A few years ago, I was walking along Georgia street in Vancouver, when a young bum on a gleaming bicycle slid up alongside me and starting begging me earnestly for money to buy himself breakfast at MacDonald’s. In spite of the fact that I ignored him, he persisted, until I stopped his bike and told him, “You’re worse than the prostitutes on Hastings street.”

He was righteously indignant at this insult. How could I compare him, a wise and respected street beggar, to a lowly prostitute?

My answer was:

“You offer me nothing, not to clean my shoes, get a ride on your bike, wash my car, or even carry this briefcase – you want my hard-earned money simply for being around. The prostitute at least offers me her body in exchange for money. She is a capitalist, and you are a parasite, and a socialist. I have respect for those who wish to offer something in return for my money. I have no respect for you.”

Ayn Rand’s words ring in my ears as I recollect this sidewalk chat:

”The actual performance of men in society is a constant, fierce, undefined struggle between the genius and the parasite…

The genius must have his freedom and his independence…

But he is crippled, hobbled, tied, held back constantly by the encroachments and restrictions of the parasites who get their unearned sustenance from him.”

Who is Ayn Rand?

In Alan Greenspan’s new book, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World”, he mentions Ayn Rand six times, and declares that she is one of his greatest two teachers, and that she had the greatest impact on his philosophy. More here.

Respect Money and Value or Suffer the Consequences

As Canada and the United States both teeter on the brink of embracing socialist governments, I thought relating this little exchange on a wet, West Coast city street might be pertinent.

When you pander to the collectivists, there is a dire consequence. When you sell your soul for a bowl of soup, expect to reap what you sow. Understanding money and value will prevent a society, indeed a country, from selling itself into slavery.

I’ll end off with Ayn Rand:

“The creator stands on his own judgment. The parasite follows the opinions of others.

The creator thinks, the parasite copies.

The creator produces, the parasite loots.

The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite’s concern is the conquest of Man.

The creator requires independence – he neither serves nor rules. He deals with men by free exchange and voluntary choice. The parasite seeks power. He wants to bind all men together in common action and common slavery”.

Too many people make Joint Ventures too complicated. They “feel overwhelmed” and “don’t know where to start”, when it’s really as simple as ABC.

When you respond to a need and make a referral, which you do every day, simply monetize the transaction and build in residual income wherever possible. And in many cases, the reciprocal value doesn’t have to be money – you can trade anything, as long as the one making the money reciprocates!

Here is an example of a JV:

We all have tons of books, CD’s, educational programs that we paid too much for at overpriced seminars, DVD’s, and audio programs at home, most of which we will never look at again, if we ever did in the first place. Yet we continue to buy new stuff.

How about twenty friends decided to have a little swap meet, get together for pizza, and swap their CD’s., etc? Everyone would get excellent value, at no cost!

Here’s another example:

Marketing is usually confused with selling. Using attraction marketing is a very powerful and effective way to get more customers. Instead of selling stuff, give stuff away! Especially when it doesn’t cost you anything!

Joint Venture with people who want to get their products and services into the market place by giving away their Gift Certificates for courses, consultations, cleanings, evaluations, samples, reports, conference calls, etc., and everyone wins.

Yet another example:

I was in England last week, and a good friend’s wife is very connected in Africa. I thought of another friend of mine in Canada who can almost certainly do business with her, so I e-mailed him to ask exactly what commissions I would receive if I connected him with my African connection. If I like the commission structure, I will send ONE e-mail to make the connection, sit back, and wait for a check. It’s that easy.

One more example:

JV’s can be TRIANGULATED: Those are the best, easiest, and most lucrative. Connect Tom and Peter, and collect an ongoing commission on any business they ever do, as with my African connection illustration above.

I had a fellow distribute someone else’s complimentary report to his database, and it earned me ten thousand dollars.

• Total time invested: 30 minutes.
• Risk: none.
• Cost: nothing.

Be Creative!

You can trade anything in JV’s – people have traded my JV Broker Bootcamp tickets for beef, pots and pans, advertising, hotel rooms, you name it. You can be as creative as you like!

One caveat here:

You should only do business and set up Joint Ventures with good people whom you know, like and trust, or have been referred to you by trusted friends, hence the DollarMakers Joint Venture Club.

Online “JV’s” with anonymous people can hurt you and your reputation more than you can imagine.

With the right training, access, and support, anyone can make money and even retire through the power of Joint Ventures. I have; twice.

I just returned from England, where the bite marks of the omnipresent recession are more evident than in Super, Natural British Columbia. Flying home, I was once again reminded of the upside of this recession; the benefits, as it were, of the half-full glass.

