Rule of Wealth: Results make you rich.
To get a result, you need to solve a problem by creating a solution.
Practical Example
An expert on canine control will need to be able to demonstrate skills by controlling a dog. This will involve finding a rabid deranged brute and turning it into a well behaved and impeccably mannered pet.
Remember – the more extreme the subject, the better the result. The better the result? The more money you make.
Find two very similar looking dogs. The first dog should be the perfect pet, the second dog should be completely insane. To take your expertise to extremes, starve the second dog for at least 3 days before filming and pamper the first dog by feeding it lots of sausages and Indian takeaways.
Film the insane dog attacking a car or the postman.
Film the docile dog fetching the paper from the newsagents.
Put the films together and you have evidence of your canine control expertise.
On my own journey along Success Road, imparting my Fountain of Wisdom, Barry Leffat was the evidence of my expertise in practice. Barry needed to lose weight dramatically so that I could use this as evidence that the ‘Fatman’s Guide to Not Being Fat’ worked.
I made an effort to get Barry as overweight as possible (see the dog example above). If you have ever been on a diet before, you will know that there are always pictures of miserable looking overweight people on the left hand side of any promotional material, and slim, laughing people on the right hand side.
We needed to ensure that when the left hand side picture was taken, Barry was sufficiently miserable and overweight.
It is important to make sure that your ‘before’ evidence is really, really bad.
Practical Example
If you become an expert in oil removal from driveways, get hold of some well-used diesel oil. Pour the oil across your driveway. Then, using your expertise, remove it.
Don’t forget to make sure that you have some expertise in diesel oil removal from driveways before pouring the oil onto the driveway.
Plan of Action
Now that your book is well on the way to completion, you need to be thinking about the next steps on your journey along Success Road.
A template for making your ‘next step’ plans is below.
Plan of Action
Marketing:
Issue press release to a local newspaper with a picture of Barry looking depressed, lamenting the lack of support for overweight Welsh people opening a business.
Go down to local Business Link (government business support service) and ask for support with the marketing.
Administrative
Apply for a government grant to pay Barry’s bar tab and kebab house bill. Grounds? Start up business, providing employment in rural locations.
Financial Budget for the week commencing 9th October
- Investment required for Barry’s bar tab: £200
- Investment required for the Kebab House: £150
- Cash to be loaned from Child No.1’s piggy bank and trust fund: £350
Managerial
Start thinking about film locations for promotional material, product advertorials.
Obtaining and Collating Evidence
Continue fattening up Barry. Plan the photography and video footage.
Targets
- Finish writing the book
Sit down and write the book. Aim to finish it completely by the end of the week.
Try to be conscious of other people’s needs. Depending on your expertise, your guinea pig may already be showing signs of positive or negative change. Try to be conscious of other people’s needs.
You also need to be aware of the guinea pig’s own needs and requirements. Keep records of the changes happening to your guinea pig. It will help you later when you are writing your expert advice.
For example:
Observational Notes
Barry is quite happy about the way things are going. He complained that the kebab shop has run out of decent meat and the kebabs taste revolting. I pointed out to him that the kebabs are not supposed to taste nice and he has never eaten 23 in two days before…. I suspect Barry’s taste buds have been affected by the kebabs, but I am not a medical man.
Keith David is a businessman from a small village in North Wales. He is the author of “The Fat Man’s Guide to Not Being Fat”, “How to Get Rich” and a couple of other self-help books. Best known for his dramatic rise to fame after inventing a dietary plan to lose 7 stone in a week, he is similarly fairly well known for his subsequent fall back into penury. His wife, Anwen David regularly hacks his blog entries and adds factual corrections. You can read Keith’s book on How To Get Rich by visiting Amazon here
I am not sure Barry really knew what he was letting himself in for. By now I suspect he had forgotten all about his agreement to lose weight and was simply enjoying the free beer and kebabs.
Keith’s evidence of his expertise was a picture of Barry stood at a bar, dressed in a pair of floral Y fronts and his socks, holding a pint of warm beer. Keith had deliberately asked Arthur to warm up a pint of beer in the microwave to get the required miserable look from Barry.
