Entrepreneurs: Are You Trying to Catch Fish with a Boxing Glove?

Business Owners, Entrepreneurship, Joint Ventures 1 Comment »

When the average business owner wants to boost his profits, he usually:

Focuses on sales instead of profits (strike one),
Looks about him at what everyone else is doing (strike two),
And looks for “expert” advice from the wrong people (strike three).

It’s like catching fish with a boxing glove. Boosting your bottom line requires strategic thinking, and it’s best to accomplish this without any cost or risk, and the minimum of time.

Think like a general instead of a soldier, and a like chess player instead of a checker’s player, and you’ll start thinking like a Joint Venture Broker. Strategists move beyond ego and fear to a rational approach that focuses on profit and abundance. It’s all about leverage and understanding reciprocity and systems.

You Need to Ask Yourself:

Here are a few questions to ask yourself, in order to move from tactician to strategist, and from selling your time to using your head:

What else could your customers buy, before, after, and during their purchase from you, and who could you arrange that they buy that from, while you receive a piece of all the resulting, ongoing transactions? Back end = 100% pure profit.
If you gave them an incentive, how many businesses / people could you arrange to enthusiastically, systematically, and consistently refer business to you? Unlimited, qualified referrals from a trusted source with a high closing ratio is the result.
How much extra value would you like to add to your current transactions at no cost or risk to you? This can increase transaction values and closing ratios and drop your attrition rate through the floor.
How could you piggyback on the distribution, excess inventory, unconverted leads, marketing, sales, and other resources of twenty other businesses? Scrap that marketing budget.
How can you arrange to stop paying for promises and only pay for results, which will essentially allow you to have an unlimited marketing budget? Fire those coaches and consultants right now.

When business owners realize that they’re working too hard and too long for too little, and that they’re only realizing around 10% of their potential profit, they suddenly open their eyes and start thinking like real business owners instead of broke, self-employed, salespeople who BS themselves even more than they do everyone else.

You can move from the soup kitchen to the Four Seasons faster than you think. Stop paying for a Rolex and getting a Timex. But remember that the man who wears a Timex can’t teach you how to buy a Rolex.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or sign up for Email Updates below.

How to Leverage Your Mind

Get Rich and Retire, management, philosophy, self-improvement No Comments »

Leverage is what it’s all about in business. That is, after all, how the rich get rich. And that’s why I love being a Joint Venture Broker – I use leverage.

How about getting leverage on your mind, so that you can accomplish your goals faster and easier? It costs nothing, and it’s simpler than one might imagine. They say, “Affirmations, like ‘I’m happy, healthy, and successful’, consistently spoken out loud with enthusiasm and belief, work.” Well, that’s at a very basic level. One can ramp that up significantly.

Stepping Up Affirmations

Instead of mindlessly intoning, “I’m happy”, how about asking yourself,

WHY am I happy?
What have I got to be happy about?
What’s great about my life?
How can I be happier?
What can I do to make myself even happier? What specific steps can I take?

That will result in goals, and when you write them down and create an action plan, you can affirm your action plan.

This will in turn program your Reticular Activating System, which is like your mental GPS, and it will work tirelessly and subconsciously to help you notice and find ways to make your goals happen. Great leverage! That’s why you notice every new Lexus when you’ve just bought one.

How You Can Apply This Strategy

If you repeat, “I’m happy” and then interrupt yourself to ask, “Why am I happy?” you might find yourself answering, “I’m not happy – I am decidedly glum.”

Well, then you ask, “What do I have to do to BECOME happy?” It’s profound in its simplicity – it leads to positive, constructive action.
“What is making me unhappy?” Find the root cause and remove or adjust it.

Your Input Effects You

Have a good look at your input and its effect on your state of mind, aspirations, expectations, choices, and results. Every choice, word, and thought is either taking you towards your goals or away from your goals.

What are you reading, watching, and listening to?
Whom are you mixing with?
What kind of exercise, diet, and environment is affecting your progress?

Managing Your Mind

What you think about comes about. What you focus on will grow. Managing your mind with questions and controlling your input makes sense if you want to fast-track your success. Written, specific, time-related, measurable goals will make your Reticular Activating System work overtime for you, even while you’re asleep. It’s the most powerful weapon you have – might as well use it for good.

Audit Your Inner Resources

Just as professional Joint Venture Brokers use Resource Audits, you might want to audit yourself sometime. “On a scale of one to ten, how happy am I? Why? What needs to change for me to be happier? How healthy? How rich?”

Evaluate your relationships, your present status – take a good, hard look in the mirror. It’s not easy; I sometimes get viciously verbally attacked (usually in writing by the passive aggressive, anal retentive types) when I say things at my seminars that forces people to see themselves in the mirror of their minds. They hate what they see, so they “break the mirror” by attacking me.

