“I didn’t believe I could change, but the more he talked to me, the more I believed he believed I could change, and I really believed in his belief in me.”
Zig Ziglar may be the master motivator, Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield of Chicken Soup For the Soul, the master storytellers; Anthony Robbins may be the guru of personal development, but Bob Proctor is the master thinker. When it comes to systematizing life, no one else can touch him. He is simply the best.
Bob Proctor is a direct link to the modern science of success stretching back to Andrew Carnegie the great financier and philanthropist. Carnegie’s secrets inspired and enthused Napoleon Hill, whose book Think and Grow Rich in turn inspired a whole genre of success-philosophy books that now take up large sections of modern bookstores. Napoleon Hill, in turn passed the baton onto Earl Nightingale, who has since placed it in Bob Proctor’s capable hands.
Proctor carries the message of these great teachers a step higher and explains in terms understood by tots and tycoons alike how a person goes about recognizing their potential and how to apply this effort in setting and achieving life goals. Featured in the block-buster hit, The Secret, his extraordinary teaching ability has won him acclaim around the globe and has carried the Canadian-born personal development guru to the far reaches of the earth teaching people how to be more, do more and have more.
Find out more about Bob at: www.BobProctor.com
Who am I? Well, that has changed over the years. It evolves because of awareness. I now see that we are God’s highest form of creation. We’re created in His image and we’re here to do His work. Since God’s the Creator and gave us creative faculties we should be creating, doing good work, always beyond what we’re doing.
Jane Willhite, who runs PSI Seminars is a good friend of mine, and a number of years ago I went up to her ranch with Mark Meyerdirk and John Assaraf and we spent three days there. That’s where I reevaluated my purpose and my vision and I’ve let it guide me since then. The more I read ‘My Purpose’ and the more I look at it, the more I see wisdom in it. My purpose is to live and work in a prosperous environment that encourages productivity so that I may improve the service I render to my family, my company, my community, my nation and ultimately the world. My vision is to build a global organization dedicated to improving the quality of life worldwide. We create products and services at a profit, which is in harmony with the law of compensation. These products and services are created and marketed with like-minded people who share in our purpose.
Many years ago Karl Menninger said, ‘environment’s more important than heredity.’ If we live and work in a prosperous environment that encourages productivity, that’s going to stimulate our creative faculties and encourage us to keep improving on what we’re doing. I believe that spirit is always for expansion and fuller expression, never for disintegration, and God operates by law and the laws are God’s modus operandi. The more we understand the laws the better off we’re going to be at keeping our life in harmony with those laws. So that’s my stated purpose and I believe I’m on the right track because my results would indicate that.
I’m seventy-three and I’ve got as much energy as most people at twenty-three. I have attracted a phenomenal team of people in our company and I love what I do. I have a strong focus on money because I see it as an incredible creative instrument. I think money’s used for two things. It’s to help you be comfortable, and the more comfortable you are the more creative you can be. Beyond that, it’s used to extend the service that you render beyond your own presence. Whatever I earn I invest back in what I do. I don’t invest in real estate, stocks, bonds or anything like that. I’m not interested in creating great wealth, I’m interested in providing great service. What I earn goes back into the business and to what I do.
Oddly enough, the first person who “reached me” asked me the same question as the one above: Who are you? I looked at him like he had fallen out of a tree and I said, “What do you mean, who am I? I’m Bob.”
“You’re not Bob,” he said.
“Really, well who am I then?”
“Bob and Proctor are just two words,” he said. “That’s your name, it’s not you.”
I pointed to my body, “Well, okay, this is me.”
“No, that’s not you,” he said. “That’s your body. You’ve never heard anybody phone into work and say, ‘Body’s not coming in today; it’s sick.’ ”
He really provoked me to think and it was possibly the first time in my life I really did think. He changed my life. His name was Ray Stanford and he was a very ordinary guy. He’s gone now. When I met him, he was moving houses… literally, he’d put them up on jacks and move them. He obviously saw something in me that I couldn’t see in myself. He got me to sit down and really look at my results.
He put an ‘R’ on a sheet of paper and he said, “That represents results.” He put two ‘Hs’ and a ‘W’ beside it and said, “That’s happiness, health and wealth.” Then he asked me if I thought he was a happy guy. I said, “Yeah.” I hadn’t known him a long time, but he seemed pretty happy to me.
“Have you ever seen me when I was sick?”
“Uh, no.”
“Have you ever seen me when I was broke?”
The guy always had money on him, so I said, “No.”
“Well,” he said, “you’ve got to be one of the most miserable people I’ve ever met. You’re always broke, you’re always complaining of a headache or backache or something. Why don’t you change?”
I was earning $4,000 a year at the time and I owed $6,000. I could never see myself getting out of debt. I thought the only way to earn money was on my job. I was working at the fire department in a suburb of Toronto and I was stuck in a rut. I didn’t believe I could change, but he did. The more he talked to me, the more I believed he believed I could change, and I really believed in his belief in me. He got me to read Think and Grow Rich and that’s when my whole world started to change. That led me to Earl Nightingale’s condensed narration of it and my income went up to $150,000 a year, then $175,000, then it went over a million.
I couldn’t figure out what was happening. I was doing the right things but I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t satisfied with the fact I had changed. I wanted to know why. According to my understanding, what was happening to me shouldn’t have happened. I hadn’t gone to school and I had no business experience. I realized that a lot of the things I’d been told weren’t true. So I just kept studying and I’ve never stopped. That was in 1961. That was what led me to where I am today, studying the mind, the laws of the universe, and paradigms.
I would tell them to do what I did. I’ve always had a coach or a mentor and it was always a person who had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. I went to visit Earl Nightingale because I was so hooked on his stuff. I was living in Toronto and he was in Chicago. I scheduled a meeting with him for an hour and when I was leaving I asked him, “What’s the real secret behind everything?”
He just looked at me and said, “You should find out what you love to do and then dedicate your life to it. The problem with most people is they never figure that out.”
I got really excited because I knew what I wanted to do; I wanted to do what Earl was doing. I made up my mind when I left his office that that’s what I would do. I ultimately ended up in an office right beside him because I wanted to work with him; then I got the benefit of working with his partner Lloyd Conant, too.
I’ve always had a tremendous coach or mentor. And because of Ray Stanford, I always did exactly what they told me whether I agreed with it or not. I would do it until I found out they were lying or it wouldn’t work, but they never lied and it always worked. I realized that our paradigms are what mess us up. Our paradigms control our logic; they color our perception.
If you’re getting advice from someone who has demonstrated, by results, that they’ve done what you want to do, even though the advice may seem illogical to you, you’ll probably get to where you want to go.
I believe people should study a little bit every day. It should become habitual, like brushing your teeth, combing your hair, having a shower or getting dressed. Study the mind, the laws of the universe and paradigms. There’s enough information on those subjects to keep a person studying forever. I’ve been doing that for going on fifty years and if I live for another fifty, I’ll continue to do it. The rewards have been nothing short of amazing.
“I’m with Shakespeare, things are neither good nor bad but thinking makes them so.”
A wonderful storyteller with a great sense of humor, Stewart has appeared as a featured guest on television and radio talk shows (including the BBC and co–hosting a TV talk show about human sexuality in Los Angeles in the mid–70s). He has conducted coaching interviews with more than 12,000 people in the last three decades.
Through leading workshops and seminars, writing books, delivering keynotes, and making radio and television appearances, Stewart Emery has touched the lives of millions of people. He is also co-author of the international bestseller Success Built to Last.
Stewart lives in the San Francisco Bay area and served as the first CEO of EST. In 1975 Stewart Emery co-founded Actualizations, an international learning and development organization. In the late 70’s he was selected by the national media as one of the ten most influential people in the Human Potential Movement.
