2015-08-18 How to turn ideas into Money

How to turn ideas into money, 15 pieces of the puzzle. Turning ideas into money is the holy grail of entrepreneurship. Every person who would like to make more money ends up coming across opportunities or ideas sooner or later. They only need to know how to turn those opportunities and ideas into money. That is what I know how to do and will share with you today.

First, let's talk about ideas. Your way of thinking can transform your ideas into a success or a failure. Both outcomes are possible. It all depends on your mindset, the decisions you make, and the action you take regarding those ideas. I will also share the correct way of thinking for you to achieve the success that you want.

To transform ideas into money, you need to identify what a money-making idea is. When someone sees an opportunity or has an idea, they are often unaware of its true value in the marketplace. They also don't know that it will probably fail if it lacks any of the qualities that I will talk about next. A great money-making opportunity is self-explanatory. If you can't explain the concept in 10 minutes by doodling on a napkin, it's probably too complicated to be understood easily.

The fact is that when you have a concept that requires a lot of explaining, you're wasting 90% of people's energy right there from the get-go. People who would otherwise be potentially interested. As a result, there isn't much interest or enthusiasm left for the concept you are presenting. You can have the best solution, but if you offer it to someone who doesn't have the problem, then your idea is completely worthless. For a money-making idea to work, you need to solve the real problems of a specific niche.

There is always a group of people who have a problem that you have the solution to. Find those people and show them, and only them, your idea. They will give it the value it deserves, and where there is value, there is a business opportunity. Remember that you will never have one singularly great idea that serves everyone. Anyone who tries to be everything to everyone, fails miserably every time.

A passionate niche is ready to give you their money in exchange for the value you have to offer. When they're ready, eager and anxious, you will make the easiest sale of your life. If your great money-making idea doesn't bring anything new to your niche, then it's not very interesting. Worse, you will find that the competition has already swooped in and won over your prospective customers, and now you have to figure out a way to get them back. An original idea, or a new approach, tends to be more appealing to people who are dissatisfied, and that gives you the edge to go in and conquer your piece of the market with relative ease.

Look inside your niche for desires your competition has left unfulfilled, and present a solution only you can provide. Use your unique brand of magic to fulfill those wishes. It works every time. If your money-making idea includes a product for people to buy, being scalable means that you will offer additional products or services so that those same customers can come back and buy more products from you. It doesn't make any sense for you to win over a customer that doesn't keep making you money.

You always need to follow up with something, like a subscription, an auto-ship, paid assistance, support or training, notifications and news about other products. Every successful business is great in their upsell, the promotion of an extra purchase, or advanced products or services, preferably of a continuous nature. If you have an idea that can be related to volunteer work or social causes, religion or spirituality, or a business system like affiliates, network marketing or franchising, scalability is measured by how simple it is for a new member to get involved and how easily the organization's influence and members can grow. Naturally, in order to make money, this second business model needs to have a way for members to donate money or acquire goods and services. Then it needs to become scalable, as I mentioned before.

Number five. It's expandable outside the niche. If you have a very specific money-making idea for a very specific niche, you could have a problem on your hands. Even if you have a ton of success very quickly, you will need to find a way to expand outside that niche and attract other people. For that, you need to take a new approach.

Add different features and solutions to your product that can solve problems and answer the needs of new people in slightly different niches. A good example of that is the expansion of Empower Network. It began with a viral blogging system for bloggers with the slogan, Do these three things and make money. Then it expanded into the entire internet marketing training system for digital entrepreneurs with the slogan, Live off the internet. Then it continued to expand until it became a community of entrepreneurs in multiple and diverse areas, such as making money with hobbies with the slogan, Do what you love, blog about it, make money.

If you have a powerful idea and if that idea fits all the requirements I just mentioned, then know this. Your time has come. And there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. Now that you have identified a good business idea, you need to know where to put your time, money and energy. And this can be complicated if the idea is not in your area of expertise.

After you have determined the value of an idea, you need to learn how to monetize it. I'm going to talk to you about 15 steps you can take to help transform those ideas into money. Back in the days when I didn't know how to monetize ideas, I always earned less than I needed. I thought that money was directly related to the amount of hours I worked. And according to that way of thinking, if I needed more money, I worked more hours.

