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

[DisLife]

This is probably one of the most inspiring threads I've read on the Internet in a long while. I've taken this as a personal challenge to see how far I can take it. So I've gone ahead and registered the domain and am now developing a website. I've given myself a deadline to have it in beta by the end of this month.

I think I'm on track, considering I've actually been excited about this and gave up a few nights sleep over the weekend to work on it. :coco:

I figure if it works, I'll have that million in a few months to work with :groove: and if it doesn't, I've got that failure to figure out what I did wrong and improve for next time.

Money spent so far is just the domain registration.

 

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[Adam_C]

I have a million different business ideas, but none of my ideas are cheap or easily gettable, each one will cost about £100k to set up... I have about 36p in my bank.

 

[Russ H]

AdamC-

Have you read through the whole thread?

-Russ H.

 

[Russ H]

I've taken this as a personal challenge to see how far I can take it.

So I've gone ahead and registered the domain and am now developing a website. I've given myself a deadline to have it in beta by the end of this month.

I figure if it works, I'll have that million in a few months to work with and if it doesn't, I've got that failure to figure out what I did wrong and improve for next time.

THAT is a fastlane attitude!

Rep speed for you-- for DOING!!

PS Don't hesitate to let us know how it's going-- even if things don't make you a mil, tell us what you've learned.

-Russ H.

 

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[snowbank]

I have a million different business ideas, but none of my ideas are cheap or easily gettable, each one will cost about £100k to set up... I have about 36p in my bank.

Adam,

I'll be blunt/honest and say no they won't and you're just making excuses for yourself. If you want me to expand I can, but I think you probably already know this.

 

[snowbank]

At the end of June (so, two months ago) I started my own little "from € 6,000 to € 500,000 in 15 months" experiment on the side. My vehicle is trading options. I try not to over-trade and limit my trades to on average max. 2 per week. I don't want to spend too much time on it anyway.
Yesterday I reached the € 23,500 mark. So, provided my win/loss ratio and my discipline don't deteriorate too much I think that the goal is not unrealistic. Although I hope that it will be possible, I don't dare to expect that I can increase my money fourfold again in the next two months.

I'll keep you informed.

awesome, congrats. keep us posted.

 

[HenkHolland]

awesome, congrats. keep us posted.

Thanks.
I'll try to post my position around the end of each month.
So far, the high volatility in the market these days has helped me make extraordinary returns.
I am working hard on not becoming too greedy. Greed is a surefire road to losing everything again.

 

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[DisLife]

THAT is a fastlane attitude!

PS Don't hesitate to let us know how it's going-- even if things don't make you a mil, tell us what you've learned.

-Russ H.

So here's the thing. I've kind of gone through a whole range of emotions today. I think if I hadn't been following along with some of these threads, I'd have given up my website idea this morning.

I was doing some more searches on the web regarding what I'm plannig to do with my website and one thing led to another and I finally ended up looking around at some of the business pages on the ca.gov website...:smx4: Needless to say, my potential business falls into a category that the Great State of California decided I need a multitude of things (bonded, years of experience, money) that I don't have. If I'd posted right after finding that tidbit of info, I might have suggested that I've learned to do my searches before wasting my money on a domain name...

After letting the problem just sit today while I was at work, I made a conscious decision to look past the problem and see if there were any solutions. I hate the term "think outside the box", but this is exactly what I had to do. So I've come up with one possible solution, which I've already taken some action on. I need to brainstorm a few more ideas in case this doesn't work.

So what have I learned? I've learned not to let a roadblock stop me. There's a detour around the corner if you're willing to overcome your fears and just drive...

Maynard

 

[HenkHolland]

At the end of June (so, two months ago) I started my own little "from € 6,000 to € 500,000 in 15 months" experiment on the side. My vehicle is trading options. I try not to over-trade and limit my trades to on average max. 2 per week. I don't want to spend too much time on it anyway.
Yesterday I reached the € 23,500 mark. So, provided my win/loss ratio and my discipline don't deteriorate too much I think that the goal is not unrealistic. Although I hope that it will be possible, I don't dare to expect that I can increase my money fourfold again in the next two months.

