Speakers:
West: West Loh
Paul: Paul Andrew

West: Hi! My name’s West. And I want to welcome you to the call today. Today I’m going to talk about the Money Mindset program and I have two guests with me. The first one is Andrew Grant, who is the co creator of the Money Mindset Program. And also with us here is Paul Blackburn.

First, I’d like to talk to Andrew. Andrew, tell us a bit about yourself and what gives you the right to talk about this with us.

Andrew: Hi West! Well, thanks for having us today and we’re really excited to be here today. I suppose… one of the things is this is the program that I’ve had in my mind for a long time and something that I want to share. Over the last year or so, my wife and myself have been successful financially. We’ve basically become financially independent. That means I’ve got enough money that I don’t need to work anymore but I want to work. And I also have a system set up where people post me money and pay me on a regular basis to do nothing, I suppose, because I don’t have to work in that sense. If I don’t want to go to work this day, I don’t have to.

So that’s been a really exciting thing for my wife and myself to be able to achieve. And one of the things that we noticed is that some of the key points of what we’ve done over the last year has really been about changing our mental attitude. And I suppose the program’s all about doing that and we want to share what we’ve learnt over the last few years when it comes to money. But we also want to have a bit of a community setup, I suppose, and share with other people and get feedback from other successful people about what they do and how they do it.

West: Absolutely. Now I understand that you’ve been working with Paul for awhile. Tell us a bit about that.

Andrew: Well yeah. Well, Paul can tell you that himself in a little bit but I’m very excited to have Paul with us today. Paul is really our coach. Paul’s the person who has taught us how to get our head right when it comes to money, how to address subconscious blockages that we had with money, how to identify them, how to eliminate them and how to rebuild new programming at our subconscious level which supports us being financially independent.

You see, up until we did this, we used to work pretty hard. And we could make a lot of money but we’d always be spending it, but spending to our capacity. We never seemed to get ahead and so we work harder. And we could get a bit of cash and we’d be comfortable but we couldn’t get independent. And what I mean by independent is working because you want to work, not because we had to work.

And in the past, I had worked as a financial planner. And that was one of the key things that I saw all the time: people were working because they had to work to meet the bills and to make ends meet; and the dream to be working because you want to work and not because you had to work or not working at all. That would be the other dream that people were having.

So why I had Paul, why we’ve asked Paul to be here today is he is the guy who really showed me how to get my head right and show my wife as well how to get our heads right and remove those blocks. So I’ll let you introduce him if you want.

West: Yeah. Well, I’m really excited as well. The little time that I’ve known Paul, he’s just been a genius in my mind. And he’s worked with some very high profile clients but let us let him blow his own horn, so to speak, and give an introduction.

Paul: Well, hi everybody. As the boys have mentioned, probably the best description of me is that I’m a coach of the millionaires. And my profession is to help people become financially capable and independent. And by that, what we mean is that they’re capable of making and keeping sufficient money that they no longer have to work.

My top nine clients are worth in excess of $250 million dollars. None of those people, when I met them and started coaching them, were anywhere near being a millionaire, let alone multis. Two or three of those people are worth in excess of $20 million now. My favorite clients of all time are Daryl and Andrew Grant.

Andrew: Yay!

Paul: They’ve done extraordinarily well. He, Andrew, mentioned that he also is a multi millionaire. So there you go. That’s what I do…is I take people from rags to riches and we do that by working on their mindset rather than on their business or their technical skills.

Andrew: I suppose the gist about our involvement here today—or my involvement, particularly—is to show you that… I suppose we’ve really applied the money mind principles and really looked at how the mind affects your outcomes when it comes to finances and how you deal with money and how you accumulate money; and in a lot of cases, how you don’t accumulate money as well.

Personally, we’ve been able to achieve financial freedom through a number of different activities that we do. But primarily, the key weapon we’ve used in achieving financial freedom, I suppose, is the power of our mind and being able to identify and eliminate any blockages that we might have to that. Now we’ve done that with the help of Paul Blackburn and his wife, Mary. And I suppose, what we want to share with you today is the key things that has really allowed us to break through great barriers.

This is a little bit of background for you. Daryl and I worked as financial planners in our past and we’ve actually set down with, um, I suppose being close to a thousand people or so and looked at each one’s individual financial details. And one thing that really struck myself was that no matter how much people earn, they never seem to be able to get ahead. They always seem to have the bigger bills. They never seem to have any spare money or anything like that. There really are some who are struggling. And it was an amazing thing to see this common denominator that people making lots of money just had lots of big bills and they never seem to have any spare cash.

