Success Strategies

"Nobody who bought a drill actually wanted a drill.

They wanted a hole.

Therefore, if you want to sell drills, you should advertise information
about making holes – NOT information about drills!" - Perry Marshall

Thank you David Ledoux http://www.iloveMLM.com  for all you taught me

“When Eating a Frog, Go Head First”
• Do your hardest tasks first each day.
• Give yourself a small reward for successful completion.
• Everyday, focus on no more than six key to-do’s.

The first 30 minutes are the key to a great day.
• Set your alarm clock three minutes earlier each day for 10 straight days.
• On the 10th day, get up immediately, go to bathroom, wash face, put on loose clothes, walk to kitchen, drink glass of water, grab keys.
• Get out of house within 3.5 minutes of alarm going off, walk briskly in random direction 9.5 minutes away from house. No running.
• Return via a different route. Continue this practice, changing paths each day. No music.
• Focus on your breathing and your waking thoughts for the day.
• This routine will clean your lymph system, your body’s sewage system. Exercise is the key to flushing it out.
• Life is energy. This routine will improve your creative productivity by over 150 percent.

Wear A Heavy Elastic Band Around Your Right Wrist for One Week• Every time you have a negative thought, say “cancel, cancel” and snap the band. Within an hour, a welt will form.
• You’ll soon realize that your inner dialogue can “disempower” you.
• A key secret to success is harnessing our inner dialogue to support our growth efforts. You’ll work on this strategy the rest of your life.

Drive Your Dream Car at Least Once a Month
• This creates positive pressure to produce.
• It creates “cognitive dissonance” between your current reality and your imagined reality.
• Make it a point to meet the top salesman at the dealership. Have him take your photo with your dream car. Remember to smell that “new car smell.” Our olfactory sense is one of purest and most intense physical senses.
• Create positive mental dialogue to support the mental vision of you driving the car -- because you deserve it.

Clothes Really Do Make the Man (and Woman)
• Invest in one expensive, high-quality outfit that makes you feel like a million bucks. Spare no expense!
• Buy it solely based on how you feel when wearing it. Do you feel confident, more powerful? Perfect.
• Wear it only when appropriate. (No bar hopping!) Look after it like the valuable resource it is.

Create a Wad That Would Choke a Horse
• Men -- no more wallet. Carry your money only in a money clip.
• Put a $100 bill on the outside. If you’re temporarily cash short, fill the rest of the wad with singles.
• Never spend the $100 (excepting dire emergencies). When the wad gets thin, focus your money-attracting energy on refilling it.
• Ladies -- adapt this strategy to fit your prosperity-attracting needs.

•Every single time you take the clip off to share some of your wad with someone else, you are moving energy around. Pay the person receiving your energy a compliment. Watch what happens.

You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a First Impression
• HANDSHAKE -- Learn the proper way to shake a man’s and a lady’s hand. Study the firmness, duration, etc.
• EYES -- When shaking hands, look the person in their right eye. Silently pay them a compliment with your inner dialogue. That will give you a “twinkle” in your eye.
• SMILE -- Practice your smile in a mirror to make it natural and appealing. Get your teeth fixed if necessary.
• NAMES -- Use the person’s name three times in the opening greeting. (Bob, is it? Bob Smith? Bob, it’s a pleasure meeting you.)

Never Let Your Gas Tank Drop Below a Quarter Full
• Being time-starved is an illusion.
• Being too busy driving to stop and fill up is a silly self-created pattern.
• This new discipline will ensure you never run out of gas -- another silly self-destructive pattern.
• Some of the most lucrative financial deals you’ll ever make will happen because you met a stranger at a gas station.

Self-Education is Mandatory
• The public school system and post-secondary system will teach you the essential skills and attitudes necessary to be part of the struggling middle class.
• If you want more out of life, it is up to you to track down the people, courses, and organizations that can teach you how money, the brain, energy and people really work.

Support Your Inner Dialogue with an Outer Dialogue
• Most music on the radio is negative with damaging word pictures. (Why are country singers always losing their dogs, their women and their trucks?)
• Create an audio tape of yourself, in your own voice, speaking your goals and positive affirmations.
• It takes 10 positive thoughts to neutralize a single negative one. How many negative, disempowering thoughts have you had today?

Create a “Compelling Reasons” Card
• Take a piece of card stock about the size of a business card.
• On one side, write the three reasons you MUST be successful.
• On the other side, write three reasons you WILL be successful.
• Laminate it and carry it with you for the next 30 years, or until you fulfil all three reasons and need to create a new card.

