One of the best videos I’ve seen on Youtube… if you want, ignore the political “left vs. right”, and just focus on the message of personal responsibility, entitlement, etc…

TF

Thank-you Robin for this great article…

This is GOOD!

This taught me a TON about trusting coaches…

3,500 feet above planet earth

Our small Cessna-172 had risen to 3,500 ft abouve planet earth, and all was well…

One pilot up front, one instructor plus four novice skydivers in the back (myself included).

Suddenly the instructor threw the side door open and a burst of air rushed through the cabin, the roar of air and engine billowing through the opening.

My heart raced temporarily until I caught my breath.  The instructor stepped out onto the wing and encouraged the first student to follow.

The first student edged out onto the plane’s strut, looked up, and let go…

(whoosh!)

Hmm… so far so good.  No big deal.  Okay – I can do this…

The instructor yelled a few more instructions.  The second student edged out on the plane’s strut, looked up, and let go…

(whoosh!)

Hmmm… I guess this skydiving thing wasn’t that big of a deal!  Just a matter of waiting my turn…

The instructor yelled again.  I was positioned last, so the third student edged out, grabbed the strut, looked up, and let go…

(whoosh!)

Now it was my turn, and as the instructor yelled at me to come outside the plane I caught a glimpse of the ground – 3,500 IMPOSSIBLE feet below me…

“NO! NO WAY!  I’M NOT GOING!!!”  suddenly I yelled at the instructor as I cowered back against the opposite wall.  I was scared… I was TERRIFIED.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ever had that feeling before?  Maybe it’s right before a presentation or a sales call?  While the physical danger may not be anywhere near the same as jumping out of a plane, the fear can be as great or greater.

What about telling your family you are quitting your job to pursue financial freedom full time?  THAT is pretty scary…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“NOW LOOK AT ME!  YOU ARE JUMPING NOW OR ELSE I’M THROWING YOU OUT OF THIS PLANE MYSELF!!!” screamed the instructor at me.  The intensity in his eyes told me he wasn’t joking.

Now convinced that I was more terrified of this instructor than my own impending death 3,500 feet below me, I edged towards the gaping hole in the side of the plane.  He (assertively) grabbed my one arm, pointed where my foot was supposed to go, one hand, two hand, look up at the smiley face and…

(whoosh!)

…after the immediate panic had subsided, I realized that I was now safely floating through the sky, in one of the most peaceful moments of my life.  Parachute safely deployed above me, I circled back and forth, back and forth through the beautiful, clear, blue Alberta skies.

Was this what I was so afraid of?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Mentors and coaches are there to help us get out of our own way.  They see the path ahead when all we see is the fear of failure.

And just as my skydiving instructor made sure that my parachute was properly packed, the pilot made sure that the plane was in good operation, and the airport authorities made sure that the weather conditions were suitable, good coaches and mentors will make sure that you’ve got the right equipment, vehicle, and conditions for success.

…even when you can’t see past the next doorway.

And remember that even when your mentors give you the right parachute, the right plane, and the right conditions, it is STILL up to YOU to make the jump, as much as it may feel like a leap of faith.

Having great mentors has been synonymous with all of the most exciting, successful, and fulfilling periods in my life.  Find great mentors, take action in spite of your fear, and prosper.

Onwards and Upwards,

TF

When you want to promote an event – maybe it’s a product launch, charity fundraiser, or other – consider using my “Micro-Centres of Influence Model”:

How to use “MICRO-CENTRES OF INFLUENCE”

(yes I invented this term, haha)

When you don’t know one person who has a DB of 10K+ (too bad), identify 10 people that each have a list of 10-20 trusted people that would be interested in your event.

These people are your “Micro-Centres of Influence“.  Best people for this are: your event sponsors, people you have overlap / JVs with (that are personally gaining from what Robin teaches, therefore are gung-ho), other DM members, people already coming that you might know

Now hire a Virtual Assistant, train them with a script to call your own DB of 10 – 20 people. I have done this and it has gone well.

In these calls, your VA will offer two invitations… one to the free Teleconference, and one to the PAID event… important that these are INVITATIONS. Keeps things low-pressure.

Then, lend your VA out to your Micro Centres of Influence. YOU PAY THE BILL… make this no money no risk for your Micro COIs…. keep in mind that at $8/hr, you probably will be paying $150 or less… pretty awesome.

NOTE: If you have sponsors and.or JV Partners attending the event, they are a GREAT Micro-COI… the have a vested interest in having a full room.

…VOILA… you’ve now just engaged around 100 people with a personalized phone call, on behalf of a person that they know, like, and trust.

TF

Remember the last time you  were at grocery store and they were giving away free samples of ice cream?

Hook, Line, and Sinker!

