How to Build a Billion Dollar Company from Scratch

I recently read the book how to Build a Billion Dollar company from scratch by Harry Figgie. Harry built a $1.3 billion company over a 30 year period by buying struggling companies and turning them around before combining them with other companies he owned to create a conglomerate known as figgie international. The book talks about a lot of the great ideas for how a person can build a very large company in today's economy with a strategy of growth through acquisitions.



Harry bought a $23 million dollar company in the mid 1960s for $7 million. He raised money from banks and personal contacts to cover the purchase price. The company was in tough financial shape and barely breaking even when he took over. He looked at the places on the balance sheet where they were spending the most amount of money, materials and administration costs and figured out what the best way to reduce those costs was. He was able to triple his net income by reducing his basic costs. (Every penny you save after break even or better becomes a penny of profit)

The most interesting thing in the entire book might be the idea that it is easier to get to a billion dollars if you start with a $20 million company then if you start from scratch. if you can buy a company whether it is by yourself or with others you have a better chance of building an empire that last a life time.

If you are looking for ideas on how to become a expand your business or find a way you join the ranks for the wealthy elite reading this book is a good idea. and it is also short interesting and easy to read.

search engine optimization

Since mid november I have been on a very long and drawn out process of hiring an SEO company to make our e-commerce site more search engine friendly after taking a strong look at our site we found that there was alot of things that we had done poorly and that we could increase new leads, grow our revenue and hopefully reduce the amount of money we were throwing at google adwords. over $300,000 a year.

Paid ads were accounting for almost 71 percent of our traffic out of 11,437 visits in the last 30 days.

Since december 2nd I have been writting Meta tag descriptions for all 3 thousand products we sell and along the way i have found 442 parts that descriptions that just didn't do the products any justice. all of that has now changed. for the better and constant improvements will be made in order to reach our goal of building a large presence on the internet.

on a side note hello to all of my readers in pelotas Brazil.

The government help

The government has decided to help out people that spent money stupidly and bought houses they could not afford. This just rewards people for their poor choices and those who didn't make this mistake will end up paying for it!

Make your savings work for you

Yahoo finance has an article from last week that talks about how to get a higher rate on your savings then you get from your local bank. Some interesting tidbits from the article are. The current average interest rate for banks is far below half a percentage point a year. There are online banks out there that will give you 1.40% interest rate. Thats the equivalent of getting 3 times as much interest on your money each month which will continue to compound while you sit on it.

They also suggest reward checking accounts and using a 5 year CD. but if your looking to store liquid cash who cares how much money you will make if you lock the money in for the next 5 years. That option doesn't make sense when you can invest that money in other ways over the next 5 years and make more then 2.37%

I cant seem to post the link to the article but it is called 4 safe ways to earn more tinterest

Joint Ventures

A joint venture with another company can create value for both of the parties involved. Why is it when people approach me about teaming up they always seem to be the one that gets all of the value out of it. Why would I take 25 percent of the profits from a joint venture that uses my labor hours and overhead when all you provide is managing the website. Any time my employee is working on our joint venture instead of my main business means that the other person is borrowing that employee at no cost. well at least that was the Idea of the last women who wanted to team up.

contribution to overhead and labor should always be figured in when you are negotiating a deal. offering a potential partner a small piece of the total profit but then expecting the costs of the business to be covered in that small portion is a good way to ensure that you won't be doing business with that person.

google analytics

I have been using Google's free analytics software for a few months now on my businesses website and I have to say it has changed my perception on the value of the internet. I had no idea that nearly 20% of my web traffic comes from outside the united states. Yet on my website I only tell people about shipping options for the U.S. and Canada. how much business am I missing out on because There are no international shipping options listed on the website. Today that changes. Now When some one in London wants to place an order they can see instructions on how to do that. We will let people know ahead of time that any order that is shipped out of the country must have a wire transfer. No Credit card. i don't want any nigerian fraudsters stealing from me.

The world is huge I wanna sell to all of its people.

lottery pool of the future

What if you could build an online lottery pool where people payed $20 to join in a pool of 1o people that will only play the lottery when the pot gets to over a certain level say $90 million dollars.
A person would have 200 chances to win a 1/10th share of a prize worth at least 2.8 million and it goes up every time there is a winner. its the "set it! and forget it!" of get lucky with the lottery. its a way for people to increase there odds at winning without having to shell out alot of money for one lottery.

Also if a person didn't have the luxury of co workers or friends that wanted to play then they would have to play there own money every time. This way they get 10 tickets to 20 different big games = 200 chances for atleast 2.88 million dollars. and you gain $32,000 more after taxes for each additional million over 90 million. the lottery typically grows by 20 million each time there is no winner after 90 million. thats $680,000 each time for you!!