Money Machine
Money Machine
Money Machine
MACHINE
By T.J. Rohleder
(a.k.a. “The Blue Jeans Millionaire”)
Other Great Titles from T.J. Rohleder:
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 1-933356-96-0
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I NTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
C HAPTER O NE :
Systematic Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
C HAPTER T WO :
Spend More Money to Make More Money . . . . . . . . . . . 23
C HAPTER T HREE :
Harnessing Repeat Behavior. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
C HAPTER F OUR :
The Secret of a Good Sales Letter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
C HAPTER F IVE :
Drawing Your Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
C HAPTER S IX :
Finding True Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
C HAPTER S EVEN :
Find Good People and Stay Loyal to Them . . . . . . . . . . . 93
C HAPTER E IGHT:
The Insiders Are Usually Blind. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
C HAPTER N INE :
The Easiest Thing Isn’t Always the Best Thing . . . . . . . 123
C HAPTER T EN :
Do You Own a Business... Or a Job? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
C HAPTER E LEVEN :
Business Should Be Fun! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
C HAPTER T WELVE :
Ultimately, We Are All Self-Made . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
C HAPTER T HIRTEEN :
Be Careful What You Say “Yes” To.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
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I NTRODUCTION :
By T.J. Rohleder
So keep an OPEN MIND and I’ll lay out the basic secret
right now. Are you ready? OKAY, here we go. It starts with the
fact that there are ONLY 3 WAYS to build your business:
#1: you can get more new customers. #2: You can sell more
higher-ticket items to your current customers. Or #3: You can
sell MORE OFTEN to your current customers. That’s it. The
only FOURTH WAY you can build your business is to BUILD A
COMPLETE MARKETING SYSTEM that lets you do ALL
THREE of these things... Automatically.
6
INTRODUCTION
8
CHAPTER ONE
9
Systematic Marketing
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and tweaking.
Your goal is to find out what works the best and then
convert it into an automatic process, and none of this is
easy... even when it’s simple. It starts with knowing your
customers at an intimate level. That’s part of the whole
relationship factor I discussed earlier. Who are all these people
in your marketplace? What do they really want? What gets their
attention? What are they biting on right now? The more you
know and understand that, the easier it is to create what I
call a “wow factor.”
test, the more answers you’re going to have. The more answers
you have, the more often you’re going to stumble onto
something really, really hot.
You see, most new ideas don’t make it. I’m not trying to
throw a wet blanket on your enthusiasm, or otherwise be
negative; it’s just that most new ideas for products, services and
business models simply don’t work when tested in the
marketplace. And if they do work, they usually don’t work as
well as you want them to. So you have to test a whole bunch of
different ideas in order to find that small percentage that are
going to be breakouts. The more you think outside the box, the
more you think about what your customers really want and how
to blow their minds, the more you’ll succeed. You need to look
for ways to give them that “wow factor.” The more you can
separate yourself from everybody else, the more good ideas
you’re going to stumble on. You’re going to kind of get lucky
sometimes; you don’t know what works the best. Nobody does.
Sometimes, your best route is to spy on your competitors and
find out what they’re doing—and whenever they find
something hot, you just latch on to it, steal the idea, make it
yours, and make it better.
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CHAPTER ONE: Systematic Marketing
The more you can do all this, the more you can
systematize your findings into the best possible strategy.
Unfortunately, it can’t work this way all the time; but you’ll have
periods of time when it all does work, when you get the right
offer out to the right group of people (both new customers and
established ones) and you’ve got the thing that brings them
back—when you’ve got something that’s really hot. Those will
be those magic moments in your business, and we’ve
experienced them here at M.O.R.E., Inc. It’s like being on a
bicycle, when you’re going down a mild hill on a beautiful day,
where there’s no wind blowing, and you can just throw your arms
up in the air. You don’t have to pedal; you can just slide down
that hill, enjoying every minute.
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CHAPTER ONE: Systematic Marketing
so, you start to develop the ability to keep track of which ads are
worth investing more money in and which are better off trashed.
