Expert To Guru (P2) - Get Paid For Who YOU Are, Not What You Do....

I was a one man show, closet.

Warrior, as we say.

And Rich gave me the courage to.

Realize that I had a real business.

And from there I was able to go not from just a seven figure business, but to an eight figure business. Within the next two years, I went from making a five figure income to a seven figure income. And my blog went from 5,000amonth to 15,000amonth and then 20,000amonth. Believe we went from 1.3 million to 2.4 million within a year. We were fairly new in the business of doing Internet marketing and we did not know what. We did not know the recession had just hit. I had lost half my business. You know, I just wasn't sure what to do at that point. The best way I could explain it would be if you had a dumpster fire and you were just pouring more gas on the dumpster fire. Grabbing everything I could because I wanted to make money. But then at the end of the day, it wasn't serving my business. You individually need to do more. That's what I thought. I thought success was based on how hard you work, how many hours you work. Everybody else was just coming up with the tricks and the hacks. Here was this guy who brought not just practical digital online marketing wisdom, but he brought practical business with him. Everybody I know is like, you need to know Rich. I'm like, rich, I don't know Rich. This is the guru's guru. This dude teaches all the people that we're all reading from. You got to go to the guru to the gurus. This guy is the guru to the gurus. When you get inside kind of inner circles, everybody knows who Rich is. Rich was the first person who really explained online marketing in a way that I really could understand and apply. It was like the light came on in a dark room and I saw, oh, there's a whole layer to running a business I never thought about. Since the time that I started working with them, I've generated, you know, millions and millions of dollars in revenue. More money started coming in. Then all of a sudden I'm producing products and coaching programs and building an audience that needs what I am good at. And I'm getting 5,000 bucks for my 12 week program. I'm getting 2,000 bucks for my four week program.

But I want to say this, that.

It'S been about more than just the money. I feel like in many ways he.

Gave me my life back.

Besides being a guy who thinks strategically and thinks in terms of solution, Rich is a good guy and it's really Refreshing to have somebody with his caliber of knowledge who you can tell really cares. It was freedom. That's the easiest way I could put it. It was freedom, a sense of freedom, a sense of hope and future where I could see a path to get to where I wanted to go that I wasn't going to get to on my own. Someone like Rich can really put worth in you that you're not seeing. Confidence. You know, in business, so much of our success depends on our own internal confidence. Having the confidence, knowing the fundamentals, and understanding how the business moves. He works with people who are having your same problem. So he's able to show me someone like me. It's not just someone talking about hypotheticals. These are trying tactics that he's done year in, year out. I'm glad he's back around, you know, helping people. I'm excited he's coming out of retirement for this. That's a big deal. I can certainly recommend it without hesitation. I know that anything that comes out from Mitch Shepard is going to be top, top quality, best coach, best mentor of my life.

His main concern is making sure that he's delivering more than he promises in every project that he works on.

It had a huge impact on my business. I'm excited for all the people who will benefit from it this go around. I would just say do it before he goes back into the balls.

I think that you will get just.

Some immense value from working with him, even better than he seems, which is.

Rare on the Internet.

Foreign welcome, everyone, to another live stream. My name is Rich Sheffrin, and let's see here. I'm just getting prepared here. Sorry about that. And let me know if you guys can hear me. Definitely important. Let me know if you guys can hear me. And also.

Let me know where you're.

Watching from and let me kind of just restart this a little bit. My name is Rich Jeffrey, and I do these live streams every Tuesday from 2 to 4 and Thursdays from 6 to 8, both times Eastern. I own a company by the name of Strategic Profits. I have been coaching and helping online businesses grow for the last 20 years. I've worked with a lot of people that you've probably heard of and have testimonials from those same people. And so I do these live streams primarily to help you in your business with whatever advice you may need to help take your business forward, the next step. And I've been doing it for a really long time. And so I figured why not do some live streams for free to let other people who Might not have the benefit of being coached by me. Get some of my advice to help them grow their business. And so, okay, I see that there's a whole bunch of comments coming in. So very cool. There's someone who, James Markey made a Facebook angry. I don't know why you made an angry face, James. Maybe because we started at 2:30 as opposed to 2, but who knows. And let's see, we also by accident, because it was a last minute thing, put it back on my personal page. So we'll have to change that again for next time, but have a new assistant working with me today, cj, who was with me for just about a month or so, moved on to something bigger and better, which is I guess pretty common. You could say that most people who work in close proximity to me end up going pretty far pretty fast. And you know, I guess CJ is almost that never really happened that fast, but that was because his friend was starting a startup and he ended up taking a job there. So Ryan is stepping into CJ shoes and he's here today. So if you have a question, by all means type it into the chat. Doesn't matter if you're on Facebook, YouTube or any of the other platforms. I don't know that we're, I don't think we're in LinkedIn today just because we didn't get it posted an hour in advance. So there you go. By all means, please emote, comment and share. And if you share, please put hashtag shared into the comments so that I can personally thank you. I want to help as many entrepreneurs as I can. And with your help by commenting and sharing and emoting, that lets the algorithm know that this is worth passing on. Right? And so for that I would appreciate it. Also when you ask me questions, it makes it more interesting for you, obviously, but it also makes it more interesting for everyone else if I'm answering your question. Because then this becomes much more of a dialogue as opposed to a monologue. And we certainly want that. And if you're watching on YouTube, please subscribe. If you're watching on Facebook, please join our Facebook group, Strategic Profits. It's absolutely free and you can see all the details below. There you see the group Strategic Profits. My page is Rich Sheffrin on Instagram, the real Rich efren. And our YouTube channel is called Strategic Profits. So there you go and let's say hello to a few of you and then I'll tell you what we got in what we have in store for today. Let me get rid of this. It's kind of too big, this bottom third. I'd like to see it a little bit tighter, I think. But let's see. Let's get rid of that for now and see if this is smaller. Yeah, we don't need it. All right, so let's go to the comments. Tuning in from Tampa. Cool. Greetings, Guru Rich Duran from Lucerne, Switzerland. How's it going? And Tim Webb. Part one was brilliant. Looking forward to this. Rich from Auckland, New Zealand. Tim Webb, good to see you. Bitcoin for boomers. How you doing? Bitcoin for boomers. Trader Rob, how you doing? Cool. You guys can hear me? Awesome. Rich, are you traveling to the moon like Russell Brunson? No, I am not. No real interest. Driving to vacation in Michigan. Very cool. John Bowers. Jose is in Manhattan. Good to see you, Jose. And Amit is in Toronto and a Facebook user in New Jersey. And bitcoin for boomers is in New York City and Connecticut. Very cool. And let's see here.

Lol.

Retro. Are you scaring them off? I don't know. Maybe I am scaring them off. Who am I scaring them off? Michael hears you. Well, cool. And Lisa in Miami Beach. And Zavat from Prague. Very cool. This is Alice. Oh, cool. And yeah, very disappointed about Connor. Very disappointed. That's his glove, by the way, right there above the photo. I don't know if you can see it. That red thing right there. Yeah, that's Connor's glove. Signed greetings from Montreal, Canada. Nice haircut. Thank you. And yeah.

Oops.

Connor.

Yeah, One end. Rich, can you recommend someone to look into regarding marketing to. To the affluent? Can you recommend someone to look into regarding.

Yeah, well, Dan Kennedy did a whole thing.

I forget the guy that he did it with, but he has a cost. He has a course called Marketing to the Affluent. So that would be the one. CJ Neen is in the house. There he is. We were just talking about you. Maybe your ears were ringing. Jonathan in Melbourne, very nice to see you. And Geb while working in the Philippines and itching to get started. Cool. All right, so guys, let's see here. I remember that I started the video towards the end and we were playing it, I was sharing one of the three videos that I had already recorded, like expert to guru. And I am. And we talked about defining what success means to you. Right? Because if you're going to build a long term reputation that actually works for you, you need to know where you want to end up because that's what you want to Assist in. Right.

And.

And so that, like, is was where we started. Right. And that getting to the. Oh, I remember we also went over the Maven Manifesto. I gave you the link and.

For that.

And so I think we did that as well. So if someone could update me, just refresh my memory, anything that stuck out to them as far as where we left off, that would be great because I jumped into this from like, back to back meetings. And tomorrow I go to Nashville. I'll be with the guys from Traffic.

