MY NOTE TAKING NERD“Giving You The Edge”

What My Note Taking Nerd Learned FromEben Pagan’s Get Altitude Training

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My Note Taking Nerd EBEN PAGAN – GET ALTITUDE TRAINING

DVD 1

THE BUSINESS SUCCESS SYSTEM

You + Your Market + Your Marketing + Your People + Your Systems

Speed of Implementation (Time between you hear something and put it into action) = Key to Success

Most business problems = root problem = not being able to understand the perspective of another human being and behaving through that - "see through"

Put all your focus on the other person, Find out what they want and then create it and ask "do you want this" vs. 'selling', Let THEM (not you) be the smart one and be the important one, Create the idea and emotionally detach from it and judge it on its own merit in the marketplace vs. emotionally invest in your idea, reinvest/compound interest/long-term vs. spend/consume now/short term, Focus on one thing to completion vs. multitask, Do one thing way better than 'well' and have people do the other stuff vs. Do everything well, Let the opportunities go by and don't get distracted vs. grabbing all opportunities.

Look for the thing that is not obvious - that is counter intuitive BE COUNTER INTUITIVE

GETTING ALTITUDE = getting out of your perspective. "Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. “Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen." - Leonardo da Vinci

VALUE =’S PROFIT - Like Warren Buffetts Investment Style...By getting the Value and fundamentals CORRECT, it will reflect in the 'money'. The Value and the fundamentals are in the underlying structures and conditions, and the money is just one way of monetizing the value.

BE SMART enough to know you're getting lucky' - be open to 'discovery' versus just planning and creation of how it 'should' go...be open to discovery

ARE YOU Preventing success? Emotional estimation (i.e. in hiring = costly, - ARE YOU HIRING BECAUSE YOU LIKE THE PERSON OR BECAUSE THEY ARE RIGHT FOR THE JOB? This is emotional estimation versus logically thinking something thru.

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AS BUSINESS OWNERS WE TEND TO ONLY BE Seeing/Seeking validation (I.E. only seeing where we're right)

HERE IS THE KEY TOSUCCESS! Data Driven Decisions BY; TESTING, MODEL THE RESULTS, AND PROJECT

If you get the target market right and products/services you sell to them marketing almost takes care of itself.

If you get the right people - they will drive the systems

That leaves YOU to drive the Marketing and People

Get the Market and People right, test the hell out of everything and then scale what works.

Remove friction and blocks Create conditions and structures. CONSTANTLY BE LOOKING FOR AREAS OF FRICTIOIN IN YOUR BUSINESS AND OPTIMIZE THEM.

"The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product/service fits him and sell itself" - Peter Drucker

Customer avatar - when you really understand your customer you can create things that really speak to your customer

Create a customer avatar - Create a business avatar -and then create a dialog/conversation between them with a timeline between when they meet and you script it out. THIS IS CRITICAL. YOUR CUSTOMER AVATAR SHOULD HAVE A NAME, DEMOGRAPHIC, AND YOU SHOULD LIST EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT THEM.

You have to feel what your customer is feeling to communicate with them so they actually feel 'wow, someone gets where I'm coming from'...the first place you should go is 'use case thinking' ("if I was this person, this is how I would feel")

Something magic happens when a person feels UNDERSTOOD - when a person really feels understood they have the emotional suspension of disbelief. (i.e. using SPIN selling - situation, problem, implications, payoff)

"What would make my prospect feel understood?"

You only talk to the KEY qualities OF YOUR AVATAR/CUSTOMER, and not talk to the rest or else you will lose 60% of the audience...connect vs. disconnect...and when you create your customer avatar it's a construct in your mind that everything you do in your business (every time creating a product, service, marketing, communication, anytime putting anything out into the world) you run the simulator and talk to your avatar and you're seeing if it's a connect with all of those conditions/similarities. By doing this and talking to the avatar whenever you're writing or creating a product, it resonates with everyone 80% of the time...and when you're starting to do this ask:

"What is my customers biggest fear or frustration right now?" "What is your customer embarrassed to admit even to themselves?" "What's the conversation going on in their head?" - irrational

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...to grow your business you need to increase the number of customers but you can lose track that each customer is an individual and wants to connect with another individual - not a business - and in order to communicate powerfully and directly with the masses you must first figure out what all of your customers have in common so you can use this as a customer template for 1:1 dialogues and communication.

...until you can feel the gut level reactions your customer is feeling so you can talk to those EXPERIENCES and communicate it with all the body language involved etc ("have you ever lost your cat? didn't it suck?" vs. "I remember when our cat fluffy ran away and my daughter was looking around the house etc.")

Don't just create a product/service - create a category ***

2 Top Sales Abilities:

1. Ability to qualify the buyer better (qualify)

2. Ability to build trust faster (build trust)

CREATE YOUR CUSTOMER AVATAR:WHAT DO THEY LOOK LIKE? WHAT ARE THERE BIGGEST FEARS? WHAT ARE THEY SAYING TO THEMSELVES RIGHT NOW? WHAT IS THERE NAME? ECT..

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DVD 2

Avatar - it's okay to narrow (you can have several avatars)

Business Friend = customer...if you were their friend/trusted advisor, what would you say etc. how would you act?

How people make friends unconsciously and emotionally:

1. attention2. connection (i.e. "you like marketing, I like marketing! You like xyz, I like xyz"...a connect)3. commitment (this is someone I want a relationship with)4. Action

THE CUSTOMER WANTS YOU TO PAY ATTENTION TO THEM, AND CONNECT WITH THEM, AND COMMIT TO THEM, AND DEMONSTRATE THAT COMMITMENT WITH ACTION - broken business processes have pieces of this process absent. Broadcast the spirit of what you communicate with "I'm going to pay attention to you, I want to connect with you, and I'm going to make a commitment to help you get the result you're looking for - delivering you from the pain to the pleasure you want"

WE LIVE IN THE attention economy, connection economy, and commitment economy rolled into one.

Value IS The emotional drive that you feel when you want deliverance from pain into pleasure is a form of currency. You need to translate this 'result/benefit' that the customer wants into a currency you can use. The common denominator form of currency is 'money'...so how much 'money' would it be worth to have the deliverance from pain - whatever it ends up being? (i.e. freedom from hip pain) And you're looking for where the lines cross and it becomes a no brainer...then - how can you translate that currency into real world terms? How do you describe their pain in a way that lets them know you understand it and it is something you can trade them money for relief for? You need to create a bridge between these 2 different worlds.

"How can you create an alternate currency with the pain and urgency or the irrational passion that your prospect is experiencing that you can then talk about in real terms as if it were real?"

***"What is the currency of your customers?"***

When dealing with this currency, some forms of marketing work well:

1. education2. communicate in a way that allows the prospect to feel like their making discoveries, let them just a little ahead of you so they have the discovery

**** Give away $100 to a million people and then ask for $10 in return

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Ultimate marketing is often allowing your prospective customers to experience your product/service - what can you give away to your prospects as a sample/starter that is easy to distribute is mass quantities but carries massive value?

What are the most valuable silver bullet techniques you're ever discovered? That if you try it, it works every time and you ought to charge a million dollars for it. Write down your magic bullet ideas and techniques...How could you offer a sample, consultation, free analysis and how could you deliver these at a low cost to masses of quality prospects? Take these best idea/technique and put it in something educational on your website (report, audio, video etc.)

Results = the power of virtual team, you don't see all the activity, you just see the RESULT...star players are results oriented

Stars that fit archetypal personality types - creatives (creative and design work), business persons (admin and business person), deal makers (deals)... "FROM HOW TO WHO"

Seeing only validation and emotional estimation problems("employees suck" = you suck at hiring them, "I hate my team" = you seeking all the things you hate about a team and picking up on that, "I like this person" = hiring costly, Hiring cause you want to help them = bad, Hiring someone because they're like you = bad, Seeing only the good in people instead of seeing they're fucking up the business = bad...)

Stars screw up --> they already feel bad, so ask "what's the lesson you learned? Good, better now then when we're 5 times the size"...you could say "how could you screw up you idiot?" but then they become not caring about screwing up cause they see you as a jackass boss bastard and you deserve it. Treat your stars with respect, low drama. When stars screw up, you support them because they grow your business.

You need 4 people in business:

customers - star customers team members - star team members partners / other business you work with and have a

relationship with / vendors Mentors / advisors - star mentors

...instead of wanting to screw you, having star customers and so forth makes your life easy since you both want to help each other.

Star customers team members and partners and mentors have a totally different outlook on life and paradigm...it's the difference between Cause and Effect. C is greater than E. Stars are separated from the rest of the world in one way because:

- they see themselves at CAUSE, they see themselves as CAUSES happening, I effect the world vs. non stars see themselves at EFFECT/victims/powerless/they can't make things happen...and you can hear and see it in the way they communicate

If Someone’s Entrepreneurial will probably end up leaving your company, so watch for that.

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Some People: - believe they can change themselves and their circumstances... - driven to evolve, develop, learn... they have emotional and social intelligence...

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_intelligence

- want to create and contribute to others and to something bigger than themselves...- are comfortable with who they are and are authentic...- are optimistic...- live in a friendly, abundant, opportunity filled universe...

You can change people - but it's a horrible ROI - don't try and change them... you need to be honest and find another role for them...

...the mistakes are thinking everyone’s the same or everyone’s different, but youought to start with INTRINSICALLY motivated people and not focusing on how to extrinsically motivate people through HR methods - because it's hard enough running a business and figuring out how to trade customers value for money, let alone starting out from behind the gate trying to extrinsically motivate your staff. You made an upstream hiring mistake if that's the case.

KEY THOUGHTS:

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DVD 3

Knowledge work is defined by RESULTS, and you need stars who can turn knowledge into results

Since C players are seen as bottlenecks by A players and don't mesh with A players, you ought to just hire A players

When you keep adding stars - it has like a ring networked effect - and they start communicating with each other and filling in each others strengths and weaknesses and connecting with each other multiplying the effects on your company exponentially.

o (Myspace management guys knew each other for 8 years before starting myspace)

Qualities of a Star - key traits to look for when recruiting stars for your team:

1. Driver2. Being highly networked3. being emotionally and socially intelligent4. having millionaire next door sensibilities5. having passion and aspirations6. having strong personal passion about business7. In addition to these, identify any other traits and qualifications needed for the specific role you're considering

Qualities of a star: (continued)

1. driverPassive DriverAggressiveReactive

| ---------------- | --------------- |

Reactive Zone Proactive Zone

Passive Aggressive Reactives need to be extrinsically motivated and forced into doing what they need to do and are RESISTENT about it (passive aggressive)

It seems 80% of people in business are Reactive

Whereas 20% of people in business are Proactive asking "what can I do next?" - YOU want people so proactive that you need to say "really, go take a break" A Driver takes a sense of personal responsibility for things

Also instead of 'effort, time, work' they have a sense for RESULTS, Drivers intuitively get that the RESULT is the thing and when you put those 2 abstract things together 'personal responsibility + result' you get 'owning the result' and you can feel it. When you interact with someone you'll know quickly whether they're a driver or not......get daily updates from people when they start, watch how they communicate and interact with you......and if someone within the first 30 days hasn't proven to you they're a driver you probably made a bad choice and should suck it up say 'thank you' and get on with the next thing...

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...you need someone who finishes things up and shows back up and says 'okay what's next?', takes personal responsibility for delivering the result...VERY important

1. Personal and professional aspirations - ask "where do you want to be 1, 3 and 5 years?", you don't want to hear "$60K first year, $75K second year" etc...you want to hear "Year 1 - know enough to manage my own team, so in 3 years I could start my own company, and then at 5 years be at $100 million", now that's slightly more 'type E' (entrepreneurial person) - but THAT'S YOUR GUY/GAL! Someone that sees how the steps they're taking fit strategically in their future. And they talk about skills they want to get, things they want to learn, people they want to interact with. STARS = LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN MONEY CAUSE THEY THINK LONG TERM

2. Social/Emotional Intelligence - it's not important for all roles, but if you're growing a successful company they're probably going to have to interact with other people vs. be introverted and it may not be a problem now, but will manifest later on

3. 'Millionaire next door' sensibilities - if they behave flashy with their money, how will they behave with your money? If they think short term, how will they behave in your company? The whole Thomas Stanely deal, so if someone’s flashy, be careful. And don't discount people who aren't the coolest people when you meet them - see what the work looks like.

"Good interviewer does not mean good work"

"I work with people I like, admire and trust" – Warren Buffet

Ask people what they're not good at:"What aren't you good at? What are your weaknesses?"Then listen. If they say shit like "too perfectionist" - DANGER! "you mean you don't screw up?" "no" this is a warning.

WORK WITH PEOPLE THAT LOVE BUSINESS (not money -they love BUSINESS) - they see business as a fun game to play, work with other great people, get results, evolve etc.

So ask:"What do you like about business?" will tell you a lot.You don't want the 'steady job' guy - you want the ones who like figuring out all the models and paradigms and love business etc.

Fill out General Traits and then Specific TraitsYou may take general traits Eben uses for their star profile and you might add more (i.e. on of your traits might be - 'they have to be super outgoing and friendly' since everything about your business is that and will always be that so they must be social that...or maybe you're hiring specific technical traits that are musts, so write those down so you explicitly state them...)...and make yourself a star profile using mistakes you've made in the past, musts etc.

AND ONLY HIRE STARS THAT HAVE THESE STAR PROFILE TRAITS

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"HIRE PEOPLE THAT NEED TO BE LED - NOT PEOPLE THAT NEED TO BE MANAGED" …..The implication being hire people that can manage themselves

To manage get the team members sending you daily updates -tell them:"Take 5 minutes, send me a daily update everyday with 3 things”:

1. what you did that day and results you got2. problems or challenges3. questions you have for me"- and keep your pulse on things by reading these each day and you quickly start to learn who someone is when you see consistent information coming in by them.

Track all the important numbers in your business on a visual chart everyday.

Chart all the numbers everyday. Chart at LEAST 5 numbers everyday (i.e. incoming leads, conversion rates, average sale price, total sales, deposits, expenses, etc.)

You ought to be able to walk into a computer terminal and see all this stuff, and if you can't you should probably make your business so you can.

The visual display of quantitative information is key.

DAILY MEETINGS to keep important projects on track

Go over on the phone quickly everyday what you're all trying to do.

Every day at assigned time get on the phone, what are we trying to do, what we're up to...basically: quick - where's everyone at, connect (what are we all trying to do), boom we're off.

You get together not for meetings and decisions etc. - but to COORDINATE. What does Co-Ordinate mean?

"Life is a process of constantly re-orienting oneself in a world of total uncertainty" -Nieczhe

So when you "coordinate" you figure out where the other persons at/their location in relation to yours and you become more efficient...when you work with stars "I'm almost done this" so you're like "okay, 2-3 days you'll be done so I need to do this" = broadband communication. The more communication inside your business the better. And something else is when you meet daily after each person shares what they have to share you do 'okay, here's my top 3 priorities' because now you know where everyone is at.

"What are your top 3 priorities?

Thinking In Systems:

When things become complex and you can't keep everything going on in your business in your head and it looks like a cockpit of a 747...you need a way to bring it back to a steering wheel and gear shift again so you can drive again instead of figuring out how the whole thing operates - and systems thinking is useful for this.

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What is system thinking?

Looking at a group of interacting parts/entities/stuff all interacting together and instead of looking at the individual pieces you look at what emerges when they interact. Looking at what's produced by the whole system.

It's the difference between:"Maybe we should tweak this little thing, and this little thing and that thing" vs."If we pour money into the top - what comes out the bottom of the system?" --> and look at it this way to start. Most people don't think about the whole system.

95% of the results you get in the business are cause of the system, not the people.

Important pieces of a system:

1. Physical variation - when there's variation it's because of the system you created in one way or the other, not because of the people. So you track your key metrics on a graph so you can see your variations and run a moving average through it. (in excel just right click "add moving average") And when you do a moving average for 7-15 days you can go 'oh, it is a stable process and it's not as wild and crazy as it looks'...so you have to smooth physical variation because it always happens in any real world system.

2. Short term and Long term results are often very different - when you start thinking short and long term results you start looking further upstream for things.

3. In a system you never do just one thing - a lot of times something screwed up somewhere and you want to tweak that one thing to fix it, and we forget to say 'okay everyone, watch for other effects to come cause I changed part of the system', so you tweak your website so it runs smoother but all the sudden your refunds go up by 20% and you never connect the two because you weren't looking for it and you don't realize all these things are connected.

4. All systemic changes have side effects somewhere you didn't anticipate - whenever you change anything let as many people know as possible (i.e. 'i'm going to change what our marketing says" - over at customer service - "tell me what the customers are saying cause i'm going to change the marketing" - over in sales - "how are the numbers looking once we change this thing"...) so everyones on the same page - why? cause if you have a disconnect and miss the side effect it can hurt your business

5. Systemic results are often counter intuitive

6. Stable systems become hard to change - especially with people (as people are complex systems) (i.e. once you train someone wrong, it's hard to change) A persons CHARACTER is a stable system meaning hard to change. (i.e. you get a guy that cheats on the golf course don't be surprised if they cheat on your business (jack welch firing cheating golfer)...someones takes short cuts, that's what they'll do...you find someone super pessimistic and conservative that's probably just what they're going to do)

Overall...First, don't let variation freak you out - chart it visually. If you have a great sales

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day today, relax, cause you may get zero tomorrow. Don't let your emotions go wild.

Secondly, expect side effects and expect short term results to be different from long term results. When you have a big win, that's when you need to tell your team to be most careful not to get cocky as you may miss danger coming. (Old lady who lived to tell about Titanic cause she sold her ticket for it when she read the newspaper headline "the ship that even god couldn't sink")

Plan how you're going to tweak a system and planning how it's going to perform once you tweak it...No. You want to Test the system/hook it up, run it, see how it responds, THEN SAY 'Now I think I understand how this is going to respond' - remember, Test Model Project.

(These things come back to Seeing only Validation and Emotional Estimation) You're probably missing the boat if you think things that don't work are bad luck, and your successes are because of you.

a. Constancy of Purpose - figuring out those elements that are your core/strategic elements+b. Never ending Improvement - how to do that stuff above more efficiently, faster, better, more streamlined, more profitably

**Having both prevents you from changing things you shouldn't be changing or doing things the way you've always done them with everything.So it's key to identify what are the things you never want to change and what are the things you want to constantly improve on a neverending basis.

Southwest Airlines will probably always be low cost airline strategy.But they'll probably always improve the customer experience while they're getting that low cost airfare.

IF YOU DON'TKNOW WHAT YOUR CONSTANT PURPOSE IS AND WHAT THE NEVERENDING IMPROVEMENTS ARE - YOUR STARS WILL CONSTANTLY BE MOVING STUFF AROUND CHANGING WHAT YOU DIDN'T WANT CHANGED, KEEPING THE SAME WHAT YOU DIDN'T WANT THE SAME...so you got to know what those are internally as a business.

Incentives - test them, see what happens, tread lightly, BE CAREFUL WITH INCENTIVES because there's never been a system to take people without intrinsic motivation and quickly turns people into intrinsically motivated people...but you can kill intrinsic motivation fast. Remember: Advertising can unsell people. Suing people isn't only upside. You need to consider the downside...which is...

IF YOU OFFER INCENTIVES FOR INTRINSIC MOTIVATION, IT CHANGES IT

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INSIDE OF US. If you get people doing a great job cause they love to do it and you start offering $100 for every project they complete - YOU *MIGHT* BE KILLING THEIR INTRINSIC MOTIVATION BY ADDING THE TREAT AT THE END.KEY: ***When you just incentivize you'll never know if they'd have done it on their own???***

Once someone gets something it's their’s forever - that's the human mentality. So maybe stay away from incentivization because the first type of behaviour it creates is: "how do I work/game the system to get what I want?"

RESCOURCE! UNDERSTANDING VARIATION: The Key to Managing Chaos - DONALD WHEELER http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Variation-Key-Managing-Chaos/dp/0945320353

**A lot of times the people motivated by incentives are the smooth talkers, thus they promise more (sales) than operations can deliver etc. You may prefer to find stars where that's just not how they operate, and they just know in the long run if they perform they'll get the value.

Tips for system creation:

1. hook the whole thing up, all the pieces and run it and see how it performs - THEN make guesses about what it will do in the future

2. Track results over time visually - show them to everyone, don't delude yourself or your team over high results

3. Proactively look for unintended consequences - expect them when you run new things "what are some things that came up?" etc. ... people don't want to be punished for finding problems in the business, so make the finders of problems on your team WINNERS! People hide their mistakes and then try and fix it, and as the person who screwed it up and now is trying to fix it they're probably making it worse. DRIVE OUT FEAR - get rid of that fear that you'll punish if something goes wrong.

4. When you want to change the result work on the system NOT THE SYMPTOM - work on systems not symptoms

5. Focus on what's working, strength, what's positive and develop and grow that - if you try and do one thing and all the sudden another thing takes off and is successful, FOLLOW THE SUCCESS and forget the weakness

6. Look for bottlenecks/constraints - they can be key to unlocking a lot of growth, every system has a place where it gets squeezed down and has a little constraint, so look for those and seek them out

Two ways of "planning" things:

Planning and sticking to the plan when things aren't working and then blaming the plan (control) (usually this is done with big business as they want to know how much sales will be years in advance so they can allocate resources and prepare budgets - and then plan is blamed when things aren't met) vs. A. Where do we want to go, B. what would have to be true and work to get there, and C. Test something as fast as you can.

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Try to get some results from a test so you can then model and project

Set minimal conditions on your first system (why? so you can see how the people will behave, and how the system will behave, and what it will do all by itself vs. trying to control every aspect of something brand new you haven't done before and being too stuck in trying to plan all your success and not seeing what the results are), running system, watching results...then refining after getting data (and integrating planning and discovery together)

SO...with all the people in the future who will want to plan with you "how much money will we make here? etc" (successful people too)...say "we'll test and if the results are between here and here then we got a winner" YOU'VE GOT TO TEST IT...only in projections does the line always go up...

THAT GOES FOR EVERYTHING! New marketing campaign? Don't overspend on layout and design and placement etc...spend $200 and see if anyone calls. If no one calls don't blow the thing up cause if things don't work small they probably won't work big.

Path of Least Resistance - i.e. campus without walk ways and simply watched where students walked NATURALLY and THEN laid out the walkways once the paths had created themselves. So they put the important conditions in place, ran the system, saw what happened, then said 'okay this isthe way things would naturally run'.

So put the important conditions in place, set it up, then stand back, and see what happens and how the people behave.

New people on a team:

"Okay here's something to work on, here's someone you can talk to, and just let me know how it's going". You get to see how people really behave in that situation even if it's frustrating. People who have always had things laid out often can't function in a fast growth entrepreneurial environment and they don't know what to do and shut down. But others thrive. Give folks leeway and see how they perform.