I know that every single time this happens, I delightfully race over and gobble up the ice cream, whether I think I will like the flavour or not.  And it is always THE highlight of my grocery trip!

The way that I race to the “chocolate mint ice cream” is one of the exact ways that Robin encourages people to drum up business in Joint Ventures.

Stress-free selling

When I see and eat the Free, no-strings-attached “chocolate mint ice cream sample”, I never feel guilty about taking it.  Nor does the sales person pressure me.

We all feel good about it whether I buy the actual tub of chocolate mint ice cream or not.  Everybody is happy, and I walk away cheerful about my experience.

KEYS TO SUCCESS…

1) FREE

2) No strings attached

3) What you’re offering for free must have genuine, inherent value that people WANT

4) Once people are in front of you, enjoying your sample of “chocolate mint ice cream”, you must have a way(s) to monetize.

TF

Rich Dad’s Prophecy has arrived…

New York Times – 3/24/2010

Social Security to See Payout Exceed Pay-In This Year

The bursting of the real estate bubble and the ensuing recession have hurt jobs, home prices and now Social Security.

This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, made a few incredible points in his 2005 Stanford Commencement address.

Amongst them, he told a story of how he dropped out of college.  This allowed him to “drop-in” to all the classes that actually interested him, rather than being in all of the mandatory classes he would have been prescribed to take.

At the time there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for the classes he chose.  In fact, one class he took was calligraphy.  He learned the difference between serif and sans-serif, the proper spacing between certain letter combinations, and other key information for the artistic representation of letters in print.

Years later, as he was working on one of his latest Macintosh computers, it all clicked… he “connected the dots”.  He and his partner applied what he had learned in Calligraphy class to bring to the world the first every fonts.  Different typefaces, sizes, styles… all because of that seemingly trivial calligraphy class.

His message: in life, it’s impossible to “connect the dots” looking forward.  We can only do our best – stay hungry and foolish, follow our intuition – and live every day as if it were our last.  And then – only looking backwards – can we truly connect the dots, and bring together everything we’ve been, learned, and accomplished.  And through this we can find great synergy.

To watch this speech in it’s entirety, click here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

The concept of “taking responsibility” in life was something that I first understood back when I was playing college volleyball.  This moment is one of my favourite all-time memories from that year…

CRUSH THE BALL

It was late in the game, and our team was on the brink of missing playoffs for the first time in 10 years.  Our college had a reputation of having a winning varsity volleyball program, but this particular year just wasn’t panning out.

My teammate JR crushed the ball for what appeared to a beautiful down-the-line kill.

“OUT!” yelled the line judge.

“WHAT?!?  That’s bullshit!!!” yelled JR.

Our coach, Arch, called a time-out to bring the team back together.

“Look boys, you can bitch and complain about the refs and blame them for everything… OR you can go out there, and – on this next point – pound the ball through the middle of the floor so HARD that there will be no room for interpretation.  Your choice!”

So we shut up and got to work.

You always have a Choice

I don’t remember if we ended up winning that game or not, but the lesson has stuck with me forever.  I can “bitch and complain” about my bank account, workload, clients, partners, whatever…. or I can just shut up and get to work.

Own the fact that I have a choice.  A choice between giving my power away – to the ref, to my boss, to my bank account, to my teachers, to my parents, to my past experiences, to my past failures, to anything else – and taking my power back, taking control of things and getting down to business.

Sometimes life can be a struggle, and sucking it up means growing up… getting bigger so that you can easily step over the obstacle that once seemed like an insurmountable wall.

TF

Another great article from Robin J. Elliott of
www.DollarMakers.com

Enjoy!

TF

How to Succeed as a Joint Venture Broker

March 27th, 2010 | Category: Joint Ventures

Why is it that someone attends one of our exciting Joint Venture Broker training programs or seminars, reads my books, joins the DollarMakers Club or the DollarMakers Women’s Club, listens to my podcasts, reads my Blog, joins DollarMakers101, and STILL FAILS?

After all, they have received the best possible training, they have great support, all the tools they need, and access to the right people, they can pick and choose from some excellent, ready-made Joint Ventures, yet they still fail.

Why?

Perhaps the following will go some way to revealing the reason…

A parable is told of a farmer who owned an old mule. The mule fell into the farmer’s well. The farmer heard the mule ‘braying’ — or whatever mules do when they fall into wells. After carefully assessing the situation, the farmer felt sorry for the mule, but decided that neither the mule nor the well was worth saving. Instead, he called his neighbors together and told them what had happened and asked them to help haul dirt to bury the old mule in the well and put him out of his misery.

Initially, the old mule was hysterical! But as the farmer and his neighbors continued shoveling and the dirt hit his back, a thought struck him. It suddenly dawned on him that every time a shovel load of dirt landed on his back: he should shake it off and step up! This is what the old mule did, blow after blow. “Shake it off and step up… shake it off and step up… shake it off and step up!” he repeated to encourage himself.

