West Interviews Paul Blackburn
And Andrew Grant

Speakers:
West: West Loh
Paul: Paul Andrew

West: Hi! My name’s West. And I want to welcome you to the call today. Today I’m going to talk about the Money Mindset program and I have two guests with me. The first one is Andrew Grant, who is the co creator of the Money Mindset Program. And also with us here is Paul Blackburn.

First, I’d like to talk to Andrew. Andrew, tell us a bit about yourself and what gives you the right to talk about this with us.

Andrew: Hi West! Well, thanks for having us today and we’re really excited to be here today. I suppose… one of the things is this is the program that I’ve had in my mind for a long time and something that I want to share. Over the last year or so, my wife and myself have been successful financially. We’ve basically become financially independent. That means I’ve got enough money that I don’t need to work anymore but I want to work. And I also have a system set up where people post me money and pay me on a regular basis to do nothing, I suppose, because I don’t have to work in that sense. If I don’t want to go to work this day, I don’t have to.

So that’s been a really exciting thing for my wife and myself to be able to achieve. And one of the things that we noticed is that some of the key points of what we’ve done over the last year has really been about changing our mental attitude. And I suppose the program’s all about doing that and we want to share what we’ve learnt over the last few years when it comes to money. But we also want to have a bit of a community setup, I suppose, and share with other people and get feedback from other successful people about what they do and how they do it.

West: Absolutely. Now I understand that you’ve been working with Paul for awhile. Tell us a bit about that.

Andrew: Well yeah. Well, Paul can tell you that himself in a little bit but I’m very excited to have Paul with us today. Paul is really our coach. Paul’s the person who has taught us how to get our head right when it comes to money, how to address subconscious blockages that we had with money, how to identify them, how to eliminate them and how to rebuild new programming at our subconscious level which supports us being financially independent.

You see, up until we did this, we used to work pretty hard. And we could make a lot of money but we’d always be spending it, but spending to our capacity. We never seemed to get ahead and so we work harder. And we could get a bit of cash and we’d be comfortable but we couldn’t get independent. And what I mean by independent is working because you want to work, not because we had to work.

And in the past, I had worked as a financial planner. And that was one of the key things that I saw all the time: people were working because they had to work to meet the bills and to make ends meet; and the dream to be working because you want to work and not because you had to work or not working at all. That would be the other dream that people were having.

So why I had Paul, why we’ve asked Paul to be here today is he is the guy who really showed me how to get my head right and show my wife as well how to get our heads right and remove those blocks. So I’ll let you introduce him if you want.

West: Yeah. Well, I’m really excited as well. The little time that I’ve known Paul, he’s just been a genius in my mind. And he’s worked with some very high profile clients but let us let him blow his own horn, so to speak, and give an introduction.

Paul: Well, hi everybody. As the boys have mentioned, probably the best description of me is that I’m a coach of the millionaires. And my profession is to help people become financially capable and independent. And by that, what we mean is that they’re capable of making and keeping sufficient money that they no longer have to work.

My top nine clients are worth in excess of $250 million dollars. None of those people, when I met them and started coaching them, were anywhere near being a millionaire, let alone multis. Two or three of those people are worth in excess of $20 million now. My favorite clients of all time are Daryl and Andrew Grant.

Andrew: Yay!

Paul: They’ve done extraordinarily well. He, Andrew, mentioned that he also is a multi millionaire. So there you go. That’s what I do…is I take people from rags to riches and we do that by working on their mindset rather than on their business or their technical skills.

Andrew: I suppose the gist about our involvement here today—or my involvement, particularly—is to show you that… I suppose we’ve really applied the money mind principles and really looked at how the mind affects your outcomes when it comes to finances and how you deal with money and how you accumulate money; and in a lot of cases, how you don’t accumulate money as well.

Personally, we’ve been able to achieve financial freedom through a number of different activities that we do. But primarily, the key weapon we’ve used in achieving financial freedom, I suppose, is the power of our mind and being able to identify and eliminate any blockages that we might have to that. Now we’ve done that with the help of Paul Blackburn and his wife, Mary. And I suppose, what we want to share with you today is the key things that has really allowed us to break through great barriers.

This is a little bit of background for you. Daryl and I worked as financial planners in our past and we’ve actually set down with, um, I suppose being close to a thousand people or so and looked at each one’s individual financial details. And one thing that really struck myself was that no matter how much people earn, they never seem to be able to get ahead. They always seem to have the bigger bills. They never seem to have any spare money or anything like that. There really are some who are struggling. And it was an amazing thing to see this common denominator that people making lots of money just had lots of big bills and they never seem to have any spare cash.

It wasn’t till I actually started to look at this a little bit deeper and I noticed that there were people who are actually financially independent, financially free. What I mean by financially independent is working because you want to work, not because you have to work. And so having that passive income—and we’ll talking about passive income in a minute—but having that passive income to allow you to do what you want in your lifestyle and so on. So the thing I noticed, that there was a majority of people… it wasn’t about how much money you earn. It’s about how you save the money, what you did with it and how you achieve the money. And that’s what sort of makes the difference between people who are slaves to their job and people who had freedom in their life and had lots of money.

West: And there’s that big barrier that people need to overcome to start thinking like that. I mean most people are just happy to work their job but they’re not even aware that they have blocks holding them back. They’re not aware that they have these feelings that been conditioned over the years so they’re unable to achieve more. But it’s great to have someone like you on board to show people that it is possible. So I look forward to a bit more meat from you a little bit later on in the call.

So basically, Paul—I just want to jump back to you—well, we put together a program called the Money Mind. In a nutshell, why do you think a program like this is so important for someone looking to take the next stage in their financial career?

Paul: Well, this might be a bit longer answer than you anticipated, West, so I apologize if it takes awhile to get this into a sentence but it takes a bit of doing. If you look at any industry—so you could choose plumbing or you could choose accounting or you could choose any field that people listening to this call are likely to be employed in—and what you’ll see is that there’s a range of expertise or results varying from people that one end of the scale who struggled, to people at the other end of the scale who do well.

Andrew mentioned financial planning and advising people. Well, one of the things that I’ve noticed is that financial planners who should know better, it’s still only ten percent of them who are actually successful. And there are financial planners out there going broke. But there are barristers who are going broke and there are plumbers who are going broke and there are nurses who are going broke. And in all those fields I just mentioned, there are people who are extraordinarily successful.

So if that’s the case, then what we’ve got to do is understand that they must be doing something different with the raw material. In other words, if the raw material is your skills as an electrician, then why do some people do well and other people don’t? And the first thing that the unsuccessful do is say, “Well, I got in the wrong field. You can’t get people to pay the right money,” or “People don’t pay,” or “It’s hard to find enough work,” or “You’ve got to work so hard to make it,” or whatever it is. But there are people in that industry—we’re talking about electricians at the moment but it could be any industry—there are people in that industry who think the opposite. They think it’s the best industry they could’ve gotten into, they have no shortage of clients. In fact, they have no shortage of clients who pay lots of money and pay on time and delighted to see them turn up and do the electrical work for them.

So really, at the beginning, we’ve got to look at perception being reality and the whole idea that what will happen is that regardless of what field we tackle—and you know, we’re looking specifically at finances in this particular call—but we could be looking at relationships, people who expect to find in relationships do. And nobody expects it. But what happens is you may not have been very well trained. You know if, for example, your mom and dad or the significant figures in your life did not demonstrate how to have a successful relationship, well you have to learn by yourself and that means anything can happen.

So, much of what we pick up during our early life determines our future later on—and sometimes we don’t even know this happened. Sometimes we don’t know that it’s even our view of what it is that we’re doing that’s causing us to see it in the way that we do. Therefore, we tend to say, “The problem is the industry or the person or the whatever it is…” rather than “My perception of the industry or the person or whatever it is.”

West: I guess the Money Mind then is a stimulus to enable someone to—with the same raw materials—try and change their current level of understanding and of possibly one of the others in their industry are so successful and why they’re not. Would that be fair to say?

Paul: Yeah. The trouble is if they don’t study that person’s methodology, all they learn is how to be a better electrician. What they’ve actually got to do is follow that person around all day and watch what they do and listen to what they say and how they express themselves and what activities that they get involved in. And what you’ll find is that the difference about the activities is that the successful person understands that they’re in business first and electricians, second; the unsuccessful person understands that they’re an electrician, first, and business, second. And so they have different attitudes to paperwork. They have a different attitude to marketing. They have a different attitude to who they’ll bump into and therefore, how they would treat that person.

West: That’s a very profound concept, Paul. I mean you said stuff that shows only why a very few percentage of anyone in any industry is successful is because a very few percentage understand that concept. Would that be fair to say?

Paul: Yes. But if, for example, you talk trading the stock market as an example, then I don’t know how many systems there are out there but I guarantee you, for every system for how to try the stock market, we can find at least one person who’s very successful using that system. We’d also find a bunch of people who are absolute failures using that system. So the methodology is, you know, that’s just one of the ingredients.

And I guess what most people don’t understand—simply because we don’t get taught that at school—is if you know how, that’s fine. But you’ve only got a part of the story. The rest of the story is the next bit after the technical or mechanical parts of the operation. So the mechanical part of being a plumber means you’ve got to know how to solder and all of that stuff. But that’s not the business of being a plumber. That’s the mechanics of how to put parts together. The business of being a plumber is more about how do we try these pieces to its customers, how do we get the customers to be glad to see us, to pay us, to pay us on time, to pay us a lot? And the person who has a poor money mindset will look at the mechanics of plumbing, whereas a person with a wealthy mindset will look at the mechanics of running the business.

Andrew: If I can just jump in there too…it’s the money mindset that we need to really be focusing on and the business of being rich, I suppose, or business of being wealthy or business of being financially independent that most people just fail to address in their lives. What they do is they focus on being good at their job or they focus on whatever it might be—if they think it makes money. But they don’t focus on the whole concept of being wealthy or achieving their goals and doing what they want to do at a mental level and an emotional level and a physical level. Those are three areas we really like to try and touch on and that I effectively preach that you need to have all those areas under control when it comes to money and to be successful in it.

And most people don’t deal with how they think about and feel about being wealthy and being rich in an emotional level. Most people, as Paul said, would go and learn a system of how to make money…

West: Exactly. Become really great technicians…

Andrew: Yeah, they become great technicians as Paul used in the analogy of the plumber, but they don’t deal with the…

West: With their plumbing.

