Fast Track to Billion$ with Friends

I hope you saw the great wisdom of Brian Tracy’s words of advice of to surround yourself with the ‘right people’ aka RP.  (See my February 13^th blog post.)  Those ‘right people’ are, for you, the people that have excelled in an area of life that you want to be super successful in as well.

When I was young it was all about money and, yes, a little bit of fame too. I must admit that excelling in the money department and my path to multi millions couldn’t have been done without the help, coaching and direction of certain RP in my life.  Those people were a god send. Knowing them paid off really big time for me.

But my climb up the money mountain has been eclipsed by a young man who read my first book, How to Wake Up the Financial Genius Inside You.  This university student started with nothing but quickly saw the genius behind the RP idea and was smart enough to approach a his own set of people. His RP helped push him to buy income producing property now worth3 billion dollars. Whereas I mainly approached people that could coach me and direct me this young guy approached super wealthy people and brought them in as partners.  In addition to his real estate empire he paid north of 70 million dollars in cash for the professional soccer team Real Salt Lake. This young man’s name is Dell Loy Hansen.

Part of the key to Dell’s success was taking good care of his partners. He made these great deals with them and so they in turn told others about their success including people with money. Having more people willing to invest with him allowed him to buy more and bigger properties.

So whatever your dreams are, if you want to hit it big, the path is much shorter and faster if you find the RP to surround yourself with and to work with. I also want to stress that there are many, many other good reasons to seek out and associate with those RP and for reasons much more valuable than money. I’m talking about the great life-long friendships you make and the wonderful warm relationships and experiences those alone can bring.

 

The Rug Merchant of Tangiers

Today I’d like to add a footnote to last week’s blog on the theme of negotiation.  Many years ago I took a group of investors to Tangiers in Northern Africa, both for fun and for a seminar I was to put on for them. And what a seminar it was! The best part, however, was a lesson that was learned from a rug merchant in Tangier’s.

While on this trip we all took a tour. The talkative guides took us through the narrow, winding back streets, through the open markets with their pungent odors and all kinds of interesting and colorful people.  Then, after half an hour’s stop at the Kasbah, we finally ended up at a rug merchant’s large second-floor shop.

Even though I was paying for this tour, no one had bothered to tell me where we’d end up. It was there in the next hour or so that the big lesson was learned by all of us, a lesson in the art of negotiating.  We were all hot and tired but sitting comfortably on mounds of beautiful Oriental rugs. Our gracious host began telling the group about the uniqueness of his rugs then his troupe of articulate salespeople went on to sell their captive audience on the quality of the rugs.

Interestingly enough, they also explained the custom of haggling over price.  They would be offended if we were to accept their first price without some sporty bargaining. Priming the crowed into a jovial joking mood, the merchant asked someone to make an offer on a rug he said was for sale at $4500 dollars. One of the guys in my group offered $500 dollars. After a lot of back and forth the rug was sold for $1200 dollars. The buyer had been assured that its value was over $2000 dollars. I found out later that the buyer had it appraised in the USA for a mere $600 dollars.  Oops! There was lesson learned there for certain, a lesson that happens to be about one of the oldest tricks in the old negotiating handbook. That is, you start with a very high price to give the illusion of a bargain when the price is dramatically cut.

I’ve used this method many times on both the buyer’s side and when selling a property and you probably have too. You can read more about the rug merchant and related negotiation techniques in my book How to Wake Up the Financial Genius Inside You.

 

 

Sensational Free Publicity

I have a few more thoughts on the idea of “Free Publicity”. I have this incredible story of how I ended up on the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer nearly for free due to a simple marketing gimmick. That front page article got me a huge boost in sales for the book I was promoting then showing just how impactful media exposure can be for your business.

This all started when I talked my way on to a small radio show for a very short interview. Before this though, I had come up with a unique way to market my book. It was simple and very effective but not nearly as effective as when I had that radio audience.  Being on that radio program for even the short time I was turned my marketing trick into a much bigger push than I ever imagined I’d have from it.

