Dr. Gregory Berns is a neuroscientist and a psychiatrist. His research has been profiled in the New York Times, Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal. His new book, Iconoclast, was published by Harvard Business School Press. He says, in short:

“Categories are death to imagination… Often the harder one tries to think differently, the more rigid the categories become.

There is a better way, a path that jolts the brain out of preconceived notions of what it is seeing: bombard the brain with new experiences. Only then will it be forced out of efficiency mode and reconfigure it neural networks…

The surest way to evoke the imagination is to confront the perceptual system with people, places and things it hasn’t seen before.”

The More Radical and Novel the Better

And THEN he says:

“It typically takes a novel stimulus – either a new piece of information or getting out of the environment in which an individual has become comfortable – to jolt attentional systems awake and reconfigure both perception and imagination.

The more radical and novel the change, the greater the likelihood of new insights being generated.”

That is why reading new books, traveling to new places, meeting new people, and exposing your mind to unique and formerly unknown concepts and ideas is so important to creativity.

• Push yourself out of your comfort zone.
• Jolt your brain out of its complacency.
• Force yourself to examine alternative approaches and options.
• Learn new skills, both physical and mental.

You have massive, underutilized potential.

Make New Financial Horizons Too!

DollarMakers provides you with multiple options to expand your financial horizons in a risk free environment, since we prefer Joint Ventures that are created with no cost or risk, and little time.

1. Attend our local meetings, our Conventions in exotic places, and our stimulating conference calls.
2. Meet people from widely diverse backgrounds in seventeen countries around the globe.
3. Be at the Bootcamps, discuss creative business solutions, and learn from other Members about their businesses and their lives.

An Attractive Place to Be

At the Mentor Training last week, we had people from very different backgrounds and ages from South Africa, The US, and Canada. If you had been at our Convention in Cancun, you could have meet people from all over the world in relaxed, beautiful surroundings, where you could swim with angelfish and turtles, play with dolphins, and talk with new friends on the beach.

Come Expand with Us

Because of the nature of the synergistic Joint Venture mindset that we teach, DollarMakers attracts visionaries, and remains open and flexible to new ideas and innovations – the perfect place for those who want to work with us to achieve our mission of helping millions around the world to achieve financial independence, while reaping what we sow.

Reboot Your Creativity

Find a way to help many other people achieve their goals, and you can’t help benefiting from the mental, emotional, and financial consequences. DollarMakers is a unique and proven vehicle to reboot your creativity and apply new ideas in a practical and effective manner.

I grew up poor, and I have made money. I have been on both sides of the fence. After 22 years in business and 55 years in life, I have arrived at some conclusions about money.

• When you have enough money, you relax, enjoy life, and focus on contribution, health, relationships, balance, and quality of life.
• When you don’t have enough money, everything is seen through the prism of money.

In my experience, money will solve, eradicate, or seriously reduce 97% of your problems. A shortage of money affects your health, relationships, self-esteem, peace of mind, choices, quality of life, and temperament. Enough money, or an abundance of money, makes a dramatic difference in every area of your life.

Why You Deserve to Be Wealthy

• You say we can’t buy time? You can. You can travel faster and in comfort and hire the help you need to do most things for you.
• You say we can’t buy health? You certainly can, with great food, medical attention, assistance, equipment, technology, drugs, and peace of mind. And you can “suffer in comfort”.

Money is extremely important, and most people know this, even though they don’t all admit it.

The problem is, how can we make more money so that we can enjoy the benefits?

The first and most important obstacle to making money is mental conditioning and attitude. For this, I wrote my book, “Break Free!” I won’t address that foundational issue here, but suffice to say it is an essential read, as is Ayn Rand’s book, “Atlas Shrugged” in order to clear away any mental barriers to becoming wealthy.

Don’t Shrink – Expand!

And so here we are. We decide that, instead of tightening our belts more and spending less, depriving ourselves of the things we want and need as we try to live within our income, we should go out and make more money.