Andrew: That’s right. Their mental plumbing and how their brain deals with it. And I suppose it’s all about being comfortable with money and not being comfortable, if you want it really simplified.

One of the key things that Paul taught me when I was younger was that—I don’t know if you remember saying this, Paul—but he talked about a thing called the comfort zone. Remember talking about that, Paul?

Paul: Yes, I might have been talking about the comfort zone for many years.

Andrew: Well, the basic gist of it is—and I’ll let Paul expand on it if I butcher it; so excuse me, Paul—but he basically taught me that I will move towards wherever I’m comfortable both physically and emotionally. And if I’m emotionally uncomfortable with money, at a subconscious level we’re talking about it, I’m not consciously registering this but at a subconscious level if I’m emotionally uncomfortable with money and its subcategories of wealth as well (and there are subcategories but we’ll talk about that later), I will move away from that position. So you can give me a whole lot of money and I will get rid of it because emotionally, I’m uncomfortable with it.

West: And you’re saying, Andrew, that people aren’t even aware of it.

Andrew: Most people aren’t. They struggle from day to day and they go, “I can’t understand why we can’t get ahead. We’re battlers, we’re strugglers. We can’t understand why when we do get money, we lose it.”

Paul, you might want to talk about the lottery issues.

Paul: Yeah. If you look at people winning the lottery, then pretty much it boils down to a predictable thing—eighty six percent of lottery winners end up back at square one within twenty four months with a trail of broken relationships behind them. For example, their brother doesn’t talk to them anymore. So in effect, their life is worst. And many of the lottery organizations in the world, particularly the ones run by governments, employ counseling teams to tell people when they win the lottery that this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to them. Because most people who win the lottery find it difficult to understand why it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to them because they’ve got their mind on, well, now all their problems are solved when in actual fact, all their problems are about to get magnified. Because if you’ve got a dud system—and we’ve got to understand this if you change subjects—but if you’ve got less of the wiring in your house, it doesn’t work and you decide that the way we fix it is we just give them more juice, then you’re going to burn the house down. And so the same will happen…if you’ve got bad hard wiring with the money in your brain and you add more money, then you just get multiplied problems.

And so we’re fond of saying—like what Andrew said—you’ve got to study the business of money or the business of being in business or the business of getting wealthy—and what I mean by that, the business—but the whole idea of going one step further. Because for most of us, our education has been by people who did not know what they’re talking about and what they said was, “Well, if you make more money you’ll be happy.” Now obviously, that is not the truth. Otherwise, we’d all be filthy rich, [19:13] marching ourselves silly already. Because what happens is that if you have a subconscious belief that it costs you more to live than you earn, then your income goes up, then your costs are going to go up with it.

The classic example I’ve been referring to for probably too many years now, when Mary and I were school teachers, in the last year that we were school teachers, our combined income was thirty grand a year before tax. So it’s about fifteen thousand each. And that was not enough for us to live on. In fact, the motivating thing for us to go into business was for ourselves. So off we go into business. And in that first year, we made $300,000. So ten times as much money. And you’d figure that would sort it out, eh? But no. It ended up with the accountant. And the accountant says, “We’ve made all this money,” and I say to him, “What’s going on here? If we made all these money where is it?” He says, “Well, you seem to have spent a bit more than you earned.” In fact, we spent a bit more. The amount that we spent more was more than we’ve earned the year before as school teachers. So we just managed to be broke at a different level. And anyone can do that.

Andrew: And that’s what I saw as a financial planner all the time. I had people come in front of me and no matter what they were earning, they were always having the same problem: they extend to their capacity, basically, and spend to what their earning. That was the issue.

Paul: And so what we’re saying is that the reason most people are not successful with money is that they are working on a false premise. They’re working on the idea that ‘if I could just double my income, everything will be alright.’ What we’re saying is your problems will be twice as big and you’ll still be broke.

West: I guess if someone doesn’t take action and, say, doesn’t follow through with the program like the Money Mindset, they’ve got a pretty much zero to one percent chance of anything changing in their life.

Paul: Yeah, mate. And the statistics are scary. I mean you’re talking about five percent of people being able to fund their own retirement, ninety five percent being dependent on some kind of external support mechanism, probably primarily the government. And if you go and look at the numbers then that’s obviously not going to happen. They haven’t got the money. They’re not going to be able to get the money. And so the system will collapse. The very good, the very powerful, the very able—what do they call it?—the network, the safety net thing is about to fall apart.

Andrew: You’ve just got to do your number s on this one. This is not rocket science. You’ve got to understand that there’s a big population bubble moving through from the baby boomer era. So what that means is that there’s more people born in the baby boomer era than were born directly after. And the problem is the baby boomers’ current pay for the current social security system and current taxes and so on and [22:15] they’re moving all three/free… now, the problem that happened in our [22:20] society (?), is that what we do now is we take taxes on the current people to pay for the retirement of the current retirees. Now when the baby boomers go to retire, there’s a huge amount of people going to retire and there is not the population¬ based [22:40] ? ? retirement to support them.

And when I was in financial planning, once again, this is another issue that I saw that you would check out and see what the… you could see what people require to retire. And it was a huge amount of money that they require, if they were going to get it and stick it into a managed time or something like that which they would earn—if they’re lucky—ten percent a year.

So problem being, not enough people going to be able to support the baby boomers when they retire and so what’s going to happen?

West: Big trouble.

Andrew: We’re in big trouble. That’s why the big issue is about social security. In Australia, it’s called Superannuation. They’re really trying to push people to save for themselves and that type of stuff. But sit down and work out how much money you need to keep you going for a lifetime. And considering our lifetime expanded—well, these days we’re living longer—sit down and see how much money you’re going to need to keep you going.

West: And we get them to do exercises like this in the Money Mind, don’t we, Andrew?

Andrew: Yeah, it’s all part of it. We say, “We’ve got a reality number. There’s a bit of a reality number. And you need to understand what it is that you’re going to require to keep you going in retirement?” And if that retirement is when you’re no longer able to work or wanting to work or if it’s retirement you want to take early—which my wife and myself have been able to do. We don’t need to work anymore. We have our systems in place, money making systems, that it just chugs along and makes its own money—but we need to have it be clear on what it is and how much that figure is to be able to get that freedom.

Paul: Maybe the other thing that you might just throw into the mix there, Andrew, behind that is that when you say all that about the baby boomers retiring and that kind of stuff, you can sound pretty scary. But the reality is there is not an institution or an organization on the planet that disagrees with what we’re saying.

West/Andrew: That’s right./Yeah.

Paul: So they’re all out there saying, “Yup, this is going to happen.” It’s not like, you know, we’re sort of making this up. We’re not making it up. This is big serious stuff and everyone is saying it’s going to happen. The governments around the world, here in Australia, the government is saying ‘you better fund your own retirement.’ They’ve stopped a little bit short of saying, ‘Coz we can’t do it.’ But they’re telling everybody, “Get in to Superannuation.” They’ve made the tax situation such that people are forced to consider to a Superannuation scheme or be it a hopeless one.

Andrew: For people who are outside Australia and listening to this, Superannuation is basically a retirement funding. I think they call them a 21K or something like that in America and I don’t know what the British equivalent is. So if you’re wondering what superannuation is, that’s what we’re talking about.

I remember—now I have to check on this particular stats—but I remember being told back in the early ‘90s, when we were in the financial planning game, that at the time, I think every one person on a social security benefit, there were about six taxpayers [26:14] standing that position. By the time I go to retire there would be for every three people in a taxpaying position, there’d be two people on social security. (Note) You do the math. That was just told to me—those figures—so you have to check that out yourself. But it illustrates the point, doesn’t it?

West: That they need to basically do something about it now.

Andrew: Yeah, that’s right. And this is not about selling retirement planning by any means. The point that we really want to hit home is that if we give you a chunk of money—say you did well and you retire; say you did well and you get the superannuation payout, we give you a million dollars sitting in your lap—now unless you’ve got your head right with money, unless you’ve really dealt with the issues of how to accumulate money and how to keep it at a subconscious level…you blow it. And you’ll find somebody to rip you off or you do something like you put it in a bad investment and you’ll lose it. And as Paul mentioned earlier, this was illustrated by the people who win lotto all the time and so on. And I’m sure, most people that think hard enough, they know somebody who’s come into a bit of money and what’s the first thing they do? They go and get a trip or buy a car or give money to their relatives or something like that.

Paul: You know, it’s not everyone. We’re only talking about eighty six percent of them. Fourteen percent of them actually go okay. But, you know, if you had a gun to your head, would you want to take those odds?

Andrew: That’s right. That’s where we’re at.

West: Okay. Well, just on another note, I’m sure there’s actually a lot of systems out there, Paul. You’ were going to tell us before why, potentially, many of them are incorrect or put people in the wrong direction.

Paul: Well, I think there’ll be a lot of people on this call who will recognize the following statement said to them by somebody who loved them and somebody who cared about them and somebody who wanted them to do the best in life, that person said to them:
“Study hard, because if you do you’ll get better marks. And if you get better marks you get a better job. And if you get a better job you’ll be happy.”

West: That’s what my dad told me.

Paul: Yeah. And, you know, you’re probably significantly younger than me, mate, so it’s been going on for awhile. So that message has been perpetrated out there. The people who invented that message at the time, that message was true. Now it isn’t. And so, the more you study the better marks you get; the longer you stay at university, the longer you go without an income, the faster things will change and the quicker you’ll become redundant.

And so the world has moved underneath our feet. And what we need to be able to do now is direct our effort towards bringing income to us which is independent of our effort. So the traditional model is ‘work hard.’ We’ve got to get away from that because that doesn’t work anymore. There are lots of people out there listening to this call who work harder than we do. And that’s the problem. They work too hard, they work so hard that they can’t lift their head up and have a look around and discover that’s actually the wrong way to be tackling it.

And so, this whole Money Mind thing is about understanding that the rules have changed but you’ve got to actually have time to prop your head up and notice that the rules have changed. And then change your actions to fit with how it’s going.

West: Definitely. And so for someone listening in, if you had to give a really quick couple of first steps or a mini overview of actions someone will need to take to start removing their blockages, what would you say to them?

Paul: Well, obviously, you know, given the Money Mind program is a way to do that because what we see is that we move in circles, we have people invest significant amounts of money in getting a new skill. Lots of those people come to us later on and say, “Well, I learnt a new skill. And I’m still no better off. I’ve realized I’ve got to get my head fixed. Can you fix my head? But I’ve got no money.”

