"All you can do after a failure is get up and try again. If you keep doing that, one of two things will happen -- either you will succeed eventually, or you will die. And if you die, then you won't care anymore."
The easiest way is to simply find a way to make one dollar (anyone can make one lousy dollar), find a way to automate that (hire people, code something, yadda), and repeat a million times (assuming the original process is scalable).
That sounds far from simple and totally ineffective. Finding a way to make $1 that scales to that extent is non-trivial, in fact it is probably harder than opening a successful restaurant.
Hiring people is out unless it could be repeated quickly (they charge an hourly rate that you have to fade) and if that's true, the minute you show someone how to do it they'll cut you out. Unless there is a barrier to entry, which generally means cost, in which case you probably already have a million dollars.
None of those steps are actually 'non-trivial'. My statement was meant to be sort of tongue-in-cheek. It's a true statement. It's also a gross over simplification.
This method has worked for me in the past, especially on the internet. Outside the internet however it's virtually impossible due to fundamental market restrictions.
It's not the retrospective assessment of a business that's important here but the motivation that sets it in motion in the first place. Take a company like Facebook: those guys are really serious--almost evangelical--about the goal of making the world more connected; they also happen to be cornering a Google-size market in the process. Or think back to Microsoft before hating on them became so vogue: they had a mission to put a PC in every household which is a pretty admirable goal; it also happened to be the case that it was a damn good business move.
Agreed, just pointing out that almost any business can be started to fulfill one of the goals you pointed out, especially useful and memorable, from a corner store to a trash collection company to a collections agency. It's useful to someone :)
It was thin, but the one gem that you don't hear very often is to approach being an employee as a way to learn how to successfully run a business, rather than a way to get a paycheck. Sound advice for entrepreneurs who, for whatever reason, can't yet take the plunge.
Yes it was thin, but it was pitched at college kids who may not have heard it before. Many of us got way past college before we read any of this stuff, regrettably.
Most people know about the "work hard" part, but they try it within the system as employees. They somehow trust the system to reward them, if only they work hard enough. I think that is a part where education is still necessary, because I don't think the system really works for you.
You say "Steve, how can I be a millionaire and never pay taxes?" First, get a million dollars. Now you say "Steve, what do I say to the tax man when he comes to my door and says, 'You have never paid taxes'?"
Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: "I forgot."
I remember back in grade school when I asked my Mom what the penalty for not paying taxes was "Do they take you to jail or something?", and this simple fact dawned on me and me mother simultaneously.
Say I'm a college student with $70,000 available at this very moment with a networth of around $150,000, with zero debt.
How would you turn it into a million? Hypothetically speaking.
If I had a million dollars I think I would hire a graphic designer to craft me a presentation template that did not look like it came from the ass of PowerPoint, ca. 1998.
sure it's easy to create a business, but that just means there is more competition. For every Walmart, there were thousands of mom and pop stores that crashed and burned.
"All you can do after a failure is get up and try again. If you keep doing that, one of two things will happen -- either you will succeed eventually, or you will die. And if you die, then you won't care anymore."