Copy This Idea

1

The First Million

"I absolutely knew this was what I had been looking for."

When I was asked to write this book, I remember my publisher saying to me - 'You're nothing special, yet you've made all this money!'

And she was right. I'm nothing special. I'm not some glitzy TV business guru or someone whose face you see every other day in the papers. I'm nothing special - I'm just an ordinary bloke who keeps himself to himself . who left school with four GCSEs - including woodwork and drawing. I'm not an expert on the world of business and you certainly won't find me at one of those awful business networking events.

No, I'm just an ordinary bloke who was bored with his full-time job, the commuting in traffic, the bosses I hated and the 'just getting by each month', and stumbled upon a great way for someone with no business qualifications and no experience, to start and run a business in his spare room at home . and banked well over £50 million!!

It's a far cry from where I came from and what I grew up with. I was born and raised in a one-bedroom caravan by my parents, who could best be described as 'potless' for most of their lives.

They spent their adulthood scraping a living together in a little hardware store they ran at the bottom of the town. I went to school on the local council estate and never did very well. My Dad wanted me to go into the family business - so I was packed off to the local technical college when I left school, to learn about business. But I was a failure. I remember the look of absolute bewilderment on the face of the lecturer who used to teach us accountancy. Seems I was the only person ever to fail the accountancy exam. What made it a real kick in the teeth, as far as he was concerned, was that HE wrote the exam paper - HE told us what to revise . and yet I STILL failed!! He was beside himself. It wasn't my fault. I simply didn't understand what the rows of figures on a balance sheet meant. In fact, I still don't - even now!

"I buy something for £5 and sell it for £50 . I buy something for £50 and sell it for almost £2000"

I understand that if I buy something for £5 and sell it for £50 - or I buy something for £50 and sell it for almost £2000 (which I do all the time in my business) - there's a nice chunk of profit in there. (In this book I'll show you the money-making system I use - and how you can copy my way of making these huge profits for yourself if you wish.)

But when my accountant calls in to go through my annual accounts and starts banging on about accruals and cash movements, I just glaze over. (My last accountant, by the way, went out of business. A quick word of caution: never take advice on business from an accountant. Accountants keep the score - many of them actually don't know how to play the game!)

I honestly don't understand accounts and, despite what they teach you in business books, you don't have to understand them either. To be successful in business, you do not need a deep understanding of how to manipulate numbers. You simply need to find someone who has a great way of making money . do all you can to learn what he or she does . and see if you are able to copy what they do for yourself.

Now I'm not talking about wholesale ripping off of somebody's products and selling pirate copies. That's simply illegal. However, in this book I'll share with you a system that I use (and that many of my successful students use too) to make a lot of money without working full time, without running a large corporate-style business, and without having to know the intricacies of accounts.

Back to the story - so we can get on .

Having never amounted to much at school, I drifted from one dead-end job to the next: working in a shop (following in Father's footsteps, I guess); as a trainee estate agent; selling caravans and mobile homes; and even dragging a huge suitcase of soft toys and dolls around, in my job as a rep for a toy manufacturer.

I eventually settled in the housebuilding industry and worked my way up, from a trainee to a decent job with a company car.

But, as I moved up the ladder, the more I grew to hate my job. I hated the daily commute (often two to three hours a day sat on motorways breathing in the fumes) . I hated a lot of the tasks I was given to do . and I didn't particularly like some of the people I worked for. Yet I stuck with it, completely trapped by the 'system'. You know, the thing we have all been brought up to believe in: you get a good job, you strive for promotion, you move up the ladder . and it's not just work. You move up the property ladder too - you take on a large mortgage so you have a nice house, you load up the credit card with debts for the things you think you need. Then, you wake up one day and find yourself on some sort of treadmill - working all month just to pay the bills - and then you go back and do the same thing again, month after month!

"I always had a gut feeling that someone somewhere knew a better way to live - a better way to earn money."

All the time I was working for someone else - I always had a gut feeling that someone somewhere knew a better way to live - a better way to earn money so that they had more freedom, more time to themselves, more time for what's important in life. I used to dream about not being rudely awoken by the alarm clock every morning, about not having to drive for hours and, most of all, about having enough money so I could pay off my debts and have my freedom.

For years I searched for that alternative. I answered some of those ads you see in the papers - the get-rich-quick schemes - promising the earth and then never delivering. I looked at all the existing businesses for sale in the papers too. But most of them were for sale because the owner wanted to unload his failing business onto someone else. In most cases I found that the businesses were actually making the owner less than I was earning as a salary - yet they wanted tens of thousands of pounds (hundreds of thousands in some cases) for me to purchase what amounted to a lower-paid job!

I looked at franchises - where you put down a load of money and buy into a business model that is proven. But - apart from the fact that I had little or no money to invest in a business - I really wasn't attracted to the types of business these franchise companies were offering: mobile dog washing, mobile wheelie bin cleaning, carpet cleaning or running a doughnut shop or burger joint. It just wasn't what I wanted out of life.

But I knew in my gut that the answer was out there somewhere. I just needed to find it.

Just at the point where I had really had enough - I was so desperately unhappy with my life - almost out of the blue I received an invitation to go to a three-day seminar, the topic of which was 'making money'. Now, this seminar wasn't just down the road - it was around 5000 miles away in Nevada, USA. Problem was, I received the invitation on a Saturday and the seminar was in just three days' time, on the following Tuesday. There was no way I could go . no way I could take a week off work at short notice and fly halfway across the world, particularly based on an email invitation to something that could turn out to be of little use.

That night I couldn't sleep. Again, some gut instinct told me that this was important; that this was something I had to do; that the seminar would introduce me to something I needed to fulfil my dream.

So, on the Sunday morning, I called my boss at home (very much frowned upon - no one ever did that!). I think I got him out of bed. I told him I had been invited to go to the States at short notice and, after a bit of discussion, my boss actually agreed that I could go. I couldn't believe it.

So, 48 hours later, I found myself, extremely jetlagged and shaken, sitting in a conference room on the other side of the world as the first speaker was introduced up onto the stage.

If I recall correctly, the subject of his talk was 'How to make $30,000 a month working from home'. I scribbled furiously in the hardback notebook that I'd bought that morning in the local drugstore - jotting down every single little idea I could, whilst the guy on stage talked. I drew little light bulbs by the side of things that particularly got my attention. I can tell you - that notebook, which I still have 15 years later, is crammed full of light-bulb doodles.

This guy on stage wasn't what I expected - he wasn't some glitzy, huge white smile and slick haircut, all-American 'Make Money Doin' Nothin' Guru' trying to sell us anything. There was no hype to him - he was...