West: …[crosstalk 30:32] learned a new trade or learned how to do a new profession.

Paul: A new trade, a new profession, a new idea. You’d be in your right mind if you went out and learned how to develop some new skill like copywriting or how to build something on the internet or eBay or those kinds of things. There are lots of money making opportunities out there. And what I’m saying is that people spend lots of money on those things because they can justify it to themselves. What they will do is they’ll end up coming back to us when they run out of money and saying, “I need to get my head right. But now I’ve got no money left because I used it all on these opportunities. And I made lots of money and I blew it” or “I made lots of money and I couldn’t hang on to it” or “I’ve made lots of money and my costs have gone up” or “My wife took it” or whatever. We hear it everyday.

Everyday, people ring us and say, “Can you help me with my money mind programming?”
We say, “We sure can.”
And they say, “Well, can you do it for free because I’ve got no money.”
We say, “How come you’ve got no money?”
And they go, “Well, because I should’ve come and seen you first.”

West: That’s a pretty compelling case if you ask me.

Paul: Yeah, and it’s sad, mate. It’s sad that, you know, we‘re just working on rules that don’t actually apply anymore and your average person doesn’t realize that what they really need is to get their head straight. And once they’ve got their head straight, then they will make the money faster, they’ll make more of it and they’ll keep it for longer.

West: Definitely.

Andrew: I notice right now in people I deal with and I’m sure you’ve seen this, Paul, is it’s a bit of a rule of thumb I’m able to see if somebody has a mental block. They come to me, “So how do I know if I’ve got a mental block to making money?” The first question I ask them, “Are you making money in a way which supports the lifestyle that you want to have?” If you have a lifestyle which you have to compromise because you have to go out and earn money, then you have some sort of block or lack of knowledge about how to make money that supports you in a way that you want to become accustomed.

So what I mean by that is if I don’t want to work, I don’t need to work. We have enough passive income coming in to keep us in the lifestyle that we like. What I see out there is—and particularly with people who tell me, “Oh, money is not important” and “Money will never bring you happiness” and all this type of stuff—is that they’re out there eight hours a day, generally five to six days a week working in a job that they hate, don’t like, doesn’t fill them up, keeps them away from their family, keeps them away from actually pursuing their dreams because they have to get money—but money isn’t important and it’s not going to bring them happiness—but they’re out there prepared to sacrifice their life effectively, a good part of their life, to chase it. If you’re doing that and if you’ve been doing it for longer than you want, if this is ringing true to you, then you’ve got a block. You either don’t have the knowledge of how to get the money or if you were given the knowledge, you don’t have the mental positioning, I suppose, or subconscious positioning to be able to keep it. It’s as simple as that.

West: I would argue that most people know what to do, Andrew, with the amount of information out there. But as you were saying before, the subconscious is probably the hidden ingredient that’s keeping them from doing it.

Andrew: That’s right. Both Paul and I shared the stage last weekend with about eight people. There were eight different experts from around the world. And this particular talk was to several hundred people about how to make money on the internet. Each person on that stage had their own system of how to make money and how to go about it and I had a bit to share it and I was showing people how to make money on the internet. And in their own right, they were all…there were some pretty wealthy people out there, all independently wealthy. None of them had to work in terms of what you would consider as working for anybody and so on. They travel around the world and have a lifestyle the envy of many. But they have a system of how to do it.

Now we were talking to about three hundred or four hundred people. I know for a fact that only probably about five to ten percent of those people will actually do something with the information. And a lot of them are sitting there scratching their heads going, “Which is the best or which is the right system?” And one of the speakers said, “Well, they’re all right.” Well actually, Paul, you said it to me.

“They’re all right. They all work. What’s not going to work is the bit between your ears and how you think about money and what’s holding you back and so on. And being able to identify what’s holding you back in your life when it comes to money is a critical element of being successful with money.

Paul: I would like to just go back one little bit to something that you just said, Andrew, and that was about how do you know if you’ve got a block? And I use a similar example and I’m standing in front of big crowds. And you know, we’ve been to a couple of crowds recently that have been a thousand plus. And one of my favorite tricks is to say, “Who understands that money does not lead to happiness?” And all hands go up. I say now, “Hands up if you earned too much money last year.” And no hands go up. So you can take a rough guess and say, well, okay, looks like the majority of people could handle having some extra money. Now the truth is this—if you’re not earning as much as you like, if you’re not earning as much as you can dream of, you’ve got a block, mate. Because it ain’t the industry. Because you tell me the industry and I’ll go and find a multimillionaire in that game and I can do it before the end of the week.

West: That’s right. Very true.

Andrew: And what’s the scary thing—would you agree with this, Paul, because you have multi, multimillionaire clients, lots of clients who have lots and lots of money and they’re multimillionaires—but would you say that they’re not actually working that much harder or not even working harder than the average joe? And the thing that really gets me, the work load that these people have are not nowhere near as what somebody working, you know, as a bookie or something like that…

Paul: Absolutely. And it stands to reason, doesn’t it? That somebody who’s earning, you know, I’ve got one client who regularly makes net profit more than $6-$10 million a year. That’s a regular thing. And you see, seriously, like I know that there are people in my own circle of friends, etcetera, who make a couple of million a year. This guy is making $6 million a year. He’s not working three times harder because there isn’t that many hours in the day. So he can’t be working harder. But I’ll tell you what…he’s working a lot smarter and he knows what to do with it. He knows how to hang on to it.

One of those things where people say, “Money makes money.” And I don’t think so. What I see is that brains make money. Because this guy that I’m talking about, he started at the same place as everybody else did…and that was with nothing. As our friend Mal Emery says, “You make the money in your mind first.” Then you’ve got to make it out there in the world. And the money that you make in your world is a reflection of the state of your mind just like the relationships that you have are reflections of the state of your mind. Just like your health is a reflection of the state of your mind.

Andrew: I remember you talking to me about this when I was younger and it was quite a confronting concept when you sit down and think about it because at the end of the day, what this effectively means is that I’m a hundred percent responsible for where I am in my life. And it’s a lot easier for me to blame somebody else for where I am. I don’t know if I didn’t believe that before but I suppose I sort of bought in to the common belief out there that, you know, “It’s the economy” or “It’s the government.” There’s always a reason. And we have an industry in our media and in our society that supports… if you want to buy into that, they’ll support you all day long and tell you why it’s not your fault.

But at the end of the day the minute I started to realize that, hey, my lack of prosperity financially or whatever I do in life is a direct reflection of how I think and how I feel about these issues. I might not understand it at the moment. I might not be aware of what the problem is, but the day I realized that I had to change something in my head, then everything else started to change around me. That was the interesting thing.

West: Probably one of the biggest steps that one that most people never overcome, unfortunately.

Paul: You know, I would like to try something in here. Here’s a fascinating thought. The blockages in your subconscious, absolutely, they are not your fault. You didn’t put them there. You wouldn’t have chosen them. That’s just the way it is. It’s not your fault. However… doing something about it is your responsibility. So we have people who love us and look after us and takes us to be broke. We kind of have to get over that and go, “All right, that’s where I ended up. I wouldn’t have chosen that but I didn’t have any choice. So therefore, what am I going to do now?”

So the powerful people are not necessarily people who have better options, better training, better backup, better beginnings or any of that kind of thing. Powerful people are people, who, when they find themselves in sticky spot say, “Okay, this is not where I would have chosen to be. But what am I going to do now?”

West: They’re better decision makers.

Paul: Or they’ll just take responsibility for what’s going to happen next. You can’t do much about what’s already happened. So if we’ve got some hard wiring that’s a bit crazy and certainly someone who doesn’t, then the next question is, okay, that’s fine, but what are you going to do about it?

West: Okay. I guess that brings us to the question that I’ve been wanting to ask for awhile now, Andrew. And that is…what can people expect out of the membership to the MoneyMind.com?

Andrew: It’s actually the Money Mindset (MoneyMindset.com there), I believe. But here are the sort of the things that you can be looking forward to get. Firstly, if you are interested in being a part of this program, you need to be willing to change and change the things that are holding you back, let go of the things that are stopping you from becoming financially independent, financially wealthy—whatever it is that you want to find, your end point as far as money is concerned.

As far as what we’re going to provide, we’re going to give you a step by step system of how to identify and remove subconscious blockages that are stopping you from being wealthy. That’s the main goal of the program. But also, it’s all about getting you in an environment which will support you in your desire to be wealthy. It’s about giving you regular, ongoing information, contacts, thoughts, ideas about how you can develop money, how you can remove blockages and how you can change your financial outlook and take control of your financial future via changing your mindset.

West: Paul, do you have anything to add to that?

Paul: Well… where do I sign, mate? [Laughs] As I was hearing you describe that, I’m thinking, you know, that’s true. That’s the field that I’ve been working in for so many years. I just wish that someone had to put that kind of thing together and made it available to me at an early age. And the sad truth of it is it’s not available elsewhere. It’s just not out there. It’s not in the schools. There are not people out there making that possibility happen.

And so that’s why I said “Where do I sign” is because I know that despite having helped people for twenty three years change their mindset, I can benefit from that program simply because it’s structured and it’s organized and it would take me one step forward at a time/ And therefore, you know, despite the fact that like Andrew and Daryl, Mary and I lived the life of our dreams, we can do better. And that’s the fantastic thing, is that knowing that you can do better is a great thing. Finding the knowledge, finding the backup, finding the systems…it’s just not out there.

West: Well, you’ll be one of our first special clients on the program, Paul. That’s for sure.

Paul: Yeah. Do I get some kind of a financial break for joining earlier?

Andrew: No. [Everyone laughs.]

West: For the listeners out there actually, Paul is actually going to be contributing a lot of the good stuff to the program as well.

Paul: And I’m looking forward to it too, mate, because I’m fifty five years old and I’m ready to pass this stuff on. Like there comes a point in your life where you don’t need it yourself and therefore, one of the major drivers is to make a difference. And I’m at that point in my life where making a difference has become really, really important.

Andrew: I’ve got to say something else here. I had the idea of doing something like this a long time ago when I was younger and wanting to teach people about sort of money mind principles when I first became aware of them. And someone said to me, “Well, where are you now? Where are you financially? What credibility do you have in doing that?” And that—

Paul/West: Hello?

Andrew: Are you there?

West: You just got cut out for a second there, Andrew.

