the last thing I said I would teach you is a way to increase your income by 10 times now it's a very simple formula when I started off uh by the time I was 36 years old I still remember I started off speaking and in my first year of speaking I got a call from a senior businessman who asked me if I would do a talk for 800 business owners in his organization and it would the talk would be on the success secrets of self-made millionaires or would I speak about self-made millionaires so I designed a talk and I sat down and I started to do some research and I realized I didn't know anything about self-made millionaires but I had two months before the talk so I quickly did enormous amount of reading and I found that self-made millionaires people who had started with nothing and become millionaires in one generation had been studied exhaustively and so I put together a talk called 21 success secrets of self-made Millionaires and I gave this talk and it was very well received and over the next 20 years I was asked to give this talk all over the world I put it on audio I put it on video and I wrote a book on it which has sold hundreds of thousands of copies in multiple languages and countless people that I've met all over the world said that that book made me Rich the CD made me Rich was actually it was a 1-h hour talk originally eventually I expanded it like an accordion would give it as an all day talk 21 ideas and as I began to do this I began to think how could I increase my productivity so that I could become a self-made millionaire as well and as a result of all this research I pulled together seven steps that I could take every day and it was based on what we call the law of incremental Improvement in Japan they call the the principle of Kaizen which means continuous betterment sometimes it's called The Law of accumulation is that each thing you learn accumulates and helps you improve in other things that you learn and my question I started off with was if I wanted to increase my income 10 times and I came up with this formula if you could increase your product ity by 1/10th of 1% per day 5 days a week could you do that well 1/10th is 1 1,000th more productive most people could be twice as productive just simply by focusing on the most valuable use of their time every morning but this is just one 1,000th more productive per day so if I said if you could do that one/ tenth of a percent per day 5 days a week you'd be half a percent more productive in a week having become half a percent more productive could you be do it next week and the answer is yes so that would be in 4 weeks you'd be 2% more productive in 13 4 week months 52 weeks you'd be 26% more productive in the course of a year is that possible and the answer is of course it's possible most people could be twice as productive within 24 hours just by not just by doing only the most valuable things they have to do if you did it 26% a year with compounding times 10 years at the end of 10 years you'd be 1,4% more productive you'd increase your income by more than 10 times so when I started to use this formula I'm going to share with you instead of taking 10 years it took me five years to increase my income 10 times and then I kept doing it and I increased my income 10 more times which is 100 times I increased my income a 100 times in 10 years and I went from rags to riches and I couldn't believe it and I've taught this all over the world and people come up to me and they say you made me Rich that technique made me Rich so here they are just in case you're curious number one is arise 2 hours before your first appointment or work each morning and spend 30 to 60 Minutes reading in your field start the day it's called the Golden hour invest the golden hour in yourself mentally what I do is I get up and I physically exercise and then I read and learn every single day make it a habit and I do it five six seven days a week and sometimes longer but if you read 30 to 60 minutes a day 5 days a week you read about a book A Week a book A Week will turn translate into about 50 books a year the average adult does not read more than one non-fiction book in a year if you read 50 books in a year 30 to 50 you'll get the equivalent of a PhD in your field each year I have read single books with a single chapter with a single observation from an expert that have been worth a million dollars to me but you never know where you're going to get that Insight so what you have to do is keep reading lots of material and every so often one observation will just jump off the page at you and your whole life will be changed so but use the law of probabilities by reading all the time reading is to the mind as exercise is to the body if you want to be physically fit you work out with physical exercise if you want to be mentally fit you have to read that's number one number two is rewrite your major goals in the present tense each day I use a spiral notebook and every day you take and turn the page and rewrite your goals not no don't rewrite them from the previous page write them from memory and I teach people in another area to write down 10 goals and every day write down your 10 goals without referring to the previous page as you write down the goals it's called a not not printing not not typing it's called a psychon neuromotor activity which is a big word that says it engages your whole brain when you write down a goal there's no other way to engage your whole brain and everything that you write down is actually automatically recorded in your mental soft your mental hard drive and it goes into your subconscious and begins working 24 hours a day I have worked with thousands of people who have written down their goals once and within one year their life was transformed some people within one week their whole life was transformed by just writing down their goals whenever I do my coaching programs with business owners I'll start off and I'll say I'll take a spiral notebook like a school notebook I'll say ladies and gentlemen I'm going to introduce you now to your new best friend for the next 31 days I want you to write down 10 goals on a separate page every day without looking back and when you come back to the next coaching program we'll talk about the results people come back 100% are just shocked at the difference that takes place in their lives and they begin writing their goals each day if you just rewrote your goals each day it would increase your income 1,000% if you just read 30 to 60 minutes each day it would increase your income 1,000% if you did nothing else number three is to plan every day in advance always work from a list and make a list of everything you have to do the next day the night before and planning will save you 25 to 50% of your time every single day you'll get your th% just by planning carefully before you start work number four is to focus and concentrate on the most valuable use of your time every single day select your most important task start on those and work only on those until they're complete if you can do that that alone will increase your income by 1,000% number five is to listen to audio programs As you move around I used to say listen to audio programs in your car but now you can download any number of educational audio programs onto your iPhone and you can listen to them whenever you're moving around turn driving