I'll keep you informed.

It's time for an update.
The stock market has been a roller coaster since my previous post. And so has been my trading account.
In the past 30 days my account went up from € 23,500 to almost € 65,000 in 6 trades. And then in two trades I blew about 70% and now I'm back down to € 19,000.
I did not adhere to proper money management and basically started to gamble. I'll have to improve that.

 

[fanocks2003]

Another contribution to this thread:

1) Find something unique to sell or find an ordinary product and create an irresistable marketing offer.
2) Buy a targeted list with those $3000 and email out an offer by email.
3) Process the orders coming in after such a DM campaign. Setup a corporation.
4) Use these sales as proof of concept and buy a list of targeted distributors (email lists). Create a sales message and sell exclusive licenses worldwide with a guaranteed minimum amount paid to your corporation each quarter (minimum order amount) (on contract).
5) Find an investment bank and have them search for strategic buyers onm your behalf (and sell the deal for you) and sell out as expensively as possible.

The last stage may take more than the set amount of time, but may take place in less time as well. The first 4 stages should take no more than 6 months. Preferably faster than this.

 

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[Russ H]

I like the way you gave a structure to this, while still keeping the "product" open, fanocks.

Spending the entire $3K on the list is risky, even if you have the right product. If your marketing efforts are not good, or your order processing is shabby, or you have problems w/fulfillment/shipping, etc-- any of those things could kill you.

Even timing is an issue-- if you send out the emails when your target group is focused on something else,
<POOF!>. There goes your biz.

You know all this, of course.

I only add it for others who may not have been down this road before.

-Russ H.

 

[fanocks2003]

I like the way you gave a structure to this, while still keeping the "product" open, fanocks.

Spending the entire $3K on the list is risky, even if you have the right product. If your marketing efforts are not good, or your order processing is shabby, or you have problems w/fulfillment/shipping, etc-- any of those things could kill you.

Even timing is an issue-- if you send out the emails when your target group is focused on something else,
<POOF!>. There goes your biz.

You know all this, of course.

I only add it for others who may not have been down this road before.

-Russ H.

Absolutly, investing $3000 on a list is a high-risk solution. One way of raising the probability of success is to hire a professional copywriter. This would mean investing at least 25%-50% of your $3000 on a copywriter. I guess that would be a smart idea.

This means a smaller targeted list, but a higher probability of success. Hence, lower risk. But still high-risk. Everything in a startup is a high-risk, however you look at it. Startups are not for the risk averse in any way.

 

[Russ H]

Everything in a startup is a high-risk, however you look at it. Startups are not for the risk averse in any way.

Agreed. :smx9:

-Russ H.

 

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[TheLife]

I have nto been active in the thread posting but I can give a surefire in how to get to 1million dollars in 15 months. I am no scolar but listen closely.

My name but that is not me.

1. Obtain a contractors license in sale. how to do that I do not know!
2. obtain a one year contract deal with a major cable company like comcast, or att uverse.
3. the structure should be in this way.... for each service sold whether it be cable internet or phone to your company goes $80 to $100 dollars and for each bundle sold meaning three products there be a bonus of 15 to 30 dollars. each household would give you the possibilty of making near and around three hundred dollars.
4. receive hot door to door leads from the service provider.
5. build a sales team of 30 persons that that on average will make the company $1200 dollars weekly and duplicate it four times in diferrent area or regions collecting from each area a 10 - 15 percent payout. you will be paying each rep about half of what the company makes .
6. what is left is just the math. do it. 1000 times 30 times 52 divided by ten and multiplied by four. that is called probability.
7. at 10 percent wich is a low figure you will make $748,800 in your first year if all goes well. adn when usig the 15% figure you will make just over a million your first year.

 

[FxInvestor]

This is definitely a very challenging post and requires some serious commitment. My answer is only one thing :
Leverage,Leverage, Leverage!!!!
Multiplying money is only possible through leverage.
I dont think it is necessary to re-invent the wheel and there are ways to reach the one million mark with less than 3K. Yes, the answer might surprise you, and it might take less than a 6months.
Try googling for "buying business with no cash down". There are guys who have done it and are doing it.
No other way can get you there like leverage.

