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

• One man lives in a trailer park. He is an obese, unhealthy smoker who seldom reads books of any value and spends most of his time playing computer games and whining about the government, upon which he relies for his income.
• Another lives in a nice home, provides for his family, loves his work, develops his mind, stays in shape, and has big goals.
• They were both abused as children, grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, and suffered hardships.
• They are twin brothers.

Circumstances Reflect Philosophy

In Ayn Rand’s amazing book, “Atlas Shrugged”, which I am reading for the third time, John Galt says that one is “remaking the earth in the image of one’s values”. He shows that the construction of our circumstances is an ongoing process. Our values and beliefs are the result of our philosophy. Your circumstances reflect your philosophy and self-esteem.

The loser in the trailer park didn’t end up there one day, suddenly, buy accident, as if by magic. His philosophy directed his choices, which took him down that road. The winner also built his lifestyle – choice by choice. Millions of volitional choices got both these men to where they are today. There is no mystery.

The Sum Total of Your Choices

Your lifestyle and circumstances are the sum total of the choices you have made in your life. Where you will be in the next few years, and where you will end up, is your choice. You hold your future in your own hands.  Every cent you earn and spend is your choice.

Ask the man in the trailer what he thinks about man’s responsibility, about freedom, the role of government, business, and about “luck”. He will explain his philosophy to you. Look at the books he reads, the places he goes, the things he does, the people he mixes with, what he does with his time, and you will see his philosophy. The same goes for the man who has a good life.

Anyone Can Change

Can the man move out of the trailer park lose weight, and create a life of success and happiness? Of course he can, but his philosophy would have to change. His philosophy makes him happy playing the role of a nicotine-addicted victim. He does what he enjoys doing!

• He prefers the company of drunkards and losers to winners.
• He loves feeling sorry for himself.
• He hates the idea of taking responsibility.
• He doesn’t WANT to change; if he did, he would!

His is a philosophy of collectivism and socialism. He believes the world owes him a living, and he blames his family and the world for the fact that he doesn’t have a nice house like his brother.

We like to believe that people can change, and they can. But we need to understand that most of them WON’T change, because they don’t want to change, and often because they don’t believe they CAN change.

You Can’t Give or Force Change

You can’t solve someone’s financial problems by giving them money; you have to teach them to MAKE their own money.  But you can only do that if they WANT to earn more money themselves. Chances are, they expect someone else to earn it and GIVE it to them – they are parasites.

Change is Simple

If you WANT to change your life, it’s actually simple. Find someone who has what you want, someone who has created a lifestyle that you want for yourself, and then adopt their philosophy.

I personally modeled successful men whom I admired, learned their beliefs and values, and emulated them. I adopted the philosophies of men like Paul J. Meyer, Jim Rohn, Earl Nightingale, Napoleon Hill, and Winston Churchill, and then I refined my philosophy into one of Objectivism, as portrayed in “Atlas Shrugged.”

The purpose of DollarMakers is to teach people how to become financially free. In order to do so, they need to free their minds first.

One of the biggest surprises I received in my life was while I was working on a BA Theology at a Bible College and at the same time doing a BA Psychology at university. To my horror, I discovered that I was involved in a cult. At that time, I still didn’t realize that cults take many forms – they are not only to be found in the realm of religion. The more I studied, the more I saw!

Multi-Level Marketing to Belong

For example, MLM can be described as a cult, which would explain this article that claims that the odds of winning from a single spin of the wheel in a game of roulette in Las Vegas is:

• 286 times as great as the odds of profiting after enrolling as an Amway/Quixtar “distributor”
• 48 times as great as the odds of profiting after enrolling as a Nu Skin “distributor”
• 22 times as great as the odds of profiting after enrolling as a Melaleuca “distributor”

Could that explain why people will spend tens of thousands of dollars and years of their lives with no reward, just to “belong”?

What is a Cult?

