A Million Ways to Make a Million Dollars

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.

33 thoughts on “A Million Ways to Make a Million Dollars

  1. Christina

    I love this article! I don’t know if you remember, but about a month ago, I wrote you about my confidence being down and suddenly being shy, this is exactly what my problem was! I am seriously going to…

    Reply
  2. same

    Hi Aj..

    Nice Post…This is my opinion :
    Through my experience,to influence others,we not only must experts in the particulars topic (e.g : salesman ),but the way /skills in delivering that topic to customers.There are some people,who are very good in “controlling” a situations can make a boost sales than the persons who are really expert in that particular field.In communications,it’s not important of what you want to deliver,but it’s important the you deliver it”.

    Cheers…

    Reply
    1. AJ Kumar Post author

      The whole practice what you preach, I think is what your trying to say. Yeah that makes sense. Sure that does help, having done what your influencing someone to do, but I personally don’t believe it’s absolutely required. I believe that if your an amazing communicator, you can talk your way into almost anything you want.

      There was a kid I saw on the news in high school who “talked” his way to be a part of the news-press and was about 50 feet away from the president. A task that was presumed practically impossible.

      Reply
  3. Vladimir Tsvetkov

    Imagine persuasive communication applied in all sorts of ways, not just for selling meaningless crap (e.g. antenna balls and pixels).

    AJ, I’m curious what’s your signal of intent? Why you do what you do?

    For the non-believers – advices 1 and 2 really work – just do as AJ advices you to do, forget for a minute about the neighbors!

    Reply
    1. AJ Kumar Post author

      Vladimir,

      your communication can be applied in all sorts of ways….

      you can use it to influence others to do something
      you can use it to sell products /services
      you can use it to sell yourself (for getting a raise, getting a job, etc.)

      My signal of intent with this particular article is to teach you some quick applicable ways to convince yourself to have to confidence (in yourself) to spread whatever messages you want to spread.

      I do what I do (write on http://www.persuasive.net) to teach others persuasive communication and other areas of personal development.

      By the way, antenna balls and pixels may be meaningless crap to you, but it was a very creative and unique million-dollar idea. I would never call someone’s brilliant idea meaningless yet alone crap, just because it’s “weird”.

      I don’t understand what you mean: “forget about the neighbors”

      Reply
      1. Vladimir Tsvetkov

        Creating a meaningless crap is not in opposition to brilliance and creativity. In fact, it is so ironic… these guys are so genius in the way how they are exploiting the mass stupidity.

        But, let’s be honest – it is crap. It is not even weird. Weird is something that needs some effort to be understood. Those things are jokes – not even worth attention. Creativity and brilliance should be used for solving real problems. Otherwise, it’s such a waste.

        I was asking about your signal of intent in general. The article is pretty clear, very well written, etc. The intention of your blog is clear too and I find it of some value.

        I’m asking you what’s your intention personally? What do you pursue in life? A million bucks? Or you dream about this brilliance that will make you come up with one-shot idea of such imaginary value? Come on, open yourself!

        ‘Forget about the neighbors’ means that if you live in an apartment building you can scare the sh*t out of your neighbors with the screaming session.

        Reply
        1. AJ Kumar Post author

          These guys that created those websites are indeed, in my opinion brilliant and unique ideas. I refer to them as “brilliant” because they opened up the doors for thousands of people all over the world to be successful too.

          Again, it maybe meaningless crap to you, but it is not for them and for the people following them. Some people like antenna balls, so this guy provided a way for people to buy them online. The guy that did the pixel thing went big time because “link exchange” was very popular (and still is) so he created a way for both people to benefit.

          The whole screaming thing: you can scream in the privacy of your own car so you won’t disturb anyone. Or if you don’t have a car, go to an empty park, there are always ways.

          Open up? Read my about page, I’ve pretty much opened up much entire life there. I’m almost 23 years old and spent several years in the personal development industry. My ‘talent’ you can say is my persuasive communication (hence the blog). I’m amazing at building rapport with people and befriending them. My goal is to get into the Hollywood industry so currently I’m looking into acting classes, auditioning etc. I had a broken ankle for the last 2-3 months so I was just barely able to walk again a few days before last week.

          Most of my blogs if not all of them are written from my day to day experiences, events, and beliefs. I practice what I preach, get results, and then share it with others.

          Not to be boastful, I believe my blog to be of more than “some value” 😉

          Reply
          1. Vladimir Tsvetkov

            Again, I agree about their brilliance, and again I want to stress on the meaningless of their creations.

