I recently had a jumped up seminar junkie once again disgorging his unsolicited advice about how to run my business. One flower of success in the midst of a murky myriad of failures has convinced him that he is the business oracle before which mortals such as I should gratefully prostrate ourselves. One swallow does not a summer make, my young friend. Buying overpriced business courses does not make you a Donald Trump - it merely makes you a customer of the Donald. The smartest people I know only offer their advice when asked, and even then they humbly qualify their contribution.

Taking advice from people, as Mr. John Addison says, “who are more screwed up than you are”, is not one of my many failings. I am acutely aware of the limits of my knowledge and experience, but I have never benefited from the advice of someone who is clearly inexperienced, arrogant, and stupid into the bargain.

When I discovered the Average IQ was 100, I was Appalled (and then relieved!)

When I discovered that, on a bell curve, the average person has an IQ of 100, I was at first appalled, then relieved, when I found forgiveness in my icy heart for the average plebe who disguises himself as an entrepreneur and doles out his noxious counsel to other equally inept pretenders - the blind blissfully leading the blind, and laughing all the way to the bankruptcy court.

When Jim Stovall said that we should only take advice from people who already have what we want, he should have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Wisdom. Imagine an entrepreneur taking advice from an academic, a bank manager, or a socialist. Ridiculous, I know. Yet the sheeple continue to be sheeple, and we don’t have to follow them over the edge of the cliff.

Seek out TRULY SUCCESSFUL Mentors and Follow their Advice Carefully

Let us carefully select a good pair of effective earplugs and install them as soon as we are approached by one of these tormentors. Let us not confuse the symbol for the real thing. If I was a detective looking for a psychopathic conman, the first suspects on my list would be religious leaders, seminar presenters, consultants, and coaches, suffering from delusions of grandeur and fed by brainless sycophants who pay too much to join their cults.

I seek out truly successful mentors and follow their advice carefully, all the while retaining my reason and a good dose of skepticism, and cautiously weighing their recommendations before grabbing my wife’s checkbook. Empty barrels do, in fact, make the most noise. And still waters run very deep.

The Buddha said,

“Don’t hurry to believe in anything, even if it has been written in the holy scriptures. Don’t hurry to believe in anything just because a very famous teacher has said it. Don’t believe in anything just because the majority has agreed that it is the truth. You should test anything people say with your own experience before you accept or reject it.”

Let me add this final piece: When you find yourself in any meeting, seminar, or presentation where group dynamics and mass hysteria, group-think and emotional manipulation are at work, do not spend more than $500 or commit yourself to any amount over $500. This will prevent you from waking up with a terrible, haunting question the next morning: “WHAT HAVE I DONE?” The offer will still be there the next day, believe you me, and it might look very different.

The DollarMakers Credited Business Mentor Training Program

• Become a Certified Business Mentor (CBM)
• Learn how to Double the Profits in virtually Any Business
• Earn real money getting real results for business owners

As a Protégé of Robin J. Elliott and Patrick Giesbrecht, get five days of personal, hands-on coaching in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia

For 18 years, I consulted with the owners of small and medium sized businesses to dramatically increase their profits. As I got more involved with the DollarMakers Membership and traveled around the world more frequently, I stopped the consulting. My fees ran from $500 per hour to $1200 per hour and my monthly retainers were $5,000 plus profit sharing, but my heart was in the Bootcamps and my Joint Ventures.

I continually get requests from business owners to help them grow their businesses through my business mentoring, and there is nobody I would recommend to do that. After seeing how many “Coaches” and “Consultants” out there cost a small fortune and do more damage than good, I don’t know one person who can do what we do. OK, I know one person who can do it: Patrick Giesbrecht, the fellow who retired within seven months of attending my Bootcamp, but he doesn’t do mentoring either.

And so we came up with a solution: We would offer personal, intense, hands-on training to a few, carefully selected, qualified Protégés so that we can turn them into Business Mentors who are equipped to go into virtually any business and double or quadruple its profits, and get very well paid to do so. We created a five day, focused program, during which Patrick and I will personally coach and train these few, selected people and duplicate our skills in them. They will learn directly from my 21 years of experience and Patrick Giesbrecht’s business genius.

