Work For Nobody

Work for Nobody
Start working on yourself,

So you can start working for yourself.
Edited by Erin Martineau, PhD
ISBN 978-0-578-02572-8
First Edition Copyright © 2009 by Tiemen Staal

All rights reserved, published by Tiemen Staal
Printed in the U.S.A.
Copyright © 2009, All Rights Reserved. Tiemen E. Staal 3

www.WorkForNobody.com
What others had to say…
"Work for Nobody, provides a psychological blueprint that includes tried

and true principles and tools critical for successful transformation of our
talents into life-sustaining, long-term success. He presents foundational
keys to surviving the new economic landscape, which is requiring us
to become increasingly self-supporting. Many thanks to Tiemen for
awakening the entrepreneurial spirit in all of us and for lighting a torch,
that we might go forward, self-sufficient, on our own two feet."
-- Chad Buckland, Author and Mastery University Counselor

for Anthony Robbins Companies
"Tiemen is a rare type of entrepreneur in that he understands that success in

business has less to do with the daily operations of the business, and more to
do with the daily maturation, education and growth of the mind. Tiemen's
track record of building successful online businesses, demonstrates that
there is nothing lucky about what he's been able to accomplish as many try
and fail. His new book, 'Work for Nobody' gives you all the tools required to
build a solid mental, financial and business foundation for success. In less
than 100 pages, 'Work for Nobody' will provide you with everything an
aspiring entrepreneur needs to free themselves from the system of
indentured servitude known as employment."
Fernando Ceballos, Co-founder of Attraction Marketing Formula
"Tiemen's insight into the mind of success is phenomenal. In such a short

book he tackles all the struggles, the troubles, and the conversion we must
go through to finally believe we CAN achieve something great. It's so
excellent to find a book that combines vision with the practical. I
highly recommend this book to anyone who is up for the challenge of
changing their minds before growing a 21st century business!"
Scott VanHoogstraat, Financial Advisor & Social Connector

"Tiemen's book, Work for Nobody, simplifies how to reach one’s full
potential and arrive at the destiny that most people only dream of. His
book dispels the myths that are perpetuated by many of the "old school"
financial educators. Here you will find valuable information on how to
succeed as an entrepreneur, but also includes exercises designed to
maximize the reader's learning experience. Tiemen captures the essence
of manifesting success and creating the Rich Life. If you're looking for a
clear plan to attain success in business and life, look no further, this book
was written for you.”
-- Jovan Will, Global Rich Dad Trainer

Work for Nobody
By Tiemen Staal
Table of Contents Page #
Foreword 7
Chapters
1. Begin with the end in mind 17

a. My story
b. The big picture
c. Where are you today?
d. More than money
e. Take stock of your values
2. Setting your destiny in motion 32
a. Just do it
b. Engineering the future
c. Train your brain
d. Conscious/subconscious
e. Learn from example
f. Abundance vs. perception
3. How we undermine our success 52
a. Pain and pleasure
b. Limiting beliefs
c. Labeling
d. Associative conditioning
4. Becoming financially literate 62
a. Dispel the myths
b. Start a corporation
c. Cashflow 101
d. The power of leverage
5. A world of business owners 73
a. Demise of the middle class
b. Business options for the average Joe
c. Our expensive lesson
d. Finding your niche
e. Massive Action
Final Thoughts 86

Foreword
Admittedly star-struck, I sat at the Rich Dad Company boardroom table

directly across from author, speaker, investor, and entrepreneurial guru
Robert Kiyosaki one memorable September morning. Robert has gone toe-
to-toe with giants like Donald Trump. People from around the world have
paid thousands of dollars just to hear him speak. I must have felt a bit like
Robert did the first time he sat down with his rich dad mentor, his best
friend’s father; except that on that occasion, Robert was only nine years old.
Robert turned out to be very much like I imagined him before meeting him:
serious and stern, but fair and charismatic. He has an intense gaze, and I
can’t imagine what it would be like to have to engage in any kind of high
stakes bargaining with him.
Despite my initial unease, I felt very privileged to be in that boardroom. I

was acutely aware of what I stood to learn from Robert. Even now,
whenever I take a seat in this room, I watch and learn. Rich Dad is a nexus
in the global entrepreneurial revolution.
Having escaped the Rat Race in 2006, I now work from home and run my
own businesses largely from behind my computer for about two to three
hours a day. Not a bad deal, as most Americans work 50 hours a week for
considerably less income.
So shouldn’t I teach other people how to do the same? Of course I should!

It’s almost my civic duty, given the way politicians and corporate executives
have squandered our trust and undermined our economy and financial
wellbeing.
That’s where this book comes in.
So, welcome, fellow or future entrepreneur! I’m excited that this little course
found its way into your hands. It sprang from a long-winded article that I
wrote with the aim of shaking people from their false sense of security. This
article quickly became a small book and, upon the recommendation of my
friend and marketing guru Ferny Ceballos, grew into something resembling
a quick crash course for the aspiring or struggling entrepreneur.

The truth is that you need to rely on yourself these days, and the way to
achieve self-reliance is through education. I’m not talking about going back
to school, however. Our school system churns out workers and soldiers. It
isn’t built to produce business owners and investors. In order to become
financially free you have to study outside of the traditional school system.
There is no college with a real entrepreneurial program to speak of. It’s a

school of hard knocks, and you’ll have to learn from people like me who
have been at it for a while, which means spending some time reading these
pages. For that reason, I have tried to keep it brief enough to hold your
attention. If you’re anything like me, you’ll never finish a 400-page book.
Yet, I trust this little booklet is also comprehensive enough to offer some
real value – even for those who have been around the entrepreneurial block a
few times (whether successfully or not.)
So, what made you think about going into business for yourself or at least
entertain the idea? Are you tired of working – and, therefore, living – on
someone else’s terms? Is your income not meeting your desires or maybe
not even meeting your needs? Are you tired of letting someone else tell you
when you can have a break or when you’re allowed to go on vacation and
for how long? Perhaps you found out that you like spending time with your
friends and/or family better than spending time at a job. I know I do.
Maybe you finally figured out that profits are something you can control,
and wages are not. Or you decided you deserve to be paid before the IRS
does, since you’re doing all of the work. Perhaps you decided you aren’t
ready to give up on your hopes and dreams and discovered that job security
in the 21st century is a fallacy. Whatever the reason, you’ve taken a chance
on this book, which just might mean we’re kindred spirits.
I have discovered that many people out there just like you are desperately
seeking a way out of an unfulfilling job, an insufficient paycheck, or a career
that takes too much time away from loved ones and the things they love
doing.
I know a lawyer who resents his work even though he makes a six figure
income. I’ve run into an executive who traded his career to drive a delivery
truck in order to escape the office stress. On the other hand, I’ve known way
too many people who love their job but are perpetually broke!

It seems so hard to strike the right balance, doesn’t it?
Today, many people find that they no longer want their job, and it almost
seems like the job no longer wants them either. Employers are always
systematically looking for ways to get along without you because you are
their biggest expense, whether you’re a line employee or an executive.
So, let’s face it. The honeymoon is over.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past few years, you will have
noticed that our economy and our society are undergoing a significant
transformation. As metaphysicist Dr. Joe Vitale recently mentioned, “The
current crisis is the death of an old world and the birth of a new one.” An
optimistic view, I’d say. Change is always good if you’re among those who
are aware of it and take advantage of new opportunities.
And change is here in a big way. Oh yes, the current state of the world is just
one of those major growing pains. You can choose to benefit from it or let it
bring you down in flames.
The Information Age is all but done with turning our world upside-down.
The advent of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) has allowed Corporate
America to move many of its back-office operations to Asia, where it can
hire five people with college degrees for the cost of one average American
worker.
For me personally, the effect of this simple math really hit home – more than
once. I was downsized twice before the age of 25. It really stinks to have to
admit that.
Painfully, I came to the realization that the job market isn’t safe anymore; it
no longer offers the kind of security it once promised. My parents were pre-
baby boomers. They were born in 1940s Nazi occupied Holland and recalled
German troops marching down the streets where they grew up. My
grandparents dealt with scarcity and worry; in the decades after the war
people idealized the image of the loyal company man and his benevolent
employer. But that industrial-age ideal of sticking to a large and stable
employer doesn’t seem to hold true in today’s environment.

Needless to say, I began exploring the option of owning my own business
after being kicked out on my keester the second time around and learned far
more than I bargained for. Now, I want to help you prepare for a radically
different world that will – as the middle class continues to shrink – offer you
the choice to join the ranks of the rich or the poor.
Becoming part of either one is a matter of choice and not chance. You can
blame circumstances only for so long.
For better or worse, our lives are always in motion. Some people drift along
aimlessly with the societal and economic currents, while a determined few
actively aim for their goals and objectives. Those few are aware of the
currents and realize that they have the choice to navigate their way rather
then remain adrift.
Once you have achieved this level of awareness all you need is a compass to
guide you. This book will help you work on that vital instrument.
My point is that you have to steer yourself toward success. Never expect to
just run into it one day and spend your days waiting for the perfect moment.
Instead, you have to decide that this moment is perfect.
I have found that winners create their own luck by the choices they make.
Success, which is frequently mistaken for luck, is where preparation meets

opportunity.
If you feel you’re not having much success in your professional and/or
personal life, perhaps you should look at the decisions you’ve made so far.
We’ll get into this later, but start reflecting on how well you have prepared
yourself to live up to your potential.
There was a time when I thought my college degree was all the preparation I
needed for success in life. Boy, what a painful lesson it was to learn just how
wrong I was. Luckily I came to this realization well before I had myself
entrenched too deep in Corporate America.

Redefining yourself
Having a job can trap you mentally, so perhaps it’s hard for you to see
yourself as an entrepreneur just yet. Once you have been stuck for a while, it
becomes increasingly difficult to see the life you really want but stopped
dreaming about.
Break that pattern, and get your focus back where it belongs!
I’m going to point out some things that you might not want to hear or look at
honestly, but I’m here to hold up the mirror because that’s where you’ll find
most of your answers.
I might get in your face and say it bluntly, and perhaps I’ll even offend a few
people. But that’s okay. We can’t see eye-to-eye on everything. Just promise
to step out of the box sometimes and open your mind to new perspectives.
Ultimately, you need to look inward, and see what you find. Too many
people are on autopilot and live by knee-jerk reactions on a daily basis. I will
dare to say that these people are almost semi-comatose. Don’t find yourself
among those who don’t take responsibility for their actions, as well as their
inactions.
And remember that it doesn’t matter where you start in terms of opportunity.
In western society, opportunity and available time are equal for all willing
individuals. If you dare, you can do something remarkable when you refuse
to be held back by your fears and preconceived notions.
It’s okay to have fears as long as you’re able to act in spite of them. It’s also
okay to have preconceptions, as long as you’re able to recognize them for
what they are and do not allow them to hinder you.
It’s also fine to not know exactly what to do. You can always find people
who know “how to.” Keep your focus on “why you want to.” It’s fine if
you’re unable to see every step down the road to success, as long as you
never lose sight of why you set out in that direction in the first place.
If you want to drive from LA to New York, you can’t see all the way from
Venice Beach to Time Square, can you? But you’re pretty sure you can get
there by following the right directions. Enough said.
Start asking questions
What brought you to where you are today, and where will you end up if you
keep moving in the same direction?
Are you purposefully moving toward your life’s objectives?
What do you want out of life and where do you want to spend it?
Are you satisfied with everything and everyone in your life?
What would you like to bring into your life?
Who is responsible for the life you lead today? (If your answer doesn’t
include yourself, you have a long road to travel!)
Have you given any of the above questions much thought recently?
These are tough questions, but you will need to answer them. Your answers,
if honest, will greatly impact how and if you will succeed as an entrepreneur.
The successful entrepreneur is an individual who dares to ask the tough

questions and is not afraid to stare down adversity. This is not a life for
cowards seeking the assurance of “great benefits” and keeping a job they
don’t really love out of fear of the unknown.
I also want to impress upon you that the way to financial and personal
freedom is not a sprint – it’s a marathon. Those who are willing to invest the
time and money in quality training and coaching will succeed in the long
run. You will need to experience personal growth before financial growth is
possible.
It’s a race of endurance, but the payoff can be incredible.
If you expected to receive a get-rich-quick guide, sorry – that isn’t what I’m
offering here. There are plenty of scam artists out there who offer such
things to the foolish and lazy.

I’m also here to tell you that your chances of becoming a millionaire within
a couple of months are slim. However, your chances of doing so with a job
are nearly non-existent.
You’ll be lucky to scrape enough together for a mediocre retirement with the
average career. Maybe with a professional career as a doctor or lawyer you
may have a shot at doing above-average. But since when do we aspire to
achieve above-average? Are you playing to win or just playing not to lose?
No, I’m offering a glimpse of a new version of you – more empowered,

more confident, and better equipped to make the transformation to a
successful entrepreneur.
Many people think they are entrepreneurs by virtue of doing something on

the side, but they have never really pushed the limits. I’m not going to talk
about hobbies; this path is only for the committed few.
“The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size
of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way.”
-Robert Kiyosaki
Content vs. context
You can buy the best marketing books and courses, follow the greatest
experts and gurus, sign up for the best opportunity, and throw thousands of
dollars into it, but ultimately, it all comes back to your mindset and context.
I’m going to discuss some important topics that most Internet marketing
wizards neglect to teach you. Their books, courses, or systems may be the
latest and greatest, but all of this content is rather irrelevant if your context
isn’t ready to handle all of the new information.
Let’s assume for a minute that the content (the information available) is
represented by a one-gallon drum of water, and your context (your ability to
interrelate incoming and previously stored data) is an eight-ounce glass.
You can probably see where this is going. The glass won’t be able to hold of
the content.

Your mind faces the same dilemma. It simply cannot contain or process the
incoming data effectively, let alone make sense of it.
So before you invest a great deal of time and money into various webinars,
books, and training, take this opportunity to find out if your context matches
that of an entrepreneur.
For example, in the context of the average employee, leaving a career for a
business opportunity is considered risky. In contrast, within the
entrepreneur’s context, few things are riskier than basing your financial
future on something as fleeting as a job.
You’ll find that this book is more about developing your mindset than on
your business skills. There are already plenty of books on marketing,
management, and so forth, but they will be completely irrelevant if your
context is not ready.
This book contains critical information that isn’t covered in those books, in
a course in school, or at your corporate job.
First of all, I’m not going to cover many “how to’s.”
This course is about “why should you?” Or better yet, “why haven’t you”?
Ask me about “how to’s” after you have finished this book. If you want to
learn how to sell, read Blair Singer, Mark Joyner or Dan Kennedy. If you
want to learn to invest in real estate, look at Carlton Sheets or Russ Whitney.