That’s why everything you do needs to be trackable
somehow—whether it’s a coupon to get them in the store, or a
radio commercial, or a kid’s baseball jersey. There are any
number of things you can do to identify the specific
advertisement, so you can monitor which ads are effective at
bringing in customers. Because, of course, you want to spend
more money doing things that work, and less money doing
things that don’t.
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CHAPTER ONE: Systematic Marketing
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CHAPTER ONE: Systematic Marketing
21
CHAPTER TWO
23
Spend More Money
to Make More Money
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when people read those books, they get confused about what to
do. All these books do is turn people away from the joy of
being self-employed. And it is a tremendous joy, because
business really is very simple! Now, it’s not always easy; please
don’t misunderstand me here. In fact, the more money you want
to make, the more difficult it becomes. But the root of it, the
basic components of it, are simple enough.
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CHAPTER TWO: Spend More Money to Make More Money
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CHAPTER TWO: Spend More Money to Make More Money
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The idea is to prove, once and for all, whether the dollar
is well spent or not. If the dollar proves itself, then we’ll test a
two-dollar bill or a five-dollar bill against a dollar bill. And we’ll
prove that one outperforms the other. It’s not about what
something costs that matters; it’s about what it makes you,
and this is all about salesmanship. If I had to describe the best
salespeople in one word, it would be relentless. They simply
don’t give up. They’re like those little bulldogs that grab ahold
of your pant leg and just won’t let go. They refuse to quit. They
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CHAPTER TWO: Spend More Money to Make More Money
stay after the prospect over and over. They either drive people
crazy or drive them to buy. You’ve got to duplicate that principle
of selling in all of your marketing. You do that by using this
principle of spending more money to make more money.
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CHAPTER TWO: Spend More Money to Make More Money
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CHAPTER TWO: Spend More Money to Make More Money
Our friend Bill Glazier has a quote that I want to leave you
with before I move on: “You can’t kill an elephant with a BB
gun.” It doesn’t matter if you have the best BB gun in the world,
it won’t penetrate that elephant’s hide, even if it shoots BBs like
a machine gun. At best, you’re going to piss that elephant off,
and he might stomp you to death. You need heavy ammunition if
you’re going to try to kill an elephant. You need a massive rifle
before you can take one of those monsters down.
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36
CHAPTER THREE
37
Harnessing Repeat Behavior
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So Gary got to know the owner of the strip club, and one
day he said to the guy, “How in the world do you do this? How
do yet get these gorgeous women to get up on the stage and do
this kind thing? Because you know, at most strip clubs, the
women aren’t nearly this attractive.”
And the guy said, “It’s real simple. We don’t pay them any
extra, but they make extra anyway because it’s a popular place
and lots of people come here. We start them out as cocktail
waitresses first, and a lot of these gals even hesitate to take on a
cocktail waitress job. But we pay them three times more
money than all the other cocktail waitress jobs, and they sign
on board with the stipulation that they will never, ever have
to take their clothes off if they don’t want to. And so they sign
up. They become cocktail waitresses serving drinks to customers
and taking orders for more drinks. After a few months, they get
to know the customers, and they find out that most of these
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CHAPTER THREE: Harnessing Repeat Behavior
people are just sad, lonely, depressed, married men with money.
Now, that may be a bad story to some people. I’m sure that
some of you readers might feel uneasy or offended. But I didn’t
tell the story to offend you; I just want you to remember it. It’s
an extreme example, which is the reason why it stuck in my
brain in the first place. It perfectly illustrates the principle of
getting people to repeat the same behaviors over and over,
and then trying to get them to take one small step before you
try to get them to take the next small step.
skeptical, and they just don’t trust you. They’re afraid you’re
going to rip them off. They don’t believe a single word you say.
So if you just go to somebody and try to sell them something
expensive right away, they’re going to be turned off. So you
build your sales message in a series of steps. One sale leads to
the next, and you stair-step them. You don’t try to make your
biggest sale right up front; you start slow and stay after people.
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CHAPTER THREE: Harnessing Repeat Behavior
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You don’t get rich trading dollars for dollars, right? Wrong.