Not surprisingly, starting a new business might actually be more risky and there is so much work to be done. Its easier to just buy out existing businesses which are on sale.


Ofcourse if anyone is inclined towards internet based business, there are some new programs out there which look promising. And they cost less than 3K, however, need lot of effort.

Either way, there are some opportunities there, which have been time tested and concrete. If there is anything else, I can help with, let me know.

Cheers and best luck to all of you!

 

[T.J.]

I agree with PhxMJ.. Internet Marketing and creating your own Affiliate programs is the way to go. Affiliate programs are the ultimate win-win. Make and excelent program. Join lots of forums and since your product(s) will be new if it's good it should sell like crazy.

 

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[patientPrince$$]

Ofcourse if anyone is inclined towards internet based business, there are some new programs out there which look promising. And they cost less than 3K, however, need lot of effort.

Either way, there are some opportunities there, which have been time tested and concrete. If there is anything else, I can help with, let me know.

Cheers and best luck to all of you!

Can you share with us a few of the new programs that cost less thank 3K?:thankyousign:

 

[DisLife]

It's now been about 3 months since I got started on my personal attempt in trying to meet this challenge. I'm nearly ready to launch my website into beta test mode, just waiting on some feedback from my alpha testers and still trying to lock down a lawyer that will talk to me...

Anyways, I promised to post some lessons learned as I went along and I think this is a good point as any. I'll start a new thread with the address in the near future for some feedback.

When I first read this thread, it became a real eye-opener for me. For years I'd been making excuses for myself that I needed to come up with something new or different before even attempting to try getting into the fast lane. What I've learned is that I need to take those first steps and just try to do SOMETHING. I've learned more in these 3 months than I have in a long while.

Once I got going, I almost immediately hit a roadblock because the state of California has certain requirements in regards to Escrow services. One of the key differentiators for my website became impossible. Two days later the local newspaper ran an article about a local company that provides online escrow services. WTF? If I hadn't started on my website, I would never have paid attention to this article and would not have contacted this company about becoming an affiliate! I have a feeling that if I wasn't getting the daily dose of motivation from this community, that I would have stopped development at that point and gone back to the slow lane. My big lesson was to not give up and a solution will present itself.

My website happens to be built using tools that I use for work. However the work stuff is pretty simple compared to what I've been doing for my own website. Since working on my website, I've been able to incorporate a lot of what I've been doing into what I do for work. Stuff like that has been getting me noticed at work and now I've become the company expert on this set of tools. Could be a reason I'm getting such a large pay increase for next year...

I've also learned that many lawyers can be real jerks to people just starting up. Especially to those of us that don't know how to talk to them. This is something I'm still trying to overcome. I've talked to several lawyers as a referral, the closest I got to getting a lawyer on retainer was that they promised to send me the retainer agreement then failed to do so. Most of them wouldn't even return my calls. I would think this is something similar to what people experience when they look for financing. Without the experience, you're not worth the their time. I've still got a couple of lawyers that I'm trying to contact. Hopefully I can get one soon, I'm not giving up on this one.

My website is similar to other websites out there. There's been times when this is discouraging. What kept me motivated during those moments is to remember that other people are successful in this market and that I'm not shooting in the dark trying to find a target market. I just need to come up with a way to convince them to give me a chance and show that I meet their needs better than the competition.

Now that the website development is nearing completion, I figure the real work is starting. Hopefully I'll have more lessons to share. Thank you Russ for all your inspirational posts and everyone else that has provided inspiration and motivation to help me get this far.

Maynard

 

[CRBFL]

Well I'm not sure if anyone here will remember me...
"You last drove the Fastlane: May 18th, 2008 at 10:53 AM"

It's been a while to say the least!

I didn't have $3,000 by a long shot, but that's not a good enough excuse to not take action.

I spent what I could on a couple domains and some hosting. I was willing to spend money as I went, but I didn't want to invest a large chunk of time into failures. This last several months of time has been data accumulation on trial and error looking for a good ROI.

