For 386 months, I've read an average of thirty to firty books per month. Because of those I've read repeatedly, the total is probably under sixteen thousand books, not including encyclopedias, thousands of magazines, etc. Either way, that's probably more than you and everyone you know all added up together have read, or at least a hundred college grads all added up together, and still quite a bit more. More influentially, I've had the blessings to have personally interviewed and/or broken bread with more than five thousand exquisitely accomplished people, from Olympic Champions and thousands of upper corporate and institutional leaders, including over a thousand who went from poverty or other challenges to fantastic wealth. People like John Leonis, CEO of Litton Industries (the world's largest manufacturer of surface naval warships, not to mention microwave ovens, and so much more) and Mr. Anton, NYSE Director, or the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve or CEO of Macy's or Zayle's Diamonds, and thousands of other true achievers. Without any doubt there are shortcuts that these inspiring top achievers use on a regular basis. This is how they accomplish more in one year than you do in twenty: they simply shut up and do more of what they already know.
There's no doubt that when a younger person comes to you and says, "I really respect and admire you, can you help me with__________________?"
We both know you would have plenty of advice, plenty of suggestions, wouldn't you? Well, why not ask yourself for a bit of help? That might even spur you to asking other people to help you get what you want. Again and again we all prove each day which end of the horse we're getting information from, hm? Please remember, America now has seven million millionaires. At Who's Who Worldwide, where my job was to interview the leaders of America, I realized that in order to interview every person in the top one percent of each field would mean interviewing more than two and half MILLION people who rank in the top one percent.
After several weeks of interviewing a dozen or more per week, you get better at it, and you can have a dozen different millionaires on the phone in any given day. By the time six and eight and ten months have gone by, and you hear the same exact shortcuts and techniques and sentences being repeated in so many different conversations and interviews, you begin using them yourself, even as you think, "Yeah, yeah."
Until you find yourself quickly learning guitar and piano, and how to interact with men worth hundreds of millions of dollars... and how to get even them to say "Yes," and here comes the most important part: successfully encouraging them to say "YES!" more than half the time! Is your brain in next gear yet? Can you imagine you personally being able to get top-level decisions makers, and even low- and mid-level decision makers, to say yes to you again and again and again?
You want to talk about shortcuts? Find a dozen and more people who are top, TOP-drawer 'closers,' men and women who are paid fantastic sums because they are experts in getting people to say yes, and do nothing more than listen to them and record everything they say and do. - Between 80 and 90 percent of the time, you will hear them use virtually identical sentences and tones of voice.
- They ask up to eight times for what they want.
They studiously avoid any disagreement whatsoever. They are not asking to the customer to buy the product so much as they are asking them to believe that the salesperson is presenting a value to the customer first, and the salesman second. A vital part of this is avoiding conflict. Agreeing, then resolving together.
Prudential Insurance Company, with approximately 100 successful years in the past century, have formally studied top closers since 1917. One of their studies of salespeople, achieved in conjunction with Princeton University, determined that in no less than 48% of all sales interviews, the salesperson leaves without ever asking for the sale.This is perfectly parallel to life, where in no less than 48% of your opportunities to get what you want, you don't even ask for what you want, because you think you're smart enough to know in advance that you will hear a negative response. 2) Every time they hear what is called an objection, they do what half of all salespeople never ever do.* When they hear the objection, the first thing they do is agree with the objection. They then use the objection -- are you ready for this?-- as the specific reason why the other person should say yes. It's a fantastic technique, and usually works at least once in the first three or four times you try it out. The phrase I've heard and used myself most often is, "Yes, sir, that's how I feel too, and that's why our solution may have special appeal for you." Then, offer two solutions, and leave him or her with the choice of those two. Don't ask IF she wants, ask her WHICH she'd prefer. Please, stop being so smart; you're outthinking yourself.
That's the first place we can make an enormous difference in these next three to five days of your life. You commit to asking more people for help in getting what you want, by simply asking each one of them more times.