Stewart Emery is Co–Founder (with Joan Emery) and President of Belvedere Consultants, a boutique–consulting firm located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their passion is to support individuals and organizations turning talent into performance and enduring success. Core competencies include Cultural and Organizational Change Initiatives, Organizational Culture Assessments and 360 Feedback Initiatives, Executive Team Development, Leadership and Management Development, and Executive Coaching.
Find out more about Stewart Emery at: www.stewartemery.com
I’m not a big fan of these kinds of questions. I’m the kind of guy who would write a book titled: If You Think You Know Who You Are - Buy This Book and Discover You’re Somebody Else. I don’t ask myself this question. I’ve been meditating now for over 30 years and by persuasion, I am probably a Taoist or a Zen practitioner. I don’t ask these kinds of questions and expect unpretentious answers. From what I’ve learned in our conversations with some of the world’s most enduringly successful people, from Nobel Prize Laureates to billionaires, poets and artists, former US presidents and heads of state, together with people many of us have never heard of - people who are changing the world for the better - they don’t ask themselves questions like this either.
If you ask them what they think it’s all about, they’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that as you mature emotionally and mentally, you move from self-obsession and the expectation that life should serve you, to, as Senator John McCain told us, “being committed to a cause greater than oneself” and the realization that at the end of the day we are here to serve life.
The short story is that I was born to artist parents of very modest means. My father left after I was conceived and went off to serve in the Second World War. He was wounded and came back and passed away. Our home in the Blue Mountains of Australia was an isolated cabin constructed of gasoline cans filled with clay topped with a tin roof and basically without indoor plumbing. My father used to go there to paint watercolor landscapes. That’s where I lived for the first 12 years of my life. Needless to say, it was pretty unpretentious.
I studied philosophy, psychology and economics at the University of Sydney. I taught design at the University of South Wales School of Architecture and along with a couple of very talented friends ran Honi Soit, the student newspaper of the University of Sydney.
I went from there to become highly successful in Australia as an advertising photographer and cinematographer and ultimately one of the creative directors of one of the largest ad agencies in the world. I was accountable for the look and feel of their television advertising and bringing it to creative acclaim. I woke up one day and realized I had solved the problem of being poor and had enough stuff to start my own world, but it hadn’t made much difference as to how I felt on the inside. I still felt like the lonely little kid growing up in the Blue Mountains.
I had gotten to be pretty famous in a relatively small fishpond. Then one day I saw an issue of Look Magazine, edited by George Leonard, devoted to what was going on in California in the late 60s. By way of back story, in a meeting with Michael Murphy, (one of the cofounders of the Esalen Institute) Michael asked George what they should call this “happening” and George Leonard suggested that they could call it the “Human Potential Movement.” The name stuck and the rest, as they say, is history.
I was, coincidentally at about the same time, leading what they call “T Groups” in Australia. I had a US-based client who invited me to the United States to do some work for them in San Francisco Bay Area. I came in 1971 for a couple of weeks and I’m still here. I kind of collided with what was happening in this human potential movement and ran into a brilliant fellow called Werner Erhard. We conducted a T group for Werner and his staff, which marked the beginning of EST. Many of the core ideas from the EST Training have become incorporated into a vast body of ongoing work many of us are engaged in today. These ideas include the work around belief systems, taking personal responsibility for the experience of our lives and creating outcomes that matter to us.
I’m a passionately curious man and the whole process of the emergence of human potential engaged my curiosity and awakened my passion. In Australia I had started reading from the works of Jiddu Krishnamurti, especially a little book called Think On These Things. San Francisco was where it was happening in those days and once I arrived I became swept away by the work. Today I’m still passionately curious about all that it means to be a human being. I am deeply moved when in the presence of human greatness and by our continuing work in support of human excellence. I think there’s a lot of superficiality around the edges of “The Movement” these days, which I don’t care for. I believe one has to go deep and a lot of people don’t go deep, and that’s a pity.
The majority of the wonderful woman and men you will meet in the pages of Success Built To Last described their lives as a serendipitous journey filled with unexpected wonders and riches beyond their early dreams. My life has been, and continues to be, like this. I am deeply grateful.
I believe this is a very personal question. Purpose is an intensely personal choice. The flip answer is “it’s whatever you want it to be.” I am not an advocate of the theory that as part of the Grand Design for the Universe there’s some unique purpose for each of us. I take the point of view, shared by a lot of extraordinarily accomplished people, that what we call meaning is a precious resource that lives within us that we can choose to invest in life⎯or not. I’m with Shakespeare, “things are neither good nor bad but thinking makes them so.” This idea put into practice becomes an expression of personal accountability at the highest level.
We could rephrase this to say, “nothing has meaning other than the meaning we give it.” We do not live in the world; we live in our story about the world. We are the source responsible for the meaning our story has for us. If we change the meaning we change our life. That’s one of the essential messages that we were giving to people in the EST Training and the Actualizations Workshop. Nothing has happened in the last thirty-five years that leads me to see this differently. How we invest our resource of meaning shapes our life and determines the quality of our experience and whether we are successful.
I’ve observed that people who are committed to a cause bigger than themselves, who are engaged in serving life rather than attempting to manipulate life into serving them, have richer, more satisfying, more enduringly successful lives. I don’t assign spiritual causality to this reality. As a metaphor we could delve into the science of genetics and make a pretty good argument that genes are organized to choose cooperation over competition at any price because it’s in the best interests of the gene’s ability to do what genes do, which is replicate. So, what we have here is a kind of cooperative altruism at work in service of evolution. Whether this is cosmic design or serendipity, I do not know. For me, if it is serendipity, it is even more awe inspiring.
You have posed questions worthy of deep conversation that do not lend themselves to trivial answers. Organizations need to have a purpose, and I believe people need to become aware of what it is they are deeply passionate about, what it is they love to do, and then get really good at it. Our friends Janet and Chris Atwood have written a terrific book titled The Passion Test. I recommend that you to take the Passion Test for yourself. We noticed in Success Built To Last that successful people are unwilling to settle in life for doing something that they are not passionate about or don’t love to do. And they get really good at doing what matters to them. Most people never learn how to become really good at anything let alone something they love and that matters to them.
Enduringly successful people get really clear about what they are willing to invest meaning in, what matters to them, what they love to do, and then they develop a deliberate practice to get really good at it, and they go deep. They recruit people to their dream and they build organizations and networks capable of making a difference. Theirs is a chosen purpose. Is it also a preordained purpose? Very few of the successful people I talk to see it this way. Meaning and purpose are things that they mindfully choose. They live with integrity to meaning. That is to say they manage their thoughts and actions in service of this meaning and their chosen purpose. In this way they live the fully accountable life. May you choose wisely!
“You know, there’s a saying that goes, ‘If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plan.’”
Dave Anderson is an enrolled member of the Chippewa and Choctaw tribes and is the founder of Famous Dave’s of America, recognized as one of the “Hottest Restaurant Concepts” in America by Nation’s Restaurant News. Dave’s award-winning restaurants are remarkably unique and he is widely recognized for his extraordinary palate, devotion to detail, and dedication to constant improvement.
In Dave’s own life, he has experienced frustration and bankruptcy as well as tremendous success. He firmly believes God has had His hand over his life. Dave also believes that if it weren’t for other people giving him second chances, he would not be where he is today, having helped found three publicly traded companies on Wall Street and creating over 18,000 new jobs. He has been awarded a Bush Leadership Fellowship, received a Master’s degree from Harvard University (without having an undergraduate degree), and been recognized as “Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year” (in Minnesota and the Dakotas) by Ernst & Young, NASDAQ and USA Today.