We will accept only a limited amount of Protégé’s per group, and we will include their accommodation, meals, and a professional city tour of our home, Vancouver, the most beautiful city in the world. Spouses and life partners can attend the training as well, at no cost, and their accommodation and tour will also be included (with the exception of their meals).

If you are interested in applying to be a Protégé, you can complete an application form on this site. We reserve the right to accept or reject applicants without an explanation, and since we will only accommodate a few people over five days, there will be very few slots to fill and we are already inundated with applications. If you’re interested in applying to be personally trained to be a Business Mentor, click here.

Read what you get and what investment is required before completing this Application.

Everything that impacts your mind, perception, choices, or awareness, has only one of two effects: Good or bad. The lukewarm amongst us will jeer at that declaration and allege that there is a “gray area” - losers LOVE that idea. Remember that our limitations are Self-Imposed, and so are our successes.

The fact is that if you are seriously committed to success, everything that you are exposed to will either help or hurt your progress en route to your objective. Winners cannot afford any dilution or distraction. Cyclists shave their bodies. Champions measure their speed in thousandths of seconds. EVERYTHING counts: diet, environment, input, association.

Contrasting Experiences To Learn From

I received an unsolicited phone call today from a fellow who wants me to participate in a public conference call. He asked me what my criteria were to participate or not. My answer was, “When I know whom the other participants in this project are, I will make my decision.” I will judge him by the company he keeps.

I once unexpectedly had to impose on someone with whom I had a business meeting to give me a lift home in his car. Before and during the meeting, he had impressed me with his stories of success and achievement. Until I got into his filthy van, that was. Cigarette butts clogged the ashtrays, papers were spread all over - dirty disarray, a reflection of his real nature - no congruency. End of relationship.

Nourish your success by elevating your standards, expectations, systems, and consciousness through the carefully selected association with people, ideas, input and environment. Exorcise the mundane, the tepid, the feeble, and the inconsistent.

Find mentors and heroes, both dead and alive, who will inspire, uplift, and challenge you.

Adhere to and create environments that are aligned with and congruent with your values, beliefs, aspirations, and expectations. Everything you read and watch, see, hear and perceive, has a consequence. The people in your life either take you towards your goals or away from them.

Nourish your success by paying whatever price is required. Invest in your goals and future. Discover the Real You and regain your old belief and excitement. Read only that which will fuel your ambition and inspire you on your journey. Churchill will trump Stephen King. Associate with those whom you wish to emulate. Practice that which you wish to perfect.

Read the thoughts of the great ones, if you wish to think the thoughts of the great ones, for their words ARE their thoughts. Align your philosophy with that of your heroes. Carefully and diligently remove all obstacles, detractors, and distractions from your path. Fuel your enthusiasm with stories about the accomplishments of winners. Everything counts, and everything matters. Contamination is real. Replace poison with power. You don’t eat donuts if you want to win the marathon.

Discover the route to guaranteed success with any Joint Venture. Success is the result of a certain mindset that will guarantee your success. If your mind is well prepared, your actions will follow what is prepared in your head.

There are 5 Elements to Success, and Robin J. Elliott explains them in detail in this podcast.

 

 Podcast: Guaranteed Success with Joint Ventures [7:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Many entrepreneurs have a love/hate relationship with their businesses. They love the freedom it gives them, but they hate the fact that it steals all their time and energy. They love the fact that they can earn an unlimited amount of money in their own business, but they hate the fact that they constantly have to slave to create enough cash flow. It’s almost as if they got the new car, but it doesn’t have an engine.

Something is missing in your business, and I know where you can get it.

There’s the old story of the Indian Chief who saved for years to buy a car. When he got his shiny, new automobile, he sat in it and traveled slowly down the main street, waving to all the passers-by, well pleased with himself, and proud of his new toy. He had had six horses pulling the car along, because he didn’t know how to start the car or drive; two hundred horses under the hood that weren’t being used. Sounds like a lot of business owners I have met: they work far too hard and earn a a small percentage of their potential profits.