Do you need leadership skills? Many captains of industry have their entire
lives available in print.
In all of the hype and hoopla, aspiring new entrepreneurs don’t understand
or are not able to effectively apply these teachings because of the limits of
their context. Regrettably, they are likely to give up on their dreams after
they fail to earn any money, and these books and courses will end up
collecting dust on the shelf.
Your context is the foundation; don’t try to build your knowledge on top
without reinforcing this foundation!
Your context holds information together in a way that makes sense to you,
and it’s different for all of us because it’s shaped by our individual life
experience.
With this in mind, I have deliberately written this material in a

conversational style so that it’s most easily accessible. This is not a Harvard
thesis, and it might not excite those among you who crave spotless MLA or
APA formatting. But it will help you quickly make sense of and assimilate
this information and add to your context so that you can get off the ground
running right away.
Every chapter ends with a few quick assignments to get you engaged in the
process. You will see that by the time we finish up, reading is just part of the
learning experience and shouldn’t be the sole means of absorbing the
knowledge you to which you expose yourself.
Whether or not you complete the assignments is up to you, but note that
you’re more likely to internalize and retain more of the material if you
actually perform the activities. If you really are committed you will follow
through.
Becoming an entrepreneur requires so much more than any school or college

can offer you. If I had known years ago what I know today about education
in and outside of the classrooms, I cannot honestly say that I would have
invested the time and money that went into my college degree.
I set out to write this book because I identified a missing link. I have seen
too many people try to carve out a life as an entrepreneur who bought into
all the leadership talk and think they need to educate all of the poor souls out
there who need saving from their terrible jobs or dead-end opportunities.
They read a few books, bought a few internet marketing courses and think
they are qualified to call themselves marketing consultants and (my personal
favorite) lifestyle coaches. What a fitting homage to Corporate America to
carry on this need for a job title.
Seriously folks, these people skipped some important steps in self-

development and went out into the world of entrepreneurs with an employee
mentality. They sought out a leader in the field and took a job. Now they are
working for a multilevel marketing (MLM) organization or for a self-
proclaimed guru, and they are once more dependent.
Then something changes, and again they’re lost. Like a true follower, they
go looking for answers elsewhere. When they find something that claims to
have the solution for their predicament, they cling to it until the next bump
in the road.
That is not leadership. Once you finish this book, commit yourself to
heading down a path of growth and continued reinvestment in yourself.
If you think your education ends here, you’re sadly mistaken. This is a
lifelong journey, and you have only just begun.
Let’s get started.
- Tiemen

Chapter 1
Begin with the end in mind - My story
Not too long ago, I found myself in a stereotypical corporate job at JP

Morgan Chase & Co. I had been laid off twice prior and thought I had
finally found that stable job that my parents told me about. I was making a
decent living, and we were able to afford a nice house, two nice cars, and
take the kids on occasional trips. But there was never any money left to
invest, and we couldn’t splurge on something we were passionate about.
As time passed and prices rose faster than my income did, I felt I was in
reverse while I should have been moving forward.
Although I had my suspicions, I didn’t fully realize the potential of owning

my own business until my wife began an eBay store in 2004. She had started
a year earlier at a hobby level reselling our two boys’ used clothing. When
we decided to deliberately acquire products for resale, however, things
started to gain momentum.
Soon, my wife’s hobby was bringing in more money than my corporate

paycheck. I thought to myself, “Am I putting my hours where they count?”
I should have been minding my own business instead of someone else’s! So,
after initially reducing my office hours, my job eventually became obsolete.
Within a matter of months, we became a recognized retailer of luxury

children’s apparel on eBay and Silver Powersellers (eBay terminology –
look it up, bookworm!) in a community of a few hundred million users
worldwide and growing. In 2006 we incorporated, began producing some of
our own products, and the business took on a life of its own.
Once our eBay business became a successfully working retail machine, I

began exploring other business opportunities. It’s always smart to diversify
your business activities and investments to a certain degree, so I didn’t want
to leave all of our eggs in one basket. I became even more interested in
broadening my horizon as eBay’s desire to please buyers at the sellers’
expense began to escalate. I began to feel like an employee again in some
ways. I wanted to less vulnerable to the whims of their board of executives.

After several years of continued online success, a good friend introduced us
to a new nutritional product in 2007. After months of consuming this fancy
juice, we found out that it was offered solely through a multilevel marketing
(MLM) organization. At the time, I didn’t even know what that meant.
I was a tad skeptical, but I figured it would be easy to promote a product we

used and loved. Besides, I already worked from home, so what could
possibly be the harm in taking on something else from home? Looking
forward to another income stream, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.
However, I soon found out that this kind of business isn’t as easily built as
the “rah rah” MLM events make it appear.
I quickly learned that my success with the MLM business model would rely
on my ability to recruit and lead other people interested in starting their own
business with our product. Selling expensive juice alone was not going to be
worth the substantial effort. It takes an unusual salesman to convince
someone to keep buying $45 bottles of juice in a slow economy. No, it
would be a matter of duplication – recruit other distributors, teach them what
you do so that they can recruit and teach others, and so on.
Finding people able and willing to do so was not as easy as I anticipated.

Another factor I underestimated was the simple fact that not everyone is fit
to be a business owner. I learned this the hard way and wasted a great deal of
time with hobbyists and employee-minded cowards.
A $37 investment in a book called Magnetic Sponsoring changed my

thinking a great deal. Author Mike Dillard emphasized the importance of
studying and self-development. He made it clear that people join people, not
opportunities, and people only join those they perceive as having value to
them. People instinctively seek out leaders; it’s an inescapable reality.
It made sense to me.
It struck me long after reading it, that Magnetic Sponsoring was also a
contextual work. Mike doesn’t tell you what to do. Rather, he shows you
what you have to become so you can figure out what to do for yourself. One
business model might work today, but what are you going to do when it
stops working?

As I learned about leadership, marketing, and copywriting, I was still
steadily spending thousands of dollars on products and marketing but not
bringing in nearly as much. I found out that I wasn’t alone. An estimated
97% of MLM-ers still spend more than they make.
My venture into MLM definitely brings some grave concerns to light for
anyone still pondering to pursue success in this arena. I came in with top
talent to support me, plenty of capital, and a determination to win. And still,
I got spanked! Thank heavens our eBay business allowed us to absorb the
financial blow.
Sadly, my stint in the world of MLM caused me to do something I had

vowed not to do: I threw in the towel. More on this experience later.
So, what happened next?
Well, I ditched the juice business. I began to focus on what I enjoy doing,
which is helping others. More specifically, I focused on helping others create
businesses from scratch and educate themselves financially. In my humble
opinion, a solid financial education is the only road to financial freedom.
Sure, you can make some money – even a lot of money – but if you don’t
understand money, you will never have it working for you.
You will always be working for it. As a banker I had seen this all too often.
While working for JP Morgan, I served many clients who no longer needed
to work for a living. As a banker, I always wondered what my clients did
that separated them from the rest of society. How did they think? How did
they handle setbacks? What got them excited, and most importantly, what
did they invest their time and money in?
It probably comes as little surprise that Robert Kiyosaki has been one of the
principal influences on my financial re-education. I first met Robert about
six months after first reading his book Rich Dad Poor Dad.
Call it a sign of the times or whatever you like, but I joined with Rich Dad
on its mission to provide the masses with the financial education that they
did not and will not receive in the traditional classroom or anywhere else.

In order to achieve this I aligned myself with Mike Dillard and his team of
marketing pros and a couple of entrepreneurs from Robert Kiyosaki’s inner
circle (it’s amazing to see how things fall into place once you set them in
motion.) Together we market a product called the Business-in-a-Box (BiB),
created by Canadian entrepreneur and former Midas employee Jay
Kubassek. Jay’s product shows the total novice how to start a business
online from scratch. It also carries great appeal to the disillusioned network
marketer that’s grown tired of silly MLM gimmicks, dead downlines,
prospecting nightmares, and awkward living room “parties.”
We employ a highly automated all-online marketing system called

CarbonCopyPro to promote our line of financial education products created
by Wealth Masters International (WMI). Learning how to earn one million
dollars in network marketing is one thing, but learning how to keep and
invest it and turn it into two million dollars or more is quite another.
Personally, I’m in the best place imaginable. I found a way to fuse my

passion for financial education with my skills and interests in Internet
marketing. In a broad sense, I am putting into practice Rich Dad’s lessons:
get your financial IQ up, build businesses, and learn to invest. I have found
my niche, and there’s nothing I’d love more than to help you find yours!
The big picture
You already know that the number of lower income households is

multiplying. I used to know several network engineers who had to settle for
entry level jobs after a “colleague” took over their position in a new office in
Mumbai, India.
But there is a bright spot in all of this – as I will explain in Chapter 5 – the
rich are also growing fast in numbers. As rapidly as corporations are
offshoring their offices and domestic manufacturers are closing their plants,
enterprising individuals are starting their own businesses at home.
They will replace the collapsing middle class, which is leaving a great divide
between rich and poor. The middle class is what made the American
economy great, and the great financial minds of our time agree that financial
education and self-reliance will be crucial in this transformational era.

This book is written around these two patterns of thought:
1. Societal changes are forcing us to become more self-reliant. Just look

at the ways the government is maneuvering around some of the
financial pillars of our society. They are pushing from pension plans
to 401K plans, shifting the burden from employer to employee.
Consumer-driven health insurance plans (like HSA’s) are beginning to
replace the increasingly unaffordable HMO and PPO plans, placing
yet another burden on the individual. As our government is rather
powerless in a free market to halt the flow of jobs overseas, we will be
left to figure out what to do for a living. Prices are rising, jobs are
becoming scarce, and annual pay increases are stagnant at best at the
jobs that are left. Since the housing market suffered a significant
implosion that eliminated many billions in equity, it might be some
time before we can rely on our real property again to fall back on. We
have also discovered we cannot fall back on our jobs. So, what are we
left to do? Get a second job so that we don’t ever see our family?
Hold out our hands for a bailout? No way! If you cannot count on an
employer to provide for you or a government to look out for you, the
alternative is simply to learn how to provide for yourself – 100%! This
will require enhancing your financial IQ and freeing yourself from
industrial-age ideas that do not belong in the Information Age.
2. The changes necessary to become a self-reliant entrepreneur are

largely a shift in mindset. You can pick the finest business opportunity
that suits you and invest in the best equipment, marketing materials,
consultants, etc., but without aligning yourself mentally, you will go
absolutely nowhere. Unless you have read into subjects like
associative conditioning, paradigm shifts, and autosuggestion, you
need to learn about human behavior and motivation. An understanding
of these basic principles will largely determine your success in any
field of endeavor, especially if you own your own business. You don’t
control much in a job, but you sure can control your mindset when
you learn how to change it. And you can only change from the inside
out, whether the change is physical, emotional, or mental.

Where are you today?
So, speaking of mindset, what do you really want in life? Many of us can
outline in general terms what we desire, and it usually amounts to a well
rehearsed line-up of health, happiness, and world peace. Some are daring
enough to throw wealth in there as well. But for many of us, the desire for
financial abundance is stifled at an early age when we’re introduced to the
fallacy that “money doesn’t make you happy.”
This and similar notions were concocted by those who were too scared, lazy,
or disheartened to succeed financially. Numerous studies that compare
depression to demographics and income find that people with higher income
and net worth are generally happier. I won’t waste space quoting these
studies (you have Google for that purpose.)
The point is that we tend to forget that it’s not the money’s fault, so change
the way you feel about it. Money can improve your life as well as the lives
of others around you. Ever larger amounts of money at your disposal can
improve the lives of ever larger numbers of people.
You might call a man who makes $100 million a year and donates one
million dollars during the same period to charity, stingy. But let’s face it; he
probably donated almost $1 million more than you did. Who made a bigger
difference in the world? Learn to appreciate money for what it is: the means
to create the kind of life you want for yourself and those around you.
“I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me

the position.” - Mark Twain
Whatever your financial state, live within your means – it’s the smart thing
to do. But if your means don’t cover your needs and wants, you must simply
seek ways to increase your means. It’s a matter of Cashflow.
I personally discourage the use of budgets for your personal life because
they create mental constraints. Budgets create a framework of limiting
thoughts and make it hard to think outside of the box. Of course, not
everyone can handle that freedom, so do what works best for you.
But whatever you decide, adopt this very day a mindset of abundance
instead of budgeting through life from a perspective of scarcity.
Don’t confuse materialism with abundance mentality, however. They’re not
the same, just as wealth isn’t always defined in monetary terms. Some find
wealth in the freedom of time or having the financial means to help others,
while some define wealth as simply living life on their own terms. The state
of abundance is a feeling of gratitude for everything that you’re blessed with
and all that you are still to receive and experience.
So, reach back to your inner child, and get specific about your dreams. Start
asking yourself new questions about what makes you feel good. Get excited.
Liken the experience to that of a child writing a wish list for the holidays or
a birthday.
Decide where you want to live, the car you want to drive, the places you
want to visit, the people and charities you want to help, the level of business
success you wish to achieve, the net worth you want to attain at a certain
point in time, and so on. You have to be really specific, so make your goals
as detailed as possible. Nobody else cares about your goals as much as you
do, so take ownership of them!
“If you can’t articulate your goals, you can’t achieve them.
- Pari Livermore
Ever since the release of Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, it has finally become
more acceptable (dare I say “fashionable”?) to openly discuss the
phenomenon of manifestation, also called, the law of attraction. The Secret
calls the driving force that regulates the law of attraction, “The Universe.”
Some will substitute Universe for God or infinite intelligence. Whatever you
decide to call it, the core philosophy remains the same.
I realize that The Secret has stirred up some controversy, and not everyone
agrees with every point made in the book and the film. Relax! I’m not here
to endorse it or claim that it’s the one road to happiness and fulfillment. But
the topic has actually been widely discussed for centuries; it has just tended
to remain confined to certain circles.
The Secret is aptly titled because the phenomenon of manifestation has not
been previously discussed in a manner easily digested by the general public.
For instance, Charles Haanel’s ground-breaking 1917 Master Key System
was not everyone’s cup of tea.

The central theme of The Secret is that your life is a direct manifestation of
your mental focus. It’s basically Napoleon Hill’s Achievement Philosophy
repackaged for the 21st century audience. Despite what the critics have
written about The Secret, its main arguments correlate awfully close with
Hill’s findings.
Napoleon Hill (1883-1970) was an American author who was commissioned

by industrialist Andrew Carnegie to interview 500 of the most successful
people on Earth. They included Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell,
George Eastman, Henry Ford, Elmer Gates, John D. Rockefeller, Charles M.
Schwab, F.W. Woolworth, William Wrigley Jr., John Wanamaker, William
Jennings Bryan, Joseph Stalin, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft,
Woodrow Wilson, Charles Allen Ward and Jennings Randolph.
Carnegie, one of the wealthiest and most influential business tycoons of that
time, believed strongly that successful people lived in accordance with a
certain code and that this personal strategy could be implemented by anyone.
Hill’s project lasted 20 years and resulted in a course called The Law of
Success (sound familiar?) published in 1928. Anyone who argues that the
combined experience and knowledge of the people researched and
interviewed by Hill is unlikely to lead to an extraordinary success formula is
a complete and utter fool. This is why The Secret – in my humble opinion –
has a lot of merit, but you need to judge for yourself, of course.
Though the over-produced Hollywood blockbuster style opening scene

might cause you to think twice about sitting through the whole film, you will
be glad you watched The Secret. I’ll admit right now that I was quite
skeptical, but you can’t judge a book by its cover. So, I watched it with an
open mind.

Though dispelled by some staunch realists (often pessimists in disguise) as
happy-thought nonsense, few can argue the film’s usefulness as a reminder
of the sheer power of positive thinking.
The only criticism that I find valid is the film’s appeal to materialism.
Perhaps the filmmakers used these seemingly superficial examples to
illustrate the mechanics of thought vs. reality, but you be the judge. I
recognized the deeper meaning behind the events in question, but maybe it
was lost on some viewers.
Just take from it what appeals to you, and leave the rest, as long as you see
the value in learning how to shape your own destiny on a daily basis.
I’m not saying, of course, that you can affect the universe metaphysically.
You can’t levitate boulders with your mental powers and other Superman-
like maneuvers, but your focus will make you aware of certain opportunities.
And without this awareness, you may miss them. Acting on those
opportunities can lead to physical manifestations.
One fateful introduction or opportunity will lead to another, and soon, the
snowball effect will take hold. From that point on, you’ll see how one thing
resulted in another, and you’ll come to understand that after directing your
focus, things started to fall into place.
Conversely, if you focus on everything you don’t want, like clockwork, the
Universe will deliver more of it. Additionally, you will only be aware of
more things you don’t want just because that’s where your focus is.
Remember, nothing positive can ever come from negative energy.
Now, you may be saying, “Wait a minute! I didn’t focus on these bad things
that happened to me.” And you’re right. Bad things still happen to good
people. It rains on the righteous and the unrighteous just the same. Farmers
who pray for rain and ones who don’t share the same fate, don’t they?
What may surprise you is that many unfortunate events can still serve a
useful purpose depending on the meaning we attribute to them.
This doesn’t always become clear until much later – sometimes years or
even decades later.