Today, Dave devotes himself to making a difference in his community and in the lives of others less fortunate. As an avid public speaker, he shares his optimism and inspiration with youth groups and community organizations. Oprah Winfrey’s Angel Network recently recognized Dave’s leadership development work with Native American youth. Most recently, President Bush appointed Dave to the President’s Board of Advisors on Tribal Colleges and Universities. Dave is also the author of the best selling book Famous Dave’s Life Skills For Success, The Ultimate Manual for Achieving Your Very Best. All profits from the sale of his book are donated to help people in recovery and to provide leadership training for at-risk youth.
For more information check out one of Dave’s websites:
I believe that my higher purpose in life is to make a positive difference in the lives of others.
In the beginning I didn’t really understand that my life had a higher purpose. I think I was like a lot of people. I was struggling to make my way through life, and I lived life for Dave Anderson. I wanted to know how I could get more, how I could satisfy myself. I spent most of my earlier years in that pursuit. I would work hard and I’d get so far, then I’d hit a brick wall and I’d crash and burn. Like most Type A personalities, I’d pick myself up again, get back in the game, work hard, bust my butt, and then hit a brick wall and crash and burn all over again.
I think when someone is seeking selfgratification it’s easy to get messed up in substance abuse and drinking. At least it was for me. There are many different ways that people use to feel happy. Maybe they’re looking for that magical moment (the high you experience the first time you use). When you experience that first high, you really feel like you’ve found something. But then like all addictive substances, the next time you go after it, it doesn’t quite get you so high. So you drink a little bit more, or you use a little bit more drugs, and you’re in that constant search for that gratification, that incredible high, that elusive magical moment, unachievable after the first time experience.
When I reached this point, I started to spiral downward. In that moment of personal failure, I did like a lot of people do; I blamed the economy and I blamed others. I always had an excuse for why I just couldn’t get over the hump or why I could never attain my dreams. I was doing it to myself, but I would blame everyone and everything else instead of taking responsibility for my own actions. I didn’t understand that it wasn’t just about Dave Anderson; there were others around me who suffered as a result of my behavior.
Then my wife put me into treatment. For the first couple of weeks I sat around saying, “I can’t believe my wife would do something like this to me.” Today I’ve learned that recovery is a gift. It’s the gift of healing. When I had been in recovery for about two weeks, contemplating where I had been, I really started to understand that I was my own worst enemy! I found myself on my knees at the side of my bed praying to God, the Holy Spirit, Jesus…I mean I was praying to everybody, and I said, “God I’m tired of being sick and tired, and I’m tired of doing things Dave Anderson’s way. It seems like everything that I try just doesn’t work. I’m done doing things my way and I want to be forgiven, I want to be cleansed.” It was at that moment I discovered the power of the word “surrender.” I think that when you can ask for help and surrender to something greater, it’s really a sign of wisdom and strength.
I think a lot of people are still trying to do their plan. You know, there’s a saying that goes, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plan. I was so intent on doing it my way and for my reasons that I never understood the spiritual side to all of it. I hadn’t realized that there’s a reason why we’ve been given talents or been blessed with certain gifts. Sometimes we get so full of ourselves that we forget to notice the real reason why we’ve been put on this earth, and that’s for a higher purpose. I never understood that until the moment I surrendered my life and gave it over to an almighty power that I know as God. When I got off the floor that day, I felt like the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders. I felt free. I felt enlightened. I felt empowered. And from that moment on I started living my life in servitude. I started to read and understand the Bible. The Bible says that the meek shall inherit the earth and it talks about humbleness. Jesus was always humble. I started to understand that I was like Mother Teresa or Gandhi. I was a servant of other people, and I could give the best I had to the greatest number of people, and do it without any expectation other than just being able to give to other people.
Once I made this decision, I didn’t have to worry about where success came from. All the doors that were so difficult to open before started springing open. It’s amazing what I accomplished once I understood that it isn’t all about Dave Anderson. Since I’ve been living a life of giving the best that I have to other people, I’ve really discovered what my purpose in life is all about.
I think almost all successful people recognize that they are spiritual beings. We can go to school to learn disciplines, whether it’s art, music or a profession like being an attorney. Those are all technical disciplines which you will become proficient at if you really study. But, the people who really succeed in touching many lives are the ones who understand that they have a spiritual side. Those who are unafraid to recognize this are able to connect to God’s great universe, all of its resources, and the unbelievable abundance that is out there. When you live in the realm of only what you can do, well there’s only so much you can do as a human being. Once you surrender to a higher power, you’re then able to connect with it.
It says in the Bible that we are made in the image and likeness of God; think about that. There is a lot in that incredible statement. God is infinite and we are as well. There may be some limitations to the human side of us, but there is no limit to our creativity. Look at the scientific breakthroughs with biotechnology and nanotechnology. Whenever we reach a philosophical breakthrough, a scientific breakthrough or a technological breakthrough, it opens up new horizons and we keep discovering just how unlimited our creativity is.
I’m a firm believer that if you can get rid of blame, live a life of being forgiven, and live a life of spirituality, when you’re not in judgment of others or yourself, that’s when you can start connecting with who you really are and make a significant difference in the lives of others.
I would also say that people should just hang on, not give up, and face their problems head on. A lot of people spend their lives running away from problems, cursing God and saying, “What’s all this business about living a life full of abundance? All I seem to be getting is adversity and crisis. Why is it that I have to deal with this crushing problem right now that’s ruining my life?” And God looks down and says, “Hey, you wanted abundance and abundance only comes through adversity, problems and crises.” Once you get through the problem you’re going to be wiser and you’re going to be stronger. That’s when people will start saying we’ve got to go get Keith, because he’s good at handling problems. Every time we run from problems, the good Lord above is saying, “Hey, where are you going? You wanted abundance yet you keep running away from all the opportunities I send your way.”
This last one was a doozy; I worked really hard on that one. When we quit running away from problems, that’s when our creativity comes bubbling forth. When you have to work with your mind and your talents to get through the problems, people start to notice your abilities and start to recognize all the good that you’ve accomplished. That’s when people with ideas and resources and their own abundance come to you and say, “Hey, you have a real talent for getting through the tough times, and you always turn problems around. I could sure use someone like you on my team.”
“The only voice you should listen to is the voice that comes from within.”
America loves a “rags to riches” – an “underdog” – an “against all odds comeback” - a “survivor!” Bill has been a millionaire three times, bankrupt twice, and a billionaire once.
Bill is the ultimate underdog/survivor/achiever overcoming personal circumstances and tragedy to rise to the top of corporate America. Homeless at age fourteen, a member of a street gang and a high-school dropout – he took control of his life by taking the GED exam and putting himself through college and law school.
Bill and his wife Kathy have individually graced the covers of national business magazines, Kathy on the cover of Forbes, and Bill on the cover of Inc. They were listed individually in the Forbes 400 wealthiest people in America. One national magazine ranked them number 25.
In 1998, tragedy struck when Bill’s former business partner committed fraud and sent the company into bankruptcy. Although Bill’s former business partner told the prosecutors that he had acted without Bill’s knowledge, admitted his guilt and was sent to prison – in the post Enron environment, U.S. Attorney General, John Ashcroft, indicted Bill on 57 felony counts relating to Bill’s partner’s activities. Five years later, after a 2½ month long trial where the Government called 53 witnesses and produced over 1,000 exhibits, Bill rested his case without calling a single witness or producing a single exhibit. The jury unanimously acquitted Bill on all counts.
Ironically, seventeen months after his acquittal and six and a half years after his company was liquidated, the Federal Bankruptcy Trustee issued his report, which publicly acknowledged for the first time, “CFS was not a fraud.”
This experience would have embittered most people, but not them. Bill and Kathy now travel the country, sharing their stories of how they created their successes and how they dealt with their challenges. It is their life’s goal to do for “failure” what Betty Ford did for alcoholism and Susan Komen did for breast cancer.
