Other Peoples Money

I figured out fairly young that the best way to make a lot of money was to have someone else give it to you. Ideally, lots of other people. I know that sounds simple and possibly even intuitive, but in reality I think it can all be boiled down to that.

Here I am going to show two ways of having people give you money. The basic premise is to provide more value than the money they give you. One way to provide value is to provide something for sale, the other is to provide a service. Finding some way to provide those things that is repeatable is the path to wealth.

The first way I want to discuss is selling something. One of the things I am passionate about is a card game called Magic: The Gathering. Now, I won’t go in depth on what Magic is, but here is a quick summary; Magic is a collectible card game and like most things collectible there is a secondary market for the cards. The cards are printed and sold to dealers and the dealers then sell the cards to players, and the players can sell their cards to each other and back to dealers as the the market and value of the cards fluctuates. So here is where my epiphany came from in regards to the cards. When the cards are first printed they are sold for a profit of about a dollar. So there isn’t a ton of profit in the cards with a single transaction, but when you have a thousand transactions the profit can add up quickly.

So all of that turns into having a lot of people give you a little bit of money in profit, and thus you have profits and wealth. As card dealers are a business they know that the should invest some of their money back into the business and repurchase stock and repeat the cycle. Again, this is not an article about Magic, so I won’t explore this any further.

In the realm of providing a service I want to talk about renting ou houses. People need a place to sleep, to have family dinners, and to hang their nick-nacks on the wall. Not everyone can own, or wants to own, property so real estate investors and landlords provide value in that regard. Make sure that the properties you own are safe and sound and people will pay you for the privelege of occupying and maintaining your property.

People will pay for the things they either need (in the case of housing) or that will entertain them (Magic, among other things). Figure out what people want or need and provide it to them. They will give you money. This works out in all aspects of business. Find a way to get other people to give you money and build a process where that is repeatable, reinvest some of your profits back into that process and you will do fine.

Until next time, take some action. Feel the fear and do it anyway.