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.

Interview with an Expert: West Loh

Yaro: Hi, everyone, this is Yaro. Welcome to another Interview with an Expert. We’re talking membership sites yet again. I have a good friend with me, West Loh. West is from Brisbane, where I’m from. Thanks for joining me on the call, West.

West: Absolute pleasure, Yaro.

Yaro: I got West on this call for a few reasons. He runs a membership site, so let’s begin with that, West. Tell us a little bit about your site.

West: The membership site is www.Money-Mind-Set.com. It’s about how people indentify and overcome their financial subconscious blockages to money. It’s not a process that I sat down and thought, “I’m going to start a membership site on that.

Actually, a good friend of ours, Andrew Grant, had been through a process where he was working on a job, he was working as a financial planner/consultant and he was in the Army for awhile. He was never really getting anywhere.

In the last year or so, he started addressing a lot of his issues subconsciously, working with a coach and a mentor that helps him do that.

He has made massive leaps in income. He’s making six or seven figures in his Internet businesses. So for him and his wife Daryl it was a huge difference. He wanted to create a site that teaches people the process that he went through.

I’ve always been of the philosophy that I never want to actually work for money in a job, so I was aligned with him in that. I’ve turned the site into a study of people that create wealth.

I interviewed 10-20 people who are the wealthiest people in Australia in property, business, Internet marketing, success coaches, peak performance coaches, and I’ve turned the site into a hub where people can learn all aspects of success.

Yaro: So it’s a lot of learning through osmosis from experts who’ve done what you want to do and to break down those blockages. There are a couple of things I’d like to talk to West about today.

The first one is blockages. The people listening to this call have membership sites in progress. So they’re building membership sites and they’re hoping to have a successful launch within six months.

People listening to this call may not realize this, especially if they haven’t done it before, but the main reason why you may never actually get a membership site launched or why you might be experiencing a lot of hiccups and difficulties with getting your site off the ground, is actually mental blockages, things to do with your mindset regarding making money, building a business – any sort of achievement. There is probably a lot of self esteem issues involved with this too.

I’d like to talk about how we can maybe combat some of the more common mindset issues for people who are launching projects of this magnitude, and what you’ve found from your experience dealing with your students about what they struggle with and then overcome.

Maybe you can start, West, by talking about a couple of the more common blockages people have in terms of this topic.

West: Sure. They way I look at blockages, they’re things that people think to themselves or reactions that happen in someone’s brain that they haven’t necessarily thought consciously.

For example, people go and launch a membership site. The first time you read it from Yaro’s program, what were the first thoughts that came into your head, without you having to think about it or really analyze if you could do it or not?

So for many people it would be stuff like, “I’m not good enough. I’m not as good as Yaro. I don’t have Yaro’s audience. I don’t have Yaro’s team. I don’t have Yaro’s skills. How on earth am I actually going to make this happen?”

Or other stuff like, “I already work. I don’t have the time to put in to actually do this.” All this stuff that pops into your head as to why you can’t do it is what I refer to as blockages.

It’s the same problem when it comes to making money – all the stuff that pops up when you go into a new venture or you start to make more money than before. Things will pop up. You’ll be asking yourself, “How can I deserve this?” Some people don’t feel like they’re deserving.

You were saying before about self esteem – some people just aren’t ready to do that from a confidence perspective. I think it has a lot to do with the conditioning that people have had from childhood.

If they’re not Internet savvy, people automatically class themselves as, “I’m a technophobe,” or “I don’t know how to do this or that.” They haven’t even considered the quality of the coaching they’re getting from your program.

They haven’t considered that they’re working with someone who’s done it, who’s been successful and is helping them, step by step, through the process.

That’s how I’ve defined blockages and the kind of most common things that pop up when people are looking to get into something that’s out of their comfort zone.

Yaro: I think everyone can definitely agree that they’ve at least had some of those thoughts. I’ve done that myself, when I was just getting started. I looked at people that I was trying to emulate and I would often say, “Well, yeah, sure, it’s good for them because they’ve got ten joint venture partners who are their close friends, and they’re all going to promote them because of that.”

Let’s be honest, though, everyone came from the same point in the beginning, when they didn’t have any contacts, built up relationships, or anything. Why is it that a very small segment of the population gets through that and becomes these leading figures, and most of us seem to stay at a rather mediocre place and feel
like the world’s against us and the universe is contriving to hold us down, where really that’s not usually the case.

It’s more to do with ourselves. What’s the first step to move beyond that?

West: One of the things I’ve identified in talking with all of these wealthy people is that they realize that these are things that are holding them back. 95% of the people let these things keep them where they are.

The funny thing is that everyone I’ve spoken to gets the same thoughts. Every single person that I’ve asked gets the same thoughts. You just said it. I got them all as well.

The difference is those people know that they get those thoughts and they’ve actually worked on the process where they identify them first so they can catch them when they get them, and then they just act in spite of the thoughts.

They know the outcome, because they’ve done it in the past, what happens when they don’t listen to all the stuff that’s coming through their head, and let their actions do the talking.

Yaro: So for people who don’t even have the experience to rest on, step one would still be creating an awareness of the conversation going on in your head in the first place. So that’s step one, to identify that.

West: Correct.

Yaro: Is that almost like just monitoring your thought process?

West: It is. There’s a few ways that we teach our members to do it. The first way is to just really take note of what you’re thinking when you’re looking into a new venture, or anything to do with money – what are the first thoughts that come into your head?

I’d recommend getting some sort of journal. You can call it your “Blockage Busting Journal” or “Barrier Annihilating Journal” – something powerful that you can pick up and say, “This is it!” and start writing down the thoughts that come in.

What you will find is that there will be a pattern. Later on it will click that these are the thoughts that have been holding you back, not only in your finances but in every other area of your life. It’s very rarely just in one area and not in other areas as well.

That’s the first step; you’re dead right. Being ready to identify and being open to the fact that this is something that you are actually falling victim to, like many people don’t even have the guts to admit it. They just feel like everything’s all right.

What I found out with that is that Andrew himself, who is earning six to seven figures a year through his various businesses, still gets blocks on a regular basis. He identifies them and works through them.

The other thing people can do, and we do this at the workshop, is ask themselves a question about membership sites: “What is holding me back from making this membership site the best it could possibly be?” or something along those lines.

Or it could be something more specific, like, “Why aren’t I making
$5000 from this membership site every month?” or something like that. Or it could be a goal.

Write it at the top and for two to five minutes (time yourself), just write. Let your pen go nuts, don’t think and just write whatever comes into your head. Even write all the excuses you could possibly spit out as to why it won’t work.

That’s a really powerful experience, and I’ve found it so for me personally. The first step is identifying it.

Yaro: Once you’ve identified it, what’s the second step?

West: Once you’ve identified it, I think that’s a really good platform to be aware of it. Successful people, once they’ve identified it, will catch themselves doing it. Once they catch themselves doing it, they just don’t listen to it.

Where most people would let it beat them to the ground or talk themselves out of it, they know that they’ve already associated that blockage towards taking the results away from them. They automatically discard the thought when it comes into their head and move on with it anyway.

When people sign up with your program, they know that it’s a proven formula. They know that they have every opportunity to make it work, but it’s the stuff in their own head that’s going to hold them back.

Andrew and Darrel Grant are a prime example. They’ve taken on 50 or so joint venture partners and I think that probably ten, if that, are actually highly active still and making it work and pushing through
all the barriers that have come up in getting that set up in our membership program. The other 30 or 40 have allowed life to take over. They’ve gone back to where they were.

That’s really sad to see that they just haven’t allowed the opportunity to materialize.

Yaro: This is the experience I’ve had with most of my websites and I openly state it on my blog that I don’t expect that the greater majority of people who actually sign up for my programs to finish and implement everything that I tell them to do. It’s just like a rule.

Is it a lack of motivation, life circumstance – what is it that would stop people? Other people might be in exactly the same life circumstance yet get it done. What is the magic ingredient?

West: I think, Yaro, that people like chasing opportunities, but I think that it has to be a “must” in their life. They have to be driven by
something. First of all, they have to enjoy it, but secondly they must have an intense, burning desire to make it work. It’s different from a “nice to have.’

So if someone’s joining your program thinking, “Right, it’s nice for me to have a membership site on top of my blog, it would be nice, I wouldn’t mind doing that. I’ll give it a go,” chances are that they’re going to fail. Things are going to get tough. They’re going to have to put in some work. They have to come in with the attitude that it is going to work at all costs, it’s an absolute must.

I was talking to a friend the other day who has kids, and I asked him, “What would make it a must for you?”

And he said, “If my kids were starving and I couldn’t put food on the table, and I joined up this membership program, I would do whatever it takes and it would happen. It would absolutely happen.” So he found his motivation, which was his kids.

Not everyone has kids, but you need to find for yourself what it is that drives you, that is so much more compelling that getting up and doing it isn’t work.

If you’ve joined the program, I know that you’re already active in some form on the Internet. You already have a list or some interest in business already, so that’s an interest for you. Lack of interest is not part of the equation.

Once that’s in place, you need to find a compelling “why” as to why you’ve got to make it work, and I think once that’s set, the chances of you succeeding are almost guaranteed. There are other factors, but that’s probably the key one.

Yaro: And looking at three examples I can think of right now, one is a student of the BlogMastermind program, I’m not sure if she will end up in this program, because she’s still in BlogMastermind, but her name is Caroline Middlebrook. She started blogging specifically as a platform to tell her story after quitting her job.

She lives in the UK. She quit her job and she said, “I am now going to try to make a living from the Internet. I’m not specifically sure how. I’m going to chronicle it on my blog and this is life or death. I have a certain amount of savings that I’m living on and if it doesn’t work, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

West: That’s powerful.

Yaro: She’s gone on to grow a successful blog now and it’s bringing in about $2,000 – $3,000 a month after only six months of working on it, which is an amazing result. It’s so easy to look at her writing style, her commitment to content production, to research into the
ideas in order to produce that content. That’s a clear demonstration.

My own situation – I’ve had a few recent years of success, but
going back before that, there was a reason why, and like everyone I
started at the beginning.

For me the biggest reason why was to never even get a full time job. I never wanted to have to be somewhere from 9 to 5; I wanted to make my own choice with that. I hated the idea of having a full time job so much that I was prepared to work hard enough to make something work through business.

West: Whatever works! Some people like moving toward pleasure, some people like moving away from pain. I think if you can find a combination of both, that’s the ultimate. Absolutely, Yaro, that’s another prime example.

Yaro: I was just going to finish with a third one, West, which was your situation. I’ve known you for awhile and as far as I’ve known you, you’ve never had a full time job either.

West: I had one for about two months. It didn’t last.

Yaro: What has been the motivating factor for you?

West: For me it gets back to family. I was thinking about this the other day, actually. I have two very sick grandparents and in Malaysia there’s very little support from the government. In Australia, if you get sick and you don’t have a lot of money, the government will take up the slack.

But in those countries, you don’t have that government support, so you pretty much can either die of starvation or you don’t get medical help. They just leave you on the streets to die. There’s no consequences there.

So for me, one of my recent motivators is to help my grandparents pay for their medical expenses and live a pleasant life in their last years here on earth. It’s a much nobler cause than me going out and buying a Ferrari or whatever.

For me that’s a real driving factor. I get up every day and I think how much they’ve given to me and my parents. For me to be able to support them is a very small gesture, but it’s a very powerful driving force for me.

Yaro: I think everyone listening to this call needs to find their own root reason why. That is the core motivation.

West: And making money isn’t a reason; it’s what the money will give you.
Get them to go a few layers down. It’s not the money. You’re not after a paper note with Sir Douglas Morrison on the front of it, or whoever the deceased notable is.

You don’t want that note. You want what it will give you; you want the feeling, the lifestyle, and the emotion – what it will give you. Find that root. Find that core.

Yaro: For most people the money just represents either freedom or removal of a pain, like a full time job, or being able to help family members. For some people it’s just to avoid circumstances they don’t want to be in.

o you have to think about that and for some people it might help to take a photograph of your desk at your full time job, where you
don’t want to be, and keep that on the wall and go, “Don’t want to
go there!” and that’s what you look at when you’re at home at night, working.

West: Definitely, that’s an awesome strategy. The root behind that is actually living those emotions and creating those emotions on a regular basis.

The first thing that you do when you get up in the morning is the first 20 minutes before you get out of bed, you visualize your outcome. You visualize the pleasure that you’ll get from achieving that. So you experience those emotions.

So whatever it is that you’re working toward, you want to sit or lie down, close your eyes, and let your mind take you there. On the other side of things, you should also visualize what would happen if you don’t make it – create pain for yourself.

Sometimes I get out of bed and I’m not crying but I’m actually close to crying, because it’s been so vivid, and I’m giving away all my secrets here, but you then actually go throughout the day and it’s like turbocharging or supercharging your emotions.

You put yourself into a positive state to do whatever it is you have to do. Human emotion drives all behavior and everything that you do. All of your actions you do to satisfy or nullify some form of emotion.

If you can master your emotions by creating those emotions artificially, but your brain doesn’t know that they’re artificial, you still feel the emotions as if they’re real, that will definitely help drive you towards implementing whatever it is that you’ve committed to, in this case, building a successful membership site.

Don’t forget the fact that you’re potentially helping hundreds of thousands of people as well. If your site is a valuable adding site, if it provides proven, great content that helps people to make money and helps them to live a better lifestyle, you are helping other people lead an improved quality of life or increasing their business, or whatever. So that should be a driving force for you as well.

Yaro: I think on that point, a lot of times when I’ve focused on the money as the outcome that I’m looking for, it’s really been a demotivating factor for me as opposed to thinking about what you just said and how what I can do can help other people.

Of course there’s the intrinsic reward there for me, because I get the warm fuzzy and the sense of participation and contribution by helping others. So if you can lock into those feelings while you’re doing this, that’s generally a much finer path than money.

Let’s just recap: step one is creating a level of awareness for whatever mental blockages or defeating phrases you’re giving to yourself, identifying them first.

Second, I won’t say ignoring them, but maybe transforming them and moving past them and understanding that they’re just thoughts.

I think what you’re saying there is regardless of emotional or mental state, the desired outcome only happens when you take an action that moves you toward that. You’re saying ignore the feeling and
self doubt and take an action that gets you a step closer to the results.

West: That’s exactly right. Everyone has those thoughts; most people do, anyway. Very successful people won’t even think those thoughts, but the majority of people do. Successful people just blast through them.

Yaro: And step three I would say is realizing that if you’re having trouble doing steps one and two, particularly step two, then it’s probably because you’re not tapping into a strong enough root cause. So until you find that higher cause, it’s difficult for you to keep taking those steps when you’re facing self doubt. That’s a very simple three step process that you can push yourself to.

I like to reiterate a methodology for dealing with that. If you’re having trouble simply doing this by yourself, take some kind of training or motivational audio or any mentor you want to emulate and study their work. Listen to their voice talking to you in a motivational manner to push you beyond those issues.

West: Definitely. I seriously doubt that anyone listening to this call hasn’t come across your other blog, Yaro, which is Entrepreneurs- Journey.com, but there’s really a lot of neat stuff there. You’ve

talked to a lot of successful people there as well. That’s a really good start for people.

Yaro: That pretty much covers the first topic. I wanted to bring West on
the call because he’s had so much communication with people who have moved past mental blockages and experienced above and beyond normal success.

If you do launch a successful membership site, you will be a non- typical person. You will be having above and beyond normal success.

There’s one other reason, though, that I brought West on the call. He’s actually running his own membership site, which is a big deal in itself. You have your own members and you’re doing that as part of your living.

One of the things I’ve heard you speak about previously in regard to running membership sites is actually the process of automation. We’re going away from a mindset topic which is a little bit more intangible.

West: But it all ties in nicely and we’ll wrap it up at the end.

Yaro: It does. So this is something that I discussed in the last module of this program. It’s essentially looking at ways to reduce the labor requirements to run your membership site, not only so you can get more free time, which is a goal for all of us, but to increase the value of your membership site as a salable asset.

If something requires little work from the owner, that increases the value to a potential buyer. So there are two reasons here: lifestyle for yourself and also a potentially big windfall as a sale.

West, can you take us through some of the techniques that you’ve done to automate the process or techniques that you recommend to people to set up a membership site that runs itself?

West: Sure. I’m a big believer that lifestyle is important. If you’ve chosen the Internet as a lifestyle and you’re working on it as if you were working on a job, then you probably need to reevaluate your strategy.

From an Internet perspective, I believe you guys are in the best position to actually really leverage your time and your skills to create freedom.

The first step I’d recommend is going to Yaro’s blog and listening to that call with Tim Ferris, who wrote The Four-Hour Work Week.
That will definitely give you a mindset rock. Tim’s mind is really cool in terms of being lazy; I love being lazy as well. Not as lazy as Tim,
I work a little more than four hours a week, but I don’t see it as work; I see it as play. When I’m in front of the computer, I’m having a great time.

But in terms of automating your business, the first thing you need to do is have a look at your core skill sets. What are you good at?
Take out a piece of paper and write down your business, the topic of your blog, and where you can add the most value.

The initial urge will be that you want to do everything. Make a list. Yaro will probably give you a list of the things you need to do at the end of each e-class and that will start piling up.

If you’re busy one week or so, you’ll have 20 things instead of only ten things. And if you only get five things done on the next list, you’ll have 25 things. That process will never end.

If you’re sitting there in front of your computer trying to do it all on your own, you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle that you will never, ever win.

The first thing is to identify what you’re good at personally. I’m assuming you’re some sort of expert, some sort of recognized authority in a niche or industry. And if you’re not, you probably are able to associate with someone who is an expert or has some sort of knowledge in an industry.

Once you’ve identified your main skill set, you then need to identify the tasks that need to be done that would take you too long and waste too much of your time to do, but which are still important to get done.

For example, I’m actually working through Yaro’s Blog Mastermind program, which is a brother program to this one. There’s a lot of installing of tags and all sorts of different technical things that need to be done on a blog.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to do them, but Yaro tells me that it’s important and I know that it needs to be done, so I find someone who is able to do that quickly and much more effectively and efficiently than me.

I pay them usually very little, and we’ll talk later about some of the developing countries who have a lot of really good workers who work for very little. It’s not a bad thing, just that the market rates for their current situations are not very high, so what seems low to you is actually a fair price to them.

Then I get them to do it and I can spend my time doing the stuff that
I see as valuable to me.

Yaro: So first identify your core talents and skills, and also identify other things that are of paramount importance to the success of what you’re doing.

West: The things that you’re not good at.

Yaro: That’s very practical. In Module 3 of the Membership Site Mastermind we talk about technology. To run a membership site, you obviously need to make use of a lot of technology. You have to set up a membership site script to protect your content. You have to set up an email autoresponder to deliver emails.

Maybe you haven’t got a blog yet, so you need to set up a blog. You need to have some kind of name capture to bring people into your website.

West: These are all important things. You can’t say, “I’m not doing that!” They’re important. They need to be done. But they don’t need to be done by you.

Yaro: I’ve said to the people listening to this call, in the modules anyway, that you need to be getting a tech person. That is the #1 area that they should first look to outsource. So let’s talk a little bit about the process of actually identifying the people we want to work with.

I have a section of this program called Human Resources, where I explain the team I built around me and what they actually do for my business so that I can see the overall structure. I offered my advice for how I found people. What do you recommend to people, West, to find contractors or employees to work with?

West: You did right, Yaro, in that the typical person looking to get help will definitely need help with technical stuff first. Usually they’re people who aren’t really tech savvy and they need help with uploading and creating web pages and things like that.

I would actually identify all the tasks that need to be done. You can go one of two ways: there are outsourcing sites that you can post task by task, so you can go to a site such as www.Guru.com or www.RentACoder.com and post that one specific task. People will bid on that in a reverse bidding process. Someone might start at
$100, and someone else comes in at $80 and someone else comes in at $2.50 and you choose someone.

They do the task for you, and you pay them and you probably won’t see them again. If you’re smart you’ll actually work a little more closely with them and potentially get them on board for other stuff.

The other way you can do this is to go to a site like www.oDesk.com and they will actually provide a working staff member for you.

You’ll put in a proposal to have someone work for you for a set amount of hours per week and it’s an ongoing communication
where you work with that techie on however many hours you set, at a set rate that you agree on, and you have that relationship from
the start. That’s what I’d recommend.

As time progresses, you will find that different tasks pop up that might require different skill sets that a general techie might not be able to do. In those instances, you would then go back to one of those sites, be it www.Elance.comor www.RentACoder.com and post another project.

In the past I found that people who can do a task really well, have quite a good skill set, are related to that area, so let’s say that I have a really basic task like I want them to install a blog plugin on my WordPress blog.

They would generally know a lot about WordPress. They will generally know how to do a lot of other things with WordPress as well. So before I post any other projects, I’ll actually ask that person if they would be able to do that for me. That works well.

In time, if you have enough work, they’ll actually work for you on a regular basis anyway. The beauty of it is, they generally won’t expect a set amount of hours like, “You have to give me ten hours a week or I won’t work for you” – they’re happy to work job by job,
and you pay them by the job.

Yaro: You listed a bunch of great websites there which I’ll include in the notes for this call, in the Resources area. I think the most interesting one there is ODesk.com, which is where you can get
someone who’s more of a jack of all trades employee arrangement. I think ultimately that’s the best situation, if you can find a reliable person who is a jack of all trades in the tech field, so that you don’t have to continually post projects and assess people, because that’s a time consuming thing. That’s something you could outsource.

A lot of people who really start to get into this will outsource to a project manager who is really good at vetting people and using Internet technology to find answers to questions and say, “Listen, I want you to hire someone to manage my scripts for a membership site, I want you to hire my copywriter and I want you to hire the content writer for transcripts.”

So you just go through one person, who then becomes your connection for all outsourcing.

West: That’s another really good model and it’s one I believe you’ve used as well.

Yaro: Similar, yes. Once you have your team going, it’s a great thing. But there’s a concern, and I’ve experienced this myself, with the contract workers, because of the relaxed relationship that you have with them. Sometimes they take a full time job and they’re no
longer available, or their time gets filled up with so many jobs that they can’t fit you in. What have you found is the best way to combat this sort of circumstance?

West: It has happened to me in the past. I think, due to the nature of the situation, it’s tough to be able to get around that, unless you can offer them something really solid on a long term basis.

At the end the day, if you analyze where these guys are, they usually tend to have a job where they’re nine to five and they do what they do with you outside of work, to supplement their income.

There are a few that actually do this full time. They have a small team of people that they work with, that they can call on to do certain tasks and you’ll pay them, then they’ll pay their people and make a bit of a cut on that.

Take an example from Mike Filsaime. He really looks after the people that he works with. He has a team of coders in Romania (Mike, if you’re listening to this call, I hope I haven’t given away your secrets here!) and he’s basically given one head guy there some equity share in some of the sites that he’s involved with and that guy deals with all the Romanian coders.

He’s taken this to the next level, because he has a very successful business, but he’s fitted out an office there. He’s bought them all computers. He looks after them really well. He takes them out to events and he actually flies over to Romania from time to time to meet with them personally. That’s Michael Filsaime. Mike is a great relationship builder.

If you’re an affiliate or if you’re associated with him in any joint venture, he really looks after you. He creates a loyalty to him that you just wouldn’t want to leave. Who’s going to buy you a new computer? I’m not saying everyone can buy your techies a new computer, but what I am saying is you can try to create a more personalized relationship with them.

As a start, try talking to them on Skype. Most of them are on Skype. Get to hear their voices, get a feel for who they are as people. A lot of people would just send them an email and say, “Do this and report back to me when you’re done” or use chat. So there are
small steps you can take to do that to edge things in your favor.

I don’t believe you could totally eliminate the possibility that they could leave at any time, and I’d always encourage you to have maybe two or three people who could potentially do the same task. For example, if you’re doing a big launch, the last thing you’d want is your own lead techie to leave you two days before and you’d be completely stuck. I know with your launch, with BlogMastermind, you came across some hitches.

In this recent Product Launch Formula 2 launch, I don’t know if it was a marketing ploy or not, that the website that Jeff had ready to go at launch was down, I think.

If it was valid, which it might well be, then if you don’t have a techie on hand and people are coming to your site ready to buy, it’s the worst feeling in the world, isn’t it, Yaro?

Yaro: To lose customers, yes. I think on that point as well, I’ve heard a similar recommendation from someone who’s really good at outsourcing, which was if you find someone who’s good, using these contracting sites, actually pay them more than they expect when the job is done. That creates an instant loyalty.

We talked before about how these countries have currencies and economies that, because our economies in certain Western countries are better, if you give some people a bonus of $10 USD or $20 USD for a job, that’s massive.

West: Yes. It makes a big difference.

Yaro: That can be a whole days’ worth of work.

West: For you it’s nothing, really, it’s not much at all, another $10, but for these people it can feed their families for a couple of days, and that’s a lot.

Yaro: I’ve done that, even with locals. I employ mostly Australians for what I do, and I will give $50 or $100 on top of a $200 – $300 invoice, if I’m really happy with the work they’re doing. This is just a way to create the loyalty and build a sense of team around what you’re doing.

I think having team meetings is an important thing. Obviously, if geographic boundaries prohibit that, you can do it virtually through things like Skype, and that really helps to create the connections. But it does depend on what stage you’re at and how much work you have for these people.

Continuing then down this thread, West, let’s talk about how you can eliminate nearly all the tasks you have to do as a membership site owner.

We can hand off the technological component quite easily. Another rather labor intensive aspect is writing the content for your members and also writing the marketing materials that you use to promote your membership site with. What’s your advice on getting that content taken off your hands?

West: I think one of the problems I encounter when I talk to people who are so-called ‘experts’ in their sight is that they take on an almost obsessive approach to overseeing the content and being the ones who develop the content. They must have every single thing in place and it all has to be personalized to them.

That’s great if I’m wanting to sign up to your program and I know that it’s all coming from you, but from a business perspective, a membership site perspective, and from a lifestyle perspective, it’s really actually bad for you to take on that approach.

I’m not saying reduce the quality of your content or be slack in any of those areas, because that will come back to bite you as well, but what I am saying is that you can put together some strategies and follow a few different models where you can still give a ton of your own input, but not necessarily be there to type every single word yourself.

A prime example is a woman who is an acupuncturist. I met her at a workshop where I spoke and she was wanting to get in and do it all herself, like type it all up and write her own books, newsletters,
write all the e-classes and all that sort of stuff.

I just sat down with her and after half an hour of chatting with her, I found out that she had a few of her seminars already recorded on DVD. She’d done a few consultations that she had recorded, but had never thought of using them for content in any way, shape or form. I got her to list out all the major topics, issues, and troubles that her clients have.

And I said to her, “Do you think you could get one of your clients to actually sit down with you for a three-hour block and just really blast your brain and ask you every single question about all the issues that you have to deal with on a regular basis?”

You will be blown away at how much information you can produce from three hours of Q&A just from an e-class or a newsletter perspective. Once that audio file is created, there’s a ton of stuff you can do with it. You can leverage that to no end, in many ways.

A few examples that I gave her were to break them up into maybe
8- to 10-minute topics and she would have 25 – 30 pieces of content there already. She could get it all transcribed and create two to three ebooks out of that.

She could get someone to edit the information and create e-classes from those topics. She would give direction on how she would like it structured, because in three hours you can talk about a whole
range of things, but for that three hour investment of time, with the right outsourcing and leveraging mindset, you don’t have to spend multiple hours developing your content and typing it all up yourself. I hope that’s been helpful.

Yaro: I really like the idea of using audio in that manner. I think people underestimate it. Even if you’re not a good speaker, the potential is for audio to get ideas on the table, and that can be converted to content, either through transcribing it or through continuous back and forth Q&A sessions with the right type of person who could ask you the right type of questions – and that can just be a customer of yours.

West: If worse comes to worst, you write out a series of 25 questions and get someone – anyone – to ask you the questions and you just go on. You just do your spiel.

Yaro: And like you said, you could deliver that content as MP3s, have it transcribed for text, you could have someone create brand new articles by taking your ideas and elaborating on them. There’s all kinds of ways.

And audio is definitely the fastest way to get content into existence. It’s definitely quicker than writing and easier to do than creating videos, so that’s a really big tip for people to get started.

That could be applied for marketing or for content within your membership sites. It’s a great place to start, West, thank you for that.

West: Definitely.

Yaro: We’ll start to wrap up the call. We’ve covered two very distinct topics, mindset and automation of your website. You mentioned that these two topics are quite interrelated. People may not realize why. Could you link the two together for us?

West: Sure. I think we may have talked about this in the call previous to the one we just did, but it’s a concept called The Hedgehog Concept that I want to make people aware of.

I think it’s worthwhile mentioning it again, and that is when a hedgehog gets into trouble, it rolls into a ball, sticks its spines out, and it does that one thing really well.

A fox will try to eat the hedgehog when it’s hungry and it will try lots of things; it will try to bite it, burrow into its holes, or try to pick up sticks and hit the hedgehog. The fox has a diversified approach.

The hedgehog does its task so well that the fox will never be able to penetrate its spikes. The hedgehog has one strategy and does it unbelievably well.

I think if you take that mindset, for you as a hedgehog to continue on this site, what are the things that you do well? What are the things that you can now outsource and allow the people who can do that really well, which is their hedgehog, do for you?

I don’t think that cost will be an issue for you when you get on to these sites. If you’re willing to invest $500 as a startup, just put that aside and I think you’ll make that back pretty quickly, if you’re doing what Yaro is telling you with your marketing strategies.

Tying it all together, you need to look back and think, “Am I hedgehog or am I fox?” or “Is what I’m doing now making me a hedgehog or a fox?”

That mindset will help to keep you on track, because when you get into the daily grind of doing things, you sit down and you read
Yaro’s next e-class and there’s five more things you need to add on to your list, it’s very easy to get caught up in, “Do I have to do this now? I have to get this done!”

It’s not what you’re busy doing, but are you busy doing what? Because I think everybody’s busy. I’ll finish with a quote that I heard from Jim Rohn and that is, “Never confuse activity with achievement.”

That’s another powerful quote, because people are always active. They’re always moving and they’re always busy, but they’re not always achieving, and there’s a big difference.

Yaro: Just to clarify, for anyone who has got lost in talk of hedgehogs and foxes and any quotes there, simply put, we talked earlier in the call about feeling a sense of, “I can’t do this, it’s too technical.” That’s one of the very common blockages and stepping stones that people fall for early on.

Then you’ve been presented with some realistic techniques for removing that. All it takes for you is a few action steps to either find the outsourcer or find someone you can record some audio with and respond to and then have them create content from.

Find the right people and make this happen, and it removes that constraint and you can move on. You’ll hit another constraint, and you’ll have to move past that as well.

Everything that we’re talking about there is actually a mindset to get that done. Most people will listen to calls like this or study blog articles or buy courses and training programs and learn all of this and be told these things over and over, but most people will never actually go and implement and get the result to verify that this actually works.

That creates a sense of momentum, and I think momentum is really important here because you need to have a celebration of small achievements. And in order for a small achievement to occur, you have to at least have taken some sort of action.