And Funnels speaking there.

And so I'm also speaking to Todd Brown's 1% top mastermind. So both the same day. And so I've just been swamped, including starting with the new assistant and everything else. So, Rich, I couldn't find your note. Share, encourage. I know it was when your assistant was leaving. Could you share those notes? I can. So I will make sure to do this, but you might have to remind me again because like I said, today's a crazy day. After this live stream today, I hop on a a podcast with Onyx and Gal. And then tonight I'm going for dinner with Jay Abraham. He just finished his presentations at Tony Robbins, like high end Mastermind. So I'm going for dinner with him tonight. And so, yeah, I'm just. Oh, and then Elizabeth Massig is in town. She's the head of HR for Agora, and so she's having a party tonight. So after dinner with Jay, then I'm heading to that party and then heading out to Nashville. So with all that, all I'm saying is, is that I've been swamped and had I had 20 minutes beforehand to, like, get up to speed on this, I certainly would have, but I didn't. So I'm banking on one of you guys. I can start where I kind of remember the video. I thought I could do that, start playing more of the video for you while I gathered my notes. So maybe I'll do that. And let me know what your thoughts are on that. So I can still see. I can see the. I can see the.

What do you call it?

I can see the comments and everything else. You'll be able to see me too. So let me put this on. Let me remove that from. Okay, let's remove that from the stream. Let's add this to the.

It's Rich Efren, and welcome to the Expert.

All right, so I know I. Let me make sure this is part one Guru series.

Throughout this series, I'll be sharing with you my secrets for massive market influence. So that you ultimately get paid for who you are, rather than simply what you do. In other words, that your reputation precedes you and causes you to earn more simply because of who you are, as opposed to the vast majority that only get paid for their output what they do. Now, this series is going to contain four modules. Module one is where I'm going to talk to you about developing the mindset of a guru so that you can start actually thinking like a guru and therefore start becoming a guru. In module two, I'm going to walk you through the steps to carve out your niche in your specific market so that you can become the leading authority, the chief influencer in your field. In module three, I'm going to show you how to develop your voice as a guru, in your speaking, in your writing, on video, in audio, in every format that you choose to communicate with your audience. I will show you how to cultivate that voice that will give others confidence in following your advice and buying and paying for your services. And in module four, we're going to take everything that we cover and we're going to transform it into your very own action plan to take you to the very top of your market in the shortest amount of time with the highest degree of certainty. So we've got a lot to cover, so let's dive in. Now, this is module number one, which, as I said, is the guru's mind adopting the mindset of a market influencer. You see, successful people do simple things that unsuccessful people don't do because they don't recognize that it really matters. These things that we'll be covering today and in the future modules, do in fact, matter. And I want to make sure that you recognize that, so that even these little insignificant things you don't overlook because just because they appear to not matter much, they actually do. And they matter more than you could realize right now. But that's why you're listening to this, that's why you're watching this, so that you can understand what are these little things that matter the most. Now, along those lines, my goal for you in this module is to really get you to think like a guru, so that by the time we're through with this, you will understand exactly how a guru thinks, what a guru does, and how a guru uses their own insights to give themselves a competitive advantage in their market. So in order for us to do that, to actually get you thinking like a guru, here's what we'll be covering today. First, we'll cover a fundamental truth about being an online guru. That you must understand if you're going to be successful online. Next, we'll look at the road that I traveled myself to become the guru of the gurus, so that you can see how someone can make the leap from being completely unknown to a nobody, you could say, to becoming the top guru with the top positioning. Then we'll look at what I call the multimillion dollar mindset of a guru, so that you can understand exactly what a guru does, how a guru thinks, something that you must understand if you're going to be a guru yourself. Then we'll cover how to create your own mindset as a guru so that you can develop the insights that will potentially make you rise to the top of your market faster than you can ever imagine. After that, we'll look at a concept I call thinking like an artist and acting like a guru, which can help you when you're developing your own mindset and pushing you forward through many of the mental obstacles that hold far too many back and stand in their way of achieving this top influence, this top authority in their market. Next, we'll cover something that plagues every new entrepreneur, and that's fear. And we'll look at how to overcome your fears quickly so you can get past them and, and reach the success goals that you're after in the fastest way possible. Then we'll look at how to outthink your flaws so that you can easily bypass the negative parts of your own personality that would keep your business from thriving. And then finally, we'll look at a couple of mental shortcuts to deeper thinking so that you can literally outthink your competition and therefore outperform your competition, and therefore out earn your competition. And then we'll wrap it up today with some action items so that you can take the information and advice that I give you here to and put it to your own use as quickly and as immediately as possible, and therefore start reaping the rewards as quickly as possible. Now, we called this webinar series Expert to Guru because taking that leap to being the top guru in your industry is the fastest way to take your online business to the next level. It's the most strategic way to set yourself apart from your competitors and eventually fulfill your dreams of running a successful online business and living the lifestyle that you want. So I want to start off this webinar series with a fundamental truth that all top gurus in the world know and use to their advantage. And it's something that you need to understand as you move from being an expert to Becoming a guru. You see, if you're going to rise to the top of your industry and truly influence your market, you're going to need more than just being a successful entrepreneur. You're going to need to be more than just a run of the mill expert. You see, you need to set yourself up as a guru. And a guru is much more than just an expert. You see, an expert is simply knowledgeable about a particular topic. But a guru has the expertise and is also recognized as the leading authority in their field, so they have the ability to influence their market. So therefore, you can see that expertise alone never makes a guru. And many people assume that if they just simply learn enough, they will eventually have the influence in their market. But life doesn't work that way. In fact, you could study forever. You could learn absolutely everything there is to know about your particular field and still not be recognized by anyone, have no influence, and ultimately be a nobody in your market. The reason is no one else knows that you have your insights, that you have your expertise in your particular field, unless you make everyone aware of it, unless you broadcast that fact. And that's where marketing comes in. You see, the fundamental truth is this. In addition to expertise, any recognized guru in their field, in their industry, in their market, knows how to market themselves as an authority, knows how to market themselves as a guru, a maven. You see, they have learned to think of themselves as a guru and then been able to communicate that idea to their marketplace. And you see it.

So I'm looking at my notes for this and my thoughts overall are that there's so much good stuff in this video that I think I might just want to play it for you and then actually play on Thursday the next one. Because, you know, this is. I'm not going to do as good of a job as I did with this then because, you know, I was working off my notes, I was doing it all. So I'm thinking about just playing that. Want to know what you guys think. And then I can come on at the very end. But let's just quickly answer some questions while you guys sense here. Hey, Rich, how is today similar or different to when you and Jay released the Maven marketing program, which was fabulous. Well, it's today is what's going on in the world today is just more of the same, right. Of what I originally said back in the Attention Age doctrines that I wrote back in 2007, if you remember, the attention age doctrine 2 not only talked about how attention was going to become the scarcest commodity online, it Also talked about where I thought attention was going to go and that it was going to go to social media, which I guess you could say I was right. It also said that there was going to be a need for more experts in the world. Right. That as there's a proliferation of information, what's needed is expertise to sort and curate. Right. And so that is why Jay Abraham and I created the Maven program. That's why Gary Vaynerchuk was a part of that program, because he was one of those people early on that you could see was going to be this new kind of creator that was really more influencer than creator or Maven. Right. And so a lot is still the same, but maybe the methods or tactics might be a little bit different. And so along those lines, what I'm sharing here I believe is highly relevant. And Trader Rob there definitely is self aggrandizing involved in being a guru. If you don't get your message out there about your greatness, odds are no one else will either. So I actually get into that in this video. So that's another reason why I think it would be good to just play this video. Rich, what platform do you use when you live stream yourself in your video presentation? I'm using a combination of ustream and then I also use ECAMM Live, which allows me to control different cameras and things easier than if I were to do it just all on streamyard. Rich, did you write the copy for this video? Yes, it was my notes, but I had my content writer at that time cat help me with it. But yes, I wrote it. Rich, I've positioned myself as a category of one with Maven Manifesto and became a trusted incredible real estate agent in my community. I now want to go on to coach and inspire real estate agents to do the same. However, many agents are dark on me because I've revealed the truth about the industry and excessive fees. What road or strategy do you think I should travel to attract clients who'd like to position themselves uniquely? I don't think you have to worry about that, Tim. I think that the way that I think it's always better to be polarizing to begin with and you certainly are not going to get all real estate agents anyway to join your coaching program. So I would put a mark in the line like you know, and say if you're one of the people that want to keep their clients in the dark, that thinks that even in 2021 that you're not going to be, you're going to be able to hide certain things, then you're not for me. But if you believe in doing business ethically, honestly, with morality, and build like, and be on the same page and on the same team as your customers, then that's the kind of coaching that I do. And so I don't think you have to. I don't think that you need to think anything more than that. I think that it's almost a good thing that you were polarizing. Please do play the video. Cool. Take a break.

