Jay Abraham – Mastermind Marketing 1
Man 1: And in this corner, weighing in at over $6 billion in revenue generated for his clients and associates, hailing from Los Angeles,
California, and pound for pound generates more profitable break through marketing ideas than any man alive, give it up for Jay L. Abraham.
(Applause and cheering)
Jay: Okay, wow. Hello. We'll start with a quote. It's not an original one, but it's an appropriate one. It's from a colleague named Bob Proctor. Bob Proctor says, and I agree, that almost every business owner, and aspiring entrepreneur out there in the world, struggles silently with a non-verbalized question that is decimating their capability for greatness. They don't even know they're struggling with it. The essence of the question is, 'Am I worthy of this goal?' 'Can I really build a competitive business, and stay around, in light of all these big companies trying to marginalize and turn me into a com [unclear 2:00]? Can I really reach my vision? Can I really compete in this very, very, very, very global world, with the internet and all kinds of different solutions to the same problems? Can I really make half a million, a million dollars? Can I really build a business that will endure, that has value?'
Bob says, and I agree, "That is absolutely, positively, and totally an erroneous question to even consider." The right question to always ask yourself is, 'Is the goal worthy of me and my company?' Why? you ask. Because once you learn how much more is possible, from [unclear 2:55], fill in the blank; the same opportunity, the same time, the same
investment, the same activity, the same people, the same relationships, the same distribution channels; you will see that you have been
unintentionally restricting, limiting and accepting a fraction of the number of clients you could be generating, the size of the transactions you could be creating, the number of products and services you could be nobly and officially helping your market place acquire and benefit from.
Please turn the phones off because I'm attention-deficit, and if you do, then everyone will hate you because I'll have to look at you and stop, and start again and repeat from the very beginning because I'm very
programmed; and then everyone will be like, assail you, and it'll be terrible, and I don't want to have that on my conscience.
What was I talking about? Should I start over again? Play the music again Dave, I'll go to the back.
(Laughter)
Tony, how you doing man? What was I talking about? I really am, I'm opposed to [unclear 04:07]
Jay: ...is the goal worthy of you? Because when you understand how much
more leverage you have in your marketing, in strategy, competitive and [unclear 4:25] as you can in your mindset, it will blow your mind. It will rock your world. It will transform you. But that's what we're going to get to. Got a couple of things I want to say right now, and then we've got a very rigorous speaker list. I only work from notes, I do free form; I know exactly what I want to talk about, but I have to look at notes occasionally, because I want to make sure I don't forget a critical point.
Okay, first of all, all of you, we're here for a reason. Different reasons for different ones of you, but you're here basically to learn how to grow your business geometrically, from a profit stand point, not just top like
revenue. You're here to learn how to be masterfully more strategic in your marketing process. You're here to learn how to compete at a level of
formidability and prowess, and acuity that will just basically topple, decimate and dominate everybody else you're trying to address. You're here to learn a strategy of business that will so liberate and animate your spirit; it's called Strategy Nemetics, and you may not know that.
You're here to learn the meaning of business life. You're here to learn how to make the power of geometry harness it's amazingly potent self to your every beck and call. How many people in this room have a historic basis or background with me; you bought my stuff in the past? Raise your hand. Okay. Down.
How many have attended a program of mine in the past? Okay, so about 15% of you. Okay, this is a cool program. I've done 50 programs in my professional life; they range from 5,000 to 50,000 dollars. This program, the Mastermind Marketing Program, has spawned more success stories that are documented, about 11,400. It has transformed more people's businesses by giving them a fundamental understanding of how strategic marketing is the bed rock of all things great for their business. It is giving them the focus, the understanding and the power to compete
successfully, to get their businesses growing and growing; and this is going to be the first time in seven years, that I have reconstituted and delivered it, and the crowd is wonderful, that the people here will get a lot out of it, but you have to understand how we do business. Because if you don't; if you're new to it or you've forgotten, less than a stellar experience.
If you embrace what we're all about, it will be just euphoric times two; it'll be the most - it'll actually - orgasmic endeavour you've ever had. First of all, I'm not going to give you a program, you're going to give it to yourself. And I have every confidence in your ability to give yourself the greatest program of your own life. You're not here for Jay Abraham to dole out theoretical wisdom in a very static manner; you're here to get
transformed; you're here to learn how to put into action strategies, tactics, and implement them on a sustaining systematic basis. I will do it many ways; I will teach you what I know.
I will teach you what I have experienced, but to really demonstrably evidence it, I will pluck from the audience, all kinds of people,
continuously, who have done that in their real life, who have seen the power, who understand it intellectually and conceptually, and from a construction stand point, foundationally - how it works; I will make them go to the mike, and I'll make them share case study after case study, because I want it to be real.
I do not have any need or desire to be your intellectual entertainment. I have enormous capacity to be a catalyst. I have enormous desire to be basically your advisor. I have enormous commitment to move you to action, but you've got to commit to yourself. This is all about
collaboration. It's all about everyone for each other. We're like the 650 Musketeers.
And we've got to basically make this the greatest contribution, the
greatest collaboration; we have 16 or 18 experts, not one of which is here to really purposefully sell you anything; they’re here to basically give from the depths of their heart, expertise that is critical to the foundation we're after; and number 2...to work on their own business at the tables with you. They're going to be here for the duration with the exception of two or three, and it's going to be killer.
I don't like anyone worrying or concerning themselves with what in the world is going to happen, so let me give you a quick advance, and I'm going to have to stop in three minutes because we promised Brian we would get him on and off fast, because he's got to catch a plane. We orchestrate our programs very, very strategically. But we change them at will. It's not about me being this great, on the podium, theatrical
presenter. I'm relatively good, but I'm really a shirt-sleeve entrepreneur who has worked my whole life on the front-lines of capitalism. I
understand business from an intimacy, and a reality, at an empirical level, that very few of you probably will ever achieve; and I'm going to try and
summarize and distil it down into such elegant simplicity, it'll be impossible for you not to engineer breakthroughs.
However, as we go through our intended format, I might change it at will. We have no shame about making the event and the experience and the result the best we can for you, and I am a continuous work in process. So, here's what we're trying to do. On Day 1, we're trying to open up your paradigm, evidence to you how much more is possible, get you grounded in foundational Jay Abraham stuff, introduce you to perspectives that will raise your own bar, get you to see that you can do anything, but only if you realize what you're trying to do and work backwards from it; then we're going to teach you the next day, the power and the integral importance of being strategic instead of tactical.
Then on the next day, once we understand all is possible, and reduce down what the hell you want for yourself, what your optimal goals are, and we engineer it backwards; and then we're going to show you that the key to getting it all instantly and sustainably is changing your strategy, we're going to then build for you tactics; the elements of delivery that can do it for you. Then finally, we're going to spend hours and hours building an action plan that will really achieve the goals, so you don't go home just feeling good, and go right back to the status quo; and then you're going to present it to each and everybody around the table, because they're going to decide whether you really got it, or whether you need help. And we're going to help you, so before you leave, you've got it all down. That's pretty much what we're going to do, isn't it Rick?
