Monthly Archives: March 2009

A Million Ways to Make a Million Dollars

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No, I am not going to literally make a list of 1 million ways, but I will give you the secret to what most of them have in common. First, let’s get one thing straight. Do you really even want to become a millionaire? I mean, it is a lot of hard work.  You usually have to manage thousands of clients, orders, phone calls, meetings, sometimes payrolls, etc.  It sounds so tedious and annoying.  Isn’t the whole 9-5 routine a lot more comfortable?

The answer is yes, the 9-5 routine is indeed a lot more comfortable, which is why most people follow that path.  I can honestly say that most of you reading this want to become millionaires but are not willing to put the time and effort to be one.  You can even tell me that you want it and are willing to put the time and effort to making a million dollars, but you still won’t do it.  Is it genetic? Are millionaires born with a certain gene?  No, it is what your mind has been programmed to believe: you are not capable of making an immense amount of money.

No matter what industry you are in, what line of work you do, what skills or traits you have, making a million dollars is possible.  Consider this: Do you remember back in the day, maybe 5-10 years ago when most cars had antennas.  Fast food companies like Jack in the Box would give away free “Jack antenna balls” with the purchase of a certain meal. A guy by the name Jason Walls created a website called, you guessed it, antennaballs.com.  He became a millionaire by selling random antenna balls.

Another interesting idea was a gentleman who sold 1 million pixels on a webpage for $1 each.  He also became a millionaire with his odd and wacky idea.

So What Do They Have in Common?

Well it is not the weird unique ideas I am talking about because this whole article is about how you can turn almost anything into a million dollar idea. The answer is Persuasive Communication.

Persuasive Communication is does not necessarily have to be between you and someone else, it can be applied when communicating with yourself  Every day, you are battling it out within your mind about not being good enough, being capable of doing this, not capable giving up on this, staying strong with that etc.

Persuading Yourself on Yourself

Since becoming successful begins with you, it is important to convince yourself on your ideas.  Have you ever ‘pitched’ an idea to someone even though you only partially believed it?  What about the opposite, pitching an idea and standing as sturdy as a surfboard behind it? Obviously when you stand behind something with passion and power, you are more likely to get your point across.  So now the question is how do we do this? How do we persuade ourselves to be confident, to be irresistible, and to be unstoppable?

1. Scream like a Banshee

Even people who appear to be confident and powerful in public may have originally evolved from being fearful and nervous individuals.  A great method to train oneself to becoming confident is to do a pre-game scream session.   For example, if you have presentation featuring some big wigs that are there to breathe down your neck, prepare yourself before you go to work. Just go crazy, scream loud and passionately, jump up and down, use affirmations while you are screaming, yelling or speaking very loudly.  This may appear to be a joke, but it is not.  This method will easily be able to get you ‘psyched’ out.  Entertainers do this in their dresser room, professional athletes do this in their locker room, and business professionals do this at work, at home or even in the car.

2. Ask Yourself the Right Questions

I wrote an amazing article with a list of several questions you currently ask yourself and even more questions to replace them with. If you find yourself asking yourself questions like “why am I such a loser” or “why am I so shy”, then your mind will give you the answer. If that is how you are, will you ever become successful with money? Change your questions, change your life!

Persuading Others on You

Regardless to whether you are selling cars, shoes, or a house, the majority of the sale will be determined by what you say and do.  Your linguistical skills are what persuade someone to buy from you.  Yes you must sell yourself on yourself first and then it comes down to what you say and how you say it.  Remarkably, with much practice of knowing the right vocabulary and knowledge of how to speak persuasively, you will find yourself convincing and influencing more people faster.   Keep in mind, you are selling yourself EVERYWHERE you go.

Start Here

There are a lot of free resources available right here on persuasive dot net. Go back to the home  page or even take a look at the side bar for more techniques you can learn and apply.

You Thought You Had It Bad? From CEO to Pizza Delivery Guy

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Ken Karpman has worked his way to the top by becoming a very successful CEO for a well established company. At his peak, Ken was making about $750,000 annually, an income that only small amount of people in the US population are capable of making. Ken lived the good life by buying the home of his dreams, traveling all over the world, and purchasing anything he wanted. He left his high paying job to start his own hedge fund company and take his career to the next level. Due to a series of unfortunate events, Ken wound up with over $500,000 in debt and is expected to be kicked out of his home within the next few months.