Tough times shape people based on the meanings they attribute to their
setbacks. Some will recognize an opportunity for growth and take action no
matter the odds. Others will ask themselves repeatedly, “Why has this
happened to me?” But that’s a question that will never be answered for
them. Life is a culmination of circumstances and how you decide to think
and feel about those circumstances.
Those feelings will influence your actions – despite the good intentions of
your common sense – and will deliver a new set of circumstances for you to
consider. It is the principle of cause and effect in its raw beauty, and unless
you recognize this cycle, it’s hard for you to control your future.
Decide what meaning you can associate with the unfortunate events in your
life and how they may empower you to advance to a better place than you
were before. Simply said: Learn to look at things on the bright side.
Of course, it’s hard to feel good about money when you’re in a lot of debt or
mortgaged to the hilt. But there are tricks you can play with yourself to
manipulate your thinking and bring yourself into a better frame of mind.
Rhonda Byrne explains how she took bills and added a zero to the amount,
telling herself that it was a check instead of a bill. She would say, “Thank
you,” feel grateful, and get on with her day. This may sound crazy, and
perhaps it won’t work for you or me. But the point here is that you can
influence your thinking by playing games to alter your mindset and shift
your focus.
Using debt as an example, you can also place yourself on an automatic

repayment plan so that you’re not confronted with those negative thoughts
repeatedly. This would allow you to focus on constructive thinking instead.
So, free yourself of doubt and worry, and have faith in yourself and your
ability to shape your future. The way is not always immediately clear, but it
will always reveal itself in time if you allow it.
Remind yourself frequently of your long-term goals, and remember why you
set them. Don’t be overly concerned with the how part of the equation. Just
be concerned with taking it day by day and with continued improvement.
Looking too far ahead on your to-do list can derail you or even discourage
you from starting anything at all.
“All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles
have strengthened me... You may not realize it when it happens, but a
kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.”
- Walt Disney
More than money
Now that you have started to think about your aspirations, it’s time to
introduce the next step before we actually explore how you’ll achieve your
goals. There are numerous individuals out there who have a fair idea about
how to win in the game of life, but a staggering percentage of them don’t
even know the purpose of the game!
Too many set out with the singular notion that they can succeed in life
without first deciding what or who they’re doing it for. They’re missing a
crucial step! Whether it’s a life, a career, or a business, without purpose, it
will never deliver fulfillment. For many, it’s too late by the time they realize
this.
Your values are the reason why you are taking action to realize your dreams.
If it’s just to have more money in the bank, you’ll give up before you get
through the amount of work it takes to become rich. Values are things we
never give up on, like taking care of our children, for example. If you make
it a core value to enhance the quality of life for your family, your inner drive
for financial abundance will quadruple! Your values should be your daily
source of inspiration, as well as the life preserver for your dreams during
those times when uncertainty rears its ugly head.
So, take as long as necessary to decide why you want what you want.

Take stock of your values
What matters to you? Is it to make a difference in the lives of the less

fortunate? Maybe you’re primary purpose is to make sure that your children
and grandchildren have the opportunity to go to college. Maybe your
purpose is to end up living along the Pacific Coast Highway and draw
beautiful sunsets for others to enjoy. It’s up to you!
I figured out that my purpose is to show people that there is a way to create a
life with more freedom and fulfillment, and I started living this purpose with
my friends and family. Eventually, I want to create an army of enlightened
millionaires – people who enjoy life in every aspect and show others how to
do the same.
If you haven’t yet thought of your own why, start now!
Your values drive your motivation; they’re not to be confused with your
goals. Goals change, goals are achieved, and goals are abandoned at times
for better goals. Your values should remain largely unchanged, although
events in your life could cause you to pick up a few additional ones.
Goals only serve as landmarks along your life’s journey, and you should
have many of them – large and small. Your values, however, give you a
sense of direction along the way toward your goals. Let them be your
compass.
This is why your values should be perpetual, just like the journey, and offer
you continued fulfillment. Think of your values as things which are beyond
the immediate or temporary. Think of them as your legacy. Having an Italian
sports car in the driveway is not enough by itself. Though it might be a great
reward for your hard work, it should not be a core value!
If you just aspire to become rich for the sake of having more money, you
might actually succeed at being rich… for a while. You see, money by itself
doesn’t bring fulfillment, and you’ll just spend it until it’s gone.
You should continuously reinvest in yourself and your community in every

way you are abundant, be it mentally, spiritually, or financially.

Realize that there might be something you were meant to do and be, beyond
the daily drag. Wouldn’t it inspire you to know that you’re intended to do
more than eat, sleep, work, pay bills, sleep again, and so forth? You can be
more than what you are today, so set your goals both for the long and short
term, while identifying your underlying purpose.
“Money – ultimately – is not a driving motivator, not a driving

motivator that lasts. I found that what lasts is your values.” - David
Bach (author of Start Smart, Finish Rich)
Look, everybody wants more money, a bigger house, and a nicer car. That’s
all fine, but if wanting by itself were enough, everybody would have them,
right? Desire alone, is just that and only that. The missing ingredient to
actualization of those desires is action. The vast majority of the population
will not achieve their desires due to their inaction. Reading, envisioning, and
hoping will not get you anywhere. At some point you have to start setting
things in motion.
So why do most get stuck in a state of inaction? Some didn’t bother to

further their knowledge; others didn’t have a mission beyond the money. But
getting rich is mostly a shift in mindset, and those who set out merely to
become rich do so with a poor person’s mindset. Until that mindset changes,
they will not achieve real wealth.
You need to become emotionally neutral towards money. Money isn’t real.
One of the wealthiest men I ever befriended built, bought, and sold eight
different businesses in the range of 20 to 170 million dollars. He has spent
the last few years traveling the globe for the sake of having fun and picking
up real estate.
Needless to say, I trust his advice on the subject of money without question.

The two of us were having dinner when he was in town, and he shared
something with me that really drives home my point of becoming neutral
towards money and loss. He said: “You need to be able to make a few
million dollars, lose it all and simply do it again… and not go crazy.”
Look, money is nothing more than an agreement based on trust in a system.

We’ve all seen how frail that system can be, so don’t place all your hopes
and dreams on the balance in your bank account. Instead, learn the workings
of the system and how to put money to work for you.
Robert Kiyosaki has always said there is a difference between being poor
and being broke: being poor is a mindset, being broke is a financial situation.
Rich people will sometimes go broke, but it is their recoveries that separate
them from the poor.
“We cannot help poor people, but we can certainly help rich people that
don’t have any money yet.” –Robert Kiyosaki
Unfortunately, most people don’t have a real mission in life and they likely
have never even thought about it. Even if you figure out your mission – your
reason for being – you still need to go out there and make it a reality! Money
is just a tool that comes along to help you complete your mission.
So start thinking about your mission. Anchor it to your values, which

represent your life’s compass. Don’t lose sight of it!

Assignment for Chapter 1: Focus on things to come
1. Watch/rent/borrow The Secret. It’s available in print, as a DVD

movie, or an audio book. Don’t get tripped up by skepticism. Watch it
with an open mind. Afterwards, make an honest assessment of the
recent focus of your thinking. If you have focused on things you
dislike, try focusing on things that make you feel good.
2. Write down a list of goals. Categories can range from where you
would like to live and how, to what you would like your net worth to
be. Where do you want to be in terms of physical fitness, and what
kind of relationships would you like to have? Like I said, start asking
questions and begin writing down the answers.
3. Create a goal board. Many movers and shakers use these simple tools
to keep them focused. Take your newly created list of goals and
simply clip pictures from magazines; take images or quotes from the
Internet. Take anything related to your values and objectives, and
stick them all on a piece of cardboard. Then, place it where you will
see it daily. You could also create a digital goal board, either as a
PowerPoint presentation or as desktop wallpaper.

Chapter 2
Setting your destiny in motion - Just do it!
Now, I’m not trying to infringe on Nike’s trademark here. I’m just trying to
convey to you how simple the how-to part of all of this is. Every journey
begins with a first step, so just show up at the starting line. More than half of
the work of achieving your goals is in expecting that you’re going to achieve
them. Some of you will scratch your heads, but explore this with me a bit.
I knew a guy named Ron during my banking days. Ron was always friendly
in the hallways and ready to chitchat about the news. But there was
something going on with Ron. Whenever you asked him how he was doing,
he’d say, “Okay” or “Same old, same old” or “Alright.”
Ron was in his early forties and seemed already to have lost his lust for life.
I began talking more to Ron about his aspirations and ambitions. One day I
started asking some direct questions. The ugly truth was that Ron resented
his job and wanted to do something for himself, but he didn’t know what to
do. So, he just kept going to work every day.
A year went by and I ran into Ron at a company event. By this time, I had
scaled back to 20 hours a week at the bank and was plotting my exit
strategy. I decided to quiz Ron on his progress toward his goals. The reply
was a series of excuses like, “I haven’t had the chance.”
I lost a lot of respect for Ron that day, and I hope he will pick up this book
one day and remember me. Even if he didn’t have a clue as to where to start,
he could have asked me what I had done, picked up a course, or attended a
seminar. My point is this: if you want something, go after it. Figure out how
to catch it by the heels while you’re on the way, but just get going!
The lesson learned from Ron is that if you have found something to
complain about, you have also discovered an opportunity to make things
better. If you don’t take action, you forfeit your right to complain about it.
There are countless people out there waiting for the right moment. Guess
what folks? Any moment is the perfect moment to start when you make the
decision. Do you think I sat around and waited for a sign of some sort?

Were you born with the ability to walk? No, nobody was – ever. But we all
learn to walk one day. We don’t all master this fine art at the same rate, but
nobody ever gives up on learning how.
Do we ever give up on a child learning how to walk? No, we expect them to

succeed, so they do. This is the reason why they don’t give up. So, why are
we as adults so afraid to fail?
Maybe we don’t want to lose face, or maybe we have convinced ourselves

that we can’t achieve a certain goal. We create stories in our heads that
justify our falling short of our dreams.
Settling for less than our dreams is the biggest thievery in the world, and we
commit that crime against ourselves on a daily basis.
Your success at anything rests in large part with your own decisions. The
origins of the word decide are actually from the Latin phrase, “to cut off
from [any other possibility.]” As you can see, the original meaning lends a
degree of certainty to the word that isn’t immediately obvious. It implies that
a decision is not something you should take back. It’s like a promise.
Too many people just float along without ever really deciding what they
want. Even when they do finally decide what they want, some still fail to do
anything to achieve those desires. Thinking of excuses not to do something
becomes almost second nature to them. These people will go through life
rarely doing anything of significance.
So, when you decide to create a life of meaning and fulfillment, you need to
have unwavering faith that it will become fact because you have cut off from
all other possibilities. In your experience, it is a certainty, no matter where
you are today!
Don’t underestimate this power of certainty.
We’re too afraid to commit to things for fear they won’t work out; and sadly,
we miss out on the experience that could have been gained from trying.
Many people start out trying to achieve a goal but quit before they get there.
Haven’t we all tried something, and in the absence of immediate success, we
give up?
If we go back to the example of the child learning to walk, at what point do
we give up on a child? We never do, right? The child will keep trying until
ultimate success is achieved.
Success is reserved for those who continue to get back on their feet.
For many, this determination is lost on the road to adulthood; the emotional
response to give up is a learned behavior! Your drive (purpose, instinct,
whatever you wish to label it) should cause you to keep changing your
approach until success is achieved.
Understand me correctly here: don’t keep trying the same thing if it doesn’t
work. That’s the definition of insanity! Just change your approach until you
get the result you want. Successful entrepreneurs aren’t always
extraordinarily smart or exceptionally lucky. They have faith in what they’re
doing and never relent in trying to reach their goals.
Let’s say you liken failure in business to a schoolyard brawl. After being
knocked down, very few people get back up and seek out the bully, inviting
him or her for another round. Who has the courage and stamina to do that?
Let’s say the “bully” is your ability to run your own business? So, what if
you get knocked down? Learn, get back on your feet, and start again a little
wiser.
Regrettably, most people do the opposite and give up, going back to what
they’re used to. They feel they were punished for going outside of their
comfort zone and are even more afraid to try again. A setback doesn’t equal
failure, but giving up does.
Success is a poor teacher. Embrace setbacks as learning opportunities.
Every time you hit a roadblock, you’re better off than you were before
because you now know what doesn’t work. We tend to underestimate the
importance of acquiring knowledge in this way and assimilating it. And why
shouldn’t we? Our antiquated public school system punishes mistakes!
You would be amazed by the number of self-made billionaires and tycoons

who have been through failures and bankruptcies before getting it right. You
might be even more shocked to learn that many of them never finished
school. Can you guess why?
I’ll tell you why: they were frustrated by the rigid school system that placed
limits on the creative process. Therefore they left school before allowing it
to break their entrepreneurial spirit. The only difference between you and the
people you admire is their willingness to keep seeking out that schoolyard
bully (usually several times!)
So face your fear of failure, and act in spite of it.
Avoid taking advice or joining in business with people who believe that
there are limits to what one can achieve. Sometimes, these people are your
parents or best friends, so be mindful of this!
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will
not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education
will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and
determination alone are omnipotent.” - Calvin Coolidge
Engineering the future
Have you created that goal board yet? If not, get to work! It really keeps
your focus on the direction you want to go, so don’t disregard your future.
Are you 100% satisfied where you are today – physically, emotionally,
financially, socially, and spiritually? Not yet? Good! Dissatisfaction is
actually a very useful emotion. It tells you things need to change if they
don’t measure up to your values and standards.
It doesn’t really matter where you are today in any of those categories.
Manifestation guru Matthew Ferry teaches his students to disassociate
themselves from the past.
Sure, the past has gotten you where you are today, but it certainly doesn’t
have to determine where you’re going tomorrow.
Take lessons from the past, but keep moving forward because that’s where
you’re going – like it or not. You might as well make it a place where you’d
like to be, right?

How about making your future somewhere you would love to go? It’s the
only way to become motivated enough to make effort required to get there
What you are right now is merely a residual effect of all of your decisions
and experiences up to this moment. Let go of the past, decide what you want
to do and who you’d have to become to do those things.
Take stock of your talents, skills, and passions, and see how they might aid
you in achieving your goals. But don’t be alarmed if you don’t have all of
the skills and traits required for the journey you want to take. You can
develop these along the way. Repetition is the master of skill, and all skill
can be learned.
Remember this: focus on mindset, not skill set. Skills can be acquired, hired,
or outsourced. Your mindset is 100% your territory.
You just need to get into the right mindset, get started, and keep your
confidence up. All that matters is focusing on this moment and where it will
take you. Since the past won’t hinder you now, this moment is perfect
because you can control it and you can move in any direction going forward.
We have already figured out that we need to decide on our goals and the
values required to take us there. But what’s next? You need a plan to get
there, don’t you? Once you have envisioned where you want to be, you must
reverse-engineer the future. Almost sounds like magic, doesn’t it?
You can actually make it quite practical. Decide on the steps you need to
take to reach your goals and the actions required to complete those steps,
one by one.
The jump from minimum-wage worker to financially free entrepreneur

seems like an enormous leap, and it is. But if you break the transformation
down into smaller steps, the journey becomes manageable. So, don’t sweat
the details – just start with step one.

“The past does not equal the future, unless you live there.”
- Anthony Robbins
Train your brain
Now that we have some ideas to work on, let’s get into your head for a
moment. Staying on track toward your goals requires a little bit of mental
conditioning. Your mind is a biochemical supercomputer that’s continuously
working to solve problems. Just like its digital counterpart, it is only as good
as its programmer, even though it’s many times more powerful. And guess
what? YOU are the programmer!
Most people never come to this realization, and this is why people don’t
succeed at the same level. Most people live in a state of reaction rather than
action. Instead of taking control, they spend their time fighting and/or
avoiding things coming at them.
People in this state of awareness identify themselves as victims or, at the

very least, behave like victims. They always look outward for answers
instead of inward. Quintessential pessimists fall into this category. Just ask
them how they’re doing, and you’ll hear something like, “as well as can be
expected.” If that sounds like you, I hope I’m kicking your ant hill today,
and I hope you’re taking a long, hard, and honest look at yourself and the
things you tend to complain about.
Pssst… If you’re still thinking of all of the people and situations that are
holding you back, you still aren’t getting it!