Andrew: Oh okay. I’ll say that again. When I was younger, I had the idea of being able to do this sort of program and to share this information. But I was really excited about when I first heard about this information and it’s really good to be able to share and tell people about it. And then I had a chat turned around to me and said, “Well, what credibility do you have to be able to do this? Where are you financially?” And at the time, we were tight with money and we were working in a standard job and so on. And he had a point. I really had no credibility to do it. It didn’t diminish the value of the information, I suppose, but it made my message maybe not that clear.

So I just sort of put it in the background. We went off and did other things. And as we applied this information over the years, I’ve been able to become financially independent. We made lots of money doing different things and we’ve…

Paul: And kept it, mate. And kept it.

Andrew: And kept it, yeah. [Laughs] Then we’ve been able to do programs which accumulate lots of money and assets. And we’ve also been able to develop passive income streams and some which have allowed us to work because we want to work and not because we have to work.

And so at this point, I’m really comfortable in saying, “Well, I’ve done this. What we’re talking about is the stuff that I’ve applied.” And then it’s been a direct response to applying the things that Paul has told us as well. So that’s one of the reasons that I want Paul to be a part of this program is because the information he provides is cutting edge and it makes all the difference and as he’s got a whole stable of multi millionaire clients that will testify to that as well.

West: And a range of industries and a force of elite people as well, I’m hearing…

Andrew: He’s the millionaires’ coach in that area, millionaire mind coach. And so he’s the guy who you go to if you want that sort of a train.

But having said that, the other cool thing about this program is that the information is just not going to come from Paul and myself. We’re going to have people on, on a regular basis. We’ll be interviewing people who are successful in their own right and successful in their field and getting into their head about what it is that they do differently and how they think and how they feel about things and what they do and how they deal with fear and all that type of stuff and what’s it like to have $10 million worth of debt hanging over your head. Can they sleep at night with that? And you’ll find the answer is yes and these guys are making $100 million. And it’s this whole lot of attitude and I think it’d be great for these guys to share with us and I think you’ll get a lot out of that.

West: Definitely. I mean if someone’s technique doesn’t necessarily work for you, you might come across an interview in week 2 or week 3 or down the track that you really click with, a similar background or a similar industry that you might be able to apply in your life.

Andrew: That’s right. And while those guys will say a lot of their techniques is particularly what they’re doing technique wise, what I’ll get them to share is specifically what’s going on emotionally and mentally for you and how you’re getting over those issues. And you’ll find that there’s a common theme to all of these interviews that we do with the people, common success themes: how they handle opportunity, how they handle adversity, how they manage the family and the opportunities and all that type of stuff as well.

So I think it’s an exciting thing that I’m really looking forward to doing.

Paul: Hugely exciting. I’m just, you know—if I can say my two boasts’ worth in there—Andrew’s right. I’ve got this bunch of clients who literally make fortunes every year. Well, I am very honored to be able to say that they’re my clients. But what happens is that I sit in the room advising them but I can’t help but learn myself. And so what we’re looking at is bringing most of that information to the table because it shouldn’t just stay with those people.

And so I’m particularly excited about being able to just sit down and say, “Look, I was just talking to a guy who said this and that, the other.” The other thing I’ll add is that Andrew’s right; there’s a common theme to this kind of work and it boils down to this… I just recently concluded this series of interviews with my top nine clients. These people, between them are worth somewhere around the $250 million mark. And I’ve got them all recorded. Now I don’t have permission to let those things out just yet but there’s one thing I can tell you…when I say to them what is their secret to success, they all tell me the same thing, they all say exactly the same words and it’s two words: mind set.

Andrew: That’s powerful, mate.

West: Powerful stuff.

Paul: Yeah. They don’t say you’ve got to be in the right industry. They don’t say you’ve got to be lucky. They don’t say you’ve got to marry the right person. They don’t say that you’ve got to have this kind of support or that kind of industry. None of that. They just go: mindset.

West: That’s pretty much all I have to ask. I think you guys have shared a wealth of knowledge today and I want to thank you both for joining us.

Part 6/7: Reprogramming with New Belief Systems

Andrew: Some of the new belief systems that we put in there were instead of feeling guilty in having to work hard, we replaced it with things like money comes easily to me, great opportunities are everywhere, my self worth is innate. It doesn’t come from what I do or what I don’t do.

So they’re all the sort of things that sort of removed it. But they had to go from a head level to a heart level. And that was our new belief system. And there was a whole bunch of exercises that we did to help us do that.

West: And then that translated into your bank account.

Andrew: Almost within…well, it started flying within weeks. And within months it was going.

Now, it took us a few years to get to that point to understand that. But here’s one thing that my good friend Paul Blackburn—who is one of my mentors—taught me. He says that people don’t learn slow; they learn instantly or fast. You ether get it or you don’t. You might hear about it, you might listen to it, you might contemplate it for a long time. But there’s a point where you either get it or you don’t get it. And that’s the same with these programs. You either understand the program and you get it and you want to change it. Or you don’t. So it’s got to jump from the head into the heart. And when it jumps into the heart, then that’s where it makes the difference.

West: Definitely. And this program is all about doing that, isn’t it? It’s all about that process.

Andrew: Yeah. West, this is the reason that we wanted to get this program to go: that we can share the step by step methods and teachings of how to identify your subconscious blocks that are stopping you from becoming financially independent in whatever way you want to be financially independent, whatever definition that is for you, and it’s helping you to identify those blocks and then remove them and then replace them with something which is going to get you to where you want to be and not having to be repeating and struggling and repeating the same mistakes you made before with money or struggling from day to day. There’s no reason why you need to struggle anymore. You can actually get ahead and have the lifestyle that you want. It’s all at your fingertips.

How’s that, West?

West: In the next video, I would like you to talk to the people about how to go through an exercise, potentially get them on their way.

Andrew: So you want me to show them how to actually remove it?

West: I think they’d appreciate that.

Andrew: Okay, cool. If you’re interested in actually finding out how we can help you with this program and implement it in your life, we’re giving you an invitation to click below and find out how you can join our mentoring program on these subjects.

So click below and we’ll help you out there. And see you in the next video.

Part 2: The Financial Success Triangle

West: Well thanks for making it this far on the page. We’re really excited to have you here. I’m going to ask Andrew now about a really important concept that I learned from him just recently. And it’s called the ‘Emotional Triangle’ and he’s going to talk us through the three stages of the triangle. But let’s introduce the concept and get Andrew to tell us how it fits into the money mindset.

Andrew: Well West, one of the key things that you need to understand when you’re dealing with money is that there are three elements that you need to take into consideration. And it is like a triangle. If you take one side of the triangle, what happens?

West: It falls apart.

Andrew: It falls apart. It loses its structure. There’s one thing I noticed by looking at heaps and heaps of people about this and also exploring our self where a time that we’re struggling with money and we learn all these systems and put a lot of time and money into getting our head right and understanding what was going on…but we’d still fail.

West: So you were supporting two sides or one side, really, really well and not necessarily not knowing about or even…

Andrew: Well, let’s look at this. There are basically three sides of a triangle, as we said before. And if we’re looking at the web page, you’ll see a diagram there and it’s all explained there. But if you think about a triangle—three sides—the first side is the mental side of the triangle. The second side is the physical side of the triangle. And the third side is the emotional side of the triangle, what we like to sometimes call as the subconscious side of the triangle.

Now what you need to understand here is that we mainly get taught to only deal with two sides of the triangle in our society. That is, we get taught the mental side of the triangle. That’s generally the systems behind how to make money.

West: The ‘how to’.

Andrew: Yeah. Normally, what we get taught is ‘go to school, get an education, go get a job, work for somebody, save some money, maybe buy a house and retire at 65’. That’s a system of making money and becoming financially independent. I don’t think it’s a very good system. And I think there are some holes all through the problem, that system. But that’s pretty well what most people get taught and that’s what most people actually do.

` Now, what we need to look at is actually understanding the system—which is the mental side of the triangle—and get a better system than that. But also, that’s not enough. And that’s where a lot of people fall down. It’s like learn a system, they’re prepared to put the physical effort in but they don’t address the subconscious and the emotional side of the triangle. And that is the critical part of what it is.

So understanding the financial—actually, it’s what we call the ‘financial success triangle’—you need to understand the financial success triangle, understand the importance of all three sides.

So what we’re going to do in the next couple of videos is take you through each part of the triangle in detail and say you can get a better understanding of how this applies to you.

Part 1: Introduction

Andrew: Hi. And congratulations for making it this far and coming in to the free content page on the Money-Mind-Set. In this page, we promise to take you through step by step, some of the key things that we’ve done to develop passive income.

Now before I get started, I would like to introduce you to West Loh. Hi West!

West: Hi Andrew!

Andrew: Now West is my business partner in this site. And he’s also a clever business person in his own right and he has several sources of passive income that he’s developed over the years. And I wish I was as clever as West at his age to be able to get things going up.

But how many passive income sources have you got going?

West: I’ve probably got seven at the moment.

Andrew: Seven different passive incomes.

West: Seven different passive incomes.

Andrew: So these are things that make you money?

West: Absolutely. Well, I play golf to be more accurate.

Andrew: You play golf? Okay, that’s great. So let’s get into it. People want to find out what we did, not hear about us too much.

I’m just wondering, maybe you should give a little bit of background about what I’ve been up to and where this came from.

West: Yeah, absolutely. Tell us about how you got into the mindset side of things Andrew.

Andrew: Okay, cool. Well, what this site’s about, as we said before, it’s not just to teach you strategies on how to make money I suppose because you can get that from a lot of places. What I’ve noticed over the years was that even though people learned how to make money, they weren’t making the right type of money. But the other things that I was finding out is even when I teach on how to make money, they would seem to stuff it up somehow and they’ll self sabotage and they’ll have problems with getting ahead and doing it.

So to give you a bit of a background, I used to be a financial planner. I’ve literally sat across the table from hundreds—if not thousands—of people and looked at their financial planning situations and basically looked at how they dealt with money and what they did with money and so on. And one of the key things that I’ve noticed was that the problems that people were having were very, very similar.

West: Patterns.

Andrew: Patterns and a whole lot of things again and again and again. That’s exactly right. And what I was able to do was to identify these patterns and be able to break them down into things, the mistakes that people were making. And also, I was able to identify what’s going on when people were actually getting ahead. And we noticed and we broke it down into a number of different things. One of the key things that I will talk about in a moment is really being able to deal with the mental side of making money and the money game, I suppose.