Here is a good explanation. Read it and look at your life. You might be very surprised. In fact, once we understand group dynamics and conditioning, we realize that some families operate like cults, and that often, child and senior abuse is contingent on a cult-like relationship. Also, understanding cults explains why otherwise intelligent people will believe and do ridiculous things that make no sense to “outsiders” who can view the situation objectively and rationally.

Margaret Singer, Ph.D.  psychologist author of “Cults in Our Midst”, said:

“Deprogramming – that is, providing members with information about the cult and showing them how their own decision-making power had been taken away from them.”

This site exposes a lot about cults, and this is another excellent website to look at.

Breaking Free

It’s hard to accept and realize that one is involved in a cult, but the price of freedom is acknowledging the bars on our cages and confronting our jailers and conditioning.

Without sufficient motivation and determination to break free, however, we might decide that the pain of escape from our comfortable prison is greater than the pleasure of freedom. People can react violently when they’re faced with the prospect that they might be hoodwinked, that their safety is imaginary, and that what they have believed and paid for for a long time is, in fact, a con job. But a small number do break free, and that’s whom this article is for.

I always recommend the book, “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand, in the hopes that it will free some people in different areas of their lives, as it has me, particularly in the area of our philosophies about business, money, family, responsibility, guilt, altruism, mysticism, and freedom.

• Do things often, inexplicably, fail for you, while working for other people?
• Do you feel that you’re climbing an impossible, icy mountain, while others seem to skip effortlessly to the top?
• Does everything you touch turn to grime or to gold?

Does Guilt Have It’s Hooks In You?

Do you have relatives that put a “guilt trip” on you when you succeed? “How dare you sail the Caribbean while your family needs money?”

Do you feel guilty when you do well, while others are suffering?

Do you self sabotage to prevent that feeling? “How can you drive that smart car while your brother doesn’t even have a car?” Does this sound familiar? “How can you live in that nice house when millions are homeless?”

Is Wrong Philosophy Robbing You?

We earn money and succeed in life in direct proportion to our self-worth, or self-esteem.

When your philosophy tells you:

• that you are worthless, bad, undeserving, and greedy because you like to enjoy the money you earned,
• or that money is bad, and that you should, in fact, sell what you have and lower your standard of living so that you can give your money to others,

you have a rotten philosophy.

Guilt and the wrong philosophy rob millions of people of success, wealth, and happiness.

It’s ALL How You Look at It

The way you INTERPRET your life, circumstances and opportunities, is what will determine your success or failure in life, and your philosophy or world view is that filter by which you interpret your life.

You have built the life you have brick by brick, whether it is a good or a bad life, by the choices you have made. The same applies to others.

The “Robin Hood” philosophy of robbing the rich to give their hard-earned money to the “poor” parasites out there who made bad choices, is the seed of socialism. Tax the rich to pay for the sloth of the poor.

Are You Letting the Past Undermine the Future?

The bad choices you made in the past don’t have to continually undermine your future. Guilt is a rope that wears thin.

You can Break Free from guilt, self-sabotage, and disappointment by changing your philosophy. When you change your philosophy to one that empowers, one that is based on personal responsibility and objective reality, you will find your life changing dramatically for the better. The anchor of guilt is cut away, and you can soar to unprecedented heights.

What Works Best for Me

Of all the philosophies and options out there, the one that has worked best for me is that of Objectivism.

• It provides me with the tools for freedom, success, happiness, and self-fulfillment.
• It sets me free from false guilt and the attacks of the looters, moochers, and parasites.

Self-discipline and the right philosophy improve your self esteem, you feel you deserve the best and you realize you are entitled to the life that you create. Altruism, collectivism, and mysticism will rip your happiness from your hands, steal your joy, and rob you blind. In fact, those philosophies are designed to blind you to the potential you have for love, success, wealth, and creativity.

Build the Life You Want

• You can build the life you want and be free of guilt and condemnation.
• You can be free and happy, and when your philosophy changes, you will find things falling in to place – fast.
• You can live with virtue and integrity, and make all your dreams come true.

It’s not too late to break free.

