“Those people that have seen my materials before, that have perhaps been to Bootcamp or have perhaps seen some of the Cash On Demand modules will know that I grew up in relative poverty. My father struggled for most of his life running a little hardware store in Winchester. As I’ve been preparing for this Bootcamp, I’ve been sort of looking back and we almost…..we seem to take for granted all the things that we have around us now.
And I’ve been trying to compare that back to when good old Dad was struggling to run his hardware shop, you know? I consider that we are so fortunate to have been at this particular time in man’s history.
Because back when dear old Dad was trying to make a living, if somebody came into his little hardware shop and wanted to buy the lawnmower in the window, it was a big item to purchase in one go. It wasn’t something you could just take the cash out of your pocket and buy. You had to get financing for it.
And to do that, he would have to give someone an HP loan form. And they would go off with this form, they’d fill it in, take it away, it would go back to the HP lender and it could take like a fortnight for the money to come through. So the customer says “I’d love that mower.” Dad puts it aside in his stockroom so he can’t sell it to anyone else while the HP company do their thing and sort out the money. If the guy gets turned down, a fortnight later Dad’s got to put it back in the shop window and try and sell it all over again.
There was a huge delay built into the process of selling something. These days of course, that’s all changed.
Customers in Cash On Demand type businesses… our customers can come along, they can make a decision and instantly we get paid. Customers are out there in those hungry groups like the groups I’ve just shown you, those customers are out there with the ability to buy your products straight away. Now of course the availability of credit and debit cards and that sort of thing has been abused as well.
Because let’s face it when we all grew up at school, they didn’t teach us the difference between good credit and bad credit, did they?
I’ve got a mate of mine, he’s got a very simple view on life. If he gets a bit of a downer, if he has a bad couple of months, his attitude is “Right I’m going to sod off and have a bloody good holiday, and stick it all on the credit card.” Or if running into the winter period, he gets a bit moody because you know it’s running into winter, “I’m going to have a bloody good Christmas!” And he sticks it all on the credit card. And he buys all these gifts and horrible nonsense that he sends to all his friends and relatives that they just put in the skip, you know? He sticks in all on the credit card and then in January wonders why he’s got all this debt.
Every year he has to have the latest car. I mean he’s a salesman’s dream, this bloke. I think they take him out to lunch and dinner. Because he goes in and whatever the poshest car is that they’ve put in the showroom, he says “I’ll have that one.” And he signs up the loan agreement and the minute he drives it off the forecourt, its worth far less than it was a second ago. So the value’s dropping and his interest on his loan is going up. That’s BAD credit.
And I talk to him about this stuff and I’m like “Why are you doing this? Why get yourself into all this debt?” Because he’s got a bloody big hole in his finances now because of all this accumulated debt. And he says “Well you were the same, you know before you got to be Mr Bigshot, you used to use credit cards.” I said “Absolutely but I trained myself to use it sensibly.”
Eleven years ago I was invited to go to a seminar. I used my credit card to pay for a plane fare and a seminar ticket to learn stuff. When the guy took me to one side and invited me to purchase some reprint licenses and products, I used my credit card to invest in my future. I consider that to be good credit because it’s investing in something which is likely to show a return.
I went to a seminar from a gentleman called Dan Kennedy who we’re very blessed to have with us this afternoon, speaking on stage here. I went to one of Dan’s seminars over in the States and I spent, I don’t know, it must have been something like $30,000 on a credit card on some materials that some of the speakers were offering. But that was an investment for me because I looked at it the other day, that $30,000 that I invested in materials has made me over £1,000,000. That’s a positive way to use a credit card.
So my mate, who’s having a bloody good Christmas, bloody good holiday and a brand new car – oh and all the flash clothes, he’s got to have all the latest clothes all the time, which are all out of date by the time he gets them home, he’s building up a big hole in his finances. I’m using, or was using ,credit in a very sensible way to invest in my future. They don’t teach us that stuff at school. They don’t know.
When my dad… if he sold the lawnmower, the bloke wants it delivered so poor old Dad’s got to run a van as well because he’s got to drive around Winchester delivering all this stuff.
So he’s got the overhead in his business, not only of running a shop but he’s also got this van he’s got to drive. These days, not a problem. If I want to send a package, a big package, over to the States, because somebody’s bought it, I phone FedEx, they pick it up and it can be there 24, 48, 36 hours later. We take this stuff for granted. It wasn’t available back in the 1950s, 60, 70s when my father was trying to struggle to run this business.
Back in Dad’s day, he sat in that shop for 25 years of his life, staring out of that front window waiting for the customers to come in, looking at the little terrace houses across the street, That was his view for the whole of his adult life, more or less. 25 years of his life, looking out of the bloody window, looking at the terraces.
Back then, they came up with the idea of a home computer. Right? This is what they thought…I mean this is only 50 years ago. 50 years ago the Rand corporation said, “We struck gold. We think this is what a computer will look like for the home.” Be nice in the lounge, wouldn’t it? Can you imagine having that? I mean if you had a home computer and I was standing up here telling you how to run a business from a computer, you’d have that in the lounge. You’d have to stay indoors. I mean you’d have all that buzzing, electrical stuff going on, your hair would be standing on end……
That’s back when my dad was struggling in business, that’s what they thought a home computer would look like. Today, we know, things are slightly different. I don’t have to have a great big room, full of all that hardware. This is my business. My laptop – that’s what I use to run my Cash On Demand business It’s getting a bit old and ropy now but it’s my friend. It travels with me everywhere I go. That is my business. And I can literally…when I’m ready… I was sitting in the hotel last night. I just open up the laptop, I turn it on and I do a few emails and do whatever I’ve got to do and I download the orders and then I go and have some fun. I’m not actually physically constrained to a room with a home computer.
My job this weekend…see my view is, what I’m going to teach you this weekend can change your world, okay? It can totally change your outlook on life. Running a Cash On Demand business can fundamentally change your world. And my job this weekend is to do just that. It is to change your outlook on the whole of the way we are doing business.
So let’s make a start…”
The above is an excerpt from the live presentation by Andrew Reynolds teaching his Cash on Demand students at the Entrepreneurs Bootcamp.