It wasn’t till I actually started to look at this a little bit deeper and I noticed that there were people who are actually financially independent, financially free. What I mean by financially independent is working because you want to work, not because you have to work. And so having that passive income—and we’ll talking about passive income in a minute—but having that passive income to allow you to do what you want in your lifestyle and so on. So the thing I noticed, that there was a majority of people… it wasn’t about how much money you earn. It’s about how you save the money, what you did with it and how you achieve the money. And that’s what sort of makes the difference between people who are slaves to their job and people who had freedom in their life and had lots of money.

West: And there’s that big barrier that people need to overcome to start thinking like that. I mean most people are just happy to work their job but they’re not even aware that they have blocks holding them back. They’re not aware that they have these feelings that been conditioned over the years so they’re unable to achieve more. But it’s great to have someone like you on board to show people that it is possible. So I look forward to a bit more meat from you a little bit later on in the call.

So basically, Paul—I just want to jump back to you—well, we put together a program called the Money Mind. In a nutshell, why do you think a program like this is so important for someone looking to take the next stage in their financial career?

Paul: Well, this might be a bit longer answer than you anticipated, West, so I apologize if it takes awhile to get this into a sentence but it takes a bit of doing. If you look at any industry—so you could choose plumbing or you could choose accounting or you could choose any field that people listening to this call are likely to be employed in—and what you’ll see is that there’s a range of expertise or results varying from people that one end of the scale who struggled, to people at the other end of the scale who do well.

Andrew mentioned financial planning and advising people. Well, one of the things that I’ve noticed is that financial planners who should know better, it’s still only ten percent of them who are actually successful. And there are financial planners out there going broke. But there are barristers who are going broke and there are plumbers who are going broke and there are nurses who are going broke. And in all those fields I just mentioned, there are people who are extraordinarily successful.

So if that’s the case, then what we’ve got to do is understand that they must be doing something different with the raw material. In other words, if the raw material is your skills as an electrician, then why do some people do well and other people don’t? And the first thing that the unsuccessful do is say, “Well, I got in the wrong field. You can’t get people to pay the right money,” or “People don’t pay,” or “It’s hard to find enough work,” or “You’ve got to work so hard to make it,” or whatever it is. But there are people in that industry—we’re talking about electricians at the moment but it could be any industry—there are people in that industry who think the opposite. They think it’s the best industry they could’ve gotten into, they have no shortage of clients. In fact, they have no shortage of clients who pay lots of money and pay on time and delighted to see them turn up and do the electrical work for them.

So really, at the beginning, we’ve got to look at perception being reality and the whole idea that what will happen is that regardless of what field we tackle—and you know, we’re looking specifically at finances in this particular call—but we could be looking at relationships, people who expect to find in relationships do. And nobody expects it. But what happens is you may not have been very well trained. You know if, for example, your mom and dad or the significant figures in your life did not demonstrate how to have a successful relationship, well you have to learn by yourself and that means anything can happen.

So, much of what we pick up during our early life determines our future later on—and sometimes we don’t even know this happened. Sometimes we don’t know that it’s even our view of what it is that we’re doing that’s causing us to see it in the way that we do. Therefore, we tend to say, “The problem is the industry or the person or the whatever it is…” rather than “My perception of the industry or the person or whatever it is.”

West: I guess the Money Mind then is a stimulus to enable someone to—with the same raw materials—try and change their current level of understanding and of possibly one of the others in their industry are so successful and why they’re not. Would that be fair to say?

Paul: Yeah. The trouble is if they don’t study that person’s methodology, all they learn is how to be a better electrician. What they’ve actually got to do is follow that person around all day and watch what they do and listen to what they say and how they express themselves and what activities that they get involved in. And what you’ll find is that the difference about the activities is that the successful person understands that they’re in business first and electricians, second; the unsuccessful person understands that they’re an electrician, first, and business, second. And so they have different attitudes to paperwork. They have a different attitude to marketing. They have a different attitude to who they’ll bump into and therefore, how they would treat that person.

West: That’s a very profound concept, Paul. I mean you said stuff that shows only why a very few percentage of anyone in any industry is successful is because a very few percentage understand that concept. Would that be fair to say?

Paul: Yes. But if, for example, you talk trading the stock market as an example, then I don’t know how many systems there are out there but I guarantee you, for every system for how to try the stock market, we can find at least one person who’s very successful using that system. We’d also find a bunch of people who are absolute failures using that system. So the methodology is, you know, that’s just one of the ingredients.

