You Don’t Have To Be a Genius to Make Money

You Don’t Have To Be a Genius to Make Money,
But It Sure Helps to Know One!

or, Maybe I Was “Lucky”

By:
Mike Stokes
Disneyworld, FL
Saturday 5:45 AM

Almost every day someone will tell me that
they want to make $10,000.00 a month,
and even more for goodness sakes...

But that they won’t do what it
takes to make $100.00 a month.

They won’t take the action required to cover
their product costs, let alone do what
it takes to cover some marketing expenses.

They want to be a “heavy hitter” marketing guru,
and make the big bucks, yet they don’t want to
INVEST in the education – books, tapes, seminars,
etc – to learn how to do what they want to do...

...to have SUCCESS.

They'd rather watch Lost on the TV and
learn how to make money by osmosis.

Yet these same people don’t bat an eye at
spending $100,000.00 and 4 years of their
lives to go to college to learn how to be
a $30,000 a year bookkeeper.

They want to quit their jobs and “go full time”,
yet they won’t INVEST one measly hour a day
in their business.

What in the world do they plan to do with
the extra 40 – 50 hours they have on their
hands if they quit their jobs?

They want to be in the marketing business,
but don’t want anyone to know about it.

Some even hide their business
from their spouses.

Good Lord.

If people in the “real” world thought
the way many people in direct sales think,
they’d certainly lose their jobs and businesses,
and maybe even be put in a mental institution.

Maybe I thought like that before I got
into the direct sales business, because
I certainly lost my home, my business
and everything I owned once.

Maybe I was “lucky”, because I went down
the “stupid” highway before I was exposed
to direct sales.

And maybe I was “lucky”, because it wasn’t
“just a couple of hundred bucks” that I
INVESTED to start my direct sales business,
it was every cent I had and could put my
hands on in the world.

In fact, it was our grocery money.

No kidding.

You ever make spaghetti sauce with
the ketchup packs you saved up from
fast food joints?

We did, more than once too.

Maybe I was “lucky” because I had
to take my new business seriously,
or my family wouldn’t eat.

Maybe you could relate this to putting up
your home, all your savings, all of your
retirement benefits, all of your possessions,
and quitting your job to start a business
of some sort.

Do you think you would take that serious?

As serious as a heart attack, I’d think.

I talk with people every day that
don’t want to sell any products.

I’m not sure that they understand the English language.

What could they possibly think that
“marketing” and “direct sales” involves?

I tell these folks to toss their products
out the back door if they don’t want to
sell anything.

That’ll work.

Sort of like opening a convenience store,
and not wanting to sell the cigarettes and
beer, yet expecting money to materialize
in the cash register.

Seems foolish to me, but whatever rings
their bell, so what the heck.

I don’t understand where they’re coming from.

Maybe they know something I don’t.

But then, I’m the one getting
checks in the mail every day.

Maybe I was “lucky” that I had to sell
my initial order of products, in order
to pay for my next order.

You see, I “stole” $57.00 out of our
so-called budget to start my new
direct sales and marketing business.

Fifty-seven dollars.

On September 2, 1998.

But, the difference is, I didn’t INVEST
“just $57.00” in my new business,
I invested it ALL.

I had just “moved up” from homeless to
a tiny apartment in what can only be
described as a ghetto neighborhood.

Drunks and bums for neighbors…

The occasional shooting.

Anyway, fast-forward…

Less than 9 months later, on May 31, 1999,
I bought my wife the first new car she
had ever owned in her life.

A brand new, never been driven,
shiny black Toyota Camry.

She was so proud of it.

I was too.

Then, 23 months after opening my $57.00
direct sales and marketing business,
I bought my wife a real home,
in a nice neighborhood.

Still selling the products that I couldn’t
afford to keep 23 months earlier.

I guess I was “lucky.”

Maybe I got all the “breaks.”

Didn’t seem like it at the time.

But, looking back, I think I did get all the “breaks.”

My first “break” came just moments after
I bought in to my marketing business.

My sponsor vanished.

To this day, I have never heard another
word from him, or even about him.

He simply vanished.

Maybe he was abducted, I don’t know.

Maybe I’m a “genius.”

I didn’t even know the phone number
to the company I had just joined.