I didn't follow one note, so I probably screwed up. Did I forget something? What did I forget?
(Man inaudible in the background)
I drive everybody crazy, because they spent the last three weeks working on this, and I forgot to look at it. Okay, I am so flattered that when we decided to do this, we called upon a lot of chips that were owed me, or hopefully, we hope people would invest forward in, and one of the most appreciative responses to my call was a very good friend, and a
remarkable seminal thinker, in about 27 disparate elements of high business and personal performance. Brian Tracy has written so many books I can't name them all. He's done so much research, and he's such an amazing man, because he constantly grows and pulses, analyzes researches, and always is ahead of the curve on what basically makes people, businesses, organizations and individuals grow, thrive, achieve, succeed, masterfully lead; and he's one of the brightest minds I have
ever, ever met, and he's one of the most interesting people, because he's not static.
He's the epitome and the personification of 'grow or die.' He's going to basically set the stage for you and explain to you what he thinks are the most critical elements you need to grasp about the business arena, about yourselves, and about how to reconcile the two. Rather than say anything else, I'm just so flattered, and he came here just to do this for you; he's got to catch a plane at 10:30; we're privileged to have Brian set the pace for the game we're going to have follow, and there's one last thing I want to say. I want you to understand; I see life as the ultimate 3D movie, and us; myself and all my accomplishes in merry, merciless money making, having the only pair of glasses in the whole theatre; and we have the ability to make the rules, to change them, to play whatever game we want as long as it's highly ethical, highly equitable, and gloriously fulfilling for all involved.
That stated, I didn't follow any of my notes. Brian, wherever you are, thank you and God bless you for doing this for us.
(Applause)
Brian: Thank you Jay, I am delighted to be here with you. When Jay called me, he said would I come and speak on a Saturday morning; I made an agreement with my family and my children; I would not speak on
weekends, and so I said, 'You know, I don't speak on weekends,' and he said, 'You know what, - ' Could we - how are we doing with that sound there? As the philosopher said, 'life is just one damn thing after another.' (Laughter)
Anyway, I don't normally speak on weekends, but he said, 'You know, but this is going to be 700 millionaires. You're going to be talking to
millionaires. You can't get an audience like this.' And so what I found is that everybody here is either a millionaire, or you intend to be, is that correct?
(Cheering)
Right. Very interesting point, Napoleon Hill, when he started writing his books on success, you know Andrew Carnegie opened the door for him to 500 of the richest men and women in America, and he interviewed them for 22 years; and the first person he started with was Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Carnegie had a reputation. He was called the 'Millionaire Maker,' because more executives who went to work with him from humble beginnings, became millionaires, than had ever been created by any
single executive in history. And Napoleon Hill's goal; because he wanted to be a millionaire maker as well, with, by sharing this research, but I will tell you, Jay Abraham is the true Millionaire Maker. He is the one who makes millionaires.
(Applause)
He is our Millionaire Maker for the 21st Century, so I said, 'Alright, if I’m going to be able to speak in a whole room full of millionaires, then I'll come.' Then he said, 'But you must understand,' he said, 'I can't pay you anything.' I said, 'Well, that's okay, because if you ask, I'll come.' Because I owe Jay a lot of favours, he's been a very good friend, he's given me good advice, great input; I consider him to be the guru of successful marketing in business. So I said, 'Okay, well, I'll come, and I won't charge.' And he said, 'But you have to be good, it has to be a good talk.'
(Laughter)
So I said, 'Jay, I promise I'll come, and I'll be good for nothing.' (Laughter)
So here I am. Question: who's the most important person here? (Audience replies 'Me')
Very important question by the way, because the answer is you are the most important person here. And how important do you think you are, is the critical determinant of everything that happens to you in life. People who consider themselves to be important and valuable are totally
different from people who don't like themselves, or who feel inferior or inadequate. One of the most important battles we fight in life is over all the different influences that tend to pull us down and tear us down. The fact is that you are important. You are some of the most important people in the world.
In your own world, all the stars and billions of planets revolve around you anyway. But you're important to your family, you're important to your children, you're important to your employees, you’re important and you're important in a special. I am a student of entrepreneurship; I spent 25 years studying the economics of entrepreneurship as well as the practice, and I have been very successful as an entrepreneur, I'm happy to say. What I learned is this; is that 1% of people in our society can create jobs. 99% of people can work at a job once it's been created. Only the
entrepreneurs create jobs. And it is the entrepreneurs - all the jobs in America; 80-90% percent of all the jobs in America, are being created by
entrepreneurial businesses. You are the engines that literally drive our society. You are the ones that create the jobs, that create the
opportunities, that pay all the taxes; if that doesn't make you mad, nothing else will.
You are the ones that provide opportunities, provide jobs; you are the future. In fact, I just came back from Russia; I was in Russia last week working with - on an entrepreneurship project that I've been working on now for 12 years. Sometimes things take a lot of time to come to fruition; but my goal - and I was at the Kremlin, meeting with the assistant to Vladimir Putin on this; and I’ve got complete support all the way down, and it is to do a crash course on entrepreneurship for the Soviet Union, or for Russia - it's no longer the Soviet Union. Because they don't understand economics, and they don't understand free markets, and they don't
understand profitability. They were taught for years that these were all evil things, and now they realise; and Vladimir Putin in conjunction with George W. Bush, has said 'We have got to turn Russia into an
entrepreneurial democracy. And we've got to do this quickly.'
So what I've designed is a really neat program, and it's a crash course; because what I've found is this. That a country is successful to the degree to which it's entrepreneurs are respected, cared for, tended, nurtured, fertilized, and encouraged. And a country is unsuccessful to the degree to which entrepreneurs have a hard time. So the most successful countries in the world; the freest, the most prosperous, the most wonderful countries in the world are the ones that have the greatest number of entrepreneurs. And the United States, if there’s a sweepstakes, and United States won the sweepstakes this year, worldwide is the most entrepreneurial country in the world. Which means that it's more possible to start here or to come here, and to build a business and become wealthy, than any other country in the world, ever in the history of man on Earth. So you are at the front of the line. You're at the front of the line in terms of becoming successful, here, right now. If you can't do it here, it's not possible to do it. Now you'll have to learn how to do it, but the fact is that you can do it.
And our job today; my job in the little bit of time that I have; is to give you some ideas, and then Jay's job and the jobs of the other wonderful people here, is going to build on that. But let me ask you a second question. What's the most important part of today? And this entire conference? (Audience replies - unclear)
Well the answer is; and it's very important, the answer is what you do afterwards. Hi John. It's not the fact that you're here, it's what you do
afterwards; it's the actions that you take. And I'm going to give you a very simple principle. First of all, you are very important. Second of all, what you do afterwards is the critical determinant. Action orientation is the one identifiable quality of really successful people. Successful people are in action, they're in motion, they are moving, they are doing things, they are trying things. I cannot tell you how important this is; is that the faster you take action; Rich DeVos told me this, long before he was one of the richest men in the world. He said, 'Brian, we have found in our research,' he said, 'that there is a direct relationship between how fast a person takes action on a new idea or opportunity when they hear it, and how likely it is that they will ever take action on anything.'