And I guess what most people don’t understand—simply because we don’t get taught that at school—is if you know how, that’s fine. But you’ve only got a part of the story. The rest of the story is the next bit after the technical or mechanical parts of the operation. So the mechanical part of being a plumber means you’ve got to know how to solder and all of that stuff. But that’s not the business of being a plumber. That’s the mechanics of how to put parts together. The business of being a plumber is more about how do we try these pieces to its customers, how do we get the customers to be glad to see us, to pay us, to pay us on time, to pay us a lot? And the person who has a poor money mindset will look at the mechanics of plumbing, whereas a person with a wealthy mindset will look at the mechanics of running the business.

Andrew: If I can just jump in there too…it’s the money mindset that we need to really be focusing on and the business of being rich, I suppose, or business of being wealthy or business of being financially independent that most people just fail to address in their lives. What they do is they focus on being good at their job or they focus on whatever it might be—if they think it makes money. But they don’t focus on the whole concept of being wealthy or achieving their goals and doing what they want to do at a mental level and an emotional level and a physical level. Those are three areas we really like to try and touch on and that I effectively preach that you need to have all those areas under control when it comes to money and to be successful in it.

And most people don’t deal with how they think about and feel about being wealthy and being rich in an emotional level. Most people, as Paul said, would go and learn a system of how to make money…

West: Exactly. Become really great technicians…

Andrew: Yeah, they become great technicians as Paul used in the analogy of the plumber, but they don’t deal with the…

West: With their plumbing.

Andrew: That’s right. Their mental plumbing and how their brain deals with it. And I suppose it’s all about being comfortable with money and not being comfortable, if you want it really simplified.

One of the key things that Paul taught me when I was younger was that—I don’t know if you remember saying this, Paul—but he talked about a thing called the comfort zone. Remember talking about that, Paul?

Paul: Yes, I might have been talking about the comfort zone for many years.

Andrew: Well, the basic gist of it is—and I’ll let Paul expand on it if I butcher it; so excuse me, Paul—but he basically taught me that I will move towards wherever I’m comfortable both physically and emotionally. And if I’m emotionally uncomfortable with money, at a subconscious level we’re talking about it, I’m not consciously registering this but at a subconscious level if I’m emotionally uncomfortable with money and its subcategories of wealth as well (and there are subcategories but we’ll talk about that later), I will move away from that position. So you can give me a whole lot of money and I will get rid of it because emotionally, I’m uncomfortable with it.

West: And you’re saying, Andrew, that people aren’t even aware of it.

Andrew: Most people aren’t. They struggle from day to day and they go, “I can’t understand why we can’t get ahead. We’re battlers, we’re strugglers. We can’t understand why when we do get money, we lose it.”

Paul, you might want to talk about the lottery issues.

Paul: Yeah. If you look at people winning the lottery, then pretty much it boils down to a predictable thing—eighty six percent of lottery winners end up back at square one within twenty four months with a trail of broken relationships behind them. For example, their brother doesn’t talk to them anymore. So in effect, their life is worst. And many of the lottery organizations in the world, particularly the ones run by governments, employ counseling teams to tell people when they win the lottery that this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to them. Because most people who win the lottery find it difficult to understand why it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to them because they’ve got their mind on, well, now all their problems are solved when in actual fact, all their problems are about to get magnified. Because if you’ve got a dud system—and we’ve got to understand this if you change subjects—but if you’ve got less of the wiring in your house, it doesn’t work and you decide that the way we fix it is we just give them more juice, then you’re going to burn the house down. And so the same will happen…if you’ve got bad hard wiring with the money in your brain and you add more money, then you just get multiplied problems.

And so we’re fond of saying—like what Andrew said—you’ve got to study the business of money or the business of being in business or the business of getting wealthy—and what I mean by that, the business—but the whole idea of going one step further. Because for most of us, our education has been by people who did not know what they’re talking about and what they said was, “Well, if you make more money you’ll be happy.” Now obviously, that is not the truth. Otherwise, we’d all be filthy rich, [19:13] marching ourselves silly already. Because what happens is that if you have a subconscious belief that it costs you more to live than you earn, then your income goes up, then your costs are going to go up with it.