And so we look at Robert Kiyosaki’s Four Quadrants:

The E Quadrant – Employee

The first one is the E Quadrant – Employee  – you have a job – that’s where you sell your time, which is your life, sacrificing yourself for a paycheck, compromising your values for a boss, making sure you won’t get rich. Your boss pays you just enough to keep you, and makes you work as hard as possible, with as little freedom as possible.

Real wealth is having more monthly residual income than you need to live comfortably – enough time to enjoy your money. So we won’t waste our time on that quadrant.

The S Quadrant – Self Employed

The second quadrant is the S Quadrant – Self Employed – you own a job. Here, you’re also selling your time, and most so-called “business owners” are really just broke, self-employed salespeople, and they would do better getting a “real job.”

• Very little security, except that you can’t be fired.
• Usually no time to enjoy any money you make.
• Very limited potential.
• One product or service, one geographical area, one focus.
• Big ego – “big hat, no cattle”.
• And if you’re making a lot of money, you have less and less time  and more and more problems as your business grows.

The B Quadrant  – Business

The third Quadrant is B – Business – you own a system, and people work for you.

Interestingly enough, this is where Network Marketing (MLM) fits in, except that it takes a long time to start making you money, and again, it’s all your eggs in one basket – a very dangerous place to be. Many MLM companies fail. There is only one that I use and endorse, after trying many over the years and making good money. But it takes time, and we want money fast, don’t we?

So we look at Franchising – very expensive and risky as well, requiring massive capital, and you’re simply buying a job. You have no freedom, no time, and it takes ages to make money.

Or we buy a conventional business – again, risk, overhead, no free time, massive failure rate (87% fail in the first five years of new ownership or start-up) and frustration.

The I Quadrant – Investing

And then we get to Quadrant Four – the I or Investing Quadrant, where we have our money work for us. You have to have money to invest, and many investments are not what they seem to be. We all know what has just recently happened to the stock market.

Joint Ventures – The Best Solution I’ve Found & Why

Let’s tie this up. After 22 years in business, conducting seminars for business owners, professionals and employees across North America and in Africa and the United Kingdom, and after working with tens of thousands of people and seeing many opportunities and options, the best solution to wealth that I have found incurs no risk or cost, no overhead, no licenses, leases, inventory, employees, or selling, and takes little time once it’s set up and working.

1. I run my business with no overhead, employees, inventory, or any other costs except my telephone (I seldom use a cell phone) and a computer connection.
2. Everything I earn and bank is 100% profit.
3. And 90% of my income can be maintained and grown in one hour a day from anywhere in the world.

This may sound too good to be true, but it is, and I am living proof of it.

• You don’t need education, resumes, the old boys network, connections, a database, or business experience.
• Your age, circumstances, background, and whether you have a business or not, is irrelevant.
• You can retire within one year of starting off as a Joint Venture Broker, with more residual income than you need to live comfortably on.

What You Need to Set Up

As a JV Broker, you simply link supply and demand and get paid an ongoing commission on all resulting business. You can be involved in multiple business transactions, products, services, and industries, in numerous geographical areas, simultaneously. You can have multiple income pipelines feeding money into your bank account while you sleep, as I do. And one of them can be Network Marketing.

Spreading your risk across many industries and geographic areas gives you unlimited income potential and security, peace of mind, and many options.

You can be as sophisticated or as mundane and simple as you please, but the more you learn, the more you earn, because your discipline and education improves your self esteem and confidence, and you attract larger JV’s and more money.

By cross promoting and linking your various JV’s, your income can grow exponentially.

Succeed from Anywhere

And you can do this from home if you like – you never have to set foot outside your door to get rich doing this. Stay in your pajamas or wear a $1,000 suit, or wear jeans for the rest of your life – your choice! You could even do this from a prison! And you don’t need to be computer literate or technically savvy – your JV’s can be high tech, low tech, slow tech, or no tech. There is no excuse not to succeed and make money, except your own beliefs and the amount of work you do.