If it’s a case of simply finding one person and hiring them to do a logo for your new membership site so you’re taking that step forward, that’s enough to start momentum moving forward.

West: Exactly. Momentum is powerful.

Yaro: Before we wrap up, West, talk a little about your site. What’s the website address again?

West: It’s www.Money-Mind-Set.com and my blog is at www.WestLoh.com. Listen, Yaro, I’ve just finished writing a book on the Money Mindset, and I am going to sell it. But for your membership clients, if it’s all right with you, I’m more than happy to include it as part of what you’re offering, at no charge.

Yaro: Thank you, West, it’s very generous of you. I’ll have to include that with the link for this audio. I’m assuming it’s a PDF?

West: It is a PDF, that’s correct.

Yaro: Great. I’ll have to grab that off you.

I like to end these calls with this one question, and it’s totally off topic, but that’s all right because it’s been off topic every other time I’ve asked it of other people.

It’s this: you start a membership site, you’ve got members – how did you get traffic to your site?

West: I’m a little bit lucky in that I have had an association with Andrew and Daryl Grant, who are already quite respected and have relationships with other people. However, they haven’t fed it to me on a silver platter.

One of the things that we’ve done recently is Andrew has given me contact details for Stephen Pierce, who’s quite a prominent Internet marketer. He has allowed me to contact him and put together a promotional campaign where we could promote some of the stuff we’re doing, during his seminar.

So he spoke and we were able to joint venture, through some of the techniques mentioned in the previous call to this. You can make
that call available to your clients as well. The same steps that I mentioned, Yaro mentioned in that to do a joint venture with Stephen.

So that actually got us a lot of traffic and a lot of affiliates who want to now drive traffic to our membership site. The seminar was on how to create income streams with no money and no product. For you guys that would be awesome as well, because you should have an affiliate program where people can promote your product for you without your having to be there.

If you can recruit and nurture some really good affiliates, they’ll
keep driving people to your site. Yaro’s actually done a fantastic job in BlogMastermind of nurturing his affiliates. He’s one of the best that I’ve ever seen.

It’s a great affiliate area, if you just join up for the fact that you can have a look at Yaro’s affiliate area and see all the promotional materials and all the training tools he’s given. If you’re half serious about making money, that will get your engines firing.

Yaro: I want to bring you back a bit, West, because it sounds a bit like you’re talking about the end result here. Let’s go even further back.

You’ve got relationships with prominent experts, Andrew and Daryl. They’ve presented you with an opportunity to run a membership site in conjunction with them. You jumped at the chance; it’s a topic that you’re interested in yourself with the mindsets.

That led to connections with people like Stephen Pierce, so the joint ventures can come easier because you’ve got this connection with someone else who has good connections.

Let’s go back a bit further, though. How did you initially get in contact with Andrew and Daryl?

West: I actually found out about them through a great site called www.Entrepreneurs-Journey.com.

Yaro: Let’s go even further back.

West: I did find out about them through Yaro, yes. I owe a lot to Yaro.

Yaro: How did you meet them? You listened to the podcast I did with them. But that’s not enough to meet them. What did you do next?

West: What I did then was contacted them through the site, just through email, to start building a relationship, so they got to know who I was.

I told them a little bit about what I do. I signed up for their email list and I found out they were running some workshops. I believe at the time these workshops cost quite a lot of money to attend. I was happy to pay the money, to go and meet them and to learn what they had to teach.

For me, it was a process of being able to commit to actually putting some money down to go and meet them, for them to get to know me, and put my face out there. I met a lot of other people at those workshops and seminars as well, and subsequently I saw them in other seminars.

So there were three seminars that other people have run, like Internet Traffic Mastery and a few other ones, where a lot of speakers get two to three hours to speak. I would just stick around until Andrew and Daryl were willing to meet me.

I did that with a lot of the other speakers as well, but Andrew and Daryl had an opportunity going that appealed to me, with membership sites, and I decided to jump on board.

I had a lot of the negative stuff going through my head that many of you have had, and I pushed through them and did what I’ve described in this call.

Yaro: In my experience, West is the best example of someone who’s really leveraged the workshop/conference/seminar series as an avenue for connecting with top experts to get joint ventures. I
almost think you could do an entire program yourself, West, on how to leverage those opportunities.

There’s an art to that. Shy people go to these conferences and they’re too afraid to talk to people. Even if they’re not afraid and they do meet people, they don’t really know how to turn that into a meaningful connection.

You clearly have done something that’s beyond the average when you attend these workshops and events that gets you into the mindset and the frame of awareness of these experts. What do you think that is? Let’s wrap this call up with that last point.

Your traffic technique is pretty clear. You’re fantastic at meeting experts. You have a lot of access to traffic at events. How have you done that?

West: I think generally if you’re happy talking to people, you just need to get over that mindset where you think, “He’s too good for me” or “He’s learning so much from the Internet, he would never want to speak to me.” You’d be really surprised at what you could offer someone like Stephen Pierce or any other marketer who’s at these seminars.

Some of the things that I’ve done are for example, meeting Brett McFall. I went up to him and said, “Brett, I’m a big fan of your work. I really appreciate all of the stuff you’ve done for me. If you ever need a testimonial on any of your work, a video testimonial, let me know.”

And he said, “West, I am always looking for testimonials. Here’s my card,” and I went home and shot one and sent it through to him.

Now I don’t know whether he’s using it or not, but first of all it tells him who I am. I didn’t get a chance to tell him what I actually did, because he’s a very busy guy. He speaks, he sells a lot of packs, and then he’s off speaking with the other speakers and all that sort of stuff.

So I only had two minutes or so, but I did establish that connection and managed to get a card or some form of contact and then I followed up on the promise that I delivered, so it wasn’t asking anything from him.

And this is another thing that Yaro spoke about on the Joint Venture call, is that maybe you can offer that person something, even if it is something as simple as a testimonial for one of their products that you may have considered, or even a presentation that they gave. No one’s going to refuse a testimonial.

Yaro: No. If anyone wants to give me video testimonials, I’m all for it.

West: Exactly. Me, too.

Yaro: Just for anyone who might be concerned that we are talking about Internet marketing industry here, every single niche, if has somewhat of a following, has a major event that’s attached to it, so there’s like a conference or something that you can attend where all the enthusiasts are there, and the people putting on the show with their stands, and there will be people there that you can connect with who have access to large audiences. It’s a matter of identifying them and then introducing yourself.

That’s a fantastic joint venture tactic, and if you’ve got a membership site or you’re planning one, that can almost be all you do.

West: Just recently there was a property expo in Brisbane. All the guys doing property membership sites were there networking their butts off and they got a lot of good results from that.

Yaro: There should never be a gap. Thanks, West, I really wanted to highlight that as a traffic technique. I’m ending all the calls with traffic techniques, that’s why it seems a little bit out of place, but it’s got to be the hottest question that everyone asks.

West: One technique I’m moving into recently, and I haven’t had any results yet because I haven’t actually spent a lot of time on it, but on the weekend I went to a presentation by a gentleman named Monte Huebsch. He’s a Google expert.

Some of the results he was putting up there were on YouTube as a site that’s growing even at a faster rate at this point in time than a lot of the social networking sites. The trend was amazing. It blew him away, but it blew the audience away as well.

Even just shooting some basic videos and putting them out there for free on any of the video sites, but primarily YouTube, trying to brand them with your URL and creating some value in the actual video, is something that I’m going to move into.

Maybe I can report that in our next call if you want me to talk about something like that.

Yaro: I’m planning on doing the same, actually, get the webcam out and
sit and talk about it. Great way to drive traffic. West, I think we’ve hit an hour, so that’s a good time for us to end our call.

Just before we finish, we mentioned your website again, but if anyone’s interested in what West does with his membership site or wants further information regarding mindset or automation, as we’ve talked about membership site automation, the best way to get in contact with you or if they want to join your membership site is…?

West: Just go to www.WestLoh.com or email me personally. If you guys know Yaro, you’re my friends as well: info@westloh.com and I’ll reply to you personally.

Yaro: Great. I hope everyone got something out of this call and you’re hopefully motivated to move past your blockages and definitely thinking about getting some outsources so you can start getting that membership site out the door! Thanks for joining me today on the call, West.

West: My pleasure, Yaro. Thank you for having me, it’s been great.

Yaro: I’ll speak to everyone soon. This is Yaro Starak.

Speakers:
West: West Loh
George: George Mihos

West: Folks, I want to welcome you to the call today. We’re very, very privileged to have Mr. George Mihos on the line today. Now I had the pleasure of meeting George in Gold Coast. We recently met at a seminar about eBay. And one of the things I really respect about George is the way that he’s open to learning and continuously open to learning and his philosophies in investments and in business were very refreshing. I was privileged to have spent even just a little bit of time with George but he blew me away with his philosophies. So I had to get him on a call for you guys and I’m sure you’ll feel the same way after we speak with him. So George, I want to thank you for joining the call today.

George: You’re welcome, West. And I also want to thank you for persisting, one of the many success characteristics I’ve experienced in my short life; and we’re all just getting started. What’s exciting is most peak performers will do what it takes to achieve an outcome. And you persisted; and then I persisted. And finally I caught up with you on the golf course, I find, that is. How are you, mate?

West: Very well, very well. It’s always good when you get to chat to someone you highly respect.

So George, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your story? I mean you’ve come a long way. And I understand, from what you were telling me, that you’ve got interest in so many different areas. And one of the philosophies that I believe you preach is that wealthy people need to have multiple streams of income. And we’ll get to that a bit later on. But where did you start and how did you get into it?

George: That’s a very fair point there, West. I’ll just share my story very briefly. I come from a very humble beginning. My parents—as most people in Australia—immigrated forty, forty five years ago. And one thing my parents instilled in me as we were growing up was to go and live your passion. And my passion growing up was soccer balls. And I played professional sports at a very young age. And I lost my passion for it a little bit along the way. But what happened, I met my next passion. And that was my beautiful wife. And with our culture, if you’re married for twenty four hours and you haven’t started a family, well, there’s something wrong.

West: Now you’re Greek, is that correct?

George: Greek heritage. Autralian born here—in the largest capital city of Greeks in Australia, but a true‑blooded Aussie.

What changed my life dramatically was I was working in the corporate world doing the treadmill—what most people choose to do—the path of least resistance. And let me preface by saying that whatever we chat over the next twenty, thirty minutes or whatever it takes is, as always, I’m not giving financial advice in any way. I always encourage people to go and see or do an independent and legal professional advice. But also keep in mind that Titanic was built by professionals…whatever that means.

Anyway, suffice to say, I was working the typical long hours—60-70—hours working in the corporate world. And I came to a realization when my wife and I found out that we were about to be blessed with the birth of our first child. And the realization was that I looked around me and I saw people 5, 10, 20, 30 years my senior doing what I was doing, not living a better lifestyle. And I realized at that point—it was a pivotal moment in my life—that unless I took some drastic action, I wasn’t going to get the results I really wanted deep down.

And West, I’m sure you can relate to this and people listening to this call…and that is that if we were absolutely honest, purely honest, we look at ourselves in the mirror and looked deep down in our gut what we really desired, and if we ask ourselves this question, “Today was the last day of our life, would we do what we did today?”

West: Powerful. Very powerful.

George: And that’s what changed my life. And the answer was, “No.” However, guess what happened next?

West: You took action.

George: Well, no. Reality kicked in. The fear kicked: “Well, what am I going to do? I don’t know what I’m going to do.” So I made a decision to invest the next 5, 6, 7 months before our beautiful daughter came in this world, was to go and find what the wealthy knew.

West: Get the knowledge.

George: Absolutely. Now as you can appreciate, in six, seven months, you’re not going to find all the secrets, are you?

West: No. There’s a lot to learn.

George: There is a lot to learn. The other realization I’ve come to now—knowing what I know now—is that all the answers already exist. The difference between the wealthy and not wealthy is they know how to ask better quality questions. And I’ll give you an example of this.

As I was going through my journey of making a decision, “Should I?” “Shouldn’t I?” “Should I?” “Shouldn’t I?” I remember hearing an amazing quote that’s embedded in this beautiful brain of mine. And that is—and you may want to write this down, folks:
“The quality of your life will be determined by the quality of the questions you ask yourself.”

Who do we talk to the most everyday, West?

West: Ourselves.

George: Ourselves. By appreciating and respecting that quote, what I realized was that fact that most of us—because not all of us talk to ourselves more than anybody else—and the majority of our own internal dialogue is not serving us. In actual fact, it’s self‑sabotaging us. And as soon as I appreciated that point, I can recall being stuck in peak hour traffic, my left eye caught my rear vision mirror and I remember asking myself, “Wow!”—I’ve been asking myself—“What am I doing here? What am I doing here?” For the last 5, 6 weeks, I couldn’t come up with an answer.

And then I said, “Okay.” These are the questions. Write this down, West. This will definitely add value to your life. You’re ready?

“What am I passionate about?” And as soon as I asked myself that question, it was like a bolt of lightning. Bam! And I call it my BFO, my blinding flash of the obvious, my epiphany. And my passion—right there I was able to identify it—is being able to transform and add value to people’s lives because that’s what I’ve been really great at. I’ve been able to connect people, inspire people, frustrate people and move people.

And then reality kicked in. I heard that voice in my head saying, “George, you’re full of crap. How can you honestly impact other people’s lives when you’re stuck in the rat race?”

West: So that’s, I guess, what we call in our program a block or one of the limiting beliefs. So talk us through how you approached and how you got over it, George.

George: Well, the other point I would like to ask everybody to make at this point is write this down: “Purposeful decision.” Make a purposeful decision. How many times have you heard people saying, “You need to make a decision?” Have you heard of that before, West?’

West: I have. But purposeful decision gives it a bit more juice, doesn’t it?

George: Well, I used to hear this a lot: “You need to make a decision.” And I kept saying to myself, “But I have.” And I was getting frustrated. And then I woke up one day and the purposeful decision was when my wife and I looked at each other and we were about to go down the IVF path, because unfortunately, we found out that we weren’t able to really start a family the natural way. And we found out after doing our own investigations, the only choice we have was to go through the IVF process. And I understand it can be pretty stressful for both male and females.

Anyway, the good news is we woke up after forty months of procrastinating, we looked at each other and we said, “Are we going to do this? If we’re going to do it, let’s do it.” And from that day when we made a purposeful decision, five weeks later my wife got pregnant the natural way.

West: Wow.

George: And that was a major lesson. That was a major turning point in my life because I realized… a lot of people struggle to make decisions, correct?

West: Correct.

George: In actual fact, they don’t West. They’ve actually made a decision not to make a decision.

West: I see. I see.

George: Does that make sense?

West: It does.

George: I have another analogy to put in perspective. How many of us have heard that the human capacity, the human brain is that it’s so powerful that we’ll likely be able to access or utilize 10% of it.

West: I’ve heard that before, yes.

George: You have? What I’d like everybody to do is don’t believe a word I say. I like them to take my pearls of wisdom and go and test it for themselves, is that fair enough?

West: Definitely.

George: Okay. Let’s get a pen and paper and write down ‘10 percent.’

I read an article—which I don’t have in my hands right now—but it states that if they were to take a human brain and transform it into like a computer, into a machine, it would be so big that it would need the equivalent size of the Mississippi River to keep it cool. It would cost about a $100 billion to build. So let’s write down ‘$100 billion.’

West: That’s a lot of money.

George: That’s a good start, isn’t it?

West: That’s a very good start.

George: Then if you were to take the power that it can exert, it would be the equivalent of about $200 billion worth of power. So to cut a long story short, $100 billion and $200 billion will give us $300 billion, correct?

West: Correct.

George: So let’s apply the theory of 10 percent. 10 percent into $300 billion is what?

West: $30 billion.

George: I know you are great at golf but I also know that you’re pretty good at numbers too, West. Absolutely. $30 billion.

How many people out of 6 billion people do you know in this world right now that are worth $30 billion?

West: Probably ten? I don’t know.

George: Not many, correct?

West: Not many. A canful.

George: So we’re talking about 10% of $300 billion. Let’s be a lot more conservative. The recent stats I came across was if you were to take the world’s wealth and divide it by the world’s population, the average person would be worth about $3 million.

West: Wow.

George: Okay? So $3 million into $300 billion is what percentage?

West: That would be one percent, isn’t it?

George: Not even. 1 percent is $3 billion.

West: Oh, $3 million. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

George: 1 percent is $3 billion. $300 million is .1 percent. So it’s .001 percent or something to that effect, correct?

West: Correct.

George: And a point I want to illustrate is that people are claiming we’re using 10 percent of our capacity.

West: We’re using less.

George: We haven’t even started, West. We haven’t even started. Does that make sense?

West: It does.

George: So when I realized ‘purposeful decision,’ I went out to the marketplace and I decided to find the evidence.

Now write this down: ‘What is your evidence procedure?’ And this is a very, very important point because I have coached, directly and indirectly, thousands of people over the last nine years personally. And you know what I found? I’ve come across good‑looking people, I’ve come across not that good‑looking people. I’ve come across bad people, good people, dark people, light people, tall people short people, old people, young people. Does that make sense, West?

I went searching for the secret of wealth. Maybe it’s because I was born in the northern suburb that’s why I wasn’t wealthy.

West: It sounded like you were on a mission, George.

George: Absolutely. Now what I would like to share with all the listeners here is go in the marketplace and find the evidence. Because you will find whatever evidence you choose. If you want to find the evidence, West, something works, you will find it. If you want to find the evidence, West, something does not work, you will find it. We live in a world of duality, correct?

West: We do.

George: Absolutely. And if you want proof of that, just have a look around you. There are good‑looking people, there are people who got a face like a smashed tram or something like that, right? There are people who are extremely wealthy, there people who aren’t.

So what I found was this: as I went out into the marketplace, I started to eliminate—this is very important to overcoming personal barriers and self-sabotaging—I started to eliminate some of my fallacies. So I thought, “You know what, well, I’m doing okay. But, you know, all rich people were crooks.” And I didn’t realize I had that embedded belief in me as I was growing up. The reason why I had that—you may laugh at this side comment, West, and you may not appreciate it or have seen this show—but have you heard of Starsky and Hutch?

West: I’ve heard of it but I don’t believe I’ve seen it. But I know it’s a funny movie.

George: It is a funny movie but I actually grew up with the series. And I used to watch it religiously every week. And on that show I used to notice something. All the good guys were the broke guys. All the good guys, their cars were breaking down and they’ve got holes in their shoes and so on. But the guys that had the cash, the yachts, the girls, the cars…

West: Those were the bad guys.

George: They were the bad guys. Yeah, armed robbery and drugs and so on. So I didn’t realize this, I was planting in my head a belief that wealth was bad.

West: Through your television programming.

George: Unbelievable. And then I would go the park and physically train for sports—my passion was sports—and I’d see a beautiful car fly by, a Merc or a Beemer, whatever. And my natural reaction was ‘drugs’. Makes sense?

West: It does. And it’s a reasonably common association, isn’t it?

George: Absolutely. And that’s why I started earlier, West, is what is your evidence procedure? What I then did, I went out the marketplace to counteract that. I went out in the marketplace looking for good people with good ethics, good values who had results. And you know what I found out? It had nothing to do with whether they were born on the right side of town or the wrong side of town because there are good and bad operators in every side of town…correct?

West: Definitely. Definitely.

George: There are good and bad operators in every industry. I think one thing I didn’t probably properly comprehend or appreciate enough is that in Australia, it’s a lot easier not to excel. We have this thing called the tall poppy, have you heard of that?

West: That’s very pronounced in here.

George: And I can speak from personal experience here—I didn’t appreciate that—if you decide to have a go, you’re going to start intimidating some family, friends and extended people. Because reality kicks in. And West, I can speak from my heart and say if anybody has a deep desire and they follow their passion and they do what it takes—and the key is—they’ve got to be willing to take massive action. Massive action is an integral part to success.

You know, some people have been coming up to me recently and asking me my thoughts on the phenomenon of The Secret. And I said, “Look, it’s fantastic. In actual fact, I came across those secrets after a book called The Science of Getting Rich was written back in 1900.”

West: It’s certainly not a new concept. I believe they just repackaged an old classic.

George: That’s true and that’s okay because what is okay about it is that it was able to catch a large audience of people. So a lot more people are at least considering the fact, does that make sense?

West: Yes.

George: Where I felt that it could have been a lot more powerful was the message of accountability, responsibility and massive action. And let me make one thing clear: I don’t care—young, old, where you’re at—I don’t care where your starting point is. If you’re willing to do what it takes and you’re willing to get around the right quality of people and information and you’re patient enough, my experience has shown me most people within 3‑7 years can transform their life phenomenally. Granted there’s always an exception to the rule, correct?

West: For sure.

George: Some people, their starting point is way back where they need to do a lot more housecleaning; in other people, because their starting point is a lot healthier, they will be able to accelerate that. But I’m just giving you some genuine information here, West.

West: I understand. And I’m sure people are extra dedicated and they follow what they’re told. And what they learn more closely, they will get results quicker than in 3‑7 years, correct?

George: Without a doubt. I heard a famous comment from Albert Einstein. And Albert Einstein is respected as being one of the most intellectual human beings to ever cross this physical plane, would you agree?

West: I would definitely agree with that.

George: I’m not saying I agree or disagree with any of these comments. I’m just providing people with the information…

West: The stimulus.

George: Absolutely. They can come to their own conclusion. But suffice to say, Albert Einstein made a comment: “One of the three most powerful forces in the universe was, one, compound interest: the ability to leverage your time and money. The other one was the human mind.” And he said the sad fact about that is if most people stated or expressed what they thought, most people would say nothing. The mind’s very unproductive.

West: I have heard that one before. And it’s true. It’s very true.

George: So what I say to people is—can I just give a bit more value here please, West? Is that okay?

West: Yeah, absolutely.

George: I want people to write these down: just a line down the middle, two columns. On the left hand, I’d like them to write probably the three most common words people use verbally or in their internal dialogue. And the first one is ‘can’t.’ The second one is ‘if.’ And the third one is ‘should.’

West: They’re pretty wishy‑washy, aren’t they?

George: West, that’s what’s impressed me about you. You are pretty switched on. Not as good‑looking as me but switched on. [Laughs]

On the right side of the column, I’d like them to substitute these… See, what I’d like to do is give so much value where people can take this information and implement it now. Not in three weeks time, not in ten years time, NOW. It’s the small, incremental steps you take now that will create massive compound effect.

When Albert Einstein made that quote, he wasn’t just talking about money. He was talking about every effort we put in, in our life on a daily basis. Does that make sense?

West: It does.

George: So instead of using the word ‘can’t,’ substitute it to ‘how can I?’ Now does that mean you’re going to come up with a resolution straightaway? Let’s be honest. Not always.

West: But you’re asking the right question.

George: Absolutely. What it does, it gets the stimulus going in your brain where it’s now looking for the evidence, “I cannot… I cannot… I cannot”

The second one is instead of using the word, ‘if,’ say ‘when.’

West: That’s powerful.

George: ‘When’ gets you committed.

West: You’re telling your brain that it’s going to happen.

George: Absolutely. ‘If’ is an element of doubt. Now doubt becomes cancer. The more doubt you have, the more cancer spreads. It doesn’t influence productive behavior.

And the last one, how many times have we heard people saying this: “I should do this.” “I should get up half an hour earlier.” “I should go to the gym.” “I should clean up…” “Should, should, should, should.” And then what happens, you wake up one day shoulding all over yourself. Substitute it to ‘must.’

West: Yeah. I like must.

George: Recently I was inspired to add value to a lot of people that I’ve had the privilege of inspiring. I created a theme, my 21 Gifts of Christmas.

And in the first gift is 20 ways to getting started to your very own financial and emotional transformation goal. One of my—I call them my friends now because people I coach I eventually tend to build great relationships with them. He rang me up and says, “Geez, George. One of the tasks was get up one hour early.” Just one hour early. And set aside that to either personal or physical development. And he said, “I didn’t realize one hour a day will give me 31 hours a month.” 31 hours x 24 hours a year, that’s 744 hours. You divide that by 24 hours, that’s an additional month per year.

West: And nowhere… out of thin air.

George: Bam! So when people say to me, “I’ve only got 24 hours in a day,” I don’t care how many hours you’ve got. How are you using those hours? Now see, a very simple yet powerful exercise.

The other thing that I came to a realization very early was you need to immerse yourself in a system, West, because as people, it’s very easy to B.S. ourselves. Makes sense? And I’m talking about B.S‑ing about our belief system. It’s very easy when we’re just accountable to ourselves to get distracted; particularly in Melbourne, I can assure you, when it rains quite frequently.

West: And there’s a lot going on in Melbourne, isn’t there? A lot of sporting events and…

George: A lot of distractions without a doubt, but not enough rains. So please, can we all put out some positive energy for rain.

But I realized through my trial and error and having a goal, I designed a system which I called my ‘7 Musts for Wealth.’ I just want to share one of the 7 musts for now, if that’s okay, West?

West: Please do. We’d love to hear it.

George: Write these down, folks. My number one of my 7 Musts for Wealth is: You must know what is your exit strategy.

West: Regardless of whatever project you go into.

George: Regardless. The first step is identify your exit strategy. Now you can be flexible because the market changes, doesn’t it?

West: Absolutely.

George: And who makes up a market? People. We all do. So when I talk about the market, this could be with relationships, it could be in your personal life. It could probably be in your portfolio, you know, whether it’s cashflow, developments, lease options—whatever—negative gearing, capital growth combination, joint ventures. The same with the stock market. You need to have an exit strategy in place. However, that doesn’t mean that you don’t change it as the market changes.

West: It’s very easy to forget once you’re in.

George: And also, West, most people don’t have that in relationships. When things are going well, they think everything’s fine. However, when sometimes things turn as we know, then you start identifying, “Oh! This was my understanding. This was your understanding.” Now without procrastinating and overanalyzing things—I think you got the message, West—what I’ve learned about success and getting around a lot of savvy successful people is that they tend to prepare phenomenally but they don’t procrastinate.

Do you know when is the best time to take action in anything?

West: When?

George: When is now the best time to take action, West?

West: When is now the best time to take action… it kind of gives it away, doesn’t it?

George: It does. Right now. You do whatever you can NOW.

And I’ll give you a classic example of that. In 1999, there was some major headlines going around the major mediums in Melbourne and saying ‘get out of the property market; it’s about to explode.’ Now for the average Joe Blog—they’ll look at those headlines and how do they react?

West: They get scared.

George: One, they get scared and they assume they’re correct. And thirdly they assume the person who writes it has the credibility to write it.

West: They need to ask better questions.

George: Exactly. If you actually, say, you’re then going to ask these people, “Tell me, what is your investment strategy?” And this is the issue with having these tall poppy culture. It’s very easy to be a critic. It’s very easy and it’s very easy to have a market for critics. What I say to people, “If somebody’s going to make a criticism, that’s okay because we live in a…” You know, people before us went to war in our behalf, correct?

West: They did.

George: And they dispended our right to be as unequal as we wanted to or as we choose to. And the great thing about this country is we talk about our opinions without having the risk of throwing grenades at each other. Isn’t that a brilliant gift?

West: That’s awesome.

George: That’s phenomenal West, do you agree?

West: I absolutely agree.

George: I highly agree with you mate. I’m not going to get into an argument there. And the point is this—it’s okay to criticize as long as you say, “Look, I think that guy’s breath smells but here is another option…” The problem with critics is they don’t provide another solution. And the reason why they don’t is because they’re never going to take action themselves.

Don’t get me wrong, I eat books. I’ve got a lot of books. I’ve given more books and more research away than what is in my life at the moment. And I don’t do that anymore because what I found, by giving away things to people, they don’t place value on them enough.

West: They don’t value them.

George: Does that make sense?

West: Exactly right.

George: But if books alone were enough, West, we wouldn’t have any schools, we wouldn’t have any unis, we wouldn’t have any cultures. Okay, books are a supporting tool; they’re not the vehicle. Does that make sense?

West: Because all the information’s there. But the structure isn’t, the system isn’t.

George: That’s right. So a system is very important. So my number one ‘must’ of my 7 Musts is you must know have exit strategy in place.

West: Powerful. And just on that, you were talking about relationships before, I’m assuming you mean both personal relationships and professional relationships, is that correct?

George: Absoutely. And actually, West, write this down. This really changed my life in a big way. Write down: 100 percent.

West: Done.

George: Okay? Now, coaching a lot of people, I’ve seen conflict in relationships both in professional and personal. And because people have this preconceived belief that if I’m in a relationship and as long as we’re putting in a 100 percent together, that’s a 100 percent. So let’s break it down. One might be putting in 70, one might be putting in 30 or 50‑50 and so on, correct?

West: Yup.

George: If you got that attitude and you’re only putting in 50 percent and the other party doesn’t turn up, how much do you have now?

West: 50 percent?

George: Is that a 100 percent?

West: No way.

George: No way. And to be successful, you’ve got to always be putting in 100 percent: with your children, with your spouse, with your investments, with your passions, with everything. And my attitude was when I came to the realization, “Look, I love my wife. I love my kids,”—though I did not have kids at the time. And my wife was a little bit nervous because what I did and when I took drastic action is I actually gave away a pretty cushy, comfortable corporate job. And I went home and I said, “Honey, I did it.” She said, “You did what?” “Your primary source income—quit.”

West: So you effectively burnt your bridges. The point of no return.

George: I did not get that reaction at that time. However, suffice to say—I’ve been blessed with a beautiful wife and a beautiful family now—because one thing she did do is she didn’t jump in my way. She had her fears. She had her limiting beliefs. But one thing she did know, that I was willing to do what it took. As long as, she knew I had a worthwhile goal,that’s very important.

People talk about goal setting. How many times have you heard people talk about ‘You’ve got to set goals. You’ve got to set goals’?

West: Many times.

George: Okay. How many times do people not hit their goals?

West: Quite often.

George: And reason being, West, is there are three sides to the equation here. One is…I find if people are hitting 70 percent of their goals or more, their goals tend to be too small. Okay? They’re not stretching themselves enough. If they’re not hitting at least 30 percent of their goals—so they’re hitting 30 percent or less—their goals tend to be too big. Now that doesn’t mean it’s a big goal. What it means is they may not be putting in the appropriate action to be able to treat it. Does that make sense?

West: Yes.

George: Okay. So what I say to people is, “Don’t have goals; have the outcomes.”

West: Interesting.

George: Have the outcomes. Because when you set a goal, you tend to put a limitation. And that is, a goal becomes like a timeline: “I want to reach to this goal on this date.” Now as we have already admitted and agreed, we don’t hit most of our goals. So when you don’t hit a goal, what you’re actually embedding in your own conscious or subconscious mind is, ‘loser,’ ‘failure,’ ‘you failed again,’ ‘you lost again.’ Understand what I’m saying?

West: Continually betting yourself down.

George: Absolutely. So a goal should be used as a tool to test, measure, and monitor how you’re progressing towards your outcome.

West: Right. Wow. That’s a refreshing new way to look at it. For sure.