Now, if you do something repeatedly over and over again, what do you develop? You develop a habit. Now, 95% of everything we do in life is our habits. Successful people have good habits. Successful people have done certain things over and over again, until they become automatic. They get up early, they get going, they prepare, they plan their days, they make calls, they get out there, they pay their taxes, they do their job properly. In other words, they do the things that lead to success, alright?
Unsuccessful people have bad habits. Let's just say unsuccessful people don't have good habits yet, alright? So the development of habits is the key to success. All successful people have good habits. Now, if you hear a good idea and you take action on it quickly, and every time you hear a good idea, you try it out, what kind of a habit are you going to develop? You're going to develop the habit of action orientation, you're going to become the kind of person who's a moving target. I know people who are worth millions and hundreds of millions of dollars; entrepreneurs that have never had a day in business school; tenth-grade dropouts; but they have one quality is they're action oriented. So if you hear something good
today; and you're going to hear so many good things in the next couple of days; if you hear these things, the most important thing is, imagine an archer pulling the bow back; your job is to take action as quickly as you can.
Now, if you take action, only two things can happen; what are they? (Audience replies)
You can either succeed or you fail. Now, if you succeed, good; you do more of that, wonderful. If you fail, what happens?
(Audience replies)
You learn something, which makes you smarter, makes you wiser, makes you tougher, and pushes you forward. Now, here's the interesting thing.
We only learn to succeed by failing. It is impossible to succeed without failing, and the most successful people are the biggest failures. The people who succeed the most, fail the most. I've had this argument with people, they say,' Oh no, successful people are just lucky people. They just kind of lucked into the right opportunity.'
No, that’s not the case. Successful people fail over and over and over again, but they keep picking themselves up, and trying, and they keep getting smarter and smarter and smarter. They had four millionaires, self-made entrepreneurial millionaires, interviewed on television recently, and they asked them during the interview; they were sort of around the couch like this, 'How many different businesses have you tried before you found the one where you made a million dollars?' And they hadn't even thought about that, so they had a commercial break, and these guys sat down and calculated up, and it came back on again. The average was 17. They had given 17 shots on average; some had given 30, some had given 12; but there was 17 on average.
Now, question, okay, did they fail 16 times and then succeed the 17th? Or did they get smarter and smarter and smarter until they were impossible, impossible to stop. And that's exactly what happens with you. So therefore whenever you get knocked down, whenever you fall on your face, say 'This is part of the process; this is the price that you pay. This is the price that you pay to be in the top 1%. This is the price that you pay to be a millionaire.' Can you become a millionaire on the cheap? Can you become a millionaire quick and easy? Only idiots buy lottery tickets, and they say, 'Oh, I'm going to become a millionaire by buying a lottery ticket.'
No. I'm here by the way, to tell you I've got some bad news for you. Two things: one, you're not going to win the lottery. So don't buy any more tickets. The lottery ticket is a stupidity tax, it's the only tax people pay voluntarily
(Laughter)
Number two; I hate to tell you this; there is no long-lost relative who's going to die somewhere and leave you a pile of dough. So the only way that you're going to become healthy is all by yourself, and you're going to become wealthy by applying what we learn here. Now, I have studied success all my life, and I'm going to try to give you just, in the time that we have, some really good ideas, the best ideas I know. So, what I have found; and I started off my life so far behind I thought I was first.
I do not graduate from high school, I finished in the half of the class that makes the top half possible.
(Laughter)
And I worked at laboring jobs for years and years, until, when I can no longer get a labouring job, I, like you, got into sales. You know how we get into sales in entrepreneurship? We back up and we hit something; we get out to see what it was, and it's a sales job. There we are, and then we flounder around; and then after spinning my wheels for about 6 months, I finally went and asked somebody, 'What are you doing differently from me?' And he told me, and I did it. I asked the top person in my company, who was selling five or ten times as much as me; 'Hey, what are you doing differently?' And he said, 'Well, this is how I sell,' and I won't go into the details of it, but he had been trained by a Fortune 500 company, he had twelve, 18, 24 months of intensive training. He knew how to sell in a logical and orderly way.
So I begin to sell in a logical and orderly way, and my sales went up. Then I began to come to conferences like this, and take notes, and practice what I've learned; and my sales went up. And I began to read books and listen to audio programs, and my sales went up until they made me a sale mangler. And eventually they said, 'Whatever you're smoking, share it with other people,' because it worked. So now I've trained more than half a million sales people worldwide, and many of them, countless of them, are millionaires today. By the way, in America today, we have five million self-made millions. Five million. That is greater - and there's seven million in the world; five million are in the US. Think about that, okay?
Now, if you have five million self-made millionaires, where do they all come from. Do you know where 79% of self-made millionaires come from? 74% come from entrepreneurship. 74% come from the people in this room. And 5% come from sales. And what do you think the most
important single skill for entrepreneurship is? Sales; the ability to sell what you have. It's a complete idiot who say, 'I've got a great product, I'll just find somebody to sell it.' You must be out of your mind. If they can sell it, they won't work for you. They'll sell their own stuff, they'll make money elsewhere.
So therefore, 79%, or almost 80% of your possibilities of becoming a self-made millionaire contain within yourself and what you're doing right now. And so your job is just to figure out how you're going to do it. Well, what I found was; and this is - where are they? Excuse me. There we go, got it. (Laughter)
If you want it done, you've got to do it yourself. Okay. What I found was that the law of cause and effect is what predicts everything. The law of cause and effect is the reason for everything that happens. Now if you only had one or two self-made millionaires in America, you could say that was a remarkable coincidence. But if you have hundreds, and thousands, and millions of self-made millionaires, then you have to assume
something's going on here. So what we say is, 'Success leaves tracks;' find out what successful people do, and do the same thing. The law of cause and effect says, ‘if you do what other successful people do, you get the same results’.
Now, here's the great application of the law of cause and effect; it is that thoughts are causes and conditions are effects. Your entire outer world is a reflection of your inner world. This is the great discovery in all of human history; to me it is the greatest of all discoveries. I read it every day, and every single time I read it, I'm just flabbergasted. Here is the great
equation, are you ready? The great equation is just this. It says that your outer world is just simply a reflection of your inner world. If you want to change anything on the outside, you have to change something on the inside. This is why Peter Drucker says that 'Knowledge and know-how are the keys to the 21st century.' Knowledge plus know-how, or knowledge and skill, are the keys to the 21st century.
It's because what happens when you learn new things? You change the person you are on the inside. As you change the person you are on the inside, your outer world begins to change to reflect it. So here is the great discovery, and I'll write it in red. You’ve heard this many times, but again, it is the basis of all religions, and all philosophy, and all metaphysics, and all psychology, and all success; it is that you become what you think about, most of the time. You become what you think about, most of the time. You become what you, think about, most of the time.