Let’s put things in perspective: unless you have reason to believe you might
succumb to disease or hunger tomorrow, there are many millions of people
worldwide who are in far worse situations than you.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s turn our attention to using your
head to get things done. Back to the computer analogy, a PC’s central
processing unit (CPU) is nothing more than a paperweight unless you feed it
with instructions in the form of code. This code is written by a programmer
and is basically a long mathematical problem that the CPU will solve in
order to perform the various instructions that are derived from the code.
Your brain works in a very similar fashion.
If you focus on a goal (the code) that you wish to realize, your brain (the
CPU) will identify it as a problem that requires solving, and awareness will
allow you to identify opportunities that will facilitate the process. This is the
reason why the how part of the equation will reveal itself as time goes by.
You will find out how as long as you stay aware of what you want to
achieve. If your life is lived in reaction mode, the daily junk that you fend
off is the code you feed your brain, and you’ll never get around to presenting
it with the good stuff: your objectives.
This is why it’s so important that you gain awareness of where your focus is,
and schedule time to realign your thinking. Sounds kind of like taking time
to fix an appliance or something, doesn’t it? Well, that’s exactly what I’m
getting at. This is required maintenance for the most important thing you’ll
ever own: your brain. It is amazing that most of us spend more time, money,
and energy on maintaining secondary things like homes and cars.
Conscious/subconscious
As you know, you have a conscious and subconscious state of mind, but
only the conscious mind ever goes to sleep. The subconscious is always at
work, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This is the part of the mind where
your habits rest. It enables you to drive a car and do others things (within
reason) without veering off the road because driving becomes habitual;
you’re programmed with the basics.

So, your mind operates on two levels of consciousness, and if you don’t get
both of them on the same page, it will be quite difficult to achieve your goals
because your conscious mind will be continuously interrupted with life and
its many issues. Get it?
While your conscious mind is handling your immediate affairs (everyday

stuff), how do you get your subconscious to keep you on track with its 24/7
work schedule?
Your conscious mind responds mostly to your senses, so it’s easier to

program in the moment. But your subconscious is primarily influenced by
physical and emotional energy. Simply put, it responds in large part to how
you feel. Did you ever have a bad dream after watching a scary movie late at
night? Well, presto!
Your emotions, in large part, control your subconscious and its powerful
influence on your life. The Secret (have you ordered it yet?) lays down this
process in understandable terms. Just thinking positive thoughts or merely
thinking about what you desire isn’t enough. You have to feel, or better yet,
experience it. When you combine this emotional experience with the
aforementioned gratitude reinforcement, you come up with something very
powerful that gives you clarity and removes your fears.
Unless you have already read into the science behind this, you have yet to
understand the power of this skill. In fact, many of you might still believe
that feelings are caused by exterior factors rather than by an internal decision
in the conscious or subconscious mind.
The point is that you make a conscious decision about how you want to feel.
If you don’t make it consciously, your subconscious does it for you based on
how it has been conditioned by experience. That’s why so many people are
on autopilot and live life in reaction mode. They feel helpless and always
experience uphill battles. They surrendered control and ceased taking action
because they have always been in reaction.
So what’s the answer? Train your brain!
Someone who has presented us with a great way of programming the

subconscious mind is world-renowned success coach Anthony Robbins. One
of his core techniques revolves around incantations.
You recite to yourself aloud how you wish to feel and what you wish to
attain or experience. Actually saying it out loud activates your physiology
and sends more powerful signals to your subconscious mind, keeping you
focused and more likely to remain aware of your intentions.
The purpose of this exercise is to create new feelings and program habits. If
you practice this regularly, the process itself becomes habitual. It is in
habitual behavior that the rich find lasting success in life, not a singular act
or decision. It is continuous and requires lifelong commitment.
The process of programming your subconscious by way of incantations is

known as autosuggestion or self-suggestion and has been used by the most
successful people in history for centuries.
Experiment: randomly ask someone what he or she is thinking. I will bet you
anything the answer will be either nothing or some inconsequential thought
about their to-do list. My suggestion to you: think with specific intentions.
Author Napoleon Hill extensively chronicles the use of these techniques by

the world’s elite in his book Think and Grow Rich. As I mentioned in
Chapter 1, Hill was commissioned by industrialist Andrew Carnegie to
document the philosophies and methodology of some of the most successful
people in the world. Hill noted that many of these tycoons and world leaders
used autosuggestion to retain control of their thoughts 24/7.
Considering the company you’d be keeping, it’s certainly worth a shot,

wouldn’t you say?
The practical application for autosuggestion is to program the subconscious

so that it continues to work in the background on solving the stated problem,
a.k.a. the attainment of your goal. (Your brain is a problem-solving
computer, remember? So, give it something important to solve instead of
everyday stuff that has no bearing on your life’s objectives!)
The subconscious mind works at its own pace, and the more complicated the
problem, the more time it will take to work on it. Sometimes, it will take
days, weeks, or even months for it to come up with the answer. Don’t worry
about it too much. Your awareness will find the necessary clues.

Have you ever had one of those moments when the light just came on? Those
moments come when the subconscious announces a solution for a previously
submitted problem!
“It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
- Albert Einstein
How we perceive things depends on how we interpret them based on our

mental conditioning. How we subsequently feel about them depends on the
meaning we decide to attribute to them. This power of choice and reason
gives us control. It’s our evolutionary edge over every other life form on
Earth. Take the power given to you, and use it to your advantage.
Do you want to know if you made the evolution from corporate stooge or
home-based amateur to bonafide entrepreneur yet?
There is a quick way to tell when people hit a road block or setback.
Take these two people with fledgling home-businesses for example:
Mac: “This is not working. I am going to look for something else.”
Madie: “This is not working. How can I make it work?”
Can you tell which one is the entrepreneur?
It’s easy.
Mac responded to his situation with a finite answer, immediately shutting

down the creative process in his subconscious. The result? His brain stops
working on answers for his problem and he’ll likely end up taking that job.

Madie, on the other hand, answered her predicament with a question
instructing her subconscious to get to work on the problem! If she is
determined enough she will find her answers and succeed, even if she makes
numerous mistakes before getting it right.
Getting the hang of this yet? Don’t worry – if you’re not scratching your
head, I’m not teaching you anything new. It’s a good thing, believe it or not,
and an indication that your money was well spent on this nifty little booklet.
Read it again if you have to.
Learn from example
No matter what field you have chosen to pursue, odds are that you have
identified a leader or hero you admire and wish to emulate. Imitation is the
ultimate form of flattery and, frankly, a proven road to success for many. It
makes perfect sense. Why reinvent the wheel? And your heroes don’t have
to be in the same field you’re working in; they can be authors, historical
icons, spiritual leaders, or business executives.
My short list includes Anthony Robbins, Matthew Ferry, Robert Kiyosaki,

and Mike Dillard. Those familiar with these leaders will notice that only one
of them is specifically related to the network marketing industry. Robbins
and Ferry appeal to me for their spiritual and personal development
strategies. Kiyosaki is my financial mentor. Mike Dillard showed me online
marketing techniques that helped me market my online businesses.
Let me clarify that there is no need to copy anybody or believe that you can’t
succeed if you don’t closely mirror your heroes. I want to impress upon you
that you can take away from them what you like and leave the rest. If
anything, their work will help you with your visualizations of what you wish
to accomplish for yourself.
One of the best things you can do as you start out is to study those who came
before you. You’ll probably end up with a hodgepodge of strategies and
philosophies, but that’s a good thing! Pick and choose the ideas that fit you
and your circumstances. I use numerous techniques and quotes from my
personal heroes throughout my various writings.

Beware of the pitfall of thinking that you have ever finished learning,
however. You can never stop benefiting from acquiring new information,
and if you neglect to do your homework, you will obviously never even get
off the ground.
If you do achieve lift-off but neglect to continue learning, you will falter at
some point or hit a ceiling. The more income you generate, the more you
should proportionately increase your spending on training and coaching.
For example, my spending on training and coaching so far for 2008 (it’s
June as of this writing) has been more than $8,000. I would say investing
about 5% of your income in continuing education is a fair guideline.
Some seminars that cost several thousand dollars may seem expensive to
you now, but if they enable you to work your way to a life of freedom and
fulfillment, wouldn’t you agree that they worth every penny? It seems
reasonable to me to stretch my budget to invest in something that generates
lifelong returns beyond what I once thought to be impossible. Once again,
it’s all about choice. Some people consume and spend their money on
renting a “lifestyle” while others invest in themselves and become truly
wealthy.
Why is it that we gladly plunk down $30.000 for a Sport Utility Vehicle that
will depreciate 25% the moment we drive it home, but we cringe at spending
a few thousand (or even less) on seminars that teach us how to become
financially free? Because the car makes us feel good, and the seminar just
sounds like work. The decision to buy is an emotional one. Understand this
and you will become a marketing master. However, the fact remains that one
purchase enhances our wealth and the more popular one diminishes it.
We have become a society of instant gratification because mass marketing

appeals to the impatient child in all of us. We have become resistant to long
term investments like financial education and we need to reverse course if
we ever hope to become wealthy. Yes, wealthy, not just rich. You can make
anyone rich by handing them a million dollars or more, but I promise you
that this money will not even last a year without proper financial education.
My finance instructor in college was a former wealth management

professional at Smith Barney. Several of his clients were major lottery
winners and he had some sobering insights to share about their experience.
Instead of investing in income-generating assets these people often
purchased luxuries such as large homes, great vacations, and expensive cars
because they think that’s what the wealthy do. The temptations of status
symbols are too much and their lack of financial IQ sends them down to the
Maserati dealership.
After about two years they are usually worse off then they were prior to
winning their fortunes. Why? The millions are gone and their Cashflow
cannot sustain their newly acquired liabilities because they don’t have the
residual income to pay for them. Before too long, they are back in the Rat
Race. More on this in chapter 4: Becoming financially literate.
Abundance vs. perception
This may be one of the trickiest steps along your journey. In order to attract
more of the things that you want, you need to feel grateful for what you
have. I’m sure that sounds like grandma’s bulletproof advice that you’ll
gladly hand down to your kids. But I’m going to take it one step further. You
need to feel grateful about the things that you have yet to do, have yet to
own, and have yet to experience. That’s right – stuff in the future. Stay with
me on this one.
The goal is to tie a sensation of gratitude into your visualization exercises.

The effect is that you expect these things to happen because your
subconscious is already experiencing them! Remember how your
subconscious fits into the picture? It’s that handy section of your brain that’s
constantly working on bringing those things into your life that you have
been focusing on.
This concept might be hard for you to wrap your head around at the moment.
If you need to delve into the actual biology of this phenomenon, check out
Charles Haanel’s 1917 course called The Master Key System. One of the
many fascinating aspects of Haanel’s course is that he actually identifies the
parts of the human body that facilitate the connection with the immaterial
(the Universe, God, infinite intelligence, or whatever you want to call it.)
The fact that his course is over 90 years old underscores again how this
science isn’t new.

Regrettably, the masses are still largely ignorant about many aspects of this
branch of science, even though it has such far-reaching effects on their lives.
If you’re going to pass on Haanel’s course, let me try to convey one of his
main points. Let’s say your brain is a transmitter, and your senses are the
receivers. It’s key to become mindful of how you interpret incoming signals
(perception) and how your interpretation shapes the actions you take in
response.
Voluntarily or involuntarily, we constantly receive all sorts of signals from

the world around us. Your actions are based on the emotions you have
allowed yourself to feel in response to those signals.
This entire process can take place in an instant, so it might not seem like
something you can control at first glance. We’ll sometimes regret our
actions later but justify them by saying, “That’s just the way I am.” Wrong!
When you view the world from a perspective of need, you will always
perceive scarcity. You will never achieve wealth in the areas of your life
where you see scarcity. For the vast majority of us, this is true when it comes
to money. We never seem to have enough of it!
Shall I share a secret with you?
Abundance comes when you experience it; it’s an all-encompassing mindset.

You have enough once you feel that you do, regardless of exactly how much
you have in your wallet or in the bank at the moment.
When you feel terrible about your money situation, for example, you attract
more of what makes you feel that way because this is where you’re focusing.
You have to feel rich before you can actually become rich, no matter if
you’re worth $25 million or $25 and some change. By feeling rich, I don’t
mean pretending to be rich. This is a pitfall that has landed millions of
consumers in crushing debt positions. By feeling wealthy I mean feeling
abundant and grateful now and that anything is within your grasp.
When you mentally tune into abundance, the financial abundance will
follow. This is not just about money, of course. There are many people out
there with plenty of money who are unhappy, unhealthy, or both. Life is
meant to be abundant in all aspects – not just your bank account!
A great example of the abundance mindset is found in a newsletter written
by Mike Dillard, my aforementioned marketing hero. The title of the email
read “Why the rich hate Wal-Mart.” My first thought was, “Oh boy, some
people are going to take offense to this.”
But Mike explained that the store’s philosophy is based on penny-pinching,

so it attracts hordes of budgeters, coupon-cutters, and others who think from
a perspective of scarcity and need. I thought the email explained the concept
of the abundance mentality so well that I’ve retrieved it from my records for
your review.
It’s lengthy, but I consider it important enough to include verbatim to help

drive home my point.
“I’ve been debating whether or not to write this email for about two weeks
now because I know that quite a few people will wrongly be offended by it,
and that my inbox will be flooded by derogatory responses.
“Then my new issue of Perry Marshall’s Newsletter arrived in my mail box,

and I changed my mind...
“Here’s the introduction to the newsletter:
‘You know what’s wrong with the Internet?
‘Smart people and stupid people get equal airtime. And since
stupid people tend to shout longer and louder than people who
have acquired wisdom and judgment, ignorance usually
prevails.
‘Stupid people proudly step forward and identify themselves.

They self-select. As soon as this newsletter issue hits the streets,
people who are angry about this newsletter and this irrelevant
first section which obviously has nothing to do with marketing
will send nasty emails and cancel their membership. This
naturally weeds the stupid people out of my Renaissance Club.’
- Perry Marshall.