West: A lot of these people have how-tos, right? They have how to actually do make money but there’s a missing ingredient.

Andrew: That’s right. That’s exactly right.

Let’s take you to the next step and we’ll start to talk about some of the key strategies from there. So go to the next video and we’ll take you through step by step on what needs to happen to make money.

West Interviews Brian Sher

Speakers:
West: West Loh
Brian: Brian Sher

West: Welcome to the call, folks. And today we’re very privileged to have Brian Sher on the line. Brian was born in South Africa and moved to Australia to study a degree in Marketing but he’s since gone on to grow many companies, one of the main ones being Vision Publishing, where he’s got some books—which I actually have in my personal library and I’ve been reading for a long time now and it’s been very, very useful for me. And Brian’s also been recruited as a dynamic and exciting speaker and adviser to many, many top business owners and professionals. So we’re very lucky to have Brian on the call today. And welcome, Brian!

Brian: Well thanks, West. How are you?

West: Very well indeed. I’m excited to speak to you today. Before the call, I was actually just reading through one of your books, How to make Money Out of Thin Air. It’s a fantastic read and I recommend people to go and have a look at it.

So Brian, why don’t you tell us a bit about your journey, how you got into, firstly, running these books, that would be a good start. Yeah, what was the premise behind you being able to reveal some of these secrets?

Brian: A lot of people ask that question. And the truth of the matter is, is that I don’t consider myself to be an author, I don’t consider myself to be a speaker, I don’t consider myself to be a business consultant. I just—like many other people—started life by thinking ‘What am I going to do?’ And having left university, I suddenly realized that working in a job probably wasn’t for me. So I just set out to do the best I could, you know. And what that means is that when you’re faced with the prospect of not getting a job, you have to start looking at the alternatives. And sometimes it was quite scary, quite unsure what to do.

And going into business at a young age, you know, is always a great thing because you start off with a lot of energy, enthusiasm; but the flipside of it is that you’re quite naïve and therefore you do things that you wouldn’t do if you actually had some common sense. And that’s your biggest advantage, really. Because, you know, how many people have you spoken to who have been in business three, four, five years and they say, “You know, if I knew back then what I know now, I probably would never have done it.”? I’m sure you’ve heard that many times. And I was in that boat—it seemed like a good idea to go into business and I was excited about the prospect of doing that and the thrill of doing it. And so off I went.

You know, I started a number of businesses in different areas and I met some great people along the way. And like everybody else, I had to learn and struggle and find the right way versus the wrong way. And there’s many, many wrong ways to do things badly but a few ways to do them correctly and pay the price like everyone else. I just learned things along the way.

You know, one of my early businesses that you mentioned was a company called Vision Publishing where we used to summarize business books. And so I was in a very fortunate position that my product was ‘learning’ and my product was to be the best business books that were being published at the time. So every day, I was taking a lot of great information from some of the best minds around the world and I was applying it to my business. And I found that a lot of the stuff worked. So over a period of time, I built a lot of content, a lot of things that worked for me. Because obviously, every business is different; and some things work better in some businesses and some things work better in others. But I found what worked well for me in a business of my size. And usually small and medium sized businesses operate differently to large corporate businesses. And being in a small-medium sized business, I found that certain things worked. And I wanted to document those. So I thought the best way to do it was to just write them down.

So I never set out to write the book. I just set out to document the things that I found were working for me. And that turned out to be a book that a lot of other people valued and found that something was really good. So that’s the road to becoming an author.

West: Wow. I just noticed on the back of the book here you’ve got a raving testimonial by John McGrath, someone who has followed in your footsteps and written a couple of books of his own. But he’s a very successful real estate agent. And also Simon Reynolds, who’s also a very well respected entrepreneur. So yeah, you definitely had an effect on some of these guy’s careers, Brian.

Brian: Well look, I mean, John McGrath and Simon Reynolds today are friends. I see Simon really and we do quite a lot of work together. And that’s one of the great benefits of achieving a certain level of success, is that you get to meet some really great people. I’m sure you’ve experienced it yourself, West. You find that people of that caliber rub off and you get to really lift yourself to level thinking that you wouldn’t otherwise achieve. So that’s a really good benefit and something which I treasure and value a lot.

West: Absolutely. I want to ask you, Brian, when you were looking at starting your initial businesses as a budding entrepreneur, did you have any really critical self doubts and barriers or obstacles or self talk that a lot of people go through? First, did you have them? And secondly, if you did, how did you break through them?

Brian: Well, you know, I would start this conversation by outlining for you one of the great things about being young and enthusiastic and having the great vision: the fact that you don’t see problems. You know, you just see all opportunity. And it’s only once you’re in business that you suddenly start your own limitations.

So starting out, I never had any doubts, really. I was just enthusiastic and I saw an opportunity and I went for it. I didn’t have to think too hard about it simply because when I looked at all my other options, there weren’t too many. So I just thought, ‘Gee, this is a good opportunity. I liked the idea of it and I’m going to do it.’

It’s only once you’re in business—and I do remember sort of three months after I started Vision Publishing and things weren’t going so well because the thought process that I had and how I was going to grow the business wasn’t working—and it was only at that point that I really had to start the true learning process. Because I thought I knew everything before going into business, but once you get there you realize there are a lot of things that you don’t know. And I went into a bit of depression, self doubt, loss of faith in myself. And I remember sitting in my office thinking, ‘Well, how do I get out of this without looking bad?’ That was my predominating thought. But fortunately, all the money that I had was invested in the business. And that kept me going.

West: So you were committed, basically.

Brian: I was committed. So all those personal development things that you read about—commitment and focus and persistence—those are all the things that are nice to read about but where they really come to play is when you are forced to make some really life changing decisions. Now I remember sitting in the office here in Sydney thinking to myself, ‘I really am going to be a disgrace to myself and to my family. And I’m going to let down my partners,’ ‘coz this thing’s going to fail. And I was in a lot of pain, you know, a lot of emotional pain. And this happens to a lot of people, not only to my self. And it happened to me many times. But because of that experience and having gone through that and succeeded beyond that first experience, I know every time I go to that place of self doubt, I know the way out. And a lot of people don’t know that because they get to a place of self doubt and they never found their way out.

I happen to be in that place of self doubt surely after I started my business, but the pain of it drove me to take greater risks and to try things that I ordinarily wouldn’t have thought. You know, it was a black or red scenario for me. So I decided, ‘Look, I’m just going to do this and see if it works.’ And I tried some things which worked really well. And the business dug itself out of making a loss to making great profits. And the business grew enormously as a result of that whole experience and that pain that I was in.

And I value that today because every time I have that self-doubt, I remember that and I know that that’s a good place to be because the greatest innovation and the greatest breakthroughs that ever happened in your business, in your life are at a time when you are in the most pain.

West: Wow. It sounds almost as if you…like expect to go into that phase whenever you take on a new venture or go through a phase in your business. And when you expect to go into that, you know that there’ll be a way out. And that’s a reassuring thought for anyone going into business.

Brian: Well, that’s a very fair comment that you made. Obviously, the smarter that you get, the more you learn, the less time you spend in that period of pain. The problems just become different. And then you need to learn different things at different times.

And you’re always learning lessons. You always find that there are things that you don’t know that cost you money…but at a different level. Rather than just judging success or failure, there are different things that cost you money that you still think, ‘Well, if I didn’t do that, I would have been far more successful rather than just successful,’ if you know what I’m saying.

West: Mmm. Very powerful. Do you have like a certain sequence of questions that you ask yourself when you’re in that period of pain or period of self doubt and you’re just not sure where to go next? And I completely empathize with that feeling of doubting yourself and not knowing where to go next and not knowing how things are going to pan out. When you’re in that phase, Brian, what’s the process you go through to start clawing your way back on track and staying focused?

Brian: The answer to that question is varied. But the basic process that I go through is I try to look at things in the simplest terms because I also think that once you get to that point, you’re not thinking clearly. You’re at a point where you’re under a lot of stress…

West: Emotional.

Brian: Exactly. Your cortisol levels are very high…in most people. And when you’re at that point, it’s very hard to think clearly. So you’ve got to take yourself back to a place of excitement. You’ve got to take yourself back to that experience of joy, you know, “Oh this is a great thing and this is the reason why I got into it in the first place,’ and get that excitement back. Because once you’ve got that excitement back, then you can start to see clearly again. And at that point where you can start to see clearly again, you can then start to say, “Okay, it’s a matter of just connecting these three dots.” And if you keep it that simple and you understand that business is just a matter of building a good product and selling it and you do that many times and you become successful, then the complexities are taken out of it.

West: Hmm, that’s powerful stuff. So basically you need to get unclouded so you can see clearly the path ahead.

Brian: Well, you need to firstly realize emotionally where you’re at. And the hardest thing to do is to do that. And a lot of people who are suffering in business just can’t see that, you know, the forest with the trees. And that’s the hardest thing. And the hardest thing is to actually get your self out of that.

What I would do if I was in that situation—now I just couldn’t see the forest with the trees—I would spend whatever money I had or I had left or I could afford to get another perspective, whether it’s a friend that you trust your success on business or a business coach or mentor. But not just any business coach or mentor. Because one of the things that I find—certainly for myself—is that people go and get advice from other people that are more messed up than they are. And I can never understand that. That’s like going and asking someone who’s homeless for advice on finances. You’ve got to go to the right people.

West: Exactly. And you probably have to invest in that.

Brian: Exactly. Today I’m very fortunate. For me, I’ve got a circle of friends who are successful. So I can ring them up and say, “Hey, let’s have coffee later (or lunch). I need to bounce some things off you.”

West: But you weren’t always like that.

Brian: But I paid the price.

West: Exactly.

Brian: I paid the price to get those sort of people. And today, fortunately, I can call a few of them friends. So I can get that sort of advice.

But you’ve always got to understand that free advice is never free. Because unless you paid for that advice, you don’t value it. And you should go and try to find the best people that you can that you can afford to help you get through that process.

West: Very true. Now that’s awesome advice, Brian. Thank you for sharing that with us. That’s going to be something I think people should go back and listen to again.

So I wanted to ask Brian now…with the kind of things you do today—you mentioned you don’t classify yourself as an author or a speaker—what kind of activities are you mainly involved in today? I mean, do businesses come and ask you to help them grow their profits? Or do they get you to look over some of their constraints? What are kind of the main things that you do today as Brian Sher?