For example, the interest in DollarMakers services and products is growing steadily as people suddenly become aware of the value of the information and links we provide.

The flight was only two-thirds full, so I was able to select another seat and escape some precocious, seat-kicking French kids who should have been chained in the cargo hold with a selection of vicious, rabid wolves.

“Will Everything Be All Right?”

Smart people have a good perspective on how to benefit from these recessionary times, while frightened people frighten other people and the enlightened ones get rich.

When interviewed on CNBC, Monday, March 9, 2009, here is Warren Buffet’s response when Terry in San Antonio, Texas, asks, “Will everything be all right?”:

“Fear is very contagious. You can get fearful in 5 minutes, but you don’t get confident in 5 minutes.

Everything will be all right.

We do have the greatest economic machine that man has ever created. We started with 4 million people back in 1790 and look where we’ve come. And it wasn’t because we were smarter than other people. It wasn’t because our land was more fertile or we had more minerals or our climate was more favorable. We had a system that worked. It unleashed the human potential.

It didn’t work every year. We had 6 ‘panics’ in the 19th century. In the 20th century we had the Great Depression, World Wars, all kinds of things. But we have a system – largely free market, rule of law, equality of opportunity – all of those things that cause the potential of humans to get unleashed. And we’re far from done.

Your kids will live better than mine. Your grandchildren will live better than your kids. There’s no question about that.

But the machine gets gummed up from time to time. If you take the bulk of those centuries, probably 15 years were bad years. But we go forward.”

Don’t Let Fear Drive You

Fear drives logic and rational thinking out of the house, and welcomes its friends, apathy, scarcity, depression, and the blind acceptance of socialism – anything to hide from personal responsibility and reality.

While the producers are proactively embracing the situation and finding solutions, scheming collectivists sell filthy, overpriced, flea-ridden, wet  blankets to the huddled morons who convince themselves and others that the end is nigh.

Opportunity is Waiting at Your Disposal

Your concerned competition is so busy cutting costs and reducing value that any thinking entrepreneur can easily scoop away their customers. Instead of fleecing the timid, now is the time to provide real solutions and build lasting and profitable relationships with them, as DollarMakers does.

Look at Wal-Mart and IKEA – they’re thriving! The money in the world has not disappeared or dried up – it’s all still there for the taking.

• Are the five star holiday resorts empty? No.
• Are the expensive restaurants closed? No.
• Did all the money get burnt up in a raging fire?
• Are the resources, equipment, and distribution methods suddenly missing, as in a mythical Rapture? No.

It’s all waiting for you – at your disposal.

The Upside of the Recession

The upside of the Recession is that intelligent entrepreneurs are having a field day, and the scammers and posers are being revealed and removed.

It’s time to learn about Joint Ventures, and use them to have fun and get richer.

When you make good business decisions, you get rich.

Alan Greenspan says in his latest book that Ayn Rand has been the most important influence on his philosophy, and his philosophy drives his decisions. There are only two kinds of decisions: Those based on emotion, and those based on fact or rational objectivity.

One of the most important quotes you will ever read:

“An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man’s value premises. An effect, not a cause.

“There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between man’s reason and his emotions—provided he observes their proper relationship.

“A rational man knows—or makes it a point to discover—the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come; if his premises are wrong, he corrects them.

“He never acts on emotions for which he cannot account, the meaning of which he does not understand.

“In appraising a situation, he knows why he reacts as he does and whether he is right. He has no inner conflicts, his mind and his emotions are integrated, his consciousness is in perfect harmony. His emotions are not his enemies, they are his means of enjoying life. But they are not his guide; the guide is his mind.

“This relationship cannot be reversed, however. If a man takes his emotions as the cause and his mind as their passive effect, if he is guided by his emotions and uses his mind only to rationalize or justify them somehow—then he is acting immorally, he is condemning himself to misery, failure, defeat, and he will achieve nothing but destruction—his own and that of others.” ~ Ayn Rand.

Use this Litmus Test

When your business decisions are driven by need, fear, arrogance, pride, greed, envy, or revenge, they are emotional and irrational.  We have all compromised our values and overlooked important red flags to make a buck.

The result of compromise is guilt, and guilt causes self-sabotage. In other words, you will lose a lot more than you gain. Ayn Rand:

“A chronic lack of pleasure, of any enjoyable, rewarding or stimulating experiences, produces a slow, gradual, day-by-day erosion of man’s emotional vitality, which he may ignore or repress, but which is recorded by the relentless computer of his subconscious mechanism that registers an ebbing flow, then a trickle, then a few last drops of fuel–until the day when his inner motor stops and he wonders desperately why he has no desire to go on, unable to find any definable cause of his hopeless, chronic sense of exhaustion.”