            “… opened up the doors for thousands of people all over the world to be successful too…”

            Million dollars does not equals success. And I really doubt that thousands got richer, because of those guys “brilliance”. Most probably thousands got to spent their time and money realizing stupid ideas like theirs and end up broken in time of crisis.

            “Not to be boastful, I believe my blog to be of more than “some value””

            AJ, I really enjoy your blog, but you’re just 23 and you’ve spent, what… “more than half a decade ” in the industry, which is… face it, it’s 5 years and a day. It usually takes at least 10 years to get really good at your “craft”, so the time is all ahead of you. I’m confident you’ll get really really good at what you do and I’m looking forward to see you in a movie or in a TV series.

            The primary tools of our culture are money, authority and prestige, while it should be COMPETENCE, SKILL and RESPECT. The latter three usually take longer than the first three. What do you think about this?

          2. AJ Kumar Post author

            Vladimir,
            An online antenna ball store is far meaningless. Again you cannot speak on behave of everyone in this world to claim that his store is meaningless. He provided a good/service that others weren’t able to, therefore he profited greatly.

            “do the things others wont do and you’ll have the things others wont have”

            Of course thousands got richer! Look at all the various random online stores now available. You can buy almost anything online!!

            I know success isn’t= to money, but to society, success is almost always determined by money.
            Even if you do not consider themselves to be personally successful, you got to admit their business model was.

            Yes I am 23 and have MUCH MORE to experience, there is not doubt about it. And yes I do understands the “theory” of the 10 -year rule and I agree with it. I no where claimed I am an expert or a master, but I do practice what I preach, and share my results.

            The point of spending the time I did behind the scenes of the personal development industry is that it gave me the insight of what the average adult takes many many many years to understand, in just a couple.

          3. Vladimir Tsvetkov

            If you claim that the guy with the antenna balls store is the one who invented e-commerce, you’re wrong.

            1992: J.H. Snider and Terra Ziporyn publish Future Shop: How New Technologies Will Change the Way We Shop and What We Buy. St. Martin’s Press. ISBN 0312063598.

            With antenna balls or without them the world of e-commerce would be no different. Why you’re talking about things as they don’t have an absolute value – as there is no way to measure their utility, their cultural, social and environmental impact? GET REAL, not everything is relative!

            Every single thing needs resources to be produced. And as we live on the same planet, we share the same capacity of resources and they are not infinite in quantity. So we have to be more responsible in the way we use them.

            At the same time there are numerous problems to be solved (far more important than antenna balls and similar crap) – if you give each person a real problem to solve, there would still be problems in the bag. But solving real problems requires SKILL and COMPETENCE. Choosing to fight real problems instead of creating imaginary needs is what I call RESPONSIBILITY. RESPONSIBILITY goes hand in hand with RESPECT.

            And my name is Vladimir, not Vladamir (can’t even imagine how you pronounce Vladamir) – LOL.

          4. AJ Kumar Post author

            I misspelled your name but changed it quickly after my post after I realized my mistake…so by the time you were finishing your last post, it was already fixed.

            I never claimed that the antenna ball guy ‘invented’ e-commerce. What I’m saying is that it is examples like his that made it possible for people sell practically everything on the internet (i.e. fertilizer!)

            You keep referencing them to ‘crap’, which is unnecessary. That guy provides a good which people apparently are interested in. Regardless to whether or not he’s helping the world, he became a self made millionaire. Vladimir, it does not matter how you do it (ethically/legally of course).

            Why would you speak so negatively of a person’s success?

            There are definitely more relevant and important things to solve in this world… That’s obvious. What’s your point? People need to make money. Many people want to live successful lives, drive fancy cars, etc. They do whatever it takes to get to that level.

            Again, do the things others wont do and you’ll have the things others wont have.

            **legally and ethically**

            If you can sell antenna balls online and make a million bucks, good for you. If you can make a difference in the world by convincing millions of people to turn off their lights for an hour every week, then good for you…

            Vladimir, I get what your saying, but you shouldn’t call someone’s good idea crap, just because they made lots of money on something irrelevant to you or to helping the world in general.

          5. Vladimir Tsvetkov

            “What’s your point? People need to make money. Many people want to live successful lives, drive fancy cars, etc. They do whatever it takes to get to that level.”

            The level you’re talking about is money, authority and prestige, but when you’re incompetent, when you lack the skill, you’re getting from CEO to pizza delivery guy. And there will be a lot more success stories like this.

            AJ, you’re right, it’s just the semantics I’ve assigned to the word ‘crap’ in my mind. And the semantics go something like:

            “Crap is Everything that is turned into consumable when there is no actual or rational need for it. But also Crap is All of the efforts to turn everything into consumer of the above mentioned consumables.”