Brian: For the last eighteen months… I’ve just returned from the US where I grew a business over there for three years prior. And so I’m in the process now of buying into and establishing a number of businesses, new businesses in areas that I’m familiar with, some that I’m not so familiar with. But I’m also on a couple of advisory boards of about seven or eight companies. I do that together with Simon Reynolds. So there are a lot of small and medium size businesses who really don’t have anyone that they can turn to. You know, large corporations have Boards of Directors, whereas small and medium size businesses (SMEs) really don’t have that mentorship that large corporations do.

So I have set up advisory boards that Simon Reynolds and myself work on, where we will become an advisory board for small businesses. Like the board of directors, we will sit with the business once a month and say, “Look, here are the five things that you need to do and here are the eight things that we feel that you’re making a mistake of.” And that’s been very powerful and very effective.

West: It sounds like kind of a mastermind group where businesses that don’t necessarily have access to very large networks can access people who have experience and proven records in the industry.

Brian: Right, right. But we do that on a selective basis. And we find that that’s working really well.

But the main game for me is to always… you know, I’ve been in business for myself. Advising is fine and I do a little bit of that. But to be in business for yourself is ultimately where I think the value lies because the amount of money that you can generate in your own business far exceeds anything you can do by being a consultant or by being an author or any of those sorts of businesses.

And in my book, How to Make Money Out of Thin Air, which you have a copy of, I’ve outlined 20 habits of the world’s most valuable businesses and 41 habits of the world’s most successful business people. And those are the sort of criteria that I try to follow myself personally as well as businesses that I look at and get involved in. Because I think that by having that checklist, it allows me—and that’s the reason I wrote the book; obviously because I like to keep a documentary of my own thought processes—is that if I’m looking at a business or if I’m consulting to business or if I’m helping out in a business, I look and compare that business against the list of the twenty habits of world’s most valuable businesses. Because if you can do that and you can say, well, this business or this potential business should add these components or should have these components, suddenly you can change your business model to be a far more successful business model than you may have started out with in the first place.

West: Absolutely. It’s very powerful to see that list. And it just minimizes your risk, obviously, and it minimizes the businesses’ risks if they can follow those key criteria which have been proven time and time again.

So why don’t you tell me some ingredients that if someone’s looking to build a million dollar business now no matter the economic conditions, what are some of those key ingredients that you look for? Or if someone came to you and was looking to build a million dollar business now in the current economic crisis, what advice would you give them Brian?

Brian: Well, the first thing I pull out is this list of habits of the world’s most valuable businesses and say, “Look, let’s compare your business against these.”

And I’ll run you through a couple because I don’t have enough time to go through all of them.

West: Yes. Give us the key ones.

Brian: Well, the first and obviously the most important is you’ve got to look at what market you’re in. And that sounds obvious. But a lot of people going to business, they’re really not addressing the market potential for what they have.
So for example, someone might come to me and say, “Look, I’m thinking of opening up a news agency.”
And I’ll say, “Well, that’s great! What’s your long term goal? How much money do you want to earn? And what do you want your business to look like in 5 years?”
They might say, “Well, I want to have a business that’s pulling in a million dollars a month,” or whatever their goals are.
And then I look at their business and say, “Well, the market you’re doing doesn’t match your life goals. It doesn’t match your potential.
Because if they’re going to open up a news agency, the market is limited to their neighborhood. In other words, someone who lives in Perth is not going to fly to Sydney to go and buy their news agency. So you’ve got to understand that your market is probably the most important thing. And that’s why the internet is such an exciting breakthrough for many businesses because all of a sudden, the person—such as yourself, West, you’ve got an internet business—you have access to millions, if not, billions of people around the world. And you can operate it from a location in your garage or your home. And that’s why internet is such a fantastic tool.

But if you’re selling widgets, if you’re selling a service or you’re selling consulting services, you can’t distribute that through…

West: It’s limited.

Brian: If you’re a doctor, how do you sell your services to the internet? So you’ve got to look at your market. You’ve got to look at your product first and say, “Well, does this have huge potential?” And if it doesn’t then you’ve got to realize that you’re limited to the amount of customers that you have. And you know, what’s surprising is…

West: Sorry I lost you for a second there, Brian. So you were saying about people not realizing the market potential of their business.

Brian: That’s right. And what’s so surprising is that people going into business or starting a business, they fall in love with their product and they don’t fall in love with their market. So they look at their product and go, “Wow, I really love this new paper that I’ve got! It’s a really different sort of paper.” And then I’m thinking, well, you know, how big is the market for this paper? They’re not really looking at the volume of business that they can generate should they be successful in their marketing.

West: So when you talk to people you basically give them a reality check and say, “Let’s face the facts. Let’s take a look at your market and let’s really figure out what the true potential is. And let’s not kid ourselves.”

Brian: Correct. Yeah. And you’ve got to look at every circumstance and say, “Well, look. Your market is limited.” But where I get excited is about businesses that have unlimited potential. One of my clients, she’s selling courses on how to write, how to become a screenwriter or how to become a scriptwriter. And she was just selling it in Sydney. And I said, “Well, look. If you repackage this and you make it an online course, all of a sudden you can sell this around the world.” You always have the potential to grow the business to a worldwide business. She just didn’t realize it. So that’s a success story.

On the other hand, there are a lot of people who try to look at their products and want to sell it on a worldwide basis but just never will and never can because there’s no potential to do that. So that’s the first thing, West.

The second thing is…obviously, I’m a big believer in selling what I call leverage products. And I think you know what that is. A leverage product is something where you’re not necessarily selling time—because time is a limited commodity—so in theory, if you’ve got twenty fours hours a day and you’re prepared to work twenty four hours a day, you’ve still only got twenty four hours a day. Whereas if you make any product that you can sell that’s made by a machine, you can sell as many products of those in as many markets as you potentially can get to. And every time you sell a product you make a profit. So if you can sell a thousand products an hour, you can make $1 profit out of every one of those products, you’re making $1,000 an hour and you don’t have to be there.

West: Exactly. That’s powerful. And I think not a lot of people really maximize that concept even though they’re able to. So I guess that’s where you come in as well, as kind of a coach and a mentor to some of these people that come and approach you, to help them realize that potential.

Brian: Sure. If that’s what their goals are, of course. And then one of the other habits that I’m really big on is if you’re going to make a sale, you should have some sort of residual income. And I know you guys are big believers in that and it’s become a lot more popular now with a lot of online…

West: Yes, we call it a backend in the internet marketing world where we continually upsell or we try and get more out of them. But you’ve probably been advocating this type of business model well before it became popularized in the internet world.

Brian: Right. I mean, the online businesses have really picked up on that and it’s become really popular. And there are a lot of guys now talking about what they call continuity programs. And then there’s new lingo out called forced continuity and volume continuity and white continuity and black continuity. There’s a lot of lingo and jargon that’s developed around this but the bottom line to keep it simple is, you know, the most valuable businesses where if you look at them, they sign you up with a customer and you end up using them every month. Look at companies like banks, credit card companies. You get a credit card every single month and you use that credit card. They don’t have to market to you every month. You buy now and you keep the credit card for ten, twenty years. That’s why credit card companies are very, very successful.

You look at some companies, they sign you up—these days, everybody realizes you get a mobile phone for free because they’re not interested in selling you the phone, they’re interested in your mobile phone bill every single month. Those are the sort of business models that you need to look at and say, “Well, how do I take my business from a one time sale into a continuity sale?”

West: Definitely. And I’m sure there have been many instances where people have come up to you and said, “Brian, I don’t think I can create an ongoing, continuous income,” but then you’ve been able to show them how to do that based on those principles.

Brian: Well, sometimes you’ve got be creative. And sometimes it’s easier than others. And sometimes it’s more obvious than others. And sometimes there’s just no opportunity at all, in which case, you need to adjust your business model.

West: Yup. Powerful stuff.

Now tell us about the power of the Price Earnings Ratio, Brian, because I know that you’ve mentioned that to me in the past and how most businesses don’t even take that into consideration. So give us—for those of us who don’t understand what it is—just a quick explanation what it is. And then tell us how, as business owners, maximize our P/E Ratio.

Brian: I love this topic because this is the real business end of getting rich. And when people talk about getting rich and going into business, there are so many people in businesses today that have a business that effectively is nothing more than a job for themselves. And while they’re self employed, they really don’t have much value in their business because they don’t understand the P/E Ratio and they don’t understand what that means and they don’t understand how powerful that is. And they don’t understand the fact that if you employed these 20 habits that I keep talking about—of the world’s most valuable businesses—your P/E ratio skyrockets. And if you can skyrocket your P/E, you’ll skyrocket your wealth.

So let me just answer your question as to what the P/E ratio is. The P/E Ratio is basically a price earnings ratio. And what that means is that your business is valued being the price relative to its earnings. And the ratio is just the proportion between what you’re earning and what the value of your business is. Let’s take around numbers as an example. If you’re making $100,000 profit or you’re making a million dollars profit, what is your business worth? Now you can be making a million dollars profit and your business is not worth anything. Why? Because for your business to be worth anything, it’s like the real estate market, for the business to be worth anything, there has to be someone who’s willing to pay that price.

West: Exactly.

Brian: So for example… let’s use real estate as an example. If you have a house—and it’s a beautiful house—but that house is built on a toxic waste dump, even if it’s got harbor views, I don’t think you’re going to find anybody that’s going to give you anything for that house.

West: Yup. True.

Brian: But that house is undervalued to you if you’re prepared to live in it. It’s the same thing with the business. If your business is not structured properly and it’s dependent on you as an individual and it doesn’t have leveraged products and even if it’s making a million dollars profit, and it doesn’t have these twenty habits of the world’s most valuable businesses built in, your price earnings ratio is going to be almost zero.

And people who sell their time, who are consultants or doctors, lawyers, those sort of businesses really don’t have a lot of value and their price earnings ratio is very, very small.

On the other hand, you’ll find other businesses that are well systemized—again, which is one of the twenty habits—they have residual income, they sell leverage products, they create powerful brands, they’re not dependent on any one person, they’re usually the market leader, they attract the best and brightest people, they have few real competitors because they’ve differentiated themselves, they have high margins on their products, they don’t have a lot of real competition because they’ve differentiated themselves properly. And what they’ve also done is they’ve built an exit strategy from day one. Now, if you do all that, all of a sudden your price earnings ratio starts to skyrocket.