Now, here's the question - by the way, this is always true, except there are - there are some exceptions, because if there weren't some exceptions, then every young man would turn into a young woman by the age of 20. (Laughter)
And all fat people would turn into pizzas. Okay. So, you become what you think about most of the time. So the good news has been done. And by the way, this is the rule; all the research has been done, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. All the good ideas have all been found, we just have to learn them and apply them; we have to take action on them. Action
orientation. Okay, so then the question is; and they've interviewed over 350,000 entrepreneurs and we sliced and diced them up by how
successful they are, and they've looked at the top 10% of entrepreneurs. And by the way, everybody here in this room is in the top 10%, or you intend to be. Is that correct? Say yes.
(Audience shouts 'Yes.')
Okay, so what they did is they asked these people what do you think about most of the time? What do you think about most of the time? And can you guess what successful people think about most of the time? (Audience replies - inaudible)
Well, it's a little bit more than that, but I will tell you, there is a particular mindset that leads to success, it's absolutely slam-dunk guaranteed, that if you have the proper mind set, you will be a great success in life. But not only that, you'll be happy all the time. Which is as important as anything else; you'll be a happy success, alright. Well, here's what they find; they find that happy successful people think about what they want, and how to get it, most of the time. You think, 'That can't be that simple.' Yes,
successful people think about what they what and how to get it.
Successful people have very clear goal, they know who they are, and what they want, they know what their priorities are; but they think about what they want and how to get it all the time.
So I'm going to teach you your operative word, which will guarantee your success in life, and the word is simple, "How." Say 'How.'
(Audience shouts 'How.')
From now on, whenever you have a goal, you say, 'How do I achieve it?' Whenever you have a bill; 'How do I pay it?' Whenever you have a
problem, 'How do you solve it?' Whenever you have an obstacle, 'How do you overcome it?' But from now on, the only question that you ask is 'How?' And it's very interesting; I was speaking to a self-made multi-millionaire a couple of weeks ago, I went in to speak to him; he has 29 companies. He bought in an entire roomful of all of his executives, and said 'Brian,' he said, 'Just talk to them for three hours and tell them anything you want.' And so I did, and at the end of it, he came up to me and he said, 'Brian, you started with nothing, and you started as a new immigrant to this country;' he said, 'Brian, that word 'How,' he said, 'Geez, I've known that in the past and I've forgotten in, it's the most important thing I learned,' he said; 'That's going to become our operating word throughout all of our companies.'
We've got lots of challenges, and the markets are up and down, and the stock market is up, and the customer's come and go, and so on; but the
critical question, how? And here's what happened, when you ask the question 'How?' it's like stepping on the accelerator of your own car, sitting in neutral. (Mimics a car). And it throws off sparks of ideas.
Remember, ideas are the keys to wealth in the 21st Century, so when you keep asking 'How?' and then 'How else?' and then 'How else can we do it?' and 'How else?' and 'What's another way to do it?' And you keep asking 'How,' and you get everybody thinking in terms of 'How,' what you do is you become intensely solution oriented.
Now, here's an important point. You have two types of people in the world, the bottom; the 80 or 90% who are problem oriented, and talk about their problems all the time; and then you have the top people like yourself who think and talk about the solutions all the time. So one of the most
important orientations that I learned, is successful people are solution oriented. Now, from now on, remember, the natural tendency of human nature; it's almost like gravity, okay. In that our natural gravity is to talk about what we're worried about, what we're anxious about, who we're mad at, what our problems are and everything else, but the top people don't do that.
They discipline themselves, so they wait, stop; there’s no future talking about things that have already happened that can't be changed. We can only talk about the things that we can do something about, so the only question we ask is 'How?' You have a problem, how do you solve it? And you become intensely solution oriented, and your question is 'What is the solution?' 'Okay, I know we have a problem, what's the solution? Yes, I know that happened, but what's the solution? Yes, I know we have a difficulty there, but what do we do now? What's the next step?'
Because what we find, is that solution oriented people are future oriented people. Now, does anybody here - quick question - does anybody here have a light bulb - light at home with a dimmer switch on it? Okay, I see some of you are too tired to raise your hands. Yeah, those are the people that like to go through the revolving door of life on somebody else's push, you know? 'I won't raise my hand, I'll let the person next to me raise their hand.'
(Laughter)
Lazy buggers. (Raises voice) How many people have dimmer switches at home, for Christ's sake?
(Audience shouts)
Thank you so much, geez. We've got to put more juice in that coffee, Jay. Anyway, so a dimmer switch can be controlled mechanically by either
turning it or pushing it up and down. Okay, that's a dimmer switch. Now, when a dimmer switch is on full, it's fully bright, okay? When a dimmer switch is down, it's low and dark. You have a dimmer switch on your brain, and this is critically important. You have a dimmer switch on your brain, and it's the critical determinant of your success and happiness in life; it's so simple. You have tremendous mental abilities, but it's like a light bulb; it's turned down, then it just gets very, very little light. But if it's turned up, it gives you tremendous life. When you dimmer switch is on full, and it's full bright; you are creative, you are positive, you are confident, you are happy, you are powerful, you have high energy, you're immune system is strong, you need less sleep, you're more effective in your interactions with other people; it's everything good when your dimmer switch is on full.
When you dimmer switch is down low, because of problems, difficulties; you get worried, you get anxious, you get nervous, you're frustrated, you're irritable, you snap at people, you don't sleep well at night, and so on. Does anybody know what I’m talking about? And our dimmers
switches, by the way, are going up and down all the time. Now, a physical dimmer switch you control with your physical - mechanically, with your hand. And a mental dimmer switch, you control with your thoughts. And there are certain thoughts that you think that keep your dimmer switch on full. One of the things that's going to happen is a result of this conference, is not just at the end of the conference, but throughout the conference, you're dimmer switch is going to go 'Wham, wham, wham,' you're going to - 'Boom, boom;' you're going to have ideas and sparks, because whenever you hear a good idea, that you think can help you, your dimmer switch goes on full. It makes you happy.
Human beings are naturally creative, and whenever we have a good idea we feel happy, it just kind of 'Whoo;' even if we haven't done anything with the idea yet, we feel happy. I mean, if we sit there and think about what we're going to do afterwards or go - well, never mind, I won't go into that. It makes us happy. Anyway, the very anticipation of an event. They say 85% of all of our emotions are determined by our anticipation of what will happen. If we think, 'If we use this, we're going to be more successful,' it makes us happy just to learn the idea.
So there's certain thoughts that you're thinking; I could spend all day on this, but when you think about solutions, your dimmer switch goes on full. When you ask the question 'How?' your dimmer switch goes on full. When you think about the future and where you're going; and Jay was talking earlier about having a clear reason, mission, vision, which we'll talk about in a second; for you future, whenever you think about an exciting future,
your dimmer switch goes on full. And the interesting thing is, if you keep thinking about the things that you want, and how to get it, and you think about your problems and how to solve them, you think about your goals and how to achieve them; eventually it becomes a what?