Find out more about Bill at: www.BillBartmann.com
That’s a great question, and if you had asked me at any other point in my life I probably would have given you a different answer. It’s like when we pick our major in college. We decide in our freshman year what we think we want to be when we grow up, and it almost always changes by the time we become a sophomore. All those things I thought I was during the early part of my life have changed. And last year at age fifty-seven, I finally figured out who I really am, and what I’m really supposed to be doing here on earth.
I have led a very unique life, with some cataclysmic failures and some wonderful successes. It’s pretty rare to have both of those in the same individual, and because I posses both, I think that is now my job. I’m supposed to talk to as many people as I can about both my successes and my failures, and I am very open about them both. Quite frankly, I think there is more to be learned from our failures than there is from our successes. So, who I think I am is a spokesman for people who have failed in their lives and who want to learn how to overcome their failures.
It is so much a process of overcoming adversity in life; it’s the adversities that introduce us to ourselves. Likewise, it was an adversity that introduced me to the new me, or the “who I think I am now.” I had a business partner who committed a crime. The crime tanked my company, put the company into bankruptcy, caused 3,900 people to lose their jobs, caused my wife and I to lose a three-and-a-half billion-dollar fortune, and ultimately got me indicted on fifty-seven felony counts. During all of this adversity I was able to get myself acquitted of all fifty-seven of those counts, but in the process I learned a lot about myself and about the world. It was that adversity that set me on the path I am on now.
The best advice I can give anybody, and I give it as often as I can whether I’m talking to a high school group (I do over a hundred high school speeches a year) or if I’m talking to adults (I will speak to over 300,000 adults this year), is that the only voice they should listen to is the voice that comes from within. We are so eager and willing to listen to outsiders. We listen to others when they tell us that we’re good enough or we’re not good enough, or not smart enough, or we can’t do this, we can’t do that. The only person who is really qualified to opine on our strengths, our weaknesses, our credibility, and our capabilities is ourselves.
Sure we should be honest with ourselves; we should admit and accept that which we didn’t do well and right, or the mistakes that we have made in our life. But at the same time we should be equally honest about all the things we have done well and right. We should be able to embrace and accept and appreciate all the times we didn’t screw up, all the times we didn’t get it wrong, all the times we didn’t make a mess of something, and put them on the same level – on the same scale – as we put our screw ups. And if we were to do that, if people were to do this one simple little drill, just compare their successes against their failures (and a success is any time that you didn’t fail) they would see that they have succeeded a hundred times more than they have ever failed. This would give them the strength to overcome whatever adversity they’re facing presently.
I think we should keep it simple. There’s no need for me to give you the eighty-four steps to success, because honestly there aren’t eighty-four steps. There’s just learning how to live with yourself, learning how to be yourself, learning how to be happy being who you are, what you are, the way you are right now. It’s so important to enjoy the moment. Yes, we can strive for more and be on a path to have more, but we should never be in “deferred gratification” mode where we have the mentality of “well I’m going to be happy later if I work real hard now.” No! Let’s be happy now.
It doesn’t matter which God you believe in. I’m very spiritual and I have a strong sense of personal belief, but I try really hard not to put my beliefs on anybody else because I don’t think that’s my job. I don’t think that’s what I’m here to do. No matter which God you believe in, that God believes in YOU, and wants you to be whatever you can be. He also wants you to be happy being what it is he’s already made you.
“Find a mentor and you do what they say.”
Gerry Robert brought himself out of poverty to earning over $1 Million in a single year. Now he’s a mentor to some of the highest income earners in numerous industries. He cares about people and is great at what he does. He is the father of three boys and married for over 20 years to Anne, his teenage sweetheart. He is also a former minister.
He is a best-selling author, columnist, speaker and consultant operating throughout North America and Asia. Gerry has spoken to over 1 Million people from around the world. People from IBM, Shell, Air Canada, MacDonald’s, Royal Lepage, The Royal Bank of Canada, Nesbitt-Thompson, Scotia Bank, GM, Canada Dry, John Deere, CIBC, Prudential, ReMax, Malaysia Airlines, John Hancock, Bank of Montreal, Trimark, Hewlett Packard, Boeing, Texas Instruments have attended Gerry’s power-packed seminars. Last year, he traveled over 250,000 air miles giving lectures and seminars.
He has written several best selling books Including Conquering Life’s Obstacles, The Magic of Real Estate and The Tale of Two Websites: A Conversation About Boosting Sales On The Internet, and The Millionaire Mindset: How Ordinary People Can Create Extraordinary Income. His books are endorsed by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale (Power of Positive Thinking), Ken Blanchard (One Minute Manager), Zig Ziglar (See You at the Top), Robert Schuller (Possibility Thinking), Mark Victor Hansen (Chicken Soup for the Soul) and others. He is a regular columnist for numerous prestigious publications and newspaper the world over. His weekly column provides practical, humorous and innovative ideas on sales and marketing.
His ideas are not conventional. He is provocative and innovative. He gives practical ideas and strategies to build almost any business. He is not part of the “motivational hype” crowd many people associate him with, given his line of work.
He can be reached in Toronto at 1-(800) 473-7134 or by e-mail: gerry@gerryrobert.com
I am an expression of who God is. I am part and parcel of what makes up who God is. I’m a reflection of who God is.
When I discovered the purpose for my life, I discovered it in about two minutes at a seminar that literally changed the course of my life forever. Bob Proctor’s mentor, Leland Val Vandewall asked us to think for a second, and without giving much more thought than that, simply write the first thing that came to mind when we asked the question, why am I here? What is my purpose? Without thinking, I wrote the following: “My purpose is to demonstrate by my life and my results what a life of faith is, teach that to the world in order to lift their spirits closer to God.”
That came out instantly and it was very clear to me that it was what I’m here to do. I want to demonstrate by my life and my results, not my talk, not my wishes, but by my results. I think that results are a demonstration of what’s really going on. I want to demonstrate by how I live with life, how I interact with life. I want to demonstrate what a life of faith is. I am not necessarily talking about religious faith, although that is an important part of my life.
The good book says that faith is the evidence of things unseen and the certainty of things hoped for. In my case, it’s the certainty of what I hope for. I want to teach people to get their eyes off of their past, and get their eyes off the limitation, and get their eyes on what it is they hope for and have them be certain that it will materialize in physical form in their lives. Faith is seeing things that other people can’t see. Faith gives you hope. Faith keeps your eyes on God. Faith keeps you moving.
The next part of that is to teach it to the world. I have been gifted with the ability to teach, and it is important to me to have a global view of teaching the world in order to lift people’s spirits closer to God. I think what people need more than money, more than relationships, more than anything, is an intimate connection with the Almighty. If I can participate by lifting people a little bit closer to God, then my purpose in life is being fulfilled.
There have been two major events that took the form of mentorships that transformed my life. My first mentor was a man named Norm
Sharkey, who I met on September 6, 1977. That marked a significant change in my life, because for the first time ever, I opened myself up to the spiritual dimension of life. I was going down the wrong road. I was like a freight train on the tracks of destruction. I met Norm Sharkey, and he got me in touch with God for the first time. He showed me that I could have a personal relationship with God and he introduced me to Jesus and other teachers who have been instrumental in changing the direction of my life. He showed me how to give love and how to receive love. It happened in such a profound way that it completely altered the course of my life.
Then in 1988, I met Bob Proctor. Bob Proctor has become my financial mentor; at least that’s what I call him. He’s really my internal mentor. He showed me that I could earn in a month what I used to earn in a year. I started making over $1 million a year. In order for that kind of result, something major has to happen inside of you, and that’s what Bob’s main effect on me was. He showed me how to really think about what was going on in my life and he changed my understanding of who I am and how I tick. We’re never taught about how people think. We’re never taught about why people do certain things and don’t do certain things. And why people don’t do the things that they want to. He showed me how to apply that.
