The Ten Roads to Riches: The Ways the Wealthy Got There (And How You Can Too!)

Start

small-

think huge.

41The

Ten

Roads to Riches

who cracks the scalability issue and figures how to create a huge dry

cleaning chain

-so

rt of the Sam Walton of dry cleanin g.

Taco stands are tiny like dry cleaners.

Easy entry to

o-

just tortillas and a cart- but

massively scalable. You wouldn't pull off the

highway to visit your favorite dry cleaner,

but

you would to grab lunch at your favorite

taco j

oint

. For example, Chipotle was a tiny regional

burrit

o j

oint

in Denver. McDo nald's invested and Chipotle went nati onal, then

public in 2006.

The

y did this by focusing on scalability and taking

every advantage they could from centralized buying, mass advertis-

ing, and, yes, technology. T iny

int

o huge.

NEWER

OR

BETTER?

Next question.

Entr

epr

en

eur

s change the world two basic ways:

Creating something entirely new

-filling

a product or service

hol

e-

or making existing products b

ett

er, more efficie

nt

.

Which

is

for you?

The

entirely new crowd is like Bill

Gates

and Apple C

EO

Steve

Jobs

(

net

worth $5.7 billionj.'

Or

Will

Keith

Kellogg-

creator of corn flakes and the cold breakfast cereal genre . Or

John

Deere

, an ironsmith who inv

ent

ed the steel plow and one of

America's oldest firms. Entirely new!

Y

our

initial m

ot

ivation can be m

or

e personal

-m

aybe

changing a small slice of your world.

Th

at can pay big.

My

friend

Mike Wood was an

int

ellectu al

property

lawyer frustrated by

the lack of good electronic games to help his son learn

phon-

ics. Inspired ...