time into learning time turn exercise time into learning time the only time by the way to listen to audio programs is when you're doing something else you can't sit and listen to audio programs because it's too slow but if you're driving you can listen if you're exerc exercizing you can listen if you're walking you can listen even if you're going shopping you can listen keep feeding your mind with new ideas because one idea will make you can make you a fortune number six is ask two questions after every event of importance whether it's a sales call a meeting with a client an interview and the two questions are what I call the magic questions and these questions will make you rich question number one is what did I do right and then take and write down everything that you could think of that you did right in that situation do this immediately after we were talking on the radio this morning in in the military after every military exercise they immediately do what is called an after action report an after action report is the officers are forced to sit down and go through every single step of the of the operation that just took place and they ask what did we do right and what would we do differently what will we do differently next time and those what you're doing is you're capturing the very best things that you learn from that last experience if you do this after every sales call within a year you'll have increased your sales five to 10 times and within a year you'll be one of the highest paid people in your field if you do this after every presentation as I used to do if you do this after every interview as I used to do it's just astonishing how fast you learn and grow when you do an after Action Report immediately after you have completed the event or the action and number seven is is to treat each person like a million-- dooll customer treat each person as that you meet as though they are the most important person in the world start with your family start with your spouse and your children and as you go through the day treat everybody uh as if they were important and sometimes I see people who will do this with prospective customers but then they'll treat waitresses and taxi drivers with disrespect there's a the mark of a superior person is the way they treat people people who cannot do them any good so you can always tell a top person because of the way they treat people who can't do any good for them it's if if all you do is you treat people who you think can help you well it means you're a different type of person than a person who treats everybody well there are three things that hold us back three enemies and these enemies are the same enemies worldwide number one is the comfort zone is we become comfortable doing things in a certain way and we are reluctant to change and you see I'm sure you teach that in HR Consulting is people fall in love with a method of doing things and even if it doesn't work even if they're getting bad results even if it makes them unhappy they keep doing it perfect example is look what happened with Blackberry they came out with the iPhone in 2006 Blackberry had 50% of the world business market and they dismissed it as though it was a toy they said there's no value to that and they said they're always we will always be dominant in our Market because everybody wants a very complicated expensive um Telephone that drives you CR crazy half the time uh as opposed to one that's really easy and fun to use I mean that was real good thinking at Blackberry uh and they just stayed in their comfort zone and made no effort to upgrade their technology made no effort to learn from the fact that Apple sold 50 million sets at $600 a piece uh within 12 months and because they were in a comfort zone and if you stay in a comfort zone too long what happens is you just are passed over the second factor that holds us back is the path of least resistance remember I said starting something new is the hardest thing of all we do everything possible to justify not changing and you must be when you present a new idea to people it'll automatically trigger all the reasons why it won't work the path of least resistance is that human beings always seek the fastest and easiest way to get the things they want and so people are always looking for easy ways and if you suggest changing or doing something new or different that's difficult it's hard to do something new and they will fight you at every step of the way the third factor is the fear of failure they're afraid that if they try something new what if it doesn't work and what is what we're doing now is working what if we try something new so those are the three factors so the question is why and how do people engage in transformation and the answer goes back to the research that youve read Paul it's called a significant emotional experience something happens that really gives people a jolt they get fired from a job their company goes bankrupt their market share drops like JC Penney or something else by 80% and it really gives them a smack in the face and this significant emotional experience causes them to Jag into a new way of thinking it makes it opens them up to maybe there's a better way to do this but the significant emotional experience is usually very painful very painful and it and without that it's like a person who works and works and works and finally in their 50 age 55 they're aranged from their spouse and their children hate them and are drug addicts and they have a heart attack and they almost die and that significant experience they come back and afterwards a totally different person suddenly they have a perspective on what's truly important in life and it's not work and they change their family change everything so unless people have that significant emotional experience it's very hard for them to change because of the power of those first three that I told you so just be alert to those you'll see them everywhere but I found that the key is just is preparation preparation and repetition so what I do is I prepare and prepare and even though I've shared these ideas before I got up early this morning I've got late yesterday midnight from uh uh from cutter and I still prepared and prepared all these snows and what that does is I call it fluffing up your mental pillow it's like you fluff up a pillow by preparing you fluff up your mental pillow so that the ideas are available to you so I it's just repetition and I it's not a matter of being particularly smart it's just doing it over and over again well the the I think the most important thing in a subject and I really urge people is don't ever try to learn something that you don't really enjoy because you'll you'll be demotivated and you won't remember anything and don't try to learn something that you can't use right away this basic research on this is it's got to be usable you got to think as I read this gez this is neat stuff I can use this this is applicable because if it's not applicable it won't be enjoyable to learn and if it's not something that you like if I was starting to talk about you know financial analysis and how you can dramatically improve the results of certain parts of your business by changing the algorithm that you use to measure the uh response ratio I mean most of the people in this room would go to sleep because you're not interested