Fladlien Productions

Today I was sitting outside on my deck, writing a sales letter in my head. That’s how I do it these days – I map it all out in my mind, and then when I sit down I let my unconscious mind write it for me. I learned how to hypnotize myself to do that after reading a book in which the great hypnotist Milton Erickson put someone in a trance and then had them do “automatic writing”. It’s much easier that way.

While sitting outside, I noticed something. There were two box-elder bugs who had somehow gotten connected together at their hind feet. It was interesting. One was trying to go one way, and the other was trying to go a different way. The result – neither were able to really go anywhere.

During my days as a monk, I developed a very deep appreciation for all living things – which is why I continue to be a vegetarian to this day. So I decided to help them out. There just happened to be a lone bird feather laying on my deck, so I picked it up, and used it to “tickle” the intertwined feet of the box-elder bugs until they became untangled – then they ran off in their separate directions.

That got me to thinking about my clients. Most of them are in a similar situation – they hold conflicting beliefs inside themselves. So when they try to do one thing, another thing jumps up and holds them back. This is especially true regarding money.

The reason most people have trouble making money is because they have not dealt with all their issues about how they feel about wealth. They are conflicted. Let me give you an example. I was at my mom’s recently, when a client called me up. She was down to her last few dollars, and really wanted to buy one of my higher ticket coaching programs. But by doing so, she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to afford rent next month.

What did I do? I told her that she especially should involve herself with my program, because she had the proper motivation to make it work, and having it work for her would help her climb up from the financial situation she was currently in. I made her buy it right there on the phone to make sure she was committed.

When I got off the phone my mom asked me, “How can you take someone’s last bit of money?” First, let’s examine that word. In my mom’s mind I took something. However, I didn’t. In reality, I gave something far greater in value than the cash my client exchanged for it.

Second, far be it for me to think I’m morally superior to tell someone else what they can and can’t do with their money. Remember, this client wanted to buy… and what she really wanted was just some confirmation she was making the right move.

And in my opinion she was, because I know if she uses my system she truly will get great results – otherwise, why would all my stuff come with such strong money back guarantees?

Now let’s say she buys it and does nothing with it. She ends up being broke and unable to pay the rent. Is that the end of the world? Hardly. In fact, her options are either to get tougher or to wither and wallow away, and stay in mediocrity. If she can’t get tougher, then there is nothing that I or anyone else can do for her. If that experience helps her, then I would’ve done her a disservice if I let her stay in her comfort zone, barely scraping by on the rent.

See, the point is I have no qualms about asking people to give me money, because I have no conflicts with wealth coming from inside me. So I’m able to more quickly, accurately and efficiently move toward my goal.

I know for a fact most people wouldn’t be able to do what I just did above. And that’s because they have an inherent conflict regarding wealth. And it’s no wonder it’s so hard for them to attract it in their life!

You know you have a problem if you rarely email your list or customers with an offer. You know you have a problem if you equate value to time. For example, this is what I tell my copywriting clients. My fees are usually $2,000 to $4,000 depending on the scope of the project. It will be $2,000 if I feel I can get the ad done in less than 3 hours. $4,000 if I think I have to spend all day on it. And I won’t take jobs if I have to spend more than one day on the ad.

Sometimes I do ads for clients that only take me 45 minutes to write and I get paid $2,000 to do it! And I don’t feel one ounce of guilt for it. Because I know that ad will either bring back multiples of that amount if properly used, or if it doesn’t, part of my agreement is that I will go back and tweak it up to three more times until it does.

I actually turn time into a competitive advantage. In reality, the level of my copywriting ability usually goes for $10,000 on the market. I know because I’m friends with a lot of copywriters who charge that much for a sales letter (or more). The difference is I can do the same quality in far less time and with far less effort as them, so I can pass that savings on to the customer. In reality, I’m giving them more value. It’s a great deal for them (which amazes me why more people don’t try to partner with me for their project).

Could you, with a straight face, ask to be paid $2,000 for something that might only take you a couple hours to do? And even more, could you tell the client that fact, and then turn it into a selling point? If not, you have a wealth conflict going on inside yourself.

Here’s what you need to do. First, get out a piece of paper and write down all the potential conflicts you think somebody could have about wanting to get rich. Then come up with rational responses about how those conflicts are illogical. You don’t have to share them with anyone. But just by doing this, you’ll have an innate congruency to attract more wealth in to your life.

Let me give you one more example to get you started. Some people are afraid of wealth because they think money will isolate them from others. Here’s my personal rational as to why that’s not a problem.

First, I recognize money will isolate you from others. Some people will be jealous, or think less of you behind your back. To that I say – great! Those aren’t the people I really want in my life anyway. So wealth is like an insurance policy against them. Also, the reason money will change some of your current relationships is because to get more wealth, you have to become more. And as you become more, you grow as a person… while a lot of those around you stay the same. So if you continue to fit in with the current crowd you’re with, it means you’re not growing – and that you’re going to get the same “wealth results” they are getting.