Do you understand the simplicity of this? The only possible way that anyone can tell if you understand is by seeing you do it. Your worded opinion has no value until you have experience in that area... enough experience to earn a title such as beginner, intermediate, advanced, or expert.
You and ONLY you decide when you become a beginner, an intermediate, an advanced, then an expert, no matter what human effort you mention, from stacking dominoes to getting people to say yes. The single largest advance you will enjoy is based on who you're getting your information from.
Your hair just may stand up straight when you begin realizing the enormous impact you always get simply by asking more people more times each. It is the single most powerful magic trick you can instantly use for faster, better results in any human effort, from brain surgery to politics, guitar or piano playing, raising children or bicycling, ad infinitum, which means never-ending, limited only by your personal imagination. Having read an average of one to three books per day for more than eleven thousand days, three sets of encyclopedias, nearly twenty thousand books, five thousand Internet hours, and so much more, there is no possibility of refuting the fast effectiveness of this greatest power shortcut ever known to man.
Stop and consider this: from the day you're born to the day you die, you never ever obtain or attain anything until you ask for it. Yes, or no? Whether you're asking yourself to squeeze out that one more pushup, or asking the girl at the counter for a quart of ice cream, everything you ever get is the result of your asking for it. That's why you asked your mom for that ice cream cone so many many times when you were a child... ... and when she persisted in saying no, what did you do? You went to Daddy, of course, and/or Grandma, Grandpa, Sister, Broth... on those occasions that you wanted that ice cream badly enough to try tears, pouting, shouting, wheedling, you persisted until you got it... and on those occasions that you did NOT want it badly enough to pout, shout, etc., you gave up after one, two, or three tries... ... and you didn't get the ice cream.
If you decided to use just one one=hundreth of one percent more of your brain, you might consider doing so using this magical, fantastically effective shortcut and using it more beginning today, wouldn't you? Question is, WILL you?
In the next ten days, like every ten days of your life, you will be asking people (including yourself) for certain things. Should you bother to keep track, most people will say yes to you on the first try, especially salespeople, gas station attendants, etc. When someone says no to you, find creative and different ways to ask that person no less than seven times. You will be astounded with your results. When you ask once and hear the word no
An effective comparison is found in sales. One of the longest studies done on top sales produces found that roughly 48% of all sales calls end without the salesperson ever asking for the sale, for a variety of reasons. Yet with every one of the producers in the top ten percent, they would take every single no they'd hear, and try to find out why they were hearing a no, so that they could ask again, a different way, resolving the concern of the buyer. Empirically speaking, those people who ask each person seven times will generally hear up to four times as many yesses. This SuperShortcut is so simple that you glide past it every day. USE IT! It works fast, and will double your results in anything you wish... ... at a far, FAR higher rate of acceleration than you're getting today. A quick look at the Forbes Magazine list of the 400 richest people in America, a mind-grabbing 251 of them have been stone cold broke -- more than once!! When you include the 6,800,000 Americans who are currently earning eighty thousand dollars per month or more, we find again and again that they simply ask more times for what they want. They ask more people, and they ask people more.
These incredible supershortcuts and techniques are brought from the mouths, the words, and deeds of thousands upon thousands of extraordinarily successful people, using a broad, universally agreeable definition of success: Measurable results. Every human task fits this. We can modify this definition, never eliminate it. The day-to-day progress towards mutual benefit. Whatever YOUR definition of success is, there's a way to measure it in your field of interest, correct? We'll identify precisely where you are on the map, and where you are determined to be in 100 days, and 1000 days. I'm proceeding on the assumption that you can identify at least one thing, if not more, that you need to be world-class at before you die. Without a doubt, the single most important thing you can do in the next sixty seconds is to state, out loud, your determination that you can and will be world-class at ____________.
If you truly don't know what you'd pick from a genie granting you three wishes, or even just one wish, keep reading, by the time you're done the seed will be planted for you to water, and allow to germinate. It will flower. You see, it's part of the human condition that everything we do from birth to death has only two causes: pain or pleasure. It is the motivation for every thought and act we commit to in life. Whatever it is you're doing, or thinking about doing, is to avoid pain, or gain pleasure. For some people, even these two most primordial, basic functions get confused. If you're not too screwed up, there's still hope for you, provided you clam up and get busy on this day, before you next sleep. Fair enough?