Cool.

Yes, Play the video. There was no more video. More silence than talk. There was no video. I don't understand what you're saying, Michael. I think everyone else has seen the video. Oh, no. Self aggrandizement is where you left off last week.

Ah.

So is that okay? I'm going to press play and I guess we'll just keep going and we'll.

See where we go.

And I'm watching the comments. So I'm here.

Wasn't some lucky or fortunate experience that ever leads anyone to being a guru. They marketed their way to where they are today. And that's good news for you because you don't want to follow in the footsteps of someone who just happened to get there by accident. You don't want to mimic an accident. You want to mimic a clear path that's been proven to get others to the spot that you want to attain. And that's what we're covering here. You want to follow a strategic approach that gets you to the very top of your market. Let me give you some examples. Dan Kennedy, for example, is probably not the best copywriter in the world, but he's an exceptional marketer. So many people perceive him to be the best, or at least one of the best copywriters. Or how about Dr. Phil? Dr. Phil is one of the most celebrated mental health professionals in the world, but there's a reason for that. He knew how to market himself with his personality. How about me? I'm known as the guru to the gurus because I've helped more gurus build businesses online than anyone else. Now, I didn't come up with that, but once someone else said that about me, I started using it. And I've been marketing myself as the guru to the gurus for years. So much so that often that is how people refer to me or introduce me when I get on stage. So the truth is that while being a guru and being the top influencer in your market does start with expertise, that expertise must be coupled with marketing, because marketing and self appointment, self aggrandizement, is how you become a guru. Think about how you want other people to see you, think about what they would need to perceive about you to be willing to pay for your advice, and then start marketing yourself that way. Now, as I just mentioned, a certain amount of self aggrandizement is a part of becoming a guru. You will always be the first person to brand yourself as a guru, as an authority. It doesn't happen by accident. And no one's going to come around and tell the world that you're a guru unless you first have done it yourself. See, after that, it's up to you to market yourself that way so that peers start seeing you as the guru of your industry. And my main point is that it has to be deliberate, that you have to figure out how you want to be perceived and then do what you can to be perceived the way you believe your market needs to perceive you in order to follow you. Take for example, I just recently met with an up and coming guru who was planning to do a launch and they were asking me about how do they really get to the top? And my question to them was, well, how do you want to be perceived in the market? And he said that he was doing this launch and that he would wait and see what people thought of him after the launch was done. And my response was, is that that's completely backwards. That you want to start figuring out how you want to be perceived before you do your launch. Then when you do your launch, you put a paragraph of copy that defines your positioning in all the swipe files that you create for your affiliates. This way the entire Internet is being alerted of your positioning with each and every email that gets put out. And I want to really underscore that point. You see, too many people believe that this is something that happens accidentally. And because of that, they sit on the sidelines and they never achieve the positioning that they desire or the positioning that would really boost their income. So what I'm telling you here is a simple fact, that if you wait for it to happen, it will never happen. That you have to broadcast to the world who you are. You have to broadcast that you're relevant and that your opinion and your advice matters. And only then will others take notice and begin to believe what you've been telling them. And every successful guru does this. They figure out a way to set themselves apart from the average person in their market. They figure out a way to gain a reputation for excellence. They get widely recognized as a source of strategies, skills, tactics, techniques or methods or systems. They establish authority in their market because they claim to have it. And they use their training, their backstory, their education, their profession, any other kind of experience that they have to stand out from the crowd. So in short, really, a guru does two things really well. They have an area of expertise, but even more important than the area of expertise is that they know how to market themselves. And that area of expertise to be highly relevant to, to the prospects and customers and clients in their market. Now anybody can do this. You don't have to have an advanced degree like a PhD or be a world chess champion. You don't have to really have the academic credentials or the certifications that so many people think that you need to have. At the end of the day, you are the only person in the world who has your own unique background skills and experiences. And that means that you can set yourself apart because no one has your life story. And the trick of this, the whole game of perceptions, of being the top authority in your market, is to take who you are and your life story and make the case of why that is completely relevant and completely helpful to the members of your marketplace. See, I can tell you that because I've coached hundreds of of today's top gurus in Internet marketing, in real estate, in multi level marketing, and in so many other areas. And I can tell you that many of them went to grow seven, eight figure businesses because of the way they position themselves and the way that the marketplace ultimately perceived them. See, once you're a guru, you really enjoy some benefits that others simply don't. You are trusted in advance. Before you even say anything, you're trusted. You have a reputation that you're a cut above the crowd, that you're worth listening to, that you're worth buying products from and getting services from, that you're relevant in the market. And with that relevancy comes influence. It makes really all of your marketing 10 times easier because you have the authority and social proof that you need to convince others that you matter. When that happens, people take you seriously. They open your emails first, they take your calls first, they want you to speak at their events. And it all happens because of the work or effort that's done on the positioning side, the shaping of perceptions of your own relevance, the shaping of perceptions about what your expertise can mean in the life of your market. And it's much easier to build a business when you have that leading authority position because the market wants to listen to you. And so everything is so much easier. Now. You might be wondering if anyone can do this why don't they? And the way I see it, there are really three main reasons that the vast majority of people just stay average and end up not having the positioning that we're talking about here. First off, they're missing the mindset. The average person has no idea who they are and much less what makes them special and what gives them the right to give others advice. Next is they have no idea how to find their niche, to make their message heard in what they perceive is an overcrowded marketplace, or they don't know how to communicate with their marketplace, or they're missing an action plan to become a guru. And lastly, they make that fundamental mistake that we talked about earlier. They confuse adding more expertise as being the thing that's going to get them to the top as opposed to marketing their way to the top. Now, of course, there are solutions that address each and every one of these challenges. And once you overcome these challenges, you'll have a significant advantage over everyone else. And that's the goal of this series, to help you get there, to get you over these types of hurdles and give you the strategies and tactics that you need to develop the right mindset in the right niche with the right voice, following the right action plan to become the next guru with a six, seven, eight or even nine figure business. So we're starting with the guru mindset for that reason. The reason being that if you're building an Internet business, you want to do the counterintuitive approach of building the business around you as the guru. So the very first thing you need to do is to get clear about who you are. And more specifically, what flaws do you have that you'll need to out think? What fears do you have that you'll need to overcome? And what processes can you put in place that will literally force yourself to be successful? That's what we're going to be talking about here. But I want to make another point. You know, many people say that they don't want to start a business that is putting them at the center where they're the main personality. And I understand that concept, but I want to share with you a different perspective about that. One of my biggest clients is a company by the name of Agora publishing. They're a $600 million business. They're privately owned, their profit margins are between 30 and 40%. So you can do the math. That's 180 to $240 million of profit at the end of each year. That equals 3 to 5 million dollars of profit each and every week. Now, why do I bring them up? Well, I bring them up because they're a personality based business. There are lots of different personalities. There are lots of gurus underneath this umbrella of Agora Publishing. However, anyone who's ever tested this, anyone who's ever tried to really experiment with what is easier to sell, a brand or a personality, will tell you that it is far, far easier, far faster and much more effective to build a business first on a personality, regardless of whether your ultimate objective is to keep the business dependent on on you. So, in fact, in my business, I used my personality to build strategic profits. But now, as strategic profits has grown, we've introduced new gurus to do two things, really, to expand our reach and to make the company increasingly less reliant on me. Now, again, anyone can do this, but the fact is, is that not many will do this. And that's a good thing because it makes it easier for you to stand out in your market. And I'm going to show you exactly the steps you need to take, starting with this module and in future modules that will get you there the fastest. Now, I think to give you the best perspective, I'm going to begin by telling you my own story to show you how I helped engineer my success as a guru to the gurus, to help you really understand that it didn't happen magically and that I didn't work on my expertise more and more. And ultimately, the steps I took not only helped me become the guru to the gurus, but when I was still privately coaching, I was coaching 50 hours a week and getting paid $2,000 an hour to coach and had a waiting list. I was booked up for months. So you can do the math there. It's $100,000 a week talking to people on the phone, in my backyard, sitting by my swimming pool, giving advice. And it wasn't because I was the best coach in the world, but I was the best at marketing. My coaching that helped me achieve that sort of success. All right, so as I go into my story here, one of the things I want to let you know is, is that this is the entire story. You know, most people believe that I somehow came to life when I wrote the manifesto. But in reality, My story started four years before that, back in 2002, when I first got online. I was publishing ebooks and I was struggling. I had no contacts, I had no list, I had no relationship. I was starting out probably the way many of you are now, or maybe where you started out. I knew nothing about online marketing. So basically I started buying lots of ebooks, started studying a lot. Eventually I joined a coaching program that included Steven Pierce. He was the one who was teaching it. He was the hot guy at that moment, back in 2002, because he had released a book called called the Whole Truth, which was the best selling ebook back then. And I really just started devouring courses. Now fast Forward to year 2003. I got noticed by Stephen, and I want to kind of stress that point, that by being a good student, I got more attention of the guru whose coaching program I was in. And it's. That is a secret that I still to this day tell my clients now, because when you shine as a student, the guru who you're following has added incentive to help you because they see in you their next success story. So I took, used and leveraged the knowledge that I learned from Stephen. And because of that, he took an interest in me. Now going into 2004, I leveraged my relationships to start getting exposure. What I did was, is that after Steven started paying attention to me, I asked Steven if he wanted to do a project with Jay Abraham. And because Jay Abraham is so well regarded, he said, of course he does. And I had been a client of Jay's in a previous business, so I was able to call Jay and tell him that I had this guy, Steven Pierce, who's the hot guy, online at that time, to do a project together. And Jay was interested, Steven was interested. And so that's what happened. We did a conference call series where basically I was the low man on the totem pole, which meant that I did all the heavy lifting, I did most of the work. We split it, you know, three ways. But they also got the added benefit of the increased exposure because they had lots of products. So in the end, they made more, I made less, and I did the majority of the work. Now, that's to be expected. I was piggybacking on their attention that they already had, on their credibility they already had, and I benefited greatly from it. Now, that went well. So well, in fact, that we decided to do a actual coaching program. And for that coaching program, one of the deliverables was a seminar at the end of the coaching program. And I had to give three presentations. Now, Stephen, because he was speaking on stages all across the world, he already had presentations in the bag. Jay, because he's been doing it forever, he. He also didn't need to prepare, but when it came time for me to prepare, I needed to prepare quite a bit because I had never really spoken on stage. So I had to figure out what I was going to talk about and carry my own, so to speak, as I shared the stage with two of my mentors. And so what did I do? Well, I leveraged my backstory. I looked at my own experience, and I realized that it was my own experience that I had that no one else had that I could offer. In a sense, you could say that I looked at my own assets in a different way. I looked backwards to connect the dots to the present, right, so that I had relevance increasingly so to the audience I was speaking to. And what I talked about was what I had applied from what I had learned in offline businesses to my online businesses that had helped them succeed. In other words, I really found the sexy part of my own story, of