And the value of earning a dollar is different in two businesses. So if I was going to start a business, I’d be wanting to start a business or grow a business that has the potential for a really high price earnings ratio. And the reason for that is because if I’m going to build a million dollars worth of profit into a business and it’s going to take me five years to do that, what I want to do is make sure that when I sell that business like I would want to sell a house, I want to sell it for the highest value that I could. And to get a high price earnings ratio is the way to do that.

So if I was going to build a million dollars profit, I would rather try to sell my business for $10 million at a P/E of 10 than at a P/E of 1, which means I’m only going to get a million dollars for my million dollar profit. And if you try and sell your business at a P/E of 1, there’s almost no reason to sell it because why would you sell a business that you can earn a million dollars out of anyway? So there’s no point and no one will want to sell a P/E of 1. So every dollar that I’m going to earn over the next five years, I want to make sure that not only am I earning a million bucks but I’m earning a million times 10 (million X 10). Because I’m earning $1 million every year but at the end of that period, whether it be three years or five years, I’m then going to sell that $1 million for $10 million or I’m going to sell it for $5 million or I’m going to sell it for $20 million.

And that’s a really incredible thought process that very few people talk about when they start growing their business. Because if you can build a business with a high P/E ratio and you can build all these twenty habits in, you become instantly rich.

West: And it’s a completely different way of thinking from how most people approach business and business foundations, isn’t it?

Brian: The words are: “Start with the end in mind.” And that’s one of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

West: Yes. Stephen Covey.

Brian: You know, millions of people have read that book but if people take those principles and apply it to themselves on a daily basis, they can make a huge difference to their lives.

So when I think about business or I try to help people, advise them, I try to think of it in those terms and I try to drum those concepts into their head because if you’re going into business, there is no point in—unless you’re doing it as a hobby—but the point of going into business is to make a lot of money and to give yourself a lifestyle that you will enjoy, appreciate and you can maximize and you can value. But the best way to do that is to earn the most amount that you can in the shortest period of time. So I would rather have a business where it’s producing half a million dollars a year and has a P/E of 5 than a business that’s producing a million dollars a year and has a P/E of 0. Does that make sense to you?

West: Yes. Absolutely. Different mindset from what the masses are thinking out there. So I’m curious, Brian, with regards to online businesses…is it more difficult to determine the P/E ratio if the business is primarily online? Because I noticed you’re talking a lot also, obviously about offline businesses with staff and systemization and all that sort of stuff. I’m sure a lot of the principles will also apply for online businesses.

Brian: They absolutely do. The great advantage that online businesses have is that immediately a lot of those habits are already built-in. I mean, if you’ve got an online business, the first thing you have is you have a huge audience, you have a huge market that you can access to. Obviously if you’re selling left hand knitting business or something that’s really a niche market, you might find that you’ve got a decent size business because you’re able to sell around the world, which wouldn’t succeed if you were just in Australia. However, it’s still a relatively small niche market. But if you’re able to attract a larger niche market around the world, then it’s automatically built in. So that’s the first thing.

Online businesses don’t automatically have high margins. They don’t automatically have residual income. They don’t automatically have real competitors. So you still need to address a lot of those principles with online businesses. You still need to have an investor entry and exit strategy if you want to grow the business. You still need to keep innovating. Those are all the things that online businesses still need to do which apply to online or offline businesses. But, you know, online businesses have some advantages…just intrinsically.

West: Absolutely. I can’t speak highly enough of online businesses. I completely agree. I love having that worldwide audience being able to purchase from me while I’m out playing golf and while I’m sleeping. So that’s an advantage that I enjoy as well.

So is it an exact science, Brian, calculating the P/E ratio? I mean, can someone who doesn’t have a lot of experience or doesn’t have an MBA or an Accounting degree…are they able to pull from these factors you mentioned and get an idea of their own P/E ratio or do they need to follow some strict guidelines in order to look at how their business is currently standing if they have one?

Brian: Look, the P/E ratio, the market determines that; you don’t determine it. what I’m suggesting is that if you have these 20 habits built in to your business or as many of them as you can built in to your business, then your P/E ratio will be higher than if you don’t have them built in. Now what does that mean? I mean, what does higher mean relative to your own particular business? If you go to the Financial Review and you look at a lot of the public companies that are listed there, they will have a column next to their daily price quotes which determine their price earnings ratio. Now the price earnings ratio is simply the value that the market puts on the company based on the current earnings. So for example, if the company is doing a $10 million profit as a public company and the company is valued or the company share price is, say, $10, then how do you determine whether what the price earnings ratio is? Well, you have to look at hoe many shares are issued.

So let’s keep this really simple. To determine your own price earnings ratio, firstly, it’s only a calculation that you do yourself, it’s the value of your business that someone will pay when they buy your business relative to your earnings. So if you’re doing a $1 million turnover and you can sell your business for $10 million, then your P/E is 10.

Now most small-medium size businesses, if they’re private, will be valued somewhere between 3 and 6. That’s a rule of thumb. In other words, someone will come along and depending on how many habits you’ve got built in to your business… By the way, when I say 3, that’s a business that already has systems or already has products developed; it’s not a service business that depends on a doctor or a lawyer because that’s virtually worth nothing. But I’m talking about a business that already has a profit, it already has systems built in, it has a customer base, it’s got a track record, it’s been going for a number of years. You’ll typically get between… today, maybe a little less because the whole market’s depressed and the recession; if you were to sell your business, maybe 2 ½ to 6 as a private company.

But the idea is that if you are able to go in the right industry and you’re able to build your business where you have built in your exit strategy from day one, you may find that there’s a public company out there that has a price earnings ratio of 28 or 30. And by approaching that company and saying, “Look, would you like to buy my business?” they may offer you a price earnings ratio of 10 or 12 because they’re buying you at a multiple of 12; but for them, the value is 28. Does that make sense to you?

West: It does.

Brian: So they’re buying your business at, say, $12 million. At a million dollars profit, they may give you a check for $12 million bucks and they’re going to take your million dollars profit. But that million dollars profit is worth $28 million to them because that sort of capitalizes their business at.

So if you understand that principle and you understand that by thinking about your exit strategy from day one and always identifying a company that has a very high P/E ratio relative to yours and making them the target of your business, then you effectively could have an extraordinary result from a very small amount of effort.

West: And that’s the goal of business, isn’t it, Brian?

Brian: Well, yeah. It is a goal and certainly, you know, if I was getting up in the morning and saying, “Look, I’m going to start a business and I’m going to work really hard for the next five years,” I would rather walk away with a check for $12 million than a check for $2 million, wouldn’t you?

West: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

So if people are looking at getting into business or selecting a business to go into—obviously we’ve talked a lot about the P/E ratio and the factors that go into that—are there any other factors that you look at apart from those key pillars? You know, maybe in terms of personality, whether it fits or lifestyle. Or are they the main things that you advise people to look at?

Brian: Well, look. I’ll jump to the other list that I spoke about, the 41 habits of the world’s most successful people. Because I think if you’re not passionate about your business—in other words, if I’m looking at somebody and they’re asking me for advice and I’m talking to them about their business, they may just don’t have the burning desire to succeed, which is, I think, the very first habit that you need to have and you don’t have the energy and you don’t have that passion about your business, then it doesn’t matter how good the idea is, I just don’t think you’re going to succeed.

West: Absolutely. And I strongly recommend everyone…is your book still for sale on shelves, Brian? Is it still out there in the market or can I buy it through your site or…?

Brian: The What Rich People Know, I think you can get on Amazon. You can order that on Amazon. And the How to Make Money Out of Thin Air, I think you can order that through Penguin. I don’t know which bookshops have them or still have them. But Penguin Books has it. I’m sure they can order it through those two sources if they really want to get it.

I think that it’s a great list to have. And it’s a great checklist.

West: It is. Absolutely.

Brian: I go and explain each one. And by the way, we started this conversation by saying that these things work in recessions or no recessions. It doesn’t really matter. It works equally and powerfully for you in a recession. In fact, I personally think the recession is really a good time to start a new business.

West: Because things aren’t as expensive. People don’t tend to chuck their prices up so your starting prices might be a bit lower or…

Brian: Well, yeah. You can get reasonable office space. You can get good stuff, you can buy desks and fans and whatever you need at discount prices. I mean what a great place to start.

West: Definitely. Definitely. Cool. Well that’s been a really good content packed call, Brian. I want to thank you for your time.

Actually, I want to ask you one more question before we sign off today. It’s actually about your books. I’ve been doing some courses recently that have all recommended having a book. And I was wondering for you, has it made a significant difference in your credibility, your ability to interact with people in gaining trust and building relationships? And would you strongly recommend that everyone has one?

Brian: Well, look. That’s a really interesting question. I believe that books should be strategic. And just writing a book can damage you as well if the book’s no good. I mean, I’ve seen some excellent books out there obviously. But if you’re going to put a book together, my advice is this: make sure that you’ve got some really good things to say that other people will value. There’s nothing wrong with documenting. That’s what I did. I just documented my thought processes and I think that everybody should do that. But the value of your book—if it’s not well researched and it’s not well written and it’s not professionally put together, it can do a lot of damage to you.

So don’t just think by going out there and writing a book, it’s automatically going to serve your purpose. Because one thing that I learned is that there are probably more people that I know that have written books than people who haven’t. And that’s probably because of the circles I sort of hang around in. But the bookshops are full of books and it’s very hard to know what’s good and bad. But writing a book is a really good thing to do to document your thought process. And I suggest that everyone at least start that process and see where it takes you. You’ll never know…you might be the next New York Times bestseller.

West: It sounds like it was almost a journal of yours that you decided to share with the world.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. I must say I started this interview, again, by saying I’m not an author and I don’t consider myself one. I write that stuff down because I thought, ‘Look, I want to keep this fresh in my mind and I want to document it.’ And certainly, if someone wants to know how to do things the way I do it, well, they can just read it. It’s certainly up to them.

And I’ve been fortunate that the book’s been successful. I think it’s in twenty countries now, in different languages. It’s very nice to see that happen but that’s not the ultimate goal. The goal is just to go out there and do the best you can and learn as much as you can from everybody and certainly, you can learn from someone, a person sitting next to you in the bus. You can. And you’ve just got to keep your eyes open and learn from everyone and everything around you. Use what you want; throw away the things that you don’t and I’m sure you’ll be successful.

West: Sure. For sure. So if people want to find out more about you, Brian, where do they need to go if they want to…do you have like a coaching program or a website that people can sign up for a list? Do you offer anything to the public that people can benefit from your knowledge, besides your books?