“Perry’s point is that you should never stifle the growth of the wise minority
for fear of loud reprisal by the ignorant majority. With that said, here is a
very basic, very simple message on the surface that will contain deeper
meaning for those who get it...
“I hate shopping at Wal-Mart. It makes me sick to my stomach, but the

important part is why... (If you’re going to read this, you need to read the
entire page.) For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a burning desire to
achieve above average financial prosperity... To have the million dollar
home on the lake, the cars, and the ability to do anything, or buy anything I
want. 100% pure freedom.
“But it’s not just about material goods. Money gives you the freedom,
options, and power to have a large and positive impact on society through
charity, education, and reform.
“Because I have such strong feelings and emotions attached to the desire to
achieve wealth and success, I have equally strong feelings of repulsion for
poverty and weakness. Most wealthy and successful people share this
repulsion. Why?
“Because they are consciously aware (unlike the majority of society), that
thoughts, ideas, and attitudes are real things, and that they are contagious.
You will adopt the ideas, beliefs, and mindset of the people you spend the
most time with (including the people found on TV, in books, or on tape),
which will lead you to make similar decisions, which will lead you to
assume a similar life and lifestyle.
“Rich people know this, and they know that a person’s mindset is fluid. It’s
always changing with the ideas and interactions it comes into contact with
on a daily basis. This is why rich people protect themselves from everything
associated with struggle and poverty.
“Ever wonder why they live together in walled communities closed off from
the rest of society with massive gates? Ever wonder why they shop at
expensive boutiques, fly first-class, stay at $500/night hotels? Ever wonder
why most of them belong to ‘members only’ country clubs?
“Is it because they want to enjoy the finer things in life? Well sure. But
that’s not the only reason. They want to protect their minds from the
thoughts of poverty and struggle that are held by the rest of common society
because they know that all thoughts are contagious, and they have a burning
desire to live un-common lives.
“The rich get richer because they only invite and interact with other
prosperous people. The common man sees this behavior as ‘stuck-up’ and
‘snobby.’ The rich simply see it as an unfortunate necessity, as I do. That’s
why I never shop at Wal-Mart. Have I? Yes. But just walking into that store
makes me physically uncomfortable. My stomach turns.
“I feel that way because I associate that store and the people who shop there
with struggle and poverty. The entire company is designed around the
concept of “saving money” and pinching pennies.
“It’s a physical monument dedicated to thoughts like...
‘I only have this much money, so I need to save as much as I

can.’
‘The economy is crashing, so I need to guard what little I have.’
‘I can’t afford it...’
‘We’re on a limited budget.’
“That kind of mindset is a disease voluntarily held by people who go

through life as victims. They are subservient to their boss, to economic
times, to prices, and to money itself. Money has the power, and they are
lucky to acquire and save any that comes their way.
“The rich think differently. They believe and accept that they have the power
to change and shape their lives as they wish. Money doesn’t own their lives;
they own the money. They have the power.
“The difference between these two mindsets can be summed up like this...
- Someone with a poverty mentality says, ‘I can’t afford it.’
- Someone with an abundance mentality says, ‘How can I

afford it?’
“The more you start to think like the rich, the more apparent this mindset
will become to you. One day, you’ll walk into Wal-Mart, and you’ll literally
FEEL what I’m talking about. You’ll feel like you’re out of place... Like
you’ve walked into a club or restaurant where you’re the one person who
doesn’t belong.
“Now I know that there are a lot of people out there reading this who DO
shop at Wal-Mart and are saying, ‘That’s easy for you to say, Mike. You
don’t have a family of four to support, and you’re not struggling to get this
home business thing off the ground anymore.’
“Well, I have shopped at Wal-Mart, and I have been as low as anyone. When
you’re pawning your DVD collection to eat as I have, you’ve basically hit
the bottom. But the difference is that even during those times, I have
NEVER been comfortable shopping there because in my mind, I was
different. I didn’t belong in that store. I didn’t share the same mindset that
the rest of the people in there did.
“I have nothing against saving money when you’re struggling. I was there.
But I do, and will always, wage war against a poverty mentality. Whether
or not you shop at Wal-Mart is not important. Everyone starts from the
bottom and does whatever they have to do. Whether or not you are
comfortable and happy shopping at Wal-Mart is where your personal truth is
found.
“If you don’t have the feelings, desires, and aspirations to separate yourself
from the crowd of Middle America discount shoppers, then I don’t know
why you’re even on this list.
“To take this attitude of abundance vs. prosperity to another level, I’ve also
adopted the following habits: I never use coupons, and I never accept coin
change from a purchase. If my bottle of water costs $1.75, the cashier gets
$2.00 and keeps the 25 cents.
“Why?
“Because I NEVER focus on pinching pennies. I focus on MAKING

MORE.

“I constantly hold an abundance mindset, and these two habits are a physical
expression of that mentality that I have held even when I was making
$1,500/mo as a waiter. It’s a message to my subconscious mind to always
see life through a lens of prosperity.”
So, were you entertained, or are you shaking your head in disagreement?
If you disagree with Mike’s point of view, let’s at least agree on this: you
will only perceive and receive what you focus on, and if it’s saving money,
cutting coupons, and pinching pennies, life will present you only with
opportunities to do exactly that. That isn’t my idea of an extraordinary life
and not a position from which you aid those in need.
I’ll be perfectly honest: I shop in that awful store for certain things when I
absolutely have to, but I hate the lifestyle concept that the business is based
on. Living with a budget is like living in a financial cage. If you lack the
funds, simply find ways (legally) to increase your fortune. All it takes is a
decision and a strong enough desire to take the necessary steps to get there.
Everyone else can remain firmly seated on their hands and complain their
lives away, for all I care.
As Mike attempted to make clear in his infamous email, everyone starts

somewhere, and most of us started from the bottom just as he did. Almost a
decade ago I had my whole life contained in two suitcases – yes, really! But
that doesn’t mean that the bottom is where you have to remain. Your future
will mostly be what you envision it to become.
Life is less a result of your circumstances than it is of your choices: choice

of thought and choice of actions. Focus on what you’re grateful for now and
in the future. Don’t hope for it to happen, expect it.

Assignments for Chapter 2: Becoming Aware
1. Take your list of goals and create a list of all the actions you have
taken to achieve them. This should give you an indication of the level
of control you have in your life. If it doesn’t measure up, step up your
efforts to take action no matter how seemingly insignificant!
2. Think of a handful of people you admire for their achievements, and

research them. Take your top three, and find out what they have done
to get where they are? Consider what you could do, too. Very few
people are handed a life of freedom and wealth, and those who have
attained it faced many setbacks on the way. Any self-made millionaire
had to search for answers, study, experiment, fail, and do all of it over
again until success was finally achieved. If you’re not willing to deal
with that, you won’t earn the privilege of becoming financially free.
3. List several obstacles that are currently preventing you from pursuing
your goals. Can they be overcome? (The answer is “yes,” by the way.)
How can it be done? Do you have a network to tap into? Are they
really obstacles or just fears? I’ll leave you with this quote:

Chapter 3
How we undermine our success – Pain and pleasure
So far, we’ve merely explored the predicament of the ignorant. Amazingly,

there are people who know exactly what they want and how to obtain it but
choose not to do anything about it. In my opinion, these people are even
farther removed from success. Unfortunately, you will find that most people
are too lazy or fearful to take action, or they’re consumed with satisfying
short-term pleasure and avoiding pain. This is where you will find addicts of
all sorts.
All human motivation is fueled by merely two needs: the need to attain
pleasure and the need to avoid pain.
The caveat here is that the long-term is often overlooked in favor of the
short-term, and the need to avoid pain is stronger than the need to attain
pleasure.
Let’s take a 1500-calorie coconut cream-pie shake as an example. You’ll

gladly spend ten minutes enjoying this audacious desert. At the same time,
you’re all too willing to ignore two simple but profound facts: first, the
pleasure of the shake will last only ten minutes; second, at the cost of self-
discipline, a healthy body can be enjoyed 24/7.
Another example: there are people who will not invest $2000 in a course or
business opportunity that could change their lives because they don’t have
the money. Those same people live in a shoddy trailer with a $2000 HDTV
system and a new Mercedes parked outside. At the same time they can
hardly afford to pay the rent on the trailer, let alone health insurance.
Deep down they wanted that course or opportunity, just not badly enough. If
people have a strong desire for something they will do whatever it takes to
attain it.
The people in this example preferred the immediate pleasure of those

luxuries and the avoidance of the $2000 pain over the eventual bliss of living
a life of financial freedom. Instead, they continue renting a lifestyle they
can’t really afford.

They prefer to spend money on things that make them look rich instead of
investing it in things that will actually make them rich.
“Don’t trade what you really want for what you want at the moment.”
--Author unknown
As a former credit underwriter I have already seen too many people renting
lifestyles and they come from all walks of life. Whether they made $30K a
year or $300K, their financial choices forced them to keep running in that
hamster wheel also known as the Rat Race.
Take it from the guy who used to write the loans: eventually you no longer
own the stuff, but the stuff owns you.
Have you ever procrastinated?
Of course, you have. We all do it! So, why did you put off doing something
you knew you would have to do eventually? It’s simple. You associated
more pain with getting the job done than you associated with doing nothing
in the moment. Recognize the power of the moment. You have control over
the moment.
The present is the sum of all of the moments that have come and gone.
Control them, and you control your future.
Procrastinating can significantly backfire in some instances, but in every

instance, it has an immobilizing effect. This very emotion is what keeps
many people from starting their own business. It would mean that they
would have to come out of their comfort zones and do something totally
new.
“Get out of your comfort zone and stay there.” - Morgan Smith,
founder of Morgan Capital, while addressing a gathering of Phoenix-
area entrepreneurs, including myself.
As I mentioned before, many adults are fearful of failure. Regrettably, most

of the barriers to success are created in our own minds. These barriers are
merely rationalizations that we create in order to avoid dealing with the
potential pain of failure.

Most people won’t attain financial freedom or realize their goals because
they are too afraid of the unknown and the uncertainty of success. We stick
to jobs because we chose security. At the core the quest for security is
merely the fear of loss in disguise. Major life choices motivated by fear
generally don’t serve us well in the long run.
People who are in control of their emotions and recognize how their minds
link up pain and pleasure are the kind of people who are often excited by
new challenges. They will get bored quickly with the status quo and count
on the unknown to keep things interesting. They are driven by another
human need, the need for uncertainty. Yes, that’s right … because
predictability also drives us crazy.
So, how do you find balance between these competing needs?
The key is to focus on the appropriate and ultimate outcome. Instead of

focusing on the short-term pain of taking action, imagine the long-term pain
of inaction. Take someone putting off retirement planning, for example.
They don’t want to deal with the headaches of research and pulling out
money for retirement contributions. For some reason, they associate more
pain with getting it done than not being able to retire and having to work
until death. Avoiding the steps necessary to attain financial freedom and take
control of your life should pose less pain than having to work until you’re
too old.
In summary, your focus should be on the long-term pleasure that will result
from following through with the things you owe to yourself. Not doing so
will result in eventual unavoidable pain.
Before we move on, I want to ruffle your feathers just one more time.
Another reason that people don’t reach their goals is because they associate
more pain with the process of achieving them than with forever keeping
them at a distance. Perhaps it’s fear of failure, or you associate great pain
with the work you imagine it takes to get there.
Then there are those who believe the achievement of wealth will mean that
they will have fewer friends or that they will be perceived differently by
those who aren’t as financially secure. Others are afraid of the great
responsibility that comes with great wealth.
First, let me tell you that an estimated $13 trillion exchanges hands every
day globally in all of humanity’s transactions. That simply means that
there’s enough for everyone who is interested in a slice of that enormous pie.
Every 60 seconds someone somewhere becomes a millionaire. So you see,

there’s no need to fear appearing to be greedy, or to actually feel greedy.
Your fair share is out there and, if you are interested, your turn will come.
Second, it’s not lonely at the top, but the bottom is definitely more crowded.
Don’t find yourself stuck there!
Limiting beliefs
Your belief system is besieged from all sides, and you probably aren’t aware
that you need to take an active part in defending it. You need to be the
gatekeeper of your mind and stay mindful of what you let inside!
One of the few useful skills that I picked up from my college days was the
practice of analyzing my sources. When given writing assignments (and
there were plenty!), we had to make sure our research material came from a
reliable source. These sources had to meet certain criteria before we could
quote them.
Similarly, you need to be careful what you allow to enter your head. Your
mind is bombarded on a daily basis with massive amounts of information
from the media, businesses, politicians, special interest groups, and all of the
people who interact with you. Be very careful with anything you consider to
be skewed, one-sided, or even pure fiction. It takes a second look to consider
where the information comes from, as well as the motives of the originator.
Know your sources!
Beliefs that cause you to limit yourself are treacherous because they can
arrive as wolves in sheep’s clothing. Unfortunately, some of the most
harmful misinformation is fed by our parents, teachers, friends, or other
people we may blindly trust. They are not always qualified to dispense
advice on topics such as finance.

Other beliefs can stem from our friends’ fears that we might achieve success
and leave them behind. As a result of that subconscious fear, your friends
might instinctively discourage you from pursuing a venture.
Humans have an inner need for connectivity, and if someone leaves the
circle, it shakes up the comfort zone of those left behind.
So, you might hear things like, “These business opportunities are never as
easy as they sound,” or “Oh, those Internet offers are scams!” Since these
are your friends, you may trust their judgment automatically because you’re
programmed that way. If you fail to recognize this programming, however,
you might just let an opportunity slip away that comes only once or twice in
a lifetime.
Life-changing opportunities come by just once or twice. Who knows if you

even recognized the first one.
Sometimes, our friends can prevent us from moving forward, and you have
to take a long – sometimes painful – look at the meaning they have in your
life. You might even come to realize that a certain friend isn’t really the kind
of friend you thought. True friends should have a selfless interest in your
prosperity and allow you to live up to your full potential. I speak from
experience here and have seen a major change in my social circles.
Don’t forget that thoughts are infectious, and you assimilate a great deal
from the people who surround you. So, you owe it to yourself to be critical
in choosing your friends. I’m not telling you to ditch your family and current
social circle, but do become mindful of their influence on your thinking.
Regrettably, our school system is to blame for many other fallacies that we
take as truths. We’re taught to learn how to do a particular job and follow
directions. Mistakes are punished with low grades. In reality, mistakes teach
us what not to do, how to handle setbacks, and how to recover from them.
They’re so much more valuable than we realize.
The ultimate evil in limiting beliefs is passing them on to our children and
friends as truth simply because we’ve never doubted them. Only if you
expose yourself to the teachings of those who have dared to question the
status quo will you be able to move beyond these beliefs.

Don’t be afraid to acknowledge the contradictions and fallacies in what
you’ve been taught in the past! Just because you’ve “always” thought
something doesn’t necessarily make it true.
Labeling
Labeling is something we all do, and it’s a potentially harmful by-product of

our persistent need for identity. Ever since I started out in banking back in
my W2 days, I referred to myself as a “banker” whenever the all-too-
familiar question came, “What do you do?” Even though there was so much
more to me than my job, I identified myself by my job.
Your mind is on a constant quest to simplify things by categorizing data;

when people ask what you do, it really means, “In what category can I store
you?” The answer creates a label for you, and it’s stored in their minds for
future retrieval. So, labeling really works in both directions.
It’s no wonder that we label ourselves, considering all of the forms that we
have to fill out specifying our identities. Society seeks to label us because
everyone wants to know where you fit in, be it the government, marketing
firms, or your in-laws.
Many women with children will always label themselves as a mother –

period. Even though there’s so much more to them beyond their parental
role, they limit their identities to their primary activity only. And how can
you blame them when they’re called “Mom” all the time? Ever wonder why
so many moms fall into a depression after their kids move out?
Here are the two primary dangers of labeling:
1. Identity crisis.
Let’s say you lose your job and your label gets torn off. A major part of your
identity is suddenly taken away. Crisis ensues and many fell into depression.
2. Hindrance to visualization.
As will become clear in the following chapters, it will be hard for you to see
yourself doing something else if you resigned yourself to a label.

Right now, ask yourself who you are. Go ahead and tell me, are you
everything you ever wanted to be? Are you considering your interests,
passions, things you’ve always dreamed of doing or being? I know that I
never dreamed of being a banker. (Yuck!)
A turning point came for me when I started listening to one of Tony

Robbins’ Personal Power tapes on labeling. One day, when I was taking my
then seven-year old son to his Montessori school, he said, “I want to be a
banker just like you, Dad.”
My heart sank.
I didn’t want my son to aspire to something I considered to be the single

dullest thing about me. So, I quickly started to fill his head with things like,
“Oh, don’t try to decide on jobs now. Maybe you’ll be the employer instead,
son!”
And then, I saw it clearly: I was spending five days a week at a job I
considered boring. Even if it wasn’t so dull, it surely wasn’t going to allow
me to realize my dreams. Something was going to have to change
dramatically, or at age 65, I was going to be left with nothing but regrets
about what could have been.
So, take a long hard look at yourself, and try to expand your label because,
otherwise, it will limit the way that you and everybody else see you. There is
so much more to you than your job or responsibilities – trust me. Don’t ever
believe that you’re limited to the qualifications and traits that come with any
label. Only you can decide who you are!
Today, I ask people how much time they have before I answer what it is I do
or who I am. The short list includes father, entrepreneur, husband, author,
coach, student, businessman, investor, financial expert, traveler, networker,
etc. Doesn’t that sound better than banker?
Here’s the risk you run into with labeling: you can’t see yourself doing
things beyond your label because it becomes your only frame of reference.
So, let’s say a certain business opportunity shows up, and it’s outside that
frame of reference – as a result, you don’t consider it an option for you
because your are limited by your present label.