In this case, we plan on getting very rich. In fact, I told Chris
Lakey this morning that this could end up making us more
money than anything else in the past six years, because once
somebody spends that $500 with us, that’s a gateway. The real
money to be made on this new business comes from all the
related items. And that’s a keyword there: related. We’ll offer
them closely-related additional services that are sold, in some
cases, on a till-forbid basis. What this means is that we continue
to make the sale to them automatically until they tell us to stop.
That’s how many magazine subscriptions work, for example.
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CHAPTER THREE: Harnessing Repeat Behavior
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Let me leave you with one more story, one I’ve told before;
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CHAPTER THREE: Harnessing Repeat Behavior
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CHAPTER FOUR
77777
The secret of a good
direct mail letter:
It doesn’t shout at people
—
it lures them in.
777
51
The Secret of
a Good Sales Letter
Not only that, but you don’t want to tell people too much
too fast. You don’t want to throw everything out there at once.
You want to hold things back. This creates that feeling of
anticipation that the customers crave: that there’s something
more out there, and you’re letting them discover things on their
own. It allows them to feel empowered. People don’t want to
be sold anything, but they do want to buy things, thank
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trying to making people feel that they’re the ones who are
coming after you, rather than you coming after them. You’re
trying to do things that make them feel empowered, instead of
being disempowered, as you are whenever somebody’s chasing
after you, trying to get you to do something you don’t want to.
People hate that, but they love it when it’s their idea. They love
it when they’re the ones doing the choosing and the chasing. The
minute they perceive that it’s the other way around, that’s when
they grab their purse or wallet and start backing toward the door.
Now that I’ve put that out there, let’s switch gears a little.
As I was contemplating this subject earlier, I started thinking
about the qualities of a good leader. That leader could be a
sports coach or the leader of a country. You know, a person can
be a dictator and still be well liked; or they can be a tyrant, and
people can hate them. A good leader, whether in political or
sports or elsewhere, demands respect and attention... but not
because they’re threatening to kill you or cut off your arm. They
do it with the tone of their voice and out of a sincere desire to
do what’s best for their people. Those are two different
approaches to getting the same results.
respect not because you’re a threat, but because of the way you
carry yourself.
A good direct mail letter gets the results that you really
want, not just results—because you could coerce people into
buying, even without holding a gun to their head. But those
methods would be less effective than luring them in, which is
why you shouldn’t shout or come across as domineering or
coercive. You don’t want to make your campaign feel
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CHAPTER FOUR: The Secret of a Good Sales Letter
them feel you’re chasing them too hard, trying to twist their arm
to get them to buy. If you’re reaching the right marketplace and
you’re a good copywriter, you don’t need to stoop to arm-
twisting. They’ll do the arm-twisting at their end.
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CHAPTER FIVE
Working without
a strong model
is like…
taking a trip
without a map.
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Drawing Your Map
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CHAPTER FIVE: Drawing Your Map
So part of the stretching that you do, the growth that you go
through, involves studying what other people in your field are
doing. And not just what they’re doing right, but what they’re
doing wrong, too. Many times what they’re doing wrong can
be just as instructive as what they’re doing right. Once you
identify where they’re screwing up, you can implement the right
processes, correcting the mistakes they’re making and profiting
along the way. It’s all a process of learning.
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But, well, that process didn’t work with this one idea that’s
making Russ so much money. Finally we gave up, and now
we’re paying him a small royalty and getting all of his best ideas
to work with. We’re not trying to be too innovative anymore.
This new money-making concept didn’t really work for us when
we tested something like it—but now Russ is helping us every
step of the way. He’s giving us the best of the best of his six
years in this one money-making project, so in this case, the
map is completely clear.
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CHAPTER FIVE: Drawing Your Map
case, we’re just adapting everything that Russ is doing. Now that
we’re licensed, we’re going to incorporate every last thing he’s
doing into our model. That’s acceptable, because we have his
blessings now. With this clear new roadmap, it’s very likely
that this project is going to be successful for us for years, just
as it has been for him.
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CHAPTER FIVE: Drawing Your Map
So just remember: all the ideas you’re looking for are out
there right now, and you’ve got to subject yourself to a lot of
material to find them.