Since Ken has a wife and kids to support, he has resorted to being a pizza delivery guy making$7.29/hr plus tips. His family also receives about $500 in food stamps.

The economy has hit this man hard and stories like Ken have begun to appear more and more. I am not writing about Ken to give you information about how bad the economy is, I am telling you about Ken to show you that SHIT HAPPENS. You have a choice: you can either sulk in your losses and complain about how unfair your life is or you can get back to work (no matter how old you are) and make it happen!

There is no doubt in my mind that Ken will become successful again because a person like him knows how to keep his pride and ego in check and that the efforts of his hard work eventually paying off.

After watching this video about Ken, do you think you have it bad? Regardless of whether you do or not, tell me what your challenges are right now and how you plan on getting back on your feet.

Have You Ever Slowed Down to Focus on an Accident?

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Has there ever been a time when you were stuck in traffic on the freeway? Then as you started to creep forward you realized that the traffic is because too many people were gawking at an accident on the side. Also, I bet that even though you got angry that the traffic was because everyone was focusing on the accident, you subconsciously slowed down and decided to look too! If you have ever been on a freeway, chances are that you are guilty of Rubbernecking! Our minds are consciously aware of only a few things during any given time. You get what you focus on most of the time. That means that whatever you are presently focused on is what you will perceive to be

reality right now.

Focus Focus Focus

The concept behind ‘focusing’ is so simple it can be taught to a kid. Most of you have probably played around with magnifying glasses in efforts to burn a hole through a piece of paper. The reason why the paper burns is because the rays from the sun penetrate through the magnifying glass and become concentrated into a single focal point which then causes a chemical reaction i.e. becoming hot enough to burn the paper. The point of this example is that the paper will only burn if the magnifying glass is positioned in a way for the light to have a single focus.

Negative Focus

From one of the previous blog entries I wrote about negative news, your focus can be subconsciously used to sabotage your entire career. If you are currently placing your focus on our declining economy, than more important things like your family, career, and lifestyle will all be directly affected. Yes, I understand the “need to know” of what is going on in this world, but if it alters my well being, I am not interested. Let’s say you are a real estate sales person and your job is to sell homes. The economy has substantially impacted the Real Estate Industry, but according to the reports, homes are still selling every single day. As a real estate person, your focus should be on money making activities like prospecting for business, presentations, and follow up. However, the focus for most Realtor is on money servicing activities like paperwork and other forms of “busy-work”. The money making vs. money servicing activities was a great concept I learned while working at the Mike Ferry Organization. I was taught to spend 80% of your time on money making activities and 20% of your time on money servicing activities. This format allows you to use the right amount of focus to bring in new business and take care of it.

Positive Focus

If you get what you focus on most of the time, does it not make sense to focus on something magnificent? The law of attraction blah blah blah, can come into play here, but I am referring to focusing on the right career, a project, a successful relationship, money, success. These examples are obviously too vague and focusing on something effectively requires you to narrow down your focus to the very last degree possible like the example with the magnifying glass. What is your focus? What do you want to do with your life? Is your focus to become the best sales person in your company? Is your focus to become an influencer so powerful everyone lives by your word? The power of ‘focus’ is so vast, that if you take advantage of it, you will be able to achieve almost anything you have ever dreamed of.

Exercising/ Weight Training

The concepts of ‘focusing’ does not only apply to success in business and relationships, but it also applies to physical fitness. The reason why there are hundreds of different machines or variations of exercises is because each of them focuses on a particular muscle in your body. A common challenge that most people have which results in an ineffective workout is that during the exercise, their focus is on a different muscle, watching TV, or listening to music.  When you exercise, pay full attention to the muscle you are supposed to work out because it will allow that muscle to achieve maxim effectiveness.

The Art of Multitasking

I noticed the power of multitasking a few years ago when I worked at MFO. The receptionist was able to speak on the phone, look up something on her computer, place people on hold, and write down notes almost simultaneously. Obviously doing all those tasks at once is definitely not impossible, it just requires a lot of practice. Multitasking allows you to do more and in less time. Practicing multitasking will inevitably blow up in your face at one point or another, but after the expected decline, you will be accelerating your process at speeds you thought were impossible before.

