If you’re scalping hockey tickets, selling pot, whining about high taxes, or mumbling absentmindedly about the weather and the price of eggs, you probably encounter very little resistance or intransigence. However, when you offer an alternative to the popular status quo, suggest a substitute to mind-numbing mysticism, or present a different perspective, essentially questioning strongly held beliefs and established conditioning, you suddenly find yourself facing blank stares, passive aggression, or outright conflict.

Controversial, politically incorrect information is not usually well received. This, in spite of the fact that your information can potentially dramatically improve the quality of life of your reluctant target. There’s a reason for this, and it’s not your fault.

We all tend to seek our and select information to support our dominant beliefs and avoid pain. I thought three concepts would help illuminate what we’re up against when we follow that road less traveled and wish to share real treasure with the mediocre masses.

First, Cognitive Dissonance:

“Cognitive Dissonance normally occurs when a person perceives a logical inconsistency among his or her cognitions. This happens when one idea implies the opposite of another. For example, a belief in animal rights could be interpreted as inconsistent with eating meat or wearing fur. Noticing the contradiction would lead to dissonance, which could be experienced as anxiety, guilt, shame, anger, embarrassment, stress, and other negative emotional states.” – Wikipedia

Imagine the fellow who strongly believes, as he was taught, that he should always “Turn the other check”, and so he does, and as a result of his passivity, he finds himself continually bullied, so he feels anger at the obvious injustice. Now he feels guilty because he’s angry. A double bind has resulted from his sacrificial conditioning.; he;s damned if he does, and damned if he doesn’t. Or he works hard, makes money, and then feels obliged, because of his conditioning, to submit to the extortion of his loafing relatives. Naturally, he resents this, so he feels guilty… Final example: He believes money to be the root of all evil, so when he earns it, he feels guilty and self-sabotages to punish himself.

Second, Cognitive Distortion:

From Wikipedia:

“Cognitive distortions are exaggerated and irrational thoughts identified in cognitive therapy and its variants, which supposedly perpetuate certain psychological disorders. Eliminating these distortions and negative thought is said to improve mood and discourage maladies such as depression and chronic anxiety. The process of learning to refute these distortions is called “cognitive restructuring”.

Many cognitive distortions are also logical fallacies.

1. All-or-nothing thinking – Thinking of things in absolute terms, like “always”, “every”, “never”, and “there is no alternative”. Few aspects of human behavior are so absolute. All-or-nothing-thinking can contribute to depression.

2. Overgeneralization – Taking isolated cases and using them to make wide generalizations.

3. Mental filter – Focusing almost exclusively on certain, usually negative or upsetting, aspects of an event while ignoring other positive aspects. For example, focusing on a tiny imperfection in a piece of otherwise useful clothing.

4. Disqualifying the positive – Continually reemphasizing or “shooting down” positive experiences for arbitrary, ad hoc reasons.

5. Jumping to conclusions – Drawing conclusions (usually negative) from little (if any) evidence. Two specific subtypes are also identified:
* Mind reading – Assuming special knowledge of the intentions or thoughts of others.
* Fortune telling – Exaggerating how things will turn out before they happen.

6. Magnification and minimization – Distorting aspects of a memory or situation through magnifying or minimizing them such that they no longer correspond to objective reality. In depressed clients, often the positive characteristics of other people are exaggerated and negative characteristics are understated. There is one subtype of magnification:
* Catastrophizing – Focusing on the worst possible outcome, however unlikely, or thinking that a situation is unbearable or impossible when it is really just uncomfortable.

7. Emotional reasoning – Making decisions and arguments based on intuitions or personal feeling rather than an objective rationale and evidence.

8. Should statements – Patterns of thought which imply the way things “should” or “ought to be” rather than the actual situation the patient is faced with, or having rigid rules which the patient believes will “always apply” no matter what the circumstances are. Albert Ellis termed this “Musturbation”.

9. Labeling and mislabeling – Explaining behaviors or events, merely by naming them; related to overgeneralization. Rather than describing the specific behavior, a patient assigns a label to someone or themselves that implies absolute and unalterable terms. Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.

10. Personalization – Attribution of personal responsibility (or causal role) for events over which the patient has no control. This pattern is also applied to other in the attribution of blame.”

When you read the above, it makes it easier to see where people are really coming from, instead of taking their “rejection” personally. It explains why otherwise intelligent people join cults, vote for narcissistic socialists while claiming to be capitalists, and invest their money in ridiculous scams.  It reveals why most people prefer to be told what to do and what to think by those who do not have their best interests at heart, and why rational, proven  solutions are rejected outright as “to good to be true”, “from the devil”, or “dishonest” – why someone would prefer to lose money in mutual funds and ripoffs instead of getting 12% per year, or buy silly franchises and lose a small fortune when they could make a lot more money with no cost or risk at all.

Cognitive therapy

Cognitive therapy seeks to help the client overcome difficulties by identifying and changing dysfunctional thinking, behavior, and emotional responses. Depending on your situation and circumstances, unless you’re a psychologist or psychiatrist, you’re not going to make a huge change in the way the majority of people think. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, simply because most people seldom choose to change. But there is a way to influence and help more people positively in their own best interests: education. Not the junk spewed out by teachers, preachers, politicians, many “financial planners”, banks, and “gurus”, but real, worthwhile education.