And here’s another point that I’d like to make: after you’ve
been doing this for a while, after you’ve created enough of
your own stuff, you can steal from yourself. That’s how we
came up with our initial Internet offers: we took the “How to
Make Money with Computer Bulletin Boards” letter that we
modeled after Gary Halbert’s and incorporated those ideas into
our Internet offers when we started marketing websites. That
made us millions of dollars more. This is one of the benefits you
get if you just stay in the game and stay in the same market long
enough. Now, it’s also important to look outside your market for
other ideas, because part of the essence of creativity is to cast a
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wide net and incorporate ideas that other people are using that
have nothing to do with what you’re selling. So do look for
outside concepts to cross-fertilize your thinking, but know
that eventually, you’ll be able to use your old material as
models for new material.
you can do is stare at a blank screen. The same thing is true for
any writer. The hardest thing is often that first step of getting
something down; once you get past that, it’s a lot easier to get
going. It’s easier to use your models as your springboard, as
the starting-off point. As I said before, you can’t patent or
copyright an idea... even though people try to do it all the time.
You can’t plagiarize an idea either. Think about the cell phone
industry, or the latest computer gizmos and gadgets. Whenever
someone comes out with the latest widget, it doesn’t take long
before everyone else has one that does similar things: the
touchscreen mobile phone, for example. Once the first
touchscreen mobile came out, everybody soon had one.
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going, and you’ve got no real time-frame for getting there. Which
roads you end up on don’t really matter. It doesn’t matter how
many highways or side streets you travel; you’re just out driving
around, and eventually you’ll get somewhere and you’ll stop.
But that’s not the way most people travel! Most people plan
everything out in advance, and study all the maps beforehand.
Chris Lakey goes so far as to print out directions online, looking
at all the possible alternate routes that he could take on the trip.
He’s very detail-oriented when it comes to planning out a trip
and where he’s going to be driving, how he’s going to get there,
and exactly what’s going to happen along the way. That’s the
way most people are—maybe not to the degree Chris is, but to
the extent that they want to know where they’re going, and they
want to know what roads they’re taking to get there. They want
to know how long it’s going to take, and they want all that
figured out before they start.
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Finding True Power
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good at. It’s a lesson that I’ve had to learn the hard way.
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CHAPTER SIX: Finding True Power
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fine at washing down the windows and dusting the shelves, but
that’s minimum wage work. Maybe they’re really good at
marketing, so they manage to bring the customers in, but the
accounting side of the business suffers. Or maybe it’s the other
way around.
Recognize what you are good at and what you aren’t, and
get help: have other people step in and do those things for you
that you can’t, or that aren’t reasonable for you to do at your pay
scale. To do otherwise would be like deciding to do all your
home maintenance, even when you’re not mechanically
inclined. Here’s a funny story that happened recently, and it
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Chris Lakey and his family live in a fairly new house, built
a little over a year ago; they’re the first owners. He says that one
of the reasons they opted for a new house was that he and his
wife both know that he’s not mechanically inclined. So one
weekend recently, they discovered this sewage-like smell
coming from one of the storage rooms in the basement, where
the furnace is. When Chris went down there and smelled that, he
asked himself, “What in the world is going on here?” He’s no
plumber, so he immediately picked up a phone and called one.
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CHAPTER SEVEN
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Find Good People
and Stay Loyal to Them
vital. Find people who are really good at what they do, who
have poured their hearts and souls into it, who have paid a
price over an extended period of time to develop those skills.
Those are the people you need to surround yourself with.
Hopefully they’ll be people you can count on, people who like
you and whom you like. That helps, but it’s not absolutely
necessary. You can actually have people on your team that you
don’t like... but usually those are the people that you don’t work
as closely with.
Finding people who are strong in all the areas you’re weak
in requires some character inventory both on a plus and minus
scale, and then, ideally, you have to find someone you believe
will stay around to grow with you—someone you can see
having a long-term relationship with. As I mentioned a
moment ago, the relationship doesn’t have to be perfect; it just
needs to be workable. Again, some of this does sound like basic
common sense, but in a minute I’ll tell you why, for a lot of
people, it isn’t common sense at all. A lot of people are violating
this principle for their own reasons.