Having occasionally supped beer in The Lump, I can confidently state that the beer is always warm and I am not sure that heating it up in the microwave would have made much difference. Arthur the Landlord once won an award for being the most Miserable Landlord in North Wales, but he is better known in the village for being the tightest one as well. It is said that he keeps his money under his mattress and has to sleep on the top bunk.
The Lump is always very quiet at 10.30pm on a Sunday and Arthur the Landlord let Keith use the bar for the photo shoot. A couple of tourists stopping at Sid the Vicious’ bed & breakfast got a little bit more than they bargained for when they decided to go for a quiet drink in the local village pub. They swiftly departed.
I took the pictures of Barry, mainly because it gave me an excuse to book a babysitter and go for a drink in The Lump with Keith. The images were definitely impressive. Barry’s stomach seemed to stretch from his chest down to his knees, covering everything in the middle. He did not seem to mind standing in the bar wearing hardly anything. I had to remind him to get dressed.
This part of the programme was not the hard bit for Barry. All he had to do was eat lots of kebabs and drink plenty of beer.
Keith is the only person in the UK to be barred from his local Business Link. A serial offender for attempting to appropriate government funds for ridiculous reasons, they have a photograph of him behind reception.
Keith had never written a book before. He was never going to be able to spend a week writing a book and at the same time help to run a café, (very) occasionally help with child care, visit the pub, play squash and complete his weekly round of golf with Dr Williams.
If I had known at the time about the loan from the children’s pocket money Keith would have been in almighty trouble. I usually agree to £200 expenditure on each entrepreneurial project. This is an absolute maximum. £200 equates to 8 weeks of grocery shopping for our family. After all, as my mother once said, look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves.
The Expert Plan began to have massive implications for the village of Llandaffr DH. Barry went doolally (if there is such a word). Unsurprisingly the extract from the Hot Pad below did not appear in Keith’s How to Get Rich manuscript…
Keiths’ Hot Pad
9th October
Meeting with Arthur the Landlord re: Barry
Discussion centred on Arthur’s concerns about Barry, his weight and his drinking. Firstly Arthur thanked me for supporting the pub through my Expert plan.
Arthur explained that Barry has been hiding in bushes outside The Lump. Every time a tourist goes past Barry yells something indecipherable about druids before showing them his bottom.
Arthur is concerned that one of the tourists could report Barry to the police for indecent exposure.
Arthur has set aside part of the bar for the experiment. As Barry is now more unwashed, unshaven and unkempt than he usually is, Arthur feels it is important that the programme does not impact on his efforts to run an important community enterprise (the pub). I reassured him that it would not be for much longer, and Barry would then be ready for the next step of the plan.
I did not mention that the next step of the plan involves Barry abstaining from alcohol for the rest of his life and will probably force the closure of the pub and the ruin of Arthur.
Keith cares about one thing. Getting rich.
Is he conscious of anything else going on about him? No.
Does he notice when his wife (me) is in need of love and affection? No.
Is there a caring side to him that thinks about the welfare of others before his own needs? No.
(I have just added this note after having a friendly discussion with Keith about the standard of my vegetable lasagne, described by Keith as “bowel churning”. It is possible I have allowed bias to creep into my commentary).
The following entry in the Hot Pad was not included in Keith’s manuscript:
The Hot Pad
10th October
I have told The Happy Sheep kebab house in our local market town of Mold that Barry has reported them to the Trading Standard officer for selling him a kebab with a dead mouse in it. That will keep Barry out of there for a while…
Barry has drunk 27 pints of beer in the last 3 days. His stomach now looks like a chimp’s bottom it is hanging so low. It reminds me a little of a water bomb with too much water in it, just before it explodes.
At this point in the proceedings, Keith was very excited. He talked constantly about being rich beyond our wildest dreams, and the money that was soon to flow into our bank account when he got Barry to lose weight. Keith was going to require a considerable amount of weight to be jettisoned by Barry at high speed in order to attract people to the Fatman weight loss diet.