In my last posting, I said it was possible to improvise someone else’s business and turn it into your own and start making money. I have also talked about how someone can turn simple ideas they have in mind into a money making opportunities.

Now, I like to share with you some real-life stories of ordinary people who tapped on other people’s business or simple ideas they have and turn them into money-spinning businesses :

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I’m sure everybody knows about the McDonalds fast food restaurant. Do you know the history behind it ? Here goes – the present chairman, Ray Kroc, was not the creator of the famous McDonalds restaurant. The very first McDonalds restaurant was created by Dick and Mac McDonald in a very small shop in California. The McDonalds restaurant sold very high quality burgers at a very cheap price.

However, the McDonald brothers did not see the potential of the restaurant and it was bought over by Ray Kroc, who saw the potential of this business, for only $2.7million.

He franchised the business worldwide, and within a short period of 6 years, there were about 20,000 franchised outlets worldwide, earning Ray Kroc millions of dollars in royalties !

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Many of us thought that the very first Operating System, the Microsoft DOS (Disk Operating System), was created by Bill Gates (the founder of Microsoft). The truth is that Bill Gates did not create Microsoft DOS, but he purchased the Operating System called “QDOS” (what MS-DOS was based on) from Seattle Computer Products for a mere sum of $50,000. He then generated billions of dollars in revenue by licensing non-exclusive rights of the software to IBM and their clone manufacturers.

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The “Chicken Soup” inspirational books you see in bookshops are not written by Jack Canfield and Mark Hansen. The stories in those inspirational books were written by hundreds of contributing writers. What Jack Canfield and Mark Hansen did was to compile the stories into “Chicken Soup” books, and guess what ? It managed to fetch them over $160 million by publishing and selling these books worldwide !

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Richard Branson found this business by chance when he was vacationing in Beef Island (part of Virgin Islands) with his wife. He and his wife were stranded in the airport when the local Puerto Rican flight got cancelled.

When caught up in situations like this, most people will either hang around the airport waiting for things to happen or lodge complaints with the authorities. Richard Branson, unlike most people, saw this problem as an opportunity.

What he did was that he made calls to aircraft charter companies and managed to charter a private plane for $2,000. He also borrowed a blackboard and wrote the following – “Virgin Airways $39 Single Flight to Puerto Rico”, offering flights to other passengers who were also stranded at the airport. He managed to sell EVERY SINGLE seat within an hour, and even managed to make a profit from offering the flight ! Amazing isn’t it ?

When he got back, the thought about the comments of one happy passenger who said “Virgin Airways isn’t too bad – smarten up the service a little and you could be in business.”

This marked the birth of Virgin Airways and today, it is a global budget airline and one of the most profitable in the world !

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After reading these stories, it only made me realise one thing, and that is, it is POSSIBLE for EVERYONE to be rich - only if you believe you CAN.

Please stay tuned and continue to check back on my blog as I'll be uploading articles on how YOU can make money on the Internet.

Cheers
Jun Yuan