George: That is powerful. That is phenomenal. An actual fact, I had a coaching session with one of my grads that’s been with me now for 4, 5 years—he actually came down from Adelaide—met down the road and had a nice peppermint tea and relaxed and talked about life. And he just became a dad recently and his world’s changed. And that distinction alone, he said to me it was worth coming to Adelaide. So he got up with a lot more energy and a lot more passion and focus.

Actually, focus is another interesting point. People have said, “Oh, I’m not focused.” And I say, “Well, that’s not actually accurate. You are focused.” Every minute of the day we are focused beings. But what are we focusing on? And we tend to be focusing on too many distractions.

And this is a question that changed my life and I would like to share this with you also—write this down, folks—ask yourself this question: “Am I productive or am I being busy?”

West: Big difference.

George: A lot of people in business are busy-ness. It doesn’t mean they’re productive. It doesn’t mean they’re profitable.

West: Actually, I heard this one quote from Jim Rohn which is similar. And he says, “Never confuse activity with achievement.” And I think that pretty much hits what you’re hitting on here.

George: Very similar focus. That’s a great point.

West: So people, they can mistake being busy with achieving. And that’s a big mistake. Carry on.

George: Well, it’s true. Particularly at this time of the year. You know, we’ve got the festive season upon us—which is great; it gives you time to reflect. In actual fact and for most people, it tends to create a lot more pressure: financial pressure, expectations…

It’s funny, I was talking to a friend of mine the other day. And I didn’t realize this, but I was talking to a lawyer. And he reckons December is his busiest month for family law issues. It tends to bring a lot of cracks in a family out in the open. It tends to add a lot of pressure.

And, you know, this word ‘pain’ is a very interesting word. Most people go through life, West—what I’ve identified what I’ve observed—they go through life thinking they can avoid pain. Understand this: We will never, ever, ever, ever—and let me illustrate this point again—we will never, ever, ever avoid pain. All we are going to do is delay it. Okay? So we’re either going to experience—and this is very important, West—we’re either going to experience the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.

West: I’m sure people know which one weighs more.

George: It does. And I’ll give you an example. How many people do you think hear of movie stars or major sporting athletes and when they achieve they think, Geez, I would love to be in his or her shoes? Or successful people, you know. I mean how does it feel to be an overnight success? Youtube is a recent example. Google. Skype. I mean these things did not exist 2, 3, 4, 5 years ago. Does that make sense?

West: That’s right.

George: Well, you look at something like Mc Donalds, Ray Croc. What a name—Ray Croc. That’s why he went to the Mc Donals brothers and said, “Listen, I want to license your name.” Imagine having all these golden arches, ‘what a load of croc.’ The guy was switched on enough to appreciate his strengths. His ego was not his amigo.

West: And he identified his weaknesses.

George: Absolutely. He said, you know, “I’ve got my strength. These guys have got a strength, I’m going to marry it.”

Now my association to pain is completely the opposite. Pain is spelt P‑A‑I‑N, isn’t it?

West: It is.

George: ‘P’ to me means passion. ‘A’ means action. ‘I’ means integrity, inspiration. And ‘N’ means now.

West: Awesome. I love that.

George: So I don’t look to avoid pain. I say, “Bring it on!” And in actual fact, when things are not painful enough, I look up in the sky and think, well, maybe it doesn’t me trust me enough. I don’t know.

West: So you have a completely different association of pain and what everyone else does.

George: Very different.

West: It sounds to me like you seek pain, George.

George: Now some people may take that out of context. Let me just add… I’m a very happily blessed married man with two beautiful little girls so I’ll leave it at that.

However, saying that West, it’s true you know. If you look at anything worth pursuing, it takes effort. And critics would say, “Aw, he’s talking about get rich…etc.” It takes massive effort. Now you can either put in the effort over 40, 50, 60 years and not be in the best position to appreciate it. Or you can convince that in the next 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 years and really accelerate the process, yeah?

West: Definitely. You’ve just got to do what people who have done it in that time do, right?

George: Well that’s a great way to leverage yourself. West, you just inspired me to remember one thing…my evidence procedure is very simple: if somebody has achieved something and they’ve done it, so can I. Because in most cases, they’re not better‑looking than me, they’re not smarter than me, you know. I’ve got all my limbs, I’m breathing.

And write this down: “What other people think of me is none of my business.”

West: I love that quote as well.

George: Makes sense? And there is a disclaimer to that quote. And that is if they’re paying your bills and they’re helping create the lifestyle for you and your family and they’re taking care of all that, they’ve got a right to tell you what they think.

West: They do.

George: And appreciate these people. They’ll think what they’ll think, anyway. You’re never going to make a hundred people happy at the same time. If that was the case, this world will not be where it is because we live in a world of reality.

West: Absolutely. I can vouch for that fully. I recently did an interview with another one of my wealthy mentors. And she said that if there are people that aren’t pulling you down and talking bad about you, you’re not doing good enough.

George: Because you’re not doing enough.

West: That’s what she said.

I wanted to ask you, George, really quickly later on, if you’re in a train of thought now we can touch on this later, but over like the end of the month or the end of the year, maybe you can tell us a little bit about how George Mihos goes through the process that he does in setting up the next batch of activities or the next set of outcomes or what kind of process that you go through…later on if you get some time.

George: West, I’m happy to give you a simple answer to that very empowering question. And that is this: I have identified my strengths. And that is, unless you consistently look into adding value to others… In actual fact, let me expand on this. Now most people, I found, have not heard of Buckminster Fuller. He was renowned to be just as intelligent, if not more intelligent than Albert Einstein, but he doesn’t have the profile of Albert Einstein, correct?

West: Correct.

George: Now to cut the long story short, he was married. He had a young girl. And he did what most people do in America, on a certain hour of the week he was planning to go to the North American version of football, Gridiron.
So when he saw his daughter while she was laying in her bed, not too healthy, and he says, “Sweetheart, what would you like daddy to bring home? Talk to Daddy.”
“Bring me home a flag, Daddy.”
He said, “Fantastic,” kissed her on the cheek, off he went.

What happened? He didn’t come home that night. He didn’t come home to say goodnight. He eventually came home. As you can appreciate, his wife was distraught, she’s got a new child she’s dealing with, her partner’s been away for a couple of months. Finally comes in the house. She looks at him and says, “Listen, I don’t have the energy to argue with you. Your daughter is very ill. You need to go see her.” So up he goes upstairs, walks in the bedroom, looks at his daughter and guess what the first thing she asks him?

West: “Got the flag?”

George: “Where’s my flag, Daddy?” And his reaction was, “Ohh…”

To cut the long story short, she died very shortly thereafter. Now can you imagine how devastating that would be?

West: Absolutely.

George: I mean I’m blessed with two beautiful girls and you really don’t want to think about stuff like that. But suffice to say, what happened at that moment, he got up and moved out of that household. And apparently, the story goes he did not speak to a soul for the next two years. He went searching for the meaning of life. You know, his marriage collapsed, his family collapsed as you can appreciate, right? Two years, he finally found it. Guess what it was…

West: What?

George: He found the meaning of life…the meaning of life was living on purpose. Okay? And I’m answering your original question by sharing a story. How do you live on purpose? Adding value to others. Add value first—that’s one of my key ingredients to success. In actual fact, it’s part of my laws—number two—in my Indisputable Laws of Wealth. Adding value first.

And what I do is I always look at ‘how can I create win‑win opportunities?’ And one thing which we want to expand on this one—I’m happy to look at our schedules—maybe down the track, West, is one of the key things that I’ve come across that makes people really successful is joint ventures. Joint ventures are a very powerful way to create wealth and to diversify at the same time.

West: Definitely. And you’re referring to any industry, any project, anything?

George: Anything.

West: It’s just a generically powerful concept. Yup.

George: Absolutely. And the key there is building relationships and adding value. People who go through the wrong process, they’re always thinking about ‘what’s in it for me?’ And most people’s favorite radio station is WIIFM. We know that. What’s In It For Me.

And in the day, when you come from a space, ‘okay, you’ve got a frustration, I’ve got a solution; I’ve got a frustration, you’ve got a solution. How can we marry that?’ And it’s not necessarily fifty‑fifty. That’s not always the best win‑win. Makes sense? But it’s finding a medium that’s going to be profitable to both parties. And everybody’s able to bring different value to the table. Does that make sense?

West: For sure. And even long term. I mean it might be only a very small gain right now. but down the track, you can see massive gains from it from a long term relationship.

George: Absolutely. And persistence is very important. You may have heard of Graeme Alford. His book, Never Give Up: Mental Toughness.

West: I have heard of that book. Yes.

George: I actually saw Graeme present on a couple occasions over the last 12, 15 years. And for those people listening who don’t know who Graeme is, he set up an organization called World Business Mastery in the mid‑to‑late 90s. And he was responsible for promoting and bringing the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev, General Swartzkoff, Lee Iacocca… just to name a few, you know, world leaders.

West: Wow. Incredible leaders, yes.

George: Now if you had told Graeme twenty five years earlier that he would be doing this, twenty five years earlier he’d been arrested for armed robbery. He was the barrister of a lawyer from Melbourne’s underworld. And whilst he was in jail, realization kicked in. And he also had an accounting background. So he got a pen and paper and he thought, ‘You know what, I’m going to do an assets and liabilities of my life.’ In actual fact, I challenge everybody to this.

So he got a pen and paper, put a line down in the middle, ‘A’ for assets, ‘L’ for liabilities. And he looked at the left column and said, “Oh, I’ll get back to that.” Liabilities were easy. You know, ‘my marriage has collapsed,’ ‘my life sucks’…

West: No money. No relationships.

George: After seven hours of contemplating, he only wrote two things on the assets column. And you know what they were? He wrote ‘my life’ and ‘my mom still loves me.’

West: [Laughs] Now I think most people would have those two.

George: Yeah, at least. And, you know, we live in Australia…to name a few.

But suffice to say, he reckons that day changed his life. He became totally focused, started working on his health. And his exit strategy, West—you know, we talk about exit strategy—while he was in prison he was working at his exit strategy. And his exit strategy was to get in at a prison whilst to act like he had brain damage because he had a lot of alcohol abuse. So he was telling his prison mate, “I’m being interviewed today by a counselor. I’m going act like I’ve got brain damage.” He comes back after the interview and his mate says, “How’d you go?” He said, “You wouldn’t believe it. I got brain damage.” He said, “No, no, no. Mate, I’ve got brain damage.” Something like one fifth or a quarter of his brain had been burnt away or something because of so much abuse.

Anyway, I take my hat off to him because he transformed his life, he overcame adversity.

And during the experience of bringing up these world leaders, he asked Lee Iacocca, a Christian, and also General Swartzkoff, which is, “General, two years to get you out here. So many phone calls! And I asked your publicist, your PA, after two years—now we’ve all heard this saying ‘insanity is keep behaving the same way expecting the same results,’ correct?

West: Same results. Yes.

George: Okay. Well, he came to that realization. He says, “Well, I’ve been asking them the same questions, I’m getting the same results. Maybe I need to change the questions I’m asking.” So he rang up the PA and said, “What will it take to get General Swartzkoff out here?”

West: Ooh. Powerful.

George: Powerful question, right?

West: Different question.

George: Very simple. Very simple.

The answer was something like this:
“Double his fee, triple his speaking engagements.”
And he said, “Is that it?”
And they said, “That’s it.”

You see, that’s amazing.

Then he asked Lee Iacocca, “Lee Iacocca, two years! Eight NOs. You said no to me eight times!”
And he goes, “What are you talking about, Graeme?”
He says, “It took me two years to get you out here blah blah blah blah.”
And he says, “Ohh… I automatically give four ‘NOs’ to somebody. Automatically.”
He said, “What do you that for?”
He says, “Well, how many people do you reckon come back after four ‘NOs’?”

In actual fact, how many people do you reckon come back after one ‘NO’? Something like 91 percent of people would take the first ‘no’ and off they go. He took eight ‘NOs’. Now when somebody says no to me, West, you know what I hear?

West: An invitation for more information?

George: Yeah. But I hear something else. I don’t hear the word ‘no: N-O,’ I hear this, K‑N‑O‑W. They don’t know. Because if they knew what I knew, they would be breaking down my door. And I know eventually they will know.

West: So it’s your role to pass on that information?

George: Absolutely. I’m just going to keep looking at the relationship, appreciating people of where they are, part of their journey. Everybody has different starting points.

See, to be able to implement the strategies that have changed my life and thousands, for most of us we need to unlearn what we previously learned to be able to apply what we’re learning. Does that make sense?

West: That makes perfect sense, yes.

George: That’s why you need to immerse yourself around good quality people, an environment, a system that’s consistently immersing yourself. And eventually, what happens… How many times have you heard something, West, for the first time and you may have got confused?

West: Many.

George: And sometimes you may hear the same thing 7, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20 times but when that pin finally drops and you have that epiphany you go, “Aha!” Now you may be in the shower. Or you might be on the golf course. Or you might be driving your car or making love or whatever. But if you immerse yourself long enough and stay in your environment long enough, you would eventually get it. The key is, are you willing to do what it takes? Because life is not a dress rehearsal, West.

West: It’s the real deal.

George: And we’ll put a blowtorch on my back side. And I ask permission if I can do that to them also. When I read an article of about 180+ year olds were interviewed, and they were all asked this question: “Having the ability to go back in time, would you make any changes?”

West: What did they say?

George: “And if, what would they be?”

Something like 88+ percent, “We would make changes in a heartbeat.” And the common two responses they got were these…you ready?

West: Yes, I’m ready.

George: “We will take more massive actions/risks.” “And we wouldn’t care about what other people thought of us.”

Pretty compelling, isn’t it?

West: It’s very compelling. And I think it’s easy for people to hear it. And they might need to listen to this interview again and again for it to sink in like you were saying before.

George: They’re more than welcome to, West. In actual fact, can I add some more value here, if that’s okay?

West: You can. Fire away.

George: I’d like to invite your listeners and their family and friends to go into my website, www.GeorgeMihos.com. And very simply, when they log on to my website I like to give them what I believe are the most powerful gifts for this festive season called my ‘21 Gifts of Christmas.’

West: Not even if it’s not the festive season and they listen (or read) this later on, are they still able to get it?

George: That’s fine. I will extend that. And if it’s not on there, all they’ve got to do is send me an email and say, “Hi. You said I can do this… on behalf of West,” and I will arrange that for them.

West: Awesome, George. So where can they get it? Just through your website?

George: It’s just through my website—GeorgeMihos.com.

You know, technology’s brilliant, isn’t it? You can be anywhere from anywhere and access any information you want these days, which is awesome.

West: Definitely. Definitely.

So tell us a bit about what the 21 Gifts gives you. Does it take them through a process? Or cover many of the concepts a little bit more detailed that we’ve talked about today?

George: A lot more detailed. It’s an accumulation of my practical, pragmatic experience and leveraging of others. And I’ve put it together in a very simple yet powerful way of delivering the data so they can take it with them and impact their lives. And not just their lives. Because the exciting about it is when you start to live your passion, West, people start to see this. And they start coming to you and they start saying, “What do you want?” Your regulars starts saying, “Look, there’s something going on. You’re changing.” And as you take action, you start to get your results, you then become…from a strength of you’re able to add value, you’re able to influence. Not through opinions, because as we know we’ve all got opinions. They’re like armpits and they generally stink.

But I would really encourage anybody who’s absolutely serious about becoming better, adding value, experiencing more. And you know what? Who says life was meant to be a very simple brisk walk in the park? We could smell the roses, appreciate each other’s strengths and enjoy life. You know, take your kids to the Amazon River, take them to the Acropolis, take them to the Nile River. Take them to parts of Australia that Australians haven’t seen, West. It’s cracking me up. Our own backyard…there’s so much to do.

West: It’s amazing, yeah.

George: I’ve employed a personal trainer. And I meet him just down the road from my office. We go through different parks. Just through that experience alone, I’m experiencing things that I’ve never seen before. And I go home and I say to my kids, “Kids, what are we doing this Sunday? We’re taking our boats. We’re going to do this…” And it’s just opening their eyes to the possibilities.

I would love to take somebody from fourteen hundred and thirty three (1433) or eleven thirty eight (1138) or seven ninety three (793) and plant them here today.

West: As an experiment?

George: You reckon that would fry their brains? They would look around and say, “God, I thought I was thinking big. Look at this.”

West: For sure.

George: Imagine 10, 15, 20 years from now. I mean, you’re recording me on this thing. I’m looking at your face on the screen. If you told me this was possible 10, 12 years ago… My first mobile phone was a brick. I needed ways to be able to carry it.

West: The rate of change is just amazing.

George: I don’t want to leave this message, ‘If today was the last day of the rest of your life…?’ By the way, you want to behave like it is, but you want to plan and prepare and act like you’re going to be here for the next hundred years. Does that make sense, West?

West: Sensational. I love that.

George: Can I help you with anything else?

West: Mate, you have answered and inspired myself, obviously, but hopefully many, many of the listeners on the call today. I do want to ask you one more question, George, and that is how does George define success? I know it’s a very broad question.

George: It is. And that’s fine. To me, it’s organic. It’s constantly evolving ever. As long as you can look yourself in the mirror and those eyes looking back, know the truth… because we live in a marketplace where we heard all the clichés, we live in a marketplace where people have a lot of masks on and they try and impress people with money they don’t have, they buy things with money they don’t have. Now that’s insanity. You don’t have to impress anybody. As long as you can look in the mirror and that person loves you back, that’s powerful.

West: Definitely. That’s a great way to finish on, George. I want to thank you for your time. And obviously, you’ve done a lot of preparation for this call. And I think the listeners will really appreciate it.

So guys, if you’re listening and you want more information on George and his work, please visit his website. Contact him if you would like to know more information. I mean I’m sure, George, you also provide information for people wanting to get into certain property vehicles, in terms of education.

George: Across the board, West. Not just property. I’m a firm believer…what inspired me getting around the wealthy people… sure, they I tend to focus on one or two key areas. And then they take that passion and leverage it into other areas. So I provide information across the board, real practical data, whether it’s properties or shares or business or joint ventures or peak performance.

One thing I probably didn’t do any justice…my passion is kids. I’m blessed with two beautiful little girls. And in the last 2, 3 years, I put on what I call kids’ workshops. Kids are kids. I call you a kid, I call me a kid. Jerry Lewis said to me, “Never lose the kid. Never lose that child. Stay creative. Be passionate.”

So a lot of my—which I call my friends now—my graduates, my clients inspired me with an overwhelming message: “George, we wish we had met you earlier. We wish we knew this stuff 20 years ago.” And that got me thinking. So I did about a half dozen workshops off my back because I wanted to; I was passionate about it. And that is where we got their kids and we taught them the fundamentals of wealth. Across the board. I talk about holistic wealth.

West: You teach your stuff that I learned in school.

George: Oh, unbelievable. And in extension of that, we also support the Make‑A‑Wish Foundation which is one of my favorite charities. But I’m happy to help anybody out when time permits.

Look, West, if I can just again express my sincere gratitude for this opportunity. Also, I know it’s the festive season. I hope everybody takes the opportunity to enjoy the family because family is probably the most important thing in this world. And also, reflect and decide from now—not only to decide from now—the next year is going to be bigger and better than ever, and appreciate that. Some people may be listening to this message after the festive season, the message is the same. Do it now, folks. DO IT NOW.

Love you. Have a great day. And I look forward to being able to inspire you and add a lot more value to your lives. Thanks again, West. Have a great day.

West: Thank you for your time, George. We really appreciate it.

George: You’re welcome.

West: Take care.

Speakers:
West: West Loh
Will: Will Swayne

Will: Hi, it’s Will Swayne from Marketing-Results.com.au. And I’m lucky enough to have with me West Loh on the line with me.

Hey West!

West: Good day, Will!

Will: How are you doing?

West: Sensational and improving. If it goes any better, I’ll be worried.

Will: Excellent. Nice upbeat response.

Of course I’m on the line here with West because he’s someone that I’ve asked to interview as a successful internet entrepreneur. And particularly, we’re going to be looking into how West got started in internet business, how he went from basically being like a student and a regular 9 5 worker to actually being a full time internet entrepreneur. And it’s part of the series I’ve been doing on this topic.

So West, why don’t we get started and perhaps you’d care to give us a bit of your history…perhaps your education and your work background. And we’ll take it from there.

West: No worries. I started with a lot of academic background, Will. And I don’t have any regrets of course. But looking at my wall right now, there are three shiny degrees hanging up there. It was a bit of a labor of love studying intensely at university. And being brought up in an Asian culture, the philosophy—and a lot of your listeners, I’m sure, and your clients are Asians as well, probably have a good understanding and appreciation of this—that the parents are always pushing their children to study a profession and find a good well paying job and just bust your ass for fifty years and have a sort of semi comfortable retirement.

And so that was kind of the road that I started on and I’ve always been interested in. I’ve always been fit, I’ve always been active. I’ve always been a good tennis player. And one of the things I wanted to do was become a professional tennis player. And when I realized that I wasn’t going to make it because there were a lot bigger guys, a lot of stronger guys and I just wasn’t growing at the rate they were growing so they had power—I was really fast but I was never able to match their power—I decided to study human movements and study how the body worked and exercise physiology of the human body and go from that perspective. So I really enjoyed that. That was four years full time. Then I just kept on studying after that and sort of got addicted to it.

And I started studying a Master’s degree in Exercise Science working with Special Populations, working with cardiac disease, obesity, diabetes…all these different types of populations in regard to exercise and how exercise can help them maintain and get back to a high quality of life.

And after that—if that wasn’t enough—I went and did another Master’s degree in Business. So an MBA which is kind of a little bit more where I’m headed. I came across some people in my life that I respected as mentors and as professionals and they had all done MBAs. And one day I was working up a thought, “I’m going to do it.” So I applied two to three times to do it and I got rejected two to three times because I didn’t have enough work experience. You need to actually have seven years full time work experience or some sort of weird combination which, I did not have.

So I went out and did the hard yards and then I actually reapplied again fourth or fifth time, I believe, and I got accepted. And that was another two or two and a bit years after that.

And looking back, if I had my time all over again, I’d probably have done it a little differently. But as I said, no, I certainly have no regrets. I’ve learned a ton just about myself, about problem solving, about how to work with people because you interact with some very high professionals. But I guess the only drawback with that is all these people going through the MBA looking at getting a higher paying job. So they’re usually managers or they’re usually engineers wanting to take a managerial role and they’re all looking to just increase their pay by ten, fifteen grand, twenty grand a year. But they’re still good thinkers and good problem solvers and you can learn a lot from them because obviously, many of them come from all sorts of professions like doctors and lawyers and all sorts of stuff.

So after that…

Will: Hang on. How old were you when you actually got into the MBA?

West: I probably was twenty six, roughly.

Will: Okay. That’s pretty damn young to be doing an MBA.

West: It is. And as I said, I got knocked back three years before that each year. And I also was probably the youngest person going through it in my year. The average age is, I believe, thirty five or so and people up to fifty are still doing it.

Will: So you were there showing them how it’s done, West?

West: Well, not really. I mean I had to gain a lot of respect from the people there. Initially, when people were selecting groups and people were getting to know the people in their classes, I was tending to start always off on the back foot. I’m twenty nine now and I look very young. And when I was twenty six, I looked even younger obviously.

Will: So everyone was sort of saying, “Oh here’s the kid.”

West: Yeah. “He’s just a little high school kid doing the MBA. What can I possibly learn from this guy?” But what I found was as soon as we got started talking and I started telling people what I did and actually adding value to the project or the group interaction, they’d sit up and value my opinions. So…

Will: It was all good. Excellent. You’ve definitely got a pretty strong background in academia. I presume between the time when you were sort of applying for the MBA and the time when you got in, you were actually working.

West: I was working. Yup. That’s right. I worked as a personal trainer for awhile. And I just love keeping people fit, healthy, motivated; inspiring and motivating people. I became one of Brisbane’s most prolific trainers. I was training 100 150 sessions a fortnight, just full on from 4:35 in the morning and I’d be going until the gym closes at 10 at night. Although I actually wasn’t working out, at the time I was physically and emotionally absolutely drained for the period that I did that. Because when you’re training someone, it’s actually quite intense, especially training people who are very hard trainers. A lot of women that I trained came more for the emotional kind of feedback and nourishment that they get from talking to someone; they just have someone’s attention for thirty minutes to an hour.

So I did that for awhile and really enjoyed it. But I realized that that model of trading time for money—one hour of my time for how many dollars—wasn’t going to cut it. And that was kind of an acceleration for me to jump online later on.

But I did do a few things after that. I also worked in corporate health for BP, consulting their corporate professionals and executives and technicians on site at Pinkenba. That was a lot of fun. Seeing all this people earning big, big bucks but absolutely doing nothing for their health, it was quite scary really. I mean if you get paid 250 grand a year and you’re massively overweight, you’ve got high blood pressure, it’s just not worth it man. You can pay me $10 million in a year and take away my health, I wouldn’t even consider it. So that was a big learning lesson for me.

I also worked in a health club as an exercise therapist, which means people who come in and have special rehabilitation problems and they have had a serious injury like people who are pregnant or people who need special care to come in that not just your average trainer can’t usually deal with, people who have specific needs, I would deal with those guys and we were sort of a notch above the gym trainer, so to speak.

And I worked in a few other jobs here and there but those were probably the ones of note.

Will: Okay. So you did that, you got through the MBA and maybe had some work experience after that. And at some point you got in internet business. Tell us how that happened.

West: I guess for me, I received a letter in the post from a guy called Ed Dale. And it was about—he called it at the time the Underachiever Method, where you could just basically create an information product online, an ebook. And at the time, you could just pump out some ads and that would sell, that would sell like hotcakes. And you didn’t have to do any extra work. You’d set up shop and internet was open for business twenty hours a day, seven days a week and it just sort of takes over and that was a little business on its own.

So I was interested in that concept initially. Obviously, these days, things have changed massively since then. Maybe there are businesses that exist that just takes over but it’s my belief now that businesses need to be nurtured and continually optimized if they’re going to be successful. But that was initially how I got into it.

So I committed a portion of my life to learning about online marketing, immersed myself in information overload massively and learned the basic skills that I needed and found the mentors that I needed. And yeah, it’s all sort of gone from there. I guess, to this day, I’m sort of still going and it’s paying the bills. And obviously, any business can be improved but I’m having fun. I’m having tons of fun doing it.

Will: Excellent. So would it be fair to say that your motivation for getting involved in internet marketing was to break out from the time for money model and get into some passive income generating streams?

West: Absolutely. Ever since I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad—which was many, many years ago now—that really accelerated my paradigm shift. Because at the time, I was wanting to like own a gym or become a CEO/Manager of a gym or some sort of corporation after I finish my MBA. But after I read his (Robert Kiyosaki) book, I just didn’t want to work for anyone anymore…at all. To this day, my parents can’t understand that way of thinking. It’s just absolutely not in their paradigm to believe that someone can not actually want to get a job. You know, it’s tough because you love your parents but I just don’t share what I do with them anymore because they don’t understand it.

But you’re dead right. I wanted leverage. Kiyosaki talks about assets creating, you know, investing your time in something but having it pay you back forever. And that’s sort of a criteria in anything that I do now, is that whenever I enter into something, it’s got to pay me back ongoing forever for that one bit of effort to put in. So obviously, a lot of things that people put to me, I don’t take on board because it doesn’t fit that criteria. And I’ve been offered many high paying jobs, six figure packages and stuff like that but it just doesn’t fit the criteria so I turn them all down.

Will: Okay. So that’s interesting. So you’ve got a set criteria that the sort of work or business ventures that you want to get into…?

West: Yeah.

Will: And you don’t deviate from those criteria despite attractive offers. Because one of the biggest problems people face is that they set rules of how they want to operate and then a week later, they get a bit of an offer that might be a bit outside the rules—particularly when you’re trying to build a business—you’re trying to build a business and all of a sudden someone comes back and say, “Hey look, I’ve got some consulting work for you here and it’s $75-$100 an hour.” You know, it can be very tempting to go back and sort of start getting into that sort of work and then giving up the main focus.

West: And I understand that people have to pay their bills and have families to feed and that sort of stuff so I’m not suggesting to anyone listening to the call to quit their jobs and just go take a massive risk like that.

I think Kiyosaki talks about building a business in your spare time. And instead of watching TV and going out and partying hard and drinking or things that you do that you do for pleasure, make it a pleasurable thing to build an extra business. Even if you’ve only got one or two hours extra a day and maybe a couple more in the weekend, that can really all build up into a significant venture if you put effort, time and commitment into it.

Will: Yeah. And I think there’s sort of an exercise analogy that I heard that equally applies to business building. This might resonate with you, West. But I was listening to a DVD called The Wheel of Life—a little bit like The Secret and of the guy on that is an expert in exercise and that sort of thing. And he said that the average Australian watches TV for about twenty hours a week and yet the number one excuse why people don’t exercise is that they don’t have any time.

West: Exactly. That’s pretty crazy.

Will: And I think in business building, it’s exactly the same. People sit in front of a box for twenty hours a week and then they go, “Oh yeah, you know, I never have time to get anything else started,” and ten years down the track they’re still in the same place where they were previously.

West: And I guess, you know, we both went to Tony Robbins together and he’s a master of getting you into a peak state and really pushing your cords. “And when anything becomes easy, it becomes a must for you” and that’s straight from Tony’s mouth. And if you make building a business or having an extra income stream or quitting your job an absolute must, then it just becomes easier for you. So you just need to find a compelling reason to create that. You’ll wake up and watching TV won’t even enter your mind.

Another analogy I just heard recently that really resonated with me was if you put a frog in warm water and you bring it to a boil, it will actually stay in the water and die. But if you put a frog into boiling hot water, it’ll jump out. And that’s a great analogy for what happens to most people. They’re just sort of in the water and it’s getting hotter and hotter and hotter and before they know it, they’re 55 and they haven’t really done much and they’re dead, financially speaking; or even emotionally speaking.

Will: If not physically. That’s an interesting perspective.

Why don’t we go on to discuss some of your internet ventures and some of the challenges you’ve faced and how you’ve gotten to where you are. But my understanding—and I might not be totally filled in on the whole picture—but my understanding is you spent some time working on, sort of, the underachiever method, basically niche ebook sites.

West: Yeah, I did.

Will: And then your main project or your main business at the moment is money-mind-set.com.

West: Yes. That’s a membership site that I went into with the Grants. I was at one of their seminars and they put out this tender for a joint venture relationship. And I didn’t even apply for it. I just went there and I learned tons but I didn’t apply for it. But Andrew called me up personally and said, “Listen West, we really like to work with you. Why don’t we meet up and at least talk it through.” And yeah, it worked out from there.

So the site, it’s basically about how people let their own—what we call—inner programs or subconscious blockages, the way we’ve been conditioned from children, all these things that crop into our head to do with money, how to identify those things that do crop up and then how to eliminate them so they don’t keep holding you back into the future and they don’t keep you from plateauing in your income levels. And it’s based on Andrew’s own journey. If you haven’t heard of Andrew and Daryl Grant, they speak at the World Internet Summit, they’ve gone from zero to seven figures in probably less than three years. They’re doing amazing things on and offline. One of their major projects is membership sites.