Here’s another example: if you label yourself a stay-at-home mom
(popularly shortened to SAHM), you may find it hard to see yourself as the
president of your own network marketing organization with 3,500
distributors who look to you for leadership.
Or you may not be able to see yourself running an online retail business
from a warehouse with 20 employees and averaging $5 million in sales per
year.
Unless you recognize the subtle effects of labeling, it can hold you back
from reaching your goals and realizing your dreams.
Associative conditioning
The process of associative conditioning is one of the most powerful forces

driving human behavior. Your understanding of it will play a central part in
determining your future. A classic example is given by Tony Robbins with
his own experience as a young boy who wanted to be like Dad and drink
beer. His mother decides, after much whining on young Tony’s part, that he
can have a beer, but only on the condition that he drink the entire six-pack.
Already after beer number one, little Tony feels quite sick and declines the
second bottle, but his mother makes him drink on. Halfway through, Tony
spews the beer all over the kitchen table curing him of ever wanting to touch
alcohol again.
So, what happened here? The experience caused Tony’s brain to link beer
with nausea. In other words, he was conditioned to associate beer (or
alcohol in general) with pain.
Another example is the common resistance kids have to going to school

because of the rigid and unnatural learning process of our public school
system. Their brains have linked school to pain. Conversely, my eldest son
developed the association that video games were no fun at all because he
wasn’t able to play well. It turned out that he needed vision correction.
Obviously, he’s now much more into his Wii than before because he learned
that his original association was invalid.

Associations can also be positive, of course. Just think of how many people
associate chocolate with great pleasure. So, associations are created
primarily by experience. We program ourselves based on results in the past.
The trouble with our associations is that they control our future decisions.
This can get in the way when making pivotal choices with respect to career
and money.
Associative conditioning is the primary reason people quit entrepreneurial

businesses. They may have tried something in the past and failed. If they
decide based on those results – that being in business for oneself equals pain
– they may never try again.
Do you think Donald Trump should have quit after he filed bankruptcy? Of
course not! Why did he jump right back into the fray? Because he didn’t
associate going bankrupt with pain or failure. Therefore, he wasn’t afraid of
it!
Donald Trump wrote a book with Robert Kiyosaki, and the men now
frequently chat about their business affairs. A perk for those of us who are
affiliated with the Rich Dad company is that Robert will share anecdotes and
stories. He recently shared an experience that Trump had with a reporter
when he was over a billion dollars in debt! The reporter asked if Mr. Trump
was at all worried. Trump’s reply was, “Worry? What’s that? Either you
take action, or you don’t.”
It would be a good idea to start thinking about your associations. How?

Think of a topic, and see what feelings it generates inside of you. Think
about not having a job and being responsible for your own income and
income protection benefits. How does it make you feel? Do you feel
uncomfortable? If you can’t act in spite of that discomfort, you may need to
change your associations.
First and foremost, you have to become aware of your associations (there’s
that word “aware” again.) It doesn’t happen overnight, but slowly, you’ll
consciously let go of your preconceived notions. Trust me on this, half the
battle is simply recognizing associations for what they are.
If you take anything from this whole chapter, let it be this: the only thing you
have to fear in starting a business is that you will quit before you succeed.

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were
to success when they gave up.” - Author unknown
Assignments for Chapter 3: Spotting the Roadblocks
1. Write a single-sentence bio about yourself. This will give you an

indication of how you perceive yourself, which will allow you to
determine which subconscious limitations you might have placed on
yourself. You could also ask someone else to describe your personal
traits. Sometimes, others will point out strengths and/or weaknesses
that you haven’t considered. Get to know yourself better!
2. List your family members, friends, co-workers – the people you

interact with frequently. What are their views, achievements, and
backgrounds? How do your values compare to theirs? How might they
have shaped your opinions of yourself, the world, and your ambitions?
Is their influence harmful, or can you benefit from it? Often, you’ll
find that your income calculates to about the average of the incomes
of others with whom you associate. They are part of your current
context and what you consider to be possible. In other words, their
individual incomes represent what you believe you are worth in terms
of your income.
3. Separate fact from fiction. What are you worth? $45,000 a year?
Should your employer decide what figure you’re worth or should you?
It’s kind of an important issue to leave up to someone other than you,
isn’t it? Write down reasons why you’ve been content with where you
are or why you were not content but too afraid to do anything about it.
Are these insurmountable problems or inconveniences? If you want
your dream life badly enough, your creativity should find a way
around any obstacle. The point of this exercise is (like many of them)
to get you to think on a different frequency. You are a creator, not a
product! So stop making excuses and get down to business.

Chapter 4
Becoming financially literate – Dispel the myths
You are likely familiar with the age-old proverb, “Nothing is certain but
death and taxes.” It makes people think that taxes are an inseparable part of
life, but nothing could be further from the truth. Don’t forget that the USA
was spawned from a colonial uprising against the taxation by the British
Empire.
After American independence was secured over two centuries ago, taxes
were only briefly reintroduced during times of war. Taxes were definitely
not a certain thing in early American society, so how we came to believe
fallacies like the proverb above requires a short delve into U.S. history. I am
a major history buff, but I realize many of you aren’t so I promise it will be
quick and painless!
When the Industrial Revolution picked up steam, new technologies excelled.

When the industrious and innovative elite reached new heights, the poor
cried foul. They believed that the rich ought to be punished for their success
and pay for social programs that support those in who made less. Politicians
were eager to please the poor masses, since universal voting rights meant
that they had a far greater support base there.
The poor got their way, and, initially, only the rich were taxed. However, the
government’s appetite for money grew exponentially, and a growing federal
deficit required universal taxation. It wasn’t long before this became a way
of life. Ironically, taxes eventually hit the average middle and lower class
families the hardest. Many still don’t realize that they work from January
until roughly May just to pay what they will owe in taxes for the year –
that’s almost five months’ income, and yes, that is still true today.
Ever notice how government officials are considered ineffective when they
don’t use up their allotted budget? They never want to finish a year under
budget because that could result in a budget cut! That thought strikes fear in
the hearts of a great many government managers.
In the business world, the opposite is true, and people are rewarded for
completing a task under budget. Because the government is always striving
to employ all available funds, there is an ever-increasing demand for more.
That’s why taxes have steadily increased. This is a major reason the rich use
legal tax shelters. They are all too familiar with the government’s long
history of highly questionable financial stewardship.
Still, even with the strategies that the wealthy use, the wealthy pay for the
vast majority of federal taxes. Don’t mistakenly think that the biggest load is
carried by the working class. This is a very stubborn myth that needs
dispelling. The top 1% of income earners alone pay more than a third of total
individual income tax payments.
Are you already beginning to take a new stance toward your money? That’s
the major purpose behind this chapter. Make no mistake: I’m making a
blatant attempt to change your opinion about money.
And what is money really? What is the value of that paper and metal we
stuff in our wallets? A banknote in itself is worthless; it’s a promissory note,
which is accounting terminology for an IOU.
However, if you intend to show up at a regional Federal Reserve branch

office with the intention of having the government live up to that promise
and exchange your note for gold, you’re going to be in for an unpleasant
surprise.
Ever since President Nixon detached the dollar from the Gold Standard, our
money is merely currency backed by consumer confidence in the system.
That’s certainly a shaky foundation during tough economic times.
One side effect of this is the dollar’s devaluation due to all of the extra
money that the U.S. mint has been printing. By controlling the money
supply, the government can increase or decrease the flow of money in an
attempt to steer the economy when deemed necessary.
But this power comes at a price. When you look at a stock graph figured in
dollars without devaluation, you’ll see the famous 10% line going steadily
up over the years despite the many ups and downs of the market. If you do
figure in the dollar’s devaluation, however, you’re in for a sobering and
unnerving surprise. Inflation and currency devaluation will erase most of the
interest gains on your company 401K. If it is security you seek, this method
of saving is not as safe as you have been told!

In reality savers are actually losers if you look at the numbers, which very
few people ever do. Financial advisors (some very famous ones), banks, and
our own government have been filling your head with nonsense for years.
Don’t think for a second that the truly wealthy live by their advice.
Do you think your local banker can teach you how to use a self-directed
Roth IRA to finance real estate and earn capital gains in transactions that are
100% legally tax free? Nope. But you can bet on the rich making sure that
their kids know how.
Applied knowledge is power. Use it or lose it. Neither the IRS nor the big
banks have a stake in advancing your financial education, but you certainly
do.
Starting a Corporation
If you’re a business owner or a real estate investor and have ever taken a
seminar that was of some value, you were no doubt introduced to a strategy
called “asset protection.” The way the rich keep their assets protected from
legal mishaps and unscrupulous people is through the formation of
corporations. A corporation in its simplest form is nothing more than a
business entity that is legally separated from its owners.
When my wife and I started seeking consultation on growing our eBay

operation, we were told repeatedly to form a Limited Liability Company
(LLC). The LLC would be separate from us, hold its own bank account, and
own its own property. If someone ever sought damages from us or the
business, it would be most difficult for them to cross the legal barrier.
I couldn’t argue with the advice, so I set out to locate a certified court
document preparer. I wanted to avoid lawyers, as their fees were out of our
range. I also didn’t want a do-it-yourself-kit because I wanted it done right. I
also had numerous questions about future expansion and taking on partners,
so I needed a knowledgeable person.
It ended up costing me just $300, and I discovered a previously undisclosed

perk to owning an LLC.

After filing the paperwork with the IRS, you are issued an Employer
Identification Number (EIN), also called a corporate tax identification or
wholesale license.
When you take your tax I.D. to a bank, you can now apply for corporate
credit cards. You’ll find that banks are much more generous toward
businesses than consumers, and here’s why:
1. Business cards bring in 5% per purchase transaction, while consumer

cards bring in just 1%. So, the banks make five times more in
transaction fees.
2. Businesses perform better statistically. Their payment behavior is

more reliable than consumers, where charge-off rates are higher.
3. Banks want to sell you on their merchant services, which bring in

heaps more in transaction fees.
In short, you’re suddenly a much bigger fish for them to go after than when
you showed up as a mere consumer. Within months, I had been approved for
five credit cards with an average of $20,000 in credit limits. That meant that
my business had about $100,000 in unsecured loans available to grow its
operations. If you have ever tried to obtain a SBA loan in that range, you
will have found it to be very hard.
Another great benefit of corporate cards is that most of them don’t report on
your personal credit file for as long as they remain in good standing. So, any
debt carried on them doesn’t weigh you down personally.
The tax benefits of the corporation make up the rest of the argument for any
serious business owner to start one. A corporation doesn’t pay individual
income tax, because it’s not an individual. As an employee, the taxes are
withheld before you receive anything. You did the work, why should you be
paid last? Thank your government.
Consult your attorney or CPA for details, but the rich use corporations to
pay for most of their expenses, hold many of their assets for protection, and
avoid paying more taxes than necessary. There are even strategies available
that will allow one to personally and legally own almost nothing, and earn
nothing that can be taxed.
It’s a matter of obtaining the knowledge the IRS would like to keep from
you. My personal disclaimer: don’t exercise any of these strategies without
counsel from tax and legal specialists. Their advice does not come cheap,
but it will cost far less than getting yourself in legal trouble.
Cashflow 101
Making money is really a game of sorts, isn’t it? The sooner you start
learning how to play it, the better off you’ll be. The place to start is the
advancement of your financial education. When it comes to the power of
money, it’s not really about how much of it you have at the moment but how
you control the flow of it. Remember the lottery winners? They win and
spend millions only to end up back where they were. So, the amount of
money you possess at any given time is rather irrelevant.
With financial education, you will gain insight into your personal and
business cashflow, and you’ll learn how to accumulate enough to live life on
your own terms.
Liken your business life to a game of monopoly – your success is dependent

on how much money you bring under your control. The key word here is
control. Most people work for money and never realize that they could have
their money work for them instead.
Look, it’s not about the amount of cash you have or the things you can buy.
The rich concern themselves with cashflow: how much comes in and how
much flows out. Everyone else is poor, temporarily rich, or pretending to be
rich. As a banker, I have seen too many people who are just renting a
lifestyle and paying dearly for it.
One day, you no longer own the stuff, but it owns you!
According to most standards, you are considered rich if you have a net worth
exceeding 1 million USD. Most people would also call such an individual
wealthy. Rich Dad, Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki makes a distinction
between being rich and being wealthy. While being rich is measured in
dollars, Robert measures wealth in time. By his definition your wealth is
measured by your ability to sustain yourself financially without having to
rely on earned income.
In 1996, Robert and his wife, Kim, created a board game (told you it was a
game!) called Cashflow 101. Their aim was to show people how the wealthy
think and how you need to expand your context if you plan to become
wealthy yourself.
Few people know that Robert’s best-selling book Rich Dad Poor Dad was
originally written as a guide for the game! The Cashflow game was Robert’s
original concept to financially educate the public back in the 1990s, but it
took a backseat to the success of his Rich Dad book series.
Lately, Robert has been busy bringing the game back to the forefront
because he realizes that now more than ever, the time is ripe to enhance the
financial IQ of the general public. The government and big banks are not
going to teach you how to play smart, so you will have to take ownership of
your own financial education or lose out.
There is no denying that the public needs financial understanding, and our
school system simply fails to provide it. This is the void that the Cashflow
game can fill. A central theme of the game is the Cashflow Quadrant, which
classifies people as an employee (E), self-employed professional (S),
business owner (B), or investor (I).
Trademark of Cashflow Technologies, Inc
The Cashflow Quadrant lays out how the employed and self-employed have
to work for money on the left side of the quadrant, while the business
owners and investors on the right side have their businesses and money
working for them. Though some earn their income from multiple quadrants,
people on the right side earn passive income that enables them to live
without the need to go to work.
The objective of the game is to increase your passive income (derived from
businesses, real estate, or investments which are generated on the right side
of the quadrant) to exceed your expenses.

Once you have achieved this, you are financially free, which means you no
longer have to work for your money and have effectively escaped the rat
race (the left of the quadrant.) The game allows you to experiment with
different investment strategies without real-world consequences.
Robert found that the financial decisions players make in the game trigger
the same emotions as they would in real life. Therefore, once you master
your emotions and control your decision-making in the game, you will be
much better equipped to deal with such circumstances in the real world.
Thanks to a chance meeting in Austin, TX in the summer of 2008, I met

some of Robert Kiyosaki’s associates and began forming a relationship with
the Rich Dad Company. This relationship resulted in the creation of a
Cashflow Club based on Robert’s Cashflow 101 board game and officially
sponsored by the Rich Dad Franchise. Later that year I finally got to meet
with Robert at his office and attend several board meetings with his
leadership team.
I conduct club meetings where I teach Robert’s lessons the way he intended
them. Though attendance is free and I’m not paid by Rich Dad to host these
meetings, what I learn from working with Robert and his brilliant team is
invaluable. The club also attracts all sorts of like-minded people who teach
me a great deal as well.
The power of leverage
Your financial fortune and the legacy you leave behind stem from what you
have learned about money and what you have taught your children about it.
The difference between what the rich teach their kids about money and what
the poor teach their kids is one reason the rich stay rich.
You know the sayings, “money isn’t everything” and “money doesn’t make
you happy.” Although both statements hold some measure of truth, I also
know that money allows me to travel; it’s sending my kids to a school of my
choosing; it allows me to contribute to charity; and it will help me when I’m
older. The most important thing money buys me is the irreplaceable asset of
time. I have time to think, time to learn, time to spend with those I love, and
time to spend at places and activities I have a passion for.