(Audience murmurs)
It becomes a habit and you develop the entrepreneurial mindset. The entrepreneurial mind set is a person who's always positive, forward orientated, thinking about where they're going, thinking about how to remove the obstacles, The non-entrepreneurial mind set is a person who's passive, waiting for things to happen, complaining about life, wahh wahh, bitch, bitch, moan, moan. 'My mother didn't love me, my father was this, my childhood sucked.' Did anybody here have a lousy childhood, say yes. (Audience shouts 'Yes.')
Good. Get over it. (Laughter)
We don't want to hear about it anymore. I don't ever want you to talk about your lousy childhood ever again. Because do you know how many years are consumed, and what I found in meta-physics was this, the more you think about subjects that make you unhappy, the more unhappy they make you. And eventually you get to the point - quick aside, sidebar no extra charge, Jay.
(Laughter)
What's the most popular prescription drug in America? Prozac, and it replaced Valium, which replaced something else; and Prozac is an anti-what? It's an anti-depressant. Now, today we have 1000% increase in the last 100 years, a thousand percent increase in depression in America. 'I'm depressed, they're depressed, they're just depressed, they're so
depressed, they've got to have pills, I'm so depressed.' Why are so many people depressed? Well, they did a 22 year study at the University of Pennsylvania, and they figured out why. People are depressed because they sit and think about their problems all the time.
They sit there and - have you ever made tea; you put hot water, boiling water into tea, and you forget about it, and the hot water works on the leaves, and they steep. You know what steeping is? They steep, and tea becomes darker and darker and darker. Well, the word that they came up with at the University of Pennsylvania - this is in a psychological study - was the word 'mull’. Unsuccessful people, unhappy people mull over their
problems, they think about their problems all the time, they steep the tea leaves of their problem, they mull; and their minds become blacker and blacker. And pretty soon they actually change - their thoughts actually change the chemical construction of your body, and they actually make themselves physically ill. It's called psycho-somatic medicine. Psycho; the mind, make soma; the body, sick.
85-95% of our health problems today are psychosomatic, as people are just thinking over their problems, and the more you think about your problems, the more depressed you become. So they say, 'I'm depressed.' Now, people say, 'Well, this person has a bio-chemical problem that's leading to depression. Yes, it's called stinkin' thinkin'.
(Laughter)
That's what it is. It's what they're doing. You know, if I said, 'You become what you eat,' you would say, 'Well, everybody knows that.' I mean, if you eat really good healthy foods, fruits, vegetables; everybody knows the proper foods to eat; if you eat these foods they eventually affect the chemistry of your body, cell structure and everything else. Everybody knows that, don't waste time with that. We've heard that a million times, okay? We don't eat any better, but we heard it, okay? Now, it's the same thing; you become what you think about; whatever you feed into your mind. That's why coming to a place like this - do you know how many lives have been changed by coming to a conference like this? There's
something about being in a room full of incredible people, all of who have great ideas, ambitions, hopes, aspirations and so on; that creates a force field of energy in the room, and you will have ideas. Here's my promise. You'll have an idea, Jay will be talking, or someone else will be talking; you'll have an idea, and it'll spring into your mind like one of those little lightning things in the cartoons, and it'll have nothing to do with what the person is saying.
And it'll just, 'Boom,' this idea - just 'Boom,' like that. And what you do, here's the rule, catch the idea and write it down. When you get an idea, don't wait. Just write it down quickly, because that idea might be worth the whole conference, and nothing in the conference was about that idea. Because the room; there's an atmosphere of intelligence in this room that everybody can tap into. It's almost like an electrical force field that you can tap into. So your job is to keep your mind on what you want. And the reason why people are depressed is that they're going to talk about what they don't want all the time. So when a person starts talking about
something they don't want, say, 'Is that what we really want? If we don't want it, let's stop talking about it.'
Now, a friend of mine who is a psychiatrist, said, 'In 25 years of psychiatric counselling,' he said he most common two words he ever heard; when he met with a client for the first time, or even later; were these two words. And the words are 'If only.' 'If only, if only, if only I'd done this, if only I'd done that, if only he or she hadn't done this, done that; if only my parents, if only my spouse, if only my kids, if only I hadn't hired that SOB that robbed me blind; if only, if only, if only.'
Well, you can take all your 'if only' and your 'could haves' and your 'should haves,' and add 50 cents and buy yourself a cup of coffee at a cheap place, okay? The fact of the matter is, that all if onlys refer to the past. I'm going to give you a piece of advice, is let the past go. The past has only one value for us; it teaches us to be successful in the future. So what you do is you sort the wheat from the chafe, and you take out the things from the past that were helpful, and let the rest go. And don't ever say 'if only' again. 'If only I invested in real estate in this area 10 years ago, I mean...' Well you were broke then and you're broke now, so shut up.
(Laughter)
In other words, get your head out from wherever it is stuck, and get on with the future. And don't worry about the past. The past, you can't control the past. 80, 90% of people's energies are immersed in worrying and talking about the past. Your job is to be future-oriented. Your job is to be solution oriented. Your job is to think about and talk about what you want and where you're going; that's the key to successful
entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs are in motion, in a forward motion, all the time. Now, there's an incredible thing; I'll come back to this in a minute, but when I was in China recently, I found that the Chinese - I was speaking in Shanghai, we've got 20 million people in Shanghai. Woo. I'll tell you, thank God those entrepreneurs don't come over here, they'd eat us alive, I mean, these people eat raw meat. I mean, they're hungry, I'll tell you what. 16 hours a day, that's slacking, you know.
So anyway, but the Chinese believe in luck. The Chinese believe a lot in luck, okay? And the reason is because throughout all the history of China, there have been wars and revolutions, and famines, and plagues, and mass murders, and one tribe massacres another; so life has been
extraordinarily unpredictable, right up until recently, by the way; the way the Communists come over, kill tens of millions of people and so on; you never know what's going to happen. So, the Chinese believe that a lot of everything that happens in life is luck. Well, I have studies this subject for many years, and what I've found is that there's a difference between what we call luck, and what is called chance.
Now, chance is what takes place in casinos. You draw cards, you roll the dice, you put your money down on the roulette table; none of which you know anything about, but - ah, but this is chance; you have no control over it, you have no control. What we find, by the way, is that
entrepreneurs do not like games of chance. Entrepreneurs do not gamble, they don't go to Las Vegas, they don't buy lottery tickets, they do not believe in gambling. And by the way, if you believe in gambling, get it out of your head, because what it does, it's a defect in your computer. It's a bug that eventually poisons the whole program, because the gambling is always an attempt to get something for nothing. An attempt to get
something for nothing starts off with a little tiny thing, and it actually grows, and it gets worse and worse, and then we have Enron, and all of these scandals that people go to jail for years and years.
So, what I found is that luck is really a matter of probabilities. Now, there's a probability that everything will happen. There's a probability that if you flip a coin, it'll come down heads or tails. What's the probability? Can we turn on these light full please? Who turned the lights down? Please turn up the lights, okay. Don't touch those lights, I'll smack your hand. This is not a nightclub, this is a seminar, right?