Have multiple teams running where you're not at the center.

Hiring people with corporate training as they've been trained by the best.

PERSONAL PRODUCTIVITY

The problem in business is not figuring out how to take advantage of all the opportunity, the problem is - in the face of all this massive opportunity - figuring out how to narrow your focus.

How do you pay attention to fewer more important things while more and more are coming at you?

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The appearance of opportunity distracts and hurts entrepreneurs more than problems.

***Get your team together once a week or whatever for a 'team training call' and teach something you've learned that can make your team members life better...and focus the material on the personal life of other individuals - in other words, focus on making the persona life of people on your team better and care about their personal lives and insist they have great personal lives so they enjoy what they're doing inside the business so we all succeed together (and you tell them this)...this will in turn create a bond between you and the group that is powerful...it's win/win/win because you're not being weird about it and you're just being honest...

The 'zone' / 'flow' - total engagement or involvement, enjoyment, and feeling of contribution or creation...Optimal Experience...getting completely engrossed in something...IF YOU CAN TEACH YOUR TEAM HOW TO GET INSIDE THIS STATE WITH THEIR WORK, IT CAN BE POWERFUL

'Flow' increasers:

1. Don't let people do things they don't like to do

2. Don't let/make people do/keep doing things they're bad at

3. FOCUS PEOPLE AND ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO STAY IN PLACES THEY'RE STRONG AT AND TO DO IT ALOT - if you're concerned about people working from their strengths/talents and constantly nudging people in that way it equals more fulfilment and productive and your whole business could operate this way...and your business starts to have a talent/strength

Friction and problems in business happen automatically just like weeds grow automatically in a garden...if you want to grow a beautiful garden, THAT is what you have to pay attention to (plant, water, pull out weeds). You got to tend the garden. In other words, you need to improve your ability to enter that 'flow' state or you'll be pulled into other states continually and cycle AWAY from this one.

What prevents this 'flow' state?:

multitasking (is inefficient alot of times) (shifting gears in your brain takes a while), being interrupt driven, electronic OCD, addiction to struggle, focusing on loss/what the other person is getting etc.

THE THING IS - HOW MUCH IS IT COSTING YOU TO HAVE TO CONSTANTLY SHIFT GEARS BACK AND FORTH? Compounding over time, it's insane.

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DVD 4

The more personal something is, often the more universal Friction = anything in your business or life that slows you down, that catches, that snags and makes things not work smoothly. Look for friction.

"Streamline" PROACTIVELY as much as possible to remove friction, simplify,and create systems that run without snags

Friction removers: Most people would rather solve problems than set goals...so

instead of setting goals to remove friction 'what's the goal?'...sit down with everyone and instead ask 'what are some of the problems we need to solve now?' w/ current projects etc Start with this. And see what your team comes up with. And it's not negative when they come up with things cause they're trying to fix things and make it better.

This pre-empts problems and fulfils THEIR NEEDS FIRST.

Talk about what you're thinking regarding the future, share your thinking process...if you figure out the whole thing in your head and say 'go do this' it doesn't empower people cause they weren't involved and wasn't their idea. So instead you say 'I got this idea, I got a brainstorm and I'd like to get your advice and see if there are any problems with it and what you think...' and then take them through the process of how you figured this idea out, how and where you got the idea from, what triggered it, what data you used to make the decision, the whole decision making process and back story and case and how you arrived at the decision and then how if we do these 4 steps you think we can get to that...WHAT DO YOU THINK?' You lay your whole reasoning, thinking, modelling - what do you think of that? ASK THEM IN THAT WAY! It shows you trust them and you're being open and you're not controlling...

"Long term optimist - short term pessimist"

Every new idea will probably not work, most will not work - so just simply test new ideas But long term optimism can be useful when 'you're smart enough to know you're getting lucky' and you take it and run with it...and the things that are working - those are the ticket and will most likely keep working...because overall you're always growing Cut your losses, ride your winners

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"MONEY MAKING"

TO STAY TUNED TO THE HIGHEST PRIORITY, HIGHEST VALUE TASKS, FOLLOW THE THINGS THAT ARE

"MONEY MAKING"

...and 'money making' are the things usually on the outside of your business that actually get the money to come in, and typically there are very few of them...and the thing that makes the money is the customer doing something and interacts (typically) with some system you've set up...it's not a function of what happens inside the business.

The fallacy is the employee saying "Those guys have no idea what they're doing, I make all the money here for the company, I do all the work". So you have 2 parts like a disconnected pyramid...

...and the purpose of "the business" is to support, protect, nurture, optimize the money making stuff. So the money making is kind of outside the business itself. IT'S THE STUFF THAT INTERACTS WITH THE CUSTOMERS AND GETS THE CUSTOMER TO TAKE OUT THE MONEY, WHICH ARE USUALLY SYSTEMS THAT HAVE BEEN DEVELOPED PREVIOUSLY.

**** I.e. The inbound telemarketer working for your company with a script and customers call in and they upsell them and close the sale...THEY TRULY BELIEVE THEY ARE THE 'MONEY MAKING'. The 'money making' is actually the ad you've been testing for 5 years to get the calls coming in...the fact that you got an office set up, with a phone line coming in, and the person there with a script in front of them, and the product in the warehouse, and the upsell system, and the fulfilment, and you've got a profit model, and a bunch of people managing the business...

THE WAY THE MONEY IS MADE IS TOTALLY DIFFERENT FROM ALL THAT! There's a huge disconnect there.

You need to figure out what your money making activities are, and separate that little pile of things that are really the money making things, and THEN YOU

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FOCUS YOUR ENERGY ON THE MONEY MAKING STUFF and delegate all the rest of the stuff and try to get everyone else to focus on "the business" stuff ...and then you can become more efficient, effective and productive.

The most important factor when making an investment ... OPPORTUNITY COST. In other words "what else could I have been doing with that money?"

Guess what? It's the same question for your time, energy, effort, team...it's not all about "if I make this investment what can I get back?" it's about "what are the other 7 things that I can't do because I'm going to do this 1?"

I.e. Warren Buffett has bunch of companies they own and partial investments...and if new investment comes along the first question is "well, instead, should we just buy more of a company we already own?" NOT "how good of an investment opportunity is this?" but rather "is it better than all the ones we have, or should we just buy some more of this one cause we already made the choice over here"

Opportunity Cost is not the usual entrepreneurial way of thinking.

PRODUCTIVITY PYRAMID --> To become more effective you must identify and become conscious of the activities and time investments you're making throughout your days, and then focus on the highest value activities. This pyramid helps you identify and focus on spending your time doing your highest value activities

1. HIGH LIFETIME VALUE (building relationships, learning, creating systems, supporting health, development);

2. High dollar per HOUSE (activities that 'ring the cash register' and bring in sales...kind of real time - you do em you make some money, you do em you make some money);

3. Low dollar per house (aka the $10/hour stuff, busywork, admin, errands, shopping, repetitive tasks);

4. Zero or Negative Value (worry, idle chatter, distracting others, most 'news')

As a leader one of your jobs is protecting your Stars from their "achilles' heels" that they can't see.

We often can't see our own 'achilles' heels' but some are:

1. spreading yourself too thin

2. starting new projects constantly

3. controlling and micro managing (projects and details we should delegate) STOP DOING THESE THINGS, AND HAVE FOCUSED BLOCKS OF TIME TO FOCUS ON THE MONEY MAKING.

Also understand 'money making' stuff can change and become money making

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over time or become high lifetime value later on. These exercises are just to get you focused.

Continuity = if everything stops tomorrow, those subscribers are still there with recurring revenue...a recurring revenue model that's a significant part of your business (i.e. Eben lowered the product prices since it got more people on continuity)

Get a recurring revenue model if it makes sense - PLUS it allows you to communicate with your customers and include more marketing every time you deliver the product.

CREATE AND DOMINATE A NICHE MARKET:

IT'S BETTER TO BE FIRST (INTO THE MIND) THAN IT IS TO BE BETTER --> they're not talking about the product, they're talking about human brains. "ours is better" is usually the deal in business...but is the best thing always the best seller? NOT TYPICALLY. Pepsi challenge vs. Coke. Coke always wins but not in taste tests. It's a matter of perception. That's the way product marketing works.

THE FIRST THING IN OUR MIND IS OUR FRAME OF REFERENCE AND WHAT WE COMPARE EVERYTHING ELSE TO. If you're the first one in everyone is playing catch up to you, otherwise you have a long road ahead. Create and dominate a niche market. #1 is a great place to be, try and stay there.

Proctor and Gamble and GE use

this strategy.

HOW TO BE FIRST INTO THE MIND:

Think about your prospects and think about what their needs are...and to LOOK FOR PROSPECTS WHO ARE LOOKING FOR YOU...instead of 'i'm going to create something and sell it, hopefully they want it, and put it in front of them and they'll see it'...instead ASK --> "WHAT ARE PEOPLE LOOKING FOR THAT THEY AREN'T FINDING?" and there's ALWAYS something. When follow THOSE opportunities you're bypassing lots of obstacles that most people don't bypass. TAKE THE FUCKING SHORTCUT RIGHT TO THE MONEY vs. convincing and communicating etc. There's ALWAYS a niche opportunity out there.

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Now, when you look for prospects that are looking for you AND you create your own category. And if competitors steal it they stop communicating with prospects looking for that solution. This is often a great way to approach marketing - is to create your market and then dominate it and create it around prospects who are looking for your solutions and not people you have to talk into wanting something.

The 4 question test when creating a market/niche/product/service:

1. IS THERE PAIN AND URGENCY OR IRRATIONAL PASSION? (In other words, is there strong emotion involved);

2. IS THE PROSPECT PROACTIVELY SEARCHING FOR SOLUTIONS (Is it to the point where the prospect is looking to solve their problem);

3. FROM THE PROSPECTS PERSPECTIVE, ARE THERE FEW OR NO PERCIEVED OPTIONS? ("There's already someone making a product like that" is not an excuse...there can be a lot of people making products like the one you want to make, but if the prospects don't know about it it's as if they don't exist);

4. IS THERE A POTENTIAL FOR LONG TERM RELATIONSHIP POTENTIAL (Why? Cause profits from second sales are much higher than one shot sales...2-3-5-years etc with continuity and backend...)

The majority of product/niche ideas don't even come close to 4 yes's, let alone 2 yes's.

(SIDE RANDOM NOTE: Schwartz 3 dimension of mass desire (mass desire = public spread of a private want) a. urgency, intensity, degree of demand to be satisfied b. staying power, degree of repetition, the inability to become satiated c. scope/number of people who share this desire)

The Essential Conflict:

Person offering product wants to appeal to as many people as possible cause then they'll see more and fear excluding anyone and losing a sale... ...but person BUYING the products wants to buy something designed SPECIFICALLY for their own need, from an expert, reasoning that the specialized product made by the specialist will be far more effective and reliable.

Core Issue from the prospects perspective:

Is this made for everyone, or made for ONE (them)?...so there's a level you need to focus on between everyone and one person

-----------------------Everyone| |One ...and finding that ideal sized target audience/niche and then creating the products for it - THAT'S WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT HERE

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The core issue is "was this product/service made for me?" cause it's more powerful for them to DISCOVER the advantage than you say 'hey I got this thing that will solve all your problems'

NARROW YOUR NICHE AND FOCUS...this helps you talk directly to and connect with your prospect. There is no way to overemphasis the power in the customer 'discovering this thing is just me'. The feeling of "*gasp* I found it! I discovered it!"

NAMING YOUR CATEGORY, PRODUCT OR COMPANY...phonological loop, when naming something use a. repetitive sounds (tend to stick in our culture - eminem, M&M, coca cola, dixie chicks, "junk in the trunk" would not have stuck if it was "stuff in the trunk", you snooze you loose, double your dating, Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Manson, bed bath and beyond, ozzy osbourne, blackbarry (everything that's a "palm pilot" (which was a brand) is now called a "blackbarry" - the same way people call everything that's a tissue a "kleenex")) b. add rhythm (David Deangelo) c. unconscious associations (ie. David in David DeAngelo...David was the little guy in the renouned story who beat the big guy (goliath))

"It's not about making a name that's easier to remember, it's about making a name that's impossible to forget"

Although you occasionally get the "Mrs. Fields Cookies" brand, more often than not you see brands with good naming become things that catch on, good phrases - cause how often does alliteration show up randomly in life?!...BUT THE POINT IS: BRANDS THAT ARE NAMED WELL TEND TO BE WORTH A LOT MORE! If Coca Cola was named "Freds Soda" we may not have heard of it. There are many examples that go against this (McDonalds?), but we want every advantage we can possibly have. So do things to make names more valuable and more memorable. There's probably something to Google and Coca Cola competing for most valuable brands in the world. They probably weren't named like that by accident.

HOT SEAT...

When evaluating anything you first go to (whether evaluating a website design etc): "What do I think if I'm a prospect?"

You can help more people if you have more resources and more profit. People know who you are and remember you MORE if you get them to the point of wanting to buy from you FAST, than if you don't.

Narrowing your focus: "The one person who resonates with your stuff the most or

person that has the one type of problem that just seems to resonate and you hear it all the time is...???" -->

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is...RESULT they get from you the ones who succeed when they come for money advice = they quadruple their money in a year...then your headline ought to say "the simple system I discovered that helped me go from broke to making $123,000...and the next year making $248,000...and the next year...and the next year...and I'd like to share it with you right now for free"

Problem --> "I don't teach how to make money" Solution --> "Guess what? THAT'S WHAT THEY WANT

JACKASS!" People don't want permission to make more money...They

want to make the damn money!

WHEN YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT GETTING THE RESULT THE OTHER PERSON WANTS, then you got their attention. It's like calling Deangelos dating programs "More self esteem to succeed" and no one would have bought it. Double. Your. Dating. THAT'S. WHAT. THEY WANT! Talk THEIR language. Even if it sounds hokey like "double your income" that SPEAKS THEIR LANGUAGE! FROM THEIR PARADIGM. Then you give em a magic bullet to see the result (i.e. Sexual Tension - women get chemistry, men don't, so next time your paying for something and there's a cute woman behind the counter, offer the money to them to pay, but pull it back when she grabs it, and then she'll laugh - and you'll have done something called 'create chemistry' and you'll notice the instant results)

...So the 'break' guy might create a niche category called 'making more money through leveraging your financial mastermind' (and then you'd have to name it etc.), so you'll say "I have this new process no one else knows how to do and if you learn it you can double your income in 12 months, and I called it "leveraging your financial mastermind" - here's the thing, you have a financial mastermind and you don't even know it and it is being wasted right now. Someone has given you apiece of advice in your life that has helped you make more money...think of that person right now...write thier name down - do it now...step 2, make a commitment to yourself to pick up the phone within the next 24 hours and call that person and say 'I'm just a conference but I was thinking about you, alot of success minded people, and we were talking about money and I wanted to acknowledge this idea you gave me that helped make me money..."

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...CAN YOU SEE A CATEGORY/NICHE STARTING HERE?

You give your reader INSTANT GRATIFICATION so they can see results - why? Because if they follow the advice, and get a good result...YOU. HAVE. NOW. BECOME. THEIR. GURU. You've done the impossible and helped them through the computer screen and given real time results in the moment. ************** Narrow the niche...not help EVERYONE with xyz (i.e. permission)...but help the biggest group of people that have a proactive need with that one thing that's the result you help them get. (i.e. we narrowed it down to people who want to make more money - and we narrowed it down to double, triple, quadruple your income - and then give one of your techniques that helps do that, refine it, then give that away so they can get the instant result - and then 'what if you became the personal financial leverage mastermind guy' (needs more work with that category and naming that niche) - and you will have created a category / a whole concept you'd have created / a whole industry with set of books, tapes, whatever - and what it helps you do is 'you buy this thing and then you leverage all of your own assets, YOU DO IT' - and it sounds compelling to someone in debt who tries the thing and goes 'wow this guy must really know his stuff'...and you become known as the guy who "helps people take a few simple steps with the resources they already have and double and triple and quadruple your income every year" that's the kind of thing that gets you on Radio shows and TV)

SO REALLY THINK ABOUT YOUR CUSTOMER AVATAR AND WHAT THEY WANT AND WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY NEED...and then create a niche/category (and you can use your regular stuff but AFTER what they need) and then strip it down man and get it down to that instant gratification technique, say 'try this' give it away and make sure they try it and see that it works, show them the 10 stories of other people, and then add in the whole friends/experts who are your friends or whatever...THAT will make a person say 'wow, here's a guy who's really here to help me and someone I want to build a relationship with'

"...the success of a brand usually is due to its being first in the market rather than the marketing abilities of the company. The power of the company comes from the power of its brand, not the other way around."

"...Second-place companies often are late because they have chosen to spend valuable time improving their product before launching it. According to Ries and Trout, it is better to be first and establish leadership."

"...If a product is not going to be first, it then must find an unoccupied position in which it can be first. At a time when larger cars were popular, Volkswagen introduced the Beetle with the slogan "Think small." Volkswagen was not the first small car, but they were the first to claim that position in the mind of the consumer."

"...It most likely is a mistake to build a brand by trying to appeal to everyone.

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There are too many brands that already have claimed a position and have become entrenched leaders in their positions. A product that seeks to be everything to everyone will end up being nothing to everyone."

"...In the past, before there was a wide range of brands available, a company could name a product just about anything. These days, however, it is necessary to have a memorable name that conjures up images that help to position the product."

"...The concept of positioning applies to products in the broadest sense. Services, tourist destinations, countries, and even careers can benefit from a well-developed positioning strategy that focuses on a niche that is unoccupied in the mind of the consumer or decision-maker."

WHAT ARE SOME KEY IDEAS YOU’VE COME UP WITH?

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DVD 5

1. What are your prospective niches? What are the segments within your market? What are the groups that appeal to your 'stuff'? (i.e. people having money problems - good big group, people having relationship problems etc.)

2. What are your prospect's key focus areas of pain or passion, or key reasons why they're buying your product or service? (What's the main reasons they're buying?)

3. What is the prospect looking for but doesn't perceive is available? (Few or no options) (Can be a point of uniqueness, difference, point for you to stand out)

4. Niches or Tests (possible niches to test way you might create your own niche category)

YOUR 5 MARKETING MODELS

"Profit in business comes from repeat customers" - Demmings

Question to ask is:

POWER QUESTION! "How can I start building relationships with companies that can stabilize and make our lead flow more predictable?"

Write down 3 ideas, if you were your one of your target customers, what would (on a scale from 0-100) be a magic bullet 100 idea? SO ASK YOURSELF: "What technique could I create that would get close to 100 from the customers perspective in terms of ideas?" Comes back to looking through the customers' eyes.

Don't think of your website as something that markets you - but rather something that mirrors the customer and what they want and need.

5 parts to the Marketing Model: (Leads-Conversion-Upsell-Backend-Continuity)

1. Generating leads - prospective customers coming in that may be interested in buying your product

2. Conversion - once they're in

3. Up Sell - good idea to offer something else at the point of purchase when the credit card is already out

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4. Backend - follow up, remarket, sell them more stuff

5. Continuity - recurring, subscription, autoship etc....and think of each of the 5 areas as a business in and of themselves that you can track and hold accountable for results.

Referral Selling --> People are always seeking approval and bonding, so give them stories to tell. (it has to make sense to your customer), so the story has to be compelling/good reason why UPFRONT of why you need referrals from them to do business with them and asking as a condition of doing business...secondly, getting them to refer actively, and the question is: why would someone tell their friend a story about their experience with your business/you? We call people up and tell them stories BECAUSE WE'RE SEEKING ATTENTION AND APPROVAL FROM OTHERS. We're telling storiesto get attention, love, approval, status, friendship - that's why we do it underneath it all...SO WHAT TYPE OF STORIES SHOULD YOU GIVE YOUR CUSTOMERS TO TELL? Stories their friends will think are cool! So give them a story they'd want to tell their friends about! You think like this, you'll do things differently. So instead of just 'can you give me some referrals' - give the customer what THEY need - and what they need is a cool story to tell their friends.

You need simple formulas to measure everything in your business: (EXAMPLES)

1. Leads -

a. CPL (how much it costs to get one in)

b. CPSubscriber (how much it costs to get a

subscriber to one of DYD newsletters or other lead funnels)

c. Conversion of visitor to free newsletter subscriber (good indicator of quality for DYD - even though not buying anything - the higher conversion-tosubscriber, the higher quality of leads)

2. Conversion -

a. % convert to purchase

b. sales-on-spend (i.e. spent $100, how many did we get back in sales on the front end - it's a consistent metric for DYD 'we spend $100, we get $100 back, thus 100% sales-on-spend...it's like ROI but allows to see the immediate result...sales-on-spend doesn't take into account cost of goods, production costs, refunds etc so you have to factor that in)

c. cash-on-cash (i.e. spent $100 in cash on day 1, on day 30 got back $50 in cash, day 60 $100 in cash, day 90 gotten back $150 etc. whatever that looks like...and you chart the cash-on-cash profile over time and you see where the lines cross)

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3. Upsell -

a. Increased ticket price - how much more does someone buy after checkout

b. continuity monthly interviews take-rate

4. Backend –

(here dyd employs the cash-on-cash profiles etc 'how long does it take, if spend $100, to get the $100 back and over time where does that go - so you'll have 2 lines intersect at some point in excel to see the timeframe) a. Cash-on-Cash employment (see above)

6. Continuity - a. length of the continuity - how long people say and what the increase value is and increase LTV based on that amount of time they stick

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BECOMING PROACTIVE ABOUT FINDING STARS:

Interview process as a relationship building process. Get to know them over time and if at all possible see a little of their work. BUILD A FRIENDSHIP OVER TIME THAT MIGHT TURN INTO A BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP...and over time shoot some emails back and forth and watch how they respond to get a feel for how they are. Changes your paradigm and allows you to start building a virtual bench.

So in essence, you meet someone, recognize they're a star and just say "hey you know, let's talk, I might have a need for someone like you in the future or maybe we can work together on a project or maybe I can help you on something" and you start a dialogue. Just shooting a dozen emails over a couple months teaches you something about a person -i.e. how quickly they respond, how thoughtful they are with their answers, etc.

During the process you can say "hey, we've run into a situation here, what would you do if you were in this situation?" Get a little advice or insight from them.

STOP THINKING OF IT AS AN INTERVIEW, AND START THINKING OF IT AS BUILDING A RELATIONSHIP THAT AT SOME POINT MIGHT TURN INTO A WORK RELATIONSHIP...