Let's put it out on the table and clarify why we are spending time together. If you're reading this, I've been paid in cash or satisfaction. I've done my part, that's how you've come to do some of your part --- getting to this page, this sentence.
I do want to be famous, as long as it's not in my lifetime. I've had a taste of minor celebrity, and didn't care for the blaring, glaring, obnoxiously intrusive spotlight. Even with the success of this endeavor you're now reading, my identify remains shielded because this program is one of those rare ones: it's really not about me selling books or tapes, it's about you becoming a superstar in your life, whether or not anyone else knows it. That's up to you to decide.
I've read repeatedly where more than four thousand millionaires in the past century have directly credited Napoleon Hill for their becoming millionaires as a result of his unique "Think and Grow Rich." It's common knowledge that more than a thousand lower and mid-level employees at Microsoft became millionaires because of Bill Gates' vision. Many thousands more made a million or more dollars from stock in his company. Larry Ellison, at Oracle, and other men, have been credited with directly creating hundreds and hundreds of millionaires.
My most ardent personal goal is to have my work used as guidelines for superbly effective shortcuts two and three hundred years from now. What can I tell you? I believe I'll observe it from somewhere beyond, hopefully what we call heaven.
It's impossible for these PowerGems and SuperShortcuts to fail. Only we can fail to use them. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to take over as pilot of your ship. You're the boss. Stop delegating so much authority to people whose face you don't shave, to events you didn't shape.
In a nutshell, it's your turn. The only true value I get is for you to close your mouth, open your eyes and ears - to those who have done it better than you- and will continue to do it better than you until the moment you begin doing as they do.
It's one of the most basic facets of science. Duplicate an action enough times, and you will assuredly duplicate the results of that action.
Every time you read something in these pages that strikes the "Aha!" chord inside you, jot it down!! Print it out. Put it on the wall and say it out loud five, ten, or a hundred times before you eat three more meals. Do it again tomorrow. Take any one or more of these PowerGems and memorize them until the meaning of the words soaks all the way through. You'll understand more of the benefits even as quickly as a day or two.
Jot down those that seem tailor-made for you to gain benefit. Please remember that the entire point of this book is for you to use shortcuts that produce results quicker than you're now obtaining. Please don't complicate things . Keep it simple. Every shortcut you take brings you one step closer. Write in the margins, write on the lines, just please don't be a moron and stop writing. The more you write, the more you make.
The more you write, the more you make. The more you write, the more you make. Even if you only use a fraction of what's in here, there are dozens of shortcuts that are as good as tailor-made, just for you, in YOUR particular career field, whether you're a household word, or housewife, a Harrier jet pilot or a hooker, a typist or a tyrant: this is the best day to create a useful map, recipe, blueprint, because even more convincing than my own use, or my students' successful use of these high-powered shortcuts: Name 1000 role models of this generation. Each of them uses most or all of these Shortcuts of masters and millionaires. They ALL begin in writing.
Stop leaving it to other, lesser people to do. If you are not an acknowledged master or millionaire in your field, you have absolutely no right to a licit, valid opinion on how to do it successfully. There are people who pursue their highest calling with passion, and there are people who do not. We already KNOW what you are.... because of whatever you've done on a day to day basis for years now. It is the final dividing line, the shortcut to understanding the most critical, instantaneous forward motion toward supersuccess: those who know what to do, and those who shut up and do it.
Just like the thousands of Winners I've interviewed, and thousands more I've studied, your life is perfect proof of virtually every word in this book. Stupid people are those who know exactly what to do; smart people are those who shut up and do it. Most people get only one life to live. Is it fair for us to say that you personally will probably only live one life? If you only have one of something, don't you want to treat it differently than you do something you have many of? That life, just like a piece of bread or lightbulb, is made up of smaller components that are combined. With bread, it's the smaller components of flour, water, and heat. With the light bulb, it's a piece of wire, a couple of supports, a wire band, glass. With life, it's the smaller components we call "seconds." Just as we can take the light bulb, and add it to other items to be part of a truck, the individual seconds of your life, and mine, and everyone who lives and breathes, those seconds become hours, days, weeks, months, and years. Add up all the items, and the total is called "My Life."