I feel that when you find those good people, you have to do
everything possible just to hold on to them. Now, you can’t have
full control over someone unless you have a gun to their head,
and you don’t want to do that! Instead, you have to do things
that make it as advantageous as possible for them to
continue to want to work with you. That’s all you can do. First
of all, it requires a certain willingness to go through all the ups
and downs with them. Nobody is perfect; some people will let
you down occasionally. Some people will let you down a lot, but
if they’re basically good people, then you can stick it out with
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CHAPTER SEVEN: Find Good People and Stay Loyal to Them
them. You go through the thick and the thin and you do
things to care for them, and try to maintain a good
relationship with them.
You see, it’s all about relationships; in fact, that’s what all
business is about. A relationship is a two-way street, never a
one-way road. It involves give and take on the parts of all the
parties involved, so you have to be responsible for what you
can be responsible for, and that’s giving as much as you can
possibly give. You’re there for people. You care about them.
You try to do things to encourage them and make life fun for
them. So make your business a positive place to work, a place
that’s exciting and enjoyable. Personally, I look at the people I
work with almost as extended family (some more than others, of
course). You’re with family for the long haul.
Now, again, you may think that all this is common sense. It
sounds like common sense: find good people, and stick it out
with them for the long haul. And yet a lot of entrepreneurs are
too independent for this. They want to do everything
themselves, and they think they can. Some entrepreneurs really
are talented, and they can do everything themselves; that’s part
of the problem. They’re right and wrong simultaneously.
Hey, I was a jerk OK? I was another word that starts with
an A—you know the one. I was highly driven, and I was
extremely hard to work with. So many entrepreneurs are like
that. Now, that’s not an excuse; there’s no excuse for that kind of
behavior. You have to learn to transcend that. But thank
goodness I inherited a good staff. The best thing I’ve done in
the 10 years since is that I haven’t run any of them off. The good
ones I inherited from Eileen when I took over have continued to
work with me. Since then, we’ve also put a few other key people
into place.
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CHAPTER SEVEN: Find Good People and Stay Loyal to Them
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and thin—through the good times, when we’re doing really well,
and through the not-so-good times when we’ve struggled a bit.
He’s been there when promotions have been working really
well, and when things don’t work, and he’s printed all kinds of
specialty items for us or had them outsourced. By now, he
knows our business very well. He knows what our main goals
are. He’s about as close to our company as any supplier has
ever been, and he knows the kinds of things we’re trying to
accomplish with our business, and so it’s not uncommon for
him to bring us a suggestion. Not too many suppliers or
vendors will, outside of the occasional salesman who’s just
trying to sell you something; but our printer, Steve, will actually
come to us with suggestions on things we might want to try or
things we might want to test. He knows our business, and that
allows that relationship to continue to flourish.
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CHAPTER SEVEN: Find Good People and Stay Loyal to Them
them through for free. He’ll do that for us because he’s getting
enough other business that he’s happy to throw that in as an
extra service. In some past events, we’ve made up big poster
boards to display around the room, and he’ll print those for us
quickly. You see, that relationship serves both us and him. If
we were to do business somewhere else, he would have to go
find new clients. We represent a certain portion of his business
that’s fairly consistent and automated. He knows that he’s going
to have new printing jobs from us on a fairly regular basis,
because he knows our business and knows that he’s our printer.
If we were to go somewhere else, he would lose that business
and have to go chase it down somewhere else.
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CHAPTER SEVEN: Find Good People and Stay Loyal to Them
them once, and then they never have any reason to do business
with you again. But if you build relationships with those 1,000
people, then by Week Two, you’ve got not just 1,000 new
customers, but also 1,000 existing customers. In Week Three,
you’ve got 2,000 existing customers and 1,000 new ones
again, and it just keeps snowballing, building a customer
base of people who already have a relationship with you.
These are people who are more likely to trust you and do more
and more business with you.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
he insiders are
T usually blind.
Only an outsider
can objectively look
at something in a
fresh, new way.
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The Insiders Are
Usually Blind
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just started jotting out some ideas that were like jigsaw
puzzle pieces—different project ideas that have worked for
us, or different things that we wanted to redo.