Interpreting Your Circumstances

The way we interpret our circumstances and experiences goes a long way to determining how successful we will be. The meaning you choose to give it is the meaning it will have for you.

When a woman told Churchill he was drunk, he responded, “Madam, tomorrow morning, I will be sober, but you will still be ugly.”

Glenn Beck, a true political prophet, is being violently attacked and threatened by people whom he’s courageously exposing in the media as frauds and weasels. He had his friend, a psychiatrist, join him on his TV show to discuss how one should handle these attacks. His friend illustrated how drug addicts refuse to admit they have a problem and attack you for suggesting they do – a great illustration.

Philosophy: Your Best Leverage

The best mental leverage of all is your beliefs and your philosophy – that is what guides you every second of your life. Your beliefs, world view, and philosophy is either hurting or helping you, so why not choose one that works for you?

Discard outdated, demeaning beliefs, and watch your life soar to new heights of success.
I highly recommend you read “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand – it has changed many lives, including mine.

One is faced with a buffet of belief choices – choose right. As developmental psychologist Gail Sheehy wrote years ago in her groundbreaking book, “Passages”, it’s normal and healthy to change your values and beliefs as you go through life, instead of being stuck in the poisonous beliefs some of our parents, preaches and teachers imposed on us – talk about child abuse!

Your most valuable asset in life is your mind.

Buddha said, “Thoughts give joy when they speak or act. Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves them.”

Control your mind, and you control your life.

Napoleon Hill taught us, “Whatever the mind of man can believe and conceive, it can achieve.”

Your circumstances are a clear reflection of your philosophy and thoughts. Have fun taking back control of your mind and your future – be free!

Abundance Surrounds Us – But Do You See It?

Joint Ventures No Comments »

Jay Abraham, the multi-millionaire master marketing guru, whom I first met in the early nineties, certainly understands abundance. He says,

“You are surrounded by simple, obvious solutions that can dramatically increase your income, power, influence, and success. The problem is you just don’t see them.”

Now Jay isn’t talking about viewing The Secret or chanting positive affirmations. He is a very practical, rational, bottom-line entrepreneur.

What He Means

The problem that Jay refers to is our negative, limiting conditioning that is based on scarcity, fear, competition, and skepticism. Instead of seeing why things are possible and what we CAN accomplish, most of us find reasons why we CAN’T. When the average person is told he can get rich, retire, and break free from his burden of debt, he responds, “It’s too good to be true; must be a scam.”

But when you think like a real entrepreneur, and especially when you understand the power of Joint Ventures, everything changes. You don’t have to die of thirst in the middle of a freshwater lake.

The Abundance that Surrounds You

We are surrounded by opportunities, resources, and options that most of us are blind to. Underutilized resources, unconverted leads, hidden assets, money, credit, excess inventory, perishable resources – my personal frustration is that I battle to find enough people who understand Joint Ventures to take advantage of all these wonderful windfall opportunities, and that’s why I started DollarMakers. There is no shortage of options, only a shortage of smart, hard working people who GET IT.

For Example

Here’s a simple example of the amazing power of negative conditioning. Last night I presented a complimentary, ninety-minute seminar on how to become financially free through the use of Joint Ventures, and invited people to attend my JV Bootcamp. I told them how two hundred people attended my last three Bootcamps, and none of them took advantage of our money-back guarantee. Then I offered then the same deal: “Attend the Bootcamp, and by lunch time, if you’re not happy, we will refund your $497.”

At the end of my talk, a man walked up to me and said, “I still don’t know if this will work.” Even though I had effectively removed all the risk, and I know he can easily afford the $497, he is still stuck. Scary!

It’s like holding out a bowl of money, offering people free money, and they say, “There must be a catch – I won’t take any. Please let me return to my sad life of desperation, frustration, and fear.”

Seeing Through the Myths

The best part about getting a piece of the vast abundance around us is that is can be done with no cost, no risk, and relatively little time. The myths that are perpetrated by the media, the mystics, and the academics are not factual, yet we buy into them. When people learn the indisputable, proven FACTS about specific ways to access resources and wealth that cannot be denied, things change – fast. These facts can be demonstrated through real-life stories and examples, with measurable results.

“You have to work hard for many years in order to make real money” is a myth, a concept that is fed to us with those who have a vested interest in our servitude. The rich get richer because they understand this stuff. The banks and your “Financial Planner” don’t want you to know this. You can walk out of your self-created prison – the door isn’t locked.

Rising Above Recession

This recession is a good example of smoke and mirrors, and many businesses are doing better than ever before DURING the recession. Those who believe the only way to survive to is to get and keep a job at any cost, are the losers; they will accept pay cuts, unpaid overtime, ridiculous restrictions, and paid slavery, whereas they can walk away and enter a new world of freedom and choice, where they can hold their heads up high and retire within a year with more residual income per month than they need to live on!