So they basically share their journey, every technique they did, every exercise they did. I went to Andrew’s house. I spent three days with the guy and I just picked his brain for three days. And we collated all the information. It’s delivered sequentially. And it’s kicking along really well now. We haven’t really marketed online massively yet and that’s our next stage.

But we’ve done a lot of offline work. I’ve done some speaking, Andrew’s done some speaking and the site’s getting some serious momentum.

Will: Excellent. I think so many questions have popped up there in my mind. It’s drilling down a bit further. So would it be fair to say that your initial projects with ebooks and this sort of thing, was that financially lucrative for you or was it more of like a university course, you know, a real life uni course on internet marketing concepts that may not have borne tons of fruit?

West: Yeah. They didn’t make money for me. I wouldn’t call them lucrative by any means. I still have a couple that do make money for me to this day that I don’t touch at all. I few of them I had partners on, a few of them I did on my own and I got rid or sold some of them. But I would say my main benefit from doing those sites was…the concept was really simple: you need to get someone or yourself to write an information book then you basically got to create a website and then you’ve got to market it. So it’s really a simple concept. Like some of the concepts online that I have right now are really, really complex and there are a thousand stages to the equation.

For me, learning about the different components, you know you’ve got to learn about website creation. You’ve got to learn about marketing. You’ve got to learn about email, autoresponders—just really basic stuff. It teaches you kind of fast how to learn and implement all that sort of stuff.

And recently, I’ve started teaching people how to build a team around them that can do that stuff rather than everyone doing it all themselves. Because in today’s market—I don’t know about you guys but I’m sure it happens with you as well—but I’m just flooded with information and opportunities and people wanting to do this and people wanting to do that and the tasks that you need done are never ending. They just keep piling up. And you always need to be looking at what your time is worth and what you’re actually spending your time on and how much you can outsource that. If you spend your time doing something that you can outsource for cheap or that’s worth less than your time, then you’re effectively leaving money on the table.

Will: Absolutely. That’s a very important point, especially when you’re doing multiple projects concurrently.

West: Definitely.

Will: And how many niche websites did you actually build or how many did you hold concurrently or…?

West: I think probably—it’s a couple of years ago now—probably three to four max. They’re actually a lot of work, Will.

Will: I hear you. I hear you. A little bit of a line has been sold, I think, by the internet marketing industry where it’s just like, oh yeah, yeah, you go into Google and you do a bit of a keyword research, identify a niche, you check up a page, it takes you half an hour to get a page up, people come in and they fill in a survey and yup, it’s all good to go. So you go into Elance and you pay someone a couple hundred bucks to write some copy for you, put that up and the money starts coming in. Put a bit of Google adwords…

It might have been a little bit like that sort of fifteen years ago when these strategies sort of first started. But now that’s a recently hard game to play I think.

West: It is.

Will: People make money out of it and I think, essentially the Grants, my understanding is they got started being in ebooks.

West: Yeah, and they’re really doing well in it.

Will: They’re doing well with it? So you can?

West: Yeah. You can do it.

Will: But it’s like anything else; you’ve got to be good. There was a time, I think, when you didn’t actually have to be that good. Now you’ve got to be really good.

West: Exactly. And it’s competitive now. Some of the craziest, craziest niches that you would never think would be touched are being divided into sub niches; and those are being divided into sub niches. It’s like absolutely insane, Will. It’s getting really competitive.

Although I did speak to a gentleman the other day who’s really gone on top of the web 2 arena. And he said that there’s still only a very small percentage of people online, comparatively, if you look at the real population. And there’s still a huge, huge way to go. So it’s still at the tip of the iceberg according to this gentleman. Although for me, at least, I feel that it’s very competitive right now.

Will: Yeah, yeah. I think it’s a little bit of both. I mean there are sort of opposing forces out there. The more people online, the more markets, the more customers there are to go around. But there’s a lot of people going online and trying to do this as well so you’ve got to be good. And I think that’s why people listening to this type of call are really doing that. Because they want to get educated about pitfalls to avoid and how to emulate the success.

Okay. I’d like to move on in some detail to talk about Money Mind Set because I think that’s a site that people listening to the call can learn a lot from. So you’ve explained how you originally started this up as a joint venture with the Grants. So can you tell us a little bit all about the business model behind this? It’s a membership site. And how does that work?

West: Okay. So some membership sites you join, you’ll get everything when you sign up. And you’ll log in and there’ll be a dashboard and you just get a ton of videos, a ton of audios, a ton of this. You go through it at your own leisure. The Grants actually did a lot of research. They flew to the States and they went to a few membership bootcamps and talked to leaders in the industry on what was the innovative concepts and where they saw those concepts going. And the model they came up with was to let someone join the site, give them an award once they’ve joined, but then sequentially deliver the information over a period of however long—six months, twelve months. People won’t feel like they’re being ripped off because they’re getting a good selection of goodies when they join up but they also don’t get the whole kitchen sink in one hit so they can just quit and leave and get a refund and still keep the product.

Will: When you say goodies, what do you mean by that?

West: We just give them some bonuses. We give them some interviews that we’ve done. We give them some workbooks and some good books that we recommend. And we give them a whole bunch of other joint venture offers that have been given specifically for people who have signed up for our program that aren’t available anywhere else.

Will: Okay. So it’s pdf materials, mp3 audios…

West: Videos and some access to some of other sites, maybe, that are paid, that normally people would pay for, we give them accesses as members to this site.

It’ll cost you nothing extra. I mean you’ve got to look at stuff that doesn’t cost you a lot extra but adds a lot of perceived value.

And when people sign up, it’s like $49 a month or something. If you actually look at our sign up page, we’ve got a ton of value there. We’re giving away tickets to Andrew and Daryl’s personal workshops that people normally pay the Grants to come to. They’re giving away Mentor Toolbox Workshop tickets. We give away personal phone, one on one time. We give away a whole heap of other stuff as well. It’s like for $49 bucks, it just becomes a no brainer.

So whenever we’re putting together an offer or something we’d like to sell to people, it’s just got to be something that people look at and think, ‘Wow, I’m getting massive, massive value for money.’

Will: Right. Okay. And I can see here on the page that it’s a $49 a month site.

West: Yeah, that’s correct.

Will: And that’s US or Australian?

West: That’s Australian.

Will: Okay. So a lot of people on the net are charging US but I guess…would it be fair to say that most of your clients are Aussie clients?

West: At this stage. We haven’t actually done any online marketing yet so…

Will: Okay. Well that’s interesting too.

West: We’re looking at really pumping that up as our next level.

Will: So basically, people come to the site, they opt in. When you join up, is it just $49 bucks to start off or you’ve got a trial of something…?

West: It depends. I have done some joint ventures with some people where we’ve offered them the first month free and anyone who stays, they get—I think—it’s 45% or 50% of the income that comes in from people who have stayed through them; the first month being free. I did that with a gentleman named Kurek Ashley, who’s a motivational speaker. And he used to be a Hollywood actor. He recently had a book launch and we offered that as part of anyone who bought his book. So that was really good.

And yeah, it just depends on the person. But if you were to come through the actual site itself, it would be $49 upfront and $49 a month thereafter.

Will: Okay. And what’s the membership software that you’re using to run the backend?

West: We’re using aMember to protect all the content. We’re also using AWeber. We’ve come up with a system where aMember can talk to AWeber. So when someone stops or cancels in aMember, that automatically cancels in AWeber and likewise. So it’s been a pretty kind of intense labor of love. I didn’t actually do that. The Grants struck a relationship with some techie who was able to fuse that model together and that’s the model we’re actually using.

So the AWeber would deliver emails to the URLs which are protected. And then the people will need to log in to their aMember account to access the materials.

Will: Okay. For people who don’t know, aMember, it’s a membership site software. But I think it could basically be described as a very advanced login access program.

West: Yeah. It protects folders. And as far as I’m aware it’s pretty tough to crack or get around. So it’s worth its weight in gold and we happily pay our aMember fees.

Will: Okay. Good. So it’s worth the money.

West: It’s worth the money, yeah. Obviously, you’ve got to invest in something if you’re looking to build a business.

Will: Absolutely.

Now the model behind this membership site is it’s basically $49 bucks a month forever? And you keep developing content every month? Or…?

West: Yes, that’s correct.

Will: Okay. And how long has this site been going for?

West: It’s been going probably about one and a half years now. Initially, I started developing the content myself through all the information that I got from Andrew. And so I just basically interviewed him and we shot some videos and we did a ton of stuff. So we had a lot of content.

I was happy to get a feel for everything, how to put the content into the website, how to protect it, how to upload it to aWeber or their email autoresponder. I don’t do that anymore. I have someone who does all that for me now. So I might just say I’d like an e class on blah blah blah blah blah, shoot it off to my ghostwriter. And obviously, I’ll direct them and I’ll make sure that it’s good content because, you know, the last thing you want is for them to be pumping out bad content and you losing members due to that. So it has to get my seal of approval. It has to get Andrew’s seal of approval before we go live on any of it. And thus far, we’ve had some really good feedback on the content because it works. People follow the program and they get results.

Will: Excellent. Let’s say I’m twelve months into my membership and I’m just getting the monthly content, what would I expect? What would I get for $49 bucks?

West: The original course we envisaged to be between three and six months. And that was a course teaching you exactly how the mind works when it comes to money and what exercises that worked for Andrew and Daryl. Of course, every exercise isn’t going to work for everyone so we want to hit different aspects of identifying and removing subconscious blocks.

So once that time is up, we then focus on more general stuff to do with money. I actually interview Wealthy and successful people. I’ve interviewed probably 15 to 20 of Australia’s wealthiest people so far, ranging from net worth of between $5 and $50 million. And some of them are on the BW Rich List. And I just pick their brains and say, “What do you do? How did you do it? What do you recommend to people?”

And so we try to add a lot of value where we can aside from the actual e classes. I also have been to a lot of seminars and I paid tens of thousands of dollars to go them. And as part of the site, I actually share all my notes. So I’ve got them all nicely done so people don’t have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to go to these seminars and they have all the notes that are available to them.

We also summarize a lot of the latest business mindset and success books. So a 500 page book, we really got down to 10 20 pages and we let them have access to those things as well. I just share anywhere where we can we feel would help someone get happier, healthier or wealthier, we’ll throw into the program.

Will: Okay. So basically…I mean you have to be a bit of a guru in content creation, don’t you? I mean the content’s out there but what you’re doing is really, you’re packaging, processing, pre digesting and basically delivering it to a group on a cost effective basis for the individual. But of course, the effort required to do this on a month by month basis is obviously large but spread across a large number of members.

West: Yeah. I mean initially, it was a lot of effort. But now I have a system going where I’ve got a couple of team members who I work with, who are very good at what they do. I don’t actually upload any of the stuff anymore. I very rarely edit any of the stuff anymore. I rarely deal with customer complaints or customer service anymore. It’s close—it’s not 100 percent automated—but it’s pretty close. And the good news for me is I now have time to do other stuff, attack other projects or if I want to focus on the online part of this business, then I can do that.

Andrew also wants me more on stage. He wants me speaking a little more and converting from the stage a little more. And that’s something I’m excited to do as well. I just need to definitely improve my profile so that I can get recognized. Because you know, you just can’t invite yourself to certain events; you need to be asked and you need some sort of reputation before people will start taking you seriously.

Will: Okay. So it’s building your personal preeminence basically.

West: Yeah, absolutely.

Will: Okay. So it’s interesting what you said before. You said you haven’t done much online promotion. So how actually have you got the members you’ve got so far?

West: Actually, the Grants were sitting on a list of about a thousand people. They actually had this program, the Money Mindset, probably six to twelve months before we even launched it. And at a particular seminar, they actually sold it without it having been created at all. So they said, “Guys, we’re looking at creating this program. If you’re interested, fill out one of these forms, put your details in and we’ll hook you up as soon as it launches.” And we had like 150 people sign up, pay—pretty much—to a program that wasn’t created.

And so initially when we decided what we were going to do together, Andrew said, “Listen, I’ve got all these people and this program. We’ve already got tons of members lining up for it. Are you interested in this area?” And I said yes and he said, “We’re lucky in that we’ve got all these people who are interested. Let’s do it.” So that was our initial surge of people.

Will: So you actually presold the program prior to development, established there was a market…

West: Exactly. And then created it.

Will: That’s a very smart way to do it obviously. Because 99% of people who are trying to get started in internet marketing will make a product, put it out there and, ‘Hmmm. No one wants to buy my product.’

West: Yes. That’s a good lesson. And I’ve fallen trap to that as well. I’m not claiming in any way, shape or form to be the be all and end all. I was lucky on my part because Andrew had already done that. So I guess where I came in and where my smarts were was to team up with the Grants.

Will: Right. Okay. So it sounds like sort of the Grants provided the bit of the profile and the promotion and some of the resources behind the site and you have basically come in as a partner and you basically project managed the whole lot.

West: Definitely. Initially. Now I have people who do that for me. So it’s kind of running on its own. But you’re dead right. They were smart enough to realize that they couldn’t do it on their own. I was smart to realize I couldn’t do it on my own.

I think, you know, online…it really does pay to nurture your relationships with people. And I think another interview that you’ve done with Yaro and Gideon is a perfect example of that. They kept in touch for a long time but hadn’t really done or considered anything serious. And Yaro always kept in touch with Gideon and Gideon always kept in touch. And over time, opportunities arose and now they’re doing really well with their membership site.

Will: Exactly. And I think it’s a bit of an area that a lot of people underemphasize: creating real human relationships with real people on the internet and then leveraging those relationships.

West: Definitely. And if you look at all the top internet marketers, they’re all doing joint ventures. It’s like an inner circle mastermind where everyone’s joint venturing and helping everyone out and everyone else is getting left behind. If you’re second, third or fourth tier, you’re leagues below the guys who are killing it at the top.

I know guys that you work with, Will—Rich Schefren and Jay Abraham—they’re masters at that. They have hundreds of people praising them and promoting them. But the thing is, those people who are promoting them are still making money. So it’s a win win.

Will: Absolutely.

Okay. So where to from here? What’s West going to be doing for the next 6 12 months?

West: Good question, Will. And it’s a very timely question because I’ve been asking this myself—that question—leading into the New Year. But I think for me, as long as I’m enjoying what I’m doing and I’m waking up passionate about what I’m doing, I feel l’m on the right track…if at any point in time where I wake up and I just feel that the passion’s gone or I’m not enjoying what I’m doing, then you need to listen closely to what your body and your emotions are telling you. I think for me, it’s not so much about chasing the money or making a ton of cash, it’s more about being able to help a lot of people and doing stuff that’s worthwhile and really adds value to both your life and the lives of people around you. And I think with that kind of philosophy, no matter what you do, even if you don’t become a multi billionaire, you can still live a pretty happy quality of life.

Will: In terms of the site, basically you’re going to be moving more of the promotion online as you mentioned?

West: Yeah. That’s definitely what I’d like to do with that particular site. We’ve actually just started to get on YouTube and we’ve just started to get some article marketing happening. One lesson I’ll put out to the listeners there is that you always need to look at the biggest bang for your buck, basically. There’s an unlimited amount of things you can do for your task. And if you had a hundred people who live a hundred years and working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you still couldn’t do everything that you wanted to do. So a great way to do it is to look at what things are going to get you the best value and just really focus on those things. And ask around. Ask your friends what’s worked for them. And do some research online, see what people are saying. Don’t try something obscure or speculative and waste a ton of time on technical things that may hold you back because you don’t have the skill to do it. And I think if you can become like a strategist and like a general of the army rather than a soldier in the trenches…that would be a really good lesson to take away from today.

Will: Absolutely. That’s a brilliant thing to keep in mind when you’re trying to build an internet business. Obviously, as you did and as most people did, you started off learning the basics, the core skills and doing things yourself so you understand them. And as you understood them, you realize that the highest best use of your time would involve delegating, building teams, building systems so that you can free yourself up to focus on the strategy and the high level stuff.

West: Definitely. And that’s the highest paid stuff. And most people are not willing to do it. And if you’re willing to do what most people are not willing to do, then you’ll get results that most people don’t get.

Will: Absolutely. All right, on that note why don’t we sign off today because we’re almost out of time. But thank you, West, for your insights and for your story. And I know that everyone listening on the call will get a lot out of it.

West: It’s an absolute pleasure, Will. And if anyone at all wants to contact me, I’m happy for you to pass out my details. I really enjoy and respect what you’re doing, Will, online. And yeah, if I can be of assistance in any way, shape or form to you or your clients, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Will: Many thanks.

West: Cheers.

Will: Cheers, West.

Speakers:
West: West Loh
Irina: Irina Webster
William: Willian Webster

Irina: Hi everyone! Irina and William Webster here. And welcome to another CD in our series The University of Success. Today, we are talking to West Loh. Hi West!

West: Hello! How are you?

Irina: Good.

And West is an internet business money maximizer. He owns multiple internet businesses which he developed himself from scratch. And one of the most interesting ones is called Money-Mind-set.com that teaches people how to develop the right mindset that will bring you wealth and success and that it doesn’t matter what your past has been, there is a bright future awaiting you.

And West is only a young person. How old are you, West?

West: I’m 29, Irina. I’m not that young.

Irina: I know. It’s still young. So West, can you tell us why you started… what are you doing now and then what was your motivation for doing so in the beginning? You were doing other things before this?

West: Yeah, sure. Before I got into the internet work that I’m doing now, I was studying… I actually finished three degrees, Irina. Now many people who come to me and they say, “Wow, you’ve done three degrees,” and all that sort of stuff, but I look back now and knowing what I know now, that was pretty silly…having done that.

I originally started out in the health and fitness industry working as a personal trainer and motivating people on how to get fit and healthy. And I also did a degree in business and I did a masters degree in clinical exercise science. So basically, helping people with very, very special needs get healthier. So people with heart disease and obesity and arthritis—all those really special type conditions that people need to take extra exercise precautions when they’re exercising. So that was kind of what I was doing.

And while I was studying, I also fell into going to seminars and reading books on personal development, self help, motivation, wealth, relationships—all those kind of things. So during the day, I would be going to my lectures and then when I’d be driving home in the car or when I’d be at home just listening to my own stuff, I’d be listening to these other people. And it dawned on me—sort of three quarters of the way through my third and final degree—that the guys at the university, in academia, are very good in theory but if they were really doing what they preached in real life, I seriously doubt they’d be lecturing for however much they’re earning—$60,000-$100,000—however much it is.

And the people who I was learning from in seminars would all be earning $500,000 up to $10 million and plus. So these guys were the guys actually doing it. And I don’t have any regrets having done three degrees. But as I said before, knowing what I know now, I certainly wouldn’t have done that.

So my motivation to do what I’m doing now, basically, has come from spending all that time from seminars and meeting people at live seminars. I spent close to $100,000 in the last, probably ten years or so, on education, on materials and seminars. I lost count of how much I’ve spent. And a guy named Robert Kiyosaki—which I’m sure everyone has heard of, listening to this call—I had the opportunity to meet him personally and meet his wife personally when he came to Australia a couple of years ago and thanked him for having a big impact in my life. Because when I read his book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, everything finally clicked for me. And at that point in time, I was on a journey to the corporate world. I wanted to own gyms and I wanted to be a CEO of a big health club chains and all that sort of stuff. So after I read that, I no longer wanted to be an employee and I wanted to create a life where I could really leverage what I was doing and work once and basically set up passive streams of income, which is what the game is all about: it’s all about getting out there working once, getting paid forever.

So that’s when my philosophy changed. And that really shifted my direction in life.

William: That’s really amazing, West. That’s amazing. Because you’re exactly right. A lot of people would be scratching their head, you know, how a person can go for three degrees and then just turn their back and walk away from them. I know I’ve done…

West: Yeah.

William: It wasn’t easy.

West: No, no.

William: I mean you put a lot of effort, a lot of time.

West: Absolutely. And you sacrifice heaps in those degrees. I mean, the last degree I did was an MBA. And if anyone doesn’t know Masters of Business, basically, you go on to classes 7 to 10 every night, week nights, you’ve given up your weekends. And it’s really, really tough. So there was a lot of sacrifice there. But you know—as I said—there are no regrets because everything is a learning experience. And then one thing you’ll find when you meet successful people is that they never look at anything as a failure or a loss. It’s all a learning experience to enable you to get closer to where you want to go. But yeah, I completely agree, William.

William: But how did you get people in your life—like your parents or your family—in that sense to agree with you? I mean, they must have seen you going through doing all these degrees and then all of a sudden you just go, “Oh, I’m going to do something else now.” They must be really scratching their heads.

West: Absolutely. And that’s a great point you brought up. I don’t know whether you guys know much about the Asian culture, William. But Asian parents tend to be very strict and they tend to be very one minded and they tend to want their kids to follow a career path. And my parents are no different. And they still, to this day, have no idea why I’m doing what I’m doing. They still, you know, every time I see them, they still ask me, “Why aren’t you working in a job? And why aren’t you getting that recognition as a professional?”

So that still puzzles them, to be perfectly honest with you. And I don’t think that’s ever going to change. I mean they’re my parents. I mean, they just want the best for me from what they know. They were never exposed; they didn’t have the pleasure of what we’ve had access to today. I mean the world is a place where information is just so readily available. People these days are sharing all their strategies, all their philosophies and it’s just something that they never had access to. So I can’t blame them. I don’t blame them. But to answer your question, they are still scratching their heads.

William: Yup. ‘Coz you and Irina, your parents are very similar in their mindset. So that would have been a real obstacle for you to actually… in your own personal self, I mean to sit there and weigh out, “God, if I’m going to do this, what am I going to say to my parents?” I mean a lot of people would go ‘oh geez, I better not do that I don’t want to get in trouble with my parents or become an idiot.” So that took a lot of courage to do that, West.

West: Definitely. Definitely. And you know, the way I saw that, William, is two things:
The first thing is when I’m with them now I try not to talk about what I’m doing for my work. So we’ll talk about other stuff. We’ll talk about how I played on the golf course. My dad enjoys fishing shows and car shows and that sort of stuff so we’ll talk about that sort of stuff, but I’ll tend to steer the conversation away from how great work was and “I interviewed a really successful person today” and “I created this new audio product” and “we’re really excited about launching…” I tend to stay away from that. Because if we get into any sort of conversation on that, they’ll always revert back to, “Hang on a minute, how come you’re not out there working and sweating your guts out for an hourly wage?”

And the second thing is to really show them results. And that’s basically the only way that I know to shut my parents up and that, if you can talk till the cows come home—and I did that for a long time; I was talking about doing stuff and I never actually took serious action. And in the last year or six months or so, I’ve really started to show them some really good results. And they have shut up ever since. I mean, you can’t argue with results.

So for anyone listening who has parents that are just rock solid and they’re really, really ancient in their philosophies, you basically have to just bite the bullet, go out there, get the result and show them the actual result. And that would definitely change things for them.

William: How long did it take you to get sort of going, West, once you sort of convinced your parents?

West: Yeah. I went on a journey, William. I would have to say my first twelve months was actually education, believe it or not. And this is a flaw that I believe I have. And that is that when I want to do something, I will tend to explore every product, every course and analyze it and go through it and take notes. And some might see that as a strength. But from what I’ve learned in the last twelve months hanging out with really wealthy people, that’s actually a flaw. And I say that because when someone who’s actually wealthy or someone who has that mindset wants to do something, they don’t wait twelve months to do it, they actually just do it and they let their results give them feedback so they can change and modify their strategy.

William: That’s your academic training coming out.

West: It is. It is. That’s exactly right.

William: I had the same problem.

West: That’s exactly right. ‘Coz I mean, when you have to do a report or something for university, you’ve got to go and research and then you’ve got to go and weigh the pros and cons. You’ve just got to go through all that process. And that’s one of the things that I’m seriously trying to change in the near future.

William: That’s a big change too, actually. That’s really an obstacle to overcome, West, because that is changing your complete mindset and it’s making you actually think in a totally different way of what you’ve been taught or trained to do.

West: It is. Absolutely.

William: That’s amazing to be able to do that. But I know it’s not impossible for anybody, tell you the truth, because I know I’ve done it. I mean, Irina’s a doctor. And you can’t get any more sort of people dead set in their mindset. And doctors, they’re very, very conservative people.

West: Definitely.

William: So it can be done. You can change it. And that’s why we love talking to you.

West: It can. But I think, for people who want to get it done they need to have that desire or they need to be searching. Like some people are very closed to it and they’re so conditioned in their way of thinking that they’re not open to hearing that. And that’s fine. I’m certainly not judging anyone. But I find, when I work and I look for people to work with, the people who have very, very preset ways of thinking, it’s hard for them to change. It makes your job a little bit harder.

William: That certainly does, yeah. Because a lot of people we come across, especially from our area or field that we work in, they’re very closed-minds. I guess that’s why they’ve got the problems in the first place. And they’ve got all these subconscious blockages which really do drag them back and hence the need to sort of expand their range of thinking to be able to drag themselves out of that kind of condition. And this is what—basically there are some of these CDs, they’re all about as well—is showing people, really, that hey, they can do it if you really want to because there is a bigger world out there than just the odd little dots that you’re focusing on because you must have had to overcome something very, very similar, especially with your training?

West: Yeah, definitely. I mean I think that subconscious blocks, when I first heard about them, I was a little bit skeptical. I was like, ‘Hang on a minute. Have these guys just created something to sort of push another people as another system or do they really exist?’ I was a bit skeptical. I wasn’t really sure if they existed or not.

I first heard about these through a husband and wife pair called Andrew and Daryl Grant and they introduced me to their mentor Paul & Mary Blackburn. And I went to one of their workshops. I really found out through some of the exercises that we were doing that everyone has them. They’re buried deep, down inside through your conditioning in the past, especially if you’ve been in academia or even if you’ve gone through school, you’ve got some serious blockages or conditioning limitations that are holding you back. And when I did some of the exercises—which I share in my Money Mindset program, which I’ll tell you guys about at the end—it really came clear what kind of things that had been holding me back. And it’s really amazing. When you address them and you basically annihilate them, smash through them, you can really take some changes and make some changes in your life that you normally wouldn’t have because they’d be holding you back.

So the real disappointing thing is or the real sad thing is that most people don’t realize that they have them and therefore don’t take any action towards overcoming them. But even Paul Blackburn and all the best guys that I’ve interviewed, they all have stuff that comes into their heads when they’re about to start a new project or whenever an opportunity comes along to them, they’ll always have that stuff that holds them back. But the key difference is these guys know that it is holding them back and therefore they can control and break through them rather than let it hold them back, which is what most people do and therefore they stay where they currently are.

William: What did you find was your biggest sort of drawback? Was it basically just your training or was it other stuff from earlier on that you learnt from your parents, because you said your parents are pretty conservative?

West: Yeah, yeah. You know, my parents have always brought me up to work, you know, ‘work really hard, study really hard to be able to get a job and then once you get a job, you basically work your butt off to get raises.’ That’s how they trained us as kids growing up for our first ten, fifteen years, they’d always be hammering that, you know, “West, we want you to go to university and we want you to become—”they actually wanted me to get in the nursing industry because that’s the profession that my parents are in…they’re both nurses. So they wanted me to get some sort of medical… You know, I said, “There’s no way I’m spending ten years at university becoming a doctor,” which I ended up doing anyway—spending ten years there anyway—but I obviously did three different degrees rather than the doctor.

But yeah, so I truly believe that I had a lot of—and I’m certainly not blaming here, I just want to get that straight. That’s one thing that I don’t like to do, which is put my current circumstances or results as a responsibility of other people. It’s been entirely my own doing. But I think they had a large part in programming some of the programs that I had to unprogram, if I put it mildly like that.

William: Hence, the subconscious blockages.

West: Yeah, yup. And then I don’t really think they ever truly go away. You’ve got to keep addressing them and keep working on polishing. It’s like in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey talks about sharpening the saw. And it’s continual work on yourself and really sharpening that axe so when you try and cut down that tree, you’re not working with a blunt axe and trying to smash and smash and smash with a blunt axe; you’ll never get anywhere.

William: Yeah. That’s 100 percent true.

Irina: West, do you believe that anyone can get the right money mindset if they want to and become rich, especially if they have some adversity in their life?

West: Yeah. Listen Irina, I truly do believe that if someone really wants to make a difference and they’re committed, they have to be committed though. They have to make it a must. And there’s a difference between a must and a want. I mean, you can want something but everybody wants to be rich, but not many people make it an absolute must in their lives.

Actually, I was talking to my brother the other day—and this was a hypothetical situation—but I said to him (his name is Shaun), “Shaun, if someone came up to you and held a shotgun to your head and said “if you don’t double or triple your income in the next thirty days, I’m going to come back and blow your head off,” then that automatically becomes a must.” Right now he’s living quite a comfortable and thirty days might just go by and he’ll still live a comfortable life. But it’s a completely different mindset if you bring that guy with a shotgun in and make it a must in his life. And I think, for people who get to that point and it’s usually through a journey they’ve been through or something clicks or something happens in their life that just throws them over and it just automatically becomes a must like, you know, maybe something happens to their kids or someone in their family gets really sick and they need a lot of money…people do amazing things when they’re put in circumstances where they have to come up with something, you know, absolutely have to.

Irina: It’s like changing priorities, changing values.

West: It is. It is. And the thing about living in Australia is that if you’re running out of money, the government will still help you. So for some people, they’re just happy to leech off the government. And that’s really sad. I mean, I’m not saying that the government should—I’m not making any judgments here—but in other countries like Malaysia where my parents are from, the government don’t actually do that. So if you’re not making any money, you’ll die of starvation. If you don’t have kids or aunties or uncles or anything to support you—now in that situation, that’s a must. And people do all sorts of things over there and not all of them are ethical or legal. It’s sad but that’s the way life is over there.

William: Yeah. Well, that would give you a pretty good background into what not to do as well, I suppose, coming from that type of background. Because your parents obviously have come from that background and also instilled that in you that you have to actually do something because it’s not going to be handed on a silver platter.

West: Definitely, definitely. And they’ve come a long way. I mean, I have to respect them. My dad has eleven siblings and they all lived in a little mud hut. His dad died really early on in life and his elder brother took up the mantle and gave up school and everything to go to work to support the kids. So they’ve actually got a really long story and when I look back, I’m really, really proud of how far they’ve come. So certainly, you know, I’m very privileged to be where I am today in this position.

William: Well that’s a story on success all on its own there West…

West: It is. It certainly is.

William: Your parents have come from living in a mud hut with eleven kids. Yeah, I mean there’s not too many people—not in the Western world-we would contemplate how you could possibly do that.

West: No. Absolutely. And that’s what I was saying before about the stark contrast in wealth between nations. In Australia, the very fact that you’re in this country, if you’re listening to this recording and you’re in Australia, you’re extremely, extremely lucky. And that makes you automatically a very, very wealthy person compared to many millions of other people in the world.