What “Being in Harmony” Means

When you do business according to your philosophy and remain true to your values and philosophy, you’ll be happy and you’ll get rich, as long as you have the right philosophy.

When your philosophy is one of collectivism or mysticism, your business decisions will be flawed, and they will undermine your business.

“The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.” ~ Ayn Rand.

When business owners sell their souls for money, they start to become conflicted about money. So they start projecting their dishonesty and condemning the very purpose of their business:

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.”  ~ Ayn Rand

What Makes Good Business Decisions

Good business decisions are the result of careful, level-headed thought. Ayn Rand again:

“Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.”

Choose your philosophy very carefully, if you want to succeed in business. You have to learn to say “No”, even when it costs you money. The more defined and sophisticated your philosophy, the more selective you will become, and the more success you will enjoy.

Try This Analogy

A good analogy is a cheap watch versus an expensive watch. When you buy an expensive watch, you make sure that the person working on or servicing it is well qualified and licensed or authorized to do so. You don’t take your Rolex Presidential to someone who is not an authorized Rolex dealer, any more than you would take your Rolls Royce to a backyard mechanic.

Your business is a reflection of YOU. Who you are, your values, your philosophy – everything that you are is reflected in the way you do business.

Understanding Cause & Effect in Business

Every decision has ripple effects and long-term consequences, so it is important to think about the base and foundation of your business decisions and to determine to disciple yourself to live strictly according to your objective philosophy.

Compromise and concession are the cancer that kills businesses.

Operate with Like-Minded Individuals

Those who use their minds to make good business decisions find it easier to operate when supported and surrounded by like-minded, ethical Joint Venture partners, hence the importance in DollarMakers Joint Venture Forum to attract and retain only those whose integrity is beyond question and whose philosophy is one of capitalism.

Your mastermind, your inner circle, your team, and your family, affects every business decision you make. Be aware of that.

A question I was recently asked was, “Why did we choose the name, ‘DollarMakers’, for our business?”

Our mission is to help people make money.

That simple. Not to steal it, inherit it, or borrow it, but to make it.

To create value that will result in money – capitalism.

We help people adjust their philosophy so that making money is a natural result, and we specialize in the use of Joint Ventures to accomplish this result. Joint Ventures is the most sophisticated, leveraged, elegant way to create wealth that I have found.

Four Things About Money:

• Better to have it than not have it.
• Better to have more of it than less of it.
• Better to have it sooner than later.
• And no matter how much you’ve got, you could always use a bit more.

Ayn Rand said, “So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money? Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.”

Read the full excerpt of “Francisco’s Money Speech” from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged here.

How can you turn your business into a “Customer Magnet?” How can you create rushing rivers of qualified, eager prospects? The key is not:

• better packaging (that’s what your printer sells you)
• a better website with “higher conversion ratio” (that’s what your Web person  – I hesitate to say Web Master – sells you)
• learning to close more sales, seeing more people, or better salespeople (that’s what “sales trainers” sell you)
• or more advertising (that’s what ad sales reps sell you.)

– it’s by changing the way you look at the market.

Most “Entrepreneurs” are Self-employed Salespeople

Most broke, self-employed salespeople who call themselves “Entrepreneurs” are legends in their own lunch times, and the only ones who are convinced they’re the cream of the crop with products and services nobody can possibly do without, are their doting dogs. Their arrogance is exceeded only by their ignorance.

Most are hard-sell, cheap, arm-twisting, desperate pushers of their products who make it abundantly clear that they don’t give a damn about you. They do not understand that they are a dime a dozen, unimportant, and irritating.

The Difference of People with a Joint Venture Attitude

People with a Joint Venture Attitude understand capitalism, value, reciprocity, and human nature.

• They’re in business for the long term.
• They see the big picture.
• They actually THINK.
• They act strategically (think chess game) instead of tactically.
• They are proactive as opposed to reactive.

Would you get more attention if…

At our DollarMakers Joint Venture Broker Bootcamps, we share the most powerful referral system I have ever found. I used it to personally train an elite team of Million Dollar Round Table Insurance Salespeople, and they loved it.

But for the purposes of this article, let me ask you a few questions to which DollarMakers provides the answers:

1. Would you get more attention if you were introduced to a prospect by someone whom they liked and respected?
2. Would you get more attention if you could GIVE AWAY valuable sales incentives and gifts, complimentary holidays, useful items, and massive added value, at no cost to you?
3. Would you get more attention if you stopped bragging about yourself and started talking about the other person’s needs wants, pain, and goals? (You might think this question is superfluous, but 98% of salespeople don’t do it!)
4. Would you get more referrals if you knew how to make your offer so attractive that you had people BEGGING for the opportunity to help you?
5. Would you get more attention if people were convinced beyond all doubt that you genuinely cared about them?