As a Joint Venture Broker, you can use the JV mindset to invest, make money on other people’s money, grow your MLM business, and have other people doing all the work. I have successfully run my business remotely from Cancun, Hawaii, England, the US, Canada, Africa – no more barriers, no more restrictions – every resource you need is freely available through JV’s.

That’s Why I Made DollarMakers

DollarMakers was created to provide you all the training, connections, JV partners, ready-made JV’s, and support you need, from Members in 18 countries just waiting to write you a check, to conference calls Bootcamps, online training, newsletters, ezines, Members Meetings, Conventions, and much more.

We are the world’s leading experts in our field with small and medium sized businesses, professionals, and individuals, and we have the structure and systems you need to make it happen. We are your ladder to lots of money and your bridge to a burgeoning bank account. We are your way to wealth and your ride to riches.

How soon do you want to be financially free?

Say “Goodbye!” to scarcity, fear, insecurity, sleepless nights, and limited options, and say “Hello!” to freedom and joy. What you sow, you will reap, and we’re waiting to work with you. We agree with Zig Ziglar, who said,

“You can have anything you want out of life if you’re prepared to help enough other people to get what they want.”

Jump on board the DollarMakers Train to your Dreams!

When an attorney, J. Jamail, was asked to represent Penzoil in court in the late 1980s, he agreed to barter his services for a percentage of the award if he won the case, instead of charging an hourly fee. He won the case again Texaco and when Penzoil was awarded $3 billion, Jamail earned about $420 million.

When we believe in ourselves and our abilities and we think about how we CAN accomplish something, instead of why we can’t, we realize that we don’t have money problems; we have thinking problems.

Be Creative – You ALREADY Have Everything You Need To Make It Work

Every resource your business needs is already available to you through someone else, be it:

• legal services
• space
• advertising
• labor
• distribution
• access
• reputation
• membership or skills.

There is no shortage – there is only abundance. I use a simple illustration in my seminars: I ask the audience to imagine a huge barrel of stinking garbage and rotting meat. I tell them there’s a million dollars at the bottom of the barrel and ask how many would dive into the barrel and climb under the rotting mess to get the money.

My point is this:

If you believe the money is there, you will climb into the putrid garbage and duck underneath it and search until you find the prize. But if you don’t believe it’s there, you won’t even try. You won’t pay the price if you don’t believe the award exists.

J. Jamail believed in himself, his skills and his client. He was confident and courageous. He created his success. There is a solution for every challenge and that solution is available through another person / business. Joint Ventures enable us to access everything we need and want, and, if we do it right, we can do it with no money or risk. We simply have to have the right mindset.

Why Most People Fail in Business

The reason why most people fail in business, in my opinion, is that:

1. They try to do everything themselves and
2. They give up to easily.

They very soon forget the million dollars at the bottom of the barrel and focus instead on the long hours, frustration, stink and work. A savvy Joint Venture broker might simply find someone with a long stick and agree to pay him a percentage of the prize for fishing the money out of the barrel, while he goes on to look for more opportunities, much like Penzoil did with Mr. Jamail.

Think HOW rather than IF

It’s not “IF I can do it”, but rather “How can I do it.” IF stands for Instant Failure. Paul J. Meyer encouraged us to “Enter every activity without giving mental recognition to the possibility of defeat.” He told us:

Crystallize your goals. Make a plan for achieving them and set yourself a deadline. Then, with supreme confidence, determination and disregard for obstacles and other people’s criticisms, carry out your plan.

Now THAT’s what I’m talking about! That’s the attitude that will tract winners to you. And, buy working together with optimists and achievers, we can accomplish amazing things.

There are a LOT of real estate investors around. Many of them are doing well by taking advantage of the soaring property prices and the equity that affords them. Those who are good at what they do, are making good money. What is their biggest challenge, I wanted to know?

CASH FLOW.

While all the deals and purchases are happening and capital is tied up and things happen in the normal world of the real estate investors, they sometimes have cash flow challenges. And the fastest and best way to get around that is to use Joint Ventures.