Many people are suffering in this recession, but they’re digging themselves deeper into the hole by the way they choose to respond to financial problems.

My friend’s wife told him to stop spending his time visiting banks to borrow more money to survive the financial downturn, but rather to spend that time MAKING money.

Usually, wives have to read this and put their husbands onto the right track, since they generally seem to have a better handle of the response to financial strife.

Here’s what won’t solve your challenges:

1.    Hiding From Your Creditors

…that just makes them angry, and you don’t need angry creditors. Communicate and make token payments if necessary – be on time, whatever the amount of the payment, and don’t make them run after you – you will lose.

2.   Blaming Others

Stop winging, whining, complaining, blaming, shaming, and naming other people and the government for your financial problems – you’re just irritating people, alienating winners, and using up time that might otherwise have been used to make some money and solve problems. Bewailing your fate will further deteriorate your resolve, belief, and self esteem. We tend to believe what we say, so talk positive.

3.   Taking Advice from Just Anyone Who Gives It

Don’t take advice from people who are more screwed up than you are, those with a hidden agenda, or those who don’t already have what you want.

4.   Making Desperate or Hasty Decisions

Take a rational, financially secure person with you if you assist on attending “money-making seminars”, and don’t make quick decisions – desperate people do desperate things, and you should realize that you could make bad decisions when you’re feeling overwhelmed.

5.   Hiding from Your Responsibilities and Pain Through Addiction and Diversion

Stop hiding with dope, cigarettes, drink, video games, food, and movies – confront your options and get to work. If you say you can’t find work, work as a commission only salesperson. There is no excuse not to work while you play at home like a child.

6.    Cutting Back in the Wrong Areas

Don’t cut the wrong costs – the first things to go should be the television services ($80 per month), booze ($100 per month), cigarettes ($300 per month), and movies ($60 per month), and other wasteful things.

7.   Continuing to Do What Does Not Work

Stop doing what doesn’t work – stop wasting your money on MLM (network marketing), Lotto tickets, gambling, and anything else that doesn’t make you money.

8.    Spending Time with Losers

Stop spending time with other broke, self-employed / unemployed losers and start mixing with winners. Associate only with positive, successful, optimistic people.

9.   Not Working on a Commission Basis, While Looking for a Job

Analyze what activities are providing you with an excuse not to get out and work on a commission-only basis, and remove them. You’re job, when you are unemployed, is to get a job, and while you are looking for a job, to WORK on a commission-only basis. Women, stop allowing loser men to live off your income and force them to work.

10.   Tuning Into Hopeless Media

Stop reading newspapers and watching CNN. The media won’t give you any hope.

11.   Waiting for Someone Else to Save You

Stop waiting for Obama or any other politician to solve your problem. Say, “If it’s to be, it’s up to me!”

12.   Limiting Yourself

Finally, stop thinking there is nothing you can do. The best advice I can give you is to use Joint Ventures to create financial freedom. You can start earning real money, fast, IF you will work hard and do whatever it takes.

Rika loves garage sales. It’s a beautiful spring day, and we go for a walk. Along the way, we see… A GARAGE SALE! Suddenly, as we meander along past the tables laden with other people’s trash, we both notice something on one of the tables that once changed our lives.

The Program that Changed Our Lives

Many years ago in South Africa, we imported the Anthony Robbins Personal Power Program from America. Because of the exchange rate and import duties, it was expensive, and it took a long time to receive it. We were very excited and listened to it over and over again. It changed our lives dramatically and resulted in personal understanding and choices and a video program that made us tens of thousands of dollars. We still live by the principles we learned from that wonderful program.

Throwing Away a Fortune

And there it was, in all its glory! The Anthony Robbins program, in pristine condition, with the little workbook and everything, at a garage sale!  That’s like putting your most precious, inherited, priceless, irreplaceable family jewels on a garage sale.

I was stunned. Rika and I both reached forward simultaneously to grab the program.

I looked at the character behind the table, early fifties, torn T-shirt, and asked him. “Why are you selling this fantastic program?”