Ah, so, what is the probability that a coin will come down heads or tails? 50%. You could flip a coin all day long, what's the probability next time? Always 50%. Now, there's a chance in America, that the people will
become millionaires. What is the probability of you becoming a millionaire if you're in America. I mean, just basically if you're born in America, grew up in America. Or you could move to America. What's your probability? It's 5%. 5% of American families have a net worth of more than a million dollars. By the way, please understand this, everybody in America starts of broke. America was started by brilliant, brilliant people who decided to create a country where people could start off with nothing, and become successful.
It's the only country in the history of the world that has a Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and legal structure that is
designed for the common man. No other country, in human history, has ever had it. Now, you've got a lot of left wing, pinko, limp-wristed people in government, who think that America should be a great Communist society, and so on, and so these people are always trying to raise taxes and increase regulations, and diddle with the law. They have tried to fight Supreme Court Justices who want to interpret the law the way the
founding fathers wrote it, and all these other people want to game the law. And there's people on the left who are always trying to game the law. They believe the law is there to be broken if you can get away with it.
We've had them in office for 8 years, okay? And that's why we have so much trouble today; everybody thought that the law was there to be gamed. So you've got so many people trying to cut corners, the fact of the matter is, society is not ruled by law; it's a society ruled by chaos.
We must have law and order. If you don't like the laws, we work to change them, but we obey the laws. One of the most important things about being an entrepreneur, is always pay your taxes, always obey the law. Never do anything that is dishonest. If ever you do anything that's dishonest, it's like putting your hand into a bear's mouth, and the bear closes their jaws; getting out of the legal system is a nightmare. Don't ever get into it. Are you with me so far? Don't ever - they say that
entrepreneurs are always trying to cheat on their taxes; don't ever cheat on your taxes. We don't like taxes, we all fight for people like Bush, who wants to lower taxes, but don't ever mess around with your taxes. Once they catch you, they're the most terrible human beings that ever lived, those people in government. Awful. Okay, well, so.
(Applause)
So, it's really important. It's better to be poor and honest, than be rich and dishonest, because remember, as Satchel Page once said, 'You better keep moving, because something might be gaining on you.' Okay, they're
gaining on you and you always get caught. People think, 'Well, I'll game the system;' you'll always get caught. Something about the legal system; you always get caught. So don't get caught.
So anyway, probabilities. There's 5% probabilities. Now, that's pretty good probabilities; highest probabilities in the world; 5% will become
millionaires. And as I was saying before, by the way, about being broke, well some people complain, 'Well, I don't have any money, how can I become rich?' Well I got news for you; nobody has any money to start off with. American's like being broke so much, they keep going to it
throughout their lifetime. (Laughter)
Being broke is the normal thing, all self - self-made millionaires on average have been broke, or nearly broke, 3.2 times. So if ever you've come to the edge, you've come almost - gotten broke or you got deeply in debt and so on, join the crowd. When you get deeply in debt, and you get under the gun, and the pressure is high, and you're in an emotional pressure cooker, and you are scrambling; you know what's happening? You are learning at an incredible rate, like a fusion reaction. One really tough business
doesn't kill me makes me stronger;' one really tough business decision will teach you more lessons that will enable you to be successful than
anything you can imagine. As a matter of fact, when you are going through hell, you say, 'Thank God, oh boy, this is really helping.' (Laughter)
'Boy, am I learning a lot.' Okay. So, the fact is, if you're playing with the gun; well, if you've got 5% chances, it's like playing Russian Roulette with a gun that has 19 chambers loaded, and one empty. There's (imitates a barrel of a gun spinning), and push the - [unclear] the bullet, and not good odds, okay? So what is your job throughout life, in terms of becoming wealthy and happy? Your job is to increase the...?
(Audience replies)
Probabilities. And everything that you learn that helps you to become better, like here, increases the probabilities. When you think about the solutions, you increase the probabilities. When you know exactly what you want, you increase the probabilities. When you treat other people well, you increase the probabilities. When you take good care of your physical health, you increase the probabilities. And you'll find that financial success is rare, but it's a result of a whole series of probabilities. The person who is successful has done a whole lot of little things. One thing they didn't do, they didn't step on their own windpipe by doing things that were
dishonest.
Okay. So, what we find is that the most important single quality for success as an entrepreneur - number one quality is the quality of optimism. Entrepreneurs, in studies of tens of thousands of successful entrepreneurs, we find that entrepreneurs are optimistic. They're positive about themselves. Now does this mean that they're positive all the time? No, it just means that in general, they tend to be positive and
constructive about their life and their work. And that's why Napoleon Hill, in the middle of the depression, wrote his book and said that the key to success is a positive mental attitude. Everybody goes, 'Wow, that's a remarkable thing.'
It's a positive mental attitude. PMA. Now, optimism is what they
discovered at the University of Pennsylvania as being the predominant quality of the highest paid, most successful and highest paid people and happiest people in our society. So optimism; and what the conclusion was that optimism was learned. People learn to be optimists or they learn to be pessimists. They learn to be optimists by thinking about things that they want, and they learn to be pessimists by thinking about the things
that they don't want. And they learn to be optimist by thinking about their future and their possibilities. and they learn to be pessimists by thinking about what happened in the past that they can't change. Are you with me so far?
Now, here's the rule from Gary Zukav. He says, positive thoughts
empower. Whenever you think a positive thought, you feel more powerful. When you think a negative thought, it disempowers, it weakens you, makes you angry, turns your dimmer switch down. So there are three ways that you become an optimist. Number one is you think and talk about what you want. Think and talk about what you want, and how to get it.
This is - if you just did this, by the way, go home now. Because I promise you this, the more you think of talking about what you want, and the more you focus on how to get it, which is why we're here today, the faster you'll move ahead. The greater the probabilities will be that you'll be successful. Number two is, they look for the good. Imagine that everything that
happens, happens for a good reason, so look for the good in every situation. Look for the good in every person. Your business went broke; well that's okay, it was a lousy business anyway. Your house burned down; well, that's okay, we needed a new house closer to the office. Your car got stolen; well, the ashtray's were full, who cares. You know.
In other words, you become - you always look for the good. Now, here's an interesting thing. It's like a dog looking for a bone; 'sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff.' If you keep looking for the good, you will find it. In the Bible it says, 'Seek and you shall find; for all who seek, find it.' It means that if you look for the good, you will find something. And the interesting thing is your mind can only hold one thing at a time, positive or negative. It's called the law of substitution. So therefore, if you look for the good, you knock out. You block out, by substitution, all negative thoughts. So if your life is going to hell in a hand basket, you say, 'Oh, that's good. That's good, that's great.'
So these are your words; 'That's good.' W. Clement Stone would say 'That's good,' all his life; he started off selling newspapers on the streets of Chicago, and died worth $800 million. And he taught people to always be optimistic, always look for the good. And the wonderful thing is, if you look for something good in any situation, you will always find something good. Now, here's the second key to - third key - to becoming an optimist; you seek the valuable lesson. And this is so important; you make it a habit to always look for the good, and seek the valuable, valuable lesson in
every situation. And if you seek the valuable lesson, surprisingly enough you'll always find it.