what I had to offer. And that story gave everyone immense value. So much so, in fact, that I had people crying in the audience, believe it or not. And it was at that conference that basically I found the core of the manifesto. You see, it was that presentation because it resonated so well about the difficulties of starting and running and growing an online business. That really resonated with people. And the advice that I gave them on how to fix it really captivated their attention. So I knew I was on to something. I knew that I had this powerful, emotional big idea that I could use to create my online business. So in 2005, we had another seminar that was for another group that went through this coaching program. And I gave that speech again, only this time I did it with a pitch at the end for my own private coaching program. And I offered a coaching program that didn't exist yet. I didn't have any of the material yet for 25 people. And I was doing it by application only, and it would cost $750 a month. And I could get that amount, which seemed like an awful lot way back then. I could do that because I offered an incredible guarantee. And the guarantee was that by the time we were through, you would be making double what you're making now and working half as much as you're working now, or you got your money back. And because of that over the top guarantee, I got about 40 people who applied. And of those 40, I took the 25 that I knew I could actually deliver on that guarantee. And I spent the whole program basically researching, studying, preparing on what they needed to learn so that they could achieve the benefit that was in that guarantee. Basically to make four times as much per hour by, you know, making double the amount. And half the time, and I Want to just stress that point for a second because really it is a extremely powerful approach that I went out, got some credibility for myself. The credibility came from partnering with top people. I got the opportunity to do that because I was one of their better students. I then orchestrated the events so that I would benefit from the association realizing that I would have to do the majority of the heavy lifting in the beginning. I then ultimately put a proposition out in the marketplace that had a very big guarantee which allowed me to select my future case studies, basically. And so I didn't have to prepare anything in advance. I prepared it as we went along, and by the time we were done, I ended up with great success stories. I ended up with a high price program that later on I could sell for less. And I really had all the content at that point. I had everything I needed to really launch myself to a much higher level. And it's important that you understand the nuance there, the significance that this is an easy way to basically generate all the different assets that you need to take you to the very top. Now, one of the things that I put on the application where those 40 applied was at what point during the presentation did they decide that they needed to apply for this program? And really what that told me was the hot buttons, the points of my presentation that really registered with people, that got them to get out of their chair with credit card in hand, wanting to apply for my program. And it was what they told me about my presentation that ultimately made its way into the manifesto. In other words, they told me what was the best parts of my presentation that got them to buy. And I took that information and I used that information in the manifesto. And so there's no big surprise there that the manifesto worked as well as it did and went as viral as it did because it was based on market research, you could say. But the best type of really what got people to buy anyway, as we go into 2006, the steps that actually led to me releasing the manifesto and doing a launch, the first step was, is that I didn't know how to do a launch. So I had built these lists from these partnerships with Steven Pearce, with Jay Abraham, with John Carlton and so on. And I hadn't really ever mailed those lists because they really, at the end of the day, I felt like, you know, when I was doing the projects with Jay, they were opting in for Carlton, so they weren't really opting in for me. But I had this list, I had this list of about, I guess about 30, 40,000 people, but I had never communicated with them. And it was a year and a half, two years later. And so you could say that the list was cold at the very least. And so I had this idea that I could approach Jeff Walker, do a series of three teleseminars to my list. The first two just providing immense value by showing them results of product launches that clients in my coaching program had gotten. And then on the third one, Jeff and I would actually pitch product launch for noon. And so this greatly benefited me. I learned how to do product launches. I let my entire list know that I had these coaching programs and I had very successful clients. I got to know Jeff Walker well, which paid me back high dividends later on when I was doing a launch and really had this list re energized so that when I was ready to launch the manifesto, I had a starting point with a list that would help me get the word out. And so by the time I released the manifesto, I had all the content already created. I had the high price point that these gurus and success stories had paid me. And I really had everything that I needed to do a great launch and to really mark my spot on the map, so to speak. Now, as I mentioned, when I did my first launch, I was intent on really making sure that the world positioned me the way I wanted to be positioned. So I in fact made sure that in all the emails promoting the manifesto, etcetera, that they referred to me as this secret coach behind some of the most successful gurus, some of the biggest success stories online. And therefore that got the word out that eventually led to me being called the guru to the gurus. And it was that forethought that really helped really establish the way that I would be perceived. So if we fast forward to today, I now own a, you know, a multimillion dollar company strategic process. I consult with multimillion dollar corporations like Agora and many other big ones. You would certainly recognize the name. I've been paid up to $25,000 an hour to speak to Google and Microsoft and Yahoo. I get paid about $15,000 a day as a minimum as a business consultant. And I spend time each and every week consulting with my business growth system clients so that they can have the same competitive edge that you're getting right now during this series in that I talk to them about what their overall strategy should be and what their next steps should be. And again, I believe that anybody can do this, that you watching this right now can do this. And all it takes is some strategic thinking. And that goes back to really having the right mindset, which is what we're talking about right now. Now, I want to tell you about some of the characteristics of the mindset, but before I do, first I think it's important to give you a job description, because most people have a better idea of what a doctor does than what an entrepreneur does or what a guru does. And if you're going to become a guru, ultimately you should understand what a guru does. So obviously, a guru is a knowledgeable, recognized authority in a particular industry. And therefore, what a guru does is a guru gets paid to think. They get paid to share their unique perspectives, their ideas about the world. Now, some of what a guru shares is valuable tactics, strategies, ideas, etc. In short, they're secrets, right? But ideally, they're counterintuitive secrets. In other words, you know, there is common wisdom and then there is the counterintuitive. And what people appreciate most are the counterintuitive. You know, if you want to lose weight, and I tell you the common wisdom, which is eat less, exercise more, you don't really want to hear that. You don't really have a reason to plug into my advice. But if I tell you that you can eat fat to lose fat, or I can tell you something that is counterintuitive, it makes you interested in learning more. And so the secrets, the better that you position them, the more that you show people how they can benefit from them, the higher premium you can charge for your own knowledge. Now, with that stated, what you have to realize is, is that we're in, as a guru, you're in the advice business, you're not in the information business. And we'll get to that later. But it's an important distinction. People want your advice. And what sometimes people make a mistake of is thinking that they're going to be a guru by providing lots and lots of information. And really, that's not what people want a guru for. They want the guru to have sifted all through that information and give them relatively easy to understand, simple to follow advice. So now let's drill down a little deeper and talk about some of the similar characteristics that gurus share. Now, remember that I've coached so many gurus that really very few people could give you this insight. They'd be more autobiographical than how I can be, just having worked with so many of them. First off, they project the appearance of being secure, okay? And in order to project that, you have to get comfortable in your own skin. You have to appreciate who you really are. So it's okay to have certain insecurities, but it's important that those insecurities don't revolve around component parts of your positioning and in the areas that you advise. So gurus also are secure in the sense that they realize in advance that there are going to be some people who just won't like them, that will disregard what they say, potentially even say negative things about them. Because as a guru, one of the things you have to realize is, is that you open yourself up to criticism. So you have to be okay with who you are so that that criticism doesn't really affect you. It doesn't really matter all that much, because for every negative, there's 100 positives. Next. Gurus have self confidence. Now, once again, they appear self confident, and they appear confident in the knowledge they have in the field that they're advising. How you think about yourself is going to have a large impact on how people see you. So I've not ever really met a guru that didn't have self confidence. In fact, many are somewhat narcissistic in a sense that confidence is unfounded, but it doesn't matter because they project that confidence. And you don't have to be confident about everything. You just need to project confidence in your area of expertise. So if you don't have self confidence, you need to start working on that. You need to start really projecting yourself as being confident. Because if you don't believe in yourself, no one else will. So it's necessary for you to really kind of develop this self esteem. And one of the easiest ways to do that is to really do an imaginative exercise where you really close your eyes and you imagine what you would be like, how you would interact with people and how you would stand, talk, do the things that you do if you felt totally confident. And the more often you revisit that image in your mind, the easier it is to start becoming that. And that's really the way that you need to go about doing this. Because each of us projects our confidence in different ways. And in order for you to project it in a way that's in line with who you are and will be perceived as genuine, you really need to get greater clarity on how you yourself project confidence. And by doing so, you'll find it relatively easy to do next, they rely on themselves. In other words, to be a guru, you need to know yourself and you need to know where your strengths and your weaknesses are and use both to your advantage. In other words, you stress your strengths, you give people your prospects your customers, your clients, the ability to overlook their weaknesses by pointing out your weaknesses, as long as those weaknesses don't have any impact on your area of expertise. And it could actually be a way that you bond with your prospects. So I don't have a problem talking about perfectionism or procrastination, two areas that I tend to struggle with because it resonates with many of my prospects and clients, and it gives them hope that even with those flaws that I have, that they share that I've been successful and so they can be too. You must recognize and maximize who you are and the unique set of skills and talents that you've acquired. And what I find is, is that most people are not that good at identifying what those unique set of skills are, what those unique strengths are, unless they've done some amount of introspection. Now, I've been keeping a journal for about 20 years, and so for me it's relatively easy. Now, if you've never kept a journal or you've never really done very much introspection, what you're going to have to do is start really thinking through your past experience, start really thinking through when you've excelled, when you've been passionate, when you've been complimented, and start to identify what are the things that are in common with those experiences. Ultimately, you're going to need to rely on yourself to figure out more about yourself. No one else can tell you about it, but the more that you learn about who you are and what makes you unique, the easier it will be for you to climb up the ladder of success and ultimately be the dominant authority in your market. Next, gurus lean towards being resourceful as opposed to looking for resources. Now, this is a very, very important point. You see, most people, if we look at Internet marketing, for example, they tend not to spend much time thinking on their own. Instead, they look for resources of someone else who's already done the thinking, already figured things out. And this is the way it is in almost every market, not just Internet marketing. Now, if you're going to be a guru, though, and you're going to have products or services, then you need to be the provider of information advice. In order to do that, you need to spend some time thinking instead of always defaulting to what others have thought. You need to do the thinking on your own so that you have your own opinion and you have your own observations and you have your own advice. Take for instance, this blog post I wrote a couple years ago. It was right after Billy Mays passed away. And actually, if you go into Google and type in Billy Mays marketing, you'll find the blog post that comes up number one. Now, right after he passed away, I thought about writing a blog post and I thought I'd write about what unique things he did to help him sell so well. What I did though, was when I did a little research, I realized that nobody had really taken the time to dissect it, which meant that it offered me an opportunity to do exactly that, to dissect Billy Mays commercials and by doing so, offer my readers, my subscribers, subscribers advice. The blog post ended up being about 28 pages, but it went incredibly viral and really got us a massive amount of traffic on our blog. And primarily because I had spent the time thinking and doing the analysis that many thought would be valuable but were too lazy to take upon themselves. And this is the consistent thing that gurus