Why buy an airplane and learn to fly, when you can simply buy a ticket on someone else’s plane? It’s infinitely cheaper and easier, takes no time, and there’s no risk. Oh, you knew that? Then why don’t we do that in our businesses? Instead of buying and leasing and owning and risking, why not simply rent, borrow, or share something that is already paid for? Instead of working for minimum wage in your own business while your kids play ball, why not hire somebody and go watch the game? Do you think Donald Trump cleans the floors in Trump Towers? I was there, and I didn’t see him cleaning…. Oh, you’re not Donald Trump, you say? Well, you certainly won’t get to his level of accomplishment by being a laborer. You can read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, all day, but until you start acting on it and doing what rich people do, you’ll stay poor. I know people who’ve organized more cash flow games than I’ve signed checks, and they still work for a boss.

In order to turn that time vampire you call a business into a DollarMaker that spits out money while you sleep, you need to start learning about five things: Leverage, Duplication, Joint Ventures, Profit, and Value. That means that your dear ego needs to take an extended holiday while you take a good, hard look at the real situation in your business.

I told one of my clients, once, that his employees were stealing from him, and that he should start recording phone calls and set up CCTV. He was appalled. He was disgusted, shocked, and indignant. How dare I imply people would be crazy enough to steal from him? His brother turned to me and said, “We have caught a number of people stealing from him.” His ego was so out of control that this fool lived in denial and kept his brain pickled with alcohol over the weekends. You have to face facts if you want to change things.

Pretend your business is a Monopoly Game, and evaluate exactly where you stand. Look at all your resources, options, risks, costs, profits, ratios, and statistics. Look at the return on investment derived from your advertising. Be objective. You’ll be amazed at how many options you have available to you.

When you stand back and look at the amount of money you stand to make over a year from a Joint Venture or sale, you can decide objectively what you are prepared to invest in order to make sure your offer is accepted. For example, if you stand to make $20,000 conservatively, and you know that you have a high degree of certainty of closing the deal with enough leverage, is it worth investing $4,000 to close that deal? I would think that’s a pretty good return on investment.

For example, could you inform your future, proposed JV partner that you have paid for him and his wife to attend the DollarMakers Cancun Convention in November, and covered their flights as well? That small investment gives you enormous leverage for five and a half months! They’re locked in.

On a smaller scale, sending a nice limo around to his house with a huge bunch of flowers for his wife, with tickets to a great show in town and then a limo ride home afterwards, doesn’t cost much, but it’s very impressive. As long as he is available and likes the show, that is.

You could avoid being perceived to be manipulative by offering these perks as a bonus for an early decision to participate in your JV:

“BillyBob, if you go ahead with this deal, I will pay for a three day holiday in Vegas for you and Candy at New York, New York.”

How do you find out what they REALLY want? Ask them the right questions and LISTEN to them.

Unashamedly and ethically bribe people to buy. We all love fun and toys. But be sure what you’re offering is something BillyBob really, really wants, before you make your offer. My bank manager once offered me expensive tickets to a Canucks hockey game. I gave them back. He assumed I like to live vicariously through sports teams like many other sheeple, and he was dead wrong.

Give people a wonderful reason to do business with you. A free meal or a T Shirt don’t really impress people much. How do you find out what they REALLY want? Ask them the right questions and LISTEN to them.

“So, tell me, Elvis, if you had $2,000 cash in your hand, and you absolutely HAD to spend it on some fun toy or experience or game or gimmick or trip within the next six hours, what would you buy?

“Why would you choose that?”

“Tell me more…”

Sometimes, a $5 gift for their dog does more than a $100 bottle of single malt Scotch whiskey. Find their “Hot Button” and push it. Invest to get interest. I would rather spend $100 on one person and make an impact, than $10 on each of ten people and insult them. Think strategically.

Think about it: are you more inclined to accommodate someone after they bought you an expensive lunch and handed you a nice gift, than after a latte at Starbucks? Do you feel like reciprocating after a nice boat trip, more so than after being handed a cheap company calendar?

Pay HIGH commissions - 50% gets peoples’ attention. Pay peanuts, and you get monkeys, with due respect to primates. “Buy a house from me, and I’l buy you a big screen TV” - it works.

Robin J. Elliott
www.JVWisdom.com

“Vertical Thinking” is analytical, focused, left-brain, binary (black or white) and narrow. This is the way most of us in the west have learned to view life and business. Horizontal thinking, on the other hand, is creative, right-brain, lateral, open, inclusive, synergistic, and strategic. Joint Ventures utilize and optimize both these approaches perfectly.