In studies of hundreds and hundreds of self-made millionaires, multi-millionaires and billionaires, you find that every one of them have
developed a habit, a habit of looking into every single setback or difficulty, for the lesson. And they always find it. There's always a lesson that is actually worth more than the problem. And sometimes it is the lesson that turns your life around. Sometimes a setback, when it occurs, in retrospect, you say, 'Thank God that happened, because if hadn't happened, I'd have kept on that course of action, instead of going on this course of action, where I achieved my great success.'
Now, here's something that was discovered, by the way, by Buckminster Fuller, and it's very important. It's called the theory of procession. And it's not discussed anywhere, but it's something that I have learned, and it was rediscovered in a 12 year study and Babson College, amongst successful entrepreneurs. And they called it the corridor principle. They said that when you set off to achieve your success, usually your target is here, okay. It's a certain amount of sales, a certain amount of profitability, and you start of down a corridor, like you're walking down the corridor of this hotel. And as you walk down this corridor, towards your target, because that's where you think it is, something happens and your path is blocked. Okay? The market changes, collapses, run out of money; a thousand things happen. However, at this point, another door over here opens. And there's another corridor, so you start down this other corridor. And your target seems to be down here. It seems that the target has shifted, and you start down there, and, as you start down this here, you hit another block.
But each time you hit a block, another door opens and you start down another block. And you start down here, and you hit a block, and another door opens. And this is the way life is. And eventually what happens; another door opens, and you eventually, by the way, find another door opens, and eventually, you find yourself at your target, which was
financially independence; you find yourself there in a totally different way to than you expected. Almost every single person who succeeds, succeeds in a different way, a different area, a different product, different service, different market, different customer base, different business model; than they started off with. But they said, 'Now, here was the key to success.' The difference between successes and failures is successful people wanted to have everything just right before they started down the corridor.
I mean, unsuccessful people. Successful people just started. And so the most important word that you'll learn is the word 'launch.' Is 'launch' towards your goals, just throw yourself, as we say, leap, and the net will appear. So what you do, is you get a good idea, you just launch. You project into action, you take action on it with no guarantees of success. And I'll tell you, this is what they found at Babson College in 12 years, in the entrepreneurial faculty. They found the difference between successes and failures is that successes are willing to try with no guarantee of
success. Failures are always wanting a guarantee. Always want to be sure; 'I want some kind of guarantee that I will be successful if I invest my time or money.'
But successful people sort of say - they think it through, they take a chance, they get an idea here from Jay or someone else, they say, 'It sounds good,' and they just try it. Now, as soon as you try it, what happens is you get feedback, instantly. And the feedback, gives you feedback that enables you to self-correct, and change course, and often, you will self correct and you'll get feedback; 'Whoosh,' and you'll change course; 'Whoosh,' you'll change course; 'Whoosh,' you'll change course; keep changing course; be like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I mean, you're moving all the time. And the interesting thing is, the more you move, the more you change direction, and the more you'll take in new information and ideas, the more you increase the what?
Probabilities that you'll be successful.
And when you finally achieve your success, people will say, 'You know, you're just lucky.'
(Laughter)
'Well, I got up every morning early, I worked hard all day, I planned my time, I worked on high priorities, I attended every conference, I listened to tapes, I read books, I did all of these things for 15 years, and finally broke through and made a million dollars, and that was just luck? While you stayed at home watching television, scratching your belling and bitching about your childhood?'
(Laughter and applause)
I love you guys, I'm so happy to be with you, because we are all the same. I mean, I feel like you're my brothers and sisters, because we're all going through this. I'm running my own businesses right now; I'm one of the few people who's built a million dollar Internet business. You know anybody? I make more money than Amazon.
Their volume is greater but they still don't make any money. And I cannot tell you all the heartaches that I've been through. How many times do you get lied, deceived, cheated, swindled? I mean, this goes with the territory. Small business people seem to be either victims of our society; everybody wants to tear a piece out of them, until you become big enough to tear a piece back. Alright. Okay.
So launch with no guarantee of success, and that's the key thing.
Successful people think it through and then launch with no guarantee of success. The most important single quality for success is courage. Just have courage and its sister quality; confidence. Courage and self-confidence. Now, courage and self-confidence are learned qualities. How do you learn courage and self-confidence?
Going right back to Aristotle; how do you learn it? You practice it whenever it's required. And even if you don't feel courageous, you take a deep
breath and you do it anyway. You just whistle through the graveyard. I remember this story of motivation. This fellow is on his way home one night and he's running quickly, and the sun is setting, and he's in a real hurry, and he should probably be home for dinner, and he lives way on the other side of this city cemetery. And he things, 'Well, I could really save some time if I just cut through the cemetery.' So he says, 'I'll cut through the cemetery.' So he's hurrying through the cemetery as fast as can; he doesn't want to be in the cemetery, and it's just nightfall, and he comes racing around this hedge and he drops right into an open grave, that had just been dug, for use for the next day. And it's about 10 feet deep and about 4 feet wide, and about 8 feet long, for a large casket, and he drops. And he falls in the - the earth is soft, so he doesn't hurt himself, and he lands in this grave. And he says, 'Geez, whoo.' And he looks up, and it's night, and he starts shouting, 'Help, help, help!' There's nobody there. 'Help, help,' nobody's there. And he thinks, 'I've got to get out of here.' So he started jumping up and he starts to brace himself against the wall, and he jumps up, and it's just too high, it's just too wide, and he can't get out. He keeps pulling the edge down and he thinks, 'Damn, this is stupid, what a stupid thing to do, why didn't I watch where I'm going,' and he tries, and finally - he's exhausted, and he's tired and dirty; he's sitting there and he thinks, 'Well, the worst that can happen is that I'm stuck here all night long, and they'll find me tomorrow morning. My family will be upset.' Jesus, he's dumb. And he sits down there in the bottom of the grave and it gets completely dark, and he's sitting there just sulking, okay? 'Damn, damn, damn.' Then he hears this (knocks on something)
and then 'Boom, boom,' and then somebody comes and drops - falls in the other end of the grave.
(Laughter)
Just the way he did. And he's sitting there like this is the pitch black - 'Isn't that funny, that's exactly what I did.' And he the guy picked himself up and he swore, and he started to jump up and he tried to get out and everything. And he says,' That's just what I did.' And he sits there
watching in the dark, his eyes have just adjusted to the dark; he sits and watches this guy swearing and getting all dirty and everything else. And he thinks, 'Well, I might as well let him give it his best shot. That's what I did.' So he sits there quietly, then he finally says - the guy is going
(breathes heavily), and he says, 'Well, I should probably, you know, tell him I'm here.' So he gets up and he puts his hands on his shoulder and he says, 'Sir, you can't get out of here.' But he did!
