employed) trader or investor, relying solely on your own personal cunning and labors to amass a fortune. Very, very few people can do this-- while a business owner with a solid, scalable plan can-- by learning to leverage other people's money, time, and skills/expertise (OPM, OPT, and OPE) to build an empire.

Using leverage is one of the key elements of this exercise.

So is learning how to think like a rich person (or soon to be rich person), instead of an "S".

-Russ H.

__________________
"Control everything. Own nothing." -John D. Rockefeller

"Don't confuse motion with action" -Ernest Hemingway

This is something completely crazy but will probably work. SELL YOURSELF. Literally.
Start a website and sell shares of yourself. Describe yourself. Convey that your are a motivated driven person who does whatever it takes to succeed and make people buy a stake in you. Sell shares of yourself at $10 a pop. People who buy shares are entitled to future revenues that you make in your business ventures. I'm sure you can find 100,000 people in 15 months who will buy a stake in you for $10. Infact find some people who really believe in you and they will buy $100 or even $1000 of your shares. Even if you fail it will be great marketing.

I thought of this after I read about a baseball player selling his future revenue streams online.

Ok, Here goes. After reading all the posts on this subject, I think it can be done with some help. So I think one of the first things is to protect the idea while you get help. So where does one (me) get a workable non disclosure agreement? Second, should money be spent on a trademark at the inception? Third, i have the idea, does anyone care to invest? I am going to do this and it may fail but I do not think so.
Also, I have put together a business plan for a brick and mortar business, where are examples of the same thing in an internet business? How do you make money on the internet besides subscriptions, which I don't think will work for this idea or ads?
I want to leverage the minds and maybe your money and expertise in this forum and help myself.

What questions do I need to ask?

If you are willing to help, I will do.

Thanks

How ironic that you post this, Bear.

I realize that you think posting silly investment scenarios and then quoting yourself is funny, making your own running gag.

But I repeat my earlier comment, posed originally to another poster:

Think about your posts on this thread: How do they help others?

-Russ H.

__________________
"Control everything. Own nothing." -John D. Rockefeller

"Don't confuse motion with action" -Ernest Hemingway

This is the mentality that excludes folks from entering the Fastlane. "Get Rich Quick" is not synonymous with "Get Rich Easy" ... there is a difference: One is reality and one is illusion.

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Bear-

The whole goal of this thread is to dispel the notion of "get rich quick"-- not through sarcasm, but by showing someone that getting rich is a *process*.

By having people see the work (and planning) involved to make this challenge happen, it's clear that it's not "get rich easy" or even "get rich quick", but "get rich in a relatively short period of time by developing a scalable concept that fills a need."

We read about these stories all the time-- from the facebook template girl (making hundreds of thousand of $$, so fast she dropped out of high school and got a GED), to any one of the other young entrepreneurs who "strike it rich" in a matter of months.

They get there through hard work, AND by having a concept where growth is not tied directly to their personal time (so their business can grow exponentially without needing exponential time commitments from the founder).

I'm sorry that you read the entire thread, and didn't see this.

-Russ H.

__________________
"Control everything. Own nothing." -John D. Rockefeller

"Don't confuse motion with action" -Ernest Hemingway

Ah, this will be fun. In fact I've been looking for a young hungry buck to teach just what I have learned. If only I could go back to 17 with the knowledge I have now. Mmm, mmm, mmm. I would do exactly what I did with my (now) husband. If you have $3k with which to start, then you're WAY ahead of the game. We started with $50! This will sound over-simplistic, but it is exactly what we did. Sit back and enjoy my little novella.

Spend a few days learning everything you can learn about a product niche. For us, it was menswear, since we both already had some knowledge. Then go to every thrift and resale store you can find and buy every garment they have in the top 10(ish) brands. You'd better know what sells on ebay, because that's where you're going to have to sell them. I swear I'm not selling a "get rich on ebay" seminar. This was our reality for 5+ years. This is how the numbers will unfold (could be slightly different today, as I've not done this for over a year, but it will be darned close):

$3K will buy you (on average) 250 garments, which you will sell for an avg of $80/ea. The first month, this will take you all month (at least!) to turn that inventory around, as you learn the biz. But your gross on this first round was $20K. Note: Our worst month was $2K, our best was just over $30K.

The lesson we learned WAY too late was this: While this is a very profitable venture, it is NOT repeatable, duplicatable or scale-able, because each ebay ad is unique. So in order to grow this exponentially, you will either need to:
- teach the system to employees who will duplicate what you are doing (preferrably in other cities so that you're not all competing for the same inventory) for a cut (or if you're lucky, a paycheck)
- use part of your profits to source one or two items from one of the many 3rd-world countries that are now producing textiles for pennies on the dollar (compared to US and European factories). And yes, if you have cash, they don't care if you're 17. This is easy $$. One photo shoot + one ad = multiple sales. While the margin isn't as good as the second-hand clothing, the $/hour is a no-brainer and involves no measuring, no mothhole fixing and no crotch-rot cleaning. (Should I add this to the list of sh!t jobs on the other thread?)

After 6 months, our young protege could easily have amassed $100K. At this point, he could con