Have people you trust that are different from you interview your candidate. Let's say you have a developer tech friend, an entrepreneur friend, a creative designer friend, and another friends who's super detail oriented nuts and bolds structured logical person. Now, you may know all these people but they're not on your team. And you say "hey, will you do me a favour and talk to this person I'm thinking of hiring and just let me know what you think of them?" and when you're getting to know this potential Star you say "we don't have a big team so I can't introduce you to a bunch of people to interview but I have a group of friends I really trust and I'd love if

You meet them and talk to them and get to know them a bit"...POINT? DIFFERENT PEOPLE WILL SEE THINGS YOU CAN'T SEE. SOhave people different from you interview the candidate - people you know like and trust but are very different. If you have a big team, have the candidate interview with several very different people. People from different depts etc. -then get the group together to talk about the person and bounce ideas off about what you heard i.e. "oh they made excuses for their failures with everyone? interesting" or "oh now I see where that part fit into the puzzle" "As I grow older I pay less attention to what men say, I just watch what they do" -

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Andrew Carnegie

**** Try to disconnect what you hear people saying from what you see them doing

**** And try to disconnect how much you like the, from how valuable their results are

SEE THINGS OBJECTIVELY

Profit is number 1 because if you don't have your nose above the water (since it's oxygen) you cease to have the ability to exist - which is not 'worshipping money'.

LEARN TO MARKET TO WOMEN CONSIDERING THAT WILL BE A HUGE SEGMENT OF THE MARKET?! Hello. Only half the population?

When seeking stars - a possible rule of thumb:

***"ONE DEVELOPED TALENT IS WORTH 10 AVERAGE SKILLS"*** When you work with people that have developed their talent into a strength - taken what they're naturally good at and gotten coaching - it makes a huge impact. People, typically, who are okay in a lot of stuff are not really that good at anything, just okay...so when you're making your wish list, you might not find it ALL in one person (i.e. you might want 20 traits, and you'll find 10 in one type of person, but if you find the other ones in them watch out since they probably will be pretty bad at them)...when you're building your business, if you want mega horsepower, find someone who is incredibly good at that one thing you need and then fill in the gaps around them and almost don't even worry about them too much.

When you're looking for someone for a particular role "okay, what's that core thing we're looking for" and try and match just one talent or one strength or one thing they're really really good at to that. And if they got that one thing, you figure the rest out. If they're a superstar, you support them.Usually takes 2-6 months for someone to start being profitable in an org considering the cost of hiring, time, education, training, etc...so tell them you don't expect results in the first couple months, but rather to get to know the team and work with them on an underhand toss project and just orient themselves and LEARN...the first few months? LEARNING. Here's a list of 10 people to contact etc etc.

- Mistake: Imitating "people practices" of big companies (i.e. org. chart = subtly unleashing a process inside the humans you have)...so just ask: "Is there a real reason I need that?" or else you can get into serious drama trouble

- Mistake: giving status and power to someone who hasn't earned it over time

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(the long term implications are just...really strange i.e. you might just give someone the title director of operations and then someone from corporate environment comes and sees them as director of operations and says 'well, then I should be VP of Finance', and next thing you know your business takes off with all these weird titles and you realize they're all wrong and you interact with big companies who have VP of Finance that would eat your VP of finance for lunch and you realize you'll look like an idiot if you introduce the 2 people...IN BIG COMPANIES THESE TITLES REALLY DO MEAN SOMETHING

and when you say 'i'm going to give my front desk girl customer service manager' - just be careful ...don't give status and power to people who haven't earned it) DYD at most have teams and team leaders and team leaders need to be agreed upon by the team that believes they've earned it.

- "Osmosis Hiring Process" - getting into the relationship more slowly and maturely and thus retention is VERY high and rarely loose anyone. You're not hiring a robot or machine to do a job for you and give them money for a result, you're hiring a human and they're someone you want to become a long term asset for your business and if they're a star they're probably going to like this process because they're going to want to know you better because they're thinking about their future (i.e. people in the altitude room actually at the seminar to meet the team and see what they do and talk to the customers etc) it's a relationship!

- Underhand Toss Project (i.e. get the business cards printed for your company), new person starts you say "I tell you what, you drive this project, get the business cards printed - you own it, here's what you got to do, go get all the contact info and get the designer to give you the art and they'll send you to accounting to get the money and you got to do everything - it's simple, you can't screw it up" ...and then... leave them alone. Let them go. JUST SEE HOW THEY BEHAVE. The worst thing you can do?

Put someone on a project and micro manage and show them how to do it right. Helping them. Give them space, let them run, and if they don't produce, just say you made a bad call and it probably isn't going to work out and do it in the first 30 days early.

- Always ask what people think about other people on the team. "How do you like working with this person? And that person?" Do the same thing with new people and do it over and over and over. "What do you think fo them? What does everyone else think of em?" You can learn a lot by asking your team members "what does everyone else think of this team member?"

- -If someone doesn't fit the culture of your business, that can make it not worth it to have them since it demotivates the rest of your team members. And if you're not listening for that..."Hey what do you think of this person's performance? How do you like working with him? What does everyone else think?"...you won't even notice it cause people just won't come to you saying "I don't like they're style/fit", you'll never hear it. If you can mesh it fine, but good to know since not knowing is the worst.

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THE ENVIRONMENT STARS WILL BE WORKING WITHIN IS CRITICAL: Not the corner office, we mean here the working environment/the culture."How do you get a few thousand young, intelligent, talented, millionaires to hang out and work all the time?" YOU BETTER MAKE A COOL PLACE TO HANG OUT AND WORK! (Google!?)

You don't need a kitchen and shit, but It's all about the vibe. Instead of 'you guys do the work and I'm going home', it's all about being there with your Stars and living the example you want them to be or they'll resent it. If you want to be completely removed from your business, fine BUT STAY THE HELL OUT OF IT and get some great people that want to run it that way run it that love doing it. Don't be a bad example. Create a good environment.

VOCABULARY creates culture, the words you use to describe things (dyd eliminating the words 'employee, boss, assistant, mandate, command'...but dyd vocab includes 'team, team member'...and the phrasing of 'no matter how much you make you are professional and throwing your weight around like that is not something we do, and you should be treated like a professional at what you do no matter if you make x, y or z')...with vocabulary you're trying to eliminate words, concepts and ideas that imply "Granted Status" or "Granted Power". If you ever hear someone justify their position with their rank, status, title etc...beware. Cause that's not a good reason. A good reason is "I did the analysis and the ROI isn't there, so let's not do it"...not "I'm the CEO and I'm telling you let's not do it". If you got good thinkers continually showing up with ROI analysis saying "let's make this decision" and it's a good decision, and they continually make good decisions, and you should continue going back to that person...and they should earn that responsibility by proving that they know what they're talking about! Not cause they're good 'politicians'.

Virtual Team, you take the good with the bad, you lose the physical connection etc but you gain 'just results' type mindset and also high value people often talk half the money just to work somewhere where they don't have to get up and go work in an office etc.

HOW DO YOU PAY PEOPLE?

What they're worth. Take ROI and apply it. Do the math.Someone says they want $100K and you do the math and they're not worth it,don't pay it to them. If they want $100K and they're worth $1,000,000 to you, then okay.

YOUR JOB IS TO FIGURE OUT WHAT YOUR ROI IS! A star likes being in a place where they can create their own future and results - not where you peg them in at $74K - they want when they perform they share in the upside. HOW MUCH SHOULD YOU PAY YOURSELF?

It's like, "how big should you grow your business?" That's what you need to figure out, do the math.

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CREATING YOUR VIRTUAL BENCH

Brad Smart – Topgrading

"Indepth work history / Tandem topgrading interview" - one person asks questions, the other takes notes so you focus concentration...and topgrading interviews go 2-4 hours and you're looking for PATTERNS that the person you're interviewing doesn't even know exist. You go through their entire work history and every job they'll have left was for the same reason i.e. blaming company for screwing them - but you'll hear that cause you're listening for patterns. VERY important.

Through the osmosis process - often takes 3-6 months to hire someone and theindepth work history/tandem interview is used before hire.

Significant players are risks you have to take whereas customer service can betaught in a couple days up and running and productive fairly quickly. So you need to do the math for "if we found a good person for this particular role, what would the ROI be for us, and how much am I willing to risk (for example) $12K for the probably of (for example) a 50% probability of earning an extra $50K/mo."IT ALL COMES BACK TO WHAT'S THE ROI. WHAT'S THE ROI. It's abusiness remember.

CREATING YOUR VIRTUAL BENCH

If things go well in your business, what are 3 upcoming roles you'll need... and go deeper than 'web designer' into the one strength that you'd need I.e. HTML wizard that can just do anything with HTML or a super talented Graphic Designer...cause designing the HTML is different than Graphic Design in Photoshop or whatever.

You CAN find both in a person...but "what's the one thing you really really need them to be good at, and if they're great at that, and they're a driver, then they'll figure out how to get all the other stuff done?"

So write down 3 of those, then right down the names of 3 people you can contact to get some referrals to those people. You call them up and say "I've decided if the business keeps growing at the rate it's growing we'll probably need a very talented web graphic designer, I see it happening in 6-9 months, that's my guess...DO YOU KNOW THAT IS JUST AN AMAZING WEB GRAPHIC DESIGNER THAT I COULD MEET AND TALK TO, GET TO KNOW A LITTLE BIT, GET SOME ADVICE, MAYBE THEY KNOW SOMEONE THEY COULD INTRODUCE ME TO?" And start the process, start reaching out and connecting with people.

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Rule of thumb?

Spend 10% of your time doing this/connecting with people that could be good future team members, building relationships with stars. So, start building your virtual bench right now.

So 3 roles you can see needed...1 developed talent/strength...3 people to contract to introduce you to those folks.

VITAL STATS DASH

Create your own where you see the company in one shot.

Business Instrument Rated = fly in conditions where you can't see outside thecockpit.

Flying by the instruments and trusting them. That what you're seeing on the dash is in fact what is really happening. So you need to learn what the instruments are telling you and when certain instruments fail knowing how you'll be able to check the accuracy and tell what the airplane is doing based on the lack of the other instruments. Also knowing how to control your air speed and altitude is important and navigate using everything in the airplane and outside the airplane.

"Data are most valuable at their point of origin. The value of the data is directlyrelated to their timliness." - Lawrence Miller

"When you have mastered the numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books. You will be

reading meanings." - Harold Greene

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DVD 6

Vital Stats Dash

START ONE IN MICROSOFT EXCEL - start with a simple one (i.e. Cash balance, daily deposits, net cash, daily expenses...)

There are only a few key places you make and spend money in business "What are the main ways we make money?" (i.e. simply if you have 3 products, make a chart of how many of those products you're selling a day) "What are the main ways we spend money?" (i.e. 5 main expense categories? How much money you spend on people, marketing, lose the refunds, bad debts,technology...whatever those big categories are and make yourself a little chart and track the numbers)

The vital stats dash is the heartbeat of your business - you want to be very familiar with it.

You're looking for trends and then drilling down into the trends

Measure every campaign for ROI and connect every spend with its return. - Measure all the dollars you spend (whether on marketing, people etc) and track it back to the return. Like, counter intuitive for some people "how do you pay people?" well...you figure out how much it'd be worth to have them get a certain result and if they get it you say 'hey I made a good investment' if they don't get it you show up 'hey, we're not getting the return we need here so we have some choices...we can have you work on something else, pay you less, maybe help you find something else...etc.'

It's all about exchanging those values.

Not knowing your numbers could prevent you from scaling up and growing the businessFigure out what the metrics actually mean on the dashboard and get definitions together and make sure everyone on the team is on the same page. Make sure there's a connect. "What do you think this metrics means? Here's what I think it means"

Metrics:

SOS (sales on spend) - 2 variations of the SOS a. front end SOS (how much they buy on the first visit) b. back end SOS (how much they buy over time) COC (cash on cash) - since business is mostly done by credit card and takes time to get leads etc, that one is done in profile over time

Cancels and Refunds

Profit

Profitability

Net cash - current cash position if you settled everything that's happened over…

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the last couple of weeks and everything into the future, where do we really stand? has there anything that's been spent or committed that we don't really know about?

ALWAYS REMEMBER - YOU'RE LOOKING FOR TRENDS. There will be physical variation in any system...you're looking for the trend to be going one way or the other.

Track LTV of your customer. Remember - compounding the flips of money to reinvest can, over time, render BIG differences. So knowing once source brings LTV leads for $10 front end to $50 LTV and another front end source $5 CPL and LTV $14 is important toknow!

Three Levels of Instruments to Navigate with:

1. daily vital stats dashboard (3-10 daily metrics) (i.e. how much money are we spending every day, how much money is hitting the bank account every day, how many new leads are we getting, total sales volume, refunds and cancels...WHATEVER IS IMPORTANT TO YOUR BUSINESS)

2. Daily and weekly updates from team members (i.e. small team where you manage everything might be good for 5 minute daily update from everyone at the end of every day and maybe they have 1 or 2 charts they're responsible for daily and they drop the data and you see the data updates and you keep your finger on the pulse) REMEMBER - WHEN SOMETHING GETS TOO COMPLEX AND YOU NEED TO ROLL IT UP INTO ANOTHER CHART, HAVE ANOTHER PERSON MANAGE SOME OF THOSEOTHER DATA SOURCES SO THEY CAN LEARN THE LESSONS

3. Ultimately after those 2 above you need to do a more in-depth analysis and more in-depth projection - where every month or biweekly you have someone take all those charts and do an analysis of them and then you get the team together and go over them so you all see the business trends.

5 parts to DYD team:

1. Operations team (29 people)

2. IS automation team/technology team (10 people...developers and IT folks, people that work on their technology, and email deliverability)

3. Content team (farmer and colleen and another 10 people...anything released that is printed, content, products, that sort of thing)

4. Marketing team (5 people...responsible for the internal marketing after a lead comes in and they are in the door and in our system -selling our products to

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them...they help structure the offers and send out the email newsletters andpromotions and all that kind of stuff)

5. Subscriber acquisition team (10 people...external lead gen team...call on companies, do partnerships, do ppc, manage affiliates etc.)

You have to think like a customer. Think like the other person. See through their eyes. Experience it through their world. And develop it for them. And then they'll give you what you need.

PRODUCT CURRICULUM:

What if each new product could be its own new niche or category? (it's defensible stronghold because if you compete with the product itself you're competing with the category, and if you compete with the bigger picture you have all these niche categories...high barrier to entry...and you can use this strategy with your lead gen etc.)

"What are the biggest needs the customer is looking for? What are their biggest challenges?" - i.e. starting conversations is terrifying, meeting someone of the opposite sex and not having time to do it so they experiment with the internet, inner game self esteem self confidence issues, AND A PRODUCT WAS CREATED FOR EACH OF THESE!

ALL WERE BASED AROUND THE NEED THE CUSTOMER HAD/WHAT THEY WERE TRYING TO DO. And made a product that talked right to that needs. Linked all the products together = curriculum. Creating categories based on sub-niched products, linking them together for strategic advantage, competitive advantage etc.

The Path of Self Advantage = "what could I say so my prospect would see it as being to their advantage to take advantage of this opportunity?", "How do I get them to see it as a self advantage?" Instead of 'how do carrot and stick someone?' (extrinsic motivation), it's 'how do I get someone to carrot and stick themselves?' (intrinsic motivation) "How do I create a psychological situation where the person says 'wow this si really something I should do' rather than someone saying 'I should really do what they’re telling

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"How can you set up conditions and structures so your prospect will say 'this will be to my advantage', and once they use it and learn it and implement your product (drive the car, use the golf club etc.) and they have the experience of 'this is great!' and then you say "want some more advantages?"' and they say 'there's more?! Yes I do want some more advantages'...

..."what if you had a product line evolved to a product curriculum that you presented and instead of "I want you to buy this and this" you say "I have figured out the steps for someone who (is just getting started in golf) to (quickly break 100 typically in 30 day (note: it usually takes a golfer a year)) and from then on (take 2 strokes off your game every quarter for x months) and you could (go into the PGA if you wanted)...now not everyone will be interested in this, and you may only be interested in hitting the ball a little further, putting...BUT let me just show you some tricks from some of my advanced things and you decide later..."

Notice the communication of the above. It allows the prospect to discover a whole secret road that goes to a lot of destinations they want to go to.

So, create a path of self advantages.

Create a curriculum of at least 3 products to start, more down the road. 2 is like '1 and buy this other thing', but 3 is like 'intro', 'take to next level', 'advanced'.

Next - script the path or dialog is necessary. Draw it on a timeline. and how long will it be before they need product A, then B then C? It might not be an amount of time, but rather steps they go through. "You'll get my $47 product and within 15 days you'll have dramatic improvements in your game and by day 30 you'll realize you're much better than you thought and by day 30-60 you'll be having so much fun you'll notice you may want to step up tot he next level...and then that next process may take 45 days and you'll want to go to the next level - and then there are 5 different aspects of the golf game and surprisingly a few are physiological so I got 3 different products that help you putt better, tell jokes on the course better, and blah blah" - then open it up a bit.

The more you see your customers world, the more you pick up on little distinctions you may have never noticed before. Remember, the more personal, the more universal.

The 'aha' of 'wow, everyone has this fear, this fantasy, this little insecurity, this thing they want to get done - and I can make an entire product around that' (i.e. the spouts to pour laundry detergent and PandG surveyor watching middle American home housewives)

If you can find that universal personal irrational driving thing and you can hit that nail on the head with great marketing and maybe with a great product - stop

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thinking that's all they'll buy - and start thinking 'if I can have that amazing home run hit at the beginning, I'll get this big flood of customers and then I can sell them all these other things they might need'

It's a great way to still capture the whole market, not leave anyone out by using the curriculum - and a lot of times you can use different product curriculums as the on ramp when you partner for example (using the'online dating' program as the lead gen on ramp/different front ends)

So when creating a product curriculum, you get into the customers mind and ask:"What would I like my experience to be?"……and you write out the whole customer experience.

"Oh man I got beat at the golf course again, and my buddies are gonna really hassle me cause I dropped the golf club etc." --> what kind of experience would that person want to have when they sit down at the computer or open up their golf mag. ...WHAT KIND OF EXPERIENCE WOULD THEY WANT TO HAVE IN ORDER TO BE INTRODUCED TO YOUR PRODUCTS?

SCRIPT it out like (YOU PLAN THE EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE YOU WANT YOUR AUDIENCE TO HAVE - flow chart the emotional experience)...

USE EDUCATION TO TAKE YOUR CUSTOMERS THRU A PROCESS!!

So the 1,2,3 of the first AD (wich may be delivered by google adwords or postcard ro whatever) they see 1,2,3 is the emotional experience 1 st, 2nd, 3rd that the AD stirs in the prospect. (i.e. 'oh this thing will help me improve my game...OH here's tips right here, I've never seen anything like this before - (and if you were a customer you'd want to be reading it and not know it's an "ad" cause I wouldn't want to read an "ad" - from a customers perspective they want EDUCATION upfront - they don't want to be sold something, they want to be educated, told something etc.) Then second experience would be some kind of (R)ESPONSE...then maybe (E)DUCATION...then next step may be them actually (C)onverting/buying something...then next experience would be sure to offer more stuff after buying..UPSELL

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At first you want some education that everything you've been taught and everything you're doing is wrong, and then you might want to reach out and connect (ATTENTION, CONNECTION, COMMITTMENT, ACTION)...so done the right way, the EDUCATION has the customer feels paid attention to, and then as they are moving up the chain - as they're 'converting' so to speak/connecting with you - they can feel connected with...so if you were a customer, what would you want if you were to reach out and connect with a business/what would you want your experience to be? You'd want the feeling that you'd connected with another person or group of people who were interested in the same things you were interested in - that had the same passion for things you had a passion about that had the same experiences you had...we're flipping back and forth between the "ad" and Response but do you see what's going on here?

We're thinking about it from the customers perspective and although psychologically challenging, imaging what you want the experience to be. And once you've figured that 'customer experience' chain out...

The next step is to have the second set BELOW the customer experience called the "PROCESS"...and if the above is the experience, then each experience matches up with a correlated process that you need to do in order to deliver that experience, and then do that for each experience linking the processes of what you need to do as a business. It's a simple model but most business go 'what's the product we have and how can we sell it to the customer?' and instead of the prospect feeling 'this process is natural' it feels more like a square peg trying to fit in a round hole and this is something they are trying to sell me and I'm not interested in it. Whereas when you create the customer experience first and then you fit your process into the experience you want to create, it turns the whole telescope around again.

You get interesting distinctions when you think like a customer.

If you have a great experience with the process and the dealer of a car that you buy doesn't pressure you and something happens to the car - you don't blame the dealer,you obviously blame the car manufacturer. But what happens if the car salesman reams you and high pressure sells you and you buy the car and the exact same thing happens to the car - you blame that bastard dealer!

So this model not only helps you sell a ton more and have a lot more backend and upsell, but also prevents lawsuits, and jail etc!

PLANNING YOUR PRODUCT CURRICULUM:

Brainstorm the product ideas based on a specific need of a customer, something that could create its own category and then link to the next ones.

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DVD 7

TONY SCHWARTZ:

Building capacity to expend more with efficiency in replenishing what you have Physical energy (quantity of energy) - Nutrition (what do you eat, when do you eat it and how much of it do you eat), Fitness (speed of recovery/train recovery), Sleep, Rest and Renewal (daytime equivalent of sleep)

Emotional energy (quality of energy) - performing at your best, high in quantity/high in quality High Positive vs. High negative/Low negative Mental energy - in terms of CAPACITY = focus of attention (think in an absorbed way for a sustained period of time about one thing)

Spiritual energy - Energy derived from the experience that what you do really matters in your definition

4 sources of energy human being needs to operate at their best/4 needs that must be met for you to bring everything you have to the table:

Quantity, Quality, Focus, and PurposeDilemma? Either a. low in the tank on some of those or b. not regularly renewing some of those Will and Discipline - we don't have much of it

"The Unbearable Automaticity of Being" - most of what we do is habitual or due to external stimuli and we don't make many of our own choices due to lack of will and discipline

Great athlete uses Ritual - highly specific behaviour that becomes automatic over time, and done at a precise time in a highly specific way...something you do that serves you well but you don't have to think about doing because you practiced it so many times and done it over and over and over again and it shows up in your life at the appropriate time.

"We are what we repeatedly do"

Something is a ritual when you feel PULLED towards it, not pushed.

Human are designed to move between the expenditure of energy and renewal of energy...

Look for signs emotionally, mentally, physically that you need recovery...It's the quantity of recovery but rather QUALITY of recovery that matters. You need to train recovery.

Great Players and How They Use Recovery:

1. Player hits shot and turns away from net ("Let it go", "Day 1, We Lost,Next."...investing energy where it will make a difference, don't invest where it won't, have the wisdom to know the difference - ONCE A POINT IS OVER, IT'S OVER …DON’T SPEND ANY MORE ENERGY ON IT.

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2. Player switches their racket from the dominate hand to the non dominate hand (Recovery, let the muscles relax - if one player continually holds racket in dominate hand while other lets it relax in between play, who has more energy?)