The World Seems the Same Through Your Eyes
• Keep a Success Journal at least weekly.
• The changes in your inner dialogue happen slowly, you’ll never notice.
• Record your fears and challenges. In five years, the things that scare you today will seem funny. But, without a record, you’ll forget you ever had these fears.
• This is a major success secret. Treat it with respect and discipline. If you don’t record your thoughts today, you won’t know how far you’ve come.

Scheduled Dream Building
• At least one day a month, your calendar should include a three-hour appointment with yourself to go dream building. Follow a different dream each month -- cars, houses, charities, travel, church, clothes -- whatever inspires you. Ever been on a yacht or private jet? You’ll never own it until you can first dream it.
• Schedule similar sessions with your spouse and family. Make it fun to expand your dreams. Do the same with your key employees and colleagues.
• Be spontaneous in your dream building. Master the art of the “Pull In”. If you’re driving along and see something that spurs your energy to be creative, stop what you’re doing and pull in to take a look, even if only for a minute.

Build a Team of Competent Money Advisors
• Get to know your bank manager. Go to lunch.
• Do you have a good accountant?
• Do you have a good Certified Financial Planner?
• What else is missing from your team?

Leaders are Readers
• Read 11 pages per night before bed.
• Read 15 books, minimum, per year.
• Keep books in your bathroom, bed stand, office and briefcase -- use downtime to read.
• “Force feed” your subconscious, and see how it affects your conscious mind.

Make Your Bed Each Morning
• This creates a moment of discipline in your life.
• It makes sliding into bed at the end of the day more of a pleasure.
• It reduces the clutter factor in your life. An unmade bed creates a stress on the eye and, thus, on the subconscious.

You Are What You Eat
• Building a higher quality of life requires energy.
• Being overweight is a manifestation of imbalance in your life, self-image, inner dialogue and certain belief systems.
• Learn to identify self-limiting behaviors associated with eating patterns that don’t serve your purposes. (Does eating this whole cake because I feel bad help me or harm me?)

The Art of Listening
• People like to be asked questions to which they already know the answers.
• To build listening rapport, don’t just be thinking about what you’re going to say next. Get involved in the dialogue.
• If you’re stuck for conversation, ask them about Family, Occupation, Recreation, and Mission in Life (FORM).
• Attempt to discern the shade of eye color of the person speaking. (Not just blue, but aqua with a hint of raspberry). This will sharpen your attentiveness.

Life Moves in One of Two Directions
• Imagined Reality vs. Current Reality
• Whichever picture is stronger in the mind, the body follows.
• Destructive habits and negative self-talk will attempt to derail movement toward the Imagined Reality. (You don’t deserve a new car. The old one isn’t all that rusty. Stop dreaming about it, you’ll never have it.)
• This works for both Good and Bad pictures. If you imagine a negative outcome, and worry about it and focus on it, you’ll move in that direction.

Your Seven-step Check
• When going out in public, to a meeting or important social event, do a seven-step check in the mirror just before. Men, check all of these areas:
Shoes -- Shined and tied
Fly -- zipped
Shirt -- tucked
Tie -- straight
Teeth -- no broccoli bits
Breath -- no “X-Files” breath
Hair -- no Alfalfa-like rooster tails
• Ladies, create a suitable pre-check system for yourselves and never fail to follow it completely.

Business Cards That Work
• People are reluctant to throw out business cards with someone’s picture on it. Put your smiling mug on it!
• Invest in quality. They are a reflection of you.
• Include all contact info -- website, voice mail, e-mail, fax, postal mail.
• Use both sides -- on the reverse side, cite benefits to the prospect. Give them a reason to call you.
• Everyone benefits from having business cards, no matter what your current occupation.

The Power of a Handwritten Note
• No one writes letters anymore.
• Sending “thank you” and congratulatory notes will instantly separate you from the crowd.
• People love to be praised and appreciated.
• This is an important secret. Using this strategy will elevate you in peoples’ minds in a dramatic way.

There’s A Gold Mine in Your Database
• One of your greatest assets is your database.
• Invest in taking care of it, nurturing it, growing it.
• Birthday cards, monthly phone calls, personal notes add to its value.
• The old adage, “It’s Not What You Know, It’s Who You Know” has great significance. You will never make it to the top by yourself.