I started off by applying this to the earning of money, and I quickly found out that it’s just a symptom, a game, or a measuring stick, to understanding more about me and what causes most people in the world to operate on autopilot without thinking. Bob has had a major effect on my life for the past 21 years. And I’m just so grateful that he’s been part of my life.
I was asked that question recently on an Australian radio show. They said in 30 words or less, tell us how a person could achieve what they want to achieve in their life. I told them it wouldn’t take me 30 words it would only take me eight words. Those eight words are: find a mentor, and do what they say. It’s that simple. Find somebody who has the results that you want. Don’t ask broke people how to get rich. Don’t ask sick people how to get healthy. Don’t ask divorced people how to have strong relationships. Find somebody who has the results that you want and do what they say, and the emphasis is on the word do.
Now some of us are seminar junkies and go to seminar after seminar after seminar after seminar, and I’m here to tell you that some of you should stop going to seminars. You should start doing the seminar. What I mean by that is people need to start putting into practice what they already know. Most of us know what to do to have more love. Most of us know what to do to have the money. Most of us know what to do to have better physical bodies. The question is why don’t people do it?
Again, find a mentor and do what they say. It’s not a matter of gathering more information. There are some people who have gone to so many seminars that they can finish the sentence of the speaker on stage because they know the material that well. My mentor told me that you know nothing until you make a permanent change in your behavior. It’s behavior, not gathering more information, it’s doing what you’re mentor says. So you’ve got to study and learn and get close to them. You’ve got to invest; be near them and let them influence you. That’s what I’ve found is the easiest and fastest way to grow in any area of your life. Find a person who lives the life you want and do what they say. Follow their advice.
I was in Vancouver yesterday with my first mentor, Norman Sharkey, who really taught me about love and about God. And just watching him interact with people caused me to be more loving. Proximity is good. Read their books, do what they say, go to their events, learn from them - not to simply gather information, but to implement what they say into your life.
“It’s important to invest the time to find out who you are. The path doesn’t just make itself clear without some searching.”
Christine has led many lives: teenage lingerie model, celibate Buddhist monk, Microsoft engineer, geisha trainee, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. Her triumphs and disasters have been revealed in her New York Times bestselling business book: Rules for Renegades: How To Make More Money, Rock Your Career, and Revel in Your Individuality (see www.RulesForRenegades.com).
Christine is CEO of Mighty Ventures, a business accelerator which helps both startups and established companies to launch and gain traction at rapid speed. She has built and sold 5 of her own businesses with an average 700% return on investment, served as a board director or in-the-trenches advisor to 36 startups, and has invested in over 200 startups (including Google) as a venture capitalist or angel investor. Christine has consulted to the White House (Clinton and Bush), 700 of the Fortune 1000, and hundreds of small businesses. She has repeatedly identified and championed key trends and technologies years before market acceptance. Christine’s popular column on www.BusinessWeek.com/SmallBiz launched January 2007.
Christine has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, PBS, and CNET and is frequently quoted in the business, technology and general press at large. Stanford Graduate School of Business has done two case studies on her and PBS has featured her in three specials (Triumph of the Nerds, Nerds 2.0.1, and Nerd TV). CNET has broadcast two specials covering her unconventional rise to success as a woman with neither a high school diploma nor college degree. Christine believes we can do well and do good, using business as a path for personal development, wealth creation, and philanthropy.
Find out more about Christine at: www.mightyventures.com
Who I am is a person who is very committed to helping people realize their full potential in both their business life and their personal life. I am very service-oriented and helping people to grow, stretch, and learn is very important to me. My personal growth is a high priority.
I’ve seen a lot of pain and loss in my life. By age seven, I had lost both of my favorite friends. By age thirteen, I was studying different religions, going with friends to their churches, reading Buddhist and other self-discovery texts. It just happened naturally. I was drawn to learning why I was here, what it all meant, and what my place in the universe was.
At age fifteen, I went to EST (Erhard Seminars Training). What struck me as life-altering was the message that we are 100% responsible for our own lives. It was exhilarating! It was all up to me; I could shape my life however I wanted! WOW!
I’ve had a wild ride since then, trying on different lives. I was a celibate Buddhist monk for 7 years because that’s how I thought I could help reduce human suffering. But after a while it became clear that the path for me was to dive into the middle of human existence, roll around in it, and reduce suffering from that vantage point—from helping others to help themselves. So I broke my vows, got a burger and a boyfriend, and continued on my quest.
My volunteer work in hospice has been profound and humbling. It constantly reminds me that we never know how much time we have. We need to live NOW. Serve now. Love now. Be the difference you want to see in the world NOW.
Well, we’re all on the path, and always will be! It’s important to invest the time to find out who you are. The path doesn’t just make itself clear without some searching. You have to make the time to develop a relationship with your own version of God, to meditate, pray, get still by whatever method works for you. As you practice quieting your mind, you will begin to receive messages that will help you get better direction on your path. Slow down, be still, and listen. Then dive into the world and serve!
“One of the lessons I’ve learned is that the quality of the answers that we get in life is truly determined by the quality of the questions we ask in life.”
Paul Martinelli is a self-made entrepreneur born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His full-service cleaning company, At Your Service, Inc., was established in 1988 with expanded operations in Tampa and Pittsburgh.
Mr. Martinelli’s business efforts led to a term as President for the Executive Association of the Palm Beaches (1999) and won him the Arthur E. Turner Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award (1998). Mr. Martinelli maintains close ties with Palm Beach communities as a Board Member of ARC (Association of Retarded Children) and has personally worked to make communities safer as the East Coast Regional Director for the Alliance of Guardian Angels in New York City.
Mr. Martinelli is currently the President of Bob Proctor’s LifeSuccess Consulting. Read more about Paul and LifeSuccess Consulting at: www.lifesuccessconsultants.com
I am a child of God who has been gifted with certain intellectual faculties that allow me to co-create my life and to live my purpose. My purpose is very specifically defined. My purpose is to be the very best in the world at communicating the teachings and ideas of Bob Proctor and Thomas Troward, to guide other people to find their purpose, and to give them a process by which they can show others to do the same.
I was twenty-two years old and had gotten the entrepreneurial bug to start a business and to express the spiritual side of myself that had built up inside. I had $200 and a dream. I went door-to-door and cleaned offices in the evening time. I used a vacuum cleaner, a bottle of Pledge and a bottle of Windex. I built that business to a certain degree in about three years. I got stuck, as so many of us do, and I could not break out of where I was financially. In hindsight, I realize that I wasn’t just stuck financially, I was stuck spiritually, I was stuck in my relationships, I was stuck in every area of my life. I was stuck in my personal development and my health.
I did something that I had never done before in school; I started to read books. I had flunked out of high school. I had limiting beliefs for the first half of my life. I had this terrible speech impediment…I stuttered. Of course, whenever a young person has some kind of weakness the other kids tend to prey on that. I was told that I was stupid and was teased a lot. If you hear these comments over and over again, sooner or later it forms your perception of who you are. It got to a point where I had so much desire that I began to challenge my own core beliefs and values. I began the tough work of self evaluation, of asking, Why do I believe this? Is this true about me? Does it have to be?
I read everything from Anthony Robbins to Zig Zigler, but I just couldn’t get any of it to stick. It seemed like most of the information in those self help books just wanted to motivate me, and I was already motivated. I was a twenty-four-year-old man, who was cleaning toilets and emptying trashcans at night. I did not need a kick in the rear end to move me faster in same direction. I needed a change of course. I needed to change who I was and how I operated. I truly believed that this could happen.
Through divine intervention, somebody gave me a videotape of seminar called You Were Born Rich by Bob Proctor. After watching it for about thirty minutes, I knew that Bob had the answers for me. He made me aware of the universal laws that govern the way I thought and behaved. He showed me that I had intellectual faculties that I was using, but wasn’t using properly. I would always imagine the worst-case scenarios instead of using my imagination to look at all the possibilities. I realized that I had the ability to choose my perception and that would ultimately create my reality.