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CHAPTER EIGHT: The Insiders Are Usually Blind
revise it before we throw it out there and start to test and tweak
it. The point is, you do have to become an outsider, even if
you’re an insider. You need to become your own consultant,
looking at things differently. The good news is that you’re only
limited by your imagination... and the bad news is the exact
same thing. It’s all up to you.
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CHAPTER EIGHT: The Insiders Are Usually Blind
some that are about half that size. If you carried around a bag of
those, when he was around some and couldn’t have them, you
could show him that you have some and he could have them
later. That way, he doesn’t feel like he was unable to have
something he was around and could have just taken. He would
see that you’re offering him the ability to have one, deferred. He
just needs to wait just a little bit because the timing isn’t right in
that moment.”
It was a bit of a shock to Chris and his wife that they hadn’t
thought of that. It was a simple solution to their problem, and
yet it was outside of their ability, apparently, to see in that
moment. So they chuckled to themselves at how silly it was that
they hadn’t thought of it. Now, of course, they’re prepared for
similar events should they happen in the future. Hopefully, the
next time something like that does happens, it’ll go more
smoothly than it did the last time.
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CHAPTER EIGHT: The Insiders Are Usually Blind
All this takes hard work, but the more you do it, the better
you get at it. The worst thing that you can do here is to
assume that you’re not as creative as you need to be, that
you lack the ability to do these things. Many of us look at
people who can do these things and become intimidated,
because, frankly, there are some super-creative people out there.
But what most people fail to realize is that even those super-
creative people had to develop their skills and abilities. They
weren’t born that way. You can develop those skills and
abilities within yourself, and therefore become the outsider
even if you’re an insider, because you have developed that
outsider mentality.
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CHAPTER NINE
123
The Easiest Thing Isn’t
Always the Best Thing
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action is that they’re afraid; it’s just that simple. Most will
never admit it, of course; they have too much pride. So they
cover that fear by thinking that being conservative means
they’re being smart, and they take great pride in the fact that
they’re always holding back, because they do believe that
they’re smart.
Now, all this does take great courage and great vision; but
still, you’ve got to make a game out of it, too. Have some fun
with it. Make your moves carefully and wisely, and you’ll be
surprised at how fun and effective this will all be, especially
if you make the best possible use of direct response marketing.
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more than make up for all the money that you lose on all those
failed tests.
so superior when they see other people try and fail. But as the
great Teddy Roosevelt once said, “It’s not the critic that
counts, it’s the man who’s actually in the arena.”
There are all kinds of reasons why you should never, ever
start a business, so the easy thing to do is to stand on the
sidelines and argue for the safe and conservative plan. You can
always put your money in a money market account. It may not
be incredibly profitable, but you’re not going to lose your
money. It’s going to sit there and collect the little bit of interest
the bank is willing to give you... so it’s pretty much safe, until
they start charging you fees on it because they can’t figure out
how to make money any other way in this economy. The way
you make more money is to take some risks; do the stock
market thing, do the mutual funds thing, buy gold, whatever
you’re doing beyond putting your money in a nice, safe bank
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back, back to back, with his feet up in the air a little, his knees
above his chest, holding on. The guy on the ground has, say, 150-
170 pounds on his back—and he has to crawl along without his
knees touching the ground, going as far as he can. These football
players are strong, toughened by all kinds of strength
conditioning, and so they should be able to go quite a ways,
right? But they didn’t get that far: some of them made it 10 yards
or so. Of course, once they collapse, that’s it, the drill is over.
Well, the coach didn’t feel like he got enough effort out of
them. They were trying... but they were also complaining about
how they were going to get slaughtered in this football game
that was coming up against a team that was bigger, faster, and
stronger than them. He just said, “Guys, I don’t feel like you’re
giving me all that you could be giving. How do you expect to
compete Friday night when you aren’t even giving me all you’ve
got here in practice?” And then he calls one of his team leaders
over, and he gets him down on the ground again and says that he
wants him to do it again... except this time, he wants him to give
it all he’s got. And he wants him to not give up, to just keep
pushing through.