I had to wait until my first $57.00 order
arrived to find out how to contact the company.

Well, at least I was smart enough to know
that I needed to hook up with someone that
knew what they were doing...

Because I was “blessed” to not know a
thing about this marketing business.

Well, I have to admit that I was
“lucky” about one thing at least.

In the company newsletter that came with
my initial $57.00 order, they listed all
of the big money earners in the company.

They don’t list the people that don’t make any money.

Imagine that...

(I have since come to learn that most companies are like that.)

My “luck” is kicking in now, because if I’m
gonna call anyone for advice, it has to be
one of those big money earners on that list.

I just plain didn’t know how to contact anyone
as dumb and broke as myself, which is who I
certainly would have contacted given the chance.

Well, I’m about to learn my first lesson
in prosperity consciousness.

That lesson is this:

When you need business advice and counseling,
get it from someone who is already where
you want to be.

Not at the barroom or from your
dumb, broke brother-in-law.

Write this down:

If you want to make money,
you’ve got to get close to the money.

If you want to catch the flu,
hang around with people that have the flu.

If you want to make money,
hang around with people that are making money.

It’s not much more complicated than that.

Oh, and you do need to heed their advice.

And, take action.

So, what’s the “secret” of success?

1. ASSOCIATE with successful people.
2. INVEST in your success education.
3. DO what successful people do.
4. Take ACTION. In other words, do it.

You can’t PLAY business,.

You’re either IN business, or you’re wasting
people’s time and your family’s money.

If you’re gonna be in business, here’s what you need to do:

1. Find an honest and legitimate business,
not a money game.

2. Find someone that is already successful,
or is connected to someone that is already
successful, in that business.

3. INVEST in the products and the tools that
are necessary to be in that business.

4. Get a day planner and mark out and set aside
your business hours, those times that you are
working your business, just as if you had to
go to the job.

5. Do the work that your successful mentor
does to build his/her business.

6. Stick with it.
I don’t think Bill Gates became
a gazillionaire in a week either.

7. Read. Read. Read.
Establish a weekly/monthly budget for books,
tapes and seminars.
I invested $50.00 a week when I was
only earning $200.00 a week at my J-O-B.
It pays off big time!

8. Mastermind.
Stay connected to successful people.

9. Be consistent.

10. Just do it.

There are plenty of false prophets and false
gurus out there that just “talk the talk.”

You need to run with those that “walk the walk.”

Mentors that are really “doing the deal” can tell
in 3 minutes of talking with you if you’re making
any money or not.

So I recommend that you don’t try
to run any BS past a real mentor.

I can remember one time a “big shot” trying
to tell me how to market products to
convenience stores.

I was still a “little shot” at the time.

However, I did know a thing or two about
marketing to convenience stores.

She didn’t know I already had products
in over 200 c-stores and I could tell
100% that she had never even TRIED
to sell one or she wouldn’t be saying
what she was saying.

I had walked that walk...

She was talking the walk.

Interesting.

Anyway, I can remember driving
400 miles to meet my mentor.

Paying $1,200.00 to participate in a conference.

Borrowing $1000.00 for the trip.

Best investment I’ve ever made.

I’ve invested a small fortune looking
for my “assignment” in life.

I’ve moved on past friends that weren’t
going where I must go in life.

What we’re talking about here works,
pure and simple.

No getting around it.

When you SEEK correction in your thought process,
UNCOMMON mentors are “invited” into your life.

When you seek CORRECTION, you SCHEDULE
uncommon HELPERS into your life.

You MUST seek out MENTORSHIP with uncommon thinkers.

You can't find ONE BILLIONAIRE who did it alone.

Get some biographies at Barnes and Noble.

They ALL had a brain trust.

They were all TAUGHT.

Steve Wozniak MASTERMINDED with (iPod) Steve Jobs.

17 partners MASTERMINDED with (Domino’s) Tom Monaghan.

Siegfred MASTERMINDED with Roy.

Carson MASTERMINDED with Ed.

Oprah won’t budge without Gale.

Life leaves clues.

“Life was never meant to be a struggle.”

Get in the flow.

Masterminding opens up channels
of WISDOM and UNDERSTANDING
that you just can not access
on your own.

Best of Success!

Mike Stokes
(225) 218-1469
www.EZPostCardSystem.com