Because we add different amounts of different ingredients, the final product is also different. Since you or somebody else paid for this book, it makes sense to use it. In the next five minutes, let's draft out a proposed plan for your life. Yes, you. Five minutes. Write in the margins if you have to. PUT IT ON PAPER. It is one of the most compelling of all the shortcuts of power: it must be written. Never mind what's in your head. Does no good until it's outside of your head, under your control. Write all over this book. For your sake. Scribble ideas and wishes in the margins. USE IT!!
Everything important you ever do in your life you plan, from weddings and holidays to interstate travel. In minutes, we begin drafting a plan for the most important journey of all: YOUR LIFE... day to day. Stop and think about it: ever been to a wedding? I would suppose that no less than 95% of all weddings go off wonderfully. Every wonder why? Think there might be a connection to the fact that the wedding or other affair was so carefully planned? Even the color and folding of the napkins or type of lettering on the invitations to the honeymoon suite reservations, et alia: the event is planned, on paper. It's broken down to smaller steps, correct?
Would you even dream of trying to make a three-day deadline to travel 1500 miles without a definite, clear, written plan, sometimes referred to as 'a map;' sometimes referred to as 'Give me the directions?" Of course not. You make the deadline specifically because you know in advance just where you were going, you find out which road to take, and then you persist, even when you get lost, run out of gas, or suffer other obstacles. True, or not?
When you come to a red light, you stop your car (hopefully). At that moment, your forward momentum has stopped. In fact, your trip has come, literally, to a halt. Do you end the trip? Do you turn around and go home? Well, before you sneer, stop and consider how many times in your life you may have taken a first step, even a second, third, or ninth step towards doing or acquiring something, and suddenly your trip came to a halt. Proving once again that ninety-three percent of us are too stupid to act upon the knowledge that 100% of us possess, you quit. Because you quit, you failed, not the other way around. Are we on the same page here? You did not quit because you failed doing it. No, you failed because you quit doing it. Let's change that today. I believe in you enough to take two years off to folter 40,000-plus pages of research, for you to use. In any and every worthwhile thing you personally have ever accomplished, and repeated at will, it is exclusively because you knew precisely what you wanted, you knew what you had to do to get there , and you did it as many times as it took to get it done. Now, we get to use your skills for higher achievements, with results appearing as soon as the next hour or less... of YOUR life.
Just get the recipe correct. Like a corrected map or blueprint of your home, we work backwards, live forwards. You would not bake a cake without a specific, QUANTIFIED recipe. You would not dream of driving to another city without a map. You would not consider building a house without a blueprint. How could you possibly think of treating your life as something not worthy of building, rather than just taking as it comes? What do these things have in common? They are written, and they are capable of being measured by QUANTIFIABLE smaller steps. Period.
---- Precisely (meaning quantify precisely) what do I want?
---- What four smaller pieces can I break this into?
If needed, go ahead and break it into five smaller pieces, or even 10 or 20 if you wish. Until you put it in writing, you're just a talker. Proof? Well, you SAY you understand the value of written planning for a wedding, a birthday party, a complicated journey, the building of a house.... now we get to prove to the world that you understand that your life itself is the most important journey of your life, and that your life needs a map, too , if you're going to get to your destiny or destination, whichever word you prefer. If you don't know exactly where you're going, you'll probably end up somewhere else. That's not rah-rah: if you don't know precisely where you're headed in ten years, it's unlikely that it'll be the place of your dreams. As long as your actions of today are the same as yesterday, you're an ass if you believe you'll get any improvement in results tomorrow. Science tells us that such things can't happen... ...or at least that they haven't happened in the past few thousand years. Improve your actions today, you'll reap fruit tomorrow. |