Multitasking does not mean you will be “focusing” on several different things at one time, in fact you might not be focused on one thing at all. After you master multitasking, you will be the depths of thoughts while everything your doing is just one big blur. Multitasking at a level of perfection will occur from your continuous practice of the task consciously. Once you begin to perfect the task, your mind will start to perform the task as if it were second nature. Ideally, if you practice the art of multitasking, you will learn to grow your mind’s knowledge and infrastructure at a faster pace than someone who performs each task linearly.

What are you focusing on right now? (not literally this second, but your overall direction in life)

What is the Answer to 99 Out of 100 Questions?

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I finally decided watch the movie Vanilla Sky, starring Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz. If you are some of the few who have yet to see that movie – A successful publisher finds his life taking a turn for the surreal after a car accident with a jaded lover. Besides being a great movie, Tom Cruise’s character said, “My father wrote about this in his book. Chapter 1… Page 1… Paragraph 1: What is the answer to 99 out of 100 questions?…Money” It could not be worded better than that.  Before I get a lot of people telling me that life is not all about money, let me make a few clarifications:

  • Contribution is more important than money
  • Money does not measure one’s success or buy happiness
  • Money make the world go round and round

Money

Almost everyone everywhere at one point or another has money on their mind. Whether or not they have enough, how they can get more, and what they can use it on. People who say that money is not important are just putting up a facade. You cannot tell me that money is not important to you. The clothes on your back, the reason you get up early in the morning to go to work, the mortgage payment, and car payment, all have to deal with you having and making money.

Contribution is More Important Than Money

I agree with this completely so let’s go into further detail. There are two ways you can contribute:

Contribute Your Time

You can contribute your time in several different ways. You can give people advice on how to live a better life based upon your knowledge and your personal life experiences.  Many people who write autobiographies talk about their challenges and how they were able to overcome them. Some of these people share knowledge they have gained from over 30+ years of experience.  Imagine reading 1 book like this every month for 12 months, that equals learning about 360 years of life experiences in just 1 year! Mother Teresa is a great example of a person who dedicated most of her life to helping others. Her efforts was so highly respected, she impacted the whole world. A smaller scale example would be me, believe it or not, it takes me several hours of my time to write about knowledge and experiences I have gone through in my life. Or how about a vague example of a high school student who spends their time after school helping out at the senior center.

Contribute Your Money

I was having small debate about Donald Trump with a reader of mine on my article about losers. Even though many people portray “The Donald” to be a self-centered egomaniac that is only interested in himself and money, he is still able to contribute more money to charities than most people do in an entire life time. In his show, The Celebrity Apprentice, they were able to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for needy charity’s around the world. You cannot donate money to charities by being poor. Contributing your time helps, but your able to do so much more with money. Being wealthy not only allows you to contribute more money to those who need it (food, shelter, clothing, etc.), but being wealthy also means that you are able to provide jobs (employees) and help other people around them (investors) make money.

Money Does Not Measure One’s Success or Buy Happiness

Success and happiness, like beauty is determined by the eye of the beholder. To some success might be having a big house with fancy cars while to others it may be a white picket fence style house with a car the works. Happiness to some might be having $1,000,000 in the bank while to others it might be spending your life with the one you love. Filling your empty with void with materialistic objects will eventually drain out and become empty again. Buying a brand new luxury car will keep you happy for until you get the urge to want something else.

Money Makes the World Go Round

“A man with a briefcase can steal more money than 100 men with handguns.”

– Don Corleone, The Godfather

Like most ideologies, money is a double edged sward capable of doing both good and evil. Money can help a poor man live an average life. Money can help a sick man become healthy again. Money can help a student with journey of a prestige and impeccable education. Money can take a non-astronaut into space! Whether you like it or not, money has the power to do almost anything.

“Life is miserable, no matter what. It is better to be miserable with money than without it.”

-Siva Baba

You have two choices: You can either work hard make enough money so you can live comfortly, enjoy your family, loved ones, and travel or you can continue to tell yourself that money is not a necessity in your life and live paycheck to paycheck. Money is what will pay for those guitar lessons, to donate to your favorite charity, to feed your children, to shelter you from the rain, and almost everything else you do in life. Money truely is the answer to most of the questions you have in life.

How say you?

Are You a Negative News Junkie? You Gotta Read This!