Clean Out Your Closet
• To acquire new clothes, room must be made for them. Harness the Law of the Vacuum
• Donate anything you haven’t worn in eight months to charity. Donate anything that doesn’t fit, or is not suitable for someone with your energy. Say goodbye to those moth-eaten Tshirts and paint-stained pants.
• The Law of the Vacuum works in any room in house or office. Before the new can move in, the old must move out.

Play Bill Gates For a Day
• Once per month, with your spouse or master-mind group, play “Zillionaire for a Day”
• Create the largest list possible of how you would use a limitless pile of money.
• After you have bought every toy and material object your heart desires, then what?
• Focus your creative mind on massive, world changing causes. What would you build, create or initiate with your billions?

Who Has Your Phone Number?
• The telephone is an intrusive device.
• It creates momentary stress when it rings, possibly more stress if you answer it.
• It is there to serve you, not the other way around.
• Millionaires rarely answer their own phone.

What To Do Just Before Falling Asleep
• As you are drifting off, the part of your brain that screws up your goals and projects with pre programmed limiting beliefs is temporarily deactivated.
• Focus on assigning your subconscious a productive task just before falling asleep. Give it a challenge. (How do I afford a cruise with my wife this winter? How can I double my income next year?)
• Repeat the question to yourself five to 10 times until it sticks in your memory bank. Watch how many “coincidences” pop up the next day!
• Never give your subconscious a disempowering question before falling asleep. (Why am I so broke and screwed up?)
• Research the Reticular Activating System for more understanding of this powerful force within your own mind

Pay Yourself First
• Take 10% from every single piece of income that enters your life and put it in the bank. Start right now and make no exceptions. This is to be invested only, not spent.
• Your discipline in doing this is the difference between being miserable at age 65 or kicking back in style.

Take a Yearly Vacation With a Zero Budget
• Open a savings account right now with ATM card access for deposits only, no withdrawals. And no checking privileges either!
• Every Friday, take a $20 bill from your money clip. Stick in it a deposit envelope and put it in this account. Do this every week without fail.
• Tale the $1080 you’ve accumulated each year and treat yourself to a special “Freedom Anniversary” holiday

The Magic of Fresh Flowers
• Attention men: Ladies love it when you bring home flowers to be thoughtful instead of apologizing for having done something stupid.
• Women: Men love flowers too, especially when it means the start of a romantic evening.
• Single? Brighten up your space. Treat yourself.
• Flowers are one of life’s small treats with no agenda other than to be magnificent.

Harness the Power of Catching 40 Winks
• Our bodies have a natural low-energy cycle in early afternoon.
• Find a way of shutting down and grabbing a 12- minute power nap right after lunch.
• Nearly a quarter of the world’s population understands the power of the siesta. If the Western world ever appreciates its dramatic impact on productivity, watch out!

How to Doodle to Stimulate the Subconscious
• When you’re on hold on the phone, or just doodling on a pad of paper, use the opportunity to focus your amazing subconscious.
• Write tiny power phrases or achievements on the pad. Example: “I can. I will. I must.”, or “me ceo, me ceo”.
• Caution: Don’t let this sheet fall into the hands of your dream-stealers, particularly the person who’s promotion you’re after.

When in Doubt, Throw it Out
• The purpose of life is not to accumulate junk.
• Clutter creates stress. Stress blocks energy.

The Key to Charity is Not to be One
• Read “Richest Man in Babylon”.
• If you can’t give away one of the ten dollars in your pocket, you’ll never give $100,000 of your million.
• You are so fortunate to live where you do, instead of in a mud hut eating crows’ feet for dinner, or in a war-torn dictatorship. What will you do with this amazing opportunity to make a difference?

The Electronic Income Reducer
• There is an inverse correlation between watching TV and making money.
• Use your VCR/DVR to reduce time wasted on commercials and make quality TV fit your schedule.
• Beware of poverty mentality and programming that doesn’t support your goals.
• Never watch TV within two hours of going to sleep.

The Demon Called Debt
• The original meaning of the word “mortgage” was “until death.”
• People work harder to service their debts than to build a better life for themselves.
• Practice self-control and delayed gratification. Wait two days before making a purchase, so that rational replaces emotional.

How to Make Your Boss Love You
• Find out what keeps your boss awake at night with worry.
• Develop strategies to eliminate that worry.
• To add value to an organization, think “internal entrepreneur”.
• Demonstrate those characteristics frequently.
• Remember -- there is a worldwide shortage of common sense.