do. They rely on their own thinking more so than the advisor information from others. So they make the most of what they have by being resourceful and spending time thinking about solutions to the current problems that their prospects and clients face. And that's really not that difficult because most people spend absolutely no time thinking that through. So when you take the time to really think it through, you end up having better answers than your prospects or clients. And because of that, you are perceived as a guru. So let me reiterate that point. In other words, you want to become a better problem solver. And the problems that you want to spend time thinking about are the problems that your prospects and your marketplace tend to live with, tend to suffer through, and tend to have. And by doing so, by spending time consistently thinking about solutions to those problems, shortcuts to those problems, how to resolve those problems, you will always ultimately build up your bank of secrets of strategies of different approaches that will help your prospects in your market. So you're really, in this sense getting paid to think and problem solve on behalf of your marketplace. And if you really look at it that way, if you really embrace that, what you'll find is that it's very easy to provide a high amount of value in a very easy and effortless way. And all it requires, requires is consistent thinking about the problems that your prospect has and different ways and approaches to solve it. Next, let's talk about passion, because gurus are passionate, because you absolutely, positively need to be passionate about what you're doing. You know, it's been said that the greatest productivity secret in the world is to be passionate about what you're doing. And I agree with that line. Or that statement 100%. Because when you love what you're doing, your passion just shows through and if it's genuine, people will want to follow you. So think of people in your life that have true passion for some aspect of their life, and I'm sure that you'll agree that it tends to be easier to be around that person doing that thing than being around someone who's miserable or self conscious around that same thing. When you're passionate about your topic, you'll find it easier to attract customers, attract prospects, and ultimately build a thriving business because that passion and energy that you provide is attractive and makes people want to be around you, want to learn from you, and ultimately want to pay you. Next. Gurus are comfortable giving advice. If you're going to be in the information business, you got to be comfortable giving advice. It's as simple as that. When you're seen as an authority, you have to be willing to prove your expertise by giving recommendations and strategies. And that the more black and white it is, the more powerful it is. In other words, the more you learn about a topic in general, the more you're able to see shades of gray, that most things are not black and white. Yet what the public wants primarily are black and white thinkers. So you have to give advice as if this is the way to do it, not that this is one way, and it might be this way or it might be that way. That's not what people want from their guru. That's not what they want from the top authority. What they want are very specific black and white steps. They believe that the guru, the authority has thought through and is telling them to follow. And that's really important. You know, it's like when you look at someone like Susie Orman, what most financial analysts that are sophisticated, when they look at her, they say she has oversimplified things. She's not taking everything into account. However, what those financial experts don't realize is that by simplifying things and by being so black and white, Suze Orman actually has attracted the audience she has because they are too complex. And it's really that simple. It's something that is a little bit counterintuitive, but it's really important that you get your head around that. Next, a guru faces challenges head on. In other words, the most successful gurus constantly see all the obstacles that stand in their way as challenges to tackle. You know, my mentor Michael Masterson once shared that he loves obstacles because that's where he's going to leave his competitors behind. Now Obstacles are what you must surmount to get to the positioning and the income and the respect that you desire. But also the obstacles that your clients face, you got to attack those with the same fervor because it's the those issues that when you solve, you have a blockbuster promotion, you have instant name recognition, you have all the things that you want. So it's really obstacles in your own life that allow you to kind of rise above the crowd. And it's the obstacles in the lives of your marketplace as it relates to your expertise that you solve for them that creates your following. That means that there's no problem in your prospect's life as it relates to your expertise that you shouldn't not be thinking about. In other words, their problems are what you should be thinking about. Their obstacles are what you should be thinking about. And you should be working on how to solve them for them in the fastest, easiest way possible. Now, in order for all this to work, in order for you to start really to develop these mindsets and to really play the role, so to speak, of being the dominant authority in your market, the very first person that you have to convince that you are a guru is yourself. In other words, you first have to decide that you're going to be a guru. No one's ever going to anoint you. You have to self anoint yourself. And you must decide that you're going to be who you need to be. And once again, you know, self aggrandizement is a part of it. And there's no way around that. You have to convince yourself that you're a guru first. Because the biggest leverage point in your business is going to be you. You are the personality that will drive the that business forward. And really the best way to become a guru is to start with what you have. Your own unique qualities, your own unique skills, your own unique backstory and your talents. And for most people, where they get into a little bit of trouble is in their mindset, not really kind of owning it, not really self identifying, that yes, indeed, I am guru quality. I am the one that is worthy of giving you advice. And if that's not you right now, that's completely okay. But it also means that you're going to have to make certain changes and you're going to have to start changing the way that you are. Now. This is actually easier than what it might sound like. There have been numerous times where I've literally changed who I was. For example, when I first went off to college, I went to a college where I Didn't know anyone that was attending that university. And it occurred to me before I went to school that I could be someone new. I could take what I was and change it so that I would be someone different when I went to school. And so that's, in fact, what I did. And so I was a very different person in college than I was in high school. Then when I first took over the clothing business, that was failing, that I turned around. I had to become a retailer. I had to really be more outgoing than I was in the past, and I studied retailing. But I saw myself as a retailer, and that's one of the reasons that I was able to take that store from 1.5 million to 7 and a half million. When I was a hypnotist and grew the chain of hypnosis centers, I once again was a different person. I was different than I was in college. I was different than when I had my clothing stores. And lastly, here at Strategic Profits, as the guru to the gurus, I'm once again a different person. So each time I've gone about a new business or been in a new situation, I've changed who I was to better fit the situation that I was going into, and I've benefited greatly from that. And you can do exactly the same thing. You need to get clear about how you need to be in order for the people of your market to respect and admire and to begin being that person. Now. Next, it is about getting to know yourself as well as you can, because you want to build this Persona. You want to make changes that are within the realm of who you really are. Because if you have to be somebody else, that's different than being a better version of yourself. So, you know, I can't be Tom Beal, who's the president of my company, but I can be more like him in certain ways that are in line with who I am. So it's about figuring out what you want to do for the rest of your life, how you want to be, and integrating that with who your market needs you to be, where you'll find your sweet spot, so to speak, of how you can lead your market and be congruent with who you really are. It's also about figuring out which things you need to stress and which things you're better off not drawing attention to. And this, you know, it varies by person to person, personality type to personality type. But if you know yourself well and you get really clear on what the marketplace struggles with and who they're looking for, you can mesh the two of those together, to really create the ideal Persona, to really create the ideal way that you're going to project yourself. More than anything else, marketing is a game of perceptions. And so one of the things that you need to do in being able to market your expertise and to market yourself, your personality, is to get awfully clear about which things from your past, from your experiences, your skills, your talents, what have you, that you can leverage and create relevancy for your market. In other words, to take your backstory, your skills, your talents, all those things, and to make them relevant to your prospects because they believe that those things will help them them when translated to get the result that they're after. For example, I ran some very successful offline businesses before I got online, and there's no natural linkage between succeeding offline and succeeding online. I created that linkage. In other words, I succeeded online and showed people that it was the same principles that helped me succeed offline, that succeeded online, and that I could teach people how to grow their businesses online. You see, so you have to look at your life and think through what has life prepared you for? And really, it's about being creative in linking what your past has revealed about you to linking that to outcomes that your prospect wants. In other words, things that happened to you, things you did, talents you have, passions you share, have come together in a way that allows you to be able to help them. And it's up to you to really kind of refine that message. So, for another example, I love to read, and I read three to five business books, psychology books, all different types of books, really, each and every week. And I'll always read books because I just love doing it. But I've also built that into the way I'm perceived in the marketplace, which reinforces that I know a lot of things that I'm really smart, that I'm a good person to learn from, what have you. So it's about mining who you are and your past and all these things. But to make the connection of why this is a good thing in the lives of your prospects. So the areas that I would be looking at are just to make it clear, are all the significant events of your life, how can they be spun in a way that they're useful to your prospects? I would look at any natural talents that you had and how can they be beneficial to your market? I'd look at any skills that you've developed, and how can they be valuable to your market? I would look at any experiences or successes or losses, and how they can be beneficial to your market. And lastly, I would look at the passions that you have and really get clear about what you're passionate about and how those passions can be attached to your Persona and can be valuable to your market. And so it's really looking at your uniqueness and making the case that these things that make you unique also make you uniquely qualified to be giving advice and to be helping people get a certain result, whatever that result is in their lives and their business, in whatever it is that you want to be perceived as the dominant authority in your market. And so, so before I wrap up this little section, I just want to return back to resourcefulness. I think that you really want to cultivate that ability to be resourceful. And that's so important because oftentimes as a guru, you're operating in an area where you kind of have to make it up as you go along. You're never going to find a single source that is going to tell you what to do every step of the way, as much as many people would like to find. And so what that really means is that you've got to be able to figure out things on your own. And really that can be developed relatively easily over time by always checking in whenever you have a problem of trying to define the problem yourself and then brainstorm different solutions and think it through and figure out how you would tackle the issue based on the thinking you just did. Now, you can always then go and check any kinds of sources, but you really want to start conditioning yourself to be thinking for yourself and to be resourceful. And that will pay you rich dividends throughout your career as the dominant authority in your market. So make sure that you spend time, if you're not already someone who's very resourceful, to really build that muscle up. Okay, next I want to move into how you can be like an artist and act like a guru. Now, the reason why I think this is important for you to understand, to really appreciate, is, is that the mindset of an artist, a successful artist, is very similar to the most successful gurus, not all gurus, but definitely the most successful. So it's a useful self check, really, to cultivate these habits and this perspective in order to ascend to the top of your marketplace. Now, the very first thing that should be somewhat obvious to you, but I want to point out, is that the greatest artists of all time have always done things completely different than the way things have been done before. And when they reach out and did those things, they weren't sure if they would be well received or ridiculed, and generally they were both. And what allows an artist to do that is an artist doesn't become an artist because they want to please someone. They become an artist because they have a need to create art. So you have a need to help people do a certain thing. And you're going to help people regardless of what other people might think, because an artist cares about what others think, but they don't care so much that it gets them frozen, because they don't allow criticism to ever stop them. And they're constantly coming up with creative solutions. Creativity is a big part of being an artist, and they care enough about what they're doing that they don't mind failing as long as they're moving forward and they're trying. And so this concept of kind of embracing this artistic flair would serve you well as you achieve the notoriety in your market. As you work to establish yourself as an influencer, you're going to have a lot of opposition. You've got to convince the world that you are someone