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When getting ready for work most people follow a particular routine.  For some people the routine might be to roll out of bed, get ready for work then check out the news.  Then, when it is time for the long commute to work, the majority like to “turn that dial” to the local news station during their drive.   During work, these news junkies just cannot stop thinking about what else is going on in the world.  Eight hours of tedious pain staking work, they head on home while listening to the news.  Lastly, once at home they greet the family or pet, followed by getting out of those uncomfortable work clothes and you guessed it, check out the news again! The cycle repeats the next day.

Does that sound a lot like your life? Well if it doesnot, then you are part of the small minority because there are many people who just cannot stop checking out the news.  The obvious question: Why? Is it because we are in the information age and absorbing new information is really important to our likelihood and well being? Maybe for some it is.  After I became extremely curious why most people get engrossed with the news, I decided to search for my answers.  I asked my closest friends, family and anyone I came in contact with to figure out why people are so addicted to the news.  The answers I received was your typical, “I just want to know…” Since that was the first response I got, I decided to pry a bit further by asking more questions.  I finally came to a very interesting conclusion.  I realized that many people watch the news because they subconsciously feel better about their own lives and themselves.  I found this odd and interesting, but it does make sense.  It seems as if the worse and worse the economy gets, the more and more people are interested in watching the news.

Negative News Equals Negative Mindset

For some of you who have not already read my popular post: Do You Have a Friend Who’s a Looser? Get Rid of Em, read it.  Hanging around with negative people will lower your standards which I compare to immersing yourself with negative news. Think about it, is the news really that irresistibly interesting? “2 suspects were sent to jail today on suspicion of murdering their former teacher…” “The economy is doing terrible, 65,000 jobs were lost last month alone…” Why is it necessary to know this information? What good comes from this?   Do you believe you are setting yourself up for a successful life?  Do you really need to fill in that void with a daily “news fix”?

Why I watch the news

I have a different reason for watching the news along with being very selective of what I read. I almost never read about negativity in the news including:

  • Shootings
  • Murders
  • Rapes
  • Losing jobs
  • Economic meltdown
  • Mortgage crisis
  • Real estate gone bad
  • War

I usually read about:

  • Technology advances
  • Successful people
  • People getting their big break
  • Hollywood  news
  • Movie releases
  • Blogging
  • Occasional updates with whatever else is going on in the world

The occasional updates I use for different reasons than most people.  I use it as a tool to communicate with other people.  Almost everyone is talking about the bad economy. What I normally do is briefly converse with someone on a negative story and quickly change the conversation into something inspirational or positive.  I choose to be excited and motivated versus down and glum because of a horrible story. I am different than most people which is great! Does that make sense?

Positive News Equals Positive Mindset

Whether you are looking to become wealthy or spiritually connected, you have a much better chance doing so by being around the right people. What you see on TV or read online has the same impact.  The more positive news you read, the quicker you will allow yourself to emerge in positive thoughts.  They say positive thinking is what helps one move forward. This is somewhat true. Positive thinking is an ongoing action, meaning you must exert energy every second to keep your mind at a positive state.  Most people tell me “AJ, I had my one positive thought for the day so I’m ‘thinking’ positive.”  Even if you have conditioned your subconscious to continuously think of positive thoughts without being consciously aware, you will still end up with something negative by reacting to the news around you.  This is why it is also important to not only stay away from negative news, but read, watch, and listen to more positive news.  A great website I found is called Happynews.com.

Why is the Media Persistent About Providing Negative News?

Every influential person in the world can write about why the news has such a terrible impact on one’s mind, but will people stop watching? Definitely not! The media is like any other business, the only way it survives is by making profit for its shareholders.  The media is only interested in making money which is done by advertising. The more people that watch, the more money they will make.  If  someone has the option on which they would rather see, a bank getting robbed compared to healthy babies being born, the answer would be obvious.  The media is aware that more people would watch the story about the bank robbery compared to the new babies.  This translates into people prefer negative stories rather than positive.

Empower Yourself and the World

Since we cannot simply boycott the news, how about we put 100% focus on positive news.  The media will deliver what the public wants.  If the public would rather be informed of more positive news compared to negative, that is what they will begin to deliver. You have the power to control the news.  Every person who decides that they would rather better themselves by viewing positive news would see the dramatic impact in their mindset.  Imagine the influence if 1 million people across the United States made the decision to ONLY watch positive news from now on. The outcome would be that those one million people would almost instantly see a change in their mindset which would allow them to focus on much more productive or spiritually enlightening things. Those 1 million people will create a ripple effect and possibly even help the economy.