DollarMakers is based on the idea that “You can get anything you want out of life, if you help enough other people to get what they want.”  The information / education we create and disseminate is particularly focused on the creation of wealth, and underpinned by a philosophy of Capitalism, realism, Objectivism, and rationalism. We believe that continuous exposure to truth, objective thought, personal responsibility, and practical, proven systems eventually gets through to a few people, and that assists us in achieving our goals. I recommend everyone read “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand, and I use my talks, training,  seminars, websites,Twitter, blog, podcasts, videos, conference calls, webinars, and other communication channels to share reality and dispel the myths and lies that keep people chained and in bondage.

Years ago, I was chopping wood for a barbeque. I wore sandals, and stupidly supported the wood with my foot. Bang! I chopped right into the tip of my front toe. The only thing that prevented me from cleaving the entire toe in half and limping for the rest of my life was my sandal. Idiot. At the emergency room, they injected directly into the quarter-inch wound before sewing it up. Ouch! I no longer chop in the direction of my feet.

I was preparing for a camping trip

I was going preparing for a camping trip to Ponta Do Ouro in Mozambique in the summer of 1972. (Don’t go there now, unless you like the idea of landmines – you might lose more than a toe…) As I packed my VW minibus camper, I carried my snub-nosed .38 Astra Special revolver on a sleeping cushion. As I stepped up into the back door, the loaded gun slipped off the pillow, hit the bus’s floor, and went off. Since the windows and other doors were closed and a bullet was definitely fired, it can only have passed between me and the inside of the one door – a very small space – a close miss, if ever there was one. Stupid. I learned an important lesson and gained a renewed respect for guns.

I have met more conmen, shysters, and outright thieves in the past twelve years than I ever thought possible. And with governments fast going the way of outright socialism and banks and the taxman collaborating to put the squeeze on business owners, we live in an increasingly  dangerous business world. It’s time to grow up and realize that we are at risk, and that we need to limit our risk.

When I tell people to do business with no cost and no risk, I mean it.

I know a fellow with a giant ego and a small IQ who regularly sought to differ with me on this point. I have seen him lose a lot of money, since he doesn’t understand how to avoid risk and cost. If he did, he wouldn’t lose so much money in his harebrained schemes, or work with thieves. Knowing how business works, and understanding the odds, the risks, and the fact that there are a few dishonest people around, makes it necessary, if one wishes to get rich, to avoid risk and costs. And it’s easier than it seems.

How To Avoid Risks, Costs and some Dishonest People

1. Use leverage and existing resources instead of paying for new ones. Work strategically and don’t rely on any one source of income.
2. Pay for results, not promises.
3. Be VERY careful whom you associate / do business with. Remember that people can change for the worst – easily and quickly, so be prepared for that.
4. When you smell a rat, RUN. Cut bait. Delete. Immediately.
5. Test people in many ways to make sure they are still loyal and honest. Be a detective.
6. Don’t disclose the identities of your Joint Venture partners.
7. Triangulate deals – don’t sell your own products and services.
8. Align yourself with people who share your philosophy – don’t link up with mystics, socialists, environmentalists, or reverse racists.
9. Don’t trust government or work with government or their agents.
10. Operate with no overhead – lean and mean. Expect the best and prepare for the worst. Spread your income and diversify.

Joint Ventures allow one to operate as above, and the older and wiser I get, the more I appreciate the power and sophistication offered by the Joint Venture systems I use. If you’re carrying a gun, make sure it’s not pointed at you.

I just noticed that a fellow with a massive database is following me on Twitter. He knows who I am. I could show him a simple, proven, safe, no-cost, risk-free system that he could introduce easily to his database. Conservatively, it would earn him $5,000 per month in passive income within three months. (No, it’s not Network Marketing.) Yet I can virtually guarantee that he won’t even consider it. Why? His giant ego. Seminar leaders, “gurus” and “trainers”, much like many of the owners of small and medium-sized business, allow their egos to steal massive potential profits from right under their noses.

We’re not in business to feel important or to impress people

We’re in business to make the most possible after-tax profit, with the least cost, time, risk, and effort. The fact is that most “gurus” and “entrepreneurs” are not really entrepreneurs – they’re really just slick salesmen and pitchmen. (Anthony “Sully” Sullivan, the well-known “Pitchman”, says, “Life’s a pitch, and then you die.”)  Smart entrepreneurs understand that Joint Ventures and strategic alliances are the most sophisticated tools in business – they’re strategic, they employ leverage, and they are scalable. And they’re not based on ego, but rather on profit.

When we get our egos under control, we suddenly see new options opening up.

Look at the people who make the really big money, and you’ll find that they seldom sell their time, they actually prefer not to be on a stage unless they have no other option, and they evaluate business opportunities objectively and rationally. When we get our egos under control, we suddenly see new options opening up. But for that, we need to understand the back-end, leverage, and positioning.

Calvin Coolidge said, “Civilization and profit go hand in hand.” Most wanna-be business owners are simply broke, desperate, self-employed salespeople, whose arrogance is exceeded only by their ignorance, yet these are the very people who allow their egos to dictate their business choices.  A big fish is a small, rancid pond is only impressive those to even more pathetic and needy than he is.

“Robin, It’s about the Bottom Line”

The most successful businessman with whom I was ever privileged to work, partnered with me in my business and taught me a very important lesson. He said, “Robin, it’s all about the bottom line. If you maintain your integrity and sublimate your personal feelings and pride, your profits will soar.  There is always going to be someone richer and smarter than you are – don’t try to be a legend in your own lunchtime, don’t believe your own PR and BS, and focus on the bottom line.” He was a very wealthy man, one of the most humble, soft-spoken people around, and very strong and disciplined.

If you want to feel important, act in a pantomime, join a service or fraternal club and rise in the ranks to get a title, or teach kids. If you want to get rich, focus on the bottom line.