William: Yeah, I think that goes for probably most of the Western countries, at least the English speaking Western countries that I know about: America & Britain.

West: Couldn’t agree more.

William: The lifestyle are different from all the countries but they’ve still got the opportunity that you can do, but you just haven’t got it, like you said, in Malaysia…

West: Absolutely. Absolutely.

William: What exactly did you start off… exactly the first thing you did, West, when you decided that, ‘okay, these degrees are not going to do me any good because I just don’t want to go down that track.’ So what was your first step? What was exactly…?

West: Firstly, I look at my degrees as a learning experience in the sense that I learned how to deal with people and I learned how to problem solve. And it taught me a lot of analytical skills that I still take with me today. So it’s given me some good skills but, obviously, over the period of ten years you can learn those skills without having to go through all the assessments, and that sort of stuff.

But the first thing that I tend to do, as I said before, is I’ll either find someone or I’ll find a product that has the information that I’m searching for. And I really believe that if you find something successful or someone successful and you model what they do—exactly what they do—you’ll get the same results. So it’s a science. And if you follow the formula, you’ll get the end product. And that’s sort of the philosophy that I embraced when I first got into it.

So I started studying all the guys in the internet marketing, and many of whom are my mentors today, and I call them personally. But I started by buying their products and going to their seminars and meeting them personally, shaking their hands, saying, “Can you tell me what you do” and “Can I take you out for coffee” or “I’d love to be part of your program” or I’d sign up for their program and work with them through there.

So I think there’s an easy way to do it and there’s a hard way to do it. The hard way to do it is to try and do everything yourself, try and learn everything, build everything again from scratch. And the easy way is to go down the road that’s already been taken and already been proven—and you might have to pay some money for it—but if you realize the value of your time and you realize how much you’re really, really worth, paying that money—be it $500-$5,000—to shortcut your journey by months, maybe even years is more than worth the investment.

William: Yeah, I agree with that. There’s a guy who’s got a great saying which I always loved—you probably know him—Mr. Mal Emery?

West: Yes.

William: “Don’t be a pioneer because pioneers get shot full of arrows.” How true is that?

West: That’s very true, yup. I had the pleasure of meeting Mal Emery in person in Melbourne last year and had a good chat with him and got my photo taken with him. He’s a great mind. He’s a genius mind. And the thing about Mal is he really focuses on what he’s good at. And he’s not good at computers, he’s not good at a whole heap of stuff but he surrounds himself with a great team and he just focuses on what he’s good at and that adds massive value. So yeah, Mal is a great guy.

William: But the same as my other mentors, Daryl and Andrew Grant—they did introduce you to us not long ago—and they come from the same mindset. And I just love that mindset because you don’t have to suffer. You don’t have to get yourself down so far that you just can’t get up because there’s always a way that you can drag yourself up off the floor and all you really need—and it’s at the end of these CDs as well—is to show people that they can do it, plus, they might grab just something that we talk about and it really clicks in their head and then they go, “Oh! Oh, I’d love to do that.” And then they’ll follow that and they’ll pull themselves out— Not everybody is obviously going to become a multi millionaire—but people, you know, can get themselves to a good lifestyle…

West: Absolutely. Not everybody wants to be a multi millionaire. And there’s nothing wrong with that at all. I mean a lot of people have other priorities in their life…BUT it is much easier to do what you want to do and help other people with money. So…

William: That’s right. A lot of people think, people who have that mindset—and this is another one of these subconscious blockages that I had to actually overcome—that we always thought rich people were dishonest. They had to be ripping people off to be rich.

West: That’s a common one.

William: That’s not the least bit true. That is something that’s fed to us by people who are too lazy to do anything in their life so they say, “Rich people, you wouldn’t want to be like them. You have to rip people off.” And that’s actually so much garbage. But that was in the back of my mind for a long time till I got rid off that mental blockage.

West: Definitely. Yeah, I mean there’s plenty, plenty like that. And anyone listening on the call today should—you know, one of the things you get people to do is—get a piece of paper and a pen and just basically ask the question: ‘What do I believe about money?’ And for five minutes straight, just close your eyes and just let your hand go wild and write down every saying or belief or truism that you believe about money. And that’s a really good start to identify that.

William: And yeah, ‘Money doesn’t grow on trees.’

West: Definitely.

William: That’s a great mental blockage.

West: That’s one that was regularly preached in my household as well.

William: Yeah, that’s right. I think that’s in everybody’s household.

West: For sure. I sure as hell won’t to be saying that to my kids if I ever have kids. I’m actually going to tell them that money does grow on trees.

William: Yeah, exactly. That’s good.

Irina: West, actually… but um, what did you do to deal to all your businesses? Like can you describe the strategy you used to start making money?

West: For my online businesses you mean?

Irina: Yes, yeah. Or your businesses like what did you do? Like what is your money making strategies?

West: Sure. I mean, like most people you weigh up opportunities when you’re looking at getting into business of any sort. And for me, I wanted to do something… I read a book recently called 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss and that’s an awesome book for time management—I highly recommend that for anyone to have a look at—but he talks about muses. And he defines a muse as just something that makes you money but you have no interest or passion or any desire to…you don’t, you know, wake up and are passionate about it or fired up about it.

And I do like that concept of having complete passive streams but I also like having streams where I am passionate about it—so things where you can actually help people improve their lives in some way, shape or form and in the area or cause or some industry that you might have an expertise in that can actually help people.

So I wanted a business obviously that, like most people do, that wasn’t a huge capital outlay. I also wanted something that could be automated. When you guys get to talk to Matt and Amanda Clarkson, you’ll hear Matt talk about automation being a huge part of what they do. And because I’m inherently a lazy person, William… actually… were you guys there at the recent Andrew and Daryl seminar that I spoke at?

William: Yeah, we were.

West: Yeah, there was a press release released about me that put me as the laziest man in Australia or Brisbane or something like that. That was funny. You guys should let your readers have a look at that. I should send that through. But it’s very true—I am a lazy person. But when I do work, I like to work smart because I am lazy. So I’m actually using my deficiency as a bonus.

So after, like, capital, I then look at the passion factor and something that, when I wake up in the morning, I’m fired up about, I really, really can make a difference in people’s lives rather than waking up and cussing or what most people do is wake up and hit the snooze alarm and wish they could sleep in for a little more. I actually find it difficult to fall asleep at night at times because I still want to get so much stuff done. That’s how much urge and passion I have to work for what I believe in.

So I think those two factors for me were very important. I considered using some industry that I studied in—like theoretically—so either some sort of business or health and fitness, which is where my degree is in: Exercise Physiology. And those are the things that I am passionate about as well. So what you do is you take an inventory of what you have at your disposal—your skills and what’s available to you—and the best way to make a decision is with all the information in front of you.

Irina: Yeah, but how do you actually make money? Do you have websites which make money?

West: Yeah, yeah. My websites at the moment…I have a couple of eBay businesses. I have a blog that I’m monetizing, in the process of monetizing. And that’s just my name: Westloh.com. And I have a membership site that I’m working on with the Grants. So I have a couple of other sites, you know, little things here and there but probably nothing of note to mention besides those three.

William: So what made you pick your first one? You had a go and you just sort of thought, “Well, this could be a good area?” Or did you actually do a little bit of research on that particular area?

West: Yeah, the first one I started to get into was eBay. And the reason I got into eBay—probably 2004-2005—and the reason I decided to get into it is it was pretty small at that time. I mean it’s huge right now. It was growing but it wasn’t as massive as it is today, obviously. I just liked the fact that you could start selling and start receiving payments without having to put up any big capital outlay. And I used to buy stuff there all the time. One of the favorite things I used to buy was golf clubs. I used to buy putters and collect rare and collectible gold putters. And that was a market that was really, really, interesting to me. You guys are obviously on eBay but anyone who’s listening to this call who’s not on eBay, the majority of sellers on eBay are terrible sellers. They take terrible photos and they don’t give any descriptions, maybe one or two line descriptions and there’s no gallery. It’s just terrible. So I would actually buy products from eBay and just take a better photo, give a better description, just do a bit of research on the internet…and you know, I was getting two or three times the price that I bought it for.

And I would specialize in golf clubs. So I would buy drivers and putters and everything from eBay and then resell them there plus I make the odd trip to the markets in the morning as well and start there. So that’s just how I got started online.

And when I set up my Paypal account and I started seeing money coming in through there, that was really, really exciting. And I just love the fact that people would buy your products and pay you while you’re sleeping or while you’re playing golf or whatever it is. You wake up and you just check your account and there’s more money in there than when you left. And to me that was a really exciting concept. So that’s how I got into it.

William: Yeah, eBay is fantastic. I actually highly recommend that for anybody who wants to try and break that mental blockages is to just go on to eBay, learn about eBay and do what you did.

West: Yeah. I mean the key is finding a market that is hungry for products and then seeing if you can fill a demand there. And there are a lot of supplies—I think, actually, Irina was telling me at the dinner we had recently at the Gold Coast, one of her suppliers. You can find guys online or people you know or physical shops that you know—I approached a few shops—or you can just go to your local markets and find supplies there. One of the other things that I got into was selling world bank notes. And there was this local, like currency dealer, who used to sell a whole heap of old coins and old notes and stuff from the markets. And I would buy those for really cheap and take great photos, like, you know, I spent $400 on a new digital camera and take it on a very high resolution. And people around the world collect money and they can’t get a $1 Australian coin from where they live. So to see it on eBay, they’re willing to pay $10, $20 bucks for a $1 coin. And depending on how badly they want it for their collection…they’re willing to pay a lot more. So you just have to get a feel for the eBay interface and then get a feel for a market that you enjoy or could potentially enjoy working in.

William: Did you find that once you started to actually think along these lines that more ideas actually came to you, that you weren’t sort of getting stuck in that one train of thought, but one thing led to another to another to another…

West: Definitely.

William: …and sort of spread out in different directions? And you even probably couldn’t imagine you did or you would go. Is this what had happened to you, West?

West: Yeah, it did. It did. And I think you’ve got to start somewhere and you’ve got start basic stuff. I mean, you’ve got to sell your first item, buy your first item.

But after that, you do realize the potential for what you’re doing can grow in many ways. Like you can, personally, you can use eBay in many different ways. And one of the things is now using it as a lead generator and exposure for any websites that you have rather than selling stuff. But you know, you meet people and you can do joint ventures. You meet a lot of people on eBay but you meet a lot of people outside of eBay also that have no idea that eBay even exists that you could provide potential bridge to eBay for them. And if you’ve got your system already in place, it’s just a matter of coming up with some sort of agreement where you can do that.

So I mean, for example, there’s a gentleman who you may have heard of called Kurek Ashley. And he is a motivational speaker. He used to be in Hollywood movies. He does firewalks. And he’s actually quite well known in the speaking arena. I met him at a networking breakfast and I approached him about putting some of his products online and he said, “Yeah. Listen, I don’t have any presence online now. I’m busy, you’re busy. If you can help me get that up, I’m happy to split it 50 50.” All I did was take some photos of his products and used his salescopy and just clicked ‘submit’ on eBay to list it. And that provided a good source of income and it was just a matter of that relationship and putting it to him.

William: Yeah, that’s amazing because a lot of people—coming back to this subconscious blockages again—they wouldn’t have done that because they would have seen this guy and thought, “Oh my God, I cannot possibly talk to him. He’s so successful. And I’m a nobody.” And they tend to go, okay and they’ll walk away. But you did the opposite. You actually came up and talked to the guy. And you must have put yourself out of your comfort zone to do that.

West: Definitely. Definitely.

William: And it really paid off for you.

West: Yeah. You know, I used to get nervous around what I considered to be high profile people. But at the end of the day, William, we’re all human beings and we all want to live a comfortable and happy and fulfilling life. And really, there’s no difference. I mean if someone owns $10 million and someone owns $1, it doesn’t make one person better than the other. So I just philosophically got on a different level from where I used to be from putting people up on a pedestal and all that sort of stuff. I just got over that and as I said, yeah, getting rid of those blocks that would hold me back.

You know, when you get to chatting with these people, you just find out they’re just like you and me. They’re just much more action oriented and they just take more of a leap in their life than other people who just sit back and talk themselves out of it.

So to the people who do that, I say just try it and let the results speak for themselves. I mean if you go up and talk to four or five gurus—who you perceive to be gurus—and they all say, “Get lost, I don’t want to talk to you,” then fine, make your judgment that way. But I can guarantee you that they’ll be more than happy to speak to you and look at if you can do something together.

William: Yeah, ‘coz I had that sort of problem too, before. And I had to get out of my comfort zone and I went up and just talked to the guy. And I find that, hello, this guy’s human.

West: Absolutely. For sure.

William: He loves to talk. He just wants to talk. And I think sometimes, too, even though they are perceived as being very successful, I think they do sometimes like people coming up and talking to them too.

West: They do. They do. They love it. And I think the definition of success is different for everybody but very true in what you said, that they do enjoy talking to people. Because if you’re coming to their seminar or you’re buying one of their products, you’re one of their consumers and they can actually learn a lot from you as being one of their target audience or target clients. So if nothing, you can give them feedback. And this is what I used to do…I used to say, “If you ever need a testimonial—a video testimonial, an audio testimonial—please send me an email or can I get one of your business cards and send you the testimonial?” So be proactive. And I had many of them say, “Yes, I’d love one.”

So guys like Brett McFall and Jamie McIntyre—a lot of these high profile guys—that’s what I did. And that’s how they got to know my name. So a lot these guys would have heard of me…but obviously, in the next few years I’ll be looking at getting on a much more different level. But yeah, definitely, get up there and talk to them.

William: Yeah, ‘coz we found that—like even just Mal—I was a bit anxious to talk to Mal the first time. But I got such a warm reception when I first went up to talk to him I thought, Wow. That really set me back a little bit actually and I thought, Well geez, all this stuff I’ve been believing in the past is a lot of rubbish. So there went another mental blockage out the door.

West: Definitely. Great. It’s awesome, William. Because you basically blown yours out of the way by confronting it. And I think, for most people, that’s what they’re going to have to do: is to actually go out there and confront it, realize that it’s just something they made up in their own mind an. And hopefully they’ll achieve what you achieved.

William: Yeah. That’s really true, West. So continuing on… so you had a little bit of a go at eBay—which I highly recommend to anybody actually—and so what did you do after that? What was your next sort of step along the ladder?

West: Well from there I kind of met Andrew and Daryl Grant through Yaro, who is a good friend of mine, who runs one of Australia’s biggest and most visited blogs. And they had a concept going for ebooks. They were making $200-$250+ grand a year from selling ebooks. And I heard of the concept before from a gentleman called Ed Dale, who’s a very prominent internet marketer. I always wanted to do it but I never dived into it. So I dived into that for awhile. And that was a fun journey. I got many sites with ebooks—and they’re still up to this day. So that was a journey of about six months doing that. That was a very, very steep learning curve for anyone looking at getting on the internet. It is a very steep learning curve if you haven’t done it before. But don’t let it stop you.

And after that, I went to one of their seminars and they basically introduced the concept of membership sites. And that’s something that is close to my heart because:
1) You can help people on a regular basis; but,
2) It’s a regular income stream that comes in on a monthly basis.

So building the membership site in the last six months or so has been really, really exciting, fun, it’s been a great journey. And at this point, I’m continuing on with that, a little bit of blogging and I’m getting into some speaking now.

So these days I’m having some people come to me and ask me if I can speak at their business or internet conferences, at work. I did some speeches in the past about fitness, fat loss—that sort of stuff. So I do have experience talking in front of people but it’s kind of a different ballgame on what I’m talking about.

William: Yeah, that’d be a major blockage for…I probably reckon about 85 percent of the people actually just can’t get up and talk in front of somebody who’s a complete, let’s say, stranger to you. I know that Irina, she was definitely scared of doing that.

West: And I was, too.

William: We’ve done seminars of sorts and she’s got up there and inspired the people. And she found that, hey, this is not as bad as what you thought it was going to be, you know?

West: Absolutely.

William: And they all sat there and looked like they were actually interested in what she was saying. It is amazing that it’s a mental blockage, a subconscious blockage.

West: Yeah, it is one of human beings’ greatest fear: is to get up and speak. But I was really, really scared at the start as well. And like you, William, I just basically addressed it and did it.

One of the things I did was I teach group fitness classes as well. For those people who don’t know what Les Mills is, Les Mills is a brand of fitness classes that if you go to any gym in Australia or around the world—in the UK, in America—classes like Body Pump, Body Attack, Body Step are taught in those classes to groups of 10 100 people. And I decided to do become a Body Jam instructor. Well first of all, I can’t dance and Body Jam is dance. And second of all, you’ve got to get up in front of people and scream your guts out and teach…just pretty much make a complete fool of yourself for an hour.

So I did a class, I did the module completely out of my comfort zone. I could not tell you how scared I was. I was shaking and I was always looking at the floor. I was talking so soft you couldn’t hear me. It was a complete mess but, you know, over time you improve and you get better and better and better and better. And now, I have absolutely no problems getting up in front of people. In fact, I really love it and I enjoy it and I look forward to it.

Irina: West, have you read the book This and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill?

West: I have read that book.

Irina: You have read? Okay. So in this book, Napoleon Hill describe thirteen principles to riches. It’s like desire, faith, autosuggestion, specialized knowledge, imagination, organized planning and all the rest. Do you actually follow these principles?

West: Yeah, I read the book. I actually recently saw a seminar by—it’s called Akasha 2007—and it’s run by a good friend of mine, Daniel Priestley, who use to live here in Brisbane and runs a company called Triumphant Events but he moved to the UK. And he put up this big seminar. And Bob Proctor, who is the author of You Were Born Rich, is a very prominent book and seminar.

William: From The Secret?

West: Yeah, yeah. From The Secret. And he was talking about…that he reads this book Think and Grow Rich, I think six times a year and he continuously reads and reads and reads it. I can’t say I’m that prolific. I may have read it probably twice in my life. The last time was probably two or three years ago. And I believe everything in it is goals. Every time I read it, I do learn something new. But as far as following it, I think if you follow a model of successful people doing what you’re doing, you kind of automatically follow the path. I don’t open it and use it as a manual, so to speak, as such, but I believe all these principles are present in things that we do with others and on any journey with a successful or wealthy person. They’ve all followed at least one, two, three or four of these traits in what they do.

Irina: Do you actually practice autosuggestion?

West: Autosuggestion. Let me just clarify what that means. Is that where you’re affirming to yourself continuously what it is you want to achieve? Is that autosuggestion?

Irina: Yeah. It’s what he describes in the book.

West: I do. I absolutely do. The first thing I wake up in the morning, there’s probably thirty minutes of time that I actually go through affirming stuff, visualizing stuff, going through my goals, that sort of stuff. So for the first thirty minutes of every single day when I wake up is always autosuggestion.

William: Do you find that that helps you focus?

West: It does. Absolutely. You know, if you picture a television and you picture the fuzzy black ends that go on a television when it’s out of focus… amazing clarity. So, you know, shift now from the fuzzy ends to a plasma screen TV where the detail of the picture is just so high. And when you wake up in the morning and you give yourself that clear picture, it just gives you clarity for the day. And it’s so easy to decide what’s important and what’s not important. So instead of waking up and wondering, “Hey, what’s going on today,” you’re very, very focused because you know what you have to do. It’s all about clarity.

William: Yeah, that’s exactly right. But that, again, is a lot of people trying to get the mind around to actually doing something like that. And I’ve talked to a lot of people who said, “Oh, that’s just a lot of garbage. It can’t work.” But it does work because it has worked for me.

What always comes to my mind about a show I actually saw on the History channel or something like that, where one of the Vietnam Vets was actually caught by the Viet Cong and he was locked in a small cage for about eighteen months. And he was an avid golf player. He loved his golf. So what he did everyday, he just played golf in his mind and he played and he played and he played and he put the ball down and he hit the ball and it went straight down the middle of the fairway and he was going the golf round the par, under par. And when he finally was rescued and brought back to America, when he got strong enough, he went out onto the golf course and he played exactly like he envisioned in his mind all those months he was locked up in the cage.

West: Wow. That’s awesome.

William: It just went way ahead in his mind because his mind had trained itself to play golf. And to the subconscious mind, there’s no difference between reality and non reality.

West: And I’ll just add a little bit to that. Being an exercise physiologist, one of the things we do is we can take muscle EMGs. And what that means is we can put electrodes on the muscles and we can measure their activity. And when people are imagining doing things….like let’s say you’re a runner, you’re a sprinter and you’re imagining sprinting. And you actually take an EMG of the muscle. The muscles are actually firing off.

So in your body’s mind, you are actually running. So it is extremely, extremely powerful. And I think I’m going to have to see if I can lock myself up for eighteen months because my golf game is terrible, William.

William: [Laughs] I wouldn’t suggest it…it’s right in the middle of the jungle.

But that’s true. It does work. And I actually had a ski instructor once who said exactly the same thing to me. Because I love snow skiing—I still do—and I was always scared yo go on those really steep hills and he just said to me, “Why don’t you try this?” And he said, “It may not be the time for you to go to sleep but just lay there, really focus. Imagine in your mind the slope in front of you and imagine you skiing down that slope perfectly.” And I did this for awhile. And when I came to the next big steep hill, I speed down the big steep hill. And it was no problem.

West: Sensational. The evidence is there. It definitely works.

William: It definitely, definitely, definitely works. And this is what these CDs are about: it’s getting people to realize that, hey, you don’t have to be caught in a trap because nobody has to be caught in a trap. There is a bigger world out there and there is more to life than just your little problems you’re facing at the moment.

So talking to guys like you and other people who have actually realized this and come out of it can help so many other people, West… that’s why we love putting this together.

West: For sure. I really look forward to hearing any success stories that come out as a result of people listening to your program.

William: So what would you recommend anyway to people who do have a dream but they just don’t know how to go about it? What would you say your main four points that they should actually get up in the morning and do?

West: Well, I really think they need to first… There’s a saying by a gentleman named Zig Ziglar. And he says: “When the why becomes large enough, the how becomes easy.”

So for the people who want to get going, the first thing they have to decide is why they want to do it. What is it that drives them? What is their driving force? Down to core, why do they want to achieve it? Because, I mean, you can give someone a million dollars, $10 million, whatever it is, but if they don’t have an overwhelming cause to be able to do that—it might be to help reduce poverty or it might be to help save your kids’ education university fund. In my case, one of the things that drove me was both my grandparents were sick. And they’re really struggling with their medical bills. And it hurts me to see that. And for me, that was a real driving force—whatever it is for that person, first you’ve got to come up why you’re doing it. Because that’s so powerful; that would drive you. The how really doesn’t matter. Once they’ve got that pillar to hold on to, they’ll find a way. So that’s probably my number one.

William: Right. What would be your number two?

West: For a person looking to create a better life, number two thing I’d recommend is—and I mentioned this before—is try to find and model someone. So don’t take the long road. Take a road that’s already been taken and just basically do what they do. If you do what they do, you’ll get what they get. And the results speak for themselves. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel. You were saying before about a pioneer getting shot by arrows and I can vouch for that. Life is just too short to waste time trying a new technique. Unless that’s your path, unless, you know, you’re an inventor and you basically want to invent something new. But if you’re trying to achieve results, which is to either make more money or build a house or whatever it is, you’ve just got to follow a path that someone’s taken.

William: Or even to better health?

West: Yeah, or even to better health. You know, I spent a lot of time in my early years helping people create better lifestyles through fitness, health, exercise and diet. And the same thing applies. You just need to find someone who’s doing an awesome job and you find that their mindset is very different from someone who’s overweight and sitting at home and eating lots of food and eating out at fast food all the time. So…very true, same principles.

William: Okay. That’s right. And number three?

West: Number three… I would say leverage your time. So find a team of people around you that complement your strengths. So when I first started, the big mistake I made was to try and do everything myself.

On the internet, there’s almost unlimited amount of things that you can do. So I was doing the graphics myself. I was trying to write the sales pages myself. I was trying to get my blogs up myself. I was trying to do everything. And at the end of the day, I got a whole lot of nothing done or what seemed to be a lot but when you look at the actual result, it was still a blip on the big scheme of things. And it was only ‘til I realized that I needed to leverage my time in the places that my skills were at its best that I could really, really make some waves.

So for people getting out, if you’re a technician in some area or let’s say you’re a business owner and you’re good at managing people, then get those people on board and manage them. Don’t try and do it yourself. Because I think that’s a really big mistake that a lot of people offline and online make. But online, it’s crucial because online there are so many things to get done and you just cannot do it all yourself. It’s impossible.

William: Where do you find these people, West? A lot of people go, yeah, that’s all very well to say but where do you actually find people?

West: Sure. Actually yeah, at that talk I was talking about, I actually gave a big presentation on that, on outsourcing and out tasking and finding people online to do stuff that you need done. So I’m happy to shoot you guys through some of the information that I give about on that.

But essentially, it’s finding freelance workers online to do any technical tasks. You can also find writers online to do any writing tasks. I also have a personal assistant just in general for my life. So if I want to get a plane ticket booked or I want to send flowers to my mom or I want to pay a bill online or something like that—anything that can be done virtually—I get someone else to do it.

So as I said, William, I’m very, very lazy. I’d like to say I’m the laziest man in the world but it’s all about being smart. So you can be lazy but you can still be effective. So that’s kind of my philosophy and I think everyone should embrace that philosophy for sure because time is very precious.

William: Yeah. Well, if you want to shoot us through some of that stuff I’d be really happy to read that because sometimes I fall for the same trap too—I try to do everything myself.

West: And I know that you know where your strengths are. So you’ve just got to find out what you’re really good at and what the most dollar value is because, you know, I sat down the other day and I thought, If I do anything, if I do any task at all that I can pay someone to do that is worth less than my time, then I’m losing money. And when that hit me—it really did. It hit me like a ton of bricks. And I don’t do that anymore because I lose money. And people think they’re saving money because they don’t have to pay someone $10 bucks an hour to do it but it’s actually the wrong mindset.

William: Yeah, it’s the wrong mindset to think about. It’s so easy to find people to do things online on places like Rentacoder (now vWorker).

West: Yeah, absolutely.

William: There’s a lot of people there. And don’t forget, because we look at, say, paying somebody in this country to do something—or any western countries—it’s going to cost you a lot. But the people in some of these poorer countries around the world like in India and even in some of the eastern block countries… if they can make $100, $200 US, it’s like a month’s wages for them.

West: It is. It is. You know, a lot of people say, “West, you’re taking advantage of these people and stuff.” And my answer is “They are more than happy to do it because $100 for the work that they’re giving—sure, it’s a great deal on our side—but for them it puts food on the table for a month.” And if they’re a really good coder, I give them bonuses. I give them an extra hundred bucks if they worked really well. So it works for both parties.

William: Yeah, because as far as you are saying, people have to realize that these people in these countries…it’s what we were talking about before. This is not a matter of going down the government and saying, “Look, I haven’t got any food on the table. Give me some money.” It’s bad luck.

So no, I don’t think you’re taking advantage whatsoever because I think you’re actually even generous in giving them work and they’re happy to do the work. And then from doing that work, they can support their families.

West: For sure. For sure.

William: So really, it’s a huge positive and not negative at all. So if anybody’s got that kind of mindset they should… because you’re actually helping some other human being you don’t even know to live.

West: Absolutely. For sure.

William: So what would be your fourth thing, West?

West: Fourth thing would be basically to do something that you feel could genuinely help people. If you do something just for the money, then I think either one, you’ll lose passion, focus or direction. But if you’re doing something that has almost a philanthropic edge to it, then it tends to attract other people towards you.

For example, with the Money Mindset, what we’re doing now, Andrew Grant has pretty much distilled all the techniques, strategies and secrets that he went through in getting through his blockages. And that has really helped people. And when he tells people about it, they just get enrowed in it. They get fired up about it. They want to know more. They want to join the site and they want to get involved.

And when I tell people—as I’m talking to you right now, I just got a Skype message from David Schirmer. And he’s from The Secret, obviously, and he used to run a company on stock trading and talked alongside Bob Proctor. He just messaged me now. I’ll read it out to you: “West, great to hear from you! Really want to work with you on membership sites. Met Andrew Grant. Good guy. Happy to help you out in any way possible. Let me know what you need.” Just right now as I’m talking to you, right now.

It draws people into you from all over the place that you would never expect. And even people who you don’t think you could potentially work with, they find a way to be able to work with you because they want to work with you because you’ve got such great value to offer.

So regardless of your profession… I mean, my brother, for example, he loves salsa dancing. He loves Latin dancing. And he’s passionate about it. And there are hundreds of guys out there—and girls—who don’t know how to salsa dance but would gladly pay to learn. And so we decided to actually go down that field as well and create something to help people out there. So he’s passionate about that. He’s working like a machine. Like before back when we were doing other stuff together and he was really indifferent, “Ah yeah, yeah, yeah.” But now he’s on the phone calling up all these people and other people are jumping on board. So have an absolute desire and passion and a real cause to help people.

William: So did you find any that was difficult to contact these people? And then like you were saying a second ago, you just shoot a guy on email or did you call him on the phone or…?

West: You meet people through various means. A lot of mine I met through seminars going there. You’ve got to physically go there and meet the people. Not only meet the speakers in the breaks but meet other people there because they’re all like minded and they’ll know people who can introduce you to more people and all that sort of stuff. So that’s probably number one.

Number two is calling up a lot of my contacts and asking for people that can help. Maybe they know people that could help you. So that’s been useful for me.

And also, number three, would be identifying good matches and then trying to build a relationship. So I might find a site that I see us doing work together or potentially having a good relationship together with. And I would email the site with some sort of—not proposal or sell immediately…NO, NO, NO—going there with some sort of friendly touching base email, add some value, maybe give them a free membership to your site. I do that a lot—give away a lot of free memberships to my site—to give them a feel for the site and give them some value. And I don’t expect anything back at all. I’m not obligating them at all.

The other way that I found—through Facebook, actually, the social networking site—I’ve got at least two hundred high profile marketing business people on there. And that is an amazing resource to meet people. I mean it is unbelievable. I sent a few guys some video messages and I’ve formed some great relationships there as well. So those are the main avenues that I meet people through.

Irina: With this…

West: Facebook. It is a huge social networking site. Amazing, amazing site. And it allows you to become personal friends with whoever it is. So for example, Mark Joyner is on there. Seth Godin is on there; a lot of guys who you normally wouldn’t get access to. Now granted, many of them have virtual managers for their Facebook profile like I do, but some personal messages actually do get through to them. For example, Mike Filsaime is on there as well and I’ve just teed up an interview with him recently because I met his VP of Operations, Tom Beal, had a game of chess with him through Facebook. And we hooked up a relationship there. So there’s some great opportunities to meet people on Facebook. And I actually did another complete seminar on that separately, took about an hour to talk through some of the best strategies through there. And I believe that’s available through my Money Mindset site.

William: Wow. So you’ve got heaps of business stuff for people to actually join and learn because it’s all very interesting stuff. And that gives people an outlet if they’re stuck with adversary in their life. If they do join something like your site and interact with other people, it’s going to help them to see a bigger picture.