The classic example I’ve been referring to for probably too many years now, when Mary and I were school teachers, in the last year that we were school teachers, our combined income was thirty grand a year before tax. So it’s about fifteen thousand each. And that was not enough for us to live on. In fact, the motivating thing for us to go into business was for ourselves. So off we go into business. And in that first year, we made $300,000. So ten times as much money. And you’d figure that would sort it out, eh? But no. It ended up with the accountant. And the accountant says, “We’ve made all this money,” and I say to him, “What’s going on here? If we made all these money where is it?” He says, “Well, you seem to have spent a bit more than you earned.” In fact, we spent a bit more. The amount that we spent more was more than we’ve earned the year before as school teachers. So we just managed to be broke at a different level. And anyone can do that.

Andrew: And that’s what I saw as a financial planner all the time. I had people come in front of me and no matter what they were earning, they were always having the same problem: they extend to their capacity, basically, and spend to what their earning. That was the issue.

Paul: And so what we’re saying is that the reason most people are not successful with money is that they are working on a false premise. They’re working on the idea that ‘if I could just double my income, everything will be alright.’ What we’re saying is your problems will be twice as big and you’ll still be broke.

West: I guess if someone doesn’t take action and, say, doesn’t follow through with the program like the Money Mindset, they’ve got a pretty much zero to one percent chance of anything changing in their life.

Paul: Yeah, mate. And the statistics are scary. I mean you’re talking about five percent of people being able to fund their own retirement, ninety five percent being dependent on some kind of external support mechanism, probably primarily the government. And if you go and look at the numbers then that’s obviously not going to happen. They haven’t got the money. They’re not going to be able to get the money. And so the system will collapse. The very good, the very powerful, the very able—what do they call it?—the network, the safety net thing is about to fall apart.

Andrew: You’ve just got to do your number s on this one. This is not rocket science. You’ve got to understand that there’s a big population bubble moving through from the baby boomer era. So what that means is that there’s more people born in the baby boomer era than were born directly after. And the problem is the baby boomers’ current pay for the current social security system and current taxes and so on and [22:15] they’re moving all three/free… now, the problem that happened in our [22:20] society (?), is that what we do now is we take taxes on the current people to pay for the retirement of the current retirees. Now when the baby boomers go to retire, there’s a huge amount of people going to retire and there is not the population¬ based [22:40] ? ? retirement to support them.

And when I was in financial planning, once again, this is another issue that I saw that you would check out and see what the… you could see what people require to retire. And it was a huge amount of money that they require, if they were going to get it and stick it into a managed time or something like that which they would earn—if they’re lucky—ten percent a year.

So problem being, not enough people going to be able to support the baby boomers when they retire and so what’s going to happen?

West: Big trouble.

Andrew: We’re in big trouble. That’s why the big issue is about social security. In Australia, it’s called Superannuation. They’re really trying to push people to save for themselves and that type of stuff. But sit down and work out how much money you need to keep you going for a lifetime. And considering our lifetime expanded—well, these days we’re living longer—sit down and see how much money you’re going to need to keep you going.

West: And we get them to do exercises like this in the Money Mind, don’t we, Andrew?

Andrew: Yeah, it’s all part of it. We say, “We’ve got a reality number. There’s a bit of a reality number. And you need to understand what it is that you’re going to require to keep you going in retirement?” And if that retirement is when you’re no longer able to work or wanting to work or if it’s retirement you want to take early—which my wife and myself have been able to do. We don’t need to work anymore. We have our systems in place, money making systems, that it just chugs along and makes its own money—but we need to have it be clear on what it is and how much that figure is to be able to get that freedom.

Paul: Maybe the other thing that you might just throw into the mix there, Andrew, behind that is that when you say all that about the baby boomers retiring and that kind of stuff, you can sound pretty scary. But the reality is there is not an institution or an organization on the planet that disagrees with what we’re saying.

West/Andrew: That’s right./Yeah.

Paul: So they’re all out there saying, “Yup, this is going to happen.” It’s not like, you know, we’re sort of making this up. We’re not making it up. This is big serious stuff and everyone is saying it’s going to happen. The governments around the world, here in Australia, the government is saying ‘you better fund your own retirement.’ They’ve stopped a little bit short of saying, ‘Coz we can’t do it.’ But they’re telling everybody, “Get in to Superannuation.” They’ve made the tax situation such that people are forced to consider to a Superannuation scheme or be it a hopeless one.

Andrew: For people who are outside Australia and listening to this, Superannuation is basically a retirement funding. I think they call them a 21K or something like that in America and I don’t know what the British equivalent is. So if you’re wondering what superannuation is, that’s what we’re talking about.

I remember—now I have to check on this particular stats—but I remember being told back in the early ‘90s, when we were in the financial planning game, that at the time, I think every one person on a social security benefit, there were about six taxpayers [26:14] standing that position. By the time I go to retire there would be for every three people in a taxpaying position, there’d be two people on social security. (Note) You do the math. That was just told to me—those figures—so you have to check that out yourself. But it illustrates the point, doesn’t it?