I spent about 3 weeks setting up various websites and blogs and putting revenue streams in place. While that was going on I was toying with the idea of going the PPC route for lead gen to see what happened.

I went two routes with the whole experiment: paid traffic and free traffic

I wasn't worried about keyword tracking, conversions, or visitor frequency. I was going to figure out where to tweak those once I figured out where money would actually be made.

Put it on auto pilot and forgot about it. Went back to "real life" (code name for Slowlane misery...) I did have plenty of family and relationship things going on during that time, so I don't feel bad about my lack of focus.

Here's numbers from the 3 revenue streams used over that time period:

When it was all said and done did I turn a profit? Barely. Did I loose my a$$ on Facebook Ads PPC to the tune of almost $600 in 3 days? Oh yeah. Did I have a priceless learning experience? Absolutely.

The real question is did I throw enough shit against the wall to get some to stick? Well I ended up with 2 websites that were both created in under 15 minutes a piece, generated their own traffic, and didn't need me to maintain content or update. One has generated $82.11 and the other $77.82...not bad for 30 minutes of work.

If I can replicate that at the rate of 4 similar sites an hour over the course of a 40 hour work week, that week would be worth around a $12,000-$13,000. A manual labor job around $624,000 annual....

Time to figure out how to scale the hell out of it.... Well, that and keep coming up with new ideas.:smxB:

I missed this place and the people here. I have no doubt that I would have tripled my curret income (at least) if I had remained active in this community. I'm working on changing lanes...

 

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[Russ H]

Great to see you here again, CRBFL.

-Russ H.

 

[CRBFL]

Great to see you here again, CRBFL.

-Russ H.

Glad to be back, time to make up for lost time...:fastlane:

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Hey Chuck thanks for the progress report, nice to see u back.

 

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[ramy98]

lol ya, back then it was called yahoo as that was the only site people knew about

So what you think of my idea?

Jay, have you considered letting people use your site for free but charge advertisers $$$ to advertise and PPC etc..
I think your website will be more popular if it is free ; thus more advertising revenues.

Just my opinion.

 

[ZDS]

Bump! Lets see some fresh ideas

 

[BryanC]

I was considering brokering a hotel building. If I sell it for $15,000,000 I get a $1,000,000 commission. All I need to do is basically find a buyer. LOL. That would be $1,000,000 if I spent 15 months scouting buyers.

 

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[Salinger]

There have been some good ideas posted, but if this guy is only 17, he can't legally enter into any contractual agreement, or at least it's not enforceable. Most businesses require some form of contract - merchant accounts, trading accounts, buying on credit, even hosting agreements would technically apply. If he has some adult that will sign for him, then it stands to reason that the adult would also be able to co-sign a real estate loan. Sorry to be so practical.

I hate to be the one to bring this up, but I'm actually surprised nobody has suggested doing anything related to drugs, prostitution or a ponzi scheme. This is a nice, wholesome, law-abiding group.
​

 

[Salinger]

I was considering brokering a hotel building. If I sell it for $15,000,000 I get a $1,000,000 commission. All I need to do is basically find a buyer. LOL. That would be $1,000,000 if I spent 15 months scouting buyers.

Wow! You're going to command an almost 7% commission on a $15,000,000 property as a 17 year old with no experience! :hl:
Odds are you won't broker both sides of the deal either, and don't forget about the split to the brokerage firm. I'd be glad to come in and broker the deal at 4 or 5%. And I have experience. It wouldn't get me to my $1 million, but I'd have a better chance of getting the listing. Can a 17 year old even get a brokers license?

 

[exon]

My way...

$3.000 spend on one load of wholesale products from overstocks, returns or much better liquidations. You'll get it for 10% of retail price, and that is about 15.000$ sale price. Sell on ebay, fle markt or so. This will be enough for living 15 months and expenses of new biz.

I have my book with lots of ideas how to reach millions so I've listed few sites and here are some ways in short versions:
​

Goal: $1M from zero...in 15 month X 2 = $2M, the bigger challenge
Tools: knowledge & computer

We will be working two jobs at once:

#FIRST:
​

Because we don't have money for biz, we got to have buyers before starting selling the product/products.

