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The Renegade Millionaire Way

Lookin’ for Luck in all the wrong places.

The Irish are a very superstitious lot. They believe a black cat voluntarily following you home brings good luck, but bringing a black cat home, or even moving one with you from old house to new, curses you with bad luck forevermore. There are so many Irish superstitions about good and bad luck and blessings and curses, they fill a book.

I’m Irish. I don’t make a big thing out of it. Sometimes, on St. Patrick’s Day, I even forget to wear green. But my racing silks (I drive professionally in 200+ harness races a year) have a big green shamrock on them, and I have been known, after winning a couple races, to get attached to a lucky whip – until I again lose a race.

I have my little superstitions and lucky objects and rituals; indulgences; for racing, selling and speaking. But I know (and constantly remind myself) that luck has very little to do with outcomes, and that we pretty much manufacture our own luck – bad or good.

Usually by behavior, occasionally merely by attitude or thought.

People prefer looking at bad luck as purely circumstantial, yet if probed deeply and objectively enough, there’s choice involved. For example, when our very spoiled pet, who we affectionately call The Million Dollar Dog came up lame in her good rear leg and hip, and needed emergency surgery – delaying my wife’s travel plans, was this a week of bad luck?

The Million Dollar Dog already had this same surgery in the other leg, three years ago. This breed of dog is well-known for such problems, and she did pick the dog. That’s not to say I think a different choice should have been made; I do not; I wouldn’t trade this dog for any other on earth. It is to say, though, that the week’s trouble has little or nothing to do with bad luck, but with dog genetics, and human choice.

Belief in luck and all the superstitions that go with it, and variations of it to which we assign different names and terminology, clouds the core reality of success and failure: that it is up to the individual.

The Renegade Millionaire Way is acceptance of responsibility; more responsibility for more things more often and more readily than the 95% crowd wants anything to do with – not because we are masochists, but because we know a secret: responsibility equals control, control is product of responsibility, and we definitely do want control.

When it comes to the category of ‘information’, whether acquired by attending a college, buying books, attending seminars, engaging a consultant or coach, etc., most people are eager to place the responsibility for outcomes on the information itself or the provider of the information.

The kid with the Master’s Degree in 16th Century Literature asking you if you want fries with your Hero-burger blames the University of Finkelstein or his high school guidance counselor for his fate. But truth is, all information is neutral but for personal, targeted application, and all providers of information are, at best, informed, interesting provocateurs. Me included.

If you want control over the outcomes in your life to be achieved via productive use of information, you can only get it to the same extent you are willing to embrace responsibility for those outcomes.

Then there is the eagerness and ease with which businesspeople have, in recent few years, been transferring responsibility to the recession and its assorted evils. For some, a ‘bad’ economy is actually obvious “good luck” and presents opportunity. Most view it as “bad luck”. But it is neither, in and of itself. It is for each person what he permits it to be and makes of it.

Most look for luck in all the wrong places. If you are familiar with Russell Conwell’s famous speech, oft-published as a book, titled Acres of Diamonds, you’ll know where to look. Clue: that source is very close at hand.

– By Dan S. Kennedy, serial entrepreneur, from-scratch multi-millionaire, speaker, consultant, coach, author of 13 books including the No B.S. series, and editor of The No B.S. Marketing Letter. FOR A SPECIAL FREE GIFT FROM DAN FOR YOU including newsletters, audio CD’s and more: visit: www.FreeDanKennedyNewsletter.com

Filed Under: Articles and Tips, Guest Articles

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Can You Handle The Truth? Will You Tell The Truth?

We are very, very sloppy with language.

Consider the word “can’t”. People use it often, casually, and, mostly, inaccurately.

As in: I just can’t seem to lose weight. Actually, barring a genuine medical disorder, the odds against somewhere in the 25,000 to 1 range, anybody can, in fact, lose weight. There’s no mystery to it whatsoever. Reduce calorie, fat, and empty carb intake, add exercise. The accurate word replacing can’t here would be choose. I just seem to choose not to lose weight. I choose to remain fat, ugly, unhealthy.

I’m not a theologian, but I recall one of those bothersome commandments brought down from the mountain having to do with not lying. I know a lot of people who profess belief in those ten, yet lie like dogs daily to themselves. You’d think we could at least manage some private honesty with self.

In my businesses – publishing, consulting, coaching, and training – quite a few people excuse themselves from doing the things necessary to be successful. In 30 years, I imagine I’ve heard every excuse. Most quitters aren’t very imaginative, so even the 30 year list is short.

There’s the old story of the guy asking his neighbor to borrow his tractor. His neighbor says: “Can’t let ya. There’s a horrible drought in Kansas.” The puzzled guy says, a little irritated, “We’re in Iowa. What the heck does the drought in Kansas have to do with me using your tractor?” And the farmer says: “When a man doesn’t want to lend out his tractor, one excuse is just as good as another.”

Whoever publishes the piece in which you find this series of Why People Fail articles is just like me and every coach, karate instructor, art teacher, personal trainer, business advisor; he, we, hear a lot of quitters’ excuses. One of the saddest is “I can’t afford it.”

My friend Jim Rohn, a world class success teacher, has famously said: “Rich people have big libraries. Poor people have big TV’s.” Somebody visiting one of my homes said, “It must be nice to be able to afford to buy and own all these books” (there are thousands). I said, “It is – but a good number of them were bought when I couldn’t afford them.”