West: That they need to basically do something about it now.

Andrew: Yeah, that’s right. And this is not about selling retirement planning by any means. The point that we really want to hit home is that if we give you a chunk of money—say you did well and you retire; say you did well and you get the superannuation payout, we give you a million dollars sitting in your lap—now unless you’ve got your head right with money, unless you’ve really dealt with the issues of how to accumulate money and how to keep it at a subconscious level…you blow it. And you’ll find somebody to rip you off or you do something like you put it in a bad investment and you’ll lose it. And as Paul mentioned earlier, this was illustrated by the people who win lotto all the time and so on. And I’m sure, most people that think hard enough, they know somebody who’s come into a bit of money and what’s the first thing they do? They go and get a trip or buy a car or give money to their relatives or something like that.

Paul: You know, it’s not everyone. We’re only talking about eighty six percent of them. Fourteen percent of them actually go okay. But, you know, if you had a gun to your head, would you want to take those odds?

Andrew: That’s right. That’s where we’re at.

West: Okay. Well, just on another note, I’m sure there’s actually a lot of systems out there, Paul. You’ were going to tell us before why, potentially, many of them are incorrect or put people in the wrong direction.

Paul: Well, I think there’ll be a lot of people on this call who will recognize the following statement said to them by somebody who loved them and somebody who cared about them and somebody who wanted them to do the best in life, that person said to them:
“Study hard, because if you do you’ll get better marks. And if you get better marks you get a better job. And if you get a better job you’ll be happy.”

West: That’s what my dad told me.

Paul: Yeah. And, you know, you’re probably significantly younger than me, mate, so it’s been going on for awhile. So that message has been perpetrated out there. The people who invented that message at the time, that message was true. Now it isn’t. And so, the more you study the better marks you get; the longer you stay at university, the longer you go without an income, the faster things will change and the quicker you’ll become redundant.

And so the world has moved underneath our feet. And what we need to be able to do now is direct our effort towards bringing income to us which is independent of our effort. So the traditional model is ‘work hard.’ We’ve got to get away from that because that doesn’t work anymore. There are lots of people out there listening to this call who work harder than we do. And that’s the problem. They work too hard, they work so hard that they can’t lift their head up and have a look around and discover that’s actually the wrong way to be tackling it.

And so, this whole Money Mind thing is about understanding that the rules have changed but you’ve got to actually have time to prop your head up and notice that the rules have changed. And then change your actions to fit with how it’s going.

West: Definitely. And so for someone listening in, if you had to give a really quick couple of first steps or a mini overview of actions someone will need to take to start removing their blockages, what would you say to them?

Paul: Well, obviously, you know, given the Money Mind program is a way to do that because what we see is that we move in circles, we have people invest significant amounts of money in getting a new skill. Lots of those people come to us later on and say, “Well, I learnt a new skill. And I’m still no better off. I’ve realized I’ve got to get my head fixed. Can you fix my head? But I’ve got no money.”

West: …[crosstalk 30:32] learned a new trade or learned how to do a new profession.

Paul: A new trade, a new profession, a new idea. You’d be in your right mind if you went out and learned how to develop some new skill like copywriting or how to build something on the internet or eBay or those kinds of things. There are lots of money making opportunities out there. And what I’m saying is that people spend lots of money on those things because they can justify it to themselves. What they will do is they’ll end up coming back to us when they run out of money and saying, “I need to get my head right. But now I’ve got no money left because I used it all on these opportunities. And I made lots of money and I blew it” or “I made lots of money and I couldn’t hang on to it” or “I’ve made lots of money and my costs have gone up” or “My wife took it” or whatever. We hear it everyday.

Everyday, people ring us and say, “Can you help me with my money mind programming?”
We say, “We sure can.”
And they say, “Well, can you do it for free because I’ve got no money.”
We say, “How come you’ve got no money?”
And they go, “Well, because I should’ve come and seen you first.”

West: That’s a pretty compelling case if you ask me.

Paul: Yeah, and it’s sad, mate. It’s sad that, you know, we‘re just working on rules that don’t actually apply anymore and your average person doesn’t realize that what they really need is to get their head straight. And once they’ve got their head straight, then they will make the money faster, they’ll make more of it and they’ll keep it for longer.

West: Definitely.