His reply should have been expected, but I was still shocked. “I didn’t even finish listening to it – I don’t believe that stuff – that a 20-something could make all that money – it’s rubbish.”

When I recovered I asked, “So how much do you want for it?”

“I paid $139″, he scowled,”But you can have it for eight – say five dollars.”

On the way out of the garage sale, clutching my treasure, I noticed that the event was held at a Co-op housing place.

Most Never Even Cross the Finish Line

Naturally, I am re-listening to the entire program and loving every minute of it, and on the first tape Tony Robbins mentions that only 10% of the people who invest in the program will finish listening to it.

There’s a reason why that loser lives in government subsidized co-op housing. He was handed the keys to a magnificent mansion in the form of the Tony Robbins program, and he discarded it, probably in favor of a joint and a hockey game on TV. It was “too good to be true”.

Guess when he started scowling? When he saw my DollarMakers ball cap. Bitter and twisted, trapped in his cynicism, and poor.

It’s NEVER Too Late To Break Free

Although I was disgusted at this specimen that devalued something as life-changing as that Tony Robbins program, I really do pity him, and deep down inside I know that it’s not too late for him to break free of his present situation, if, indeed, he wants to break free. Many people have missed the boat, and yet they could still escape their compromised lives if they had the tools, given that they want their freedom from serfdom, mediocrity, and lives of quiet desperation.

As I type this, I have just finished writing my latest book, “Break Free!” and it will soon be available. Perhaps it should be very expensive, instead of the usual $20, since $139 didn’t get the attention of a young man who held his future in his hands all those years ago.

The truth will set you free, and the source is unimportant. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear – even in the form of an old audio tape program at a garage sale. It’s never too late to start living and to break free.

Logically, if one continues to accept the beliefs and philosophy that got one into a pickle in the first place, one’s trajectory won’t change. Any rational person accepts that if we keep on doing the same things, we will keep on getting the same results.

Change Starts in the Mind

To break free we have to change a few things, starting with one’s understanding of money.

All change starts off in one’s mind. Believe it or not, we don’t have money problems; we have thinking problems.

5 Simple, Doable Steps to Freedom

When our lives are so complicated and scary, when we’re sleep-deprived, drained, and weakened, complicated, time-consuming solutions are not the best medicine; one needs simple, quick, cheap, doable fixes to build a ladder out of the dark, dank dungeon of dejection, rung by rung.

First, take personal responsibility for your predicament, and accept full responsibility for the solution. Then, start climbing the ladder to laughter, light, and luxury:

Rung #1: Visit www.JVWisdom.com and consume as much as you can about Joint Ventures. You will find heaps of valuable, free information and videos. Share this information with your family.

Rung #2: Choose a Joint Venture strategy that you feel comfortable with, and start taking consistent, focused action.

Rung #3: Accept that some of your Joint Ventures will work, and some won’t, but since they take little time, and given that they entail no cost or risk, you have nothing to lose and everything to learn and gain, so don’t quit – keep on keeping on.

Rung #4: Surround yourself with successful people and kick the pessimists, losers, and parasites out of your life. Start reading “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand.

Rung #5: Repeat rungs 1 though 4 until you emerge, victorious, into the glorious sunlight, having broken free from financial slavery, and breathe the fresh air of freedom, peace of mind, and security. I did, and you can, too. It’s not too late.

Many years ago, I was on the brink of bankruptcy. It’s a very scary feeling, unless you’re a dyed in the wool sociopath. I will never forget the sleepless nights, having to plead with bankers whose arrogance was exceeded only by their ignorance, and how the only way out was hard, 24/7 WORK.

Why did I totter on the brink of a flaming financial furnace?

High overhead, all my eggs in one basket, relying on other people, and refusing to confront reality; we all like to hide our heads in the sand at times. And when you extract your head from the sand, you find that the house has burned down around you. Fortunately, I managed to escape the jaws of bankruptcy, and I swore that I would never put myself in that position again.