But a day only has 24 hours. I was working most of them and I still wasn't making enough money. I eventually came to realize I had it all wrong. The amount of hours you work has little to do with financial success because serious money isn't made by working long hours. It is how we work and the ideas that create the systems that are behind the work that are crucial.

Working smart is the key. After finally understanding this, I really became successful. I discovered that no matter what I am doing, it works. I discovered that money comes from literally everywhere and much of it comes unexpectedly. Many of the people who work with me have experienced this incredible feeling that money is coming in from everywhere.

It happened for them after they followed the 15 steps I am going to tell you about. These steps make it possible for you to transform a good idea, which you already know how to identify, into money. Having a vision is imagining a reality in your mind that hasn't happened yet. I was taught to think that only very special people have a vision. Visionaries were people like Da Vinci, Edison, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs.

People with clear ideas, courage, resources, and determination to make those ideas come alive. I was taught to believe that these people were rare. But I discovered that's not quite like that. I am reminded of a story that illustrates very clearly what it is to have a vision and how anyone can have one for themselves and their future. A father was showing his son a pine nut, fruit of a pine cone, which comes from a pine tree, and asked him, Son, what do you see here?

To which the son answered readily, It's a pine nut, of course. And what do you do with this pine nut? You can eat it, the son replied without hesitation. So the father explained to his son that because he only saw a pine nut, he thought of eating it. And he would eat it.

And that would make the pine nut just a pine nut. The son's idea or vision of the pine nut became his reality. But the father explained that he himself didn't just see a pine nut. Inside this pine nut, he saw a pine tree with hundreds of pine cones and thousands of pine nuts in those pine cones. And more.

He saw entire forests of pine trees. And with those thousands of pine cones and millions of pine nuts, producing even more pine trees and more forests. He went on to describe how he saw tables, chairs, houses, and boats built with the wood from those same pine trees by thousands of workers. He saw thousands of happy families living with abundance in their homes. The money they had earned had come from the work and the resources provided by that single pine nut.

The fact that the father could see a future which didn't yet exist changed the son's decision. He decided to plant the pine nut instead of eating it. This shift in thinking caused a shift of action. And there came a shift in reality. From a pine nut that was eaten that changes nothing to a pine nut that when planted changes the world.

Having a vision means seeing what other people don't see. So an entrepreneur does things other people won't. This is the power of having a vision. And everyone can have one. Actually, without a vision, there is no change.

And without change, there is no growth. You need to have a clear vision of what your future is going to be like. Where do you want to be in 10 years? Doing what? What is your life and your family's life going to be like?

What is your pine nut? And will you eat it or plant it? Number two, have a motive. When there isn't a strong enough reason to do something, everyone gives up at the first sign of trouble. Motivation comes with a motive.

My friend Paula survived on 150 euros a month. She had a company, which went bankrupt, so she was forced to get a job. But once she got that poorly paying job, and she thought she could begin to pay off some of her debts, her salary was garnished. So every month, instead of receiving her salary, most of it was immediately withheld from the bank for her creditors, leaving her, at the end of the month, with 150 euros for all her living expenses and to pay off other remaining debts. Do you think her life was easy?

Of course not. Do you think she had a strong enough motive to change her life? Of course she did. And she tried. She tried to change her life for some time by making extra money online, but she failed.

She went on like this for a while, and sometime during the month of November, her father passed away. He had been her strength and her emotional support, and now he was gone. Two weeks later, she lost her crappy job and was kicked out of the house by her boyfriend, who she had been living with. At the time, 150 euros a month seemed like a pittance, but it was all she had, and it was something. But now, she found herself without a job, without money, without a father, and without a roof over her head.

At that point, most people would have broken down and given up. She had struggled and fought so hard for all those years only to find herself in this seemingly hopeless situation. She could hardly believe it. On the same day she had lost her job and her home, she called me and said, Hui, I lost my job that took eight hours out of my day in exchange for a miserable salary. My boyfriend kicked me out because I told him I didn't want another job and I wanted to be free, and now I am free.

I can do anything I want. And I answered, Yes, congratulations, let's go to work. We looked like two idiots celebrating in the middle of all the chaos and tragedy, but the truth is that Paula never had a stronger reason to be successful. Without a plan B, her idea really had to be turned into money, and it did. Three short years later, Paula is a respected leader in the Internet marketing industry and is part of the Lazy Millionaires Leadership Council, which is in the top seven worldwide.