Tapping into the Back-end

Because JV’s allow us to earn 100% profit on other peoples’ businesses, using other peoples’ resources and time. You can leverage your relationships and client base and create very lucrative back-end income relatively easily, once you understand that all your income doesn’t have to come from real estate.

What else does your market want & need?

Joint Ventures allow us the luxury of creating cash flow with no money or risk and very little time. But we have to “think outside the box” and have an inclusive mindset. That means you move beyond the realm of real estate and seek to meet other needs, while at the same time being well paid for doing so. The people who invest in real estate have other needs, too – they buy all sorts of other products and services. Why not insert yourself into that cash flow loop and become a tollgate on the bridge of that financial transaction as well?

You want to be free to do what you like, when you like, right?

You want to be free to go where you wish, when you wish, and to be able to afford to buy what you want. Ayn Rand said:

“Freedom is to ask for nothing, to expect nothing and to depend on nothing.”

Sounds good to me. But, to many people, this just seems like an impossible dream.

A Simple Plan to Create Freedom in Your Life

In fact, you can create this freedom in your own life to a large extent. It won’t happen overnight, but it can happen. You can consciously and systematically create this free lifestyle. I have. And you can, too. This is a technology, not some “Pie in the sky” scheme. It’s not MLM or Network Marketing. It’s proven and it works. Here is a simple plan to create freedom in your life: more than enough time and money and independence for you.

You Don’t Need Millions in the Bank to Retire

We should remember that Robert Kiosaki, in his “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” book, told us that you don’t need millions in the bank to retire.

What you do need is more passive income than you need to live comfortably on.

That’s not what some “financial planners” will tell you; they want to sell you lots of risky stocks and bonds and they tell you that you need millions in the bank. So, if you need $5,000 a month to live on and your income exceeds that, plus you have a little financial cushion stashed away for unexpected costs, you’re looking good!

Multiple Streams of Income Removes Risk

And we all know that it’s better, by far, to have multiple streams of income than just one. That way, we reduce our risk, don’t we? Not all your eggs in one basket. Have many baskets, so you can afford to drop some and still survive. Spread the risk. That way, you don’t lie awake at night, worrying about losing your income because of a crash in the stock market, a grumpy boss or a dishonest business associate.

10 Simple Steps to Create Time and Money Freedom

So, step by step, this is what we need to create time and money freedom and peace of mind, and all the quality of life that brings with it; ten simple steps:

1. Reduce and remove debts and overhead.

Most people buy things they don’t need and can’t afford, with money they don’t have, to impress people they don’t like. We need to reduce our monthly expenses and cut away the fat. Do you really need two cars and all the flash? The less you need to live on every month, the easier it is to get free. Take a good, hard look at your expenses and lifestyle. Do your things own you?

2.  Make sure you are properly insured against lawsuits and unexpected loss.

Get many quotes and be very careful which salesperson you talk with. Remember, the salesperson wants as much commission as he can get out of you. A healthy dose of skepticism is a good thing here.

When I was offered dental insurance and I looked at my benefits and costs, I decided to do without. It has saved me thousands of dollars. Read the small print; insurance companies really don’t want to pay you.

3.  Incorporate your business for protection and definitely have a business.

The tax breaks are excellent, especially if you’re a Joint Venture Broker as there are many more deductibles, including trips, entertainment and the like.

4.  Remove unnecessary costs and especially regular costs from your life.

5.  Organize Your Finances.

Visit your bank manager and the competition bank manager and an accountant. Look at refinancing and reorganizing your debts, line of credit, credit cards and mortgage – this exercise alone can save you a fortune and radically reduce your monthly costs.

6.  Simplify your life as much as possible.

What can be cut out? What is working, and what is not working? Are you attending a club or group out of habit, but not really getting any benefit anymore? And it’s costing you money? How much time and money will you save by leaving?