The British Had the Right Idea
• Take a 20-minute “afternoon tea” around 3:30 each day.
• Recharge the creative battery, compensating for the low energy cycle.
• Beware sugary processed flour foods (sorry donut makers) and power up on fruit and high fiber foods.

You Gotta Have Fun-Fun-Fun!
• Check your calendar for the next 30 days. How many scheduled “fun days” do you have?
• Creativity comes from the “inner child” in all of us. Playing stimulates creativity.
• How can you get creative? What did you love as a child, but haven’t done in years?
• Go out tobogganing, building sand castles, hang-gliding, writing poetry, or taking painting classes. The more you encourage your creative self, the more your productivity will show it.

Children Are Generally Far Too Busy
• Most children have far too much going on in their lives.
• Children need 50% more sleep and 90% more free play time than adults.
• When children have overloaded schedules, and lives with too much fatigue and not enough fun, that creates massive stress on parents.

All Millionaires Have Them
• Libraries
• Self-made millionaires are consummate students.
• Buy a $50 bookcase and get serious about building a library. Invest in it monthly.

Shy? Get Over It!
• Shy is a four-letter word if you want to be a success. It costs you dearly in relationships, business and missed opportunities in life.
• Being shy is a fake behavior, a self-created label. Babies aren’t born shy. We run mini-programs in our own minds to create shyness.
• Join Toastmasters in the next 72 hours. Look it up in the Yellow Pages.

I’m “ “ -- Self-Created Labels
• Play the I’m “______” game. List everything both positive and negative that fits in the blank, including ethnic background, occupation, personality traits, etc.
• Which labels were given to you by your parents? By your teachers? By co-workers?
• Which labels no longer serve you? Will you give yourself permission to drop obsolete labels and adopt new ones, such as “I’m financially free” or “I’m happy”.

The Secret Currency of the Rich
• People will work for currency and recognition.
• It’s illegal to print your own money.
• Giving genuine praise costs nothing, but has great value.

If You’re Stuck in a Rut, Take Your Foot Off the Gas!
• The definition of insanity is doing the same thing, but expecting a different result.
• Change your behaviour pattern if you’re bored with your current reality. Take responsibility for your own life.

Your High School Guidance Counselor Was Wrong About College
• The richest people are not doctors, lawyers, engineers and dentists. The richest people are business owners.
• The straight A kids in college got degrees and ended up working for the kids who got B’s and C’s and went on to start corporations.

Judge a Man by the Company He Keeps
• Take your nine closest friends’ annual incomes. Add them up and add in your annual income. Divide by 10 to find the average. Odds are you’ll be smack dab in the middle of the range.

The Value of Your Time
• Take your expected retirement age minus your current age. Take the result and multiply by 50 to get the number of working weeks you have remaining. Divide by two to get the number of paychecks you have remaining.
• How much is your time worth?

The Value of Your Knowledge
• We generally underestimate our worth.
• What can you do well now? What would someone without those skills pay you to learn them?
• Teaching people skills one-on-one – from programming a VCR to using a computer – will be a 21st century growth industry.

Don’t Be Stopped by Organizational Walls
• So many people limit their career potential by choosing only to master those skills relevant to their specific job description or to their particular department.
• Learn as much as you can about your entire organization. Use knowledge to expand your capabilities and, consequently, your value to the company.
• If you are seen as a problem-solver, you are invaluable.

Essential Skills to Teach Children
• The purpose of parenthood is not to raise lazy, co-dependent, emotional cripples. (I can be harsh here, since I used to be one!)
• Learning how to cook, do laundry, balance a checkbook and do your own tax return are valuable life skills.
• You will worry less as a parent when your precious angel leaves the nest if you know that they can at least feed themselves and do laundry without turning all of their shirts pink.

The Credit Card Blues
• The average American bankruptcy last year had more than 11 credit cards.
• The average credit card balance in the U.S. is over $5,000 at 17% annual interest.
• At 17%, the principle doubles every four years.
• See a debt counselor if you get in over your head.

Why the Fly Must Die
• Watch a housefly at a window. It will ram its head against the glass until it dies from sheer exhaustion, even though an open door is four feet away.
• Think of three key life areas where you are banging your head against the glass.
• 80% of the people who read this book will never make that list of just three little things. They will keep banging their heads.