They are cause, not effect. When Houdini moved from his country home to the city, it required five full-size moving vans just for his library of books about magic, performance, psychology and salesmanship. He did not acquire his library after becoming Houdini. He acquired it in becoming Houdini. Personally, years back, I found it less harmful to not afford a meal than to not afford information.

If you mean it as a drought in Kansas excuse to exit a place you decide you don’t belong, a program for progress and success you refuse to stick to and apply yourself to, it really isn’t necessary to fib to us or to yourself. Frankly, we don’t care, and you do yourself no good with the dishonesty.

If you sincerely believe you can’t afford to acquire the information that leads so many to success, you might inspect what you do afford – your daily Starbucks run, your cigarettes, your nights out with friends. Super entrepreneur Gene Simmons (KISS) wrote that anyone under 30 and not yet rich even thinking about taking a vacation should be shot.

Anyone saying “I can’t afford it” to the tools, support and direction needed to get to position where they no longer need proffer such sad excuse needs a good old fashioned, back out behind the barn butt-whipping. In my opinion. At least be honest. Look in the mirror and say: I choose not to afford it.

Filed Under: Articles and Tips, Guest Articles Tagged With: choosing words, dan kennedy, truth, why people fail, word choices

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The Professor of Harsh Reality’s Lecture About Time

Having recently had another birthday click over on the odometer, time is on my mind. It’s never far from it in my work-cave, because I have strategically placed more than a dozen clocks around the room and can’t look in any direction without seeing one.

As I describe in my book, No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs, I organize everything with start and pre-determined end times; if someone has a phone appointment with me they know in advance when it ends, not just when it starts, and it does end as scheduled even if in mid-sentence.

I have trained and conditioned myself to be hyper-sensitive to time, and I train my clients to respect my hyper-sensitivity about it.

Why?

Because your bank balance and your satisfaction or dissatisfaction with it is more a reflection of how you invest your time than reflection of anything else. This the more dominant factor in wealth or relative poverty, success or failure, fulfillment or frustration than all externals combined – whatever Obama and the Merry Band of Thieves in Washington DC may be up to, whatever European welfare state is in collapse, whatever volcano or oil spill is occurring, whether economy is booming or struggling, whether your particular industry is healthy or diseased. These external things are fluid.

In my 35 years as serial entrepreneur, made-from-scratch multi-millionaire, and business advisor to thousands, I’ve seen all these things and worse come and go, occur and occur again, and I’ve seen some entrepreneurs surrender their attitudes and reality to them, while others defy them and thrive.

My primary area of specialization is ‘marketing’, and most of my articles for ETR are laser-focused on that, but truth is, marketing and selling of goods, services or concepts is sabotaged or supported by how much control the individual or individuals who are the business’ driving force exercise over the investment, direction and consumption of their time, and with it, their energy and creativity.

In reality, time is the asset the entrepreneur owns outright and has total control over. I don’t really need to follow you around and observe how you use your time to gauge how you’re doing in business. I only need hear about your philosophy about time, that governs your behavior and what you will tolerate or refuse to tolerate in the behavior of those around you.

For example, do you have litmus tests, and what are they? One of mine: if somebody can’t keep seemingly minor commitments, they can’t be trusted to honor important ones either. If they are allowed to hang around, soon they’ll be cause of you failing to honor your commitments to yourself and others.

Or, for example, how do you relate time and goals? My hovering question is: will this use of my time move me measurably closer to my meaningful goals? Is there even a chance it will? If not, why do it?

Or, a governing rule to safeguard your time and sanity. Mine: if I wake up three mornings in a row thinking about you, and we’re not having sex, you gotta go. Do you actually handle time as money, not just give lip service to the idea? Can you tell me what your time must be worth per minute to achieve your income goal?

It’s difficult to find a clock in Las Vegas casinos because those casinos are designed to separate you from as much of your money as possible; to make you a loser, and that is best done by dulling your sensitivity to the passing of time. The same principle applies to your business life. The surest way to be a loser is to be casual or insensitive about time.

I’ve worked up close ‘n personal with many, many entrepreneurs who’ve converted ideas and grit into fortunes. The difference between them and the majority of also-rans is never the originality or even the quality of their ideas.

As a matter of fact, I’ve see fortunes manufactured from mediocre ideas, and great ideas still-born. This is important because far too many entrepreneurs and, candidly, those who observe them, report on them, write about them, glorify their success stories, still hold up The Great Idea as the pedestal-worthy holy grail. That is worship of a false god.

When the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were first added to the NFL as an expansion team, and setting records for consecutive losses and embarrassing performances, after one game, a reporter stuck a microphone in the head coach, John McKay’s face, and asked how he felt about his team’s execution that day.

McKay quipped that he was in favor of it. There’s reality. Execute or be executed. It’s how business really works. Hardly anybody gets paid for their ideas. Not even the Imagineers at Disney. We actually get paid for what we get done. To the ignorant, my area of marketing seems to be about ideas. The insiders know: it is about implementation.

The entrepreneur has a situation encouraging of poor productivity: he is his own boss. Often this produces an unproductive employee and a lenient, dysfunctional boss. A two-fer.

This is why you must create a success environment for yourself, impose strict deadlines on yourself and be ruthlessly resistant to waste of time by self and others, and hold yourself accountable hour by hour.

If you aren’t willing to work under such self-imposed pressure, I suggest forgetting the idea of getting and staying rich as king of your own kingdom. Every great kingdom needs a ruler with an iron-fist.