7. Educate yourself.

• Read Robert Kiosaki’s books.
• Read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”.
• Read “Think and Grow Rich” – again.
• Attend courses. Don’t go out and spend a fortune on schemes and dreams and “get rich quick” schemes. Be very careful. Attend free seminars but don’t buy stuff when the speaker turns into a used car salesman at the end and the mindless herd goes scurrying to the back of the room to buy his overpriced products. Sleep on it first. Don’t get emotionally whipped up.
• The more you learn, the more you earn. Understand money and debt.
• Examine your thinking and attitudes. We don’t have money problems; we have thinking problems.

8. Align yourself with winners, not whiners.

If we mix with people who are richer, wiser and more successful than we are, we will earn more as we learn more. Be open-minded and get that ego out of the way. People who are free can teach you how to be free. You don’t learn by talking; you learn by listening and then applying the new information.

9. Maintain the Joint Venture Broker mindset.

In everything, maintain the Joint Venture Broker mindset: “No Money, No Risk, Very Little Time.” You don’t have to pay for things when you understand Joint Ventures. You can trade, barter and Joint Venture.

10. Become a Joint Venture Broker and create multiple streams of increasing, passive income.

• Maximum potential
• Unlimited opportunities
• No geographic limitations
• No industry limitations
• Anyone can do it, regardless of education, age or background.
• All you need is access to a telephone. If you have internet access, even better.
• Work from home, a car, a beach, a forest, a hotel, an airport, or a wheelbarrow if you like.
• And you don’t have to go out and buy a business, sell stuff, sign leases, employ people or buy inventory. You can use existing resources – everything you need is available through other people and other businesses.

When Rika and I sold houses years ago, we did well. Because we used Joint Ventures. The first house I sold, I hadn’t even seen before. Worse still, I had never even read the contract. I got buyer to help me understand the contract! We sold a lot. How did we do it?

…And how can hard working realtors differentiate themselves in a very competitive market, dramatically increase sales and create multiple, additional streams of residual income at the same time?

1. Access the Right Demographic

First, we used simple Joint Ventures to access the right demographic. You don’t need the access to people as long as someone else has it. We piggybacked our marketing on existing distribution and used Host Beneficiary relationships.

2. Add Massive Value.

Then we used massive, added value to differentiate ourselves, again leveraging other peoples’ resources at no cost or risk to ourselves. You don’t need to own a cow in order to get milk. And you can get the milk at no cost, if you know how to offer real and compelling reciprocal value.

3. Only Aim to Solve Problems.

Most importantly, we never “sold” – we solved the buyer’s problems.

4. Leverage the Competition.

We had no shortage of inventory because we worked with our “competitors”. Only the egotistical, vain and stupid are afraid of their “competition”.

5. Keep it Real.

I didn’t use a 15 year old photograph of myself on a business card or the back of a bus. We were real people. Slick is scary.

6. Get Exposure Without Risk.

We branded ourselves effectively, again using JVs, so that we weren’t some unknown quantity. We were known and respected by leveraging relationships and exposure. So trust was never an issue for our prospects.

7. Set up a Back-end!!!

Best of all, we created multiple streams of income, a serious back-end that far exceeded the commissions we earned. Fifteen businesses partnered with us to meet the needs of our clients and even those who didn’t buy houses from us.

8. Adopt a JV Mindset.

The Joint Venture mindset is far removed from the “self employed salesperson” we see so much of today. It’s based on Zig Ziglar’s premise, “You can get anything you want out of life, if you’re prepared to help enough other people to get what they want.” It takes a bit to get used to and understand. Knowing about something and actually using and understanding it are worlds apart. But, once you start using it, everything changes, including, I’m pleased to inform you, your bottom line. This applies to any business or profession. You don’t have to try hard to persuade a starving man to eat.

I asked the bell captain to call a cab for me to get to the train station for my trip to Ottawa. He replied that, with all the freezing snow Montreal was enjoying that morning, a cab would take 45 minutes to arrive! Shock and awe – what was I to do? I had meetings and a seminar lined up in Ottawa – carefully planned down to the last minute. I couldn’t afford to miss that train!

Then I realized that the bell captain was still there, talking. He was saying, “But, Mr. Elliott, why not take the underground to the train station? It’s right around the corner, here.” In only twenty minutes I was at the station via the underground, saved money on the cab and enjoyed a great, relaxing train ride to Ottawa.