worthy of listening to. And that opposition can come from friends, family, spouse, what have you. And you can't let any of that stop you. Once you get online, you'll be open to criticism from people who haven't done anything. And you can't allow that to bother you. You must be secure enough to care, but not too much so that you can press on. And ultimately, that's what artists do. Now, what's different about you as opposed to an artist, though, is is that instead of you working with plaster or paint or whatever other tools artists use, you're going to be. Your thoughts are really your artwork. It's your thinking that is your art. And those thoughts that you develop is really your masterpieces. And it's a really good perspective to have because it's your thinking, ultimately, that allows you to become the dominant authority in a market. So by improving your thinking, by actually working on improving your ability to think, think, you will improve many, many areas throughout your life and your business because you'll radically benefit from the improved thinking ability that you cultivate to be a guru that will follow you in everything that you do. Now, the really good news about all this is twofold. One, most people don't like to think. So by spending time thinking, you are automatically distancing yourself from the masses. In addition to that, we're living in a time right now where you could never make more from your thinking ability. Because with the Internet, the rise of social media, you can now reach more Prospects than the largest multinational corporations could only dream about a decade ago. And what they'll be exposed to more than anything else is the quality of your thinking. So that means that your thinking and your thoughts are really what gives you your competitive edge. And the way that those thoughts get marketed is what gives you recognition, credibility, and ultimately the ability to ascend to the top. But it's easier if you're working with powerful thoughts than if you're working with commonplace, weak thoughts. And so I really want to stress to you that you should be spending time thinking. And that time that you spend thinking should gradually increase. Your ability to work out problems. Your ability to come up with solutions and to do them uniquely will pay you such huge dividends that it's a skill that you really want to cultivate. And I would even read a few books on how to think better, because once again, it'll make every other job that you have easier. And it will make the marketing job easier because you'll have better thoughts to market. Overcoming your fears. See, part of adopting this mindset that we're talking about, this mindset of a successful guru, is really learning how to manage and then eventually overcome your fears. Now I know that some of you who are listening to me right now might think that you're not really affected by fear. But if you look at perfectionism as fear driven, if you look at procrastination as being fear driven, as you look at a lot of areas of your life and you start with the filter of what am I afraid will happen? Why am I not doing this? What you'll see often is that we're much more controlled by our fear than many of us realize. In fact, fear is the oldest and strongest emotion of all human behaviors. And it's basically burnt into our subconscious and inscribed into our nervous system. And ultimately though, fear, when left to its own devices, can really kind of create a self fulfilling prophecy that will have you not performing at your best. And obviously you don't want that to happen. So one of the ways that you overcome that is by consciously disputing your fears, by realizing that at the end of the day, there's nothing really to be too fearful of. And some of the ways that you can get around your fears are the can hold on to your curiosity about life as opposed to a feeling of knowing what's going to happen. You know, it's this certainty that of badness or this certainty of the potential for badness that often keeps us afraid. Instead, keep your mind open and be interested enough to see what happens next with a curiosity that really banishes fear. Know the field that you operate in by having that expertise and then spending your time on being able to better market that expertise, you'll feel very comfortable and you should feel less afraid. Start developing the habit of moving before you feel totally ready to. I don't mean to be that you should be impulsive, but you should start conditioning yourself to be able to act even when you're in the realms of uncertainty, because that will condition your ability to be able to handle a greater and greater amount of uncertainty and not be paralyzed by it. Next, you've got to be willing to bet on yourself. And by that I mean believe that you have the ability to get the result that you're after and to start looking and remembering all the times in your past when you've accomplished a outcome, that you've overcome obstacles. And at the end of the day, if you're secure in yourself, you'll find that there is very little to be afraid of. And the more resourceful you are, the less there is to be afraid of. So ultimately, there's nothing that I can say that will immediately make you less fearful. But what I can tell you is that by being more resourceful, by believing in yourself more, by understanding that no matter what happens, you'll be able to handle it, allows you to operate in the world where you're not being held back by fear. And in the sense of being perceived as the dominant authority in your market, the guru, it's really important that you do that. Now, even though I've overcome my fears, I'm still a somewhat flawed individual, and so is every other successful guru. There's nobody in this world that's perfect. And this next area, what I really want to talk to you about is how you can outthink your flaws. Now, this is incredibly important. And in fact, I would say that not realizing that you could outthink your flaws is probably one of the top reasons why more people. People don't succeed in business as being positioned as the top guru in their marketplace. And every other ambition that people have often doesn't get achieved because people don't spend time thinking about outthinking themselves. Now, what I mean by that is that oftentimes the default response is to believe that you need to change in order to get an outcome that you want, instead of thinking about not changing and still getting the outcome that you want. So this difference of not changing but outthinking your flaw is something that gurus tend to be very good at especially top gurus, because they had to in order to get to where they wanted to be. In other words, they have found clever ways to make their flaws, their personal challenges, insignificant, inconsequential, rather than allowing those flaws to hold them back or their business back, or to take them down a blind alley of now working on themselves instead of growing their business. So recently this came up because I gave a speech to clients of mine at a recent client appreciation day where I challenged them, my clients, to find ways to get around their own flaws as quickly as possible, rather than working on themselves or getting educated or what have you. You see, I believe that if you own a business and you need to change in order for your business to be successful, that's a problem, and that you're better off thinking through how the business can compensate even if you never change and you can do the same as you ascend to guru status. So, for example, I have a couple of flaws that could hold my business back. I procrastinate at times. I tend to take a long time to complete certain writing project at events I don't like to network. I'd rather just talk to the few people I already know. Sometimes I lack discipline. I'm not as organized as I would like. But rather than allow my business to suffer because of those flaws, I've figured out ways to hire employees that can overcome these flaws for me. So I have a gentleman by the name of Chuck who manages Founders Club, and he works on the reports that I put out. Every two months I come up with the idea, we brainstorm together, he writes, I then review, we go back and forth. But I don't have to now worry about that area, you know, I have another woman named Kat. She completes my writing projects for me. I have a JV and affiliate manager. I have Tom Beall, who is also very outgoing, very disciplined, and he runs the company. Now, I realize that you might not be able to hire around your flaws, but that isn't the only way to make your flaws irrelevant. The other way is to outthink them. And that's really, really important. So because I'm a perfectionist and because I'm a procrastinator, if I were to develop a product that I was then going to release and sell, the likelihood is it would take me way too long if it ever got done. And so I purposely chose a coaching program where even though oftentimes I would only get everything done a minute before it was supposed to go live, having this group of people waiting for me was enough for me not to procrastinate and for me to be okay with something that wasn't perfect because it had to get done. And I've done that consistently. And I could give you example after example, but whatever you think right now is currently holding you back. Instead of thinking that you have to change it, think about how you can outthink it, how you can make it irrelevant, how you can be successful without changing. Because what's the alternative? The alternative is to work on changing yourself, which doesn't actually do anything for your business. And most of the time, change, especially personal change, isn't that easy. You see. So what we're really doing here is we're thinking about our flaws and we're out thinking those. And then we're thinking about our passions and our strengths and figuring out how to better leverage those and make them more what we, we do in a day to day experience in our business. So I really enjoy advising clients. I get a big jolt of enthusiasm and energy when I do that. And so I spend a lot of time doing that. I enjoy reading, I enjoy researching, I enjoy creating new content at times, and I enjoy the Q and A calls that I do with my clients. And so I've built the business on the things that I enjoy that are always easy for me. And I've figured out ways in the beginning when I was first starting out to out the any flaws I had. And then as my company grew, I had to do less outthinking and I could hire people to kind of fill in the roles so that my flaws would no longer be that detrimental to me or the business. Now, in order to be successful with both of those, out thinking yourself, focusing on your strengths and your passions, and ultimately building a business once you've tasted that success that makes your flaws irrelevant, all requires deeper thinking. And really since we talked about ultimately that thinking is your art, it pays for us to spend a little bit more time here talking about thinking and in the greater context of things. So as a guru, ultimately you're getting paid for who you are and that's based on your insights. But even in business in general, the better thinker is often able to out think, outmaneuver, outflank and over profit from everyone else because of their thinking. So this skill will save you so much time if you learn it now. And that's thinking. Thinking will help you get further in business and further as a guru than almost anything else other than marketing that thought, marketing that expertise. So if you really look at it, you're getting paid to think. And therefore it follows that you must know how to think at a much deeper level than most people are willing to or even consider. So that, like I said earlier, that's relatively easy, because most people spend almost no time thinking. They walk around every day simply reacting. And thinking is work. And because of that, most people tend to avoid it as much as possible. Now, it's a skill, too. And like all skills, your thinking ability improves with practice. And that means that you can actually train yourself to think better. And the more that you practice it, the better that you'll get at it. So when your thinking improves, you'll not only see more clearly, you'll not only think more creatively, but you'll plan more effectively. And you'll also no longer make many of the mistakes that lots of rookies make due to faulty thinking. So there are a couple of things that I do every day to force me to think deeply. And my number one tool, which I've mentioned earlier, is keeping a journal. Now, if I could convince you to start a single habit during this entire first module here, it would be to cultivate the habit of daily writing in a journal. Because daily writing in a journal will keep you thinking day in and day out for the rest of your life. I record everything in my journal for my business and my personal life, and nothing has been more useful for me because it allows me to explore the thought patterns that impact me. So when I am excited about buying something, I explore what caused me to be excited and the feelings I'm feeling in anticipation of its delivery. If I'm feeling upset, I look at the patterns of why I got upset and what caused that. And these insights about myself have been incredibly useful in my overall marketing as well as coming up with breakthrough ideas. So the U diagram, for example, on the front of the manifesto that was in my presentation that people had told them told me was a hot button in the application that I told you about a long time ago that came through my journal. And a famous philosopher once said, that which is most personal is most general. So these deep insights into core feelings and core ways of kind of interacting with the world will allow you to better communicate with your market. Like I said, I've been doing it for over 20 years. I guess now it's almost close to 23 years. And I use my journal to work out how I should handle things. If I'm not happy, I use it to complain. And then oftentimes as I'm complaining, I figure out new insights. And eventually many of these Insights. These problems that I'm dealing with allow me to come up with breakthrough solutions, and those breakthrough solutions oftentimes allow me to really have something very, very valuable to offer my clients, my prospects, my market. So some of the ways that I use in my journal, I'll give you three that I think are easy ones to get started with. The first one is something called sentence stems. And sentence stems are basically the beginning of a sentence where the end of the sentence is left blank. And the goal is to come up with as many different answers as you can in a brief period of time. So you're not really thinking. It's more trying to tap into the gut response. So a sentence could be the most important and profitable action I could take right now is. And you would then have it blank. And the goal would be, is to answer that every day, a few answers, and quickly you would start building a database of all these different answers that you'd find some were much better than others, and ultimately you'd find the great answer. So that's one. I also do a lot of visual thinking, diagramming, mind mapping, charts, graphs, because that's how I tend to think.