Andrew: I notice right now in people I deal with and I’m sure you’ve seen this, Paul, is it’s a bit of a rule of thumb I’m able to see if somebody has a mental block. They come to me, “So how do I know if I’ve got a mental block to making money?” The first question I ask them, “Are you making money in a way which supports the lifestyle that you want to have?” If you have a lifestyle which you have to compromise because you have to go out and earn money, then you have some sort of block or lack of knowledge about how to make money that supports you in a way that you want to become accustomed.

So what I mean by that is if I don’t want to work, I don’t need to work. We have enough passive income coming in to keep us in the lifestyle that we like. What I see out there is—and particularly with people who tell me, “Oh, money is not important” and “Money will never bring you happiness” and all this type of stuff—is that they’re out there eight hours a day, generally five to six days a week working in a job that they hate, don’t like, doesn’t fill them up, keeps them away from their family, keeps them away from actually pursuing their dreams because they have to get money—but money isn’t important and it’s not going to bring them happiness—but they’re out there prepared to sacrifice their life effectively, a good part of their life, to chase it. If you’re doing that and if you’ve been doing it for longer than you want, if this is ringing true to you, then you’ve got a block. You either don’t have the knowledge of how to get the money or if you were given the knowledge, you don’t have the mental positioning, I suppose, or subconscious positioning to be able to keep it. It’s as simple as that.

West: I would argue that most people know what to do, Andrew, with the amount of information out there. But as you were saying before, the subconscious is probably the hidden ingredient that’s keeping them from doing it.

Andrew: That’s right. Both Paul and I shared the stage last weekend with about eight people. There were eight different experts from around the world. And this particular talk was to several hundred people about how to make money on the internet. Each person on that stage had their own system of how to make money and how to go about it and I had a bit to share it and I was showing people how to make money on the internet. And in their own right, they were all…there were some pretty wealthy people out there, all independently wealthy. None of them had to work in terms of what you would consider as working for anybody and so on. They travel around the world and have a lifestyle the envy of many. But they have a system of how to do it.

Now we were talking to about three hundred or four hundred people. I know for a fact that only probably about five to ten percent of those people will actually do something with the information. And a lot of them are sitting there scratching their heads going, “Which is the best or which is the right system?” And one of the speakers said, “Well, they’re all right.” Well actually, Paul, you said it to me.

“They’re all right. They all work. What’s not going to work is the bit between your ears and how you think about money and what’s holding you back and so on. And being able to identify what’s holding you back in your life when it comes to money is a critical element of being successful with money.

Paul: I would like to just go back one little bit to something that you just said, Andrew, and that was about how do you know if you’ve got a block? And I use a similar example and I’m standing in front of big crowds. And you know, we’ve been to a couple of crowds recently that have been a thousand plus. And one of my favorite tricks is to say, “Who understands that money does not lead to happiness?” And all hands go up. I say now, “Hands up if you earned too much money last year.” And no hands go up. So you can take a rough guess and say, well, okay, looks like the majority of people could handle having some extra money. Now the truth is this—if you’re not earning as much as you like, if you’re not earning as much as you can dream of, you’ve got a block, mate. Because it ain’t the industry. Because you tell me the industry and I’ll go and find a multimillionaire in that game and I can do it before the end of the week.

West: That’s right. Very true.

Andrew: And what’s the scary thing—would you agree with this, Paul, because you have multi, multimillionaire clients, lots of clients who have lots and lots of money and they’re multimillionaires—but would you say that they’re not actually working that much harder or not even working harder than the average joe? And the thing that really gets me, the work load that these people have are not nowhere near as what somebody working, you know, as a bookie or something like that…

Paul: Absolutely. And it stands to reason, doesn’t it? That somebody who’s earning, you know, I’ve got one client who regularly makes net profit more than $6-$10 million a year. That’s a regular thing. And you see, seriously, like I know that there are people in my own circle of friends, etcetera, who make a couple of million a year. This guy is making $6 million a year. He’s not working three times harder because there isn’t that many hours in the day. So he can’t be working harder. But I’ll tell you what…he’s working a lot smarter and he knows what to do with it. He knows how to hang on to it.

One of those things where people say, “Money makes money.” And I don’t think so. What I see is that brains make money. Because this guy that I’m talking about, he started at the same place as everybody else did…and that was with nothing. As our friend Mal Emery says, “You make the money in your mind first.” Then you’ve got to make it out there in the world. And the money that you make in your world is a reflection of the state of your mind just like the relationships that you have are reflections of the state of your mind. Just like your health is a reflection of the state of your mind.