West: Definitely.

William: And that’s the beauty of doing stuff like that.

Irina: Uh West, can you tell us what’s your plan for the future and what you’re going to do with your MoneyMindset.com? Are you going to build more sites like this or…?

West: Yeah, that’s a good question, Irina. And I think, for me, I really want to continue doing what I love doing primarily. And the day I get sick of this, I’ll just stop it. But right now, it is the most productive and fun period of my life that I’ve ever had and I’m going to milk it for all its worth and then continue to grow and help people.

I see the Money Mindset growing, growing and growing. I’m in the process now of marketing it and building joint ventures for it. So it’s a site that had a lot of work, technically, put into it but not a lot of work promotionally put into it. And that’s what we’re going to basically be focusing on. Andrew and Daryl Grant, the couple that I’m working with, they are very diversified or they’re focused on membership sites but they’re diversified in the fact that they have 50-60 membership sites and partners that they’re working with.

So I like to focus on a couple of things. And one thing I’ve learned is that if you focus your energy, spread it too thin, you don’t get anywhere. But if you become like a magnifying glass, you can really, really burn a hole in whatever you’re trying to achieve. So I’ve kind of embraced that and I stopped subscribing to email lists that promoted other things and sold other products and I don’t go to seminars unless they’re highly related to what I’m doing now that I’ve decided where I’m headed. And it’s just a lot more clear. Like before I used to be open to everything. I used to jump to this. I used to jump to that and switch around and do a whole bunch of stuff. And now I’m very, very focused.

William: Yeah. You get to a point where you become focused. But in the very beginning, a lot of people listening to this, not understanding where to start from or I reckon a really good place to start is to find something interesting, look around who’s actually got a seminar on that and go to it.

West: Yeah. Absolutely.

William: Then you’re going to learn more things just by turning up. I mean you don’t even have to really buy any of their products. There are many, many free ones. If you don’t want to buy their product, you don’t have to and they don’t expect you to either.

West: For sure. And I did that. For the first twelve months of my educational stint I was talking about, I just went to every single free seminar that I could go to. And they’re usually between one and four hours and on a weeknight and I would just go to all of them. And I’d learn a hell of a lot from that.

William: So, fantastic starting point actually, to actually do that. And even if you just want to maybe find something you’re interested in, even if you’ve got a small interest, go along and just see them.

West: Definitely.

William: And then if it’s not them, try another one.

West: Yup. I mean, a perfect example, like I decided to get into forex trading and options trading and I did a whole heap of other stuff. And I decided they weren’t for me. So I had to try it before I decided it wasn’t for me.

William: Yeah, yeah. But don’t let a little setback sort of take you down because the time wasn’t right for what you were doing at the particular time.

West: Absolutely.

William: People listening to this CD shouldn’t take a no as a personal attack on them because it’s not. Or if they try something and it fails, it just wasn’t right for them. So you just look for something else.

West: I mean every miss on the target just takes you closer to the bullseye. That’s my philosophy, William.

William: Yeah, that’s exactly right West. And it’s the same as people…don’t be scared to contact people they think is on a higher goal than them because even if they do say no, they normally say no, “Look, thank you very much for asking. I really consider what you’re doing is fantastic. But look, at this particular time I’m concentrating on this part of my business.” And they don’t ring you up and say, “Look idiot, get lost!”

West: Absolutely. Absolutely.

William: If they say no to you, it’s always nice, it’s always pleasant. And they’re normally always genuine too. They just are busy…as simple as that. So you shouldn’t take it as a personal affront to you. We should just say, “Okay. Well, that’s great.”

West: For sure. And you know, just because they say no once it doesn’t mean they’re going to say no again in the future. I mean, you planted a seed. And later on in life, seeds take time to grow. So you can harvest that seed six months, twelve months, two years down the track.

William: Yeah, exactly.

So anyway, we’re getting probably pretty close to the end of this session. Have you got something you can sort of offer people to come see your site and have a look?

West: Well, yeah. My first objective, William and Irina—and I hope I’ve achieved this—is to really pack this call with as much content as possible. And I truly believe that if people embrace what you’re saying, things will come back to you in droves. But—I mean, we’ve been talking about it pretty much the whole call—the Money Mindset is basically a membership site that Andrew and I have put together. Like you guys, I spent time interviewing wealthy people and successful people. And I’ve interviewed people from a range of $5 to $55 million in net worth. It’s basically a site about how to get insanely wealthy through thoughts, through strategies, through actions. We give book reviews of the best books. We give seminar summaries. We give a whole bunch of stuff—audio programs. It’s a really, really fantastic site for people wanting to change their mindset, get rid of their subconscious blockages. I’m hosting the site so I’ll basically guide you through most of the stuff. As I’ve said, I’ve got at least 15 to 20 multi multi millionaires on there involved in the site now. So the content is absolutely top class. Andrew Grant shares all his strategies. So that’s a great site. The url—for those of you wondering—is: www.money-mind-set.com. So that’s a membership site.

And the other thing, if people want to find out more about what I do, my blog has just kind of been relaunched. It’s WestLoh.com. And it’s basically a personal blog about my journey, about my philosophies. I’m going to pump it with some really good content. If you enjoyed what I said today, there are tons more of it on all sorts of different topics there, a lot of it free. So just go there and enjoy.

William: That’s fantastic, mate. But look, we want to really thank you for your time today. And actually, it’s been quite an enjoyable time it was actually flowing because I’ve been so engrossed…

West: It has, hasn’t it? Wow.

William: It’s been a really great day.

Irina: It’s been really wonderful.

William: And people should also not think they just have to go to the big gurus or so called gurus or the super super successful people because there are a lot of people out there too who just don’t blow their own trumpets and yet are very successful in their own right.

West: Very true. Very true. I found out as well.

William: Yeah, that’s what we do too. Because everybody has something to contribute. As I said earlier, one idea, one word can change somebody’s life who’s listening to this CD because it can give them that spark, the interest and think, ‘I could do that.’ And when they learn where a few people have actually come from, the adversity they’ve actually gone through… People only see what’s in front of them. But that person on the stage, they think, ‘Oh geez, he’s lucky he’s been… look at what he’s doing… oh, fantastic!’ But they don’t know the story behind that person. And once you’ve realized that everybody has a story…

West: It’s very powerful.

William: …it will help you clear your mind and make you think that, ‘hey, I could do this too.’ If we could help just one person in life with these series of CDs and what you’re doing as well with your mindset website…

West: For sure. And if anyone’s listening and they have had a change or some sort of significant difference in their life, feel free to email me personally. Obviously, don’t share this out, but if they want to, email me at info@westloh.com and just tell me what they’ve done how they’ve done it. And if I can help out in any way, I’ll be more than happy to.

William: That’s a fantastic offer, West. It’s really, really good.

Irina: Sounds really nice, West.

William: Okay. Well thanks very much for the call and I’m sure we’ll see you shortly around the traps.

West: Been an absolute pleasure.

William: And looking forward to catching up with you again.

West: Not a problem. Thank you for your time.

William: Bye now, West.

Irina: Bye.

West: Bye.

Speakers:
West: West Loh
Tyrone: Tyrone

Tyrone: Good morning, West!

West: Good day, Tyrone!

Tyrone: Welcome to the call. It’s a beautiful day over there I hear.

West: It’s absolutely a beautiful day. A little bit cold compared to Bali or Malaysia where I’ve just come back from, but I can’t complain.

Tyrone: Excellent. Well, I know that a few listeners would probably know who you are. You’re from Brisbane, but maybe share with listeners your story on how you got into internet marketing, a little bit more about your background as well.

West: Sure. Well, I’ll kind of give you the executive summary so we’ve got some really good content to tackle today. I’m Asian, if the listeners out there don’t know. My parents are Malaysian background. And you being Asian as well, Tyrone, it’s very, you know, culturally strict, so to speak, in terms of the upbringing that they’ve given me and the advice they give you and the conditioning they give you as a kid. You know, I have to talk about it a little bit later on but their advice was always, “We want you to become a professional. We want you to work hard, study hard and far up and get a good job, get a good salary and go from there.” So I started down that path and I ended up doing three degrees: two Masters degrees, an undergraduate degree.

And while I was studying academically, I was self educating myself during my spare time. And I quickly realized that getting that job or working for somebody else, making them rich, wasn’t going to get me where I wanted to get. So when I finished—I stick with finishing things when I start things, especially things like degrees—so I ended up finishing those degrees but I have never actually worked using any of the three I did which, to this day, bugs my parents very much.

Tyrone: A bit like me. [Laughs]

West: A bit like you. Yeah. I mean… I don’t know… I still feel that I learned a hell of a lot from studying. And there are lots of other things you’ll learn from academia aside from learning how to get a good job.

So I ended up searching for opportunities that would fit my criteria of where I wanted to go. And the internet definitely—back in the day, Ed Dale, with his Underachiever method, that was how I got into it. I got a letter in the post from him and read about all these guys who were creating ebooks and just setting up a site and just making a killing. And that really interested me back then. And my thought was, ‘If I could create a website and just leave it and make passive income for the rest of my life…’—I mean, it was pretty naïve back then. We all know today it’s much more competitive and it’s very difficult to take a step out forever and expect your site to keep going. It’s a very dynamic environment and things are always changing. But back then, I still loved the idea and it’s still true today, that you can actually make money 24 hours a day, 7 days a week regardless of what you’re doing as long as you run a smart business.

So that’s how I kind of got into internet marketing. And I just love the leverage concept. I was getting introduced to Kiyosaki back then and he talks about passive income, building assets, working once and getting paid forever. And all those things appealed to me and I decided to take that journey.

Tyrone: That’s fantastic. And it sounds like you’ve done quite a lot in such a short period of time and you don’t look your age actually. I thought you were probably about like—from looking at your picture—probably early 20s? But uh…

West: Yeah, I appreciate that. I still get asked for ID at night clubs and uh… you know, at one point it was insulting. But now I just take it as a compliment.

Tyrone: [Laughs] Well that’s good then. At least you’ve still got a lot ahead of you too. Fantastic.

If someone is new to online marketing, maybe just starting out as well, maybe share with them what are the top three tips of how they can start their own internet business, just from your experience as well.

West: Sure. Today’s environment, as I was saying before, is really competitive. However, more people are getting online and there are much more opportunities out there. So I still think, honestly think, today or whenever the person hears this interview, is going to be an amazing time to get online. And more and more businesses are getting online. And if you’re not online and your competitors are, you really are on the backburner and you’re going to be overtaken in terms of market share very shortly. So I truly believe that everyone should be—in some way, shape or form—online.

But you know, there is an easy way and there’s a hard way. And a couple of tips that I usually give people who ask me is really sit down and do an inventory of your skills and what you enjoy and what you don’t enjoy doing. And the biggest mistake I see people doing is trying to do everything by themselves—all the technical stuff, all the marketing stuff, all the internet stuff—and they start researching and they start doing a one man show and being too stingy to hire out teams and members, virtual staff to help them out. And you know, a year, two years go by…they’ve made progress but it’s been very, very slow and very, very minimal and they haven’t really accelerated their results.

So rather than if they had focused on what they’re good at—I mean, are they good at dealing with people? Are they good at interviewing people? Are they good at putting information and content together? Are they good at shooting videos and doing multimedia—whatever it is that they’re good at, they focus on that and build around them a team of people who have complementary skills and to focus on that. So that would be my first point. And feel free to comment or add your two cents there, Tyrone.

Tyrone: I totally agree with you. I think with any business that’s starting out, even from my personal experience, I think, yes, you look at the money and you go, ‘financially, you can’t afford this, you can’t afford that,’ so you end up doing everything. But as you start to grow, the real turning point from my own business and also for all businesses I’ve seen is once you’re starting to reach a point where there’s enough business to be able to cover, you can start to probably outsource some of your work. And I actually discovered how to outsource it relatively cheap and also with really good people to be able to help me and back me up as well, which is another story there anyway.

But yes, definitely, if you can, sit down and start looking at your systems and say, “Okay, what things can I do that I do best?” And for example, if you’re a good salesperson, you’re good at dealing with customers and customer service, you might want to be that kind of site and then say, for example, to get someone else to develop your websites and handle all your administration side of things and you continue to bring the sales. Obviously, once you get to a certain level in your business, you probably want to try and systemize it as much as you can so that you can step away from it and focus on other things.

So yeah, I totally agree with you. That is a big, big tip to give for anyone who’s starting out their business.

West: Great. Now the second point I want to make is that people, when they get started, they tend to hop and jump and continually try different and new concepts. And with the amount of gurus and internet marketers and people selling systems on eBay, on affiliate marketing, on adwords, there’s [08:33] dumb blogging…there’s just unlimited ways of making money online. And it is very, very easy.

And this is the trap that I fell into when I first got started: to sign up to a lot of lists and just get bombarded with emails with different people selling different things all the time. And I invested a lot of money in a few of those. You know, trying to chase 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 different projects or ventures and making a little bit of progress on each one is definitely the wrong way to go about it as opposed to focusing on one or two and making them monetizable and making me money, putting money in your bank account, before you move on to the next one. Or what I would recommend is continue to ramp it up and make it really good and just pretty much cut off supplies to all the other concepts.

So recently, I actually unsubscribed from pretty much every single person’s list or I either put them in a filter in one of my emails so I don’t actually get anyone’s emails now. It’s actually been liberating to log in and just have really focused messages and correspondence coming in.

Tyrone: Oh yeah, I totally agree with you. And I think the biggest thing as well, too, is email can be the biggest distraction. You probably have noticed, sometimes with some of my websites or some of my emails is that I send out an automated reply response and I don’t check emails until Tuesdays and Thursdays. So the only place you can probably get through me is through my support ticket system. Or if you personally know me, you can get my personal email address. But aside from that, I don’t usually check my email that often as well. So it’s a big distraction that I think a lot of people don’t realize how much time it takes just by checking one or two emails every hour.

West: Yeah. And the thing with emails is that you don’t plan for what’s in the emails, like for example, if one of the gurus or one of the people that you follow sends out a really interesting email, it might take you fifteen minutes to watch one of their videos and then another fifteen minutes to read their sales page and see what it’s all about. And before you know it, you’ve lost an hour that you haven’t planned for.

So the thing with the internet is—and I know we’re speaking mostly about the internet here to people listening on the call—but it’s very, very easy to get distracted. And unless you have amazing discipline (which I don’t), so I need to put things in place to enable me to not get distracted. And that’s things like setting up autoresponders for my stuff—exactly what you said—and creating filters and putting blocks on certain sites at certain times of day and putting timers on them. I mean this is what works for me that I’ve really figured out in the last couple of years or so doing this. Because if I was just to open up a browser and say, okay, what are we doing today? It’s just going to be a recipe for disaster. So I know my weaknesses and I really play towards my strengths.

Tyrone: That’s great.

One thing I just really, really noticed—that you pointed out, West—you notice your weaknesses or you know what your weaknesses are. And if people can just sit down maybe for half a day or so and just look at what their strengths and weaknesses are, it’s amazing what you become true/through to yourself about. And then you can actually decide what things you’re good at and then obviously, try to outsource or try to get other people to help you with dealing with those things that you’re not good at and, as you said, systems in place to help you or stop you from doing things that you don’t need to do that probably eat up a lot of your time is so, so crucial because everybody has the same amount of time in the day, but it’s depending on what you do within those hours over the day.

So yeah, I totally agree with you. And what would you say your third point would be?

West: Well, for me the third point would—and you spoke briefly about this before—was when you’re actually getting virtual employees or physical employees to come along, take great care in hiring and great care in training and take great care in rewarding them. And I think in the long run… Because for me, for example—and I only speak from my own experience—hiring people from India, Romania, Singapore, these people have very low wages over there and in order for you to keep them and keep them happy, it’s actually not that hard: offering them wages that are above what they have monthly over there and to be able to keep in touch with them and to speak with them and to give them regular training on what you’re doing and check out with them and that sort of stuff is invaluable in them staying and working hard for you and maintaining that level of work. Rather than if you do it slapdash, then they’re just going to leave or get approached by someone else and you’ve got to spend time again trying to hire someone else. And that’s sort of a real kick in the butt for your business.

So that would kind of be my third one. There are plenty more out there but feel free to add on to that, Tyrone.

Tyrone: Yeah, absolutely. Experience wise, hiring and training staff is always, always not the… It’s key to your business but it’s not always the easiest thing to do as well because once you’re gradually getting your work given to them, you start to realize or still need to continue to do your work at the same time, which is like a double edged sword: you either do it yourself or you outsource it somewhere else but you still have to train them. And at the beginning it’s always hard because you are spending a lot more time with them.

West: Yeah. And I’ll just give you a little tip there. One of the things I’ve been doing of late is when I do something now, I actually Camtasia it or record it. And so I only have to do something once and that becomes a training video that I can use forever. So I’ll actually shoot it as I’m doing it once. I’ll take the time to explain it and I’ll take the time to explain the foundations behind it, why I’m doing it and what I want you to do so I actually do it as if I’m training someone. So it will take me a little bit long for that one time but then I can leverage that over and over and over again.

Tyrone: Oh definitely. And that’s what I like about what you just said: Camtasia, record it on video or document anything that you do that when you’re training your employees or people who you’re hiring full time or part time, whether it be here locally or overseas, definitely document everything that you can do and have it in a system where anyone that you hire can access that as well, such as a project management system as we talked about.

That’s fantastic. I really, really like those three top points. And for any new starters staring their own business, this stuff is just crucial and key, if you can take those away.

Also, West, you’ve created a successful membership site with Andrew and Daryl Grant called the Money Mindset. That’s really probably one of the reasons why I wanted to interview and also share with our listeners why this site was created and how does it benefit others as well.

West: Sure. Money Mindset was created because Andrew Grant—who’s a mentor of mine and someone who I respect greatly and he’s doing amazing things in the internet marketing and business world. He’s spoken at World Internet Summit and he’s one of the foremost Australian internet marketers recognized by a lot of the American gurus. They get invited to exclusive cruises and private workshops and they’re members of very exclusive clubs all around the internet scene. But I met them at one of their workshops in Brisbane. And during that time, people would come up to Andrew and sort of ask him and Daryl how they…’coz what they used to do is they used to be consultants and they used to work in jobs like most people do and slogged really hard for money. And he had a big, massive transformational shift in the way he thought about money and had a big transformational impact on his income. So people were curious and were ravenous to learn about how he did it and what kind of things he actually did to turn himself around.

And so the site is all about his journey and exactly what he did in order to shift his subconscious programs (we call them), the conditioning and the subconscious blocks that hold people back from doing stuff. And the sad thing is, most people, they don’t realize that they have blocks so they don’t realize what those blocks are. And the program is his journey and all the strategies, exercises, philosophies, tips and things that he did with his wife and his staff and his mentors in order to turn his life and his financial situation around.

So I came in as kind of like a host. I wanted to be the go between because Andrew’s an extremely busy guy and he doesn’t have the time to do everything and present it all to his audience. So he invited me over to his house for a couple of days and I just basically picked his brain, asking him every question possible and I stay in regular contact with him over the phone. I sometimes get invited to his house during the workshops before and after we chat. I document everything that he’s done and he keeps up to date with all the exercises and strategies. And the site is really an insight into how he identified his blocks, how he then ended up removing all of them and refocusing and continually changing and amplifying the good things that he’s done.

Tyrone: That’s great. Maybe just—if people are curious as well and they want to actually hop on to the membership site to have a look at it or to find out more, maybe you can share an example of what Andrew’s overcome in terms of…

West: Yeah, absolutely. I mean we’ve actually provided a really informative free site on the site. And one of our goals on the free site was to really pack it full of content. Sure, there is a membership paid site as well and that’s fantastic content. But if you actually go to the free site, which is www.money-mind-set.com, and you need to enter your email to get onto out free newsletter, but the site that comes up after that takes you through the journey of how Andrew actually… how and where he was and how he got through those. So we actually tell the whole story there. We don’t leave anything out. And we basically tell everyone some of the things that he did and what the program’s all about in exquisite detail.

Tyrone: That’s great. We’ll definitely have to get people on to it and have a listen to that as well.

West: Yeah. And I mean, I’ll just tell you briefly… you’ll see a lot of videos on that site and he invited me—as I said—to his house on the Gold Coast. And we pulled the camera out and we just spent the day shooting. So it was a lot of fun. But for example, one of his blocks was we find it really hard to make passive income or we find it hard to make income on the internet, we find it hard to follow American gurus. So these are things that he elicited from his subconscious that he then became consciously aware of. And before, he wasn’t. He was just wondering why eh was continually working his butt off and not getting anywhere, which is what a lot of people find themselves in. So that’s just kind of some of the blocks that he had. And obviously, you come up with your own blocks.

And on that site, we actually have exercises where we teach you how to do some of the stuff as well. So it’s not just all about the site and how it’s created. We give you a lot of content as well. So if you can spare an hour or two going through this site and listening to the videos and I think it will be definitely worth your while even if you don’t take it further.

Tyrone: That’s great. It sounds really, really interesting and I can’t wait to probably hop on and have a look at it as well too.

And I’m glad that there’s a lot of good content in there because I think a lot of people also have a similar block to what Andrew’s made…

West: Exactly. I mean, one of the things that attracted me to the Grants is that they hate sales hype. Personally, it’s a personal hate of theirs. So you won’t go on and see all these red pointing arrows and flashing lights and big sales pitches and stuff like that. They really, really dislike it. And it comes through in their marketing.

I told you before that I unsubscribed to almost everyone’s list. There’s like two or three people that I have stayed on because I actually enjoy their marketing because it’s so content rich. And Andrew and Daryl are one of those few people that I’ve stayed on their list.

Tyrone: Yeah, that’s very, very interesting because when we say that… I guess, looking at so many different areas of the market and the thing is, is that there are so many marketers out there who are very, very sales orientated and it really comes back down to also something—within Australia, let’s say, it’s because a lot of us don’t like to be pushed or sold to.

West: Yeah. Look, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with selling. With Andrew and Daryl, they take the time to build relationship first. And because they have that trust and that rapport with you, it’s okay that they can sell to you. But what I find with a lot of the other guys is the first message you get from them is, “Hey, buy my system for $997.” And that’s the first message you ever get from them. They haven’t even given you anything. They haven’t told you who they are. They haven’t given you any good free content. They haven’t established themselves in the market. So there’s a big difference there.

But selling in itself isn’t too bad. It’s just, I think, Andrew and Daryl go to great efforts to maintain a ratio of selling to building good content and good relationships.

Tyrone: Yeah, most definitely. Actually, in talking about that I think the key is a lot of people are skeptical, particularly within the internet marketing, that they’re always expecting to get onto a long sales page, read through it and then at the end there’s just a dull figure there and go “BUY NOW.” I usually skip over all these when I’m looking at them. I actually want to get something first to see what kind of quality of work they’re going to present. It builds strong rapport as well, too, with the customer.

West: Exactly. And the perfect example of that is Rich Schefren’s Reports on Internet Business and Yaro’s Blog Mastermind reports and that kind of stuff. And these guys are really smart because they sell it as a report but it’s actually a sales page. But when you’re reading it you don’t feel like you’re being sold to because it’s packed full of such good content. And that’s the same philosophy of the Grants and it’s the same philosophy we took on our Money Mindset site.

Tyrone: Excellent. Well, that’s an excellent, excellent tip for anyone, if they’re looking to do anything like this on the internet as well.

Maybe we’ll take a step back in terms of your self and maybe if we could hop into a time machine and go back to when you just got started, what kind of business advice would you give yourself when you’re first starting out?

West: Well, I think—as I spoke about before—not trying to do everything at once and not trying to be the one man team. There’s so much learning available out there now—like on YouTube, for example, or even just Google—that you could get lost in months or years, literally, of learning and teaching yourself how to do a lot of the stuff.

Now I think it is excellent to want to know how to do things but I don’t think people should actually do things on their own. And I think once they understand how it’s done and why it needs to be done, they need to be the strategist. They need to be the person sitting at the top of their own business and building that team. So I would have saved myself, literally, at least sixteen, seventeen months’ worth of heartache if I had taken that bit of advice.

But having said that…also, I do believe that when you first start out it’s a very steep learning curve. And to try some of the things on your own is probably a good thing so you get a feel for it. But don’t get bogged down in sort of being cheap in getting some other people because it will just halt your progress. When you decide what your dollar value time is worth per hour and you can hire someone out to do it for much less than that and you do it yourself, you’re leaving money on the table.

Tyrone: Most definitely. I like that advice. It’s something that I think every new starter or beginner to internet marketing struggles with as well. That’s excellent.

Well, the other thing—I guess you’ve mentioned as well—is Andrew and Daryl Grant are your mentors as well. Do you have any other mentors or people that you model off as well?

West: Absolutely. And I like to break this up into kind of two categories. And the first one is real life mentors: people who I can call up personally or meet face to face. And obviously, the other mentors: people who I’ve learned from…from books and tapes and CDs, DVDs and on the internet. And I have many, many different people that I follow and embrace their philosophies.

Actually, earlier this year I went to an Anthony Robbins’ Date with Destiny seminar, six days of amazing information on how to master your emotions for an amazing life. And I embrace his philosophies fully and wholly. And you know, in my personal life, obviously, Andrew and Daryl have been great to me.

It depends on the area. I mean… I think if you’re looking for mentors in relationships, you’ll go to someone different. If you’re looking for mentors in property, you go to someone different. Internet…you go to someone different. And even within the internet, blogging, for example, you know, Yaro and Gideon are my go to people.

So yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s crucial to have them. But one of the pieces of advice I would give to people that people always find really amazing when I tell them is that I turn my bathroom and I turn my kitchen and I turn my car into a university. So I always have a mentor playing whenever I’m in those three places.

So whenever in the morning when I go through my morning routine, I have a system set up in my bathroom where I just hit play and however long I spend in there—ten, fifteen minutes—I’m listening to…at the moment, I’m actually listening to a guy called Marshall Sylver. He’s got a great program called Passion Profit Power. And it’s all about relationships and business and that sort of stuff.
And when I’m cooking in the kitchen or doing anything preparing a meal, I’ll hit play on my system set up there… And so when my body is active but my mind is free, I then use that opportunity to engage my mind.
And especially when I’m driving. Because when I’m driving, obviously, your mind is free to contemplate, listen and learn.
And because I actually also spend a lot of time in the gym, whenever I’m at the gym giving my body an awesome workout, I’m also giving my mind an awesome workout.

So it’s not that hard to set up a system in those three, four places. And wherever you’re going you’re always learning.

Tyrone: That’s fantastic. I’ve picked up something as well too and I’m going to try and implement some things out of this because, for me, I go swimming in the mornings. And I guess, obviously, the hardest thing is getting some electronic stuff into the water. It wouldn’t be the best thing to do. But starting in the morning, you’re fresh when you’re in the bathroom listening to some good stuff and having maybe a sheet of daily goal setting and also inspirational quotes also get your mind going as well.

West: Yeah, absolutely. And I think Tony talks about a thing called the Hour of Power in the morning. And I follow this religiously. And that’s the first things you do when you get up in the morning. You know, my first sixty minutes are actually already taken up and I go through a whole list of things that I do, including asking ‘power questions,’ going through some ‘power emotions,’ firing off some ‘power anchors,’ looking after my health—so drinking water and some power breathing. There’s a whole list of things that I do in the morning that are already preprogrammed that no matter what happens for the rest of the day, I’m in an amazing state already.

So yeah, depending on your mentor and depending on what they’ve taught you, the next best thing you need to do now is to implement what they teach.

Tyrone: Yeah. Well just as an example, can I ask you what is one or two things that you do first thing in the morning—as you mentioned—some of the things that you run through?

West: Sure. Well, the very first thing I do is ask my ‘power questions.’ Tony’s a big believer in that the quality of the questions that you ask dictates the quality of your life. And so some of those questions include, “What am I incredibly grateful for today?”

And as soon as I wake up, that’s the first question I ask: ‘What am I grateful for?’ And you know what, Tyrone? Every single day I come up with three to four things that I’ve never thought of before that I’m incredibly grateful for. And when you put yourself in a state of gratitude first thing when you wake up, it’s a good day no matter what happens in that day. So I ask myself, “What I am incredibly excited about today?” I ask myself who’s in my life that I love and who loves me. And I ask myself, “What am I passionate about today?”

So those are three or four questions that I really get associated, emotionally to those questions. And if you feel the emotion when you ask yourself that question, then you’re already in a powerful state in order to start off your day. I mean most people when they get up, they hit the snooze button and start swearing at themselves. I mean I would ask my friends, “What’s the first thing you do when you get up in the morning?” And that’s what most of them say. And I’m absolutely shocked with that response. I mean, what a crazily bad way to start your days, just to swear at yourself and wish that there was no snooze button. So that’s three or four questions I ask immediately.

And then I have a post that I’ve created listing out all my values and my rules for the day and I go through that with some power breathing and water. And Eben Pagan has some really good stuff that he’s helped me with in his time management and also in my routines which I go through. And I utilize some of his strategies as well and his—what’s… it’s on the tip of my tongue… I can’t remember the program…

Tyrone: I think it’s similar to… because Yaro mentioned recently in one of his posts as well because he’s following Eben Pagan’s program as well. Yeah, we’ll pull it up and put it on the blog post a little bit later on.

West: Cool.

Tyrone: That’s fantastic. Those guys are really, really good mentors: Anthony Robbins, Eben Pagan. Yeah, all the stuff that you do, I think, is definitely something that people should be just trying to implement. I mean I take time out in the mornings anyway to read my Bible and focus spiritually and be grateful.

West: Definitely. Awesome.

Tyrone: It’s definitely something that people need to do. And it comes back down to your core because if you don’t have a good mindset and also the right core values within yourself, it’s very hard to try and open yourself up to do other things. And you will start to see things happen once you actually be connected within yourself as well rather than hitting the snooze button and starting to swear first thing in the morning.

West: Yeah. So I mean, the crux of it is the combination of states that you’re in—emotional states—dictates the quality of your life and your productivity. So you can be in a powerful, productive and hyped up state ready to work, ready to go, ready to play hard then you’re going to have a much, much higher chance of powering through what you need to compared to if you’re in a flat, deflated, really bad state. And once you understand that states and emotions dictate your results, you won’t risk not going through proven routines to get yourself into those states.

Tyrone: Yeah. Actually, when you say that, I correlate this to sport because I was heavily involved in a lot of different sporting activities as a young kid and also on the way up to university, such as getting into dragon boating and also involved in athletics. And the thing is, is having the coaches there, they give you the tips and the necessary mindsets to actually get you focused, ready to go into a race for example. And what I remember before going to a race was actually going through a mentally preparation. And the mental preparation was actually to run yourself through a race, imagining through your mind as though you were actually running through that race and seeing which points are going to be, where your power phase is going to be or where you’re going to actually say, for example, going to a long stride—just for example.