Are you cool with that? I’m not. So it’s a good thing that money will isolate you from some of your current associates, friends and family members. But here’s what it will also do. After my brother passed away, my mom was pretty much tapped out for money. So I helped her get back on her feet by giving her nearly $7,000. I told her she didn’t even have to pay it back to me. Of course, she will because she’s that kind of person, but still – the fact is I was able to step in to help the family members who needed it most, and who were my well wishers. I couldn’t have done that if I first hadn’t laid the groundwork many months earlier by getting clear about my attracting wealth.

Please share your thoughts on this by posting a comment below.

I just got back from putting on my first seminar in Dallas, Texas with
Robert Plank and Mary Wilhite. We ended up bringing in about 30 people
to the event, which I consider pretty good for the first time. On
Friday I did two presentations, and on Saturday I spoke for over 5
hours!

Every time I’m at seminars, I always walking away with some new
insights, which I’d like to share with you. The first insight is
thanks to Mary, who is a genius at planning, it only cost us less than
$1600 to put on the whole event. I never dreamed it would be so cheap
to do one of these things. We’d already made our money back just from
the sales of the seminar tickets.

The second thing I learned was that most people who attended these
events seems to operate their online business with the breaks on! What
gives? Dan Kennedy once said something that stuck with me – you can’t
be a WUSSY and make money. It’s so true. In fact, the second day I
spent about two hours just mentally toughening up the audience. Some
people have trouble asking for the order. Other people are afraid they
might break something when they go out and try a new skill. Others
still are just plain shy.

Now, it’s natural to feel all of those things – but that doesn’t mean
you should accept them. You need a strategy for learning how to deal
with them.

Take me for example. I presented with NO POWER POINT or ANY NOTES.
Actually the only preparation I had done was in my head. In fact,
before my last presentation on Friday I had no idea what I was going
to say until 10 minutes before I stepped on stage. Which leads me to
share a funny story with you. Robert is not only a great business
partner, but also someone I consider a great friend. So we joke like
friends do. Robert bet me $5 that I couldn’t seamlessly work the word
“wagon wheel” into a presentation.

I had forgotten about it until ten minutes before that final
presentation. I was going to talk about email marketing. I have my 6
step approach to email marketing, but that sounds boring doesn’t it?
So what I did was drew a wagon wheel on a piece of paper, and said
“this is the wagon wheel approach to email marketing”. I did it to win
$5. But what I discovered was a huge, happy accident. People
immediately tuned in. Attentive rate was 100%. It stuck with them.
They talked about the wagon wheel for the rest of the event.

So I’m going to be using more visuals – on purpose – because it was
actually very helpful to the audience.

Which brings me back to my main point – I went out and tried something
new, just to see what would happen and got a great result. I’m sure
the same thing would happen to you if you just quit focusing so much
on the fear of failure, and instead tried to approach new things in a
state of curiosity.

Another big takeaway I got, which I’m going to start implementing at
future seminars, is to have people come up with their goals before the
seminar. Whenever I personally attend a seminar, I always write out a
one sentence goal on a piece of paper of what I went to get out of the
seminar. It might be something like “set up 3 joint ventures with
people who have a list of 2,000 or more subscribers”. Or, “schedule
three guest webinars”. Or “come up with an idea from one of the
presentations that you can create into a product and launch it in the
next week.”

In the future, I’m going to get seminar attendees on an autoresponder
and help them define their goals in advance of going to the seminar. I
don’t think one person there had a clearly defined and written down
goal going into the seminar of what they wanted to get out of the
seminar. My goal was to sell at least 30% of the attendees to join the
last webinar training program I’m doing with Robert Plank (it’s
already sold out!). So the whole time I was asking myself what I’d
have to do meet that criteria, and created my close around that goal.
I ended up getting 50% of the attendees to sign up.

Here’s a technique that will be useful for you, regardless of whether
you attend a real live seminar, a webinar, or a teleseminar. I call it
the “1 page of notes” technique. Les Tatum, a client and friend of
mine, was telling me that he took over 20 pages of notes for the two
day seminar. I told him he should take those 20 pages, and go through
them, and condense them down into 1 page. Then ACT on everything on
that one page.

Keep the rest of the notes around just in case you might one
day reference them – but let’s get realistic – even I can’t act on 20
pages of notes. But everyone can act on one page. So it forces you to
take the best of the best stuff and immediately implement it.

Anyways, thanks for reading. Was this helpful for you? If so please
leave a comment. Also, when you leave a comment, let me know where’d
you like me to do my next seminar at, and if there’s enough demand for
one certain area, I’ll put it on the map, as we have at least 3 more
scheduled for this year.

Thanks,
- Jason