The Scary Truth About Retirement
• Eight out of 10 Americans at age 65 have either died (80 percent from a chronic degenerative disease) or are flat broke.
• Take the amount of money you’ve saved in the past three years, divide by three and you have your yearly savings average.
• Multiply your yearly savings average by the number of work years you have remaining. Add your current life savings to calculate your retirement nest egg.
• If your investment strategy averages three percent, the average inflation rate, you’ll be stuck with roughly the same sized pile of money as you calculated above.
• Will you have enough to retire on an upper middle-class income -- $50,000 per year or more -- and live in style for at least 25 years?
• It’s time to get serious. It’s never too late to make a pile for retirement.

Your Parents Rules, Not Yours
• What belief systems are you carrying around that your parents gave you?
• Do these beliefs (examples -- “We’re not made of money.” “Children should be seen and not heard.” “Don’t talk to strangers.”) serve you when it comes to your current spiritual needs, relationships, financial matters and career goals?

Why I Never Cut My Own Lawn
• I cut grass all through high school to make extra money and grew to hate it.
• By paying a professional landscaper $15 per hour, it frees me up to focus on $500 per hour endeavors.
• Where, in your life, are you focusing too much time on low-payoff activities?

Rolling University
• Commute times are increasing as city highways grow more congested.
• Use audiotapes in the car to reprogram your mind for success.
• The average commuter spends the equivalent of one full college semester in the car each year. Leverage that time!

Don’t Let Age Be Your Cage
• A healthy human lifespan is roughly 120 years.
• When he started Kentucky Fried Chicken in his 60’s, Colonel Sanders was just middle-aged.
• Being too old or too young to do something is simply a crutch. Colonel Sanders never served “excuse sandwiches” at any of his shops.

Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail
• Everyone gets 168 hours in a week -- no more, no less.
• What are you going to do with them? Do you have a weekly plan?
• Who will try to waste some of your time? Beware of “time thieves” -- they’ll steal your most precious, non-renewable asset.

Be a Hugger, Not a Shaker
• Hugging someone has far greater meaning than just shaking their hand.

How to Properly Read a Book
• Read with a hi-lighter,post-it notes and a pencil.
• Memory retention from reading alone is very low. It increases dramatically when you get involved in noting key passages.
• 90 percent of people never read past a first chapter in a book. You can put yourself in the top 10 percent just by getting to Chapter 2!
• Don’t do this with borrowed books!

You Can’t Eat a Status Sandwich
• Many families in America go broke on $100,000 per year or more because they fall into the status trap.
• Leasing an expensive European car doesn’t make you successful.
• Nobody cares that much about you or what you have anyway. They are all too busy going broke themselves.

Two Things You Should Never Worry About
• Things you can fix.
• Things you can’t fix.

What to Do When You’re Stuck
• Ask for help.
• That’s what advisors and your mastermind are for.
• Fresh perspective often helps.
• Never take financial advice from someone who’s broke.

Learn to Use Your Toys
• Each month, dedicate one hour to learning one time-saving feature or lifestyle-enhancing aspect of your electronic toys – cell phones, DVD player, computer, etc.
• Hire a teenager if necessary.
• Use the feature. Show off to your friends!

Program as Many Contact Phone Numbers into Your Cell Phone as Possible
• When you’re stuck in traffic or in a line at the bank, make your monthly rolodex calls.
• Touching base with these key contacts keeps you fresh in their minds.
• Remember, you’re calling to find out how you can contribute to their lives. Be centered on them.

One Man’s Junk is Another Man’s Treasure
• Clean your space!
• Use auctions, live and online, to get rid of what you don’t need.
• Use that newfound money to create new money flow.

A Life Worth Living is Worth Recording
• Your great-grandkids don’t want your old business cards. They want memories and stories.
• Take photographic documentation of your life.
• Review your photo albums often. Remembering keeps us alive.

David Ledoux is the author of the best-selling books The Road to Gold and The Ultimate MLM Blueprint. He has produced several audio training programs including How To Make A Whole Lot More Than $100,000 Per Year On The Internet, The Shifting Paradigm, A Dream Come True, and Million Dollar Secrets. He has authored, recorded and produced more than a dozen training audio cassettes in the Phone Power Series. He has been featured on video and radio, and has traveled extensively speaking to tens of thousands of entrepreneurs on the merits of The Free Enterprise System. He was named the #1 Generic MLM Trainer In The World by an industry publication. He published the newsletter, The Universal Profit Leader’s Letter to several thousand subscribers around the world. He and his wife Falia have built the successful Universal Profit Marketing Group, a sales and marketing education center visited over two million times annually at www.universalprofit.com.

Thank you David for all you taught me...

Know of others? Let me know and I will add them here for the whole team to see.