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whole drill starts over, and the player gets to the 10 yards that he
wanted. You can already tell he’s pretty tired, but he keeps going.
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CHAPTER NINE: The Easiest Thing Isn’t Always the Best Thing
act.” What Malraux is saying is that it’s not about skill, it’s not
about having better abilities or better ideas, it’s not about being
smarter— it’s about having the courage to think that you
have it all figured out, at least enough to take that calculated
risk and to act on it.
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Again, as T.S. Eliot said, “Only those who risk going too
far can possibly find out how far they can go.” Until you’ve
pushed yourself, you never know how far you can go. That’s
really what this is about. It’s easiest to just stand on the
sidelines, play it safe, play it conservative. But the ones who
achieve the best results, the ones who break through, are the
ones who push the envelope all the way. They push until they
break. They push until they can’t push anymore, and that sets the
new barriers. That’s the goal for the next time. So choose. Do
you want to sit on the sidelines? Do you want to play it safe...
or do you want to push the envelope and go all out and try to
build the best business you can?
I know the path I’ve chosen, and it’s the path I recommend
for you as well. As William Blake said, “The road to excess
leads to enlightenment.” As long as you keep pushing yourself,
your best is going to continue to get better. As long as you
test enough new ideas, you’re going to become more
innovative. You’re going to keep your company alive as it goes
through all its inevitable changes, and you’ll stay on top of it all
instead of going under like so many other people do. That’s the
bottom line here.
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CHAPTER TEN
Every once
in a while
you should ask
yourself:
“Do I own
a business
or a job?”
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Do You Own a Business...
Or a Job?
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CHAPTER TEN: Do You Own a Business... Or a Job?
For people who have jobs, it’s usually about the money
and nothing else. I wish that wasn’t the case, but it is. My father
worked for the government for most of his life, and to him it was
always about the money. He thought that was what was most
important to me too, and he never understood that it wasn’t that
way at all. Sure, the money’s a part of it, but it isn’t the main
part. I’m not working for the money—and that’s true for most
entrepreneurs. We build our businesses around our lifestyles,
and that gives us the kind of freedom and flexibility you
can’t find with most jobs.
People who start new businesses often lose track of this fact
altogether. What often happens is that a person has a job, and
then they decide to turn that job into their own business. For
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CHAPTER TEN: Do You Own a Business... Or a Job?
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
”
of racquetball than living life. ”
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Business Should Be Fun!
They asked him, “T. Boone, what are you doing? You’re
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CHAPTER ELEVEN: Business Should Be Fun!
Money isn’t real. It’s not even backed by gold anymore. Until
our government changes the way we handle the Fed and our
currency, a dollar is just a slip of paper that’s worth a certain
value because the government says it is, and we agree. Until we
start trading in real gold and silver and precious metals again,
it’s just paper.
Businesses come and go. That’s not real life. Real life is all
the other stuff you deal with, the valuables that really
matter. Your business can fail, and you can start another
business. Your bank accounts could all get drained, but you can
fill them up again. You’ve only got one shot at life. You only
have one shot at a marriage. You want to maintain good
relationships with your family and with your friends. Those are
the things that are really important. Businesses come and go;
money comes and goes.
So have fun with it. Who wants a business that you suffer
through? You could probably go get a minimum wage job and
suffer, if that’s what you wanted. If you’re into suffering, there
are all kinds of boring, tedious jobs you could happily hate. But
you don’t get into a business to hate! Don’t create a business
for yourself that’s no fun. Enjoy your business life. Enjoy the
game, the hunt, and the challenge that comes along with
building something and trying to innovate and create profits and
serve a marketplace. Enjoy the challenge of getting people to
decide that they like what you have enough to give you their
money in exchange for it.
without power and running water. You need some money, but
don’t take the process of acquiring it too seriously. There are
all kinds of ways to acquire money legally. There are all kinds
of things you can do and have fun doing. So as you think
about business, and as you think about what you want to do with
your life economically, think about the things that bring you
pleasure. Think about the things that allow you to have fun.