That was the first shift, when I realized I could co-create my life by tapping into the spiritual side of myself, becoming aware of my oneness with my creator, and working with the talents I had been given. I could define who I was and define my purpose and I could live that out loud and boldly. For the first time in my life, what other people thought of me didn’t matter anymore. Another person’s opinion of me was none of my business. My opinion of me is what mattered most. That was the beginning of my self-discovery. I had gotten to the point where I was sick and tired and frustrated enough to do the necessary work involved shifting my paradigm, and that’s what I did.
My advice would be to accept the notion that they already have the answer, and that they always have had the answer. We are taught biblically to seek first the kingdom within us. The answer is there. Now, it gets clouded by all types of beliefs that we may not have chosen as young people. I believe that the average age for somebody to fully develop conscious awareness, where they had the ability to accept or reject ideas about themselves, is around seven to nine years of age. By then we have been filled with so many limiting beliefs from our parents, our grandparents, our teachers or our coaches. They’re well-meaning, just ignorant. When I say the word ignorant, most people identify that as being rude. I mean ignorant as a lack of awareness. They just lack the awareness of how human beings operate in the laws that govern our thoughts and behavior.
I recommend that people unplug their TV sets and really dedicate some time to self-study and recognize that wherever they are, whatever the results are in their lives, whatever circumstances have shown up, their best thinking has gotten them there. They didn’t just wake up one day and say to themselves, I think I’ll make all the wrong decisions in my life today. The results that they have in their lives are an expression of their level of awareness. If they want to change the results of their lives, they must first change the cause, which is what’s going on inside. The only way to shift that is to raise their level of awareness through self-contemplation. Spirit contemplates and spirit expresses itself through contemplation, and we are individualized spirit.
I would recommend that people study some of the great teachers that we have now and some of the great teachers from the past, and apply the principles they teach. They should never wait for the conditions and circumstances to be “right” in their lives to take the steps necessary to define their purpose and live their purpose. The conditions and circumstances of their lives will never be right. They have to set their own course and move in the direction of their dreams.
One of the lessons I’ve learned is that the quality of the answers that we get in life is truly determined by the quality of the questions we ask in life. Often times we ask the wrong questions. When gifted with an idea that is in harmony with our purpose, most people filter that idea through their current belief system and they evaluate whether it is good or bad or right or wrong or ask should I or shouldn’t I? Asking those self limiting questions does them no good. It doesn’t serve them at all. I would encourage someone, when gifted with an idea, to ask this question: If I act on this idea will it move me in the direction of my dream? If so, regardless of knowing how to achieve it and regardless of the conditions or circumstances, move in that direction. Go as far as you can go, and then the next step will be shown. It always works, it works for everybody, and it works all the time.
“There’s nothing we can’t do… only things we won’t do.”
Scott Evans, AKA, “The Working Inventor” has taken his passion for creating new patents to the big screen in his first feature film PASS IT ON.
Evans, an entrepreneur, inventor and international speaker, has co-produced the groundbreaking motivational movie PASS IT ON. The film shares a sequence of ACTION steps that anyone can apply to become the inventor that is hidden within—these are the proven success strategies that Evans applied to develop health and fitness concepts that have made him a multi-millionaire.
Evans was only nine years old when he realized his talent and passions were inventing and marketing. He built his first prototype, a Radio Flyer wagon, which was later immortalized in the movie Radio Flyer. Other events in Scott’s life lead to the inspiration behind the scripts for the Sandlot movies I and II.
In 2001, Evans thought he had a “million dollar” idea, but he was wrong. What he actually had was a 75 million dollar idea. The BodyBow, a portable gym, grossed millions in its first few months of sales alone, earning him prestigious recognition with the Electronic Retailers Association as a top New Inventor. Evans’ dynamic personality and his track record of success have inspired thousands in the US and Canada. His expertise in taking an idea from concept to the marketplace has made him a highly sought after business consultant for budding inventors.
In addition to owning a successful appliance retail company in Southern California, The Working Inventor is also a Human Movement Science Specialist, and even finds the time to take on an occasional acting gig. His other hobbies include golf, mountain biking and home brewing.
Contact Mr. Evans at: Wish Entertainment, Inc., www.PassItOnToday.com
I’ve discovered that my purpose is to create and to have a positive impact on as many lives as possible through innovation, inventions, inspiration and motivation. I’m known worldwide as The Working Inventor, because like most people, I’ve had million dollar ideas. The problem is that most of those millionaire ideas don’t go anywhere. What I actually had instead of a million dollar idea was a seventy five million dollar idea. So, it started becoming very easy for me to do what others find it difficult to do. People will concede that most things are simple, just not easy. You know you have a responsibility to dispense this valuable information when the two issues of simplicity and ease of a task collide. When that happened for me, I realized I had to bundle what I know together, how to bring a product, service or business to the marketplace with relative ease and simplicity and bring that to the masses, because the truth is, it only takes one big idea.
I stopped thinking and I started doing. And believe me, there’s a huge difference between thinking and doing. I recognized that most people we remember for something, not just their names, but for something. They’re usually remembered for a discovery or credited for that discovery. I consider a discovery as simply coming up with a plan of attack and implementing it. I do this through simple concepts like: What do you do with an idea? You’ve got to take the idea and build a core group of people around the idea, then, you’ve got to develop and execute a plan. So, that’s a discovery, and that’s what people are remembered for, and at that point they have the responsibility to put that information out there for the people who want it.
It’s all about being challenged. I call it the Snort Factor. It’s like a horse or a bull that’s going to snort and challenge you or run at the red cape. You’ve got to find that something that challenges you. At that point you’ve got the Snort Factor. When you find something that challenges you, go out and tackle it by whatever means possible. I promise anyone who does that is going to bask in the enjoyment of it all, and then they’ll be Are You Here To Be An Entrepreneur? 43 looking for more or larger challenges. Unfortunately, there’s no rewind button in life, so it’d be good to either push play or fast-forward. I choose to push fast-forward, and that way I get a lot of things accomplished. I like to say, “If you want to get something done, get busy.” That’s what I would pass on. Find a challenge, and your talents and passions will come to the forefront, and you’ll tackle it. Now validate yourself for the Win, and go on to the next one!
“You already have within you the answers, but sometimes it takes a mentor or a teacher to help you bring them out.”
David Schirmer is an entrepreneur, stock market investor and commodity trader who regularly trades shares, options, warrants, futures and CFD’s on the Australian and overseas markets. His market analysis ability is highly sought after by industry experts as he is the leading market cycle analyst in Australia and amongst the best in the world.
David has been involved with the stock market for over 25 years and is committed to the idea that everyone can invest in the stock market. All people need to be successful in the stock market is some simple, practical, technical analysis skills to help them make better decisions.
David’s background is the family farm, where he and his brother invented a product that revolutionized the hay industry in Australia. After leaving the farm in central Queensland, David co-founded Schirmer Industries, a company that commercially manufactured computer controlled farm machinery.
David sold his half share in the manufacturing business and went on to build a desktop publishing business. He studied the financial markets and eventually turned his hand to commodity trading. After relocating to Melbourne to establish and build the first interstate office for Hudson Institute, David decided to share his stock market knowledge with others.
David started Trading Edge, Australia’s leading stock market education brand, in 1997 with his wife, Lorna. By the end of 2007, over 85,000 people have listened to David share his vast knowledge of the stock market and more than 15,000,000 people around the world have watched, listened to or read David’s knowledge on The Secret and Law of Attraction.