She now earns in one day what she earned in a year when she lived in uncomfortable comfort in an apartment with her boyfriend on 150 euros a month. Jim Rohn tells us the story of that day when some girl scouts came to his house to sell him cookies for $2. He didn't have $2 to buy the cookies and told them that he had lots at home and he didn't need any more. The motive always has to be a very strong connection to you. It can be a family, your kids, a cause, or a burning desire, but it must always carry a strong emotional weight for you.

When you think about your motive, your reason, your why, you should get emotional. When you talk about your why, you should be powerless to stop the tears from rolling down your cheeks. It is this type of motivation that you will need. It will never allow you to run out of energy, even when you are facing difficulties, challenges, or even failure. When it gets harder, you get stronger.

You don't remember what it feels like to be unmotivated. Even if you feel the frustration of fail frequently, because you have a motive that is always on your mind, you have the drive to find solutions and produce results. We can gauge a person's ability to succeed if we can measure how long that person takes between these two moments in time. The prediction never fails. Slow people are never very successful.

The universe likes speed. And if you think about it, it makes total sense. When someone says they earned one million euros, it's important to know how long it took them to earn it, not counting lottery winners, of course. The majority of people who have earned more or less that required a whole lifetime of work, in other words, 41 years of work, earning 2,000 euros a month. Wow, I just realized that in the last two and a half years, I earned what a typical Portuguese person makes earning an average salary over the course of 42 years.

A whole lifetime of income compressed into two and a half years simply because I worked hard using this system. Incredible, right? Anyway, when it comes to making money, the time factor is very relevant. Concentrate the maximum amount of energy in the shortest possible amount of time. That is the secret for maximum results.

I will tell you a fact that will help you understand the importance of the time factor as it applies to success. Did you know that the amount of energy stored in a small muffin is about 200 calories? And did you know that the amount of energy stored in a stick of dynamite is about the same, 200 calories? Those are the similarities. Now for the differences.

When you eat a muffin, you don't explode simply because it takes several hours for it to release its 200 calories, which is the opposite of a stick of dynamite, which releases the same amount of energy in a fraction of a second, the outcome of which you are already familiar with. The difference isn't the amount of energy in the muffin and the dynamite. The difference is in how long it takes them to release it. That is the reason why results prefer speed. You can spend a certain amount of hours working, investing the same amount of money over a long period of time, and nothing will happen.

But if you focus the same amount of hours and invest the same amount of money in a short period of time, or as I like to call it, take massive action, the result is dynamite. By laser-focusing your energy in a short amount of time, you create a critical mass of results, which generates momentum. Results bring more results, money brings more money, and success brings more success. An airplane can use up all its fuel just by taxiing on the runway at 10 kilometers an hour. It will never be able to lift off by going slowly.

It needs the engines in full thrust to achieve maximum speed on the runway in order for it to be able to lift off. After it reaches cruising altitude, the pilot can even switch off the engines if he needs to because the lift of the plane has been generated and it will keep in the air all the way to its destination if need be. Once you have an idea of what you need to do, decide quickly and act even quicker with the maximum amount of energy concentrated in the shortest amount of time. You can be certain of one thing. For your idea to have any value, it has to be a little, or better yet, very uncommon.

That means it must solve a problem, fulfill a necessity or desire that isn't being fulfilled, or you must be doing something in a completely different way than everyone else. That originality, on the one hand, is part of the brilliance of your idea or project. But on the other hand, it may possibly put you in a very uncomfortable position. You will come up against naysayers. You will encounter people who are condescending or totally opposed to your idea.

Sometimes these people are the people that love you, your friends and family members. You will have to be okay with that. And during your learning process, which will involve trial and error, you will have to be willing to accept the fallout from those same people. Just remember, you are doing something that no one has ever done before. So never lose sight of your goal, be fearless, and never stop believing in yourself.

Here, your ego can either be your friend or your enemy. It will be your enemy if it stops you from doing what you need to do for fear of failure, fear of what other people might think or say. If it makes you feel bad when other people say or think bad things about you for following through with your idea and chasing your dreams, that means you are more interested in feeding your ego than achieving your dream. Change that. You are the messenger and your dream is the message.