My Advice

Someone said, “Never take advice from anyone who doesn’t already have what you want.”
Someone else said, “Never take advice from people who are more screwed up than you are.”
And I would like to add, “Don’t buy outdated advice.”

Breaking Free

How do we break free from this restrictive, oppressive lifestyle of scarcity? At DollarMakers, that’s exactly what we teach people to do, thorough the use of Joint Ventures. Anyone, regardless of their age, background education, or circumstances, can use JV’s to create financial freedom without cost, risk, or too much time. Much of it, you are already doing; DollarMakers teaches you how to monetize it. With 23 years of international experience, we know what you need to succeed.

You CAN be free. You don’t have to starve next to a loaded buffet table. How hungry are you? There’s more than enough for everybody.

Remove your blindfold, break your chains, and for the sake of your sanity, your integrity, and you family, decide that you want the time and money to enjoy a great quality of life instead of living on the edge in a dark, unhealthy coalmine. What have you got to lose? What will you do?

Want More Time?

Business Etiquette, Business Owners, Entrepreneurship, management No Comments »

Entrepreneurs, more accurately termed “Solopreneurs”, often believe that they are an island, that they must accomplish everything on their own with their own resources. These Solopreneurs think that they are maximizing their chance of survival and profitability. They are totally WRONG. Consider what Micheal Gerber says in his world-famous book The E-Myth: Revisited.

“Picture the typical entrepreneur and Herculean pictures come to mind: a man or woman standing alone, wind-blown against the elements, bravely defying insurmountable odds, climbing sheer faces of treacherous rock–all to realize the dream of creating a business of one’s own. The legend reeks of nobility, of lofty, extra-human efforts, of a prodigious commitment to larger-than-life ideals. Well, while there are such people, my experience tells me they are rare.” – Micheal Gerber

I agree with Micheal Gerber that this image is absolutely absurd! As long as you are a solopreneur, working on every facet of your business, you will be your business’ number one problem!!! As Gerber explains in his book, there are 2 kinds of businesses:

People-dependent businesses
Systems-dependent businesses

Which Are You?

How do you know which one you are? Well, simply ask yourself this:

“if I (or anyone else in my company) were to leave my business for 6 months, would the business still exist when I came back?”

If you answer YES, then you have a systems-dependent business. If NO, then you likely have a person-dependent business.

What IS a Systems-Dependent Business?

So what IS a systems-dependent business? Consider this: McDonald’s can deliver the exact same promise – the exact same food and customer experience – whether you are in Edmonton, Toronto, New York, or Kalamazoo. And it’s delivered by disinterested, teenage kids – some of the least qualified employees on the continent. And this do this BILLIONS of times every single year, at thousands and thousands of locations from sea-to-sea.

…and yet you can’t ever deliver that level of consistency to one set of customers of your one business, located in only one city or town. What’s the difference?

The difference is SYSTEMS. Your business depends on you (people-dependent) while McDonald’s depends on systems – the people can be swapped in and out.

I will now ask you: why is it that you are taking care of making sales calls, balancing the books, dealing with inventory, answering calls, cooking, cleaning, and doing all of this ON YOUR OWN?

True Entrepreneurs

The true entrepreneur sets up a system, then delegates it. Once that’s taken care of, then they create a system for another area of their business, and delegate that out. And they do this with every area of their business until they ARE able to walk away for 6 months or more.

And the funny thing is that it is often the mundane, monotonous, pressing / urgent, and repetitive tasks that distract an aspiring entrepreneur from actually doing the “big-picture” items that will actually take their business to the next level.

Build a SYSTEM for these mundane, monotonous, and repetitive tasks, and DELEGATE. Then get re-focused on the MOST IMPORTANT things… building your business, learning new skills, ideas, and strategies, and maybe even spend more time with your kids, spouse, family, and friends.

Systems for More Than Business

And what if you don’t own a business? Well, in your family life you likely DO have many mundane, repetitive tasks that take time away from being with your family.

Perhaps processing application forms for a charity you volunteer for.
Perhaps calling all of your relatives for the forthcoming family reunion.
Perhaps it’s really a pain for you to balance the family cheque book at the end of the month.
Or maybe it’s a hassle to always be coordinating the parents for Johnny’s soccer team.

Any of these items could be systemized and delegated.

So many routine and mundane tasks…

WHAT IF you could get someone else to do any or all of this?
Would that make you extremely happy?
Would that give you more time to be with your family, kids, and friends?
Would your life experience be better if you just didn’t have to deal with any of that boring, productivity-killing, repetitive brain-freeze?

Well, having your own Virtual Assistant (VA) may or may not be a fit for you. To find out if and how a VA would help you in your specific circumstance, contact Tina at 1-877-977-4776, or Info@SaveTimeBoostProfits.com to get a FREE 30-minute consultation.

Joint Ventures Are About Leverage.

