So you want to grow your business through acquisitions?

Anyone who has built a company from the ground up understands that the initial high growth rate levels off quickly. At that point the entrepreneur has a choice between:

1) fighting the Law of Diminishing Returns to extract every last inch of growth from the existing company, or

2) adding growth through acquisitions of competitors and related companies to his strategy.

In the vast majority of cases, the first route provides far slower growth than the second. Moreover, most people go with the former simply because they don't have the skill set and confidence to employ an acquisitions strategy.

A study of how billionaires become billionaires shows that they employ the second route because it offers the possibility of 50% per annum growth rates, or better, over a prolonged period of time.

By the way, this is also by far the most fun way to make money because you never get bored. There's always a new deal to work on. The people who can grow just one business for four or five years without burning out are rare. Meanwhile billionaires frequently work well into their eighties and nineties because what they do is actually fun.

In fact, it's so much fun that the people who start off by employing this strategy as a sideline frequently adopt it as their main growth strategy once they have a deal or two under their belts.

Here's one more reason why you should seriously consider learning how to grow your business this way: less competition. While the masses today are  focused on building the 3,876,734th "social networking" site, you will be operating in a rarefied atmosphere with a much smaller number of competitors.