It needs to be delivered. To say Antonio was a shy person would be an understatement. The first time I saw him, he could not exchange more than two or three words with anyone and his gaze was permanently fixed on the floor. For me, he wasn't just another person in the crowd because not only did I speak with him, we also made a video together. And now we make sure that we take at least one picture together every time we meet, which has been dozens of times already.

But the personality trait that I want to point out here is the fact that Antonio came with us on the humanitarian mission to Guinea-Bissau. And when I asked him why he was doing it, he replied, I'm doing this to overcome my fears. We traveled 5,000 kilometers by car across Africa, taking with us humanitarian aid to the people of Guinea-Bissau. We crossed the Sahara Desert and drove through minefields of no-man's land between Morocco and Mauritania. Not bad for someone who intends to overcome fears.

In one shot, we felt all the hazards of a chaotic Arabic city as we drove through the city streets, following a police escort that was leading us from the police checkpoint at the entrance of the city to a safe place to stay. We saw bullet holes and walls everywhere, and there were unfinished buildings and everyone looked suspicious to us. The escort led us to a courtyard closed off by a high wall with iron gates, with a guard at the door. We had arrived and would spend the night in this makeshift hotel. The next day, when it came time to leave and the courtyard gates were open, we started pulling the cars out into the street.

The chaos was overwhelming, but when my turn came to get my car out into the busy road, I saw Antonio in the middle of the street with open arms and a fierce look in his eyes that I had never seen before, signaling all the other cars to stop so we could leave the parking area safely. His small, thin body had been totally transformed by the assertiveness with which he held out his arms, palms facing the oncoming traffic, controlling the chaos by sheer will alone. He reminded me of Jesus Christ calming a storm. I thought to myself, yes, Antonio had overcome his fear. That was what I thought, but I was wrong.

As soon as his traveling companion passed by him in their car, Antonio was so eager to get out of there, he started to run after it and got in while the car was still moving. He later confessed that he had actually been terrified the whole time, but the fact is that he overcame that fear by doing something difficult on his own and with all the energy he could muster. You are not important. Your dream is. It takes over who you are and all of your energy, and if you have to, you develop superhuman strength and perform miracles just to keep it alive.

I like to say that while you work on your dream, your dream works on you. It transforms you into the person you need to be to achieve it. So what others think of you is irrelevant. Fear? We all feel fear, but there's a surefire answer against fear.

Action. The fear of battle is great before the battle. Stage fright is intense before you get on stage. Fear is cured with action. As long as you're 100% engaged in what you have to do, you don't have time to think about how scared you are.

You feel the pressure, the enthusiasm, the adrenaline rush, or the risk, but fear? That is long gone. All good ideas and projects that are worth it will demand everything you have to give, and still, it's rarely enough. The resources at your disposal are time, money, and skills, and believe me, you will need a lot more than what you have available when you make the decision to move forward. So you need to finance yourself, find time in your busy schedule, and learn a considerable amount of new skills, some of them you didn't even know existed until you needed them.

Miguel didn't know what a link was when he started his internet marketing business. He didn't know what an autoresponder was, and obviously, he didn't have a list, and if he did, he didn't know what to do with it. But Miguel knew what I am telling you now. He saw the opportunity, made a decision quickly, and started gathering his resources, money he had, time he found, and skills he learned. Now I've seen him speak twice on stage at international events to thousands of internet marketers sharing his vision and his results.

As for the money, I think it's the most common thing to not have money. But the truth is that everyone has money. There just might not be enough money available right now to do everything that needs to be done, but everyone has money. A couple of days ago, someone who follows my blog contacted me through Skype to tell me he had big dreams and that he wanted to change his life. When I asked him what he meant by big dreams and changing his life, he told me he needed to move into a bigger house.

The apartment he rents has only one room, and he had a young son and another on the way. He gave himself a year to achieve that dream, and I agreed. I thought it was great. It reminded me of my four daughters and the tiny house we lived in for 10 years. My daughters shared the same room all that time.

I identified with him immediately. I think a year is more than enough time to be able to move into a larger home, knowing the potential of an online business and, of course, the benefit of my help and experience if he worked with me. We talked about money, about how much money he needed to start his business online, and about the money he had available to start with straight away. Just as I expected, the money was next to none. He was very far from what he needed to start his successful business online and to be able to buy his dream house in the next 12 months.

