Monday, June 2, 2008

Brainstorm--Letter to my friend

I'm writing this to share with you my ideas. I thought I should give you little more background before I bombard you with my ideas. Also read my other post 'Think BIG' which I wrote this afternoon. Again, don't be surprised by all these thoughts..they are not mine..I have been reading books and all of them are the wisdom I'm trying to attain from the existing market pundits.

Background: I don't want to work for someone for a paycheck anymore. I was infact so ignorant all these days that I wasted 10 years of my life starting from 1997. Ofcourse now that I'm motivated to get to the next level I'm able to process the information that comes my way faster and better. Two years ago I did not understand how the stock market works..actually it is not even 18 months since I started understaning stock market. And then on..my journey of knowledge acquisition and tough times in the economy and my company challenged me to think outside the box and here I'm trying to figure out when should I stop working and start living my life at my own terms.

I would really like to a master of money not a slave.

So, the more I think about it..it is all about the knowledge and power in the marketplace. There are plenty of opportunities all around us. Just that we should take a step forward. We are bound by this labor tradition of working for someone who pays us x$ to kill our creativity. We should put our subconcious brain to work for us.

Anyways..here are my various thoughts..they may seem little random and vague right now..but they give you the direction I'm thinking about if you agree with me.

First of all, we don't have to start anything big..we just have to start it and it becomes big if it has value for the customer.

There are so many businesse concepts coming up in India right now. For e.g. Waste Management. The other day I was reading about this guys who went back from US to India to start a waste management company, and I'm sure you understand the potential of such business and resources right infront of us.

Or
  • a Subway
  • a movie outlet(we have a movie rental kiosks here right across the street in the departmental stores, it is all automated and electronically paid..visit their website http://www.dvdplay.com/) imagine how many people would be willing to rent movies and enjoy DVD quality.
  • an online marketing promotions company (http://www.goimarketing.com/) which promotes awareness in local businesses about the power of online advertising. Read this blog http://www.sethgodin.com/ and check out his ideas on permission marketing. We can easily hire 10 young fresh college graduates to start any sort of technology venture.
  • Biofuel plants
Anyways..my point here is there is no dearth of ideas if we look around. We will get the money funding in various ways.

I'm a member of this website http://www.prosper.com/ which is peer to peer lending network. You can borrow 25000 $s with in days. I now lend money to people who are starting their businesses everyday. And I get returns like 12%-15% on my money which is even better than S&P 500 and index funds.

So, we can pair up and do lot of things. We can small start and then grow. We do all the homework while we are fully employed and when we have enough growth we quit our jobs.

Some more reasons:

Earned income is the highest taxed income all over the world. Do you know Warren Buffet pays less taxes than his secretary. He publicly stated that. You know why...all his money is in trust funds and it does not get taxed. Everybody knows that it is his wealth but no body can touch it. And he donated all of that to charity.

Passive income which is generated from your assets is the least interested.

You must be wondering..if we invest our money wisely then we should be fine. Nope, because you can't take leverage of others money(ie. Govt money) if you are working for someone else. And you keep paying higher taxes on your earned income(even if it is capital gains.Period)

So, the way we do that..is

acquire assets that pay you money and redirect those funds to acquire more assets and build your cash flow and assets at the same time.

Make use of Govt provided loans to the fullest and get all the tax credits they give for an entrepreneur. Get subsidized land, power, water everything you name it. Now you know..why rich get richer.

We end up getting caught in this labor tradition (this the term my new course uses to refer to 99% population..only 1% of the pouplation in the world owns 99% of the wealth. There are only 9 million Millionaries in this world whose net worth is more than 1 mil$ just in investable liguid assets and cash) with out realizing it's exploitation.

Ofcourse none of this comes to us easily. We have to fundamentally change our thinking process and the way our mind and boyd reacts to things and observes the world around us.

We need to fill an unmet need in the marketplace.
Provide true value.
Be ethical and trust worthy.
Smart and Agile and know how to take advantage of this information overload and process it and put it to best use.

We have to develop a network of people and professionals who can help us achieve our goals.

Ok..ra...I guess I'm writing too much..so let me change gears here.

So, Are you with me on this new found direction? Take your time..let me know what you think.

Here are the few things we can get started right away. These below items will be easier for you to find out than they are for me.
  1. What kind of a company registration will give us all the tax benefits and if possible land and stuff from the government.
  2. How long does it take now for us to register a company and the buerocracy involved?
  3. Try to develop a network of tax,legal and other professionals who can work with us.
  4. Consult a tax guy and find out how to start a company between both of us with my PAN Card details. And what sort of risks do we run into?
  5. How do we protect ourselves legally when we set up a business?
  6. What banks give us the loan with a solid business plan and at what interest rate?
  7. How much net worth do we need to produce to obtain a loan?

I would like to stop here for now.

1 comment:

Keshav said...

Hey Seenu,
As I said.... I see a change in the way you think... this is said to be the first stage in momentum to leap ahead. The next chapter as we go ahead is to come up with specifics of what is at our disposal and get into the details of what is feasible.

So in my opinion we should now come up with the ideas of best ideas to tap the most potential market which can be started with less investment in small scale.

some of the angles in which I am thinking is, obviously,

1. Waste management.
2. Home market segment ... to come up with the idea of providing services where no one is yet there. for eg. house plantation in small scale. Nursery of ayurvedic plants. We have people selling road side but not in an organized way with pros and cons of small plants.

Other thoughts....
Is there a way to install a small wind mill in our backyard / garden / terrace which can generate power as much as in can play the TV for few hrs. May be mechanical / electric engineer buddies can help us here.

that's it for now.....