On the air, I said that the next day I would be at the main downtown square of Philadelphia giving away money! That’s right I told the listeners that there would be “free money” given away the next day at noon. You see, what I had done previously with mediocre results was to put a one dollar bill in an envelope with the words “take this 1 dollar bill and add 9 dollars to it and buy my book How to Wake Up the Financial Genius Inside You from your local book store or via mail”. Prior to my Philadelphia experience I had limited results with this little gimmicky marketing idea but that all changed the day after the interview.

When I got to the town square I was shocked to see something like 600 or 800 people jammed into that small space. Nevertheless, I began handing out the envelopes, which caused a huge rush toward me, so much so that I was scared that I might be crushed. I then began throwing 5 or 10 envelopes at a time as far from me as I could. It all turned into a mad circus and then suddenly I was being escorted by 2 policemen into a retail store and out the back door. The policemen were very nice and explained that I was causing a near riot and they were afraid someone would get hurt.

I was very upset and went back to my hotel thinking that I had failed, since I had only given away maybe 200-300 envelopes which would not help my book sales by much. But the next morning I was shocked  and elated to see my picture on the front page with me in the middle of that huge crowd as I was flinging the dollar filled envelopes into the air. Wow! My book sales spiked and I was a very happy camper.

I got all that publicity and that huge bump in books sales for a truly tiny amount of cash. And all that came from some pretty simple steps. Bottom line lesson here is, if you want free publicity, use your creative brain to come up with unique stories or ways to approach the media and/or your marketing methods. In this age of viral videos and social networking, it isn’t too hard to get something exciting to make the rounds. You just need to be sensational and unique so as to grab the public’s attention and imagination. What do think that would be for what you want to promote?

Learning From My Journey

Recently I met a young man who had some very big, big dreams for the future. I was quite impressed and fascinated by what he told me he was going to do with his life and, yes, I could easily see myself in him. Well, I had to go back 40 plus years in time to see myself in him but even back then, I too had huge dreams of success. As I listened to him, many sweet memories came back. Those years were such fun and exciting times. I gained both fame and fortune (even though the fame only lasted the traditional 15 minutes but it was great!)

This young man wanted me to give him some advice and help on a plan and formula that may have worked for me and might work for him. So basically I told him my road to riches story, about how I started with nothing but eventually found my fortune, far exceeding my wildest dreams. Back then my dream was to be a millionaire but I ended up with ‘multi’ in front of the word millionaire.

However, being a millionaire wasn’t my first goal. I had initially dreamed of being a NBA basketball star. I had led my American High School team from Ankara, Turkey to a come-from-behind finals victory in the Olympic stadium in Rome. I was on top of the mountain then and thought I could do anything but when I got to Utah State University on a scholarship and found myself sitting on the bench I realized I needed to alter my goals a bit. I went on to tell this young man that I quickly changed my thinking from basketball and broads to books on goal setting and fortune building. I became fixated on making a million dollars and wrote the goal down with a drop dead date—my 30th birthday. And I not only met that goal, I beat it.

So my advice to this kid was this–set a big goal or goals, write those goals down and then be sure to put a time deadline on those goals. I added that it’s also better to set goals around things that you love, like to do, and know you have some talent in.

The next thing I told him was about  the habit I had formed when I was only 19 years old, the habit of keeping a journal of my life and more importantly of my inner most thoughts, or as my dear friend of 50 plus years from my basketball days in Ankara says, “Journal your Journey”. I told this young man that those many journal entries over the years lead me to write a book that not only enhanced my own life but also pushed me to do more. That book gave me virtually instant fame and even added to my fortune. I was so blessed and lucky to eventually sell more than 2 million copies of my first book How to Wake Up the Financial Genius Inside You and that was just the beginning.

I will tell you next week, exactly what I told this young man to do. I’ll explain the ways to super charge and speed up one’s success path and even why he or you or most everyone who really wants to make a big impact on this thing called “human existence” should write a book. And, no, you don’t even have to have a literary agent or a publisher. Have you ever wanted to end up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal or be on the Today Show? Well, I did both and what I talk about next week can help you get there as well.

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