How to Buy Whatever You Want
By leadership author and keynote speaker Ross Shafer
This week I want to encourage you to stop complaining that you don’t have any money – and that can’t get what you want. Hi everybody I’m Ross Shafer and I’m glad you found the Relevant Leaders Club where each week I post a new video to either boost your business or your career…and this week I want to encourage you to get whatever you want: cars, boats, homes, airplanes…whatever makes you sweaty, even though you think it’s probably impossible. Take my dad, Chuck Shafer. He was a humble man with big aspirations. We never had a lot of money but that didn’t stop my dad. He always had nice cars and boats because he would buy broken vehicles and fix them up. My dad loved airplanes but he couldn’t afford to buy his dream plane – which was a Pitts Special aerobatic biplane, which cost about $15,000 at the time, so he bought the plans and decided to build one in our garage. You can see here he chose to smoke near anything flammable. Anyway he taught himself how to weld aluminum, stretch fabric over the airframe, and rivet sheet metal. It took him three years but this is what the plane looked like when he was done and it was worth five times what it cost him to build it. He never let a lack of money stop him. He told my two brothers and me “You can fix anything as you have the owners manual or a blueprint.” So, I did what my dad taught me. I used my lawn mowing money to buy my first car for $25 dollars, a VW Karmann Ghia and I bought the owners manual. The rocker panels were rusted out so I cut coffee cans in half and riveted them to the bottom, then covered them with plastic Bondo and sold it for TWENTY TIMES what I paid for it to get my next car…a ‘65 Pontiac GTO. Again, I got the manual, made it perfect and sold it for almost double. I learned to do that with houses. My buddy Ron Reeves and I bought this one for $4,800 and sold for $17,500.
I’ve bought and sold businesses the same way; buying low and selling at a higher price is the most basic profit margin lesson in the world, yet still too many smart people get emotional about something shiny and pay way too much for it. Instead, Be smart and be patient. Buy cars that are “two years old” after the showroom depreciation has whacked 20% off the price. Buy homes that turn most people off because the kitchen has been painted orange or the yard has weeds two feet tall. Pulling weeds and a can of paint can put thousands of dollars in your pocket. Can you apply this to a career? Yes, take a job that nobody wants because (1) they usually pay twice as much and (2) most people don’t want to be inconvenienced to learn new things. You don’t have to spend a lot of cash to get what you want… just be willing to do what other people are too lazy to do. You don’t have to take a low paying job… just be wiling to do what other people think is beneath them. Just because THEY can’t do it…don’t let their small minds squash YOUR dreams. Never let anyone limit your aspirations.
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