Do you think this is possible? Can we really make vast change in the way we live our lives?  Do we have the ability to influence the media conglomerate? Martin Luther King did and succeeded. Gandhi made a difference.  Rosa Parks took the chance.   Why wait around for someone else to take action when we have the power to simply do it?  Only focus on positive news! Only talk about positive news. Only ASK for positive news.

Influence Someone by Creating a New Reality

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Convincing someone is a prestige art that requires powerful persuasive communication. Your thoughts mainly consist of your beliefs, emotions, and concepts. How you present yourself to others determines whether or not they listen or do what you tell them to do. This occurs within the first minute of conversation.

The Average Person

You are obviously AWARE of the conscious ways to speak to people:

  • Be animated
  • Talk about interesting information
  • Fluctuate your voice to avoid being monotone

However, very few people are AWARE of the subconscious ways to speak to people. Your mind consists of two parts, your subconscious and your conscious.

Conscious Mind

Your conscious mind is you being AWARE of everything going on around you during the current period of time. An example of your conscious mind at work is when you hold a telephone number in your memory long enough to make that call.

Subconscious Mind

Your subconscious mind is always working in the background. Your subconscious does things like run your body, run your emotions, and store old memories. Have you ever read about the benefits of using certain words? Or purposely shifting your body to build rapport with someone? This is because based on thousands studies on the human mind, subconsciously, people are wired to act in a pattern oriented way.

You’re obviously beginning to see the significance to communicating to someone’s subconscious mind rather than their conscious, aren’t you?

Embedded Commands:

These phrases compel you to take action or do it now. These phrases subconsciously give you a command or something to do. These are words that are sort of like ticking time bombs for the brain. They are 1-3 words that are within sentences and have a relatively powerful impact on your prospects decision making process.

For example: It seems like you clearly agreeing with what I’m telling you so let’s ACT NOW so I can help you get what you want in the time you need it…does that work for you?

This is a very simple pattern to catch on to. Keep in mind that when you say this out loud, you need to put a unique emphasis on your embedded command. Sooner or later, after much practice, you’ll begin to discover a difference on our prospect’s action. This command is very subliminal meaning that it will affect them subconsciously.

  • Buy it now
  • Do what I say
  • Sign here
  • Sign up today
  • Say yes
  • Do it now
  • Tell me yes
  • Sign the contract
  • Choose me
  • Trust me
  • Feel comfortable

Most people somewhat understand the concept behind embedded commands, but when it comes to using it effectively in real life conversation they fail. Why? Because as I stated earlier, your embedded commands must have a unique emphasis when said aloud. Some people tend to simply chicken out. As you begin to practice using embedded commands, use more authority and conviction in your voice as you say the commanding word. You can even add a slight pause before and after the command which is bit easier to do.

How Do You Create a New Reality?

The answer is simple. Increase their level of awareness by using the following phrases and words within your conversations which will allow the person you are communicating to pay attention to what you say.

Awareness Phrases

  • Listen carefully
  • Pay attention
  • Be aware
  • This part is important
  • This is where it gets interesting
  • Check this part out
  • Watch this closely

Awareness Words

  • Discover (ing) – Soon you’ll begin to discover new ways to make money
  • Achieve (ing) – After achieving success, you’ll want to learn how to go to the next level.
  • Start (ing) – If you start to think about what learning this will do to you, you’ll instantly become excited.
  • Experience (ing) – After experiencing how amazing it was to skydive, I felt as if I can do anything.
  • Imagine (ing) – Imagine learning these new ideas and applying them into your life.
  • Able to – You’ll be able to apply this into your conversation almost instantly.

These are some words you can use to influence someone to become aware of what you say. After your listeners start to experience the new level of awareness from your conversations, they’ll be more likely to do what you want or at least find you as an authoritative figure.

Yes, I understand that most people have seen these words or phrases and chances are, you have already used them in your day to day conversations. People use the language of creation all day everyday without knowing and thereby accidentally creating the response. Now that you’re aware of these words and phrases, you’ll be able to deliberately apply these tactics and create the responses whenever you want.