The common thread running through these questions is what we teach people – and it works, long term.

Creating a Golden Goose money machine (DollarMaker) that is carefully programmed to consistently spit out qualified, interested prospects is a smart strategy. And it’s not what you will learn from your sales manager, upline, “coach”, or “consultant”.

Based on your present conversion ratio, work out what a qualified, pre-sold customer is worth  to your bottom line, and consider whether or not you should attend a Bootcamp – either online or in person.

In our society, people tend to blame their tools when they don’t succeed. Right, now, socialists and collectivists are blaming the bad economy on the capitalist system, which is ridiculous.

Losers blame the wind; winners adjust their sails.

You Gotta Have Staying Power

People who attend our Joint Venture Broker Bootcamps and don’t consistently implement the ideas and systems they learned, fail, and guess what? They blame the Bootcamp (and me.)

The fact that they don’t have the intelligence, or the motivation, or the staying power to persist until they succeed is too hard for them to accept, so they blame the system, while others, who attended the same Bootcamp, make a lot of money in the same economy with the same system, but with a different attitude.

Now’s the Perfect Time to Position Yourself!

The Joint Venture Broker systems we teach work, and we have abundant evidence to prove it. The capitalist system works, and just because some people abused it, doesn’t mean it isn’t still the best system in the world.

The looters and parasites will use the recession to try and undermine capitalism, redistribute wealth, and sabotage the success of the western world, but you can’t keep a good man down for long, and I have absolutely no doubt that the economy will rebound magnificently – the spring always follows the winter, and smart people will position themselves to take full advantage of this fact.

• Now is the time to become the best Joint Venture Broker you can be, because the world is full of great opportunities offered by this recession.
• Now is the time to grab hold of the opportunities available to you through DollarMakers and get wealthy.

Seize the day – the window of opportunity is wide open for capitalists who understand the power of Joint Ventures. DollarMakers is an idea whose time has come, and I invite you to join us as we ride this wonderful wave to Treasure Island.

Here’s a great book which I recommend:

“End of Prosperity – How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy -If We Let It Happen.”  by Steve Moore

“At a time when economies around the world are going wobbly, this insightful and timely book reminds us of the principles and the policies which America will need to employ to restore stability and prosperity.”

- Lady Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1979-1990

“Fair warning! No one can say, ‘No one told us this would happen.’ Art Laffer, Steve Moore, and Peter Tanous have done just that with this brilliantly insightful book. Read it — and act!”

- Steve Forbes

When I see entrepreneurs working too hard for too little, and yet refusing the solutions available to them through DollarMakers, I think of the following:

Delusion

Most entrepreneurs are unaware of the extent to which their conditioning denies them the success they deserve. We buy in to the status quo, follow the herd, and believe the lies of politicians, academics, and bankers. Many systems conspire to keep their followers and subjects poor, hungry, needy, ignorant, and fearful. That way, people can be controlled, overtaxed, and led. Socialism, liberation theology, collectivism, and mysticism excel in the blinding and imprisonment of the masses.

Reason

• We run in the road that we built ourselves to justify the building of it.
• We use the pots we threw because we made them.
• We spend time with people because they’re related to us.
• We do what we know because it’s less threatening than the alternative.
• We have blind faith because it’s easier than thinking.
• We let people tell us what to do, say, believe and fear, so that we don’t have to make decisions.
• We follow people we don’t like or trust because it’s easier than taking the lead and taking responsibility.
• We fear upsetting people because we fear conflict and avoid reality.
• We prefer delusion to the stark truth.
• We blame our circumstances and other people to avoid admitting that we’re lazy, scared, and stupid.
• We pay too much for our emotional crutches and justify the expense.
• We go along instead of going to war.
• We turn the other cheek because we fear pain.
• We refuse to accept that we might be wrong because if we admitted it we would be obliged to make changes.
• We feed our addiction to comfort while knowing that years of discomfort will be the result of our weakness.
• We accept abuse because we hate our own compromise.
• We accept the lashes of the mystics and parasites to punish ourselves for our subservience.
• And then we vote in the leaders that will tighten our bonds and starve us more.

Reason acknowledges fear and discomfort and embraces the consequences of questioning the status quo.

Reason promises freedom and responsibility.

The pain of reason is less than the pain of delusion.

Reason demands courage and work, and rewards us with an escape from bondage.

Your prison door is not locked.

To change your life and the results you get, you have to change your philosophy and perspective. This is the mission of DollarMakers – the financial empowerment of people world wide through an understanding of Joint Ventures and a Capitalist philosophy.