Apart from being the CEO of the David Schirmer Group of Companies, David is an accomplished presenter and world class speaker. He presents over 100 workshops, seminars and guest appearances per year on topics ranging from “Mastering the Stock Market”, “Entrepreneurship 101 – Legal Structuring to Protect Your Wealth” to “Wealth is a Mindset”, a personal development and psychology workshop. David is ‘self-taught’ and shares from his vast personal experiences in business.
If you think David is not quite busy enough, he and his wife have six boys aged seven to twenty-three. He plays the violin, the occasional game of golf, and likes to keep up with the latest computer technology.
Read more about David at: www.DavidSchirmer.com
I am one of the most successful stock and commodity traders in the world and one of the most brilliant minds on the Law of Attraction. The reason I am a great teacher of the laws of the universe is due to my ability to explain a complex subject in the simplest way possible.
Thirteen years ago I found myself flat broke. I come from a farming background, and we invented a piece of machinery for handling bales of hay that was cutting edge at the time. I started a manufacturing business with my brother to manufacture this great product. Things were going extremely well until the day that greed set in.
This left me in debt of over fifty thousand dollars and without any share in the business and no assets. With no education, no skills and no money I had no other choice but to go on social security. This fortnightly check barely covered the food and rent, and it surely did not allow for paying back any of the debt I was left with. The bill collectors came knocking and I finally ended up working out plans for payment with them that included a very small monthly pay-off rate. I convinced them that if they got just a little bit of money from me for many years to come, it would still be better than nothing which is what they would get if they said no to my offer.
I started to look at ways to make some money and learned about this new (at the time) form of marketing called network marketing. Through that I was introduced to personal development and over the next few years I attended seminars and read books from authors and speakers like Tom Hopkins, Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, and Tony Robbins. I attended Tony Robbins’ UPW course 7 times. I learned everything he did, watched his presenting techniques, listened to the way he phrased things and continued to read and educate myself.
A friend loaned me some Bob Proctor cassette tapes of his seminar You Were Born Rich. As I listened, Bob explained to me how the mind works and why we get the results we have in our life. The reason I was drawn to his work was because Bob didn’t just tell me what to do, he also showed me how the mind works and told me the why to do it. Within thirty days of listening to Bob and doing the things he said, things started to change. I went from broke to ten thousand dollars a month within 3 months, then over a million a year within three years.
I became a very successful trader once I realized that the stock market is just a vibration, like everything else. Once you tune into the vibration and really notice the way the energy moves, you can see its patterns and cycles. All you really need to successfully trade is the right knowledge, a ruler, pencil and a half an hour a week.
Find a mentor, someone who you feel drawn to. Take their course, buy their products and do what they tell you to do. Make a decision to live an abundant life. Get close to your creator; God is the source of absolute abundance. You already have within you the answers, but sometimes it takes a mentor or a teacher to help you bring them out. My life is totally different because I listened to mentors over and over again. I now have programs that teach how to use the law of attraction to bring you whatever you desire, but there’s more to it than just using the law of attraction. Some people think that using affirmations will bring you what you want, and that positive thinking will keep you from getting into trouble. It will help, but you must get clear about exactly what you want in your life. Make success a must! Study the mind every day because wealth is a mindset! The next step is to take action. “Affirmation without emotion and action is delusion” and “A dream without emotion and action is but a fleeting thought.”
“There may be ten pieces of the puzzle here, but you just need to go to the next step, to the next step, then to the next step.”
Since starting online in 1996, his personal online businesses have generated over $25,000,000 in revenue. This doesn’t include the millions of dollars his students have produced from his teachings.
Armand has taught tens of thousands of people his unique and proprietary Internet business building principles and strategies, which work without fail for every single business that has implemented them.
Each year Armand appears at live business trainings and seminars all over world. It’s not uncommon to see Armand share the stage with other world famous marketers like Mark Victor Hansen, Robert Allen, Dan Kennedy, Jay Abraham, Alex Mandossian, Joe Polish, Jay Conrad Levinson, Mike Litman, and T. Harv Eker.
Armand Morin’s straight to the point teaching style, which has the unique ability to transform any business in 90 minutes or less, has made him a requested speaker in the USA, Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Singapore.
He has helped thousands of people from all walks of life to increase and enhance their online businesses through automation with his highly acclaimed “Generator” brand of software, used by tens of thousands of people in 101 different countries.
Read more about Armand at: www.armandmorin.com
I think many people go through life not really knowing where they want to be. As I was going through the various stages of my life, from selling vacuum cleaners to running a long-distance company to running an Internet business, my purpose wasn’t clear. I knew I needed to earn an income, but what I needed to understand was what exactly did I need to do, what was my purpose? That was certainly a quest for me.
What I discovered was as I did certain things, all of a sudden everything else came into alignment. When you are doing the right thing, the alignment happens automatically for you. If you’re not in sync with everything around you it doesn’t happen.
As we go through this process of discovering what we want to do, we need to be aware of what is around us. Meaning, when we take a certain action what is the end result? If we take the right action, all of the rest seems to fall right into place for us. For example, for a long time, even as I built a successful Internet marketing business, I knew that I wanted to talk more about the aspects of a person becoming successful. It’s not just our technical abilities that we utilize on a day-to-day basis. What I wanted to talk about was the mindset of success and how success actually happens.
I took a big step. I made the decision to speak on the topic of success. I also made the decision to speak on bigger stages as well. In the course of a few days, several people called me to speak, and they had events with three to five thousand people lined up to attend. This all happened four of five days after I made up my mind. Here’s the really interesting part. They didn’t ask me to speak about Internet marketing. They wanted me to teach people how to be successful. They wanted me to talk about success. All of a sudden, all of the pieces of the puzzle came into play.
My purpose is to teach people how to become successful by teaching them the techniques to get their minds straight, rather than to depend upon things like technical abilities. At this current time in my life, that is definitely my purpose. Many people have said this but I believe it bears repeating: When the student is ready the master will appear. Hopefully, I can be that person teaching those people and appear at the right time in their life, and they can learn from what I’ve done and from the mistakes I have made.
I don’t think it was a specific event. It was a quest. I believe everybody has what they call a “vision quest.” Everyone has one, but they don’t always realize that they do.
I was always in search of what everyone else was in search of, meaning, I wanted the life of success. What was that? How did I define it? Actually, I am still in quest of that. That may seem strange coming from me. I have many things that people would certainly want to have: a beautiful home, a thriving business, as much money as I could possibly need, but does that match up with my vision?
Here’s what people should understand, it’s not a series of events. It’s really what you start, what you intend your life to be. People intend their lives to be a certain way when they are young. From the time I was ten or twelve years old I would tell my mother every single day that I was going to become a millionaire by the time I was twenty-five. For some reason that number always stuck in my mind. You can ask my mother and she will tell you the exact same thing. I said this over and over again anytime she asked me, “What do you want to do?” I would tell her, “I’m going to be a millionaire by the time I’m twenty-five.” The funny part is I did not become a millionaire by the time I was twenty-five, I was actually twenty-six. Some people might call this a failure, but the fact is that I earned my first million dollars when I was twenty-six years of age. It took me ten months to do it.
So what series of events caused this? Some might say it was the constant reiteration of that goal, even though I didn’t even know what I was doing at that time. Some people might say I was in the right place at the right time. But let me tell you this, prior to me starting a business that made me $1 million, I sold vacuum cleaners door-to-door. In selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door, I certainly learned how to deal with people, but I didn’t learn anything about how to run a business.
From the time I was very young, I realized that there was a life that was different from the one I was living. Not that my parents didn’t provide for us, they did everything they could for me when I was young. But the fact is, I realized that there was a world out there that I didn’t know. I saw it on television. I saw it on shows like Miami Vice. I saw the houses on Lifestyles of The Rich and Famous. The question became how could I access that world? How do I go from where I am today to that place? That’s what started me on my quest to find out what that other world was.