Brian: I’m doing some sort of advisory on a selective basis. If they want to get in contact with me, they can just go to my website which http://briansher.com.au/work-with-brian.html. Or just email me at briansher@bigpond.com and let me know what they’re thinking or what they’re interested in and we’ll go from there.

West: Great. Beautiful. Well thanks for your time, Brian. I really, really appreciate your knowledge and wisdom you’ve imparted on us today.

Brian: You’re very welcome. And thanks for the opportunity.

Hello this is West and welcome to the “How to get the most out of vWorker tutorial.” In this tutorial I’m going to share with you tips and strategies to find highly skilled, cost effective virtual staff for your business. I’m going to share with you little key things that I do to make a difference in getting those bids.

Once you’ve posted your project, your project will show up in your interface as something that looks like this. Now I’ve done a fair few projects in the past. And these are some of my really old one. And this is what it looks like when you’ve posted a few. Now were going to focus on one for the benefits of this tutorial.

So let’s say for example the graphics one that I’ve posted up. Now, that was a fake one so we can’t use that one. But this one here, we click on it and I’ve already got a window open. This is what happens when bids start to come in. so bids will start flowing from in all over the world. All different types of coders, varying skill levels, and varying backgrounds. And it will tend to look like this coming in one after the other. Now your job is to choose the best person for the job for the best price. Now I don’t recommend choosing the lowest bid because you tend to get what you pay for. But there are ways to maximize your chance of getting a good worker. So here are a few little tips that I tend to do.

This first thing, is in your bid request, you want to type in the words at the start “This is an easy project for a worker who knows what they’re doing.” Now studies have shown that that little sentence on its own tends to get no nonsense bids. And people would tend to bid without trying to rip you off or trying to mess around and basically waste your time. The other thing I like to do is make sure that they put in a secret code word when they reply. The reason I do that is because when I first posted a few projects, I tended to get a lot of auto bids that is basically people who bid on a large massive scale. And they play a numbers game and they’re not really relevant to your project. They might not even have the skills to bid on your project but they bid anyway. And they’ll put out the fright later on when they get selected. So, in order to make sure that they’ve actually read my bid request I require them to put the secret code when they reply. If they don’t do that, I automatically disregard their particular bid.

Now the next tip that I’ll show you is how to evaluate a potential worker. So in this case, lets say for example this is a bide request, now this project is long gone and long finished. And you’ll see slightly different things here. However it will look very similar. Now if I’m looking at working with this person, the first thing that I’ll do is click on their name. and it will come up with a little globe about them, where their from, and their history. Now one of the things I like to do is look at their past ratings. Okay now this person only has one rating but, usually you’ll get workers with multiple ratings. Now once you’ve clicked on the rating button, it will show that person’s work history and a summary of all the ratings that they’ve gotten in the past. Now as I’ve said before this particular person only has one rating but they’ve got a good one. They got a ten and the comments were very positive as well. So they’ve worked for me and actually did a great job so I decided to give them a good rating.

For important projects or bigger projects, I strongly recommend using workers that have a few ratings, at least five to ten. And I strongly recommend in contacting those people and finding out if they did a good job. So you might want to get a few referees from that person, and finding out from the source whether they’re a hard worker and have the skills that they claim to have. It will save you a lot of head ache in the future if you take a few small steps to prevent any problems happening in the future.

Now the third tip I’d like to give is get them to jump from a few hoops and whn you initially receive a bid from a person, it opens up a message board and you’ll be able to type messages for them. So I tend to get them to do little things, like get them to report back to me on what exactly they’re going to do or get them to give me a bit of an outline on their proposed plan or strategy for the project. And I’ll get them to do little things for me to jump through a few hoops. And there are a few things I’ll check. First, thing I’ll check is the promptness. How often they respond to my messages. If they’re really keen for some work, and if they really want to work with you, they’re going to reply pretty quickly. Usually within a few hours if they’re the kind of people who hangs out online all the time. And that’s the kind of people you want to work for. You don’t want to work with people who go away for three, four, five, six days and don’t attend to their messages. So have a look at their response of reply.

The second thing is have a look at the kind of detail that they reply with. So if you get them to check out a webpage or you get them to check out one of your sites to potentially research in order to give a proposal. Have a look at the feedback they provide, a lot of the workers will actually give you pretty specific and detailed feedback and a plan of action. And some will even give you a sample or sort of a taster of what they could do for you. And those are the kind of people that you want to move towards cause their known quantity and they’re serious for work. And they’re not just bidding and hoping that you’ll actually accept them. So that’s the other tip I’ll give you.

So, in summary, ways to get the most out of vWorker, here’s a few tips and strategies that I use. One, use the “magic opening” and secret code technique. Magic opening, this is an easy project for a coder that knows what they’re doing. And the secret code, whatever it is any combination of numbers or words that they must reply with in order for you to consider their request.

Second, do your due diligence on the worker. Click on their feedback, read their feedback, have a look at the project they’ve done in the past. Contact some of the workers they may have worked for. And find out exactly how they did with those people. And make them jump through small hoops in the message board or give them a really small project first and make sure that they do it properly, and they do it promptly, and they do it comprehensively before you give them bigger projects. I hope this has been helpful for you and good luck in your projects.

Hi and welcome to how to post a bid request a vworker tutorial. My name is West, let’s get straight into it.

Any task that can be done online, you can probably find it at vworker. And I use it personally as a site that’s helped me grow my business.

Once you’ve clicked a post a project button, you’ll be taken to this page. In this page basically just type in the title of your project. Say for example graphic design project. And then you just need to choose the budget that you have. So, you know. If it’s a big scale project you know, you probably want to click the higher ones. If it’s a very small project which I recommend that you start out on just to test out the interface and what vworker can offer you, then choose one of the smaller ones.

If you’re absolutely unsure, vWorker can give you a little assistance in setting up your project. So let’s say I don’t want to spend more than a hundred dollars on this graphic design project.

Now, these options will allow you to choose workers openly. IE, put it in the market for everyone to bid on, or if you have some workers that you’ve worked with in the past, or have a very good reputation, and you want to invite them to bid privately on your project, then there’s an option here as well.

The non disclosure agreement protection, if you are looking at something that has a high intellectual property and you don’t want it to be public, and you basically.. It’s important for you to not reveal anything to the market or the competition. Then this is a good option for you to tick which gets the worker to promise via a non disclosure agreement, that they are not going to disclose anything by reading your bid request. Once your done with that, click next.

Now the next page allows you to request whether you’d like to pay for an end result, IE at deliverable, or if you’d like to pay for time. So you know, for some people it’s more efficient to pay for time. IE data entry, if they know someone who’s very fast and very good. Or if you are looking for a specific result, for example if a want a set of graphics for my webpage and I want a header, and some buttons, and I want a logo, then I can set a price where I can only pay specifically for the deliverables. So choose what you want and click next.

Now this page allows you to choose which categories you’d like to put your project under. Now depending on the category you choose will depend on the type of worker that bids on it. So let’s say for example for my graphics design project, I’m not going to put it in the writing section because I would want someone who can design well and has good skills in graphics artist work. I might choose in under the design arts and multimedia, under graphic design. Okay, if you want to choose specific categories, just click on those and basically vworker listed out the amount of workers that you’ll be able to access based on those categories. Click next when you’re done.

This page allows you to put more specifics and write anything that you deem essential in order for this project to be completed, and it’s a very good chance for you to be very specific with what you want. So if anything happens for example later on, and there are discrepancies, vworker will actually look at this information when they are doing their arbitration. So it’s important that you be super specific with what you are requiring for your project. So for example, I might type graphics design set required, graphics needed are.. So you can list them all out. Header, banner, buttons, logos, whatever it is that you want. It will give the worker a better opportunity to place a bid based on what you’ve told them. And it will also streamline the communication process because you’ve been clear at the outset. When you’re done, click next.

This page looks at the legal requirements of your project. And I don’t usually mess around with this page. I usually leave it as it is. And click next. If you want to put something in there based on some legal advice that you’ve had, feel free to add it here as part of your parameters.

Finally vWorker would ask for final details if you wish to include them. It will also give you a little summary here of what you’ve done so far. And if you want to attach any files or documents, you could do so here. To enhance the picture of your project. So the clearer that your bid request is, the more accurately a lot of coders can bid on your project. If it’s not very clear, what you’ll find is that you tend to get coders that don’t bid, they just put in a specific amount later. Or you will get highly inflated, or highly deflated bids where you know that that’s not a realistic bid. So to minimize that, you want to be as specific as possible. Once you’ve done that, click next.

On this page, you can set your maximum bid. So if you want to have a certain budget and you don’t want to pay more, then you basically just put it in here. So for my project it was a hundred US dollars. Then you could stipulate what closing date you’d like to take place. So, how long you’d like this bid request be on the market before it stops accepting bids. vWorker also has an expert guarantee which enables the worker or coder in this instance to put down a little amount to guarantee that they are qualified, certified, and ready to work at one hundred percent capacity. So you can click these options of you wish to do that. I usually don’t. You must agree to the terms and conditions of vWorker and then click next.

Now this page asks you to edit your project deadlines and stipulate how many days, weeks, or months you believe is a fair and equitable amount of time for your project tob e delivered. Now, all you need to do if you want to specifically set a date is click on this box here and specify how many days you like it to be completed in.

If you would like a more organic process, where both you and the worker agree to reasonable deadline, then click on this button or this button and take it as it comes.

Managing worker estimates is a pretty cool feature where vWorker warns you that projects tend to take longer than what you stipulated and what the coder can say they can deliver it in. If you click yes, you can go to the next page.

On this page you’ll be able to choose which economies and which locations you like to have access to bid on your project. I tend to choose both emerging and mature economies because it doesn’t hurt to have more people bid on your project where as you limit it, that is taken out of the equation. If you want to read the pros and cons of each, just click this link here underneath each section. Now in this section, if English is super important for the project. For example if you’re getting someone to create training videos for you in English, then I would highly recommend ticking native English speaker and unticking English as a second language. For my graphics project for example, it doesn’t matter to me if English is their first language. I’m more than happy for them to bid on the project and work on the project. Once you’re happy with that, click next.

This page confirms when your project has been successfully been submitted. It also gives you the opportunity to review the bids that you’ve just submitted. And it gives you a little parameter and a little summary on how to increase the number of qualified bidders or check and change and review the project. So that’s pretty much how you submit a bid on vWorker. I hope this has been useful for you and good luck on your future projects.