Andrew: I remember you talking to me about this when I was younger and it was quite a confronting concept when you sit down and think about it because at the end of the day, what this effectively means is that I’m a hundred percent responsible for where I am in my life. And it’s a lot easier for me to blame somebody else for where I am. I don’t know if I didn’t believe that before but I suppose I sort of bought in to the common belief out there that, you know, “It’s the economy” or “It’s the government.” There’s always a reason. And we have an industry in our media and in our society that supports… if you want to buy into that, they’ll support you all day long and tell you why it’s not your fault.

But at the end of the day the minute I started to realize that, hey, my lack of prosperity financially or whatever I do in life is a direct reflection of how I think and how I feel about these issues. I might not understand it at the moment. I might not be aware of what the problem is, but the day I realized that I had to change something in my head, then everything else started to change around me. That was the interesting thing.

West: Probably one of the biggest steps that one that most people never overcome, unfortunately.

Paul: You know, I would like to try something in here. Here’s a fascinating thought. The blockages in your subconscious, absolutely, they are not your fault. You didn’t put them there. You wouldn’t have chosen them. That’s just the way it is. It’s not your fault. However… doing something about it is your responsibility. So we have people who love us and look after us and takes us to be broke. We kind of have to get over that and go, “All right, that’s where I ended up. I wouldn’t have chosen that but I didn’t have any choice. So therefore, what am I going to do now?”

So the powerful people are not necessarily people who have better options, better training, better backup, better beginnings or any of that kind of thing. Powerful people are people, who, when they find themselves in sticky spot say, “Okay, this is not where I would have chosen to be. But what am I going to do now?”

West: They’re better decision makers.

Paul: Or they’ll just take responsibility for what’s going to happen next. You can’t do much about what’s already happened. So if we’ve got some hard wiring that’s a bit crazy and certainly someone who doesn’t, then the next question is, okay, that’s fine, but what are you going to do about it?

West: Okay. I guess that brings us to the question that I’ve been wanting to ask for awhile now, Andrew. And that is…what can people expect out of the membership to the MoneyMind.com?

Andrew: It’s actually the Money Mindset (MoneyMindset.com there), I believe. But here are the sort of the things that you can be looking forward to get. Firstly, if you are interested in being a part of this program, you need to be willing to change and change the things that are holding you back, let go of the things that are stopping you from becoming financially independent, financially wealthy—whatever it is that you want to find, your end point as far as money is concerned.

As far as what we’re going to provide, we’re going to give you a step by step system of how to identify and remove subconscious blockages that are stopping you from being wealthy. That’s the main goal of the program. But also, it’s all about getting you in an environment which will support you in your desire to be wealthy. It’s about giving you regular, ongoing information, contacts, thoughts, ideas about how you can develop money, how you can remove blockages and how you can change your financial outlook and take control of your financial future via changing your mindset.

West: Paul, do you have anything to add to that?

Paul: Well… where do I sign, mate? [Laughs] As I was hearing you describe that, I’m thinking, you know, that’s true. That’s the field that I’ve been working in for so many years. I just wish that someone had to put that kind of thing together and made it available to me at an early age. And the sad truth of it is it’s not available elsewhere. It’s just not out there. It’s not in the schools. There are not people out there making that possibility happen.

And so that’s why I said “Where do I sign” is because I know that despite having helped people for twenty three years change their mindset, I can benefit from that program simply because it’s structured and it’s organized and it would take me one step forward at a time/ And therefore, you know, despite the fact that like Andrew and Daryl, Mary and I lived the life of our dreams, we can do better. And that’s the fantastic thing, is that knowing that you can do better is a great thing. Finding the knowledge, finding the backup, finding the systems…it’s just not out there.

West: Well, you’ll be one of our first special clients on the program, Paul. That’s for sure.

Paul: Yeah. Do I get some kind of a financial break for joining earlier?

Andrew: No. [Everyone laughs.]

West: For the listeners out there actually, Paul is actually going to be contributing a lot of the good stuff to the program as well.

Paul: And I’m looking forward to it too, mate, because I’m fifty five years old and I’m ready to pass this stuff on. Like there comes a point in your life where you don’t need it yourself and therefore, one of the major drivers is to make a difference. And I’m at that point in my life where making a difference has become really, really important.

Andrew: I’ve got to say something else here. I had the idea of doing something like this a long time ago when I was younger and wanting to teach people about sort of money mind principles when I first became aware of them. And someone said to me, “Well, where are you now? Where are you financially? What credibility do you have in doing that?” And that—

Paul/West: Hello?