Has Conditioning Got in the Way?

When he walked into the huge seminar venue in the Toronto hotel, he seemed pretty professional and successful Well dressed and groomed, poised, aware. He handed me his business card and I was impressed. Thirty minutes into my seminar, I asked the audience, “How many of you think this looks ‘Too good to be true’?” and the same man put up his hand. Shock and awe! It was hard to believe that this sophisticated businessman was, in fact, seriously handicapped by his mental conditioning. We all are. How many wonderful opportunities have we all missed, because our conditioning got in the way? We all have mental programming that hampers and restricts us.

We don’t have money problems, we have thinking problems.

The same goes for technology – I searched for YEARS to find a way to record sound bytes on my computer at home and then to e-mail them. It only took one e-mail from Member Andrew Cavanagh in Australia, and within ten minutes I had the solution, which has been working great ever since.

We don’t have money problems, we have thinking problems. And the same goes for everything else. We already have whatever we want and need – it’s all in the way we think. Understanding that we have mental blocks is the first step on the road to overcoming all obstacles on our way to success.

The Fastest Way I Have Discovered to Get Over Blocks

Other people know things that we don’t know. They have different perspectives and they know how to get to the train station. The fastest way I have discovered to getting over, under and around mental blocks is by associating with a wide variety of Eagles through our DollarMakers Joint Venture Forum.

Hundreds of ethical people around the world with a Joint Venture Mindset are available to help me to succeed in a win/win way. They have different frames of reference, experience, skills, connections, access and resources that are readily available. We help each other to see through the mental blocks and solve problems. Together, we can do amazing things.

It’s amazing how many people I see doing crossword puzzles. In coffee shops, on planes, in airports, in trains. Rika likes doing jigsaw puzzles. Many people enjoy chess. They’re all solving problems and making connections.

When I first read Zig Ziglar’s statement,

“You can get anything you want out of life, if you’re prepared to help enough other people to get what they want”,

I realized that the more value I could create and the more people I could reach, the faster I would reach my own goals. So the puzzles that I enjoy are “value” puzzles: How to connect the dots and link the right people and resources in such a way that I create massive, unprecedented value. It’s called Joint Ventures.

JustLook at How the Big Guys Do Business

This is how I’ve done business and done well for nineteen years.

• We don’t have to create competencies; we can borrow them.
• We don’t have to own or buy resources – we just need access to them.

Ericsson and Sony work together. Disney, Amex, Pfizer and IBM all excel at Joint Ventures. Wal-Mart formed a Joint Venture with Mexico’s Cifra, which significantly shortened its learning curve about the Mexican market. It is said that 20% of the revenues of large companies are the result of Joint Ventures and that 50% of those Joint Ventures are with their competition, yet only 1% of small and medium businesses understand and use this powerful business tool to create fast and large profits at virtually no cost or risk.

It’s all about leveraging exiting resources and hidden assets. And it requires a certain mindset. And it doesn’t take years of academic study; it takes one day to get started.

Everything You Need is Already Available

The most important component of a successful Joint Venture is finding the right people to work with. One has to be careful to select ethical, professional people one whom one can rely. Secondly, you have to learn the mindset and understand how to select and approach potential Joint Venture partners and then to set up the deals in a win/win, no cost or risk manner. Once you get it, it’s like riding a bicycle or becoming a physician – you can work anywhere in the world, without any resources. Everything you need is already available through someone else.

A Game Where the Winner Gets Paid

Brokering Joint Venture deals is a wonderful and very rewarding game. It’s better than jigsaw puzzles because it creates value wealth, and great relationships. Real money, real fast, in the real world, with no downside – that’s why I love Joint Ventures. Remember “Six degrees of separation”? It’s true. And “What goes around comes around”? It works. I set up one Joint Venture yesterday that instantly exposed me to four thousand people. On my own, that would have taken a lot of time and money. Together, we can do amazing things.