Even though there are things that outrank it in life, money does make people
happier and allows them to do more for themselves and those they love.
You would be able to contribute so much more to the world around you if
you would just allow yourself to live in abundance. You can make a bigger
difference when you’re rich than when you’re poor. Remember that
abundance is a perception. If you perceive lack or scarcity, that’s what you
live. If you tell yourself that you have to work for money, you’ll live your
life working for it, a risky proposition in today’s job market.
Wouldn’t you rather have your money work for you? It’s a major shift in
mindset, especially if you don’t have any money right now to put to work for
you. But we’ll shed light on how to generate that money in Chapter 5.
At an ecommerce conference, tax authority Diane Kennedy taught me a

short and simple phrase that stuck with me for years and helped me with
building our eBay business: work on your business, not in it. She reminded
me that before you even worry about learning how to leverage money, you
need to learn how to leverage time.
What this means is that you can’t do it all on your own, which is what
people in the S (self-employed) quadrant try to do most often. They are
rugged individualists and will work themselves to death. Early on, I almost
fell prey to this as I tried to keep up with our company’s books by myself. I
weighed the cost of QuickBooks training, my dislike of accounting, and the
amount of time and frustration it would require.
Then I remembered Diane’s words and started interviewing bookkeepers and

CPAs. The time saved doesn’t measure up against the expense, so my point
is: Does it really save you anything by trying to do it all yourself?
Robert Kiyosaki uses leverage to grow the Rich Dad brand. He recently
partnered with Russ Whitney, for example, to create Rich Dad Education to
serve those looking for training in the world of real estate investing. Rich
Dad has traditionally been about context because Robert had always said the
content doesn’t make sense until you understand the context.
That’s also the reason why so many people mistakenly thought the book
Rich Dad Poor Dad would teach them how to become rich. Nope! The book
serves to change your mindset toward your investment of time and money.
It provides the context for Rich Dad’s philosophy. But a lot of people still
need to learn what to do once they understand why an enhanced financial IQ
will serve them well. So, instead of reinventing the wheel, this joint venture
with Russ Whitney came about.
As Robert likes to say, “Do more with less.”
You only have so many hours in the day, and you need to focus on what you
do best and use professionals or partners to handle the rest. If you try to do it
all, you will fail at everything!
It’s a simple equation: success = time + money.
If you have little money to invest, you can certainly pour more time into
your success. But if you already have some cash, you can leverage that to
buy some time and start earning more money sooner. Either way, you can
get there if you’re willing to invest one or the other.
Most people decide not to invest either. Well, if you do what everyone else
does, you will have what everyone else has.
One of the key drivers that send people to me for advice on starting a home
business is my experience with doing business online. I spent thousands of
dollars and hours on training and coaching to support my online businesses.
These people realize that they can leverage my experience and education to
produce results instead of sacrificing the same investment of time and
capital.
With few exceptions, you cannot build a million-dollar business by yourself.

Luckily, as an entrepreneur, you will begin to master the skill of networking.
As an independent business professional, you’re a leader, and you recognize
your strengths and weaknesses. You will find other professionals and
referrals to help you achieve your objectives. A natural leader knows how to
leverage the knowledge and skills of others to the benefit of all involved.
This is why not all managers are necessarily leaders and vice versa. AND it
is one of the primary reasons I left Corporate America behind.

You might just be a natural leader once you realize you’re not the smartest
person in the room and don’t waste time trying to pretend otherwise.
Actually, if you are the smartest person in the room, it is time to surround
yourself with some fresh faces. No, instead, you want to influence the
smartest people around you and leverage their skills, talents, and efforts.
You might, in turn, provide something they need (income, skill, or
association.)
Are you beginning to see the importance of networking and creating

connections regardless of your field of business?
As a leader, you create these connections naturally because you see how the
network as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts (in this case, the
people!)
In summary, to become a successful business leader, you don’t have to do it

all or know it all. You just have to put yourself in touch with the right
people, the right systems, and, preferably, do it at the right time. It’s a snap
when you connect the dots. Connections grow exponentially.
I would be absolutely nowhere today without having connected to certain

individuals along the way. No matter how self-sufficient you are, you will
need to leverage a network if you want to achieve success fast. Don’t
underestimate how quickly your fortunes can change once you get started.

Assignments for Chapter 4: Enhancing your financial IQ
1. Visit www.richdad.com to locate a Cashflow Club near you or to

order the game. Contact me at tiemen@richdadcashflowclub.com if
you’re in the Phoenix, Arizona Metro area and would like to play with
my club; it’s the second such club that came into existence. Unlike the
numerous unofficial clubs, mine is officially supported by Rich Dad
and comes with numerous perks for our members and an exclusive
curriculum by Robert and Kim Kiyosaki. Attendance is free!
2. Start reading the financial press. Knowledge of finance will, in large

part, determine your fortune in life, good or bad. You can only afford
to neglect this skill if you can afford a good financial advisor (and
they don’t work for peanuts!)
3. Brand yourself! Think of a good business name and make sure there
isn’t someone else using it in your field of business. See if the .com
domain name is available (I recommend pcnames.com). When you
have settled on a name, file a trade name application with your state
government. From this point on you can file articles of incorporation
with the help of a certified court-document preparer and form an LLC.
Now you have a legal shield and a business entity that can open its
own deposit and credit accounts! Now you can start thinking bigger.
Robert Kiyosaki (right) and myself at Rich Dad HQ

(“The Rat” is a registered trademark of Cashflow Technologies, Inc.)

Chapter 5
A world of business owners – Demise of the middle class
It’s hard to avoid reading headlines these days that tell us jobs are
disappearing offshore and that with every decline in jobs, they don’t seem to
come back in the same numbers. The age upon us is that of the entrepreneur.
Like or not, my friend, it’s going to be about the 1099 rather than the W2 in
the long run.
Even though societal and economic changes can be perceived as painful or

frightening, they don’t have to be. Well, that is if you’re anticipating them
and know how to adapt to a changing environment. The shift you’re seeing
today is the final squirm in the transition from the Industrial Age to the
Information Age.
If you were born more than 70 years ago, then heeding the advice to go to
school and find a secure job made sense. Not today though. Your parents or
grandparents also didn’t have a crippling consumer debt weighing them
down and trapping them in the Rat Race. Credit cards were for travelers and
those that knew how to manage their money. Back then, most people only
purchased homes and cars after they had saved the money for them.
Many people think their home is their biggest asset. But from an accounting
perspective this home is actually the bank’s asset if there is a mortgage owed
on the property. On the homeowner’s balance sheet, the home is a liability!
Not knowing the difference between assets and liabilities is one of numerous
reasons the middle class is struggling. They put their money into luxuries
thinking they are assets, while they really are liabilities. With every increase
in income, they buy more expensive homes and cars, trapping them in the
Rat Race forever. On the other side of the quadrant, the rich put their money
into real assets and pay for their luxuries with the residual income.
As a banker, I have seen too many people bury themselves with big
mortgages and car loans because they think that’s what the rich do. I have
seen thousands of credit records that belong to millionaires as well. Can you
guess how they differ from a middle class person? They only carry debt
when it is used to finance an asset that generates more income than the
interest on the loan. Most of the time, their accounts are paid in full.
The rich buy assets that appreciate and generate passive residual income.
The income generated from the asset column of their balance sheet exceeds
the costs of the liabilities in the expense column. The rich pay for their
luxuries with their residual income.
The middle class buys liabilities mistaken for assets, supported by their
earned income. Whenever their income grows, they increase their liabilities
to match. Whenever Joe Worker gets a measly pay raise, he buys a nicer car
and a bigger home. This delicate balance is that infamous Rat Race.
The government and the big banks have Joe Worker convinced that his
home is an asset. They just failed to tell him whose asset it truly is. In
accounting you can easily tell an asset from a liability. One takes money out
of your pocket, the other puts money in your pocket. Your home is an asset,
just not on your balance sheet but on the bank’s.
Having an entire population buying liabilities that they are told are assets is a
recipe for financial disaster. The economic crisis of recent times is a
testament to this and no amount of extra money the government prints for
bailouts will make it go away.
Lastly, we have the poor with a very simple balance sheet. They spend what
they make and live paycheck to paycheck.
Obviously the current cycle cannot be sustained and millions around the
world are staring down a painful lesson in personal finance. Those that fail
to enhance their financial intelligence will join the ranks of the poor.
The poor get poorer because of what they teach their children and mostly
what they are not able to teach them due to a lack of financial education. The
rich will get richer because they teach their kids the laws of business and
finance to groom them to exceed the achievements of the previous
generation (read up on the Kennedy family and how they maintain the cycle
of wealth). Between the two groups is a middle class in serious trouble.
As the middle class fades, the divide between rich and poor is starkly
widening. The danger in this is that a larger poor population will blame the
rich minority for their predicament. To avoid potential societal upheaval,
financial education is crucial.
However unfortunate for the American worker, The Information Age is all
but done turning his/her world upside-down. Economies are in a constant
state of adjustment, and these adjustments react to things that were set in
motion much earlier by a variety of factors. The global reallocation of jobs is
a reaction to the sharp rise in costs to large employers. They are left with a
choice: move operations abroad to cut costs or cease being competitive and
slowly go out of business.
I have been laid off twice in the past due to offshoring and outsourcing, so
my family has dealt with this unpleasant and life-changing situation. Every
worker is expendable, and I found that out the hard way – more than once,
no less. My reaction to the sudden job loss was probably slightly different
from most people.
I decided right away that it was nobody’s fault, and no amount of whining
was going to change things. I accepted the fact that my job was expendable,
and so is yours, regardless of how important you think you are. Looking for
another one doesn’t improve your position, and finding one is getting much
harder.
You essentially have two choices if you’re no longer able to find a white or
blue collar job that suits your needs and fits your qualifications. You can
accept a low paying service job, or you can choose to join the ranks of
business owners and take control of your life.
In other words, you work for the service, or you become the one that owns
the service. Which seems more appealing? My past job losses fueled my
desire for becoming an owner rather than a worker.
If you don’t own the business, you don’t hold the cards. End of story.
So what do you do about it? Become a business owner and learn to invest.
There is also some good news in all of this. Fortunately (and interestingly),
the shrinking of the middle class has coincided with a tremendous growth in
the number of wealthy households.

In 1985, there were 13 billionaires and several thousands of millionaires in
the U.S. Today, there are about 1,000 billionaires and more than 3 million
millionaires in North America alone!
The vast majority of them have built their wealth by owning their own
businesses and through the investments that allowed them to make. Despite
the growing gap between rich and poor, the rich as a group are perhaps
growing at an even faster rate. Thanks to the Information Age, the business
opportunities today outnumber the number of people who are able to
recognize those opportunities. So, don’t become part of the ignorant throngs
who will be fighting over the scraps left behind.
The rich quickly learned to leverage technology and information, which has
sped up business cycles over the last few decades. We are racing from
booms to busts faster than ever before, and those with less financial
education are scared stiff because they do not understand what is really
happening.
Do headlines about recession and losses worry you?
Recessions are dramatic shifts in wealth. Will you be on the receiving or

losing end of the latest shift? The rich know when to get into the markets
and when to get out. Be it real estate or stocks, when prices go up it means
the rich are already on their way out making millions along the way. The
middle class jumps in hoping to ride the wave, then the bubble bursts.
Suddenly, real estate and stock prices drop and the now cash-heavy rich are
ready to buy again and the cycle continues.
The latest recession – worsened by the housing bust – is notably different. It

seems that the troubled middle class is finally being pushed to the brink of
collapse. When the dust settles, this will be a very different economy.
Business options for the average Joe
What if you decide that you don’t want to risk becoming a statistic in the
financial collapse of the middle class? What can you do?
Robert Kiyosaki teaches us that we should strive to become business owners

and investors if we want to become financially free.
Since it’s next to impossible to become an investor without significant
financial education and starting capital, we will stay in the arena of business
ownership. So how can the average hourly-wage employee make the move
to own and operate a business of his/her own? In essence, there are three
major options for anyone looking to start a business:
1. Start your own C corp. from scratch. Many never make it from small
business to C corp., as this process requires the most research,
stamina, and organizational skill of the three options, but the rewards
can be phenomenal. This is the category our first success fell under.
Our eBay business was put together from the bottom up. Through trial
and error, we figured out what worked and what didn’t. Sometimes
this education came at a significant cost. Microsoft, Ford Motors, and
GE may be titans of industry today, but they all had their starts as
small businesses. These corporations were founded by entrepreneurs
with exceptional determination and purpose. But make no mistake;
they have all had their brush with ruin. The difference is in how they
handled setbacks and disappointment.
2. Purchase a franchise. This option is out of reach for most people due
to the required net worth to start. For example, a McDonald’s
restaurant requires more than $1 million personal investment capital,
and you must meet their stringent business qualifications. Once your
business is up and running, you have to pay the franchisor a share of
your profits. You work under an existing brand with its many rules,
and all of the investment and risk is entirely yours. Results vary
greatly here, but if you’re well-funded and devote great study to
location and market research, you can achieve great wealth with a
franchise.
3. Join a network or affiliate marketing opportunity. These businesses

include MLM and affiliate systems where you work to market a
product or service on a commission basis. These businesses require no
prerequisites or any significant investment (usually a few hundred to a
few thousand dollars will get you started.) Building an organization
with this model in traditional MLM opportunities (think Mary Kay,
Quickstar/Amway) does carry risk, as you have little control over the
distributors lined up under you. The Internet has also thrown the
present-day MLM’er a few curveballs.

Mike Dillard wrote a compelling article on this subject entitled “The
Coffee House Letter,” which can be found at www.mlmpanic.com.
An expensive lesson
Since I mentioned that my wife and I worked with a traditional Multilevel

Marketing (MLM) opportunity in the past, I thought it might be useful to
share our experience, as it also taught us some very expensive lessons.
Hopefully, it will prevent you from having to make the same unnecessary
investment to obtain this knowledge.
We had been trying to build a business around an exotic juice called

Monavie and had pumped at least $15,000 into it before deciding that we
would never see a return on our investment. There’s nothing wrong with the
product. I continue to use it today and recognize its health benefits without a
doubt. But there’s something wrong with the way MLM works today.
Back in the pre-Internet days, you could work an opportunity for three to
five years and retire on the commissions from your down-line of recruits.
You built relationships and fostered loyalty by supporting and training your
rep’s.
The Internet has ruined this functionality due to MLM’s “timing-effect.”

This is what I mean by that: if you joined an opportunity early, and it took
off, you were at the top of the virtual pyramid. Your recruits enrolled others
and so on, and you took a percentage from the entire down-line.
In a person-to-person world that method of network marketing worked just

fine. Then the internet showed up and effectively bypassed all interpersonal
relationships by creating instant connections that spanned the globe.
Information travelling at the speed of light has its consequences.
Alas we entered the age of the pre-launch. Hungry MLM-junkies are now
scouring the web every day looking for the next opportunity launch, hoping
it will boom so that they can ride the wave to financial freedom because
everyone wants to get in on top.
If only it were that easy.

