How I Bought a Bar at 20 With No Money (Resourcefulness)

Welcome to the Paul Vette podcast. I'm not going to talk about how it should be done, but especially about who you need to be. I challenge you to become the owner of your true identity. Time for your breakthrough and enjoyment in your business. As an entrepreneur, you never have a shortage of resources. It's always about a shortage of resourcefulness. That's it. When I was 20 years old, I got the chance to take over a pub, so to buy a business. At that moment I thought, okay, it's nice that I have that chance, but how much does that cost? How much do you want from me so I can buy the pub, so I can take over your business? He mentioned the amount and I thought, expletive, I don't have that, I just don't have it. But I did think, I don't have it. But how then? How then? And that little sentence is truly worth its weight in gold. How can it work? How though? How else? To tickle your brain like that, that works fantastically. Because I was 20 anyway, so I not only thought 'okay, do I want this' but also 'can I do this' and within that 'can I do this' there are of course also nuances of do I not want this. Wanting is yes or no. Not a maybe because a maybe is a no. Unless you say okay, only when certain conditions are met. But watch out, the maybe is often prompted by doubt about your own ability. So then you're already thinking about the how. So you could say yes, maybe I want that if I can afford it. But you should never do that. You should say yes, I want it and I'm going to figure out how. That's it. That's it. Because I asked myself okay, I'm 20 years old, do I want this and can I do this? I thought do I want this? Yes, 100 percent. I was already the manager there anyway. I knew the business. I already ran the business myself. I already managed the team. I already arranged everything. The owner was increasingly often absent rather than present. So I thought do I want this? Yes. Can I do this? And the first thing I thought was yes, but not alone. So I had already figured that out. Okay, then I need to find a partner, find a partner right away. Okay, well then you know okay, I want this. I need a partner, apart from the money even. Because I thought I can't do this alone. With a partner I can always arrange more money. Maybe the partner I find has money, the financial resources or whatever. Within a few days I was at an afterparty after I had played somewhere, talking with also a manager of a pub. And actually we got along well together about the ideas we had, where we wanted to go. So we thought why not? Well, the next day, looking at it soberly in daylight, I also took him to the place. He thought it was a different place. That was funny. He thought it was next door. It was smaller than he had thought. But anyway, we said okay, shake on it, we're going to do this. And I asked him do you have a bag of money? Him: No, not really. Okay, then we need to find another way. But how then, to make that happen. Eventually there are always resources to get some money. Nowadays there are resources to get a lot of money, in all kinds of ways of course, depending on the business case. And we knew okay, we can also make an arrangement with the owner. So what did we do then? We created a loan. We made sure we could immediately give a bag of money to the current owner. Here you go. And after that we had the deal to, I don't remember exactly anymore, it's really a long time ago. I was 20, now I'm slightly older. More than half that age. More than twice as old I should say. Painful. And then we said I think okay, in 6 months' time we'll pay off a portion each month. And that's how we arrived at that possibility, but how then to, at least for me at age twenty, I was still alone, to say okay I'm buying that business, I'm buying that pub. And I managed it at that time. And that had nothing to do with the resources, it had everything to do with arranging the resources. And arranging the resources, that's resourcefulness. And you can activate resourcefulness very well. You can anyway nowadays with some LLM, ChatGPT, GROK, Claude, Gemini. I'm probably forgetting one if it's your favorite, sorry. But you can also brainstorm with those to train your resourcefulness. I wouldn't necessarily, you can also ask the LLM that. What are the possibilities? That's of course also possible and there can certainly be a good possibility in there. It works even better I think myself to ask the LLM, hey, tickle my brain so that my resourcefulness kicks in. Because it's something that's trainable and it's super valuable. Not only for that one problem you happen to be facing now, but also for all other problems, challenges you'll face. Because the moment you become more resourceful, then you can ultimately achieve much more with AI because you're already adding resourcefulness to the conversation with the LLM. And AI is then just even better. But it also ensures that you keep thinking yourself and that you keep seeing and creating opportunities and possibilities for yourself and your business. And in this rapidly changing market, that's really a key to keep playing, to stay in the game. Because we all know at the moment if you stagnate in this time, then in a few years you're just finished. 100 percent. You have to change, you have to grow. If you're not growing then you're dying off. It's that simple. So I really want to ask you to regularly ask yourself the question but how then, how else. The moment you do that and you just really keep doing it for 20 minutes, then you also reach a deeper part of your brain, your more unconscious part. And that's many times more brilliant. 200,000 times as strong as your conscious brain. So your conscious, your ego is often connected to that which thinks I already know a solution. But please take a little longer for it, because the solution you think of then is just so much more brilliant. It doesn't even mean that the solution is different, but it comes out of your system differently because there's just much more weight to it. That's really really super valuable. So from now on when you think about a problem and you think it's not possible, how then, I can't do it, then start tickling your brain with but how then and how else? What else is possible and what else? But how then? And if you keep repeating that in your system, I don't keep saying but how then, how else to you for nothing. If you keep repeating that in your system, then that also becomes automatic. Then you become more resourceful and then you can create other things in your business. Because how I also see it is, and it's just a, I don't even know if I may call it a law, but in nature it's the same. Chaos offers many more opportunities than order. The moment there's no resourcefulness or little resourcefulness in your brain, then there's little chaos, there's a lot of order. But chaos offers a lot of opportunities. I jokingly sometimes share a photo just before I go to the barber. Then I also push my beard all the way up nicely. I really push it up firmly and then you just see okay, that's quite chaotic. And after that I come back from the barber and then my beard is neat and then there's order again. But the beard I have then is of a greater order than before I let that chaos grow. So the moment you would trim it every day, completely meticulous, keep it completely ordered, exactly as it is. Yes, then you'll never get a beard of a greater order. That also applies to your business and life. The moment you keep everything ordered within the structure that exists now, then you fix everything. Then it never grows. Chaos can never arise from which that greater order becomes visible. Eventually you grow a beard like that, because the moment you just maintain it, just shave smooth I also did once. Real bare bottom face I had then. When I did that every day, yes then no beard grows. It doesn't happen. No, and especially in the beginning it starts to tickle and itch a bit and such. That's not pleasant at all. But within 2 weeks you're past that already. And yes, then in the beginning it also just doesn't look good at all. That just really takes months or years. And sometimes it just gets bigger and then it's chaos. And then you trim it again and then it's just a greater order again and then it becomes chaos again. But that chaos can also be greater than the earlier chaos, because there's already a certain order underneath it. Do you kind of understand what I mean? So it goes in steps. And through that expansion, through that resourcefulness of your brain, it's really truly possible to make a leap in the order of magnitude of your business each time. So your revenue, profit, the impact you make, how you can be there for your customers, your loved ones, your community. That order keeps getting bigger, simply through your resourcefulness. So again, but how then, how else, what's all possible? Very relevant sentences to really continuously ask yourself when you have the feeling that you're stuck. And especially when you keep doing it for longer than 20 minutes. --- This transcript has been translated from Dutch.