Using Other People's Money to Get Rich: Secrets, Techniques, and Strategies Investors Use Every Day Using OPM to Make Millions
If you are a true entrepreneur, just reading the title Using Other People s Money to Get Rich should get your juices flowing, your engine revving, and make your mouth water like there are steaks on the grill and cold beer in the fridge. I could go on all day about a title that good so good I wish I had written it myself. If you are new to the game of investing, let me break it down for you: Using other people s money is the only way to get rich  the only right way, that is. Sure, you can bootstrap; you can roll pennies; you can save, scrimp, watch, go without, and suffer all the livelong day but that does not make it right or efficient. In business, there is nothing noble about suffering if you do not have enough money. I have counseled, worked with, and been a bootstrapping entrepreneur since I was 8 years old I learned at the foot of the master, my dad and I can tell you I was struggling to start a business, going without a salary, barely (or not) making ends meet, and wondering when something is going to break through the dark clouds, when someone finally pointed it out to me: You are doing it all wrong. I had reached a point in my business when I simply could not go it alone anymore. I could not expand without fresh, outside capital my cash flow would not be enough. I needed other people s money. First of all, my No. 1 mistake was that I did not take a salary for myself. Do not ever deny yourself a salary. You are not being noble or showing some good faith with this gesture unless you are already financially free, which is when your passive income beats your bills each month without needing to draw a salary from the new business. However, if the most you have ever made in your life is $120,000, and suddenly this job gives you a $300,000 salary, you will not make it past the first potential investor. But smart and ethical investors do not want to see you hurting for a living while you are turning their risk capital into more capital for them. They want you focused on the business at hand, and not focused on how to make rent or the car payment, whilst you burn through their cash for your business. My second mistake: I did not ask for enough money (initially) for working capital. I whittled down the projected expenses and cost of goods sold (COGS) to almost nothing, thinking that if we cut here and there and do not use a napkin for every lunch, we might make it work. I painted an unrealistic scenario in potential investors minds, namely that everything is going to go right, immediately. Thirdly, I showed cash flow too soon. While I knew we could be cash-flow positive in three months, my investment banker friend said, Make it six just in case. Again, thanks to his advice, I wrote the plan that got funded, not the plan of my best-case scenario in business. But my biggest mistake, one I made out of ignorance and vow never to make again, was that I did not start my business with other people s money. As good as the title of this book, it is the content inside the covers that sets it apart. Using Other People s Money to Get Rich: Secrets, Techniques, and Strategies Investors Use Every Day Using OPM to Make Millions is excellent from start to finish. I daresay it is the complete and only guide you will ever need at least until a new form of OPM is invented to get rich in business. I mean that literally. Every which way to get funded in business is in this book. I read it. I loved it. I wish I had it years ago. I will give you one piece of advice that is very hard for an entrepreneur to hear, let alone do: Whatever you read in this book, just do it. Just do it like she wrote it and you will get your money, and you will have your business, and you will be happy you did. And you can thank her (and me) later. --Anthony Migyanka