Edward DeBono , author of 62 books on creative thought, said:

“Some people are unhappy about lateral [horizontal] thinking because they feel it threatens the validity of vertical thinking. This is not so at all. The two processes are complementary, not antagonistic. Lateral thinking enhances the effectiveness of vertical thinking by offering it more to select from. Vertical thinking multiplies the effectiveness of lateral thinking by making good use of the ideas generated.”

The Wedding Planner, for example, is good at providing all the services and products related to weddings and the immediate events, even going as far as the honeymoon arrangements, and she gets paid a commission on all referred business within that limited time realm.

A good Joint Venture Broker, on the other hand, will see well beyond that to a strong mailing list that builds an ongoing, long-term relationship and proceeds to mutually benefit both parties over the years; that married couple will breed, buy houses, furniture, cell phones, and holidays, and fifty percent of them will get divorced. All those services can garner serious income for the broker and the service providers, while at the same time providing massive, additional value for the couple. The joint venture broker thinks out of the box.

A Joint Venture Broker is Focused on Back-End Income Sources

The traditional business owner is focused on his own products and services, to the exclusion of multiple additional sales and service opportunities. This myopic approach explains why, in my opinion, the average small and medium-size businesses out there only operate at about 10% of the potential net profit. A lateral thinking, Joint Venture approach can set up numerous back end income sources, all at 100% margin (we like to call them DollarMakers) within hours, days or weeks, thereby turbo-boosting income and differentiating the business from it’s competition, whose blinders keep them working too hard for too little.

Leverage and duplication can be systematically applied to virtually any business when the JV Broker applies this open mindset to the business services, focusing on providing the optimal ease and value for the customer and getting paid on all resulting transactions, much like owning multiple Toll Booths on thousands of bridges across the world.

Best of all, this can be accomplished with no money or risk, and surprisingly little time, since this involves leveraging existing resources. The Joint Venture Broker looks for links and partnership opportunities, and specializes in building a congruent flow of business.

When you think out of the box, you get out of the box, and unlimited opportunities suddenly start appearing all over.

Remember when you were five years old and you felt like you owned the world? You liked yourself, you were proud of your accomplishments, you were strong and courageous, and you loved people. You believed everyone loved you, too. You could dress up like a cowboy and you believed you were one.

When people asked you what you were going to be when you grew up, you answered without any doubt that you would be an astronaut or a beauty queen or a doctor. The world was at your fingertips. You believed in miracles and dreams and you had no limitations.

When You Grow Older, You Let The World Show You Limitations

As you grew older, the world got in the way and disappointments, failures, and painful experiences started to corrode your optimism, discount your self-esteem, and wear down your expectations. You started to become cynical, skepticism crept into your heart and you began compromising.

You found that being politically correct and turning the other cheek made your life easier, and you could avoid confrontation by backing down.

Previously exciting dreams and goals got shelved in favor of mediocrity and concession. Your attempts at improvement became lackluster and half-hearted. You liked yourself less. You put yourself down and lowered your standards. You stated focusing on survival instead of great success.

The Real You is still there, deep down inside. You are a winner who has behaved like a loser. You are an eagle that is living in a chicken run. You are a king or queen, clothed as a beggar, a champion with a loser’s name. You are still that five-year-old hero, and it’s not too late to return to your real self.

You can regain your belief and excitement. You can make all your dreams come true. You are the shiny sports car that simply needs the grime washed off, gas in the tank and a tune up – a “Check-up from the neck up.” The future is not equal to the past. A hundred dollar note may be crumpled, dirty and torn, but it’s still worth a hundred dollars.

You have unlimited potential. You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. You are ready. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. You are powerful, smart, and wonderfully made. You have the opportunity to start over, today, by choice, regardless of your circumstances, IF you believe that. You’re not a has-been; you’re a Gonna-be! All you need is to make the decision that you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired. Nothing can stop you from recreating yourself and your life, starting right now, and repeating it every single day.

You might be down, but you’re not out. You can get back up off the canvas, my friend, and become the champion you were always meant to be. It all starts with the realization of who you really are. The real you wants out – do yourself a favor and be free. Throw the shackles of self-limitation off. Walk out of the prison of doubt and fear. Fearlessly create the life you want and deserve.