            If you think about this definition, you’ll find inside the essence of the current state of affairs. When people want to get to the next level and they lack the skill and they’re not competent enough to solve real problems and to fulfill real needs, they start “inventing” products and services of imaginary value. Then they need to persuade people to turn them into consumers of their products.

            I really like your article, but you’ve picked the wrong examples, with the wrong signal of intent. Which is the more productive signal of intent?

            1. My intent is to make a million bucks.
            2. My intent is to make things better for people.

            All I’m saying is that following 1, does not imply skill and competence and usually does not improve people’s life, while 2 can make you a millionaire and at the same time change the world for better.

            There are million ways to become a millionaire, as there are millions of unsolved real problems. Instead of searching for an easy way to become rich, start digging into real problems. This is my point!

          6. AJ Kumar Post author

            “There are million ways to become a millionaire, as there are millions of unsolved real problems. Instead of searching for an easy way to become rich, start digging into real problems. This is my point!”
            People who are rich can make a better difference than people who aren’t

            “…when you lack the skill, you’re getting from CEO to pizza delivery guy. And there will be a lot more success stories like this.”

            What? He does not lack skill. A self made going from 0-750k by working his @$$ off does not lack skill.

            I know for sure he will get on top again.

  4. Vladimir Tsvetkov

    “People who are rich can make a better difference than people who aren’t.”

    Is that a fact? People with money can make a bigger (no sure for better) difference – it’s hard to argue that. It’s completely different question whether the difference will be for better or for worse.

    There are thousands of examples for entrepreneurs starting from ground zero chasing their dream of transforming the world into a better place and getting really successful (VCs usually fund really good ideas), while I can’t think of anyone who went big, because he just wanted a million bucks. Again, it’s the signal of intent which matters.

    Why a guy with such skills to solve “so important” real problems would get involved into the pizza delivery business? Don’t blame the crisis for that, please – the crisis is on a global scale. The obvious reason is that no one needs his “skill”, or most probably his “skill” has nothing to do with reality. Anyway, there is not enough information on the topic, so this is just a speculation.

    Reply
    1. AJ Kumar Post author

      Yes it is a fact bro. Money makes the world go round. Money is required for research, to build, to provide food, etc.

      Yes there are thousands of entrepreneurs who make a difference, I know. Most people don’t work their asses off to “make a difference”. It’s usually a front. People want money and you can’t blame them for doing so. Hey I want to make a difference in this world by touching them emotionally through acting. I also want to be rich and famous. Me being rich and famous will allow me to do more good and make a bigger impact.

      The CEO guy made some bad choices that led him his current path. Currently, he has thousands of people inquiring his leadership skills and whatever other skills he has right now.

      Reply
  5. Tess The Bold Life

    You sure touched some hot buttons! I personally never had becoming a millionare a goal. Still don’t. Doesn’t that make me sound weird?

    Happiness has always been my goal. I have a life I love, great children and grandchildren. Just moved to AZ from MI (our dream for 25 years) and have been happily married for 37 years.

    One daughter works for the airlines which allows us to travel for free when we want. My husband sold his accounting biz before we moved. We still own a cottage in MI.

    I have several friends that are millionaires and the older they become the crazier they get about their money. They constantly obssess over how they are going to keep it. The stock market being like it is their fears have become their reality.

    Reply
    1. AJ Kumar Post author

      haha, I hear ya Tess! I think that’s great your interested in just pursuing happiness 🙂 I’m glad to hear that you are well taken care of through out your endeavors.

      Also, It’s probably an amazing feeling to finally accomplish your goal after 25 years, isn’t it?

      Reply
  6. Khalid

    I think that this one meaning of hapiness, children, grand childrenn, a great wife/Husband.

    And you are right that many people like money the more as they go olde, while the opposite should be true, ayoung guy should save for his future, but for what they are saving ???

    Reply
    1. AJ Kumar Post author

      I can see how that may make sense… young people save, old people spend… however it just doesn’t work that linearly. It varies on each person.

      Reply
  7. Ivan Oleksa

    Great I have read your article and by the way I found you website on Google and I think after I read somepost on you website especially this one I have my own opinion about what should I say on the next hang out with my family, maybe today I will tell my girl friendabout this one and get debate.

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  11. Drjay

    The article is right on and the persuasion is required. And, so is the proper mindset which is established with books like The Course on Money, The Millionaire’s Ten Commandments, Money-Power-and Sex (all at http://www.speedread.org) or the very basics Think and Grow Rich. In order to apply the persuasion – you need to know how the brain/mind works, and how to program it for results – all these books can help.
    Dr. Jay Polmar, retired author
    founder, http://www.speedread.org

    Reply
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