Along my way, I met certain other people, and each one of those people taught me something. There were probably nine or ten key people who made a difference in my life.
The first one was a guy named Lenny Epstein. Lenny taught me how to sell vacuum cleaners. He sold me on the idea of selling vacuum cleaners, even though I was 19 years old and had no intention of selling vacuum cleaners. He convinced me to sell vacuum cleaners in about two minutes. The reason this is important is that he showed me how to be a great salesperson. He taught me that you don’t push the product on someone; you make them want it so bad that it’s their own idea to have it.
And another person was someone I met along the way as I was traveling. (I don’t even remember his name actually.) I had a job for a very short time selling timeshares down in Florida. I only did it for two weeks because I felt kind of guilty selling time-shares, quite honestly. This person showed me the next step. I happened to meet one of the people who started the very first time-share in Spain. He was living in Orlando, Florida at a very high-end place called Windermere. Windermere is a beautiful place to live with really big homes. Shaquille O’Neal has a house there and Michael Jackson has a house there. He brought me to his home, which is the biggest house I had never seen and he also showed me his car, which was a Jaguar. I was impressed. Not with the fact that he had a Jaguar, but that he had it shipped all the way from Germany to Orlando in order to drive it. He had given me a taste of what the extra life was. He was an instrumental person because he opened my eyes to see that people actually do live like this.
Another person who probably changed my life the most was a teacher I had during my brief year in college. During one of his classes he talked about one of the greatest books ever written about business and how it had created more millionaires than any other book. It’s a book called Think and Grow Rich. He explained the story of Napoleon Hill and Drew Carnegie and said that if you ever want to be successful in life you need to buy this book. I took all the change I had and went to the nearest phone booth and started calling all the bookstores in the area in order to find the book.
I grew up in a very small town in upstate New York, and I was really shy at this time. I didn’t want to use public transit because I would have to see a bunch of strangers on that bus. I was not willing to use the bus to get to this bookstore. The problem was the bookstore was about 6 miles away. So I ended up walking across town, 6 miles, to this little bookstore, bought the book Think And Grow Rich, and walked back another 6 miles.
I read the book on my way back as I walked. I skipped classes the next day to continue reading and I finished the book. Here is where I would like to say that I read it and my life changed and I’ve never been the same since, but the truth is, I didn’t get it. I thought to myself, “Why would someone read this book and become a millionaire because of what they read in it?” I knew that there must be something in it, but I couldn’t place my finger on it. It took me years before I realized the impact, before my mind was ready to accept what I had learned. I hadn’t lived the concepts enough to understand them. Eventually, I did get it, and I still read that book to this day. I actually republished it with my own forward.
If I were to name one key event, I would say that it happened on Easter Sunday in 1995. That’s the day that my son’s mother took my son and left me as I was trying to start my long distance phone company. I sat there alone, in an empty room, saying to myself, “I have to make this work.” I had been working four or five months to launch the company, and my wife left me saying “You’ll never amount to anything, and you are just playing at this business like it’s a game.” Her words stuck in my head and will probably continue to stay in my head the rest of my life.
That was the single defining moment. I had my back against the wall. There was no place else to go. I couldn’t go any lower. I had no money. The cupboards were absolutely bare, and that’s not just a figure of speech. It was absolutely true. There was no food in the whole house. And there I was with this idea of starting a long-distance phone company with nothing more than a background in selling vacuum cleaners. Within the next two weeks, we launched the company, and in our first seven days we generated over $100,000, and I’ve never looked back.
You can find all the reasons why you shouldn’t do something, but what you want to do is find all the reasons that you should. We just need one good reason. For many people it may be their family. For many people it might be in spite of someone else.
My advice to someone who’s getting started is to first believe in yourself. That is key. Belief has a success cycle to it. First you have a belief that causes you to take action, or in some cases, causes you not to take action. Based upon that action, we get to a series of results, and based upon the results we either build a bigger or smaller belief. Then the success cycle starts all over again.
In order to grow your success cycle into an ever-growing one, you need to start with something small. By starting with something small, all of a sudden, it grows, and it gets bigger and bigger. Start by achieving small levels of success and building it up from there. What people hear when they go to a seminar, read in a book, or watch in a movie is the end result of what has taken people many years to achieve. They don’t see the very beginnings. So, they think that they can just start there, just jump to the end result.
The fact is, that doesn’t really happen. There isn’t necessarily a quantum leap to get there. There is a faster method, which is to focus on the next logical step, meaning from where you are to the next place. What is your next logical step along the way? There may be ten pieces to the puzzle here, but you need to go to the next step, to the next step, then to the next step. Those are the sequential steps we need in order to make the whole system work for us.
So the question I have for the readers of this book is, based on where you are, what is the next logical step for you to take? What is the one thing that you can do today to move yourself toward your end goal? If we take that premise and we apply it every single day, all of a sudden we achieve those little tiny steps, which eventually add up to a big step when we look at it overall.
Again, what is the next logical step for you, and what is it that you can do for yourself today? Today is the key! Today! If we worry about the future, we are worrying about something that hasn’t even happened yet. We need to focus on the present, because the present is what is going to make it work for us. It’s all about what we do today. How we can take destiny and put it in our own hands, and allow ourselves to achieve a level of success? Yes, there is a sequence and order of things, and it all starts with your very next step. Just take your next step.
“Every day we are exchanging our life energy for what we do, and the trade better be worth it.”
For more than 17 years John Assaraf has helped thousands of entrepreneurs and team leaders achieve outstanding results in life and business. How? By showing them the fastest and most efficient ways to break through their mental limitations.
As a teen, John had to overcome low self-esteem and severe health issues. He was in danger of landing in jail or the morgue. At the age of 19, John left home and began a quest to find mentors and wisdom. At the age of 21, he met two mega-successful entrepreneurs who are the most successful sub-franchisors of real estate offices in the world. Their 1,500 offices in 19 countries produce over $15 billion a year in real estate sales.
His vivid and sometimes embarrassing life stories have touched the lives of millions of people worldwide through his appearances on national TV and radio.
John’s passion and warmth have made him a highly regarded entrepreneur and one of the most sought after consultants and keynote speakers in North America and Europe today. His first book, Having it All, Achieving Your Life’s Goals and Dreams, made it to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal’s bestseller lists as well as #1 at Barnes and Noble. In addition, John volunteers his time to help at-risk kids develop their skills to believe “the power of their minds and hearts.”
Find out more about John by visiting: www.JohnAssaraf.com or www.onecoach.com
I am at a unique stage in my life, where my purpose is to contribute and to really help other people achieve financial freedom so that they can live an extraordinary life. That’s the business purpose of my life. In conjunction with that, my life purpose is to be a great dad to my children and to be a great husband to my wife.
Well, when I was younger I focused only on money, and I ended up with something called Ulcerated Colitis. I became very sick and that wasn’t any fun. I was taking 25 pills a day and taking cortisone shots. I realized that money really wasn’t the be-all and end-all, and that I had to have some semblance of balance in my health and wealth, and in my career, spiritual activity, and in relationships. For me this was a discovery that; number one – you can have more than money, and number two – that I was able to, and I just needed to learn the skills and strategies. So that is the series of events that led to some of my discoveries.
The first thing I would advise people to do is not to ask themselves whether they are worthy of the goals that they have, but to ask if the goals the they have are worthy of their lives. Every day we are exchanging our life energy for what we do, and the trade better be worth it. Life is too short. So let’s switch the question around and ask, “Am I prepared to exchange my life for these relationships?” “Am I prepared to exchange my life for this business?” “Am I prepared to exchange my life for the relationship that I have with God right now?” because that is exactly what we are doing every day. If the answer is “no,” well then, let’s make those changes. Let’s learn the skills and the strategies to get the support around us to be able to make the necessary shifts.