Nothing I hadn't seen many times before. I remember that when I started a little over two years ago, I didn't even have the $100 at the time to buy an online course that I needed. I know all too well what it's like not to have the money you need right there whenever you need it. I remember having to search for every penny I could find all around the house just so I could go to the supermarket. So when he told me he didn't have any money, I thought that was perfectly normal.

And this is what I told him. Imagine you already have your house and that it's the exact same house you want to have a year from now. You're living there with your wife and children and everything's okay. But one day, you receive a notification from the IRS about some past tax issue and now you need to pay 10,000 euros in the next 30 days. Otherwise, you will lose your house.

Here's my question. Would you find the money to keep your house? His answer was perfect and just what I expected. I don't know what I would do, but I would find a way. So I told him that in order not to lose his house, he needs to finance himself now.

He wouldn't even need 10,000 euros. Far from it. But his mindset needs to be exactly the same. Find a solution, gather resources, and get the money. Did you notice that this person quickly got into solution mode when the possibility of losing his dream house arose?

And he hadn't done it when acquiring a house was on the table. There's a reason for that. Almost all of us will do whatever it takes not to lose something. But we'll not put in the same amount of effort when it comes to obtaining something. If you want to motivate yourself to take action, put yourself in a position where you'll lose more if you don't act than if you do.

Because normally that's what happens. The price for not taking action is usually way higher than the price for taking action. This is what all entrepreneurs all over the world do when they believe in an idea that can make them money. They finance themselves. Some go to the bank and ask for loans.

Others find other ways. But normally all entrepreneurs and business people have had to do it at one time or another. As for the skills, the same thing applies. When we don't have them, we need to acquire them. In fact, we can never have too many skills.

We need to learn new things every day to better our performance and our understanding of things constantly. Some people say they can't pursue their dreams because they don't know anything about this or that. There's also a great antidote for ignorance. Learning. People that fail are the ones who don't start at all or give up right away.

And believe it or not, many people give up on their dreams not because they don't know how to achieve them, but because they don't want to learn. And that's it. I witnessed an unfortunate episode where a friend threw away a global business opportunity because he didn't speak English. Don't you think it's stupid for someone to lose something they actually really wanted simply because they don't want to learn something they don't know? Everyone has resources and everyone has priorities.

When those two are aligned, anyone can achieve great results. Don't fool yourself. You will never be able to achieve anything great if you try to do it alone. You will never have all the skills you need. You will never have all the money you need.

And you will never have all the time you need. You must have, as allies or associates, people who are not directly involved with your venture but who are willing to help you with time, money, or skills. In addition, you can even have associates you could consider competitors if it wasn't for the fact that you work in collaboration with them instead of competing with them. After four years of trying to make money online, Empower Network appeared with its entrepreneurial productivity, leadership, and mass influence courses. Dozens of people who started from scratch at the same time I did started having results similar to mine very quickly, and I was troubled.

I had been burning midnight oil and learning all sorts of things so that now I could finally be successful. And these newbies come along without knowledge or experience, starting from scratch and having the same sort of results as me. I was upset, of course, not because of their success. I just felt frustrated for not having any of this when I started four years ago. I was very happy for all the people who now had access to bigger and better opportunities.

Quickly, I realized that the newbies who were having amazing results were having them because they were working very hard, of course, but also because they were making most of all the veterans' experience and were surpassing them. This discovery made me very happy because it was the first obvious sign that we were gathering a very efficient group of business associates that could actually really help new members. As a result, many of these new people made much more money than I did in a lot less time. I had similar numbers in my fifth month of business. It's important to create networks of people who have the same mindset as you and share similar goals, people with the will to connect, to collaborate, and share their time, their skill set, and their resources.

Everyone grows more in collaboration and cooperation than they would in competition. This is why it is so important to participate in groups and in communities that are committed to creating something bigger than any of its members would be able to do on their own. This concept is called networking. In terms of business philosophy, it is one of the most popular in the last decade. Independent entrepreneurs that are interdependent, I'm telling you, this concept is pure genius, and now you'll understand why.