3. When moving towards backcourt and fixing the strings in their racket THEY [AND OTHER ATHLETES] DON'T SPEND TIME THINKING IN A CONGNITIVE WAY - MOST THEY WOULD DO IS 'RELAX' OR 'RUSH NET' CAUSE THEY DON'T WANT THE COMPLEX BRAIN TO GET IN THE WAY OF THE BODIES GENIUS...But they fix the strings SO THEY DON'T LOOK AROUND AND LOSE FOCUS ON THE NARROW AGENDA THEY HAVE WHICH IS TO STAY CONCENTRATED ON SEEING THE BALL IN THE NEXT POINT...THEY WANT TO STAY 100% FOCUSED

4. Walk with the look of courage (shoulders back, head up, confident gaze forward...because how you hold your body influences how you feel) Recovery/Renewal drives performance….Fitness is the speed of recovery, fitter you are faster you recover

Train recovery - you want to train your body to deeply relax

"What is the activity tomorrow that I could do that would add the greatest value to what it is I'm after/to what it is I want to accomplish - what's the single activity that could add the greatest value?" --> and set a time first thing and set an end time and stick exactly to it so you don't screw up the rhythms...cause when you're working you want to be fully engaged. And when you're not working, you want to be fully disengaged.

And you don't want to live in the grey zone.

ENERGY QUADRANTS/ZONES:

---------------- +| | |

Low

Top Left - high performance/positive Bottom Left - recoveryTop right - High negative (survival zone, threat/danger, fight or flight - different

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Angry physiology - you move from reflective to reactive, intentional to automatic ...good for protection or waking up after alarm clock, but energy drain and poor investment of time for almost everything else...IT'S NOT WHETHER YOUR JUSTIFIED BEING 'ANGRY',

BUT WHETHER 'ANGER' SERVES YOU WELL!...if you practice losing your temper or multi-tasking all day - you become very good at anger and fractured focus but not good at absorbed focus)

It's even worse for entrepreneurs since they can be passionate and want to keep pushing and may be the only ones in their business doing everything...

The first piece of the puzzle is AWARENESS ('what are the consequences of the choices I'm currently making?' / 'If I'm not working out, is that acceptable to me? Is the story I'm telling myself about why I'm not doing it FACT and true? Or is it a story to make it okay?') (a lot of our lives are stories mistaken as fact) Second piece is ACTIONS

1. Carve your days into smaller pieces (become a sprinter vs. marathon) - 90 minute sprints, when you operate operating with highest efficiency and renew as effectively as you can...so again, "What is the activity tomorrow that I could do that would add the greatest value to what it is I'm after/to what it is I want to accomplish - what's the single activity that could add the greatest value?"

2. Respect and build a ritual around internet and recovery

3. Awareness exercise (asking 'where am I in the quadrant?' Cause if you're used to feeling defensive or upset, that's unnatural for performance)

a. What is it I'm feeling?b. Why am I feeling that way?c. What's the behaviour that follows?

Our mental model = "am I valued?" any evidence saying 'no' moves us into High negative mode/fight or flight...We need to look at JUST. THE. FACTS...but we as humans we're meaning making animals and facts are never sufficient for us we must tell stories to make sense of the facts. The problem? We tell stories and then mistake them for the facts! We tell those stories so fast that we think that we told ourselves is true. To begin to separate them - the most appropriate response is CURIOSITY. You don't know! You think you know. If you're simply curious, you don't know.

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ENTREPRENEURIAL MANAGEMENT AND ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADERSHIP

"The highest and best form of efficiency is the spontaneous cooperation of a free people"

Stars don't respond well to control and authoritarians ... it's friction to them. They don't want to be around that. When you find one of these people and say "Bottom line is I'm going to be paying you $100 and I need to get $300-$500 back, so you're going to be very valuable...I need YOU to tell ME what we need to do. I need YOU to take responsibility for things. YOU are the expert, I am not. And if something gets screwed up it was my responsibility." That's a very different mindset than most orgs.Free your team (see first quote)

Let everyone be free, and for THEM to take responsibility for what they do and if they create greatness for themselves you help facilitate that with resources, but if they don't drive their own greatness you don't force/coarce/coax them to do it and if they kind of drift out that's okay. Let the Stars rise to the top and give them everything we possibly can.

So, if you do your job and get the job done and find a star - they WILL perform, you'll have to hold them back. They will make it happen. And if you don't have a star, and they're not performing...that was YOUR fault. You are responsible for that.

If you have non-stars, you don't fix it - that's a bad model...you get stars. That's how you fix the problem. All these things we're talking about apply to stars. It's a different type of person and mentality. If this stuff isn't working for you, you probably a. didn't use it with a star/it isn't a star or b. you have them in a role where they can't be a star.

NOTES:

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DVD 8

Triune brain - reptilian brain the core that controls everything(fight or sex mechanism), intellect justifies and makes the stories etc. Intellect allows seeing through eyes of another etc.

Everything someone says implied slightly higher or lower social status Constantly asking: "where do I fit in the social hierarchy"

Systems have some form of organization, and people will tend to self organize - 2 or more people is a system and they will self organize automatically if you let them.

Most businesses try and impose organization on people/artificial status = drama If you find stars (not externally motivated/flashy/like rewards type people/image and recognition people)...but really those people that have those Star qualities...and you put them together after doing a good job selecting and choosing what you needed and you say: "What do we need to do here to get to this other place?"...They will leap into action, talk, work together...and they'll self organize by status BUT IN A HEALTHY WAY...and when you put a group of stars together and trust them and you've done everything right, you can change on the fly since it's a self organizing changing systems that knows what to do and can change on the fly.

So instead of imposing, you'll get a lot more out of your Stars by saying: "You tell me what we need to do, You plug into everyone else and organize, You know what job needs to get done, and You let me know if there's a problem..." and then you keep asking everyone: "what's going on? how do you like working with everyone else? how's it working for you?"...and you trust these people to know the right things to do.

SIDE NOTE IDEA FROM FELIX DENNIS'S BOOK: "So if you want to be rich and you are in the Search phase of your

life, then get used to one thing. You are not part of a team – although you may

have to pretend you are. To put it more politely, you may have to adopt the idea of teamwork, for the time being, to help yourself understand better how individuals, departments, companies and industries function. You should certainly do so enthusiastically and conscientiously. But in your secret heart, however hard you work (and if you want to be rich, working a damn sight harder than the punk next to you is the only sensible option), you must not be deceived.

Working for others is a reconnaissance expedition; a means and not an end in itself.

It is an apprenticeship and not a goal. ...Team spirit is for losers, financially speaking. It’s the glue that binds the loser

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together. It’s the methodology employers use to shackle useful employees to their desk without having to pay them too much. While lives may depend on it in a few professions, like soldiering or fire-fighting, in commerce it acts as a subtle handicap and a brake to ambitious individuals. Which, in a way, is what it’s designed to do.

Which leads to a note of caution. Those who can never be rich may not want you to become rich. Unless you realize and accept that you cannot be ‘one of the boys’, that your bosses and you are not ‘in this together’, that only those who refuse to be conned by the idea of ‘team spirit’ in the workplace can succeed –unless you come to fully comprehend and understand all this, then you will only make other people rich.

You will receive heartfelt thanks and maybe a gold watch when you retire. But you will not get the money!

... It’s a selfish world out there. But when you’ve piled up

your first few million in the bank, you can salve your conscience by giving generously or promoting young managers and waffling on about ‘team spirit’ in your own business. Not that the brightest of them will believe you for a moment (They’re the ones you promote fastest, by the way.")

And if someone screws up/pulls a power trip/does the wrong thing/doesn't assert themselves when they should/whatever...then you take them aside INDIVIDUALLY and say: "hey I think you could have gotten a lot more out of that interaction (from THEIR perspective) I think you could have gotten a lot more, I think there's a way you could have handled that that could have gotten you to the next level in your own career - and let me tell you what that was...you did this thing that seemed a littlepolitical and tried to be the cool one, and in this situation that other person is better than me or you at handling that and we both should have laid back - if you would have let them carry the ball you would have won more - and now that person unconsciously is probably thinking 'okay, I'm gonna do that to YOU next time a little' - and you started a little drama now you see? And that didn't serve you"

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AGAIN, YOU REALLY NEED TO TEACH AND AFFIRM TO YOUR TEAM 'OKAY HERE COMES A BRAINSTORM - HERE'S A PROJECT -I THINK IT WILL DO WELL FOR US - BUT DO ME A FAVOR, LISTEN, UNDERSTAND IT - THEN GO BACK AND DO AN ANALYSIS AND LET ME KNOW WHERE IT FITS INTO OUR PRIORITIES'

You need to actually reaffirm this and say this to your team so they GET you don't mean implementation or commands or trying to control the situation Talk to conflicts of interest bringing them up proactively: I.e. the soul of business transaction contains conflict (business wants to get the most money from a customer and give the least, and the customer wants to get everything the company has at the lowest price)There are conflicts in that in EVERY situation (employee to company in terms of pay, Two team members for an opportunity within a company)49/51 decisions - biggest factor to consider when making an investment? Opportunity cost = means 49/51. You got a good thing already over here and it's the devil you know so you already know what to expect. SO when you're talking to people on your team and managing them...LEADING them...talk to the conflicts that exist openly.

Conflict is NOT a problem, and a Problem IS NOT a conflict... you can put on the brake with problems and stop this. Conflict is wired into everything in life. Some people are conflict oriented - so talk to the conflict upfront. I.e. "Elephant meeting" on the team conference call might be 'we got altitude coming up in 3 weeks and we haven't got the art for the binders and we got 24 hours left and it's worrying me we don't have it yet' AND THE TEAM MEMBER SAYS THAT TO THE GROUP. And then they list the top 3 priorities. Then the next persons on the team speaks and says 'here's my elephant: saleshave been down 3 days in a row and we don't know if it's a trend or not'. THE POINT: Instead of the team hiding and shit and issues being suppressed, everyone knows where they stand and nothing is hidden that you don't know about. So you want to be able to share problems without getting upset or making excuses about them. "ANYONE THAT FINDS A PROBLEM IN OUR COMPANY IS A WINNER - either "I found a problem over here" or "I screwed something up"...YOU WIN WHEN YOU DO THAT." - so they don't try fixing and hiding it. Make sure you have the team know that it's a win and they have permission to spot problems.

Positive Politics = helping people get what they need in their role, supporting people, coaching people, Finding Other Stars...

For new hires you say "The most important thing you can do when you start out is build personal 1:1 relationships with the key people you're going to be working with in the future - that's it, it's the number 1 most important thing...build personal relationships with the people on our team you're going to be working with in the future", then give them the underhand toss project and make sure it sends them to those people and uses the resources, and you say "You should probably be talking to each of these people for an hour at least once a week for a few weeks, and what I want you to do is call them up and say 'hey teach me how your area of the business runs, show me your metrics, tell me your problems, how does what you do connect with the rest of the business?'"

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WHY DON'T YOU JUST EXPLAIN IT FOR THEM? Although these powerful people are used to the org chart and being told how the org works etc...this way, although it will fry their brain and they won't know how to deal with it and they're receving a paycheck etc and they don't feel productive...around the 6 month mark it'll make sense to them and they'll see how the whole org works and how each persons job connects and...THEY'LL OWN THAT! They'll own that and if someone leaves even for a little while, they could fill in for their role even for a little while competently and keep the business running! Cause they know each other and each others teams, that if they had to they could quarterback the team and say 'okay I'm going to mentor and guide and you guys need to tell me what to do etc.' SO THAT'S WHAT THAT RESULTS IN. The challenging part is the "I don't get this organization, it's so weird"...but once they own it it's VERY powerful.

And what they talk about is what their team does to support other teams (not what THEY do)...they're focused on supporting the business, a much more holistic integrated model.

So most important you can tell anyone to do is:

1. Build personal relationships with the people on the team2. Learn how our system works - learn how the levers work 'when you push this that etc.' and when building a relationship and as getting to know them 'teach me about what you do, show me your reports etc'

ENTITLEMENT = TITLETITLES = ENTITLEMENT

People cling to things that symbolic symbol give them special treatment and people use it for all it's worth. Be careful with titles unless you want entitlement.

How do you create corporate culture? Hogwash. The culture is whatever YOU are.

If you're stuffy and use your title and play power games, you'll attract that. If you're open minded and laid back and attract stars and let them be themselves and you grow and stand up and make sure the ship is moving and roll your sleeves up...then that's the kind of culture you create.

If you take a day off just to relax cause you need it -your team will. If you celebrate - they will.

AS FAR AS CULTURE IS CONCERNED - BE WHAT YOU WANT IT TO BE. IN NLP - "YOU GO FIRST" - IF YOU WANT SOMEONE IN AN EMOTIONAL STATE, YOU GO THERE FIRST AND THE OTHER PERSON WILL GO THERE. Don't make the person sad by telling the story, make em sad by becoming sad.

You got first, be what you want it to be - and if you have problems in your culture LOOK AT YOURSELF

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Be careful with what you do and how you behave cause that's what will happen.

Personality types: (oversimplified but as a reference)

Creatives - macro, see big picture, eloquent talkers, no real sense of time or priorities etc. - designers, sales people

Organizers - micro, structure things, details, step by stepand you can parse these down to sub groups...but the insight here is:YOU NEED ONE OF EACH ON ANY TEAM YOU START - a creative and an organizer - and then say 'go!'...there's a dynamic. Often when you don't see results happening, you may be missing one or the other. Too many creatives? Get a strong organizer in there immediately to start organizing.

**When starting a team = minimum 1 creative and 1 organizer.

And when you have 10:2 ratio either way or whatever, you side with the underdog and balance the equation when problems arise. BUT DON'T TRY AND TAKE SIDES IF YOU CAN HELP IT. You have to support diversity and see where things go when things happen.

Beware - Red Flags:

- Smooth Talker (aren't usually good doers) (don't emotionally estimate)...if you find one that does a good job, get an organizer to keep their eye on them - hourly advisors/consultants (as long as you know you're the one who will be doingall the implementing and executing and they won't be)

- Accountants/attorneys/professional services firms (be a bulldog with estimates and budgets...if they can't, you can't work with them...and if they say $5000 then say 'make sure you let me know if something comes up outside of that' REALLY GET THIS - patent/trademark attorneys...$27K is a lot to spend when you haven't sold anything yet. Period. Unless you've tested and know it's a blockbuster, it can be bad.)

- Sticky Person (smooth talkers...they talk smoothly and about a good endgame and results they'll produce, they come into your org. and immediately start building a political system and black boxes and creating a giant network thing they only know how to run and talking smoothly with everyone - and it's worse then you think cause they're plugged into everything) IF ANYONE IF YOUR ORG SENSES ANYTHING, MAKE SURE YOU KNOW EARLY.

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Scott Hallman:

Systematic Optimizing Profitability - FUNDS YOUR

GROWTH

Zero costs to implement these opportunities

1. New techniques2. Additional techniques (adding on to what you already do)3. Improving/Optimizing/Leveraging your success

1. Up-sells/Cross-sells (measuring + Timing/Getting them in 'Purchase state'/At commitment and payment and dividing a system (i.e. 'I saw you looking at xyz,

2. Offer (you need to do it and try it before your staff does)

3. Understand your marginal profitability (

"Purchase state" = psychological window that opens up for a second (happens at the ACTION stage after Attention, Connection, Commitment...they've gotten through everything and now have momentum and then is the time to ask! When the window is open for those few seconds)

Critical procedures should be written down step by step and to track, and you want to identify which drivers can have the greatest impact by making a small shift.

Until you have the metric systems in place, it's not

implemented. Track your key metrics.

How much does it cost to ask your next 10 customers an extra simple question? Do you want fries with tha

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Keep tweaking the questions/tests/ A B split test often/every day.(All the businesses that split tested something every day were $3-$25 million) Even without volume you can still test a new thing every day. Change positions of an upsell, change tonality on the phone, change words, change etc etc...IT'S SIMPLE! You don't know what will work, so test...move things earlier, later, before, after etc inthe process.

CONTACT YOUR CUSTOMERS AGAIN! HELLO!? SEND SOMETHING VALUE ADDED, BUILD A RELATIONSHIP - JUST BUILD A RELATIONSHIP. It's not expensive.

IF THERE'S TURNOVER - YOU GET CUSTOMER INFO AND FOLLOW UP BECAUSE OF THE LTV ON CUSTOMERS. Period. Found money.

NOTES:

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DVD 9

Scott Hallman CONTINUED:

Referrals...SYSTEMS (I.e. TELL THEM TO CALL TO OPEN THE DOOR FOR YOU and keep both clients informed of what's happening cause that will build trust and the relationship...)

Systematize what is working well and put measurements to it.

Just this whole systemization deal of what works in your business, if you get just one extra referral worth $5000/yr and they buy once a year for 6 years, that's an extra (5000 x 6) = $30K minus costs to the margin!

Expanding Purchase Patterns (it's like upsell/cross sell - you have a ton of options but you don't EDUCATE - IN A SYSTEMATIC WAY - on related products!? Segment prospects and follow up...)

DO THE PROFIT ANALYSIS IF YOU GET HIGHER CONVERSION RATE ON A PROCESS IN YOUR SYSTEM - AND IF IT MAKES SENSE, START TESTING! You can add so much margin through marketing, through conversion, offering more, combined, more often, educating, relationship, referral systems...etc. Just get some systems going so you're continually improving.

Ask: "WHAT ARE YOU ALREADY DOING WELL THAT WE CAN IMPROVE?"

Playing to your strengths. THAT is leveraging your success.

Your conversion on the net may be good - but you can improve it! But you can't improve it if you don't have it documented as procedures or if metrics/baselines aren't in place...but if you do, then you just make a shift in one of the components.

EXAMPLE: Bankruptcy Attorney (SECOND LARGEST BANKRUPTCY FIRM INTEXAS)

Here's what their procedure was and EACH PART IS A DRIVER! AND INCREASE ANY OF THE CONVERSIONS ON ANY OF THEM AND YOU INCREASE THE BOTTOM LIKE:

a. Ad is placed on TVb. They call a 1-800 numberc. 23% call the office

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d. 80% of them book an appointmente. 85% of those showf. 61 % would retain but wouldn't fileg. 73% of those fileh. etc etcall the way to how many paid...

...any one of these - change the 23% to 30% it's a HUGE difference.So they tracked and wrote down where the problems were (simple procedure) just taking the success procedure and writing 'step 1, step 2, step 3...' and you stare at it and question why you do some of the steps/why asking certain things/why abandon rate at checkout is 40%...so you do all these simple things to make a difference.

THIS IS ALL ABOUT DEMMINGS AND PROCESS IMPROVEMENT AND APPLYING IT TO ALL AREAS OF YOUR BUSINESS/'SYSTEM'

1. YOU MUST CREATE A BASELINE / TRACK IT SO YOU CAN SEE TRENDS

2. 50% SOLUTION - DON'T WORRY ABOUT DOING IT RIGHT, WORRY ABOUT DOING IT. TO VALIDATE IT, JUST DO IT. (Upsell/cross sell system -you should have your metrics in place, have tested all of your language, tested your timing, have it all documented, have measurements in place, train your employees, employee training in place...BUT YOU DON'T NEED ANY OF THAT TO VALIDATE IT, JUST ASK THE NEXT 10 PEOPLE THAT WALK THROUGH THE DOOR.)

THIS IS ABOUT THE POWER OF INCREMENTAL IMPROVEMENT ...meaning...if you put something systematic in place that makes $1000, you'll make $1000 year after year. You might have a different upsell next week and the product keeps changing, but the system keeps working.

HIERARCHY OF OPPORTUNITY:

Opportunity = something you can implement now (in terms of funds to do it, capability to do it, something you can get results with and your staff can handle it...is it long term focused or a short term diversion?)

Opportunity = Really great ideas, but not quite ready for it

Opportunity = has value and you want to do it someday

...now write A1, A2, A3 - and rank the A1s and start working on them asap. So it's like "I crunched everything down, THAT will have the biggest impact on our business, we can pull it off, we have the funds to be able to do it, we have the capability to be able to do it, and I believe it will produce results" and if you do that, you'll produce results.

DUPLICATING YOUR MODEL AND SCALING:

Complex opportunities multiply as you have success, and you need a filter system. So, start thinking in terms of "the common denominators of value in any opportunity".

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Here's what you do in the face of multiple opportunities:

1. Ask: "What is the potential payoff?" A meaningful payoff in a meaninful amount of time for you. Write that down first. (i.e. if we do a partnership with this company I think the likely payoff is we'll make $1,000,000 in profit in 3 years) (sidenote: the payoff usually happens later than you usually think it will)

2. Work backwards and ask: "What is the time, effort, energy, money and opportunity cost?"

So essentially you make a grid if you like (if you have 3 opportunities):

Time Effort Energy Money Opp

1. Opp 12. Opp 23. Opp 3

Fill in all the boxes and try and add or multiply them together to come up with a type of value system because the 'time/effort/energy/money/opp' are all differentfor different opportunities. Like, they change out if you're hiring someone there's going to be like TIME can become 'how long it will take them to get up to speed', EFFORT might imply 'how much they'll distract other people' ETC....whatever the factors are...RATE THEM, ADD THEM ALL UP, and then calculate them against each other.

So you take each opportunity, figure what it'll be worth, then ask 'how much time/effort/energy/money/opportunity cost is involved' and then prioritize them. START HERE. It's not the answer...but it's something to organize your thinking. They become complicated (i.e. Eben has one for his technology acquisition etc. Virtual bench for hiring listing all processes they've been through and how valuable they are against each other etc.)

But once you do this, you tend to have the top 3-5 cream opportunities rise to the top and helps you clarify your thinking.

o You got to manage opportunities and not get overwhelmed by them.

YOUR NEW FUTURE:

Find a less advantaged STAR and mentor them and don't ask anything for it.

Teaching and being selfless is a great way to learn.

SHARE EVERYTHING YOU LEARN WITH 1 PERSON IF: a. they can't afford it themselves and b. they're a star and c. they're less advantaged than you

Create 1 new specific morning ritual - how you start the day you compare the rest of the day to (i.e. if you start off eating healthy breakfast, you compare your meals to that, but if you start off eating crap you may just let yourself go eat crap for that day) (i.e. do something 20 minutes 5 days a week RIGHT WHEN YOU WAKE UP AND IT’L BECOME A RITUAL.