But if you can actually put this into a business sense in terms of how you run your day, how you’re going to plan your day in your mind and how you’re going to actually go about completing those goals, it’s actually very, very similar and the mindset is very, very easily applicable to your business as well. So I can see the strong correlations between sport and business and…

West: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know what? Before I decided to focus online, I studied exercise physiology—that was one of my degrees in human movements. And we used to do studies where we would get elite athletes to visualize their sports, I mean, sprinters and tennis players and rowers. And we would hook up EMG electrodes to their muscles. And we would find that their muscles would fire off when they were visualizing the activity as if they were actually doing it. So that’s scientific proof that visualization is definitely something that the mind cannot tell the difference between: imagined and real.

Tyrone: Yeah. That is so powerful. Wow.

West: And just one other thing, I mean, to relate it to the viewers…has anyone ever had a dream so real that they were vividly doing those or found themselves doing whatever it was that they were dreaming about? For some people, if they can prove that that actually happens to them, that’s going to be more powerful than even science.

Tyrone: Yeah. Well, I mean if you’ve woken up in your dream feeling as though you were actually physically there…

West: Yeah, yeah. I mean has anyone ever woken up in a sweat or in a state of real panic? And I’m sure everyone who’s listening to this call has. And it’s all in your imagination and yet your body, physiologically, is reacting to an imagined event in real life.

Tyrone: In real life, yeah. That’s amazing. The subconscious plays a very vital role as well too. Great.

And maybe…since we’ve talked quite a lot about personal development and also the internet marketing and so forth, you might also want to share with… if you’ve got any plans for the rest of the year or any business ventures you’re probably looking into.

West: An advocate of my own advice, in that when I tell people try not to diversify too much and do too many things. Because I was listening to Mike Filsaime (who’s another guy that I follow) and he says, basically, if you’ve got five to ten different ventures, in thirty days time you’ll have made fifteen percent progress on five different ventures and you’re making zero dollars. As opposed to focusing on one venture, after thirty days it’s making money. And then you focus on the next venture and after sixty days that’s making money. As opposed to after sixty days, all five or only thirty percent completed.

I mean, I get offers all the time from people to, you know, “Come join me. Do this…” “And come show me do that…” “And can we do this…” “And what do you think of this…” And I’m sure you do, too. And anyone who’s got any sort of presence online does that. But you really need to decide what is your core skill and where you want to take your business and what’s going to be the biggest bank for your buck online and stick with that.

But for me, I just went to Bali and Malaysia and we saw a lot of good contacts for potential importing. And that’s something I’ve actually been interested in ever since I started. One of my eBay businesses a while ago, I used to import a lot of golf putters. I used to focus on golfing equipment because golfers are very passionate about paying a lot of money for their equipment. And I also used to buy a lot of really, really poorly listed putters and just take good photos and write a good description and get double the amount when I resold it.

So that’s something that I’ve been looking at. And I really feel that once people are on a good thing… For example, my membership site, I get some really good feedback from that but I haven’t really ramped up the marketing to its maximum effect for the Money Mindset. And doing things like this interview will definitely help. But there are a ton of marketing activities that I’ve been meaning to do and I want to spend the rest of the year really consolidating on what I’ve done and exponentially increasing the projects that I currently have rather than taking on new stuff.

Tyrone: That’s great. And as you have mentioned all the way throughout the call, it’s all about focus and you definitely, definitely show that. So yeah, I really wish you all the best with those projects. It sounds really fun and it’s really exciting too.

And finally, how can people maybe find out more about any of your other coaching programs and services, maybe even just getting contact with you?

West: Listen, it’s been a pleasure chatting. And if anyone wants to find out more about the membership site, obviously the site’s—I’ve given you the URL before—but it’s basically just www.money-mind-set.com. And if you want to learn more about the process, that site will give you everything you need. If you’d like to take it to the next level and actually get weekly exercises and specific strategies and basically me and Andrew just coaching you personally, then that site would be a good place to start in terms of getting your mind right.

I also have a blog which I was chatting to you before this call that I really seriously need to get up to date. I started it as a hobby but I think in the next year or two, that’s actually something I want to start driving traffic to and creating as more of an information hub that people can come to with regular updates. But people can contact me through that. That’s www.westloh.com.

Yeah, and I just wanted to mention too, as well, that if someone’s looking at making money and they don’t want to cerate their own product, we just launched our affiliate program as well. So that will enable people to sell a product that they didn’t create. They then get paid half of the money each month and it’s a monthly program so it’s a good passive income. And all the need to do is just put ‘/affiliate’ on the front of the money-mind-set.com and that’ll tell them more about how they can do that.

Other than that, I’m happy for people to get my contact details from you, Tyrone.

Tyrone: That sounds great. Well, thank you so much again, West. And it’s been an absolute pleasure to be able to interview you today and also share with our listeners with what you’ve done as well. And yeah, I’m really excited to actually get this up and to blog and hopefully, there’ll be a lot of great people to listen to this as well.

West: Absolutely. And look, I hope I’ve provided some value to anyone and I really look forward to hearing more of your success as well and the success of all the listeners on the call.

Tyrone: Fantastic. Well thanks again.

West: It’s a pleasure.

SPEAKERS:
WEST: West Loh
NOAH: Noah St. John

WEST: Okay. Welcome, folks. My name’s West. And I’m here at the Aussie Rob Lifestyle Summit with my good friend, Noah St. John. Welcome, Noah.

NOAH: Thanks, West. Great to meet you.

WEST: You’ve traveled all the way from uh… yeah, a long way to come here, didn’t you?

NOAH: It was a very long trip, yeah. On the other side of the planet. So…

WEST: Definitely.

NOAH: It’s a big ocean. Very large.

WEST: It is. It is. Now you’re here to talk to Aussie Rob’s group about Mindset.

NOAH: Yup.

WEST: And obviously, there are a lot of traders here. But, everyone who’s looking to create wealth needs some sort of work on their mindset. So Noah, what can you share with us and the listeners out here today, for some of the people who are looking at improving their wealth—I know for you and your philosophy is you actually help people take their foot off the brake and let themselves succeed.

NOAH: Exactly. Well, see, everybody wants to succeed. I mean, if you try to find a person who doesn’t want to be wealthy, that’s not going to happen. And so, why do we hold ourselves back on success? Well, what I teach is two things, really, that hold ourselves back. And those are the ‘why-tos and why-not-tos;’ and the ‘conscious and the subconscious.’

So think about it like two pictures. So the first picture is a scale. So like you’ve seen in a courtroom, like the Libra scales? And so on the one hand, you have the why-tos of doing something, and on the other, the why-not-tos. So the benefit and the cost of doing anything that you do and that’s just—

WEST: You weigh up— you always weigh up those scales?

NOAH: We’re always doing this in our mind. I mean, whether you think you’re doing it or not, you always are.

WEST: It drives people’s behavior.

NOAH: It completely drives their behavior. And so, we have our perceived benefit and our perceived cost. So like, for the people who are here, you know, they had to pay a lot of money to be here. And so why would you do that? Why would you pay that cost? Well, because your perceived benefit outweighed that cost, whatever it is. So, anything that you do is based on those why-tos and why-not-tos. I mean, where you live, what car you drive, what you had for breakfast this morning…it all comes down to your why-tos, why-not-tos.

So you say, “Okay. Well, that’s simple. That makes sense. But then, why would I hold myself back, Noah? Are you trying to say that I don’t want to succeed?”

WEST: ‘Cause people know this stuff intuitively, right? Maybe. Perhaps.

NOAH: Well, they know it a little bit. But here’s where it gets tricky. And here’s the tricky part—but it’s actually simple when you look at it: it’s like an iceberg, okay? And the other part that I show people is about the conscious and the subconscious mind. So it’s like an iceberg. So about five percent of our thoughts, behaviors and actions are conscious—like the top part of an iceberg, right? Just that little five percent. But the vast ninety five percent is below the surface. It’s hidden. You can’t see it.

So when you look at those two things—the why-tos, why-not-tos; the conscious and the subconscious—it actually becomes very simple: which is that everybody has the why-tos of success on the conscious level. That means everyone wants to succeed. That’s why we spend money, that’s why we read books and go to seminars. We want the thing called ‘Success,’ whatever that is—more money, more time, you know, your own island in the Caribbean, whatever that is. That is what we want consciously.

But have you ever stopped to think about what are the subconscious why-not-tos of success? What I mean by that is have you ever thought about the cost of actually allowing yourself to succeed? And most people never thought about that. And they say, “Well… ”

WEST: They haven’t even considered it.

NOAH: No, because no one’s ever—

WEST: They don’t even know it exists.

NOAH: No one’s ever talked about it before. And so you have these motivational speakers—which I’ll get to in a second—and they’re telling us one thing but it’s not the whole picture. They’re not saying anything wrong per se, but it’s not the entire picture. So when you look at the subconscious, why-not-tos of success—and I ask my audiences, my coaching, my mentoring students this all the time—why would you… what are your why-not-tos, your cost of letting yourself succeed? And they go, “Well, it’s going to take way too much time,” or “I don’t want the extra responsibility. Look at my to-do list. I’m already doing way too much. I can’t add one more thing.” “What if my family doesn’t approve of me?” “What if somebody’s jealous of me?” “What if friends don’t like me anymore?” “What if I go for it and lose it all?” See? There’s all these subconscious why-not-tos.

But here’s the thing: we’ve been fighting the ninety five with the five. Right? Look at that iceberg. You’ve got the five which is the why-to; the ninety five is the why-not-to.

WEST: They’re gonna lose, aren’t they?

NOAH: Which one’s going to win? Yeah, I mean you gotta…

Now, this is the funny thing though. The five can win a little bit. And this is why you get these—I call it the roller coaster effect:
You start to succeed. And let’s say you’re doing trading or if you’re in internet marketing, multi-level marketing—whatever it is you’re doing to make money—and it starts to work. And then what do you do? You get up here and you freak out. That’s when you get afraid and you’re like, “Uh-oh. I don’t like that. I’m too scared.” And then you go down and you’re like, “Oh wait, I don’t want that either.” So you go back up…

WEST: They sabotage themselves.

NOAH: Exactly.

WEST: Unconsciously.

NOAH: Nobody does this on purpose. This is the key here, is that, nobody gets up in the morning and says, “Wow, this looks like a great day. I think I’ll hold myself back from success today,” you know. “I’m going to read this book and go to the seminar and sabotage myself better.” Nobody does that because it’s on the subconscious level.

But it’s very simple. Just imagine that you’re driving down the road with one foot on the break and one foot on the gas. Then someone comes along and says, “Okay, West, step on the gas harder.” Are you going to get where you want to go?

WEST: You’ll probably break your car.

NOAH: You’re just going to ruin your car faster, right? So all these people are telling you to spend more money, right, and say, “Well, here’s the problem, West. You’re using the wrong gas. You need a more expensive gasoline.” And that doesn’t work.

“Well, wait. You know, you should get new tires. Get all new tires.” Well, you know what? That didn’t work.

So you know what? “You should just get a whole new car.” “You now, the red one didn’t work; get a blue one.” You know what? You’re still doing the same thing. You’ve got your foot on the break. Why? It’s not your fault. But no one’s told you—number one—why it’s there and then no one’s given you a system that actually gets your foot off the break.

So that’s why, when people use The Secret Code of Success (the teaching that I teach), they start doubling, tripling, quintupling their income because they got their foot off the break; not pushing harder with the five percent but letting the ninety five percent go, “Oh, I guess I can let myself succeed now.”

WEST: Definitely.

NOAH: It’s that easy.

WEST: Well, thanks for sharing, Noah. And stay tuned for some of Noah’s other materials that he’ll be talking about a little later on. Or you can go visit some of Noah’s stuff at his website at SuccessClinic.com. But for now, we’re very privileged to have him with us and we’re going to enjoy the rest of the week.

NOAH: Sounds great, West. See you soon. Bye bye.

WEST: Thanks.

Speakers:
West: West Loh
Mario: Mario

West: Good day, folks! I’m here with Mario La Marre, who has just given us an event here at the Lifestyle Summit here on the Gold Coast.

Mario, thanks for joining us.

Mario: Thank you West.

West: Now Mario talked about how to trade options on commodities, which is kind of like an almost secret kind of trading strategy. Not a lot of people know about it.

So Mario, why don’t you give us a quick intro, like a 20 second elevator pitch on who you are and what people come to see you for, and then we’ll maybe talk about some of the things that you teach people.

Mario: I run a lot of the trading for the Aussie Rob’s Lifestyle Trader, the Lifestyle Trader Pty Limited, and we run events in all the capital cities around Australia, New Zealand, Singapore. We’re also running training in Vegas and Orlando. We’ve got a couple of training sessions. So we’re expanding really rapidly.

West: Great. Fantastic. And so when you—because you do a lot of speaking as well on stage, right? Very highly sought out. What kind of strategies do you mainly teach people about…?

Mario: Well, our main area is basically options, foreign exchange and commodities and also not only just to trade the options on spots but also the options on commodities and soon to release options on forex.

West: Options on forex? Wow.

Mario: Oh, that’s a secret. Don’t tell anyone.

West: That’s a secret? Okay. We’ll put that under wraps.

So in terms of your teaching, do you normally teach them the actual strategies or do you actually give them like maybe a plan to help them with their mindset? Is it a holistic approach?

Mario: Definitely. Definitely a holistic approach. We talk about market psychology or psychology of trading. Very important. We’ve got a lot of people who are just starting out and they come in to do training and they never ever had exposure to the stock market.

West: Complete beginners.

Mario: Complete beginners. But we’ve got people coming back for the live trading just to go back to the basics: briefings, events.

West: People who have been trading for a long time and just want to come and learn the foundations.

Mario: Yeah. Bring it back to basics. Sometimes people need to bring it back to basics. We’ve got a beginners course but we also have an intermediate course. And we also run events. And then we’ve got specialized courses that we’re also looking at. And training people like options on commodities is a specialized course.

West: Very specialized.

Mario: Yeah, yeah. It’s a specialized course. We also put together a psychology course based around the psychology of trading.

West: Definitely. Definitely. And obviously you have the credibility because you live and breathe what it is that you teach and you actually are an active trader yourself.

Mario: Definitely. I’m a Life Trader myself and obviously be able to show people how to do this and sort of get themselves out of the rat race. That’s one of my passions. It’s…

West: Helping people.

Mario: Yeah, definitely.

West: So what would be one of the main problems that people make—I mean, people come to you and they say, “Mario…” What are one of the main issues that you see that people have that kept holding them back from their trading? Well, not just trading, just wealth creation in general.

Mario: They want everything overnight. But definitely, as the moment somebody is jumping into trading is they want to become a full time trader, professional trader overnight without any education.

West: It’s pretty unrealistic.

Mario: It is unrealistic. They want to come in. They want to earn more money than people who have spent years at university, I mean years at university to get to the status where they’re at and to be earning the income that they’re earning. And these people spent years at university.

West: And they probably even spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in their education.

Mario: I mean I take an exempt for my own life. I come from an IT background. And I walked into a technology course, an IT course, computer course. As soon as you walk out of it the information is already outdated because technology is moving so fast.

So I was always, always updating my skill set, just forever learning new stuff. And then all of a sudden, we want to come in and trade and earn more money than our CEOs and people who have put so much time into their education. And we want to do it overnight!

West: Exactly. So the takeaway lesson from this little tip that Mario’s given is to kind of be patient.

Mario: There’s no such thing as a get rich quick scheme West. I do not believe in get rich quick schemes because if you can get rich quick, you can lose it just as quick.

West: Eaxctly. And that’s a tagline you don’t hear that often. It’s very powerful.

Mario: Yeah, definitely. It is this: it’s just patience and it’s also a lot of—hey, I learned to drive. And once I learned to drive, I eventually grabbed a little bit of maturity in driving. I don’t learn to drive and then as soon as I got my license, get on the Formula One track and drive a Formula One car. If you want to do that, you’ve got to train.

West: Absolutely. And I think Mario was talking yesterday to a group of elite traders. And these guys have been trading for a long time. And when Mario told that story, you can see everyone in the audience sort of shake their heads and they were thinking ‘geez I might have fallen into that trap’ of wanting to drive that Formula One car when I’m just kind of, you know, you don’t need to actually go through the process of getting to the place where you deserve to drive a Formula One car instead of ‘Here I am. I’ve got my learners license and now I’m ready to take on Michael Schumaker!’

Mario: Exactly.

West: So Mario, if someone is looking to learn more about your philosophies and wanting to learn more about your trading philosophy, how can they find out more about you? Do you have a presence on the web or…?

Mario: I actually work for Lifestyle Trader. So a lot of the training that we do is on the website.

West: Great. So just basically go to the Aussie Rob’s Lifestyle Trading website, maybe join one of the workshops and you’ll probably be one of the trainers?.

Mario: Most definitely, yes. I will be traveling around. And I have got a group of trainers who are elite in their field. And they grow. And Aussie Rob screens everyone before they come through.

West: Pretty stringent process.

Mario: Most definitely. Most definitely. We’re talking about people’s wealth when they’re coming in. And we just don’t want to give them a half baked story. It’s got to be a system whereby they can put their hand on their heart and go, ‘hey, if I stick to the rules…’’ And that’s very important: Stick to the Rules.

West: To the rules.

Mario: Yeah. There’s a methodology there. It works if you stick to the rules.

West: And it’s really impressive because during the panel session yesterday, you know, Mario’s on stage and a couple of the other really big guys, and even they had, you know, when they told the stories of their worst trade, they didn’t stick to their own rules did they?

Mario: Every story that came out from the professional traders all—their worst trade—was all when they broke the rules.

West: Exactly.

Mario: Even Aussie Rob.

West: Even Aussie Rob. So that’s another powerful lesson.

So Mario, it’s great here on the Gold Coast and we’re having an absolute ball. I thank you for your time to come take a couple of minutes to chat to myself and to the people watching.

Mario: Thank you very much, West. Thank you.

Interview with Mia Munro
(MPoweredSuccess.com)

Speakers:
West: West Loh
Mia: Mia Munro

West: Welcome, folks! We’re here on the Gold Coast at Aussie Rob’s Lifestyle Summit. But I’ve had the pleasure of taking just a couple of minutes out to steal Mia from actually speaking in there right now just to have a bit of a chit chat.

So welcome, Mia.

Mia: Thank you. Thank you.

West: Now, you spoke on the first day. And you spoke a little bit about mindset and being authentic. But I want you to just give us a 20 second elevator pitch on what you do and how you help people.

Mia: Excellent. Thank you.

Well, the way that I help people truly is really challenging people to step up and to go after what they really want. And I think we always come down to one thing—it always comes down to psychology. But not simply just mindset being one fate. We’re actually looking at much deeper than that. We want to go beneath the layers of mindset, right into the core of who you are. And it’s been so exciting to actually launch this as the new wealth generation because I’ve been on a journey where we’ve had so many different modalities, so many different mentors and incredible people worldwide who have influenced me on my own journey.

West: And I think during the seminar you spoke a little bit about your background and where you came from and some of the hardship you experienced and how that shaped you. And that was really powerful.

Mia: Thank you. Thank you. It was powerful because I have walked it. I’ve walked the path myself and I think that’s very important as I’m going to stand out there and facilitate a lot of other people’s growth and that I’m actually on the path myself.

West: Definitely. Because you came from quite a few different industries and you’ve played a few different roles. And you’re kind of like doing what kind of most people do in that they’re trying and looking for something that they’re really passionate about. And it seems like you’ve done that.

Mia: I have. I have. I’m very excited about this. Nothing’s going to stop me or stop me getting this out to the world, this new system that we’ve launched.

West: So what’s the essence of—I mean, you spent ninety minutes on stage—but what was the essence of what you shared with the crowd? It was a very elite crowd of traders. But it can be applied to really anyone.

Mia: Absolutely. The absolute essence of it is to understand your true self and to master your mindset. What does that mean? It basically means going a lot deeper than you normally would and giving a blueprint—an understanding of where you actually are now. We all know where we want to be. And we have an idea of where we want to be and that we know the best of the best have these great mindsets and they have these blueprints for success. But the big question is where are you now. So what we’re doing is finding out that information, actually giving you the detailed levels of the way that you’re great [02:37]. That’s so exciting.

West: Absolutely. And I think you also have a series of tools and strategies that enable people to find out exactly where they are.

Mia: Yeah, we do. We have the Empowered Personal Profiling System. And it’s finding out your current blueprint. It goes through multiple levels: personality profiling, temperament theories, mindsets (with major seven key mindsets). That actually hasn’t been measured before around the world. So this is the first. This is new. You come out with a score from a zero to a hundred percent of what your actual mindset is. A little confronting for some people.

West: Yeah, sure.

Mia: A little confronting. But we need to have that information. It’s like going to the doctor and getting the test. So a naturopath, for example—Wayne talked about that—and getting the real live blood analysis. This is the same thing.

West: Absolutely. And I can fully vouch for that. I mean I worked in the health and fitness industry. And whenever we worked with a client, we needed to find out where their body fat lays, girths, in order to measure their improvement. S it’s very, very powerful.

So moving into the future, Mia, you talked a little bit about your program that’s coming out. Tell us how that’s evolved and where you want to take it.

Mia: Sure. We’ve been waiting for it to actually launch—the Empowered Personal Profiling System. So we go online, live, around the world on Monday morning.

West: Which is just a couple of days away.

Mia: Just a couple of days away. Once that’s live, people will have the opportunity to get their full profile. It’s a 20 page interpretation report. So it will give you your analysis, your blood analysis as such, your mind analysis. From there, you have the opportunity to come on board and look at some CD series that we have. It’s actually about shifting the mindset.

So once we know where we are, we know where we want to go, we need to work out all the blocks that are in between. And there’s a lot of that around belief systems, values. And we can shift that rapidly. From there, you have the opportunity to come together and be part of our community. And when you’re part of our community, it’s about also feeding off a lot of other incredible people, and again, going through some massive transformation. And then you have the opportunity to come on board with us as along term personal client—friend, more importantly—and have the opportunity to grow and grow.

And as we know, we always need to be expanding our mindset. Now even where I am today, there’s another level for me to go and it’s all about surrounding ourselves with the right people and the right tools.

West: For sure. I think you were talking about mentors before and yeah, it’s a very powerful concept that we’ll definitely embrace. Can you show us, Mia, one kind of strategy that you see has been useful for a lot of people when they come to you and ask you about maybe their mindset—maybe they’re having some blocks or maybe they’re stuck, they’re plateauing—just a little bit of a teaser to give to these people that can help them, that they can take away from watching you today.

Mia: Sure. And the strategy I will share will be around actually finding out where you actually are. And the reason that that is, is there are a lot of incredible strategies about how we can shift our mindset. And we do that. But what’s different about us is we actually want to find out where you really are.

So first, we get you to run through this all/hole [05:48]. And we open your mind massively. And it happens like a clunk. For people that have this profile, it suddenly goes clunk. And before them, they see what level of personal responsibility they’re operating at, how congruent or incongruent, what level of authenticity. Do they have an abundant mindset or a scarcity mindset? And when you have that—and there’s actually a measurable score—it’s a clunk moment. So, often there’s a little bit of nurturing. Okay. Well, this is the reality. We then [06:17] (?) that over your actual financial situation. So we look at the real life. This is not just conceptual. This is about you and looking at the real life so we get the real data…

West: You confront the numbers.

Mia: We confront the numbers.

West: Yeah, that’s probably scary for some people.

Mia: It is scary. Even for myself when, you know, I noticed my own growth and my own success and I’m on the journey too, to see my self but also to see it shift. You see, the other thing is, within three months we can remeasure your mindset. You actually go through a transformation and hold yourself accountable by resetting [unfamiliar word 06:52] the test.

West: That’s awesome. It’s almost like taking a regular pit stop: recharging your batteries.

Mia: Absolutely. And then we do that with the cars, don’t we? So why can’t we do that with our mind too?

West: For sure. Wow, that’s powerful. It sounds like a great system.

So if people are looking to learn more about it or maybe take it up to join it, where do they need to go on Monday morning or if they’re watching this at a later date? What kind of action do they need to take?

Mia: Absolutely. It’s very, very easy. Just go to www.mpoweredsuccess.com.

West: Now, ‘empowered’ is spelt…

Mia: Empowered is spelt differently. MpoweredSuccess.com.

West: So go to that website. I mean it’s very easy to get the URLs.

And on that note, thank you for joining us, Mia. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.

Mia: Wonderful. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[END 07:52]

Interview with Pete Godfrey

Speakers:
West: West Loh
Pete: Pete Godfrey

West: Welcome to the call, folks! My name is West. And on the call today, I’ve got a very awesome guest today I just love talking to. He’s one of Australia’s premier or the premier (in my opinion), copywriter. And he’s actually trained the new breed of Australian copywriters you may have heard going around the direct marketing scene and marketing in general. He’s worked with the likes of some of the legends like Mal Emery and Ted Nicholas, Joe Sugarman share the stage with him and drawn massive crowds. And I’ve personally been able to experience one of Pete’s awesome workshops and was blown away by Pete’s authenticity and genuineness in sharing his content and the unique way of delivering severe personality which I absolutely love. Having been to many, many seminars, I was never, never, never bored with Pete on stage. So I think he’s going to provide us with a pretty entertaining and insightful look into what you’re going to get at the Lifestyle Summit coming up. So without further ado, Pete Godfrey, welcome to the call!

Pete: Great to be here, West. And I’m looking forward to this Lifestyle Summit. I love the people behind the organization. I love what they’re doing and we’re going to have some fun and have some great breakthroughs as well. So I’m looking forward to this one.

West: For sure. Now for people who have never heard of you before—and I know there’s a lot of people who have—but if there’s someone sitting on the call thinking, ‘Who’s this Pete Godfrey guy?’, give us a bit of a spiel, a bit of your background, Pete, where you’ve come from.

Pete: Okay. Well, my story is that I was a rebel without a clue until I was about thirty, in my early thirties. I was in manual labor and I met a gypsy that used to travel around Australia, doing all those big jobs that people do when they haven’t been universally or anything like that. However, when I got to my early thirties, I started to come across some great books like Think and Grow Rich and the Magic of Thinking Big and all those types of mindset stuff. And I realized in a very clear moment that, hey, I was a guy getting in my own way and that, hey, I can do what I damn well please. I’ve just get to get my act together, set some goals, get a burning desire and move forward. Now that’s all great but I didn’t have a vehicle.

But then I discovered what was then called mail order. And mail order was just direct response selling things via direct response through the mail and now we can do it via the mail and over the internet as well. And that was back in the late ‘90s, I started the mail order business. I started to run some ads, started to make some sales. And that was fantastic. I quit my job because the mail order business started to take off. And since then I’ve been full‑time but the interesting thing that happened then, West, was that I used to write all my information. And that’s what a copywriter is: we write ads, we write sales letters and websites and emails that sell stuff, basically. And after a year or two of running ads and running this mail order business, other entrepreneurs started to notice my ads. They sent away for my sales letters and they started to ask me who’s doing the copy? “Who’s doing your copy? Who’s writing these ads that are getting me hooked?” And when I revealed it was my self, they started to offer me work. So I sort of fell in to copywriting. And since then, I haven’t turned back.

West: Wow, what an inspirational story, Pete. And thank you for sharing that. I know you’re pressed for time this morning but I wanted you to share with the listeners what’s the one major thing that you see as a whole in most businesses with regard to their marketing?

Pete: The thing I can give these guys to take home with them right now is a question they must ask themselves before they write any promotion, any website, any ad—whatever—and this is the question: “What are you really selling?”

So let’s take life insurance for example. If you try to sell life insurance for what it is, you’ll go broke. However, the smart people know what they’re really selling. What they’re really selling here is peace of mind.

Now remember a few years ago I was doing a lot of diet promotions for a huge client in Europe. This is the type of guy that brings on four to five thousand new customers a week. Now you’ve got to be spot on. So what I did was spend a week or two on the phone with women who have tried diets before. I had to understand their mindset, West. Now I had to find out what I’m really, really selling. Now one statement that a lady said to me really clarified what I was selling. She said, “Pete, I just want to be able to get undressed in front of my husband with the lights on.” Okay? Now in a split second my heart went out to her in an emotional way. But also, the salesman inside of me was just going, “Yes!” because I knew in that instant what I was really selling. What I was really selling wasn’t a diet. I was selling sexiness. I was selling self‑confidence, a strong self‑image.

So have a look at your business. Whatever you’re selling, don’t try to sell what it is, try to sell the feelings of the end benefit of what it does. There’s a big, big difference. If you try to sell a diet for what it is—for recipes or whatever—you ain’t going to make any money. If you sell it for what it really is—sexiness, self‑image—you’ll go a long way to have a successful promotions. So that’s one big tip the people on the call can take home and the seminar hasn’t even started, West.

West: Definitely. That’s powerful stuff. And I think my friend Brett, who you’ve trained personally, calls that the ‘big idea,” the overall, essential backbone that you base everything on in your marketing messages rather than scattered little things that don’t have any effect.

Why don’t you give us just a couple of the things that you’ll be sharing in your actual presentation?

Pete: Okay. Well first off, we’re going to have some fun. And that comes with a warning because sometimes I get very excited when I start talking about making a lot of money. And that’s what this is all about—you making—

West: I love that, by the way. It gets the crowd excited. Seriously.

Pete: Yeah. I, too, get a bit excitable. And I do throw in a few jokes but that’s just me, you know.

West: It’s called personality, Pete.

Pete: Okay. It’s all those years traveling around and hanging out in bars to telling stories. Anyway, what they’re going to have is a lot of fun. But they are also going to get different strategies of advertising more effectively and marketing their business more effectively. Basically, the bottom line is to live better, less stressful business lives. And that’s what I’m going to show: How to attract clients, not chase them. And even how to charge top dollar and still have happy customers.

And that is a brilliant piece of the talk—that one—‘How to charge top dollar and still have happy customers.’ So you’re not down the bottom, going down the ‘slash the prices’ road, which is unsustainable anyway. I’m going to show you how to command top dollar while attracting high quality clients.

So basically, living better business lives. That’s what I’m all about.

West: And who needs to be at your presentation?

Pete: Business owners and sales professionals.

West: In my opinion, in any industry, regardless of whether you’re online or offline, correct?

Pete: Of course. Principles are transferrable. Everything I do is applicable online and offline. And the smart guys, smart clients, my smart members…we use all different types of media. We don’t just rely on one or two media—one is an evil number in our world—and as many ways as you can, use different media and we test them all.

West: So that’s powerful stuff, Pete. Now I’m going to ask you to say some words about some of the people you’ve worked with who are actually coming to this actual event. And I know there are some speakers there that you’ve worked with personally and who are going to add value to the event.

Pete: Yup. I know you got Pat Mesiti on. He’s a great guy. He’s all about Millionaire Mindset. And I’ve done some work for Pat over the years. I’ve written what we call the book blurb on the back of his book. Because the book blurbs, is like the ads of the book. They pick up your book at the bookstore, then they turn it over straight over to the back page. And that’s where you’ve got to grab ‘em. And that’s just one of my jobs that I do. I’ve created a template that’s very, very easy. So I’ve worked a lot with Pat.

Wayne Pickstone. He’s a naturopath but he’s a lot more than that. I always say Wayne’s like an onion. You’ll get to know him. There’s another layer.