Now, you need to run this idea that your business can be
fun up against a viable business model. You could have fun in an
industry where there’s zero profit, so that’s not necessarily a
good match. But if you find a marketplace that you can serve
and it happens to be something that’s fun, then you’re
golden. If it’s a field you’re interested in or excited about, then
all the better for you. You can have fun, and you can make
money. You can serve a marketplace that you’re excited about. It
all leads to an enjoyable life and profits that put food on the
table and cars in the driveway.
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CHAPTER TWELVE
✰✰✰
We are all self-made…
but only the successful
will admit it.
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Ultimately, We Are All
Self-Made
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instant money.
You can get there, too. If you’re like me, and you’re
unwavering in your determination to make as much money as
you can, then you can make however much you want. But know
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CHAPTER TWELVE: Ultimately, We Are All Self-Made
that you are going to have to pay a price for it. Again, I’m not
trying to say that in a negative way, to put you off. It’s just a
truth you have to face. All super-successful people are self-
made, and they got that way by paying the price required.
I will say this: the bigger your goals are, the more driven
and determined you’re going to be. So set some goals. They
don’t have to be big in the monetary sense; just big in terms of
what you really want to accomplish. I’ve got such a goal hanging
on my wall right now, right in front of one of the treadmills
where I do my walking in the morning. This is a little sign I
wrote to myself. Basically, I want our company, M.O.R.E.,
Inc., to be the first information marketing company to
dominate the mainstream network marketing industry.
Just sit down, and write it all out so that it’s very clear to
you. Keep that goal in front of you, so you keep thinking
about it all the time. Start working on projects that will
allow you to reach that goal. That’s the only way I know to
truly become self-made.
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area, and a desire to stay near family; but if you can’t succeed
where you are, then it may be time to go elsewhere.
millions of hits! All of a sudden he had job offers from the NBA
and MSNBC to do commentary. Several big companies had seen
the video and were interested because of all the publicity.
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CHAPTER TWELVE: Ultimately, We Are All Self-Made
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
165
Be Careful What You
Say “Yes” To
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A lot of our clients are plagued with this one question that’s just
driving them nuts: “What products and services should I sell?”
They’re too focused on that. Admittedly, it’s an important
question, but we tell them that the important thing is to build the
customer base and get rich by reselling to their customers again
and again. It’s as simple as that; with some rare exceptions, that’s
how all fortunes are built. We tell our customers, “Once you
have your own client base of people that you’re dedicated and
committed to, and you really want to serve them, the
decisions about what to sell become much, much easier.”
Once you narrow your focus to what they want, you eliminate a
whole lot of choices—and that’s always a good thing.
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Just think about the things that you could do with your
day. Most of us like to watch TV in some fashion or another.
Maybe we’re into sports, and we’ll take three hours on a Sunday
afternoon to watch a football game, or maybe six hours if we
watch both the noon and the 3:00 o’clock games. Well, there’s an
evening game too, so on Sunday, you can blow nine hours
watching all three games that are on TV that day. Add a couple of
hours for pre-game stuff in the morning and a couple of hours
afterward for the post, the reviews and analysis, and you can
basically blow all day watching football on a Sunday.
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Be Careful What You Say “Yes” To
be had, then those “yeses” mean that you’re saying “no” to other
things that could be more productive. Saying “yes” to 10 hours
of television in a week means saying “no” to 10 hours of
productivity in your business. I’m not saying that TV is
necessarily bad, but it’s inherently less productive than most
business activities. So it’s a time balance issue. You’re
choosing what to say “yes” to, and by default saying “no” to
other things. Similarly, saying “yes” to cake on a regular basis
means that you’re saying “no” to good health. Now, you could
eat cake and exercise, although that’s probably not going to be
very productive either. So in general, you have to choose
carefully what you are saying “yes” to and what you’re
saying “no” to.
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If you say “yes” all the time, then you won’t be good or
committed to anything. Though if you say “no” all the time,
well, you never do anything either. So you have to balance
your commitments properly: you have to choose very carefully
what you say “yes” to and choose what you say “no” to. Those
two things weigh against each other in most of the things you
do, so be careful in your choices. As you get better at this,
you’ll find time management coming easier, because you’ve
balanced your priorities and you’re committed to the things that
are most important to you.
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