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Problems aren't problems until they become conflicts or isolated or weird to deal with...BE HONEST ABOUT YOUR PROBLEMS. It will help get things handled. In terms of Maslows Hierarchy and Lower Self (fight or flight/approval etc) and Higher Self (person in the 'zone', really doing great things)...when you as a leader are disappointed with someone on your team or do something to put someone in their Lower Self on your team they start doing things based on SAFETY/INSECURITY /SURVIVAL NEEDS and that becomes their decision making context. So where someone in their Higher Self will be balanced opportunities and their risks and expectancies and all the different things together etc, if their wife calls and says 'We have $10K less in the bank than I thought we did' something happens and that persons gets pulled into a different state of mind and they start making their decisions differently ...instead of being balancing risk and probability/being detached/logical...they start picking the one that is lowest risk/or one that makes my job most secure. So when someone is in their lower self, you ought not have them work on anything in your business cause they'll probably screw it up in some way cause they're freaked out etc...and if you cause them to go into their lower self, you're probably not helping much.

LESSON: IF YOU DETECT THIS, STOP - DON'T QUESTION IT -AND SAY 'I'M GOING TO DO EVERYTHING IN MY POWER TO PUT THIS PERSON BACK IN THEIR HIGHER SELF' ...and it can be hard since they'll try and pull you down there into conflict.

"WHENEVER SOMETHING BAD HAPPENS AND EVERYONE FREAKS OUT - YOU BECOME CALM. YOU BECOME UNUSUALLY CALM." That's what you do. Practice that to the point where people ask you why you aren't getting freaked out. Why would you do this? BECUASE THAT'S THE MOMENT EVERYONE NEEDS IT THE MOST and need a level-headed thinker to be the guide. Someone who stays unusually calm and present in the moment.

"We learn who other people are by what we catch them doing"

STOP WHEN YOU NOTICE SOMEONE IN THEIR LOWER SELF AND HELP THEM GET INTO THEIR HIGHER SELF.

From now on - you need to take care of business. If you need to commiserate or complain, do it with entrepreneurs on the same page as you or with your family. Need support? Don't ask your staff. They perceive that you've made it when you own a business. That's just the way it is. And they'll leave if they

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perceive you're a fruit ball continually asking THEM for help. They'll never believe your problems are as bad as theirs. 'You are the lucky one'.

When conflicts escalate, especially with you between people on your team -STOP. ARGUING. FOR. SELF. INTEREST. Stop using the logic that you need to get something out of it. Don't decide issues important to your team (i.e. "i want a raise from $50 to $60K) based on issues that benefit you (i.e. "Ya, but I really need to put that money towards an Investment I want to me for my etc etc") That goes bad - quickly. Not only is that a disconnect, but in a split second they instantly think "This person will not be making decisions in my best interest,but rather in their own best interest".

And they won't trust you anymore. Whenever you feel your self interest threatened say to yourself 'I have to let that stuff go right now. I have to argue for the OTHER PERSONS best interest'. So instead the raise deal would sound like: "I can see where you're coming From, honestly you deserve a raise right now - truthfully. You've been performing and you should get more money. If I were you, I'd be determined about it." ARGUING FROM THEEEEIIIRR PERSPECTIVE. But then you say "But here's my situation. Here's the numbers. Here's the books. We really need to invest in this other thing for the long term. So we have a couple choices. Either I can help you find something else where you can get more money. That might be something. You can cruise a long at the level you're at and we'll try and find it so in the future you get to the next level. Or C, here's another option..." --> STARS RESPOND WELL TO THIS KIND OF THING cause you're arguing from their perspective, being honest and straight up and no self agenda there. It damages you anytime someone can sense you're arguing for your own self interest.

"In order to change as an individual, the first step is thatyou must accept yourself"

If you want to grow a business or a person - you must accept them the way they really are, not idealize them. So if you want to grow, you must first accept.

******* Cultivate a taste of fulfilment coming from seeing another person succeed.

Have the greatest joy, homerun or win come from seeing another person succeed. Having that be your most rewarding experience in life - seeing anotherperson succeed at something. This takes authenticity and being interested in that person and caring about what happens with them. It takes practice for some. But if that can be your #1, that will carry you so far. It's another way of expressing this idea of seeing through the eyes of another person and really taking ti personally. When you take the problems of the world personally and cross the boundary to feeling "that's partly my issue, and I am responsible for this with all of us" - and when you take it personally then you go into action in a completely different way. You can cultivate that one as a taste you enjoy the most and then focus it on Stars/High performers,

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you can make a huge difference. We're not saying abandon the hopeless povery stricken - but if you're going to grow a rapidly growing company, you need to only put Stars in there so you can grow it - and then if you want to help disadvantaged people outside of your business, go help and contribute your time effort energy money maybe have some part of your business contribute...if you want to grow a strong company, you got to have Stars. You got to draw a good boundary. You got to be clear about that.

REMEMBER THE DISTINCTION: ONLY LET STARS INSIDE OF YOUR BUSINESS. If you want to help people, do that externally.

60% of your focus on Strengthening and Streamlining the current moneymaking systems that are running and bringing money in, that's most of your time energy money internal resources...in other words 'take care of what's working, don't abandon it - identify it, talk about it with everyone in the company, makes sure everyone in the company doesn't screw it up'. Make sure they get that these 'money making models' changes run by you first. But basically it's an advertising model, product curriculum model, marketing model WHATEVER IT IS, you want to tell you team not to mess with this stuff because its working...you don't want to screw with it, but rather streamline and strengthen it and put optimizers on it.

30% developing your discoveries - tested, shows promise, allocate small amount of resources without stopping your bread and butter above since you don't know what the 'staircase' has in store 10% focus on what you believe, but can't prove, but would be worth a test. Potential home run stuff that keeps you inspired.

INEVITABILITY THINKING

Start with DATA and research and what you've learned FIRST when working with your team about something you want to do. Start with what you've learned and the Data and then move to problems. Opinions vs. Fact/Data.

Problem to solve --> Goal/Objective --> Conditions/Structures that need to exist for things you want to have happen happens automatically (strategic thinking in terms of setting conditions/structures gets your mind out of thinking YOU are the one that is going to 'do it' - and into 'I need to set things up so it happensautomatically'...it's a critical distinction)

THEEEEN Actions.Problem to solve --> Goal/Objective --> Conditions/Structures --> Actions This 5 step manoeuvre, done in the right order, can keep everyone on track, and as the leader you’ll find project planning and group discussions go much faster.

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WYATT WOODSMALL:

PRESELECTION ALWAYS BUYS MORE THAN TRAINING - preselect people vs. train everyone and try and change everyone. PRESELECTION IS ALWAYS MORE IMPORTANT THAN TRAINING.

Find out what the experts and high performers in the company do - model it and train it. (side note: a la Abraham top tele-salesmen, interviewing them, learning their process and teaching the other salesmen)

Entrepreneur Code: (6 parts)

1. Filters2. Traits3. Techniques4. Processes5. Values6. Skills

"First things first, second things not at all" - Hugh Facey

it's all about prioritizing...the entrepreneur went out where his customer was, outstringing wire, and asking the farmer "is there anything I can do for you?"...so he hears a problem and says 'there's got to be a way to solve this customers problem' and said 'If I wanted to put 2 piece of wire together cheaply and easily, how would I do it?' Came up with the Gripple. And patented all the possible designs from his engineer team making sure no one could copy it, and now goes around the world selling Gripples to any farmer who has a fence and needs mending and makes a fortune.

He's the classic entrepeneur. Driven to succeed, totally focused, knows wherehe's going and focused on it...

Eben's Tweak on "Risk Taker":

Road Ahead - I'll take a lot of risk down hereDeveloping your Discoveries - and I'll take a lot of risk in here60% Strengthening and Streamlining - but with this 60% I will bite your hand if you try to mess with it.

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...so it's a combination of treating your business and opportunities like a portfolio where you have certain investments that are your strong base, you have certain investments that might be a little high risk, and then you have a few that you're using that you think might be the homerun - but you're not going to risk very much on them. But you're willing to take those risks.

Wyatt on Eben's comment:

"Yes, this is true and you're a refined and sophisticated entrepreneur that has allowed you to get to where you've gotten...but a lot of people in the trenches starting up, they got to build a valuable business starting from virtually nothing, the world is telling them it's not going to work, as is everybody...THAT IS A RISK...so once you get to a certain point you certainly need to run the business in all the ways in all the sophisticated ways we've talked about but the guy out there in the trenches starting up he's got to be willing to take a risk and in some cases he's gambling his life, future and fortune that it's going to succeed. He's got an idea and he's driven to make it work. And any idea you're driven to make work you're going to have to put in the work and do what it takes and put the time energy in order to get it to move forward."

Entrepreneurs being Difference people, yet knowing enough not to mess with a stable system and leave well enough alone.

Another problem they have is learning to delegate. Letting go is a big problem with entrepreneurs. Put people in behind you and realize what you're good at and what you're not good at (which is often management) and you need people good at that. Identifying talent.

You need to also recognize the type E entrepreneur who may come into your business and want to tinker with everything...so you need to recognize that beforehand.

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DVD 10

DEAN JACKSON:

Think twice, act once

Get your name out there vs. Their name in here (far more profitable knowing/identifying your prospects and having your prospects get their name toyou AND OFFER SOMETHING THEY CARE ABOUT vs. them being able to identify you)

Think about who people are, their reality, and what they're likely to do in a situation...it helps you gear your thinking so you can offer something that is within their frame of reality.

...opens the objections/blocks (low self esteem) customer has.

Condition and structures = allow the prospect to see it in their own advantage.

Conditions = person is there and in their mind they have these values, and I'm going to set up this connection/reconnection of their values and reframe them a bit, I'm going to effect their model of reality

Structure = the rings and the cash register...so the conditions and structures are right there so the prospect can walk up the "left hand, right hand" thing at walmart, look at it and say "I am going to express myself right now, and I'm going to do this for me"...and they just happen to have the 'right hand ring collection' right there.

***** Idealized design --> once you figure out the thing that's a good idea that will probably help the customer, you then try and design the entire process froman idealistic perspective...no contraints, no limitations, no 'this wouldn't bepossible)...you just design the ideal process. And then once you've designed the ideal process, then you go back and say "Could I make these things happen?"...and in alot of cases you'll be able to do things you wouldn't have even thought of doing because in the past you'd be thinking 'let's leave that out cause we can't do it, and then that limits this step' etc.

It's back to Henry Ford: "make me an 8 cylinder motor" - "can't be done", "do it anyways" over and over until they came back and said "we figured it out". Think about it as if you were created an assembley line process for it (i.e. making beer bottles)

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JOE POLISH:

Way of making more money = GET YOUR PRODUCTS TO STICK BETTER(get people to buy them, use them and enjoy them more so they don't buy it and ask for refund)

Bonding - you want to be in the RELATIONSHIP business not transaction business or being a transaction marketer

Selling = on the phone or face to face with someone...first goal is to extract cash from someone

Marketing = what you do to get someone on the phone or face to face with you, properly positioned so they have this 4 criteria: 1. Pre-interested 2. Pre-qualified 3. Pre-motivated 4. Pre-disposed to do business with you...doesn't matter what order, just matters you get these people who want to speak with you Positioning ... getting a well qualified prospect is critical..."PRESELECTION WILL ALWAYS BEAT TRAINING"...PRESELECTING WHO IT IS YOU WANT TO SELL TO AND HAVING THE POSITIONING TO HOW THEY WANT TO BUY FROM YOU VERSUS YOU TRYING TO SELL THEM IS HOW YOU SET IT UP...

ONE STEP SELLING VS MULTI-STEP SELLING ... have people request info you send to them, call 24 hour prerecorded message...etc.

If you don't sell information - utilize information to assist you in selling whatever you sell...it's needed for interesting a prospect and educating in the form of info

If you sell a product/info product --> when someone asks 'how much do you charge' you have a 'free consumers guide' to educate the prospect and send that to them and you have a script that educates the customers on the free recorded message

FREE.RECORDED.MESSAGE = 3 money making words, USE IT ON YOUR BUSINESS CARDS, FLYERS, AND EVERYTHING THAT EVERY COMMUNICATES WITH NEW PROSPECTS - EDUCATION BASED MARKETING - the difference between a $1 bill and $100 bill is the message on the paper. Joe had Don from a half page one-step-sell ad to a small classified and free recorded message...and cut his advertising cost in half and increased revenue in the first year by $60K.

REMEMBER: SAME INK, SAME PAPER...DIFFERENT MESSAGE. The difference between being rich and broke can sometimes just be one good 'communication'/sales letter you leverage.

1 control peice that you tweak over time can make you rich (i.e. double your dating and its variations) and that is an educational/free report/sales letter/ whatever you want to call it

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DVD 11

Joe Polish CONTINUED:

Get inside your prospects mind, enter the convo already going on inside theirhead...once you know how to communicate the 'whatever' in a way they desire it, that they want it, and that they will take action on it - then you replicate it.

Use free recorded messages AFTER you make a sale

******* 3 step process when you do anything:

1. what do you do before the sale (to get someone to buy)?2. what do you do during the sale (to increase the average sale, a la Jay Abraham)?3. what do you do after the sale

THE MODEL: BEFORE, DURING, AFTER.

PUT A STICKER ON THE OUTSIDE OF YOUR PACKAGE/BOOK/SHRINK WRAP WHATEVER - and have it be a welcome greeting! "Congratulations, you're now holding in your hand blah blah Thank you so much...read this, and watch that first etc"

Acquiring the client is the most expensive costs, so if you reduce refunds this way by half, you just added a whole bunch of moola on the backend.

Once you acquire them - make the sale stick (in order to get more money after on the backend/LTV) ...and have them stick after acquisition by:

1. get out of the transaction mindset vs. knowing the best time to gain trust for the long term and eliminate scepticism is right after or during the sales process, so think LTV, think Recorded Message Stick Strategy, anything you can do to reengage the person...and the quicker they consume and get into your stuff, the better you are, so THE SOONER YOU CAN HAVE YOUR CLIENT EXPERIENCE SOMETHING VALUABLE - AS QUICK AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE - then you a. increase their happiness with it and b. increase your opportunity to bond with them over the free recorded message

2. Dean Graziosi - put the stick strategy on his new book in retail stores..."wARNING! Reading this amazing book will change your life. Call now to hear an important free recorded message from best selling author Dean Graziosi 1-800-xxx-xxxx to find out why" ...and now people who haven't even bought the book and are sitting in Barnes and Noble are calling the number they saw on the book in the store and now Dean can talk them into getting the book - lead gen to get emails - and sell them into one his coaching programs or whatever! (SIDE NOTE: THE BOOK, AND THE NUMBER, ARE LEAD GEN MECHANISM)...so now you have an involvement/response device

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on the outside of the book that is in mass retail stores (basically, that has mass distribution)(SIDE NOTE: YOU COULD PROBABLY TAKE TAKE A QUIZ ON THE PHONE AND BOND WITH THEM THAT WAY AND GET PEOPLE PRESSING 1,2,3 AND STUFF - AND THEN SELL THAT WAY! HAVE PEOPLE'S RESULTS SENT TO THEM WHEN THEY LEAVE THEIR EMAIL ETC. Just another lead gen distribution channel)

Discover your strengths/Strengthfinder book (with code in book to do the test online afterwards)

Using the things above with your marketing online or offline just enhances it, and everyone has a phone and everyone wants a relationship. If your refund rate is half, and you cut it in half with these stick strategies, you just double your profit since it goes to the bottom line.

****** Flip video - the flip.com

****** CARRY THIS VIDEO ONCE YOU DO THE JOB (WHEN THEY'RE HAPPIEST), AND GET A TESTIMONIAL TO MANUFACTURE YOUR OWN CREDIBILITY...GREAT IDEA. ANOTHER IDEA: SEND IT

TO YOUR TOP STUDENTS AND ASK THEM TO VIDEO TAPE THE VALUE THEY GET OUT OF YOUR PROGRAMS ETC. PURCHASE 30, FEDEX THEM WITH RETURN ENVELOPE, AND SAY IN THE LETTER "VIDEO TAPE THE EXPERIENCES YOU'VE HAD AND SEND THE VIDEO BACK, WE'LL TAKE THE VIDEOS OFF AND THEN SEND THE CAMERA BACK TO YOU"

Another idea: WHEN YOU DO EVENTS, PULL OUT THE FLIP, DO TESTIMONIALS... WHENEVER YOU ARE AT, IF YOU'RE EXPERIENCING HAPPY CLIENTS AFTER DOING A JOB, ORSELLING ON THE NET JUST SEND IT TO YOUR TOP CLIENTS WITH MESSAGE SAYING "RECORD THE VIDEO FORYOURSELF, SEND TI BACK, AND AS MY THANKS YOU CAN KEEP THE CAMERA"...for less then $100 you can capture all the video you want.

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CREDO

1.Strive to increase order and discipline in your life. Discipline usually means doing the opposite of what you feel like doing. People will do almost anything to stay in their comfort zones. If you want to accomplish anything, get out of your comfort zone by replacing your bad habits, one- by one, over time, with good habits. Focusing on habits is the easy road to discipline.

2. Cherish time, your most valuable resource. You can never make up the time you lose. It's the most important value for any productive happy individual and is the only limitation to all accomplishment. To waste time is to waste your life. Use your time effectively.

3.Think carefully before making any offers, commitments or promises, no matter how seemingly trivial. These are all contracts and must be honored. These also include self-resolutions.

4.Real regrets only come from not doing your best. All else is out of your control. You're measured by results only. Trade excuses for results, and expect halfhearted results from half-hearted efforts. Do more than is expected of you. Be willing to pay the price. Life's easy when you live it the hard way...and hard if you try to live it the easy way.

5.Always show gratitude when earned, monetarily when possible.

6.Produce for wealth creation and accumulation. Invest profits for wealth preservation and growth. Produce more than you consume, and save a minimum of 20% of all earnings. Pay yourself first.

7.Cut all ties with dishonest, negative or lazy people, and associate with people who share your values.

8.Learn from the giants.

9.A little caution avoids great regrets. Hope for the best and preparefor> the worst. Keep fully insured physically and materially and keep hedged emotionally.Insurance is not for sale when you need it.

10.Learn the other side's needs, offer as little information as possible, never underestimate your opposition, and never show weakness when negotiating.

11.Never enter into nor invest in a business without a solid, well-researched and

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well thought-out written plan. Execute the plan with passion and precision. Plan and manage your life the same way.

12. Success comes quickly to those whom develop great powers of intense sustained concentration. The first rule is to get involved by asking focused questions.

13. Protect your downside. The upside will take care of itself. Cut your losses short -and let your profits run. This takes tremendous discipline.

14. The primary purpose of business is to create and keep customers. Marketing and innovation produce results. All other business functions are costs. Prospecting and increasing the average value and frequency of sales are the bedrock of marketing and business.

15. Pay only on performance. Whatever you reinforce or reward, you get more of.

16. Competence starts with guaranteeing your work.

17. Life operates in reverse action to entropy. Therefore the universe is hostile to life. Progress is a continued effort to swim against the stream.

18. Find out what works, and then do more of it. Focus first on doing the right things, and then on doing things right by mastering details. A few basic moves produce most income.

19. Use leverage with ideas (the ability to generalize is the key to intellectual leverage), work, money, time and people. To maximize profits, replicate yourself. Earning potentials become geometric rather than linear.

20. Rationalizations are generally convenient evasions of reality and are used as excuses for dishonest behaviour and/or laziness.

21. Always have lofty explicit goals and focus on them intensely. Assume the attitude that if you don't reach your goals, you will literally die! This type of gun-to-your-head forced focus... survival pressure mindset, no matter how briefly used, stimulates your mind, forces you to use your time effectively...and illuminates new ways of getting things done.

22. The value of any service you have to offer diminishes rapidly once it's provided. Protect your compensation before performing.

23. Incalculable effort and hardship over countless generations evolved into the life, values and happiness we take for granted today. Every day should> be a celebration of existence. You are a masterpiece of life and should feel and appreciate this all the way down to your bones. Aspire to achieve and build onto the great value momentum-taking place all around you.

24. Enthusiasm covers many deficiencies - and will make others want toassociate with you.

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25. All human beings are driven by two basic emotions - pain and pleasure. Most people will do far more to avoid pain than they will to gain pleasure.

26. Religiously nourish your body with good nutrition, exercise, recreation, sleep and relaxation techniques.

27. The choice to exert integrated effort or to default to camouflaged laziness is the key choice that determines your character, competence and future. That critical choice must be made continually - throughout life. The most meaningful thing to live for is reaching your full potential.

28. Keep an active mind, and continue to grow intellectually. You either grow or regress. Nothing stands still.

29.Most success is built on clear persuasive communication. It starts with careful listening, questioning and observing your feedback. Become a communications expert.

30. Socialism appeals to psychological and intellectual weaklings. Take full control of, and responsibility for, your conscious mind and all aspects of your life. Do not depend on others. Being incompetent or dependent in any part of your life or business opens you up to sloppiness, manipulation and irrationality.

31. If there is not a conscious struggle to be honest in difficult situations, you are probably being dishonest. Characters aren't really tested until things aren't going well or until the stakes are high.

32. Do not compromise if you are right. Hold your ground, show no fear, and ask for what you want, and the opposition will usually agree.

33. If the situation is not right in the long term, walk away from it. Maintain a long-term outlook in all endeavours. Live like you don't have much time left...but plan as if you'll live for centuries.

34. Invest only after strict and complete due diligence. Make decisions carefully. Then pull the trigger.

35. Always have one more project than you can comfortably handle.

36. Keep your overhead to a minimum. Rely more on brains, wit and talent.. and less on money.

37. Business is the highest evolution of consciousness, responsibility and morality. The essences of business are: honesty, effort, responsibility, integration, creativity, objectivity, long-range planning, intensity, effectiveness, discipline, thought and cont

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38. That which is most satisfying is that which is earned. Anything received free of charge is seldom valued. You can't get something for (from) nothing. The price is too high.

39. By adhering to a strong honest philosophy, you will remain guiltless, blameless, and independent and maintain control over your life. Without a sound philosophy, your life will eventually crumble.

40. It takes almost the same amount of time and energy to manage tiny projects or businesses as it does to manage massive ones...and the massive ones carry with them -proportional rewards.

41. There is no such thing as "just a little theft" or "just a little dishonesty".

42. Lead by example.

43. Take full responsibility for your actions or lack of action. He who errs mustpay. This is an easy concept to grasp from the recipient's end.

44. An hour of effective, precise, hard, disciplined - and integrated thinking can be worth a month of hard work. Thinking is the very essence of, and the most difficult thing to do in businessand in life. Empire builders spend hour-after-hour on mental work...while others party. If you're not consciously aware of putting forth the effort to exert self-guided integrated thinking...if you don't act beyond your feelings and take the path of least resistance, then you're giving in to laziness and no longer control your life.

45. Out-think, out-innovate and out-hustle the competition, and vividly visualize yourself as winning before entering into every deal or competitive situation. Maintain a blood-smelling, fighter pilot life-or- death attitude when any deal gets near to a close.