Every new member takes advantage of the accumulated experience of hundreds or thousands of people and sees their learning curve drastically reduced as their potential for growth drastically increases. So find networks of entrepreneurs with these qualities. They are worth their weight in gold. For some time, I had no idea what a mentor was. I especially did not realize the need for having mentors and following them.

I'll share with you what a mentor is. Mentors are people who have traveled the road you intend to travel, who know how to do it, and who want to help you travel it. That's it. You can have different mentors for different aspects of your life, one spiritual, one for physical fitness, another one for business, and another for any other thing you want to improve in your life, but the fact is that you need to have them, and I'll tell you why. In order to transform your idea or your project into money, you need to study and you need to practice.

There are things you need to learn from studying and other things you learn from practice. Both are great ways to travel the road to fulfillment of your idea. But here's the problem. How can you know you're doing the right thing? By your results?

I don't think so. How can you gauge the results of something you have just started putting into practice? Results are the outcome of a specific action. The outcome only appears much later. How can you calculate the influence of that action by the results it produces if they don't exist yet?

Some people use trial and error. They do something, see how it worked, fix it, do it again, assess it, and fix it again. This involves a ton of time, money, and a fairly large learning curve. People who are steadfast in their method of trial and error are very rare, either because after some time they have consumed all their resources or because they have run out of energy and no longer have the willpower to continue. A mentor helps tremendously.

Since he has traveled the road before, he can give you instructions that you would never find studying and could never find on your own without using trial and error. Their value is priceless, and that's why I like to add modeling to studying and practice as another of the different methods of learning. Modeling is the art of following a model or a mentor. Number 8. Identifying the 5 most productive daily activities and focus your energy on them.

In every undertaking, there are productive activities and non-productive activities. If you have an idea that you want to monetize, you will need to focus 80% of your time in income-generating activities, productive activities, and 20% of your time in non-income-generating activities, the non-productive activities. Anything which gets you results when you do it is a productive activity. With sales, for example, everything that has to do with the sales process is a productive activity. Generating leads, assisting potential clients, closing sales, producing and sending information to whoever is interested, explaining things, receiving money, delivering the product or service, etc.

Non-productive activities are those dedicated to improvement or evolution of your business. Studying, learning to analyze numbers and statistics, measuring results, planning. There are those who spend 80% of their time planning and studying and then 20% executing. There are even those who never get to the executing phase because they spend all their time studying, planning, and analyzing. Of course, they don't have results because all results come from taking action, not studying.

If you don't have a lot of time and you have to choose between studying and doing, do. You will also learn through action, but you will never have results through studying alone. Pay close attention. This is one of the best productivity tips I know. When it is time to act, it's not time to think.

In the same way that when it is time to think, it is not time to act. Many people get lost in procrastination because they don't have a plan and when it comes time to execute a task, they start thinking about whether they should do it or not, if it's the best time, if the circumstances are good, and other traps the mind lays to make you remain in a state of inertia. Take the time you need to think and plan your schedule. When it's time to think, it's not time to act. Don't just start doing things without thinking because you'll end up spending most of your time and your resources trying to fix the mistakes you're going to make.

Think. Don't act. 20% of your time is for that. After you have thought, after you've deliberated, studied, and defined your plan, start taking action without a second thought. If you're going to do it, then just do it.

You can consider if it's better to do it one way or another, according to your possibilities, but you can choose whether or not to do it. Understand? When you are outlining your plan of action, which will get your idea underway and make you money, always remember, productive activities aren't all the same. Identify five of them that you simply can't go without doing. Come rain or shine.

If you're sad or happy, if you're in good health or have a headache, you do them, always, without fail. These are the activities that will get you there through repetition and perseverance. It is a cumulative process. If you do not fail them, they will not fail you, and they will take you to the fulfillment of your dream and the transformation of your idea into a money-making machine. This brings me to the next topic, which is...

Number nine, be diligent with your daily routine. I really like the concept of having a daily method of operation because I know that results don't come from what we do, but from what we do consistently every day. There is something magical about having a daily routine that has a direct influence on our brain. Neurological pathways are created through repetition of the same act or thought, like water digging crevices that go deeper and deeper the more it passes through the same place. The information traveling the electrical pathways between neurons goes faster and uses less energy when it repeatedly passes through the same circuit.