Falling Hard with a “Successful” MLM

It’s interesting that pride always comes before the fall.

We knew a fellow in Edmonton a few years back who was making big money selling a magic health juice through an MLM company. Naturally, they made wild, silly claims about their juice, which was soon replaced by another juice from another company. Different packaging, same snake oil.

Well, as with most products and services, the juice ended up in Wal-Mart for a fraction of the price, and that was the end of this fellow’s arrogance and swollen head.

He lost pretty much everything, because, typical of the nouveau riche, he felt he had to lease expensive cars and buy the bling to convince other dumb people that he was making money.

It Happens in Traditional Business Too

I know someone in the UK who put every ounce of his energy and every penny he had saved into building a business. He had a great reputation, delivered excellent service, and was admired by many.

One day, a big customer showed up and started giving him large orders that required that he expand his premises and increase his production and overhead in order to cope.

Soon, the new customer brought him 85% of his business.

Slowly, this powerful customer insisted paying on him after 60 days instead of 30 days, then 90 days, thereby putting the squeeze on his cash flow.

One winter day, the customer showed up with an offer to buy the business for a mere pittance.

He was offered two options: “Sell me your business for pennies on the pound, or I will take all my business away and bankrupt you.”

This is not an unheard of story. He ended up in debt and despondency after selling his business, having to start all over again at the age of 63.

Job: Selling Your Life for “Security”

Having a boss is the same thing – handing over the control of your life, income, security, and dreams to one or a few people is crazy.

Many entrepreneurs are glad to sell themselves into slavery and bondage for the promise of enough money, and they forget that while power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Don’t buy a golden leash – it might look impressive to your cranky old mother-in-law, but there’s a slip knot on it, and it can end up choking the life out of your finances.

Be Willing to Work for It… And Then Work SMARTLY.

It amazes me how easily vulnerable people will commit themselves to large amounts of money, debt, and suicidal indenture for the sake of a free trip, accolades, and false hope. I think the main reason why people will gamble their future financial freedom is the idea of a quick buck – greed and indolence at work.

Hard work is not something most people are comfortable with, even when they know that working hard for a year can allow you financial freedom for the rest of your life, if you’re moving in the right direction.

What It Takes to Weather the Storm

The combination of arrogance and greed with having all your eggs in one proverbial basket is a recipe for failure. Today’s expensive fad is mass produced and sold in malls tomorrow.

Companies, competition, and economies come and go, and people come and go. Floods, fires, changes in laws and governments, offshore competition, new technology, and the blatant disregard of patents by certain nations means we live in a changing, dangerous world. Nothing lasts forever, and business is a series of cycles, like the seasons.

Those who spread their income and risk and maintain a low overhead can weather storms; when one section or area of business suffers, another prospers. That means no feast or famine, chicken or feathers, rollercoaster cash flow.

Why Joint Venture Brokers Have It Made

Joint Venture Brokers can participate in multiple different markets, products, services, and cultures simultaneously, with no cost, risk, overhead, or limitations except their understanding of profit, value, and business.  Typically, they are very selective, and they maintain a mature, objective approach to business.

Everything they earn is 100% profit, and they don’t have to allow themselves to be manipulated or ripped off, since they always have other options due to the nature of their business. They have the money as well as the time to enjoy it.

Savvy Businesses Use Joint Venture to Explode Their Bottom Line

Business owners who understand how Joint Ventures can be used to leverage existing resources can significantly lower their overheads and advertising and marketing budgets, while at the same time building multiple additional income flows at 100% profit. The more sophisticated operators use their front / primary businesses as “feeders” for their lucrative Joint Ventures.

Your Most Valuable Asset

The most valuable assets you have in business are your relationships, and those who understand the power of synergy, leverage, and Joint Ventures seldom walk away from good relationships or allow greed and ego to steal their futures. Together, we can do amazing things, and it’s always better to have 5% of millions than 100% of $1,000 with no support or leverage.

Keeping all your eggs in one basket is tantamount to Russian roulette.