Think.

So you have to kind of identify how you like to think, and then once you do, to incorporate that into your journal. Now, actually, I said I was going to give you three. I'll give you four. Another one is to have a conversation with yourself. So I'll ask myself questions and then answer them and go back and forth and have this dialogue where really the person I'm writing to is myself, and I'm responding. But this dialogue helps me resolve issues. And then lastly, there's great value in questions. And so what I do is whenever I come across a really good question, I keep it and I record it. And then when I feel like breaking out my big book of questions, I will answer a few of them in my journal. And I find that that also helps develop clarity. Like I said, there are some great books on thinking. I really believe that this is a skill that will benefit you greatly. Regardless of whether or not the area that you want to be the top guru and the dominant authority in requires a lot of thinking, it will nonetheless help you achieve the level that you want in the shortest period of time, in addition to just making life that much more pleasurable because you've spent the time thinking things through. And because of that, you are able to operate with a much higher degree of intelligence behind what you're doing. All right, so that basically wraps up the key points that I wanted to cover during this module. Now, before I get to the action items, let me just quickly recap what I thought was most important that you paid attention to that we covered today. First and foremost, it's about understanding that greater expertise won't get you to where you want to be. It's greater marketing ability of that expertise. So it's about learning how to market your expertise better. And therefore that also means that you can learn from any guru, current or past, by looking at what they do to make their expertise as relevant as possible to their market marketplace. Next, that you have to anoint yourself and then be willing to self aggrandize that no one's going to come to you and anoint you the guru. You have to claim it for yourself and aggrandize yourself so that people believe it. That if you don't have any credibility or assets to leverage, then take a page out of my book.