Joint Ventures No Comments »

Joint Ventures are about leverage. When I first started out, I learned how to leverage other people’s experience (OPE). I talked to many people and I soaked up all the information I could from my mentors. They helped me to quickly become successful as I was able avoid many of their mistakes, and utilize many of the shortcuts they learned to become successful.

In order for you to become a successful Joint Venture Broker, you need to do the same. That’s why I’m so excited about JVU. It’s a complete step-by-step program designed to fill in the blanks and help you put together numerous different joint venture strategies. It’s based upon all the techniques we’ve seen success with, and helps you to avoid the traps and pitfalls that you may come across.

Anybody, anywhere, with no education, experience or money can improve their lifestyle using the methods taught in JVU. It will no doubt take some longer than others, but the important thing is that you continue to learn and educate yourself in the various ways joint ventures can be applied in your life or business. With joint ventures, you’re really only limited by your creativity.

That’s why you’ll always be able to re-attend JVU at no extra charge.

And that’s why the class is filling up so quickly. If you have identified that you want change in your life, and you are committed to taking positive action to do something about it, then you should enroll in JVU.

With the 30 day Money-back guarantee, there is absolutely no risk. If you aren’t 100% convinced that you are learning valuable skills that would allow you to go back out into the real world and make at least $2000, then all of your money will be returned to you, no questions asked.

If things are a little tight right now (and for some of us they are) but you really want to attend, then take advantage of the 3 month payment plan designed to make it more affordable for you. And with the skills that you learn, you’ll be able to go out and earn the remainder of your enrollment before you have to pay it!

JVU really is the most complete, all-out joint venture training there is. Spots are filling fast, and I really hope that if you don’t feel you have the skills to go out and create the lifestyle you desire, that you will join us and learn how to take control of your life.

Click here to enroll in JVU.

http://www.jvwisdom.com/jvu

Your friend,
Shawn Christenson

Unemployed? Here Are Your Options

Joint Ventures, Recession and Financial Stress Solutions, capitalism No Comments »

On television, I saw interviews with two fathers who had lost their jobs. First, we don’t know why they lost their jobs in this instant. In many case, smart business owners take advantage of this recession situation to relieve themselves of deadwood, non-productive workers, and overpaid parasites. But I’ll give these fathers the benefit of the doubt and assume they were doing a good job.

Here’s the scary thing: they continue to send out resumes and become “Stay-at-Home-Dads” and “spend more time with the kids”, while their wives work harder and harder. One of these characters was morbidly obese – guess the wife has to buy lots of Twinkies and ice cream with her hard-earned money; after all, she just acquired another kid to support.

If They Really Wanted to Work

If these two loafers really wanted work:

Why are they not waiting tables, serving in a bar, washing cars
Or, better still, offering to work for nothing for two weeks so that a prospective boss can see how great they are and offer them a job?
How about working on a commission basis?

Too much like hard work? Don’t like being accountable for getting real results, perhaps?

Few business owners would turn you down if you offered to get paid for results on a part-time, independent agent, basis. Think about that one!

A Sure Way to Stay on That Couch

Businesses receive thousands of resumes, most of which are discarded without even being looked at. In fact, if you want to make sure you can stay on the couch and play video games when you get tired of playing with your kids, just keep on mailing out your resume.

You’re NOT RESTRICTED to a Job

Times have changed. There are thousands of opportunities to get out there and make money, and I’m not talking about “investments” or Network Marketing. DollarMakers presents regular, free seminars, and offers plenty of complimentary information on how to make money with no cost, risk, selling, regardless of one’s circumstances, using Joint Ventures.

Here’s the bottom line:

You make money by creating value. While you’re waiting to get a job, there is no excuse not to work, and there are many opportunities to work. No work is below you, and you never know whom you will meet and what you might learn when you get off your fat ass and go to work.

Staying at home feeling sorry for yourself and leeching off your wife is not what a real man does. Whining about the economy doesn’t pay for your beer and cigarettes.
And “going back to school” in order to get better qualified to get a job is the most ridiculous cop-out I’ve ever heard.

Only One Way to Have Money – EARN It!

Increasing the minimum wage isn’t the answer, either, nor is bigger government – that’s just thinly-veiled socialism. Hand-outs, welfare, and protectionism is simply government’s way to imprison the productive population and empower the losers and leeches.

No- the way to make money is to EARN it by creating value, and getting a job is virtually a guarantee that you will never get rich. Take another look at your choices, and take a GOOD look at becoming a Joint Venture Broker. There is no excuse why you can’t make money as a JV Broker, regardless of your skills, education, or background.

Take a good look in the mirror, buddy – be a man! And wives, perhaps it’s time to lock the fridge, unplug the XBox, and send your hapless hubby out to work, or perhaps YOU should fire him, too.

Next Entries

JVBlogger