46. First impressions are lasting impressions. Put your best foot forward. People treat you like you teach them to treat you. A success key is positioning yourself at the top of their agenda.

47. The right thing is usually not the easy thing to do. You may sacrifice popularity for rightness, but you'll lose self-esteem for wrongness. Don't be afraid to say "no".

48. If someone lies to you once, he'll lie to you a thousand times. Lying is for thieves and cowards.

49. Have strict and total respect for other people's property.

50. Producing results is more important than proving you're right. To get things done, try to understand others' frames of references, points of view, needs and wants. Then determine what is honest, fair, effective and> rational...and act accordingly.

51. Long-term success is built on credibility and on establishing enduring relationships with quality people based on mutually earned trust.

52. Don't be preoccupied with things over which you have no control.

53. Spend more time working "on" your business than "in" your business.

54. Don't enter into a business relationship with anyone unknown to you without being furnished with references dating back at least 10 years. If he doesn't have good enduring relationships, stay away. Check all representations on which you will rely made by everyone

55. Enjoy life. Treat it as an adventure. Care passionately about the outcome, but keep it in perspective. Things are seldom as bleak as they seem when they are going wrong – or as good as they seem when they are going well. Lighten up…You will live longer

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56. Identify exactly what it is you want. This takes a lot of thought. Then> don't let anything stand in your way of getting it.

57. You can get any job done through the sheer force of will when combined with uncompromising integrity and competence. Strong leadership is the key.

58. You are responsible for who, what and where you are in life. Situations aren't important. How you react to them is. You have to play it where it lies.

59. The foundation of achievement is intense desire. The world's highest achievers have the highest levels of dissatisfaction. Those with the lowest levels are the failures. The best way to build desire is to make resolute choices for the future.

60. Integrate every aspect of your life (body, mind, spirit, relationships, business) and each within itself. Integrating means understanding and digesting a process ...and seeing relationships among seemingly unrelated phenomena. It's a sign of innovative genius.

61. Never be deceptive when trying to achieve a personal gain. Shortchanging others results in loss of self-esteem.

62. If your purpose of life is security, you will be a failure. Security is the lowest form of happiness.

63. Never enter into a contract unless all parties benefit. But no partnership is ever 50/50.There will always be inequities.

64. Review the basics of your profession at least once per year.

65. Bitterness and anger empowers your enemies and enslaves you. Negative thinking results in the destruction of property. It is anti-property, therefore anti-capitalistic and anti-life. It also erodes your health. Forgive, forget, and get on with your life.

66. Most people spend 90% of their time on what they're not best at and only 10% of their time on their best ability. Geniuses delegate the 90%...and spend all their time on their "unique ability".

67. High self-esteem can only come from moral productivity and achievement.

68. There are an infinite number of new opportunities. Actively seek them out, and position yourself to recognize and take advantage of them.

69. There is no such thing as a good idea unless it is developed and utilized.

70. For maximum profits, identify and market universal needs, wants and trends.Satisfying needs and wants and replacing problems with creative innovations is the essence of profit generation.

71. To maximize opportunities, seek and master the complicated. The major solutions you find will be surprisingly simple, and the competition is minimal.

72. Always have options. Options are a primary source of power.

73. Nothing wins more often than superior preparation. Genius is usually preparation.

74. Patience is profitable. Achievement comes from the sum of consistent small efforts, repeated daily.

75. Persistence is a sure path to success with quality activities. Never, ever, ever give up.

76. "I will do this" is the only attitude that works. "I'll try" or "I think" doesn't work.

77. Always work on increasing the size of the pie, rather than just your portion.

78. Rewards are rare without risks, but take only carefully calculated risks.

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79. The "how" you get it (with integrity) is more important than the "what".

80. Be explicit and semantically precise in all communications, agreements and dealings. Summarize and write down important discussions...and make sure all sides agree. Putting agreements in writing avoids misunderstandings. Memories are fallible,and death is inevitable (so far).

81. The best way to get started is to get started. Life rewards action. Be proactive rather than reactive. Wait for nothing. Attack life. Don't plan to death or ask for permission. Act now...and apologize later.

82. Question everything. Don't believe it's true or right just because it's conventional. Strip all limits from your imagination on every deal and look for an unconventional creative opportunity in every mistake, crisis or problem. Be flexible.Be willing to turn on a dime when advantageous.

83. Have fun. The single key to a successful happy life is finding a vocation you enjoy - one that excites you the most. Then couple it with independent self-stimulated thinking, and follow with action.

84. Nobody gets old by surprise.

85. When it's a matter of producing or starving, people don't starve.

86. Fill your life with positive expectations. Demand the best. Attitude and desire contribute to 90% of your success. Anyone can learn the physical mechanics.

87. The surest way to accomplish your business goals is making service to others your primary goal. The key to success is adding value to others' lives.

88. The source of lasting happiness can never come from outside yourself through consuming values - but only from within yourself by producing values. In fact, producing more than you consume is the only justification for existence.

89. An avoided problem will not go away, but usually gets worse. Anticipate and eliminate problems - or meet them head on at the outset.

90. Find an excuse to laugh every chance you get, especially when you least feel like it.

91. When someone makes a big issue about his honesty or achievements, he is probablydishonest or a failure.

92. Put the magic power of compound interest to work with every available dollar.

93. The best investment you will ever make is your steady increase of knowledge.Invest in yourself. Thirty minutes of study per day eventually makes you an expert in any subject - but only if you apply that knowledge. Study alone is no substitute forexperience. Education is always painfully slow.

94. For each important action you take, ask yourself if you would be embarrassed if it were published. It takes a lifetime of effort to build a good reputation but only a moment of stupidity to destroy it.

95. You are exactly what you believe and think about all day long. Constantly monitor your thoughts.

96. If it can't be observed, it's not true. Never act on blind faith. Whenever something sounds too good to be true, you can bet it is. Refuse to be swayed by emotion when it conflicts with reason.

97. Anxiety is usually caused by lack of control, organization, preparation and action.

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98. The first rule of sharpening your mind is to be an alert and sensitive observer. Constantly pay attention. Observation is the genesis of all knowledge and progress ...and is the first and last step of every thinking man's tool - TheScientific Method.

99. Experience is not what happens to you. It's what you do with what happens to you. It takes a wise man to learn from his own mistakes...and a genius to learn and profit from the mistakes and experiences of others.

100. The purpose of life is to delay, avoid and eventually reverse death.

MURRAY HIDARY:

What do you do better than anyone else in your company - outsource the rest (ie. outsource finance in early stages, quick books and cheque management etc., sharing office spaces - take entire floor of building, take small amount for your team, rent out the rest to friends on short term basis and use as needed, thus reduce rent roll to zero by subsidizing and making a profit center out of rent...SO, CREATIVE WAYS TO REDUCE EXPENSES)

Come up with ideas and execute. The ability to execute on an idea you have is what differentiate entrepreneur from everyone else. Everyone has great ideas, but the differentiating test is whether you have taken an idea and turned it into a successful/real company and build value out of that. "What's holding me back?" - it's often an emotional fear, whether it's relinquishing control etc. Be okay with finding people who can do it 80% vs. 100% since that's going to be the difference between being stagnant and trying to do everything yourself, and growing the business and using your time to get new customers and market vs. having to deal with crossing all the T's and I's.So...be able to bring in good people and also TRUST THEM. Empower them. And be okay with 90%...no matter how much incentive, no one will be as excited about your business, and don't expect them to be. Be okay with good enough. "Leaving things undone" vs. in society being consumed with 'finishing everything' on the list...it's okay to leave things undone and off the list, as long as most of the work is getting done in a professional way, then that will let you actually expand your business and keep the ball moving forward.

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To make something grow it has to be replicatible by you, and even at 80%, the customer may or may not even notice any difference from their perspective. Going public is:

a. exit strategy for shareholders/investors in an open market exchange for liquidity

b. from a corporate strategic perspective, gives you equity to grow your business with and 1. you raise a lot of cash from the market (for M&A, working capital, hiring, IT acquisition, etc lots of reason you'd want the moola in the company) and 2. actual shares/equity in the company (find company that strategically fits withyours and instead of giving them cash, you give them shares in your company (or stock and cash) - thus saving your money and gives them upside by the future value of those shares)

Taking calculated risks

Sarbanes Oxley

Outside capital:

a. being scared of being in debt or owing people money vs. tremendous leverage at a very low risk

b. dilution of shares and profit vs. can grow business faster and make it worth a lot more if you have outside capital and smart investors (people who know people, have networks, resources - then they can help you grow your business even further throguh customer contacts and other resources)You could raise $200 million, but you could return $1 billion in value to those shareholders...and that's a big picture approach that you won't get from using internal capital.

Growing businesses big fast.

The whole system, even public market, comes down to trust...$10 share bought today because you believe it will be $20 tomorrow...

ALL INVESTMENTS, NOMATTER THE IDEA, IS IN PEOPLE. YOU'RE INVESTING IN PEOPLE.

Don't invest in the idea, because of market place and other issues, the model often tweaks and isn't the original idea you thought it would be...so don't invest in the idea, INVEST IN THE PERSON. THEY'RE INVESTING IN YOU and you have to make them comfortable with you as the leader of the company, as someone who can navigate through that sea of constant change. Someone they can trust not only with their money, but put that money to best use and can watch the trends in that particular market and take the idea and make it even better throughout time. So that's an important view to have.

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You’re not building the product or coming up with the next cool thing – as you are PACKAGING AND POSITIONING THE COMPANY. YOUR PRODUCT IS THE COMPANY. Whatever widget you happen to make is inconsequential to how you think about building this company which is in and of itself the product. Build a company to grow fast and with an exit in mind. That's important to thinkabout when you get into something. What is the exit going to be? PRODUCT IS THE COMPANY. WHAT IF YOU THOUGHT OF YOUR PRODUCT AS THE COMPANY YOU WERE GOING TO SELL?

Basic salary/bonuses vs. THE REAL MONEY/WEALTH/VALUE YOU BUILD FOR YOURSELF BEING THROUGH SHARES/EQUITY. Through owning the company and selling it through an exit.

Everyday when you come into the office: "How are we going to make this company, that is the product/thing we're building, REALLY valuable? And who's going to want it?"

You got to think about who's going to want this product/company. Not just who's going to want this particular service, but rather who's going to want this actual company? And you ought to think about that everyday. 1. It's an incredible discipline to your day to day operations of whatever you sell whether moto oil or service on a website. It will make you think about that product better. It will make you think about profit margins. It will make you think about growth. It will make you think about market potential (how big is this market? Are there 10 people or 10 million people willing to buy this?) It will make you think about that stuff every single day. But int he back of your mind you're always thinking "what's my exit? where am I going with this?

Who's going to be potentially interested in what I'm going here everyday?"...AND THAT'S IMPORTANT BECAUSE: Make those connections from Day 1. If you're thinking you're going to sell that company, don't look for the buyer when you're ready to sell. You have to look for the buyer of that company the day you start the company!

That's when you look for the buyer of the company. You don't let them know that and say 'I'm looking to sell my company to you one day so I want to create a relationship with you'...no, you develop a relationship, maybe there's a way to work together, maybe there's a way to create a distribution partnership, or just create a friendly relationship - so when you ARE ready you can make that phone call and it's a FRIENDLY phone call, they know who you are, and they'll take your call, and they'll sit with you and have lunch, introduce you to the right people and the next thing you know a deal is on the table...BECAUSE...THE CREDIBILITY, THE TRUST IS ALREADY ESTABLISHED.

THAT'S HALF THE BATTLE. Whether it fits with the company in terms of what

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they're going to pay for it, that's almost inconsequential. If it's valuable to them, they'll pay what it's worth. That's a very easy conversation to have and takes a short amount of time. BUT THE RELATIONSHIP "who is this guy? What kind of company does he have? what's this about?" MOST OF THE TIME, IT'S ABOUT KNOWING THE BUYER OF YOUR BUSINESS WELL BEFORE THEY ACTUALLY BUY THE COMPANY. YOu gotta get this!

Access to capital: either your own, people you know, or institutional (professionalinvestors, VCs etc) The best time to start a business IF you can get access to capital (since no one wants to lend at these times) = DURING A LOW ECONOMIC POINT...you can put capital to work for effectively - acquire technology, space, people/hire while they're being forced out of work for much less than usual, lower threshold cost of starting a business, you get much more attention since less competition since no one is starting a business during a recession and less noise and people hear you since no one is talking! During a boom everyone is vying for the same office, talent space etc. It's challenging.

So remember:

Boom = easy to get capital, hard to execute

Bust = hard to get capital (as long as you can get access to capital), easy toExecute. And that comes through Trust, building relationships with investors over years. Hidary went to same investors for second company who gave money for first "here's our idea" "we love it" gave money, and they're off and running. How to find potential buyer and reach out? Go to conferences, meetings (where they are) and build that network out. And they knew McGraw Hill well before they sold the business to them. SO REMEMBER THAT.

Takes time to raise money, don't underestimate (paper work, projections, signing etc)

a. how much are you trying to raise

b. your valuation (i.e. tough if you think your company is worth a billion and you started your company 2 weeks ago)

Get a good law firm - "do you have a form investment agreement subscription agreement ready to go?" They'll have that. Those forms are ready to go. Network, ask people you know, former investment bankers/lawyers - have them help you in this process, as for a modest 5% fee of whatever you raise they'll be willing to help you out, introduce you to their network, and help you manage your own network.

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Don't underestimate how much time it takes to meet with people and sit downand explain what you're doing etc.

You should only take money from people you trust since the experience of the company will always be up and down. So what's the disposition/attitude going to be of the investor when times are tough? Will they trust you? or come in and manage and takeover everything? You need an investor that has the same time horizon and mindset as you...how long are they expecting their money to be in the company before they're going to want a return on it? It might 1 or 10 years. There's no right or wrong, you just need to be on the same page as your investor. Starting a techn company might take 5-7 years to build that up to something that will be sellable. If another type of company maybe only 1-2 years. Are they going to want a dividend every year? For a tech company operating a loss for a period of time before it hits that curve, it's tough to deliver on a dividend or interest yield. But if you're opening a restaurant chain, and first 6 months you finally hit some profit, maybe in that scenario you can give an annual dividend and then go back to them and open your second store, and then open your third store.

SO - YOU HAVE TO KNOW THE MENTALITY AND MINDSET OF YOUR INVESTOR THAT COMES IN. THAT WILL AVOID 90% OF ANY PROBLEMS YOU MIGHT HAVE WITH THAT PARTICULAR INVESTOR AND THE LIFE OF YOUR COMPANY FROM THAT POINT OF VIEW.

NOTES:

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"It's all about Growth and your Margin and your Profit" - Rick ?Allias?, Inc 500 4th fastest growing, $100 mil, 20% EBITDA

So if you got fast growth and high profit margins, you can call the shots more than otherwise...and when you're dealing with professionals and you can show the bank statements 'here's what's coming and and here's what's going out'... $100 mill co. with 20% margins growing at a nice clip, you can do whatever you want.

Something to think about in terms of making your company the product:

Walmart vs. Google ...Revenue vs. Market Cap/Value, how possible? ...

Margins and Growth. Google growing at 44% a year, Walmart 5%.

Walmart vs. Target ... same deal ... Target growing twice what Walmart grows in mature market.

So it's all about:

a. How much you're growing year over year

b. What is that margin that you bring to the bottom line every yearWe live in a relativist financial society, so just like in stocks, we look at Comparables to see what something is worth. My house in neighbourhood if house next to it is $1 mil, then worth probably a mil, other neighbourhood would not be the case...so you got to get comparables for everything you're looking at INCLUDING YOUR COMPANY. They may not be easy to find, but your company has comparables. And it becomes easier to find in business people have run before...I.e. there are many people out there with a BD (license to trade stocks on behalf of other people as a broker)......there's value in the BD license itself, then in how much trading you're pushing through that operation....you need to break down those elements to look at all the different assets of your business, like "The DB license, since it could save 6 months of time could be worth $XYZ or some amount of money to someone cause of saved time for someone who wants to become a BD cause of paper work, gov't filings etc, so 'time-to-market' is valuable to somebody" etc and on top of that your Revenue, your team, your computers, your operations, your client base...that all is going to add up to "value"...and you have to break down and divide up all those assets, look at each one comparably in the marketplace, and then you come up with a complete number...and in most cases you'll find the WHOLE is greater than the sum of the parts. So you'llfind someone who wants the whole thing and will value that tremendously.

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DVD 12

DESIGN

"We think of apple as a software company"

"If you love software, you make your own hardware - so we view the IPOD as a wonderful piece of software wrapped in beautiful hardware"

Design is that place where your company, products and marketing interface with the customer. That's where design lives. That space where your customers meet your marketing, products and services. That's where 'design' lives.

Usability = how easy and intuitive it is to use something.

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION - a great concept that happens to be alliteration. The thing that leads is function, then you design the thing to facilitate the function.

First thing you look for is: Dominant Visual Element (aka 'the first thing a person looks at when they get there') Stand far away enough back from your computer screen and ask 'where does my eye go first?' Then ask: 'is that what I want them to see first?'

Visual hierarchy...

Contrast - things that contrast against each other are more easily seen anddiscerned "Your systems" color contrast

Confusion is not your friend here - Disorientation is not your friend The eye moves left to right...

"Is it crystal clear where my eye should go and go next?" but also "Is it crystal clear what the hell it is?! What does it mean?" (i.e. 'the closer')

Seemless fitting together to have the customer see 'oh I see what the benefit is tome to do this', having it all link together

Picture, headline, subheadline, right into the copy...it's designed with the customer in mind Test it, but ogilvy says put pictures OVER the headline (aspeople associate CAPTIONS to photos, and captions go under photos)

ALIGNMENT is a key to design Serif font

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MARK STEVENS (top start up attorney in silicon valley):

For finance...Know what funding sources is appropriate for you, and it's defined by what you need. (angel, vc etc etc) Structures and transactions are different depending on who you talk to, and want to have the company set up differently dependant on who you need.

As a corporation you want to sell stock, not the assets (tax reasons) - visa versa, buying company can't deduct stock purchase, so buyer will want to purchase assets for tax reasons.

Choosing LLC at outset adds value to the company cause of tax reasons.

Also easier getting money out of an LLC than C-corp.

NOTES AND KEY IDEAS

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Keep proper records.

1. single bank accounts between business and you, and records of this, clear cash flow2. Proper records of annual shareholder and board minutes that document that the formalities of the business have been respected. You got to be pretty sloppy to have the corporate veil pierced, but it happens if you're not keeping proper records.

EQUITY IS FOREVER - so impose clear rules

Vesting = if you get stock initially in a company, vesting is basically a right of repurchase that lapses over time...BASICALLY allows the buying back of

shares after predetermined time due to 'forefiture'. It relates to contribution to the business.

If you don't think about vesting in advance, it's not likely your partner or any partner is going to give up their stock if they stop working hard. Your stuck, youneed to do this in advance.

Giving stock options? Need to beware of the tax code with regard to it.

Earn out - you have projections and outlooks of what your company will do afteracquisition, and the buyer hopes it true but has their set of beliefs...BRIDGING THE GAP OF "IT'S WORTH $10 MIL" "NO IT'S WORTH $5"...IS an 'EARN OUT'. "Okay, I'll pay you $5 mil now, and if the company hits the projections you're saying, at that point I'll pay you the other $5 mil - if not, no loss for me". Now, once you a sell a company, you obviously aren't controlling it anymore -and there's a lot of things the buyer may do to fuck up what your projections were (and what it needs to do to hit those projections)...so if you get drawn into an earn out, make sure you have stipulations like "well, if you fire [my] current staff, I get the earn out, if you sabotage cash flow on purpose, I get the earn out, if... etc etc"

So what you may just do is - if you want $3 mil, then you get that upfront and anything in the earn out is bonus if it happens.

VC - your purposes need to be aligned, if you want to save the world or don't want to make money VC is not for you...but if you're in business to make money, VCs may be what you're looking for. Now, if you get with a VC and they believe you're the wrong person to run the business at any point...if more of your wealth is in those shareholdings than in the salary...the you ought to be supportive of removing yourself as the CEO cause you got a very smart heavily invested partner who is saying they want to put someone in the CEO role. Alot of owners get torqued about that...so often you see shitty reviews of VC people.VCs don't take the risks of entrepreneurs a lot of times and their fear can be they'll have to run the company themselves...so they really don't want to run thebusiness. They want to select a team, with your help, that is going to build the

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business and build value. IN GENERAL if you're dealing with known, name brand VCs, the whole "vulture capitalist" thing is overblown. Now if you fuck up, they'll throw you out, and if they can take your stock back, they will if you've agreed on a vested schedule which legally you probably will or if you miss your numbers and you need to put more money in...cause they are business people! It's not personal, but it's business. And they're all about making their investment as valuable as it can be.

If you have your stake in the business, whatever it is, 20-30%, and it's subject to vesting - you still have that full percentage and if the company were to sell you would still realize the full value from it, or dividends or whatever, you own that full percentage. It's only if there's a departure or if you're asked (or decide) to leave etc. THEN your shares are subject to repurchase. BUT YOU'RE EARNING IT. From the VCs perspective, they've already written the cheque cause they think 4 years of your talent is equivalent to several million of their dollars and that's kind of the social contract between you and the VC - and if you take the cheque in and walk out with any founder issues and you need to leave the company - then the quid pro quo isn't really there...the VC put their money in and you didn't give 4 years of your talent/efforts to the business...AND THAT'S THE WAY THEY VIEW THIS WHOLE 'VESTING' THING. (So they're not being sneaky or anything, it's simply "if you fuck up, I'm giving you money and risking capital when I could be putting it in another investment, and as such, if you fuck up, I get to "take" aka buy back, YOUR shares!)

So if you're aligned with the VC, it will work fine.

www.fenwick.com

What he looks for:

1. Interesting person

2. Is it a company that is going to be a large company?

3. Will it raise financing or do organic growth?

4. Is this a '2-7 years out' deal where it's 20-50-100 million dollar business? Because, basically, if you're not trying to build something like that you don't need the talents of lawyers at the level fenwick practices at, there are cheaper people out there with quality legal advice. But if you're a company like the above - you want to have the legal and tax implications really really thought through and right from the beginning.

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DVD 13

BRAD FALLON:

Really understand the customer, really be inside the mind of the customer Think about how you can get lots and lots of people selling your products (ie. don't be the affiliate, have the affiliates helping YOU)

"How can you sell to China?" - put info products into Chinese...since the world has

flattened don't just think how you can buy cheap from china, but sell to china, changes the macro factors of your business

Important to think about COMMUNITY - not just traffic and conversion...think social media sites...COMMUNITY/ONLINE COMMUNITY - think about people not connecting as much as connecting more online in the virtual world so to speak

Highest Value thinking SPEED

"How much did you make, what was the EBITDA, what was the valuation..." – people often talk about 'money' stuff but rarely talk about TIME.