Andrew: Are you there?

West: You just got cut out for a second there, Andrew.

Andrew: Oh okay. I’ll say that again. When I was younger, I had the idea of being able to do this sort of program and to share this information. But I was really excited about when I first heard about this information and it’s really good to be able to share and tell people about it. And then I had a chat turned around to me and said, “Well, what credibility do you have to be able to do this? Where are you financially?” And at the time, we were tight with money and we were working in a standard job and so on. And he had a point. I really had no credibility to do it. It didn’t diminish the value of the information, I suppose, but it made my message maybe not that clear.

So I just sort of put it in the background. We went off and did other things. And as we applied this information over the years, I’ve been able to become financially independent. We made lots of money doing different things and we’ve…

Paul: And kept it, mate. And kept it.

Andrew: And kept it, yeah. [Laughs] Then we’ve been able to do programs which accumulate lots of money and assets. And we’ve also been able to develop passive income streams and some which have allowed us to work because we want to work and not because we have to work.

And so at this point, I’m really comfortable in saying, “Well, I’ve done this. What we’re talking about is the stuff that I’ve applied.” And then it’s been a direct response to applying the things that Paul has told us as well. So that’s one of the reasons that I want Paul to be a part of this program is because the information he provides is cutting edge and it makes all the difference and as he’s got a whole stable of multi millionaire clients that will testify to that as well.

West: And a range of industries and a force of elite people as well, I’m hearing…

Andrew: He’s the millionaires’ coach in that area, millionaire mind coach. And so he’s the guy who you go to if you want that sort of a train.

But having said that, the other cool thing about this program is that the information is just not going to come from Paul and myself. We’re going to have people on, on a regular basis. We’ll be interviewing people who are successful in their own right and successful in their field and getting into their head about what it is that they do differently and how they think and how they feel about things and what they do and how they deal with fear and all that type of stuff and what’s it like to have $10 million worth of debt hanging over your head. Can they sleep at night with that? And you’ll find the answer is yes and these guys are making $100 million. And it’s this whole lot of attitude and I think it’d be great for these guys to share with us and I think you’ll get a lot out of that.

West: Definitely. I mean if someone’s technique doesn’t necessarily work for you, you might come across an interview in week 2 or week 3 or down the track that you really click with, a similar background or a similar industry that you might be able to apply in your life.

Andrew: That’s right. And while those guys will say a lot of their techniques is particularly what they’re doing technique wise, what I’ll get them to share is specifically what’s going on emotionally and mentally for you and how you’re getting over those issues. And you’ll find that there’s a common theme to all of these interviews that we do with the people, common success themes: how they handle opportunity, how they handle adversity, how they manage the family and the opportunities and all that type of stuff as well.

So I think it’s an exciting thing that I’m really looking forward to doing.

Paul: Hugely exciting. I’m just, you know—if I can say my two boasts’ worth in there—Andrew’s right. I’ve got this bunch of clients who literally make fortunes every year. Well, I am very honored to be able to say that they’re my clients. But what happens is that I sit in the room advising them but I can’t help but learn myself. And so what we’re looking at is bringing most of that information to the table because it shouldn’t just stay with those people.

And so I’m particularly excited about being able to just sit down and say, “Look, I was just talking to a guy who said this and that, the other.” The other thing I’ll add is that Andrew’s right; there’s a common theme to this kind of work and it boils down to this… I just recently concluded this series of interviews with my top nine clients. These people, between them are worth somewhere around the $250 million mark. And I’ve got them all recorded. Now I don’t have permission to let those things out just yet but there’s one thing I can tell you…when I say to them what is their secret to success, they all tell me the same thing, they all say exactly the same words and it’s two words: mind set.

Andrew: That’s powerful, mate.

West: Powerful stuff.

Paul: Yeah. They don’t say you’ve got to be in the right industry. They don’t say you’ve got to be lucky. They don’t say you’ve got to marry the right person. They don’t say that you’ve got to have this kind of support or that kind of industry. None of that. They just go: mindset.

West: That’s pretty much all I have to ask. I think you guys have shared a wealth of knowledge today and I want to thank you both for joining us.

Interview with an Expert: West Loh

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

West: Absolute pleasure, Yaro.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

West: Correct.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

West: That’s powerful.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yaro: What has been the motivating factor for you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

West: Yes. It makes a big difference.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

West: Definitely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

West: Exactly. Momentum is powerful.

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

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

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

West: It is a PDF, that’s correct.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yaro: Let’s go even further back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

West: Exactly. Me, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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