No matter how painful the blows, or distressing the situation seemed, the old mule fought “panic” and just kept right on shaking it off and stepping up! You guessed it! It wasn’t long before the old mule, battered and exhausted, stepped triumphantly over the wall of that well! What seemed like it would bury him, actually end up blessing him. All because of the manner in which he handled his adversity. Shake it off and step up!

You see, most people get all excited, and rightfully so, about Joint Ventures. They rush out enthusiastically and make a few mistakes, which is quite normal for one who has little experience. They fall down figurative wells. They meet with one or two setbacks, refusals, or dead ends, and what do they do? They QUIT. They leap to the confusion that Joint Ventures simply don’t work, and off they waddle to the next seminar.

Winners understand that one fails to success – that each failure is simply a rung in the ladder to success, and that every time things don’t work out as expected, you get better and stronger, and closer to success, just as the old mule in our story discovered. Champions learn from their mistakes, and the really smart ones learn from the mistakes of others, and they never quit. I still try JV’s that fail. No problem! If you use our systems, you have no risk or cost involved, and you always learn valuable lessons that later make you rich.

Robin J. Elliott
www.DollarMakers.comwww.DollarMakers.com

I can’t stand it when people say that being selfish is “bad”, and that capitalism is “heartless” or “inhuman”.

First of all, humanity has never actually had true capitalism anywhere in the world.  The United States in it’s infancy was the closest any country has ever been, and currently the world is seeing a renewed rise in Socialism, with the U.S. (as led by Barack Obama) a big part of this.

Secondly, consider this story…

Drugged? Assaulted? Robbed?

Someone close to me once went out to a nightclub to celebrate with their friends.

I was sound asleep that night, when – at 4:00 am – I heard banging on the outside of the house.  This awoke me, and I wasn’t sure what it was… I had never heard that kind of sound before.

I checked out the various windows, and didn’t find anything.

But when I went to the front door, I discovered my nightclub-going associate… almost incoherent, swaying from side to side, with cuts on their face, and grass covering their body.  It was -10C outside, and they were wearing just a spring jacket.

This was not good.

So I rushed to open the door and bring them inside.  Had they been jumped / beaten / assaulted at the club?  Had they been robbed?

I looked them in the eyes to ask them what had happened.  Their eyes were dark and sullen.  The could barely comprehend me.  They could barely even stand.

They were obviously under the influence of sometime… had they been drugged?

Intensely I asked question after question to determine if they were at risk, if I needed to involve the police, or take them to the hospital immediately.

Within a minute of being inside, this person was out cold on the couch.  I checked all vital signs, I checked for fluids including blood, cerebrospinal fluid, and saliva.  I palpated for both broken bones and blood pressure.  Quickly I covered almost all of the standard emergency response tests.

I determined that this person was stable.  So I checked to see if their wallet, ID, cell phone had been stolen…

Wallet? Check.

ID? Check.

Cash? Check.

Cell phone? Nowhere to be found…

Whether my associate had been guilty of too many drinks or had been drugged,  they had no cell phone, cuts on their face, and grass covering their body.  I needed to know that nothing terrible had happened!

So I left them with a trusted person that had joined us, and I headed out… At 415am I headed out to the nightclub, where I thought I might catch a few of my associate’s friends.

After an hour of speaking with people to piece together what had happened, as well as searching all over for the missing cell phone, I returned to find my associate still out cold on the couch.

With their vital signs still strong, my bed began calling me once again…

The next day I was working, and I received a message that all was okay.  A sense of relief washed over my body.

Yet, to this day I am still haunted by the  image of my associate – a person that I care about – nearly incoherent, cuts on their face, and grass on their body, with deep, sullen eyes.  It literally looked as though they had risen from the dead.

How could caring for someone be “selfish”?

I am a big believer in being “selfish” – motivated by my own self-interest, so how could I go so far out of my way to help someone else?

It doesn’t make any sense, right? WRONG.

In this case, I *was* acting in my self-interest.  I care about this person, and I didn’t even think twice about helping them in their moment of crisis, tracking their whereabouts back to the club, etc.

Now, if this was something that happened every other weekend, it would be a different story.  But one single night with a few bad decisions that – thankfully – didn’t end badly, and my human compassion and sympathy was in full action.

Selfishness and Capitalism

If you think that “selfishness” and capitalism are inhuman, greedy, heartless, and dispassionate, you don’t understand any of these topics sufficiently.

My actions – as described above – were perfectly selfish and capitalistic.  If this isn’t making sense to you, I encourage you to read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, followed by The Virtue of Selfishness… I believe your worldview will be expanded in ways you could have never imagined…

Onwards and Upwards,

TF