(Laughter)
It's amazing what you can do with motivation. Okay. Now, I just want to ask you a quick question.. Does anybody here have any problems? (Laughter)
Well, here's the rule. Life is a continuous succession of problems, and when you enter onto the entrepreneurial seas, they will be storm-tossed. And there will be nothing but problems up and down. Problem after
problem after problem. As a matter of fact, problems are inevitable,
they're unavoidable, they're continuous, like the waves of the ocean. They just keep coming. Now, unfortunately or fortunately, there will be a break in your problems, and it's called a ‘crisis’.
(Laughter)
So you will have - and I believe that problems and crises are very much like the waves of the ocean. You have the surfers' waves that come in every seventh wave. So you have problem, problem, problem, problem, problem, problem, CRISIS! (Repeats) And so on. So your life is like a person whose heart is defibrillating, (mimics heartbeat), Boom.
So - and by the way, if you're an entrepreneur, you're going to have a crisis every two to three months. One of the rules is; running an
entrepreneurial business; every two to three months you'll have a crisis that can sink the business if you do not respond to it effectively. That's just the way the world works. These are the probabilities.
And so what that means, by the way, and this can be a personal crisis, a health crisis, a family crisis, a financial crisis, a customer crisis; who knows what it is. In fact, your ability to deal well with problems and crises is really the test. It's the mark of whether or not you've got what it takes to be successful. So what that means is that everybody in this room is either in a crisis right now, has just gotten out of a crisis, or is just about to have a crisis.
(Laughter)
Now, if you go to a doctor and you take a stress test, okay, and the doctor gives you a stress test and they put you on the exercise machine and you get your heart - first of all they take your pulse, get your heart rate as high as they can, then they take your pulse again; then 5 minutes and 10 minutes later, they take your pulse; what are they testing for?
Your recovery rate, that's right. Now, please understand this, it's a very important point. Is that if you have a crisis, a setback, a problem; the only way that you cannot be upset when you have a setback, a reversal, a problem of any kind is if you just don't care. Now, it's not possible to live - only sociopaths and people who get elected to public office - you know the problem with politics, and I won't talk about politics anymore, because it just makes us mad. The problem with politics is the world politics. It's the root. It comes from the Greek. 'Poly' means many and 'tics' means
voracious bloodsuckers. (Laughter)
Anyway what they do is they test, and what they do is they test to see how quickly you recover. So you will have problems and crises, and you will respond to them. Every time you have a setback, according to the psychologists, you - it feels like an emotional punch in the solar plexus. It feels like a shock, it actually stuns you when you have a setback. It's like (mimics getting punched), and you're disappointed, and it kind of stops you for a while. And sometimes you'll get angry, and sometimes you'll lash out. This is normal and natural, it's okay. Only if you don't care about the result, can you not respond. However, in medicine, we call this your recovery rate, but in psychology we call this your response ability.
What is your response ability? How quickly do you respond to difficulties? Now, nothing wrong with being set back, but how fast you respond. The key is not getting your heart rate up, but how fast do you recover? That's the mark of health. And physical health, if you have a very fast recovery rate, five or ten minutes; your heartbeat's back down to normal, what that means is pretty much your whole system is pretty good. That's one of the
very best tests of your overall health, is a stress test. That's why anybody over 40 who applies for an insurance policy has to have one; it's a real good test, okay.
Well, your stress test; it comes all the day. Almost every day, you'll have a stress test, and you'll be a little bit taken aback when things go contrary to your expectations, but the question is how quickly do you respond? How well do you respond, and then your responsibility is the key.
So here's the three words that you want to learn to use for the rest of your life, and they are the words, 'I am responsible.' I am responsible. I am responsible. I don't blame anybody else, I am responsible. I take responsibility. Say it, say I am responsible.
(Audience says 'I am responsible)
What that means; I'm in charge of my own life. I have chosen this life. I have chosen to be an entrepreneur. It's going to have ups and downs and turbulence and everything else; I'm going to have setbacks and reversals on the way to becoming smart enough to become rich and to hold on to it. Okay, so I'm not going to complain or bitch or whine or moan about it, I'm only going to do the third things, which is seek the valuable lesson. Seek the valuable lesson. So we look for the - we think and talk about what we want, we look for the good and we seek the valuable lesson. And here's the wonderful point, as I said before, you will find the lesson if you look for it.
So here's a critical thing I want to teach you with regard to problems. I want you to take your biggest problem in life right now, whether it's a personal problem, health problem, financial problem. Take your biggest problem in life, which is the problem that causes you the most concern or worry or aggravation. Just think about what it is. Now we all have
problems stacked up like dinner plates.
And the top dinner plate is our biggest problem, and the next dinner plate; we all lots of them, okay. But there always tends to be one that's kind of bothering us the most. What I want you to do for the rest of your career is to imagine that your biggest problem of the moment has been sent to you by a great power that loves you, and wants you to be successful and happy. And this great power knows that the only way you can be
successful and happy, is if you learn critical lessons on the way through. And these lessons - you only seem to learn lessons - this power knows you well; you only learn lessons when it hurts. Have you noticed that?
We don't get free lessons. Every lesson costs us money, costs us time, costs us emotion. And so when we have paid the price for a lesson, that is
the time when we're the most open to learn. So your job is to look into your biggest problem, and say, 'What is the lesson contained in this problem? What I am I meant to learn that will help me in the future to be better?'
Jay Abraham Mastermind Marketing 2
And if you look into it, my promise is you'll find it. But don't just settle for the first lesson. Because lesson often are in several levels. And so what you do is you say, 'What else could be the lesson? And what else is the lesson I could learn here? And what else might be the lesson that I'm meant to learn?' Because this problem has been sent to you to help you. This power loves you and wants you to be successful. And so this power is structured this intricate lesson for you, so that you can learn it, and if you learn it, it's almost like a trophy; you can take it and go to the next level. It's almost like an examination certificate that you pass; you can now graduate to an ever bigger set of problems and crises.
(Laughter)
But you cannot move ahead. People in life move up to the degree to which they solve the problems at their level. But you only solve problems by looking for the solution and looking for the lesson in each problem. My friend, Dr. - Norman Vincent Peel, used to say 'When God wants to send you a gift, he wraps it up in a problem.' And the bigger the gift that God wants to send you, the bigger the problem he wraps it up in. Now, I know many of you feel like its Christmas morning at your house. But every single problem you have contains a gift. And if you're looking for the gift, your dimmer switch goes on full. If you're looking for the gift, you're more creative and positive. If you're looking for the gift, you're more optimistic; you feel more in control.
If you're looking for the gift, you have more energy, you feel better about yourself. You feel powerful. Are you with me so far? Now, they sound like mind tricks, but these are the things that have been discovered
throughout all of human history as being the key ways of thinking of the most successful and happy people. And at certain points, you'll reach a point where you are, by habit, a positive, constructive, optimistic person; you still have reversals but you'll just bounce back from those reversals. And leadership - my friend Colin Powell; I worked with him many times, said, 'Leadership is the ability to solve problems. Success is the ability to solve problems. And the way we solve problems is we search for the solution and we look within each one for the valuable lesson. And my promise is, you'll always find it.
I have four children, okay. I was, like a philosopher said, 'Before I had any children, I had four philosophies about raising children, and now I have four children and no philosophies.'