Tons of a books on how to hire people, but none on how to hire people FASTER.

If you're the CEO - the number one thing you got to worry about is hiring these people, so you're always in the market for them. ABC = selling. Always Be Testing = marketing. Always Be Recruiting = CEO. You need to take the time to do it right, but you got to do it faster often times.

You're the most important leverage point in the business, so it's the idea of thinking about how to do things faster. It's the whole 'ya, let's get together, how'snext Thursday?' and you say 'It's a long ways from now, what about this afternoon?','well we'll meet first...', 'well what if that meeting goes well?', 'well then we'll meet with Bob', 'Okay then bring Bob to this afternoons meeting'...THERE'S ALWAYS OPPORTUNITIES TO TAKE OUT CHUNKS OF TIME AND COMPRESS THE SAME ACTIVITY CLOSER TO NOOOOW. And people just don't think about that a lot.

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Tell more people about what's going on more often, bring more people into meetings sooner...you can never OVER communicate. Cause if it turns out you just saved a whole bunch of time and other peoples time cause you would have had to repeat the same thing. So, try not to repeat things, try to do things faster, and just think about how you can get more done faster.

***** It's a great question --> "If this meeting goes well, what would we do next?"

Well, is there a way to just skip that step and get em both done and what would happen after that.

Doing deals --> not saying have a lot of time having meetings, but we're saying if you're going to do something have it done closer to NOW (i.e. if you have business people for a deal come in, and then you plan on bringing in the lawyers...BRING BOTH OF THEM IN NOW AND COMPRESS THE TIME!)

How to ramp up from $1 mil fast:

You got to think about yourself and your org. but you have to think in terms of learning, that you can do more when you know more. That's the way it is. Learn more?

Earn more. If you stay captain of the ship as the company grows, you're going to always have to do stuff you haven't done before. And when you move from $4 mil to $40 mil it's entirely different set of issues...and you ask "How do I solve these problems I'm working on today?" instead of asking (more correctly) "what kind of problems are going to be at THAT level and what do I need to start reading and learning?". Unconscious incompetence plays in at that point and if you didn't plan, you don't even know what the issues are. So the sooner you can get your arms around what the issues are cause they're different at every level -unless you fire yourself and get someone in there who actually knows what they're doing, if you want to stay there and run things you have to learn new things all the time and FASTER and faster and faster unless you just stay at this level...hence why you might say "If you're doing something you're good at, that's probably bad" As a leader, you've got to grow that fast. If you're great at adwords and you're sitting there looking at google adwords all day...I mean, Brad doesn't even know what his company's google adwords login is. So a great copywriter might be a great copywriter, but they don't know how to hire great people, and get the right accountant in, and build an HR dept. ... so unless you want to get that guy that earns a few million a year writting copy for other people, if you want to build a sustainable business that has got equity in it so now the business is making money for you at the same time that it's etc etc...otherwise it's like buying or renting a house...the business needs to appreciate, not just 'however much you make selling stuff'.

'Pumping the Marketing bicep and using the Marketing hammer' vs. Each of these areas a little universe of knowledge you go into learn enough about so you're competent and then come back out and go into the next one and then you got to integrate. Speed is the key ingredient.

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One of the keys to speed clearly is developing your org. - as it's not just getting you to learn more at the next level, but it's "how do you get every single person in the company moving up the "flow channel" where you flow right between 'ability/challenges'?" So the question is "How do you get everyone moving up the channel faster? And that's training and development. So training and development is kind of key

Andy Grove of INTEL - Best Single ROI Universally In Business As An Investment? TRAINING

Look at how much time people waste in excel or word and just get some training books and the ROI increases, you spend x and you get xxx etc.Learn the product.

Think of the internet as a Funnel, and if you give more away of your best stuff/magic bullet - you get so much more lead flow coming from the top of the funnel. Scott Mcneely of Sun Software called it “Moving the Free Line” So his talk for an hour was on open source software and how you give the valuable stuff away and then you make so much more on the backend.

********** You can pick up little tactics here and there and be clueless as to the "big picture", or you can focus your mind as a CEO and put stuff into three categories (your three jobs according to Brad):

1. ARTICULATE THE VISION - 'articulate' meaning say it over and over and over so if someone walks in and says 'what do you around here', everyone is on the same damn page. If you don't have time for a traditional business plan, how about a 1 page business plan?! Hello. Traditional Business Plans and Traditional Strategic Planning, companies tend to do worse cause all it does it lock you in and decrease your fucking flexibility. "Can't do that, it's not in the plan!" Please, the whole fucking deal is you got to be flexible! Especially if you're moving quickly. That's part of speed - you got to be agile and flexible. A one page business plan, get the vision on one page...doesn't matter the format but put down your 'mission'/'vision'...put it down on one page 'goals for the year'/'basic idea', get it on one page. Brads a big fan of one page stuff. One page plan. One page job descriptions. "Name, Title, Your Number One Job Is To Help Us Get And Keep Customers" - as it's probably worth saying that little line on a job description - but then you just have what this person is supposed to do every day, and how it's going to be measured. Imagine what would happen if companies actually had this for people running around doing who knows what?? It would be profound. Sounds a little different than the average job description, yes? You want to figure out what they're going to do everyday and how it's going to be measured - that ought to be part of the hiring process, cause if you do that before you hire them you'll have much more success rate. SO, Articulate the Vision, say it over and over and over, and every time you talk make sure people get it.

2. DRIVE THE CULTURE - the word 'drive' implies 'don't just LET it happen'. You CAN just let it happen and you can have a good culture, but if we put

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thought into it and try and be a little more proactive or a little more purposeful about what we want it to be like to work around here - than that, by definition, will probably be better. And you have to drive it cause that's the one thing you can't hire. Smart companies vs. Healthy companies. To be a Smart company: if you don't have a marketing plan you hire someone who can do that, or a financial plan you can hire somebody smart who knows how to do that. But the Healthy companies in the culture, that's from the top down and if the guy at the top is messed up then everybody else is going to swimming upstream the whole time. You've really got to drive the culture and be purposeful.

*Not saying you should make up what it's going to be* - Brad in his company created a 'culture club' so they got people from all different levels and departments in the org, they'd all get together for pizza once a week at lunch and they'd talk about 'what do we want it to be like to work around here?' so they had the little 1 page thing of our values or whatever and that was good, and then they started putting that into their orientation programs and whatever. One thing Eben is so good at, because of the uniqueness of the org., it takes em a couple months to catch on and that's the way it's going to be (6-12 months)...but the question at the end of the day is "How do you get people to be THE most productive and THE best teams and the work sort of environment?" and the extra question is "How do you do that faster?" So, for example, once you get up to a stage where you got people coming in where you haven't met until they start work or whatever --> an orientation program. Big companies do that. But small/medium sized businesses people show up to work and it's like 'oh we forgot to get you a computer but we'll have it by tomorrow, anyways this is your desk and there's a phone and OH that's Jill and maybe you two can talk or whatever' ...but that's what people do when they have small businesses. So having an orientation program where you spend a couple days telling people the history of the company and what it's like and it seems obvious in retrospect but why does it take companies 2 years to start doing this? No idea. It shouldn't. So, you have to drive the culture

3. HIRING GOOD MANAGERS --> Management is everything. Book: 'First Break All The Rules'. Branch office A will crush Branch office B with the answers to the "12 employee questions" (see break all the rules summary) and it's proven statistically. The answers to the 12 questions make all the difference, and it's ALL about the front line managers. BECAUSE they're the ones who are going to hire the best people, retain the best people, and motivate the best people...it's all about the front line managers so you've got to hire good managers. You just can't do it yourself.

"Reverse Opt In" - Ask for opt in after giving the free content Pay affiliates ON THE BACKEND for a year! HELLO!

Having video on your website being like "do you have e-mail?" - it will be umbiguous.

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You got to think ahead. Internet is 2 way conversation taking place independent of time and space so website is talking 1:M while you're somewhere else. Web 2.0 is M:M - many people talking to many people (reviews, communities, ratings etc) Web 3.0 which is all about RDF, ROR and it's basically machines being able to understand other machines. So now you have everybodys computer talking to everybodys computer and understanding it, and that will be interesting.

Be careful what you 'up' online. Privacy.

Richard Rossi:

Don’t drive your business in the Fog. "We could just see as far as the headlights, but you can kind of take the whole trip that way"

"I thought about a group of people, I thought about how amazing it would be for them to experience this experience...he didn't start with 'I got to figure out how to make some money, I got to get these people to give me some money'...He thought about creating the most valuable experience he could for a group of very special people."

There's nothing more important than people. It's so simple. But never confuse 'simple' and 'easy'. Once your business is up and running, nothings more important to your future than the quality of the people you hire. See Topgrading. Follow that format.

1. Internally create an incredibly clear picture of what that person is supposed to do. (Just like you'd know a type of copier you needed)

2. Then create a scorecard listing those things you want them to do, and make most of those things measurable. It has to be measurable. (Just as you'd know what the copier was supposed to do and how many measurable copies it was supposed to make)

3. Only have A players do the interview and is a trained interviewer. You need training on how to interview. A uniform set of steps of how you go about interviewing. And a lot of that is in the Topgrading book. ALSO have intensive discussions with past employers - not just 'was he good etc', but really drill.

4. When the person arrives Day 1, because you've done all the aforementioned, there's a document prepared for the person saying 'here's where we think you're great, and here's where we think there's room for improvement, and we're going to work with you to make you greater and to work on those areas that need improvement'

5. Then incredibly open and regular communication between the team member and supervisor using the scorecard as the focal point. So you set down the card

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and say 'here's what the measurables are, how've you been doing?' 80-90% will be measurable, not all will be but most should be.

8 of the 10 top leader is Rossis company sit down every 6 months for 3 days to hear a report on every person in the company...all 200 people.

THE LESSON? --> NOTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE PEOPLE. YOU'VE GOT TO INVEST THE TIME IN THAT. 80% of Rossis professional time is spent on innovation, marketing, and on finding and inspiring A players. The Topgrading deal in a nutshell = people will be who they've been, and they'lldo what they've done...and it's your job to figure out through the 'interview process' who they are and what they've done. "6-7 hours with top management how could you invest your time?" - contrary: what could be more important. Cause you have to understand the power of the A Player.

These long interviews you get into - what you're doing is reviewing the history ofthe person, and they're talking about their history -- and recounting their history over time alone reveals a lot about whether they're an A player because for C players it's a painful gruelling weird thing and they don't want to talk about it much whereas A players it's like a review of their winning record. They love the walk down 'good memory' lane. B and C players may not even show up to interviews if you explain the topgrading process. The top people find easy solutions to business challenges. B player sees obstacles. PLUS A players almost always hire A players. B players hire B's and C's hire C's. Magic happens with a room of A Players. And think of your own companies when you're not willing to grow until you find that right next person, and then the next person, and then the next person. That ONE thing will make all the difference and it will cause a 'hockey stick' in your revenue.

If you take only one message it's: Don't compromise on the people.

Follow your gut instinct, cause you're not always going to be right. If you feel in your gut "I don't know if they're right" -- you're probably right, they aren't right. But then, what happens is you don't choose the short pain, even fortune 100 presidents would rather hide than fire someone. The lesson? You can never avoid the pain. Choose short pain, choose long pain. It's always going to be pain. The suggestion? Choose the short pain. Not only in hiring and firing situations, just in business in general. In other words if you need to tell someone they won't be getting the VP position they hoped for, instead of fretting and avoid the convo for 6 months and thinking about it for 6 months (long pain) --choose the short pain and have the convo. Don't avoid issues.

Create a culture of constant recruiting. Part of the job description of everyone is to find people to add to your virtual bench, find people who could in the future be A players - YOU TELL PEOPLE --> don't read the national enquirer in line at the checkout - talk to the people around you, in front of you...ALWAYS BE THINKING "IS THERE AN A PLAYER HERE THAT I CAN GET INTERESTED IN THE VISION ?AND ENVISION?" AND YOU PAY SUBSTANTIAL BOUNTIES TO ANYONE THAT BRINGS AN A PLAYER IN THAT YOU EVENTUALLY HIRE. So you deputize all your employees to be your eyes and ears and be incentivized and go out there and find A players. And as you grow your companies be sure your A players know there's something in it for them to find other A players and be thinking about that every day in all the things they do and all the interactions they have.

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There's so many advantages to having A players around you it's unbelievable...but one is when issues come up, When you have a championship team, you can sit an A player down with the issue and it doesn't get weird. "here's what's up, here's the issue, here's where you're going, here's where we're going, here's what needs to happen, I don't see this happening, what do you think?" and you can just have a normal conversation about it. Respect and benefit allyour team members. Make them feel safe and give them permission to come to your management/AND YOU with ideas - open door. Create that culture since they can bring you the next big idea. Throw benefits at your staff (staff starts with 5 weeks paid vacation - you never get more, but you start with 5 weeks = a great recruitment tool + balanced life for members and well restarted and rejuvenated gives company the biggest result) Give your team that life. Conversely, in the office expect top performance. No excuses.

So create an environment where everyone feels heard, respected, and rewarded.

Don't let success go uncelebrated and do celebrations in a thoughtful manner - it makes a big difference when you celebrate success.

Since change scares people (no matter what they say) you got to preach everyday that 'the only thing you can count on in this company IS CHANGE' and that's okay. Your job as a leader, part of it, with 1 or even 10 employees is to let them know it's okay and to talk frequently to your team about their fears and their concerns -- cause change is a huge deal for everyone as they grow their business. It's constant. So be aware if it's fear of change that's holding YOU back. ALL CHANGE IS PERCIEVED BAD BY YOUR TEAM - PERIOD...unless you show them, tell them and connect all the dots otherwise. You've got to explain how this change is good and put into no uncertain terms so everyone sees it and sees your demeanour is okay and it's just the way it's supposed to be. Change is bad = the default, and yet that's how the company HAS to grow. By definition it has to. REALLY embrace change. Cuddle with change.

YOUR JOB AS THE LEADER IS TO MAKE EVERYONE FEEL THAT CHANGE IS OKAY THE WAY WE JUST DESCRIBED IT.

******* Recognition vs. Service...there are two types of companies. One is where people want to be recognized for being on top, fancy offices, fancy titles, want to be treated with respect, their the top guys and the others are the underlings. ******

And then there's the company that believes the top people are at the bottom CAUSE everyone in that company is trying to make you money, make you succesfull, …create value in the world. What are you then? YOU’RE THE PERSON THAT HAS TO BE THEIR SERVENT AND HAS TO SUPPLY EVERY RESOURSE AND EVERY CAPABILITY SO THEY CAN DO THAT.

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****** So the question is to everyone on your team: "WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU?" Cause the unspoken message is: "What can I do for you so you can help make me successful and I'll bring you along for the ride?" ****** So you don't view yourself at the top at all. You view yourself as a servant to the people that are trying to make you successful. If you're in the hospital and someone’s trying to save your life it's like 'what can I do to help and cooperate?' And it's the exact same thing in a really successful business. You have GOT to be egoless. Your executives should have the offices away from the window in every sense of the word.

It's huge because as you become more and more successful you'll want to be recognized for that, and will want people showing you respect and will want to be the big boss...but those are the people working like hell to make you even more successful.

It's MUCH smarter to find out how you can serve them and do it.

What brought you to where you are today is a set of beliefs and actions.

Brad said one of the options is to fire yourself? Definitely fire yourself as soon as you can! Cause if you're running all aspects of the business, you probably stink at it and it's probably a waste of your talents. So really, what you need focus on is 3 things...and that is:

1. True leadership2. Critical relationships3. Creativity

And most entrepreneurs Rossi has met, that's ALL they should be working on. And they should delegate everything else. (Dan Sullivan - the strategic coach -has been a mentor to a lot of these guys, Joe Polish. Rossi, Pagan)

Tell your team you're going for a while and that they have to kind of think that way, and you will not be calling in. And when you take your time off and you want your team to know they are in charge...one of the best things you can do is not call in because then they're sitting around going 'wow, he's not calling in, I guess we really are in charge'.

And yes, they had the most competitors ever that year, and they were the most profitable that year ever and the reason is that Dan fired himself several years ago and he doesn't run the business on a day to day basis - he has a 3 man team that does that and he was able to fulfill his 'travel around the world' dream and it was magnificent.

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*********** If you don't include people in 'the list of where they want to go' you're not going to get 'buy-in'. You want 'buy-in' from your children? You have them make a list of where they want to go on the trip - you INVOLVE them in the planning of this trip and by doing that they feel they have a stake. That's a huge business lesson. You will not get buy-in from your team unless they feel that they were at least heard and respected in the decisions that you make. You don't ultimately have to do what they say or suggest but as long as they feel they had a seat at the table and they were heard and respect - that's good enough. Just as it was with Rossis kids. And it's a blessing to have a business that can prosper without you for that amount of time.

NOTES:

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DVD 14

JEFF SMITH:

How can I do all the stuff I have to do or do it faster or more efficiently VS How does the entire business fit into your life?

Business is the great game, but the greater game in life that We, as entrepreneurs, have the opportunity to create a business that gives ourselves and our team greater life in one form or another

Does it fit into the lifestyle I really want this business I'm creating to provide for me and my team?

"How can I get more out of my employees?" whereas today we can come together by choice and create businesses by choice that provide a certain life for us. That's a piece of the puzzle we often leave out when getting down into the nitty gritty of the day to day, the next piece of that being to take it down to the day to day and know 'philosophy in a vacuum is completely irrelevant'...so then to say: "What are the techniques and strategies I can use on a day to day basis to make that a reality?" and then tie the two together.

***** When considering a business opportunity, perhaps the most profound question you can ask is: ***** "HOW DOES THIS OPPORTUNITY FIT INTO MY LIFE?" ****** or "...into the lifestyle that I want".

In terms of currency of an idea, it didn't matter to Jeff how profitable an idea was if that idea would require hiring people and putting staff in place and working an office...because profitability was irrelevant if it didn't fit with his life. There's multiple different marketing strategies that can get you to the same goal in terms of profitability. It's not always 'I have to do "this" and make this "sacrifice" cause that's the only way to get me to where I'm going'...any business has dozens of ways to get to the profitability we seek, and the question we really NEED TO ASK IS: "Which is the way that fits into the sort of lifestyle I want to create for myself as an entrepreneur."

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Business is life...or maybe the reality is Business CREATES Life? (side note: people say 'music is life', but what they're feeling when they say that is 'music creates more for my life' -- so think about it in that context) In building and owning a business as entrepreneurs, what we're literally doing is creating life. And we have to ask ourselves, "what life do we want to create?" - and that's our impact on the world.

This IS the future. We as entrepreneurs get caught in 'i'm going to build this whole big business in 10-20 years and then cash out' or I have to work 20 hours a week every week and weekend and sacrifice my family etc. so I can build this business etc...and when you get down to it that's what we THINK of as the future, but THIS is the future - today is the future - so what we have to ask ourselves is "how can we build that business and grow that business in the context of our everyday activities?" That's the life we're creating with this business, and to do that in a way we enjoy.

Looking at different opportunities - there's this thing called 'Our Sweet Spot'. We always hear 'you should focus on your strengths'...but add to that --> "Think about the things you're really passionate about and that you just tend to do when you're not working or whatever those things are you gravitate towards and just tend to do...and put it in a Ven Diagram of two overlapping circles and ask: "What's the overlap between the STRENGTHS and the PASSIONS, and that's called "YOUR SWEET SPOT".

Those are the things that you as an entrepreneur, you as a leader - that's your "job description" if you want to call it that, but really the area you want to focus on...and it's coming from the perspective that YOU CAN DO THAT because there are multiple ways to get to an end result, so if you take that thought process a few levels deeper as Eben does you can figure out that path to get there - but you got to start with the idea that the possibility is there.

Fears:

Fear that we're going to be forgotten...so all these problems like unproductivity and lack of focus and etc etc and we try and solve those when the real issue is it's something completely outside the business - as we often use the business as a tool to get our needs met that aren't being met in our personal life. So we have no excitement outside of business, we got to get all our needs met and juice from life and whatever else inside the business. And because it's boring to have a smoothly running cash machine, you probably won't have that. So you have a built in incentive to NOT create the very thing you're probably telling yourself you want to create or trying to create. So the odds are pretty good it's not going to happen. Unconsciously, you will create 'fires' to eliviate the bordom cause we don't get a rush anywhere else, or might create 'fires' to sweep in and be the hero. The personal life and business life are not in two separate boxes -each one effects the other.

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How the business strategically fits into our lives - tools:

Ask: "How much is enough?"...it's never enough no matter how much we have if we don't answer that question as day 1. But it's not just "How much is enough money?" but how much is enough in every aspect..."How much is enough in response to this ad?", "How much is enough in terms of profitability of this campaign?" ...cause sure, you could tweak it etc but it's probably not a good use of your time. So taking that equation/question and applying it to every aspect starting from the bigger picture of our life and our macro perspective of the business, then taking it down and using it as a context for everything else from within.

ASK: "HOW MUCH NET AFTER TAX CASH PER MONTH WOULD FUND THELIFESTYLE YOU'D WANT TO LIVE?" WRITE IT DOWN.

(Side note 2: "Money gives you the freedom not to worry about money", Also -Dan Kennedy's idea of "Income On Demand / Lennon Let's write a swimming pool / The Herd", also something to be said about if that's the 'moola' aspect of life then the contribution part of business is to add more life and the whole 'let the wave catch you' instead of chasing an industry wave and the whole deal about doing something you love because the driver of the business is money to sustain that 'love' by its definition and as a result of being a business but really the 'passion' deal is what it's about since money is just a by product of what occurs when you do something you love with smart economics...And Paddi Lund explaining rich as 'Having $999 in expenses and making $1000, while poor being $1000 in expenses but making $999'. Also - Felix Dennis on 'How Rich' saying "Of course, all measurements are arbitrary. They are just an attempt by humans to make some kind of order out of a chaotic universe. In and of themselves, they are meaningless. Quite as valid a measurement of money as asset value or cash in the bank might be 'Availability on Request' or 'Lifetime Spending Totals'. If you have no money yourself, but a fairy godmother gave you exactly what you needed whenever you requested it, you would never make the Sunday Times Rich List but you would be the richest person in the world, even if you gave away each night"...a question perhaps to ask if to put yourself in the mindset of 'if I had a fairygodmother doing that for me - what would I be doing in life right now that would be absolutely the most passionate thing I'd want to do that I was good at?'...they're all kind of saying the same thing in a different way. Much like everyone who explains 'culture' and 'management' and 'leadership' are all trying to hit on the fundamental POINTS of business and those things like culture and management as tools to drive the fundamental underlying ideas.)Dean Jackson: If you're in the deep end of a pool with more than enough water to drown you, does it matter whether the pool is 10 feet or 1000 feet? You don't know the difference as long as you're in that pool and water that's deeper than 'more than enough'. (Read book called: 'The Number')

A number that will change your life is "What amount of money it would take net dollars to run your life for the rest of your life?" (i.e. $20K/mo. net dollars after

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taxes indexed or for inflation at 3.1 % for 50 years...that number is $6,533,000.00 is the amount of money you would have to have to yield $20K a mo. for 50 years indexed for inflation based on 6.5% annual yield on your number.) The point? If you know a number like that, it puts everything in context, now it's about getting to that number...at some point your net worth and life expectancy are going to intersect, but having a context for what that number is - so KNOWING WHAT YOUR NUMBER IS. So get that number AND continue to add value to peoples lives...it's just the CONTEXT. (side note: there's something to be said about CONTEXT changing perspective and inputs/changing tactics on strategy for example)

BOOK RECOMMENDATION: THE NUMBER by Eisenberg

Back to Jeff and Eben: ***** What we're trying to do is create a great LIFE and use business as a

tool. If you now think back about everything we've talked about, what have we really been teaching and learning? What do these principles mean REALLY? "What does winning mean?" - If you're cruising along at $1 mil a year and you make a conscious decision to say "I'm having a great life and the biz funds my life - and my method of continuing to win in the business is not to increase the profit - but rather it may be to decrease my working hours, or have more fun at the office, or create a better environment for my team, or create a more meaninful or profound impact on my customers/clients..." - there's a lot more ways to win than just growing revenue or net profit. And that's the fear a lot of us have...creating a really good cash machine business that more or less runs on autopilot ...cause then it's like "well, what am I going to do to win or that feeling of winning or competitvness inside us"...