in the subject so I'm always put my heart into subjects that I really care about and you can tell I really care about these ideas because I have seen so many people who have taken these ideas and accomplish extraordinary things after years of struggle they've just literally done wonderful things with their business and their lives and they say nobody ever told me this before and there's no place to learn this stuff before so I I see myself my job is to is to aggressively look for these ideas and then put them into a very palatable form and give them to as many people as possible and so so my enthusiasm probably affects the way that you accept these ideas this goes I I I started off my career giving a three-day seminar called the psychology of achievement which has become the bestselling audio program book and video training program in the world it's given all over the world and basically it talked about that and it talks about how your Early Childhood experiences affect you and if you have positive childhood experiences when your parents continually encourage you then you'll be a very positive person when you grow up and if you don't you won't and this the the research unfortunately says the first three to five years forms the personality of the adult and it's very hard to change an adult is the first three to five years where with a parent or parents that were critical demanding shouting unsupportive and so the my J friend Jim Ron when he was asked this question why is it that some people are negative he said I don't know that's just the way they are and there's nothing you can do one of the rules we were sharing this in in Doha yesterday is that people don't change people don't change their basic character and personality after about 16 or 17 years old they just sort of like are concrete and their personality fixes now they can learn new skills and become much more competent but they cannot change their basic personality if they're negative when they're 16 or 17 uh they'll be negative when they're 47 or 57 and there's nothing you can do so the rule is don't expect people to change don't try to change them don't hope that they will change just accept people the way they are they're not going to change I I have four wonderful children all adults now and I learned this before my first child was born and Barbara and I just made a decision that we would encourage our children to develop their potential whatever they wanted but we would never judge them and we would never demand anything from them we would always tell them whatever you do we back you 100% And so our children grew up with total self-acceptance and they are have confidence and self-esteem that that's just wonderful to see because we knew that what happened in the first 3 to five years would determine what they would be as adults and now we see them as adults and it worked you know if you tell your children you love them and how wonderful they are all all during the first 3 to 5 years they have a concrete foundation of personality but if unfortunately that didn't happen then you meet a lot of people who are negative critical suspicious and these go back to Childhood and you can't change them in Doha we talked about this the question is if if you're a professional tight RPP Walker and you're walking on a wire how often do you balance all the time and it's the same thing with balancing personal and professional goals the first thing is be really clear about your business goals and and focus on your work work all the time you work the reason people especially men men are the biggest offenders of this women not at all the reason men don't spend as much time with their families and children is they say well I'm so busy I've got so much to do it's because you're wasting so much time at work that you bring your work home there's a little story about the little girl goes to her mother and says Mommy why is it that Daddy brings work home all the time and does work in the evenings and doesn't spend any time with with with with us with the family and she said well honey you have to understand Daddy's got so much work to do he can't get it done at work so he has to bring it home and she says well why don't they put him in a slower class well if you don't work all the time you work and on your top priorities you end up you're going to end up in a slower class in life and so that's the balance but I I made a decision uh when I got got married I was got married when I was 35 and I told Barbara that she and our family would take precedence over everything and they always have and there's never been a question if I've had and sometimes it's cost me a lot of money um to choose because of time but I've never hesitated there never been one second of choice uh always they come first and they know that now I'm going to focus on my work get my work done but if there's a need for my family my family always comes first and so it's my children know this as well I it's been clear to my children so my family life has been really good I'm very happy person that your current way of interacting is not working and it could be the loss of a job you could be fired from a job or Lo lose all your money or your business can collapse but it's because of the comfort zone because of the path of least resistance and so on you has has to be a real shock it's almost like a mental Collision that you suddenly question and realize that what you're doing is not working I've had a couple of these in my life lifetime that have been very helpful to me um but you but but but as Peter Peter Ducker once said it's not that Miracles don't happen it's just that you cannot count on them um and so the idea that somebody will change is a miracle and you cannot base your life or your work or your decisions so in business the rule is only hire nice people only hire people that you like only work with people that you like uh if you are working with a negative person it just takes all the joy out of your work and so just make a decision I'm not going to work with difficult people I'm not going to have them as clients or customers and I'm not going to have them as employees I'm certainly not going to marry them you can learn new skills if you're ambitious and you're positive and you want to be more successful and you're eager to learn and apply new ideas there's no limit to what you can do but your basic personality that's like your eye color uh it's like your height it's even like your sex you cannot change these These are basic parts that are programmed into your personality so don't try to change people if people people are lazy when they're young they'll be lazy 50 years later if people are dishonest they'll be dishonest if people are unorganized they'll be disorganized however if they have good qualities and good Ambitions you can teach them all kinds of skills skills are very different from personality let me just wrap up by saying this is that the very best times of your life lie in the future the highest income of your life lies in the future the happiest moments of your life are still to come the greatest achievements that you will ever achieve cheap are still in the future and that means that your future is unlimited because it's only held back by your own imagination so I hope that these ideas have been helpful for you and I hope you have a wonderful future