Hey everyone, it's Rich again and I have to jump on a call but I didn't want to stop this. So what I'm going to do is. This is Ryan. Ryan has just replaced cj. He's going to be watching the rest of this with you. I think there's about eight or 10 minutes left and then when it's done he will end it and I will see everyone on Thursday. On Thursday we're just going to play the next video in this sequence. So I'm going to be at Traffic and Funnels so I won't be able to be on. But you will. Ryan's going to get it running on Thursday as well and so and then I'll be back for for next Tuesday. I hope everyone's doing great. Thanks for spending time with me today and I'm really happy with the great comments that you guys have. Enjoyed this video a lot. Any questions that you have, I will get those questions and I'll do my best to answer them next Tuesday. And with that said, I'm going to mute myself again and put back the video.

Can become the best student of a current guru that's well known that ultimately would become invested in your success. Remember the approach also that I took, which I believe is the ideal approach and have helped numerous gurus or today's gurus achieve that notoriety by doing the same approach that I did, which was launch a high priced coaching program with an over the top guarantee that was by application only, that during that application it exposed what were the hot buttons and allowed me to create the content based on what my clients wanted. So that when I was finished. I had great case studies, a high price point to peg things to, and an understanding of the hot buttons that allowed me to sell it. Remember also that you get paid to think and that to give advice and to market your expertise yourself and your best ideas so that you really need to be as good of a thinker as you can be and the best marketer of ideas and expertise as you can be. Starting today, make the decision to figure out first who you need to be and then to be that person, your best self, as it relates to your marketplace. Think through your life story and where has it all been leading to and why does it make you relevant to the market that you want to serve? Remember to act like an artist and realize that your art is your thinking and your artwork are your thoughts, your ideas, and identify the fears that undermine your success and dispute them as best you can. Identify your flaws and outthink them so that you don't have to rely on changing to be successful and ultimately do everything that you can to become a better thinker. Now, along those lines, here are the action items get to know yourself and Start strategically thinking by starting a journal as I covered already, but I'll give you a few more. In my own journal, I cover topics about how I'm feeling, about what I'm learning, new observations, overall thoughts, critical thinking, reflective thinking, creative thinking, spotting patterns, keeping myself accountable, getting in touch with deeper feelings, emotions, and recording and exploring ideas. So try to really leverage what you've already done, who you already are, to the best of your ability, and the way you do that is by understanding who you are better and using a journal to do that. You can also use your journal to explore the gurus that you already look up to and think about what really has led you to that feeling? What were you exposed to over time that led you to believe that this person is the right person for you or a good person to learn from. In other words, how was that perception created? Also, you can think about and record what you either know or believe to be the biggest problems that your prospects currently struggle with, and think of better ways to describe those problems, metaphors to describe those problems, stories that illustrate those problems, and then ultimately practice thinking through new solutions to those problems. If you use a journal for all those things, you will find that in a very short period of time your thinking will improve and your ability to market your thoughts will improve, and therefore you will increasingly achieve greater and greater momentum until you've reached the positioning that you want. So we spend a lot of time here figuring out on how to get your mindset right to become a guru. And the reason is, is that your business as a guru will always obviously revolve around you until you've brought in more personalities or have grown into other areas. So it's crucial that you see the world clearly, that you're honest with yourself, that you know yourself, and that you get used to deeper thinking. So all that has to do with changing your overall mindset. Now, in the next webinar, we're going to talk about how to define your niche and carve out your market and how to really become a category of one, even in a crowded marketplace. So until then, to higher profits and beyond, go get your journal. Start writing down your passions, your dreams, everything, the flaws that you need to outthink yourself. And I will see you shortly in module number two.