Winning means 2 different things:

a. It can mean 'to beat the other guy' and thus failing to focus on building a goodbusiness and making profitb. And the other type of win is to get what you want ...and you need to decide where you are in terms of 'win', what is a win for you, what is your business focused on winning, how do you think about winning, how do you communicate what a 'win' is to your team... ...and on a day to day business level when looking at 'did we do good today or did we do the right thing today or did we do the most that we could do?' - and often times we just look at the results and that tells us did we win or not 'did we make profit from this particular sales letter we sent out or blog post etc' - and we equate the actions we took today with the results BUT IN REALITY there's often a large disconnect in time between those two things. The results we got today we think of as a by product of sending out the ad/salesletter/etc yesterday or the day before etc and that determines the results. WHAT REALLY DETERMINED THOSE RESULTS WAS PROBABLY WHAT YOU DID OR DIDN'T DO 3-5 YEARS AGO...if you were up at 5am writing headlines to improve your copy etc. so whatever that ad or salesletter you wrote yesterday was a much higher quality peice of marketing...the real thing that effected the results was the thing you were or weren't doing

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potentially years ago ...SO WE LOOK AT THAT RESULT AND GO 'DID I WIN OR DID I NOT WIN TODAY, THIS WEEK, THIS MONTH?' You ought to have a system and your definition of 'winning' becoming 'did you follow that system?' Or 'I made a commitment, did I keep that commitment?' INDEPENDENT OF WHAT RESULTS YOU GOT. The results are just a by product of the actions that we take, and we get obsessed with defining the winning as the result but the results are just a by product that we essentially have no control over directly (per se)...it's an indirect control over it.

***** Focusing on some goal we want to create VS making the goal to create a great journey. So, MAKING THE GOAL TO CREATE A GREAT JOURNEY(SIDE NOTE: i.e. for your team etc. and yourself) Hold that in front of you, cause the epiphany is "I'm probably going to spend the rest of my life in the future". Especially this is important if your goal isn't to necessarily sell out the business and love what you do - then it's especially important to come at it fromthat perspective of what's the journey that's going to be enjoyable to me along the way.

In terms of specific goals you set or not set or have your team set or not set - the biggest mistake is having a goal of a result. "$100,000 EBITDA" or "27 leads generated from this ad" etc. Those are all results and we can never commit to a result as the results are a by product of our actions. So never set a goal to get a result - so when setting goals with yourself or a team FOCUS ON THE ACTION. THE ACTION IS THE THING YOU CAN CONTROL. THE RESULT IS A THING YOU CAN'T CONTROL. AND THEN YOU CAN SAY 'YES I DID THIS' OR 'NO I DIDN'T DO THAT', and it's a clear cut and dry way to look at what someone on your team (or you) did or didn't do over the course of a day as well. So make that shift between the two.

And in terms of results we usually leave out the quality or level of our results is a by product of our skills. Think of athletes preparation for 60 minutes of hockey, 4 quarters of NFL or 10 seconds of sprint competition...and as entrepreneurs we, equivalently, want to be an Olympic athlete or pro sports player for our business and our ratio is often the complete opposite. We spend 10 seconds practising and 10,000 hours performing...it's not a 100:1 ratio like a sports athlete. And THAT'S OKAY if the performance is at the level you want, but if you want to improve your performance you got to improve the quality of your skills. So it's a huge skill cause we're often busy doing day to day actions we never take the time to practice. So structuring in "what are my important things to do for the day or week etc. or for the team?" - we can say it's important to practice, but getting it down to a specific level. So like "I want to improve my copywriting" so you go to barnes and nobles take all mag headlines on the rack and rewrite them for your business for 2-5 hours...so you've taken an esoteric concepts and then put it to 'what can I do on a day to day basis to know I'm doing things that will improve the skills and the level of performance then feels easy cause you're coming to the table with a much higher level of skills. So you set these huge goals like "I want to make $100 million dollars", it's equivalent to doing football with your on every once and a while and then saying/decide "I'm going to win the Superbowl!" Well, no - cause you go from

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backyard with your buddies to football field with NFL players, you're in pain real fast and there's no chance in the world you will win. It doesn't fucking matter your affirmations or visualizations. There's no chance. So we set all these ridiculous and lofty ambitions for our business - and although nothing wrong with it - but you need to realize it ain't happening till your level of skills is equivalent to the level of the outcome you want to produce. And it may be very disparate that outcome versus out level of skills - and the encouraging thing is we have the tools to improve those skills and continue to close that gap between the two. But if you set a goal and never come close to that $27 million dollars despite setting the goal for the past 27 years...you wonder why? In golf, if you've been playing golf since 1984 for a couple weekends a year, and you look at the average scores of those players today...it's basically at the same place. It hasn't changed much even though - arguably - you've played a lot of golf?!

Go to Barnes and Noble - take the top 10 magazines - and adapt all the headlines to your business. It's the most valuable exercise you could do in business.

There's no such thing as a superior marshall art - there's only superior martial artists. Of course, there are ways to do things superiorly, but it's an interesting idea.

You don't make $1,000,000/yr with $100,000/yr habits. You got make em $1,000,000/yr habits. The skills that get you out of Egypt are not the same skills that get you to the promise land.

Po Bronson...people want more 'woo!' and less 'aah!' in their lives. (side note: equated this to pain/pleasure but with Po Bronson putting is own memorable spin on it)

Everything you get from the Altitude even won't come from the event itself, but from what you decide you're going to continue with once it's done cause it's all about skills, habits, and questions. Asking yourself the right questions is far MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE ANSWERS.

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"Teach me heart surgery in a weekend and I expect to be worldclass on Monday" - it doesn't happen. You want short cuts, but you need the on-going. Bill Gates mentor is Warren Buffet. Get it?

Eben:

We try and become experts in business to support our lives. We try and support our

lives and create great lives - and what DO WE DO once we have a great life.

What do we do once we have a great life? You think about how you can make a great CONTRIBUTION.

Your Bigger Contribution --> It makes you attractive to Star customers, team members, partners, and mentors. Clarify and focus this 'bigger contribution' so you can communicate it to everyone you meet in the future.

There's no greater fulfillment than helping other people. Remember the key taste to acquire: acquiring the taste of loving it when other people succeeding, loving seeing other people getting what they want - that's the ultimate one. There's a lot of reasons for that. It will lead to so much success in your life and so much will come back to you in ways you can't even imagine.

The whole purpose of the exercise is to become so magnetic, attractive and bright that you pull stars in around you. Most businessowners/entrepreneurs and PEOPLE IN GENERAL...don't...see...stars. They can't see them and don't know how to see them.

And most stars don't light up and appear as stars to most people. Cause if they do, they know people will take their umbilical cord and try and plug it in and suck the energy and life out of them. So instead of being really bright and shinning and trying to give to everyone, most stars go into the 'I'm just here mode, nothing really to look at, I'll listen to your story and what you have to say and maybe I'll try and give you some advice and try and help you out a little bit but I really can't get to involved cause I can't afford to have you pull me down'...and you don't want to be one of those people that scares stars away...you should be so attractive to stars that they start calling you, and so attractive that you make friends with star networkers that are highly networked and they're calling you on a regular basis and calling you saying "I got another star to introduce you to, I got another one, I got another one"...if you want this to happen, do the exercise, but don't do it for your own agenda and be sincere when you do this. And the exercise is figuring out what your bigger picture is,

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what your bigger contribution is...if you can get clear about:

1. HOW YOU CONTRIBUTE PERSONALLY;

2. HOW YOUR BUSINESS CONTRIBUTES;

3. HOW YOU WANT YOUR LIFE TO CONTRIBUTE...

And you can really get clear on it and EMBRACE it, and it really becomes meaningful...and maybe you'll start right now with 10% committed to it and then more, and then more...and fake it till you make, BUT IT HAS TO FEEL RIGHT OF COURSE, but if it feels right now, then it probably is right - so follow it and go with it. And the more you think about your contribution, the more you talk to other like minded people, the more you only surround yourself with likeminded people and have those conversations in your mastermind, the moreit will cultivate it and grow.

And the more in touch with your bigger contributions that you get, the more clear you'll be on them, and the more you'll know when to talk about them. And there's a moment when you should talk about them - a very special moment that happens rarely --> and it is, WHEN YOU MEET A STAR. That's the moment you say "Let's get to know each other a little bit" and if it seems like you're clicking mention your contribution. Mention why you're here, what you're in this for. Mention the bigger contribution ... and watch what happens.

If you want to have a small business that attract monster players that come to work with you that all your friends go 'How did you attract that person!?', and it'll be hard to explain - 'well, I just see a bigger picture here - having a personal life is important to me, and my team having good personal lives is important to me, and I want to contribute to the world, and I want to make the world better, and the lives of my customers better'...and they'll be confused and be like 'ya, but what did you SAY?' There will be a disconnect.

"I ACTUALLY want to change the world, I know it sounds crazy and I don't know how well I'm going to do, but I'm going to try"

1. What's Your Current Business Contribution How is your product/service making the world a better place right now?

2. Your Future Business Contribution What is your vision for the future of your business and its contribution? (where do you see it in the future, where would you like it to go ideally? Visions are verypowerful)

3. Seeing A Future Reality How can you see yourself making a difference in the world over your lifetime?

This is the most important part of the program by FAR!

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RIGHT NOW….WHAT IS YOUR CONTRIBUTION?

BRAINSTORM AND GET CLEAR:

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DVD 15

"What's going to be your contribution to the world? Put it in 10 words or less."

"If you want to be remembered well after you pass away - either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing"

AUDIENCE INSIGHTS:

Move people to be excited about their lives...getting your kids about excited about the lives they have...activate what's best about people/what they have to give to the world so they're excited about their lives and have them really devoted to their highest gifts...

INVENTED THE CONCEPT OF FLAVOURS AND COLORS IN FORTUNE COOKIES WITH LAUNCH/PROMOTIONAL MESSAGES/WHATEVER THE CONCEPT IS INSIDE THE FORTUNE COOKIE - since customizes messages all the time would be great to change the world one fortune cookie at a time and get all the great people who believe in changing the world and making a difference and getting their most powerful quotes and putting them on the inside of the cookies as a new product line and call them 'world changing cookies' and do some kind of affiliate deal or fundraiser - but outside the business and shit the contribution to the world at the end of the day is connecting people that have something to say with a unique way of delivering it - GET OUT OF THE 'HOW'/'TECHNIQUE' AND FORGET ALL THE BUSINESS STUFF AND TOO CAUGHT UP IN YOUR HEAD - WHAT'S YOUR BIGGER CONTRIBUTION GOING TO BE AT THE END OF THE DAY - "to give back more of ultimately who I am to the world" - good, that's a start, but where can you apply who you are, where's there a need out there...

when you do this exercise forget about 'fortune cookies'/'how'/'the business' andINSTEAD ******THINK ABOUT YOUR TALENTS AND YOUR GIFTS AND A NEEDS THAT OUT THERE AND HOW YOU CAN CONNECT THE TWO SO THAT AT THE END OF THE DAY YOU CAN TALK ABOUT WHAT IT IS*****

Until you get it clarified with a diamond finish on it - then it's not powerful to therest of the world.

Ebens Vision:

After doing like exercises and everything - for Eben - IT'S ALL ABOUT EVOLUTION.

"Evolution. That words means a lot to me. But evolving from one level to the next, to the next, and learning everything that's on that level so I can move to the next level confidently and strongly So I have a strong foundation. And then externally I realized it's about helping other people evolve, and the world evolve. So my internal purpose is evolution. In one word that's what it is about. Continuing to evolve to the next level on all levels. Physical, emotional, logical,

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physical, social, whatever. All the levels. Just keep evolving. Don't stop. And then over the couple of last years in particular in terms of the bigger picture, I started to see and take it personally that the world has a lot of issues and a lot of problems. And I started looking around at business, and I started looking around at philanthropy, and I started looking at all the different things that were happening. And by the way, whatever your contribution is now - 10 years from now it will have evolved to something else, right? So this is an evolving process but this is where I stand right now...I see a big gap between people who want to help the world and the execution of that help. I'm not experienced philathropist or person who has run a foundation before or even know a lot of people that have so I don't know what they're dealing with over there - but what I have seen (and I don't mean to be critical or talk about something I don't have experience with), but I have seen a lot of problems with execution and getting results. Well, business seems to be becoming very powerful right now and seems to be very good at getting results. And then, I saw what Bill Gates is doing. He's already the biggest philanthropist in history - he's going to leave Microsoft and go run his foundation himself. Now think about that for a moment.

The richest guy in the world who's already donated billions to charity is going to leave the business world and go run his foundation with his time and energy. And I haven't had a chance to sit down and ask 'hey bill, why are you doing that?' But I think I know the answer. I think he probably sees something other people don't. He probably sees he's going to have to go down there and do it personally. So I think there's a big opportunity to channel the power, the money, the energy the business has created and the methodologies INTO what you might call the philanthropic world. I'll bet you there's a way to map those over, the people, the money, the power and apply them over here so that instead of spinning their wheels, the people that are trying to contribute have good methods to get things done. So, that's what I think my biggest contribution is going to be is on the one hand - finding all these great business people and hopefully giving them everything I've got and bringing all the best tools and resources - and then eventually later on contributing to the much bigger picture by channeling some of those powerful people and resources into the places where we have a need. So that's what it's about for me. I don't need a lot of recognition for that. That's just what I'm going to do. That's where it's at."

YOUR LIFE:

Remember the whole money making/business pyramid, and the business supports and nurturs those money making things which are at the top of the pyramid with the light flashes coming from it? It shifts your thinking. Well WHAT IF the top pyramid half was YOU and YOUR LIFE, and the bottom half pyramid was BUSINESS + MONEY MAKING. What if the Business and the Money Making stuff became the thing that supported the LIFE THAT YOU WANTED, SO THAT YOU COULD BECOME A LIGHT TO THE WORLD/THE BIGGER PICTURE (cause the top pyramid has light lines coming from it, hence a light to the world)

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(SIDE NOTE: The Altitude logo is like an encapsulation of the THEME or 'crescendo' of the seminar or something...which is interesting when you think about the whole 'building a curriculum' and allowing the customer to have 'discoveries'...so if you start with the end in mind, and kind of BUILD THE WHOLE EXPERIENCE in a predetermined path from zooming in to out in to out and having the customer discover things a long the way...then you can give away a lot of valuable information and still have a full curriculum in tact case to fully 'get it' they actually need to go through the full program/curriculum you've set up...but it's like at the end of the seminar on DVD 15 you're like 'oooooh, I see what the altitude logo means and stands for now!' but there was like 40 hours of material it takes to fully GET that. Great way to think about experiences and planning experiences and programs -- and then the person feels like a 'devotee' cause they have the 'aha' and are part of the 'inside group' that gets the main logo and stuff, so now you have followers...just powerful psychology I noticed. Cause at first you're like 'what the hell is 'get altitude' and that logo?'

It doesn't make any sense...but everything comes together at the end when youtake them through the curriculum.)

WHAT IF you got to the place where you were so successful you didn't need it all anymore and you would want to contribute? If you TRULY got to that number you wrote down, and you knew it was pretty stable for you, for your family, for everyone's future, you got there first, you had it...if that happened would you turn at least a significant portion of your time, effort, energy, money to helping the rest of the world? ALL OF US WOULD.

THE ALTITUDE COMMITMENT - "I intend to give 80% minimum of the value that I create in my lifetime, and channel it back to the world in a constructive way ... not just give the money away ... but to channel it back in a constructive way that's actually going to do something. So that's the altitude commitment and that's what I'm standing here making and that's what I'm going to do with my life."

"I of course have to make sure I have my needs met, and pay payroll and all those kinds of things, but once I get to that level, then it's on to the next. And what I want altitude to be about in the future cause I have big hopes for altitude and I hope you can help me get there, is that we take entrepreneurs and we speed up and shorten the time it takes to get to that level, so that we can then go and do the other things and contribute. And I think it's fine to stay focused on that path of business and getting your business up growing really fast running profitable, take care of your family, take care of your loved ones, take care of everything - so that then you're on that platform you can do good. SO, in altitude we're going to stay really focused on business. We'll talk about this stuff sometimes (the You + Business/Money Making Revised Pyramid) cause we want to see where we're going, but that's what we're going to stay focused on."

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How different would you life be if everyday you woke up and you did your ideal personal ritual, and then you sat down for 5 minutes and did the 'your contribution' exercise? Think about that compounded over a year or 5 years, 10 years, 50 years, 100 years...imagine if you did this exercise and you got to live an extra 20 years longer than you thought...think about the compounding interest you can have.

"This program is not about the technique or me doing it for you. It's about giving you processes I've discovered and helping facilitate them so YOU do them. And if you go back to your 'regular world' without having someone facilitate the process with you on a regular basis, you'll just get sucked into your reality and it will seem like a nice dream 'ya I went through altitude and got that nice split testing idea and it helped me make some money' etc. and then you'll be back in the rat race"

It's important now that you've poured all this info into your veins and emotions that you figure out what you're going to do with it cause it's very easy to forget everything that's happening.

New Routines - so you realize you're doing it after you've already started...and 1routine at a time. So pick 2-3 routines you want to change and put in place over the next 6 months, focus 30-60 days on each of them. WIRE THE GOOD BEHAVIOUR IN.

Next think about the area of business...YOU, YOUR MARKET, YOUR MARKETING, YOUR PEOPLE, YOUR SYSTEMS...which is the one you really want to focus on for the next 90 days? And once you've selected the one you want to focus on, maybe turn to that part of your binder, look through some of the materials, turn to notes you've taken on that particular area - and make a list of 3 action items. 3 things you're going to do to really focus on that area for the next 90 days and really get it dialed.

And remember, you need to put all the leverage into 'YOU' because that's where the power comes from in this area...and if you drive your 'MARKET' then the 'MARKETING' kind of takes care of itself when you understand that customer avatar and you understand the dialogue you want to create and you narrow your niche and you create your category...if you get that right, the 'MARKETING' is kind of easy cause then your 'MARKETING' is showing up and saying 'hey, I've got what you want available' and the customer's trying to buy it vs. you trying to talk people into something. So if you drive your 'MARKET', the 'MARKET' drives the 'MARKETING'...then as far as 'SYSTEMS' go, if you're a great systems person and you love designing the systems and the procedures fine (most entrepreneurs don't), so you'll noticed I said the 'PEOPLE' drive the 'SYSTEMS'. So the 'MARKET' drive the 'MARKETING' and the 'PEOPLE' drive the 'SYSTEMS'. So if you're going to choose one of those other than 'YOU', you might want to choose your 'MARKET' or your 'PEOPLE' as your focal point.

And when you choose to get something done, remember - first things first, second things never.

(SIDE NOTE: Gary Halbert --> "Don’t become a student of products... but... do become a student of markets. Know your markets better than you know your products. If you fall in love with your product, it will blind you to reality. Fall in love with markets. If there isn’t a market, reconsider or drop the product. Use the SRDS (Standard Rates and Data Service directory) to find your buyers (www.srds.com).

It’s not a cheap resource, but it’s vital if you plan to reach a pool of hungry fish." talking on MARKET and SYSTEM and its distribution channel) SPEED OF IMPLEMENTATION (SIDENOTE: When thinking about Bezos saying "pick something you're passionate about, don't chase waves, wait for waves to catch you", and in altitude talking about 'being smart enough to know you're getting lucky' and then recognizing the opportunity and then just putting one foot in front of the other and doing the right things...and then felix dennis saying about luck and how we each get about the same luck as stated in altitude, but dennis saying 'don't seek her out -but use lady luck like a whore', in other words get the most out of her, but don't chase her...all these guys saying kind of the same thing in differen ways. Ride the wave, Use lady luck and slap her behind when she comes around, and recognizing you're getting lucky and just doing the right things when you get lucky to MINE success...which is kind of embodies in success = preparation (all this stuff/money making etc.) + opportunity (perhaps unexpected luck or recognized opportunity and getting lucky enough to see/realize it's an opportunity, like ebens realization about the women dating category deal)

Realizations:

-Go to niche that has a greater contribution;

-Harness energy;

-Mental recovery and time off gives you a ton of ideas ;

-the ability to say 'i'm just a beginner here' and seek out those experiences...not often do most adults do that, but it's a good one;

-setting up conditions and structures to have the customer see it to their own advantage, and enfuse that into your team and company;

-designing your lifestyle and the next level to where you want to be, and using your business knowledge to build a non-profit org;

-acceptance before you can change (SIDE NOTE: bill bartman, Event|----'denial / negative feelings' ------- |acceptance);

-Love of the Game (Business, but there's a bigger game);

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-Coming from a mindset that's entrepreneurial of 'I don't like doing someone elses thing' can cause you to resist building a team...so rather, you find people talented at the area you need and you say: "do what you want to do, be good at it, enjoy it, and get into it, and you let them and help them grow"...it's a total mindshift to be able to develop people, and they can enjoy this, and be 1000 times more productive and really enjoy the businessEben wanted his Partners to thrive (businesses that work with his company) so he invited them to Altitude and said 'let us share with you'...(side note: remember, cultivate the taste of loving seeing your customers, partners, mentors, and stars suceed)

..:: The End :..

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