West: He doesn’t make you cry though.

Pete: This guy is good. He gets in and finds out what’s blocking you from getting ahead and why you’re procrastinating, why you’re putting things off, why are you doing this. He’s got an uncanny ability to get in your head and find out what’s wrong and fix it so you can move forward with a clear objective.

Murray Priestley is there. I’ve worked in conjunction with Murray the last few years. We actually had he met one of my private wealth group meetings, a Peter McCoy. He’s a great guy for systems, understands marketing and you’re going to have a ball with him.

Is Ari there as well?

West: Yep, Ari’s coming along as well.

Pete: Good. Good stuff. Ari’s a great guy. And what’s even better is Ari used to be American but he’s now Australian. And he’s a great guy and he’s going to teach all about how to flip the selling process. He’s got a very unique way of building trust, of building connection and building relationships without any hardsell. That’s what I love, West. Hardselling is for people who don’t know any better. We’re all about attracting qualified clients that are already predisposed to buy from you. And that’s what I’ll be teaching. And Ari will give his own take on that.

Look, mate, it’s going to be a great few days.

West: For sure. And of course, Aussie Rob himself, the man himself.

Pete: Of course. And I’m looking forward to that. He reckons he’s going to take me fishing on his island at Christmas. So I’m going to hold him accountable for that. He likes to chill out like I do, you know. Sometimes we live a hectic lifestyle but it’s the small things in life that really get me off. And fishing with Aussie Rob for a couple of days, it’s going to be very, very relaxing and I’m going to enjoy it. So yeah, it’ll be great.

West: Definitely. Beautiful.

And I think at this seminar, Pete’s going to be sharing a lot of his strategies. He’s going to be giving you—he mentioned before—templates and some specific takeaway things that you can implement right now in your business to get some exponential results provided you stick with the implementation of it and execute it well.

So Pete, I want to thank you for your time, mate. We’re talking about the Lifestyle Summit, that I’m learning so much from you just from this chat. So I can’t imagine what you’re actually going to pump out in the actual meat and guts of the seminar. So I strongly encourage everyone to be there and you’ll get an opportunity to meet Pete in person and see what he’s all about.

Pete: Another word too, West. I’ll be around on the breaks. I’m not just coming in and talking then going away. I’m there for a couple of days. I’m more than happy to help people out on the breaks and I won’t be hiding in my room. So I’ll be there, okay?

West: Beautiful. Beautiful. Thanks for your time, Pete.

Pete: Always, West! See you there, buddy.

Interview with Noah St. John

Speakers:
West: West Loh
Noah: Noah St. John

West: Folks, welcome to the call today! I’m here with a very special guest, Noah St. John. Welcome to the call, Noah.

Noah: Well, thanks West. Great to be here.

West: I’ve had the pleasure of actually meeting Noah in person at a networking event not too long ago. But Noah’s well known for his work on The Secret Code of Success. I’ve seen him associated on a lot of media talking about mindset and motivation. He made up a word and concept called Afformations, which I’ve been learning about myself. And it really has made a significant difference in the way I think about or have thought about affirmations and the really distinct message that Noah gives. I think he’s going to share with us today on the call some of what he’s all about and also a bit about the upcoming event that he’s speaking at here in Australia, where you’re going to have the opportunity to see him live in person.

So Noah, I appreciate your company on the call.

Noah: My pleasure!

West: I know I’ve given just a brief background, but why don’t you tell us kind of where you’ve come from and your background and how you’ve come to be where you are today.

Noah: Well, I have kind of an unusual background, actually. A lot of people in this industry, as you know, are very highly successful business people or the number one salesman in this company and that company and every company that they were with. I have kind of the opposite story. I have a background of being the world’s most over‑educated underachiever. ((West laughs))

And I graduated from high school. I had all these scholarships and awards to college. And everybody called me gifted and talented and they had all these labels like that and all these expectations. And then I ended up—after I left college the first time—I ended up in a bunch of dead-end jobs. Like I was a secretary, a waiter; I was even cleaning toilets as a housekeeper. It was very frustrating because I was asking myself, “How come somebody who is supposedly gifted and talented end up working all these menial, dead‑end jobs?” So I started studying success because I really didn’t like that. I was very frustrated.

And so I started studying success and money making books and seminars and everything. And I really tried. I was very motivated. I really wanted it to work. But after a number of years of trying that stuff, I was still really not where I wanted to be. So one night I was at a seminar on eating disorders—even though I didn’t have any eating disorder, I knew a lot of people who did. Many of my friends over the years were struggling with that so I went to the seminar just to kind of learn about it—and I realized, as the speaker was talking, that even though I wasn’t starving myself of food, I was starving myself of success because I was actually settling for the crumbs of life. And so if you kind of take that leap with me, that’s where my mind went at that moment, at that night—it was October 20th, 1997—and I realized that there were lot of people like me. There had to be because there are lots of people reading all these books that I was reading and yet I knew there were a lot of people frustrated like me.

And so I actually decided to write my own book. And I didn’t know anything about publishing or things like that or even marketing or sales or business at all. I grew up in the theater. So that’s the only world I ever knew till the time I was in my 20s. And so when I started writing and wrote my first book, it really was just kind of a fluke that happened. But I started teaching people…

West: It sounds like you almost wrote it for yourself, Noah. And it had such wide implications for everyone else that it became very relevant for everyone.

Noah: I was the first guinea pig of the system, yeah. And what happened was I wrote the book and then I started teaching my friends. I just started teaching people. And they started getting amazing results and then they started telling their friends, and they told their friends—it just kind of grew from there. Then I started doing book signings at local bookstores.

And then one day I actually had the opportunity to meet Jack Canfield, who is the co‑author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul. And he looked at my book, which was self‑published at that time, and said, “This looks really good. I’ll send it to my publisher.” And then lo and behold, weeks later, the publisher of Chicken Soup for the Soul called me and said “We want to publish your first book.”

West: Wow.

Noah: That’s why I’ve been around since ’99.

West: That’s a great story.

Noah: Yeah. And so this book that just came out is my sixth book. It came out from Harper Collins, called The Secret Code of Success, and it’s really based on more than ten years of working with people around the world—over forty countries so far—sharing the system and, like you were saying earlier, really getting amazing results: I mean, helping people get rid of the head trash that’s holding them back and really increasing their income and also increasing their peace of mind, their fulfillment, lowering their stress, even losing weight, improving relationships. So all different areas.

West: It sounds like this is a process that can be applied to almost anything that people have—we call them blocks—thoughts that are holding them back.

Noah: No question about it. And that’s what I always say to people, is “I don’t tell you what success is. It’s none of my business how much money you make, what kind of car you drive, where you decide to live, what you do for a living. That’s none of my business (and really, it’s nobody’s business) but your own. It’s a personal issue, a very private issue, whatever success means. But my job is to give you the tools and the systems to get your foot off the brake because all of us have a little guy in there that basically says, ‘Who do you think you are? You can’t do this!’ and ‘You’re not good enough!’ And the problem is, not that that guy’s in there but that we listen to him.”

So even the gurus, even famous highly successful people—I mean, I’ve coached people everywhere from who are dead broke to multimillionaires—and we all have that. We all have the same fears, the same belief that we’re not enough. But the difference is you just have to have a better system to deal with it and overcome that and that’s how you can get better results.

West: Mmm. That’s powerful stuff. And I think I’ll probably ask you what you’ve noticed as the difference in some of the difficulties that people impose on themselves between even your most high net worth clients and compared to just someone who comes to see you that isn’t extremely wealthy but still has issues that they impose upon themselves. But I wanted to take a little step back and ask you what was the difference for you, Noah, before you wrote all these books and before you actually got published and started being recognized, your own mindset—you know, you had your own head trash, so to speak—how did you really get over that hurdle? And was this the evolution of the process that you put together today?

Noah: Oh, when I had that epiphany at that seminar I talked to you about, it really not only defined my life, it explained my life for the first time. And I came up with a term which I call ‘success anorexia.’ I was starving myself of success and of course, I’m not alone in that. Many people…as I mentioned, even very high net worth people, more than you would imagine. I’ll give you an example of that.

I was speaking at a seminar one time and a guy came up to me right after. I mean I was walking off the stage and he ran up to me and he said, “Noah, what you said about having your foot on the brake, I never thought of it that way before.” And he said, “I’m making $4 million dollars a year.” I’m like, well, geez. A lot of people would like to make $4 million.

West: That’s pretty good for most people.

Noah: Yeah, exactly. So I said, you know, hey. And he goes, “Yeah, but I’ve been making that for the last four years. I’m plateaued. I’m stuck.” And he said, “I really need you to help me get my foot off the brake.” I said, “All right.”

So that’s not the type of person you would think would even need that but, you now, appearances can be deceiving. And like I said a moment ago, it really doesn’t matter—whether you’re broke, in debt or multimillionaire—we’re really facing the same issues, just at different levels.

So I worked with him. I cached him for about 90 days. And in that 90 days, he really made a lot of amazing insights and progress. And it really wasn’t very hard. He just had to make a good few adjustments with what he was already doing. And in that next year, his company went from $4 million to $40 million.

West: Wow. That’s exponential.

Noah: So that’s a ten times (10x) increase with that.

But I mean, see, now just another example, I was with another person, a woman who was in a direct selling industry—the direct selling network marketing—and she was making $5,000 a month. And so she was working really hard and was very smart, very motivated and had tried everything else and was just really at that level. Again, we worked together, I coached her. She had the book, worked with my coaching program. And in six months, we got her from $5,000 to $75,000 a month.

West: Wow.

Noah: So that’s a fifteen times (15x) increase. So again, you can see that it really doesn’t matter what level you’re at. You can get your foot off the brake to whatever extent you decide to do it. And if you’re willing to put in the effort, it’s going to pay off for you.

West: Wow. It seems to me that you’re able to just really pick the fine details and just tweak people’s mind or behaviors in order to help them really accelerate forward. And that’s a real skill. I’m impressed by that. Can you comment on your ability to do that?

Noah: Well, thank you. Yeah. You know, it’s funny because I have that thing I told you earlier about being the world’s most over‑educated underachiever. That kind of is an advantage as well as a disadvantage. The disadvantage is that in my younger days, I never got to experience the kind of success that these gurus do when you look at the success people that we’ve been listening to for ten, twenty—sometimes—thirty years. They just are unconsciously competent at success. But you see, that’s also the advantage I have. And that is, in fact, my distinction of where I come in to this industry: is that I am actually showing you what the gurus cant tell you. It’s not that they are hiding something on purpose; they don’t even know what they’re doing. They are literally unconsciously competent at letting themselves succeed, at allowing success. So I am the only teacher, in fact, that shows you that there’s a massive fundamental difference between how to succeed and how to let yourself succeed. And I know that sounds crazy except to the millions of us that it doesn’t.

West: That’s a big distinction by the way, Noah. Thanks for pointing that out.

Noah: It’s a huge distinction. Not everybody gets that, of course. But a lot of people do get it. And I’ll give you a great example. One of my good friends is a multimillionaire. And he and I were talking the other day and he said, “I’m so glad you wrote this book. And I’m so glad that you teach this class.”
And I said, “Why? You don’t need what I do,” you know, “You don’t need me at all.” Because, you know, he’s very wealthy. I mean he’s only twenty five years old. He really doesn’t have his foot on the brake very much.
He’s like, “Yeah. Well, the reason I’m glad that you created this and that you teach this is because people are always coming up to me and asking me, “How do you do it?”
And he would always say, “I don’t know how I did it.” And he really doesn’t. He’s so unconscious that he didn’t know.
Now when they say, “How’d you do it,” I say, “Well, go read Noah’s book, take his class because that’s how I did it.”

And see, that’s where I come in. I’m kind of the geek who just sliced and diced these guys. And see, this is the other distinction that I have, which is that, you know, we’ve heard a lot of these or seen a lot of these books where you interview successful people and their so‑called secrets of success. I mean that goes all the way back to Napoleon Hill. So this is seventy years. But what I realized in doing my work—and that’s why it’s called the Secret Code of Success—is the irony is that these highly successful people (like the one I just talked about—my friend), they don’t know what they really did. And so because they’re so unconscious they can tell you all this stuff, but there’s always one or two or three or four things missing. So it’s like, “Well okay, I did that. And I did that. I did that.” “But how come it didn’t work?” Because there are things they’re not even aware of. They’re so unconscious that they can’t tell you. Not that they’re trying to hide something, they just can’t tell you.

West: And when they try to articulate it to somebody, they’re probably missing out a few key ingredients.

Noah: It’s just like asking Tiger Woods, “So what did you do to become so mentally tough?” I mean he could tell you a few things. But the very important things, the key factors, he actually couldn’t tell you. He’s been that way since he was two. Why would he even need to even think about it?

So that’s the thing. A geek like me comes along and says, “Hey, here’s what they did that they don’t know they did. Here’s what they’re doing that they don’t know they’re doing,” and now we can bridge that chasm, which before this, has been uncrossable. We have very, very few people who have been able to bridge that gap from conscious incompetence to unconscious competence. And now with The Secret Code of Success, more and more people are doing it.

West: And it sounds like you’ve actually got the process down to a fine art and it’s been proven and people are actually using it to get great results. It’s not something that is an estimation; it’s actually almost a science.

Noah: Well, I’ll just correct something that you just said—two things actually:
Art is when only one person can do it. Like someone who’s a great artist like Fred Astaire. He was a great artist and he’s a singular artist.
Science is when anybody can do it. So what I do have, it is actually a science. And there is no question that what I teach you, it is actually a science of success. I couldn’t call it the Science of Success—that title has been used a bunch of times—but it really actually is a science. Again, the definition of science is it doesn’t matter.

West: It’s a law.

Noah: Just like gravity. You know, you step out that building you are going down. I don’t care how cute or talented you are or negative or unhappy or thrilled or rich or poor, you’re going down. So it’s the same thing with this. And in this case you’re going to go up.

West: That’s powerful stuff. So Noah, can you share with us just a bit of content with regards to one of the characteristics that maybe a really successful person or one of your clients has identified, that hasn’t been able to articulate to someone that has asked them to teach them, but maybe you’ve been able to identify. And I know you’re going to share a lot more about that when you speak at the event.

Noah: Absolutely! There’s one really key thing that is so, so unconscious from these gurus. I mean they could never ever tell you this…ever. And you’ve got to love these guys because it’s like, wow.

Okay, so I want you to picture— I’m going to see if we can do this in a picture using just words here. So picture an XY axis. So you’ve got a graph of an XY axis. And we’ve all seen this. And on the vertical axis going upwards, just mark that income. So in other words, you’ve got income from going low to high, okay?

West: Yup. Okay. Got it.

Noah: Then on the horizontal axis is fear. Fear and/or stress. So you can put ‘fear’, and then in parenthesis, ‘stress’. Okay?

West: Yup.

Noah: So again, that’s going from low to high horizontally. Now here’s how it works in ninety seven percent (97%) of the human population: the more money you make, the more stress you feel. So imagine that graph as basically a forty five degree (45˚) angle going upwards to the right.

West: So it’s like an improportional relationship, basically.

Noah: It’s improportional, right. And you just keep going: okay, I’m making more money, more stress; more money, more stress; more money, more stress. And more fear. It’s like, “Oh my God, oh my god, oh my god.” And it’s counterintuitive, of course, because what are we all doing? We’re all running around trying to make more and more and more money, money, money, right? But isn’t this amazing—and everybody listening can prove this from their own experience—I mean think about the times where you started making good money like you do in your trading, you do in your direct marketing, your internet marketing (whatever it is you’re doing to make money), you make more and what happens? You get more afraid. You get more stressed. And then what do you do to alleviate that? What do you think you do, West?

West: You sabotage yourself.

Noah: There you go. Because who the hell wants to feel fear? That’s one of the most powerful emotions that we humans try to avoid: fear. Right? Because fear is pain and of course stress and all this stuff.

So we go, “Guess what? I think I’ll throw a monkey into the wrench and just kind of stop this.” And you stop doing what works. It’s so crazy, it’s so stupid. But it isn’t stupid; it’s not crazy when you look at it this way.

West: Yeah, and when you say it like that, it actually makes perfect sense.

Noah: It makes perfect sense when you look at what a human being really is. Okay, so that’s ninety seven percent of it.

Now let’s look at the gurus. Let’s look at these unconscious people. Alright. So we’ve got the same axis: income going up vertically and stress going up outwards, horizontally. Now here’s what happens to them. It’s a straight line going up. And in fact, it curves backwards slightly. So that the more money they make, the less fear they feel and the less stress they have because why? Because they go, “Hey man, I’m good because I’ve got more money. I can help more people. I can do better things. I can contribute to foundations. I can feed children in India or Africa. I can do whatever I want. I can contribute to good causes. Or I can just take more vacations. It doesn’t matter. Whatever I want.” Isn’t that incredible?

West: That is powerful. Really powerful.

Noah: And you’re just like, “Oh, wow!” Now here’s a most amazing—and actually the most frustrating—part about those two graphs. And you can just write them down or picture them as I’m talking to you. There is no way that a guru, an unconscious person, can tell you how to get from Graph A to Graph B. They can’t do it because they’re unconscious. They’re like, “Why would you be afraid? Are you stupid or something?”

West: It’s almost like they’re living in different paradigms.

Noah: They are totally different. But here is the coolest thing: now, you have The Secret Code of Success, you get a geek named Noah and you’re like, “Here it is, guys. It’s step 1 to 3. It actually is incredibly simple and you absolutely can bridge that gap. And you don’t need to worry about the gurus.”

Hey, there’s plenty to learn from unconscious people. Don’t get me wrong. I always say to people, “You should hang out with unconscious people. How do you think I started learning these things?” But I didn’t learn it from them. I learned it by observing them and going, “Now what are they doing that they can’t tell me?” Now that’s hard.

West: That is really hard.

Noah: It took me twenty years to figure it out. So you can call them all you want and talk to them but they can’t really tell you.

So that’s the coolest thing about that. I mean one of the coolest things about this is now, the rest of us can have an opportunity to make lots more money and actually have less stress, not more.

West: Mmm…tap into that ability to go from Graph A to Graph B, so to speak. So yeah, that’s really powerful stuff, Noah. And I think, you know, for the people listening on the call today, whether they be traders or property investors or internet marketers or anything like that, if you’re following the first graph, it’s going to be a tall order.

Now why don’t you tell us some of the topics you’ll be speaking about in the upcoming event? I know that you’re coming to Australia (which is very exciting for many of us Aussies) and you’ll be giving a keynote on mindset. Is that correct?

Noah: Yeah. I mean it really goes deeper than mindset because it’s about taking action. So I have always said that ‘one positive action is worth a thousand positive thoughts.’ I mean believe me, I’m all for positive thinking. But you’ve got to go beyond that. You’ve got to take action. So I do go beyond mindset. I mean, you can make the argument—and I do make the argument—that action is much more powerful than thought.

And I’ll just briefly tell you—and I’ll share this with you—that if you think about the three things that we do to manifest here on the earth, they are: thought, word, and action. That’s how you manifest on this earth: you think about things, you talk about things and you do things. That’s all there is. And so if you look at which one of those is the most powerful—and I ask my audiences this—thought, word or action, and I ask people to raise their hands. So some people raise their hand on thought. Some people raise their hand on word and some people on action.

So instead of arguing about it, let’s just look at it logically. If you think about getting a new house, can you sleep in that house? No, you can’t. You don’t have a house. You’re just thinking about it. What if you talk about having a new house? Can you sleep in that house? No. It’s only when you take action. You’ve got to buy a house, build a house, steal a house, you know—you’ve got to do something on this planet called earth to sleep in that thing. So action is the most powerful by far and even as far back as biblical times, right in the Bible it says, “Faith without works is dead.” And so there is no question about it.

I’m not saying that I don’t teach mindset. I’m just saying we must go beyond just pure mindset to take an action here on the earth.

West: Mmm. That’s powerful. So many of the people coming who have been thinking about doing stuff all the time, it’s really their time to step up and play life at a much higher level.

Noah: And you know, the other cool thing that I really enjoy about this system and teaching this is that we’re talking about little adjustments, little things. We’re not talking about jumping off the cliff without a parachute. We’re talking about one step at a time. And that’s what success is. I now have the privilege of working with— You’ve got to remember, I’m a nobody from nowhere. I mean I grew up in Kennebunkport, Maine, this kid with a very poor family, no contacts, no friends, no millionaires around. So I mean if somebody like me can do this, anybody can do this. And so it just takes one step at a time. And when I talk with my multimillionaire friends, every one of them tells me the same thing: it’s just success is one step at a time. But you need to know what the steps are. I mean you can’t just go walking around in circles (which is what most people are doing).

So I really love the fact that you can come to this event, you can take my program and it’s just going to be different, little adjustments that are going to make a huge difference.

West: Wow. I think if anyone’s on the fence or moderately thinking of coming, it’s going to be a pretty, pretty awesome event just to come and hear and experience what Noah has to offer.

So I just want you to say a few words, maybe some of the colleagues that you’ll be speaking alongside as well. Because I know that it’s a bit of a holistic event where Aussie Rob’s tried to put together some speakers from different key areas. And you’re obviously in the area of mind and taking action and helping people get their behavior DNA together. But what are some of the other speakers that you’re aware of that other people might be interested in that might relate or add to what you’ve given.

Noah: Well, Aussie Rob is a great friend of mine. And it was so cool because we met last year when I spoke in Australia at a Mal Emery event. And he made a beeline for me the minute I got off the stage. He said, “Mate! We’ve got to have you for my traders, Mate!”

West: ((Laughs)) That’s a pretty good accent.

Noah: I think I’m going to do the whole thing in Australian accent, why not?

Well anyway, I love Aussie Rob. He’s a big guy that kind of ambushed me and so it was great. But we’ve been great friends ever since. And I have helped many of his students with the wealth coaching. And again, I work with really, not how to succeed but how to let yourself succeed, the allowance of success. Which is a very subtle distinction but it’s also powerful. And if you’re missing this, I mean honestly, you might as well not bother with the rest of it because you won’t let yourself succeed.

Aussie Rob, of course, everything he touches, everything he does is first‑class. I mean I wouldn’t be coming if I didn’t believe in it. So right off the top, you’ve got him. We’ve also got another great friend of mine, Ari Galper. He’s on the fourth day. So if you can stay for that, he’s teaching about sales and he’s got some really, really amazing information. And I’m speaking on the last day, so yeah, you’ve got to stay for the last day. But I mean, everything Aussie Rob is involved with is just first‑class. So I’m really excited to be there and hear all the other speakers as well.

West: Wow. It sounds like a very exciting event, a life‑changing event, four days with some of the best in the business. So for anyone who’s kind of on the fence now, Noah, what is your sort of parting words to those people?

Noah: Being on the fence is painful. Let’s just be really clear. It hurts, okay? You’re going to hurt your arse so get off the damn fence. You’ll fall one way or the other, that’s all I’m saying.

And I mean, I got to say that Aussie Rob is doing something amazing which I’ve never seen. I mean he’s offering you a full money‑back guarantee. You literally have nothing to lose here. I mean, I’ve never seen that in an event of this caliber. So I mean, you truly have nothing to lose. You have so much to gain. There is absolutely no reason to not be there and I just encourage you to take action even if you just learn one thing and just one contact…
And just to give you a really quick story, I remember one time a couple of years ago a friend of mine told me about an event in Los Angeles and it was $10,000 to go. And I mean, at that time, that was before my book deal and everything like that and it was like, man, that’s a lot of money. But my friend, I really trusted, I trust him and I was like—and he’s really a mentor of mine—so I said, ‘Well, if he says it, let’s do it.’ So I bit the bullet. I did it. And at that event I had dinner with a bunch of people who were just kind of sitting around and at that dinner is where I met that friend that I was telling you about earlier, my twenty‑five year old multimillionaire friend and now we’re doing this huge launch together. So if I hadn’t gone to that event, I never would have met him and we wouldn’t be doing this launch together.

So just that one person has already changed my life and it’s been really many more people than that. And now the great news is with this event, the Aussie Rob Lifestyle event, it’s nowhere near $10,000. I mean it’s a lot less than that plus the money‑back guarantee. So you truly have nothing to lose and so much to gain.

West: Absolutely. And I can vouch for everything that you said, Noah, in that I’ve had experiences at events that- it’s just the environment of like‑minded people and the ability to hang out with people who are experts in their field like yourself. You get to meet them in person and get to experience some of what they have to offer.

So I appreciate you spending some time with us on the call today, Noah. And I hope the people have got some value out of the call. I got heaps out of the call. So thank you for your time, Noah. Really appreciate it.

Noah: My pleasure! I look forward to seeing everybody there.

West: And we’ll definitely look forward to seeing you in Australia.

West: Well, thanks for joining us this far. We’re going to reward you. Andrew’s kindly helped out and said that he’s going to share with you one of his most powerful exercises on how to identify your subconscious blocks. So Andrew…spill the beans.

Andrew: Okay. This exercise I’m going to show you here is it’s powerful because it’s really simple and easy to do. And that’s where its power comes from. But it’s also very effective. So don’t underestimate its simplicity.

West: Oh, I’ve done it personally, people. And it is really powerful.

Andrew: So don’t underestimate its simplicity as being maybe not effective. It’s actually very simple, easy to do but actually can get to the core of it if you approach it with the right intention.

So what you need to make this happen is to grab a piece of paper: A4 size piece of paper or if you’re in America, I’m not sure what you call that but that’s the A4 size in Australia. So what you need to do is get a piece of paper like so. What I’d like you to do then is to draw a line across the top of the paper and then draw a line down the middle of the paper. Take a minute to do that and we’ll just pause the video now and go do that. Get yourself set up and I’ll talk to you for the next stages.

So by now you should have your piece of paper and your pen and you cross the line across the top and you’ve gone down the middle of the page. Now what I’d like you to do on the left hand side of the page, I want you to write an affirmation or a statement of fact that you would like to happen about yourself. For us, we wrote down on the left hand side of the page, “I am now earning $10,000 a month passive income.” And we’re writing it as if it had happened. And I was writing it down as I was saying it. So “I am now earning $10,000 a month passive income.” So I’d write that down on the left hand side of the paper.

Then what I would do after writing the statement and saying it in my mind—“I am now earning $10,000 a month passive income”—I would be quiet. And wait. And what I’d be quiet and wait for is the little voices that you have in your head. Basically, that’s your subconscious mind talking there.

West: The first things that pop in.

Andrew: Yeah, the first things that pop in to your head. Now, what you need to understand is that sometimes that voice might be an audio sound. So something might come in and you say, I am now earning $10,000 a month passive income,” and the response might be “No, I’m not.” And what you do is you write down the response on the right hand side of the page.

And you write down the affirmation again: “I’m now making $10,000 a month passive income.” “No, I’m not” might be the response again. “I’m now making $10,000 a month passive income.” And you keep repeating the process. And what you’re watching for is you’re watching for the subconscious response and you just keep writing it down on the side (right) here.

Now what you’ll find, if you keep doing this and you repeat this process, is an amazing thing will happen. If you do it enough, you’ll start to see that the subconscious response on the right hand side would start to change after a while. And it moves from generally being… sometimes, at first it goes, “Yeah, that sounds really good,” or “Nah, that’s not too good,” or “Not really,” or “No, you’re not” or it might be something a little bit skeptical.

West: Unspecific maybe?

Andrew: They can be confrontational or maybe a bit unspecific but it’s generally something which is a flippant type of response that comes out sometimes. This is what I’ve noticed with other people when I’ve taught this method.

Now what you need to do though is keep going, keep going. What you’ll find is that you’ll start to get down to the real belief system underneath it.

Now the thing to watch for, a statement which might jump out at you as being a little bit out of place. You might be saying, “I’m now earning $10,000 a month.” “What would my father think?” Or “What would my friends think about that?” Or “I can’t do that. That means hard work.”

West: These are the deeper issues…

Andrew: Yeah, that’s right. These are deeper issues that are starting to get out. Now the trick with this is to do it in a quiet place, not have any distractions. Give yourself about half an hour to do this and start writing it down. Now it might take you three, four, five pages of writing to write all these down.

You say, “I’m now earning $10,000 a month passive income.” Now that is my statement. The statement you need to come up with is what you want to actually be achieving at a financial level. So if it’s $5,000 a month passive income, if it’s something totally different, that’s all okay. Get the thing that you want to achieve at a financial level, start writing it down, listen to the subconscious response. That’s the first one.

Once you have done that with “I am earning $10,000 a month passive income” or whatever your statement might be and you’ve written it out and you start to get positive supported statements on the right hand side which is solid and they actually believe it and they’re really credible, then you change the statement. It goes like this: for me—it’s a second person, so you go to first person—“I am now earning $10,000 in monthly income.” It then goes to the second person which basically says, “Andrew, you are now earning $10,000 a month passive income.” So it’s like somebody else is saying it to me this time. So you use the affirmation which suits you but you have it in your name like somebody is saying it to you using your name. For me it’ll be Andrew. “You are now earning $10,000 a month passive income.” And you repeat the process. And you have to go through the whole thing again and you might find a whole bunch of new programs come up and you keep going until they start getting more supportive and do that again.

Once you’ve done that, the third thing you do is you have it in the third person like somebody is talking about you. And so it’ll be like: “Andrew is now earning $10,000 a month passive income.” “Andrew is now earning $10,000 a month passive income.” It’s like the third person.

West: Just like you hearing…

Andrew: I’m overhearing a conversation about me. It’s like, “Did you hear? Andrew is earning $10,000 a month passive income.”

West: You’re a fly on the wall.

Andrew: Yeah, I’m a fly on the wall. That’s how you do it.

So the three things are:
It’s the first person. So “I am now earning $10,000 a month passive income.”
The second person which is, “Andrew, you are now earning $10,000 a month passive income.”
And the third person’s like you’re listening to somebody else saying it about you: “Andrew is now earning $10,000 a month passive income.”

Repeat those and keep going over and over it. Then you’ll start to hear the subconscious responses coming up. If you do that, if you diligently set that exercise down and you make that work for you and you set yourself a goal of doing it once a day for 21 days, I believe that will really change your life, honestly. That will really change a lot of the programming that you have. It’d be that simple.

But even if you do it once and you work it right, what it will start to do is it will start to dig up programming and belief systems that you didn’t know were there and will start you on the journey of being able to reprogram your mind to a set of belief systems that are going to make you financially independent.

So that’s the first of the exercises.

West: Wow. Cool. Now I can vouch for this, folks. Because I’ve personally done it and it’s made a big difference in my life. And I think that exercise will make a significant difference in your life as well.

However, for those of you who are looking for more support and looking for more handholding—I mean it works for a lot of people but not everybody—are there any other exercises that people could…?

Andrew: Yes. There’s a stack of exercises that people can do. I suppose that’s what this whole program is about. We put this Money-Mind Set program to put together a series of exercises and training that if you apply them, they’re all designed to help you reengineer your thought processes around making money and having it all work for you.

So thank you very much. And click to find out more on how we can do that.