How to get them?

First of all we got to have right fastlane mindset. Two months spend only on research and learning specified field (using the fastlane TIME technique, Toilette University and others...), in this case, how to help people to have better life, more money, more freedom... this is the most wide market, and we'll find a place where is the least represented. We need only 100.000 buyers. Then make Brand from ourself with good sign logo.

Then do Freelance writing for several magazines with this thematic, This would not be a problem, there is lot of them and also include question answering in articles to get even more respect by readers. At the same time make website, blog and forum with this thematic and get people there through magazine and newspaper articles. Also we can get more people there using SEO web (but I don't know it and it cost money) so we'll use facebook, tweeter and everything free... To keep as many members and make web site&forum even more intresting, we'll made the prize game, and as a reward offer some of the products that we have bought for 3.000$. Then also we can volunteer to teach seminars through our local Chamber of Commerce or some other about our are of expertise. Now we'll receive promotion through the event itself, as well as through all marketing for the event. Our association with the Chamber will boost our credibility, as well. We must serve as source to our targeted local comunity. Plus we can go to our targeted local radio station and answering phone calls...
To get some more publicity we can give some money from our product to some non-profiti organisation or in charity and there will be our name. One dollar from each buyer = $100.000 for them to promete us. To get more trust from our customers we got to be trensparent and tell them our story. We also have to use feedback, newsletter and other tools....

6 months has pass and now we have customers to who can sell what we want.

We'll sell them 100.000 copies of book, which we had wrote in last six months.
Now we can go to some big publisher and ask him to bublish our book and show them that we allready have buyers for book. They will for sure sell some more thousends of books through their chanell. Our earning per book is $10 and $1 for charity, wich has promote us. 10 x 100.000 = $1.000.000.
OK, we have taxes so we have to sell one more product and that can be anything, from some audio CDs, stickers, T-shirts... But we'll make here somethin special too. Just to bee sure that we'll make money from it.

#SECOND - Not my idea...

We sign an agreement with CBS or some other big network for one 30-second spot in the 2010 Super Bowl for $3 million. This should be relatively easy as there was not much competition for the 2009 spots.
Subdivide your 30 second ad into 300 .1 second slots and sell each one for $16,667 to gross $5 million. Given the struggling economy and the cachet of having an ad during the Super Bowl, it should be relatively easy to find 300 companies willing to spend less than $20k to be associated with the biggest advertising event of the year.
Develop and execute a PR campaign to promote the ad’s concept and the 300 buyers of this ad. If Windell Middlebrooks (the Miller delivery guy) can parlay his one second ad into a Tonight Show appearance, I would expect a similar reception for this campaign.
Develop and promote a contest affiliated with the ad where the winner will receive $500,000. (something like Push, Nevada.) To maximize the value of this ad, the 300 companies will place clues to the contest somewhere on their websites. Contestants will need to visit these websites to collect the clues prior to the Super Bowl.Then create the 30-second ad that displays all 300 company names / logos. This will require some finesse to avoid a mass seizure attack across America that could occur with 300 brief flashes of various logos. Embed the key to solving the puzzle in the 30-second commercial. Air the ad, declare the winner, and pocket $1m for our efforts.

Sell 300 ads for $16,667 each to gross $5m.
Buy a 30 second ad for $3m.
Spend $500k on creating the ad, marketing, and legal fees.
Give $500k to the winner of the contest.
We'll keep the remaining $1.000.000.


That is $2.000.000 in 15 months.


Other ideas to boost-up money income: Millionaires Club event with unique theme sponsored by sponsors who want millionaires; Dropshiping online stores; Poker or Baccarat tournament for big players in some exotic place (Croatian Islands); Roulette Martingale system:smx8:..............

And I forgot the easiest way - LAW OF ATTRACTION - Just imagine that You have $1m and You'll atract $1m.

 

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[JayKim]

bumped

 

[AMG Guy]

This is a great thread! Just proves to me there are people out there that think like me