You see, this happens daily, and any schmoe with basic computer skills can
start an MLM company and begin signing people up. They make some
serious cash with the modest sign-up fees (let’s say, $50 to join times 50,000
enrollees – you get the picture.) Many of them even get a few thousand souls
to buy some products, and they’re done. A year later, they might consider
themselves a big MLM stud and think they’re making some decent money.
They start setting a retirement date and begin shopping for their dream
home. Then, one of the business builders becomes impatient or unhappy and
hops on another opportunity launching next week. Poof!
The income evaporates.
That said, there are some good companies out there with real products which
have stood the test of time. Monavie is certainly one of them. But unless you
are a veteran MLM’er with an existing down-line from a previous
opportunity, you have one daunting task trying to build your business from
scratch. It’s not impossible, and some fanatic networkers have done it. But
even if you succeed, the risk of opportunity-hopping remains.
Your best distributor or business builder could be poached by another MLM

recruiter, and your days of financial security are over.
If a successful MLM-er ever tries to recruit you (and they will try), they will
always claim that they didn’t rely on existing contacts and down-lines to
build their business. Don’t be fooled. If they ever admitted the truth, the
entire opportunity would implode! New entrants would be discouraged from
joining, and the income made off of their enthusiastic enrollment and
product purchases would evaporate!
Another thing that hurts most MLM products is simply the cost of the
products. It’s hard to sell a $45 bottle of fruit juice in a down economy,
especially when your local big box store has an alternative for $15. I’ve had
so many people try and love the product, but they simply can’t afford to
drink it, let alone build a business out of it!
You might also consider the fact that almost every MLM company requires
you to purchase a monthly minimum of product to remain eligible for
commission payouts. The profits these companies amass are largely driven
by loyal distributors hooked into monthly orders (often billed as a
“convenient” feature called autoship), rather than newly acquired customers!
If you don’t know what you’re doing, consumption-driven MLMs can
bankrupt you.
Some opportunities are downright pyramid scams and they can even land
you in legal hot water. Be wary of those that don’t sell an actual product or
service, such as cash-gifting schemes. Others will use false advertising and
forged government records. In 2008 someone attempted to “poach” me
(attempting to lure me from my opportunity to theirs) for a fuel-additive
MLM opportunity. After some research and speaking with a compliance
officer at the EPA in Washington D.C., I found the MLM company to be
engaged in misleading and false advertising. As a result, the EPA persuaded
the company to correct their website and marketing material.
The MLM industry is a shark pond, and if you’re the new fish, watch out!
If you’re considering a networking opportunity, consider one with a 2/3-tier

compensation plan where your profit is made up front at the point of sale
and not dependent upon the risky business of down-line building.
I’ve left this unstable business behind and found something that fits my
interest in financial education. The commission per sale is significant, so I
don’t have to rely on fluctuating volume for my income. I advertise and sell
the products online, collect payment through my own merchant account, and
pay the wholesale price to the company. The difference is pure profit.
No network marketing business is built to last forever, so – per Rich Dad’s

advice – much of this income is invested into assets that generate long-term
passive income, like real estate. Remember: wealth is determined by
cashflow, not temporarily earning (job, MLM, small business) or having
(lottery, inheritance, and other one-shot deals) lots of money.
If you’re still hell-bent on making it big in MLM, I sincerely wish you the
best of luck. Great success and wealth can still be achieved by resourceful
individuals. Just know that you are trying to fill a leaky bucket, and you will
have to continuously recruit people to survive.
Even if you manage to build a significant down-line through relentless

recruiting, you still face the continued threat of attrition. You will have to
keep actively recruiting new distributors to replace the ones who left.
On average, new distributors last about three months before they quit.
This is why MLM is no longer on the right side of the Cashflow Quadrant
where income is generated passively; it is earned income these days. You
will find yourself back in the S quadrant where you literally own a job, and
it’s only a matter of time before burn-out sets in.
Finding your sweet spot
Whatever direction you decide to take in the entrepreneurial realm, you’ll

have to figure out your niche. Take some time to discover your interests and
talents. If you choose an opportunity or business that you don’t enjoy, you’ll
never excel at it. Also, take stock of your skills and training. What can you
still learn, and how can you leverage the skill and knowledge of others to
pursue your goals? If all of that is in line, you’ll still have to find a business
that has room to grow. So, it really takes a couple of core competencies to
come together in order for you to find out where your niche is, or as I like to
call it, your sweet spot.
Take everything we have discussed in this booklet – which has largely

served to help you figure out the human side of entrepreneurship – and slap
it together with your idea of the ideal business for your situation. This
should provide you with at least a starting point from which to hone in on
your target business.
I found my sweet spot after my MLM business left me with little return on
investment. Before joining Monavie, I had already been blending my
experience as a banker with my enthusiasm for working with the Rich Dad
franchise in helping people enhance their financial IQ. In brief, my current
opportunity basically offers financial education to entrepreneurs and anyone
else who wants to take charge of their financial destiny.
It just made more sense to me to connect my business, passions, experience,

skills, and associations with a wealth mastery product line rather than fruit
juice. I can’t explain it any better than that.
A core lesson Mike Dillard teaches his protégé’s is to take one of their
personal strengths and turn it into an expertise as it applies to their business.
You have set yourself apart from the pack and have something unique and
valuable to offer the community. People buy from and do business with
those -leaders- who have something to offer that fits those criteria.
As a guy, I like visuals, of course. I’m sure my female readers already got
the picture, but let me illustrate this for the many guys out there still
scratching their heads:
Let’s call it the 3 E’s of Success
Notice how there is an overlap in the middle? This is where all of the
different factors come together and where you will find your niche. This
doesn’t mean you can’t succeed if they don’t all meet at the center, but your
niche, or sweet spot, is where your maximum results are made possible.

Take a sheet of paper, and write out your three E’s. This will be very useful
for the exercise at the end of this chapter. While some factors above are out
of your control, the majority of them are things you can work on!
Massive action
Is what you bring together to create worth striving for? If you never make
the decision and take the time to figure out these things, success could elude
you for your entire life. But great goals and ideas alone don’t equal results,
and something worthwhile isn’t created overnight.
Would you diligently invest and work for several months to a year to create
financial freedom with a five-, six-, or seven-figure income for the rest of
your life? Or would you prefer to stick with a job and a five- (six-, if you’re
lucky) figure earned income and always keep working – from job to job,
paycheck to paycheck?
When your boss gives you a job to do, don’t you instinctively strive to over-
deliver? Why is it that most people don’t put that kind of effort toward their
own benefit? Aren’t you worth it? What price tag do you place on yourself?
Maybe it’s different for you, but the catalyst for me was dissatisfaction. I
made a definite decision on this issue several years ago and never looked
back.
I couldn’t accept that there wasn’t more to life than fighting traffic and gas
bills, traveling every day to an office where I didn’t enjoy working.
When I added up the time spent there versus my quality time with my family
or working on my own interests, I decided that my priorities were seriously
messed up.
You read that millions are working 50-plus hours a week or holding more
than one job to get by. To top it off, almost half of us don’t rate our job
satisfaction very high. Is that life? Whether you’re making 15K or 150K,
there has to be a better way of doing things!
I’m grateful I figured this out in my late twenties and not in my early sixties.

So, it’s time you started asking yourself new questions. Ask yourself, “What
really matters to me?” I frequently remind myself of a line Tony Robbins
drops into all of his books and programs:
“When you’ve figured out your objective, immediately take a step

toward its completion however small that step may be.”
If you don’t do this, your goals will end up on the back-burner yet again.
Trust me – your goals are much too easy to forget, and life will inevitably
get in the way.
Focus on what matters – not the day-to-day stuff.
Even if you like your job, can you say you truly love it? Isn’t something
(just like someone) only worth sticking to when you love it?
During trying economic times, you might find yourself losing your nerve
and clinging to what you know (like your job.) But what if you could be
impervious to economic upheaval? There still is security for some, but you
won’t find many of them in the job market. Don’t wait for politicians to bail
you out or for greedy corporations to suddenly give in and help the little guy.
It won’t happen, so take matters into your own hands. Take massive action!
My wife gave me a 1978 copy of People Magazine for my birthday. It was

published 30 years ago on the day I was born. It featured an article about the
troubled healthcare system and included an interview with then-President of
Blue Cross, Mr. Walter McNerney. I was shocked, amazed, and saddened
that this article reflected the exact same sentiments and observations
expressed today. In 30 years’ time, they have accomplished absolutely
nothing. Not a shred of progress.
This article could have been in the newspapers today with only the names
changed. Don’t place your hopes with politicians or big business.
Ultimately, their agendas don’t include your best interests.
You are ultimately responsible for your successes, your failures, and how
you respond to them. Whatever happens, what are you going to do about it?

Assignment for Chapter 5: Creating actionable steps
1. Answer the following questions:

• What are you good at, or what could you become better at?
• Do you want more time for family and things you enjoy doing?
• What kind of business would you enjoy?
• What kind of income would you like to earn?
• Are there causes or institutions you want to help?
• How much time and money are you willing to invest in a life of
financial freedom? Businesses require upfront investment of both
if you expect to reap the benefits later.
Write down a couple of answers, and if you find overlap, you might
have just found your niche!
2. Start a business today! You are not an entrepreneur if you don’t have one.
If you already have a draft business plan, then start taking action now.
Seek out a mentor and don’t try to go it alone; remember to leverage!
If this is your first venture, I realize you might be overwhelmed and

intimidated, and that’s normal. But I also don’t want to leave you with
your newly enhanced context and nothing to throw at it. We have to
maintain momentum, so here is the deal…
If you have no business plan or even an idea of where to begin, I will

make you a suggestion. Actually, I am going to take it a step further and
share something no other guru or entrepreneur will likely show you
(voluntarily anyhow).
I am going to show you my business plan and the tools and systems I use
myself to put Rich Dad’s advice to work for me 24/7.
I have set up a website exclusively for the readers of this book at

www.EasyBizSetup.com Why? To take away your final excuses!
If you’re not ready to take drastic action though, don’t even look at it!
This is really for serious entrepreneurs only. If you’re still in need of

some fine-tuning, you’d best stick with your training wheels before
hitting the fast track.

Final Thoughts
That was it! You made it, and I applaud your commitment!
I hope you have enjoyed this quick read and perhaps had a few “ah hah!”
moments. My voyage into entrepreneurship has been a life-changing one and
I hope yours will be nothing less.
Success in this arena boils down to education and persistence. Arm yourself
with information because it’s important to have a plan B when your career
takes an unexpected turn or your current job or business simply isn’t
providing what you want or need in life, be it in terms of time or income.
If you have a job, you are living on someone else’s terms – period. If you
love that job, keep it! Life is intended to be abundant in every way, so if
your job brings great fulfillment, it adds value to your life. Just be sure to
have a plan B if your income solely relies on that job.
The face of our economy is changing dramatically, and self-employment is

becoming more of a necessity than a privilege for many – whether as an
extra or even primary source of cashflow.
One day, self-sufficiency will simply be the norm for many of us, and we’ll
have to rely on ourselves for our financial survival. Just look at how the
government is pushing everything from healthcare to retirement into
consumer-driven systems like HSAs and 401Ks. If you don’t take care of
your business, there is nobody else who will!
You are – like so many out there – looking for answers: a way out of an
unfulfilling job, insufficient income, lack of time, poor health, or maybe all
of the above.
The good news is that there are plenty of answers for those willing to get out
there and look for them.
This little book barely scratches the surface of the topics discussed, and I
encourage you to delve into the works I’ve quoted and mentioned
throughout.

I maintain a list of recommended reading on my personal website at
www.WorkForNobody.com. Bookmark it as a reference, if you’d like.
Nobody ever became independently wealthy by following a guidebook or a

certain magical scheme. But there are informational sources you can tap into
and systems you can utilize to create your own path to success. The thing is
this: if anyone were to come right out and tell you exactly what to do, you
would be lost when your business required the next evolutionary step.
You need to be able to grow and evolve as a person if you expect your
business to do the same.
If the conditions that make your business work today will change tomorrow,
what are you going to do? Seek out the next guru? Or will you take action?
Nobody is going to take you by the hand, but there are plenty of us out there
willing to show the way. In the assignment for chapter 5, I showed you one
way – by visiting www.EasyBizSetup.com. I give would-be entrepreneurs a
glimpse of my business plan, so don’t tell me you still have nowhere to start.
Once you get the ball rolling all you need now is a winning attitude,
determination, and patience to allow things to come to fruition. It all comes
down to what you’re willing to do.
Think of an apple seed that requires a lot of work and attention for the first
years before you end up with a mature tree that produces apples. One day the
tree’s roots go deep enough that it needs very little attention from you to
flourish. You can stop working so hard, and its fruits can be enjoyed for
many decades to come.
Sure, it’s easier to work for someone else and trade the limited resource of
time for apples than to grow your own tree, and that’s why there are more
employees than employers in the world today.
Just remember that the easy road gets harder, and that the hard road gets
easier. Which are you going to choose?
Only if your context is ready to grow beyond the “tell me what to do”
employee mindset will you achieve financial freedom. Hopefully, I was in
some way helpful to get you closer to that point.
My final advice:
Decide what you want. Be very specific.
Determine what you need to become to attain it. Believe you can.
Decide on a course of action. Be afraid.
Then, face your fears and do it anyway!
Are you ready?

Disclaimer and terms of use agreement
The author and publisher of this Work for Nobody book and any
accompanying materials have used their best efforts in preparing Work for
Nobody. The author and publisher make no representation or warranties with
respect to the accuracy, applicability, fitness, or completeness of the contents
of this Work for Nobody book. The information contained herein is strictly
for educational purposes. Therefore, if you wish to apply ideas contained in
this Work for Nobody book or our website, you are taking full responsibility
for your actions.
Every effort has been made to accurately represent this product and its
potential. Even though this industry is one of the few where one can write
their own check in terms of earnings, there is no guarantee that you will earn
any money using the techniques and ideas in these materials.


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Work for Nobody

Start working on yourself,

First Edition Copyright © 2009 by Tiemen Staal

Printed in the U.S.A.

Copyright © 2009, All Rights Reserved. Tiemen E. Staal 3

"Work for Nobody, provides a psychological blueprint that includes tried

-- Chad Buckland, Author and Mastery University Counselor

"Tiemen is a rare type of entrepreneur in that he understands that success in

Fernando Ceballos, Co-founder of Attraction Marketing Formula

"Tiemen's insight into the mind of success is phenomenal. In such a short

Scott VanHoogstraat, Financial Advisor & Social Connector

Copyright © 2009, All Rights Reserved. Tiemen E. Staal 4

-- Jovan Will, Global Rich Dad Trainer

Copyright © 2009, All Rights Reserved. Tiemen E. Staal 5

Table of Contents Page #

1. Begin with the end in mind 17

Copyright © 2009, All Rights Reserved. Tiemen E. Staal 6

Admittedly star-struck, I sat at the Rich Dad Company boardroom table

Despite my initial unease, I felt very privileged to be in that boardroom. I

So shouldn’t I teach other people how to do the same? Of course I should!

That’s where this book comes in.

Copyright © 2009, All Rights Reserved. Tiemen E. Staal 7

There is no college with a real entrepreneurial program to speak of. It’s a

Copyright © 2009, All Rights Reserved. Tiemen E. Staal 8

So, let’s face it. The honeymoon is over.

Copyright © 2009, All Rights Reserved. Tiemen E. Staal 9

Instead, you have to decide that this moment is perfect.

Success, which is frequently mistaken for luck, is where preparation meets

Copyright © 2009, All Rights Reserved. Tiemen E. Staal 10

Are you purposefully moving toward your life’s objectives?

Are you satisfied with everything and everyone in your life?

What would you like to bring into your life?

The successful entrepreneur is an individual who dares to ask the tough

It’s a race of endurance, but the payoff can be incredible.

Copyright © 2009, All Rights Reserved. Tiemen E. Staal 12

No, I’m offering a glimpse of a new version of you – more empowered,

Many people think they are entrepreneurs by virtue of doing something on

Content vs. context

Copyright © 2009, All Rights Reserved. Tiemen E. Staal 13

First of all, I’m not going to cover many “how to’s.”

Copyright © 2009, All Rights Reserved. Tiemen E. Staal 14

With this in mind, I have deliberately written this material in a

Becoming an entrepreneur requires so much more than any school or college

Seriously folks, these people skipped some important steps in self-

Let’s get started.

Copyright © 2009, All Rights Reserved. Tiemen E. Staal 16

Begin with the end in mind - My story

Not too long ago, I found myself in a stereotypical corporate job at JP

Although I had my suspicions, I didn’t fully realize the potential of owning

Soon, my wife’s hobby was bringing in more money than my corporate

Within a matter of months, we became a recognized retailer of luxury

Once our eBay business became a successfully working retail machine, I

Copyright © 2009, All Rights Reserved. Tiemen E. Staal 17

I was a tad skeptical, but I figured it would be easy to promote a product we

Finding people able and willing to do so was not as easy as I anticipated.

A $37 investment in a book called Magnetic Sponsoring changed my

It made sense to me.

Copyright © 2009, All Rights Reserved. Tiemen E. Staal 18

Sadly, my stint in the world of MLM caused me to do something I had

So, what happened next?

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We employ a highly automated all-online marketing system called

Personally, I’m in the best place imaginable. I found a way to fuse my