Learning or doing something new is actually forcing the passage of neuronal communication through new pathways. It requires a considerable amount of effort and a considerable amount of time until it becomes a new habit and is done automatically. That happens through routine, through repetition, and it's a fantastic phenomenon because it allows us to turn something difficult into something easy. This frees up our mind and our energy so we can use them to continue to overcome new challenges and transform even harder things into easier ones. What I just described is what we normally think of as learning and growing.

We have been doing both ever since we were born. But what does this have to do with diligence? The plasticity of our brain is limitless. And if you apply a daily routine that turns difficult things into easy ones, not only does it make your life a lot easier, you gain the power within you to change your life and the world. Cognitive scientists talk about four degrees of learning.

Number one, unconscious incompetence. You don't know what you don't know. You're closed to development. Number two, conscious incompetence. You know what you don't know, but you can learn.

Number three, conscious competence. You know what you know, and you can teach it. Number four, unconscious competence. You don't know what you know. You have results, but you don't know how it happens.

The fourth degree is the easy one. Everything is stress-free, simple, and natural. All action you take is correct, and all your decisions are the right ones because you're working at a level of unconscious competence. This level of proficiency is achieved through repetition of a pattern of thought, followed up by a specific action. Learn always, every day, using these three methods, study, practice, and modeling.

Stopping or interrupting the pattern has two negative consequences. You stop learning, and you stop producing results. That is why it's more effective to work two hours every day rather than 15 hours over the weekend. That is why it's so hard to get back into a broken routine, be it a diet or going back to work after the holidays. That's why it's so important to keep implementing the five daily actions you identify as the bare minimum to be done every day, and never not do them.

Number 10, learn to distinguish the vehicle from the treasure. Let me share with you something that will make you think. Never confuse the vehicle with the treasure. Imagine you are the driver of an armored car, and that you're going to transport a shipment of gold. You're in charge of the safety of that vehicle.

Now imagine there's an accident. Would you focus on saving the vehicle, even if that would imply the loss of the treasure? Or would you focus on saving the treasure, even if that meant sacrificing the vehicle? Some people are so invested in the vehicle that they forget the treasure. They even forget that transporting the treasure was that vehicle's only mission.

And if that mission is not completed, it's really not worth anything. I'm reminded of Sonia, who had a business in network marketing, but she wasn't really making much money with it. Actually, more than 80% of people involved in network marketing don't really earn all that much. On the other hand, lots of people earn small fortunes. But that is just a side note, but true nonetheless.

The company with which Sonia worked had a very good marketing and strong culture. And many distributors kept working in the company because they felt good about being part of that culture. And that's fantastic. Should Sonia abandon a project that makes her feel good? Of course not.

But she needs to restructure her priorities according to how badly she wants to achieve her financial goals. She probably needs to admit that as a way of making money, that business opportunity isn't very good. But as a social club, it is. She needs to keep that vehicle for social benefits it brings. But she needs to find another vehicle for the financial benefits that this one does not deliver.

But this is what happened. Just entertaining the possibility of trying to find another financial vehicle made the people and the organization Sonia belonged to change their attitude towards her. They made her feel bad, disloyal, a traitor in such a strong culture. Sonia started feeling bad about herself just because she had thought about finding another financial vehicle because that particular one and those people did not have much to offer. Some organizations use this type of emotional coercion to improve their retention rates and keep people consuming the products for longer periods of time inside the organization.

If that's your case, make sure the emotional connection you have with your organization, and don't get me wrong, it's great that you have one, but make sure it serves your interests and is not a detriment to them. Sonia did not look for another vehicle and ended up making do with what she had. The vehicle had taken the place of her dream and she led it. When you confuse the vehicle with the treasure, you might let the gold go in order to keep the empty vehicle. It's important to know when to give up on a vehicle to save the treasure because, as you know, there is a difference between being persistent and being stubborn, and it's important that you have that clear in your mind.

When you are chasing a dream, when you want to turn an idea into money and actually be paid for the value you bring to the market, you need to have the courage to leave some traveling companions behind who no longer have the skills or the will to accompany you and find new ones. When your allies stop being allies, you need to find others. When your mentors stop mentoring, find others. This is the natural order of things. Ah, but what about loyalty?

I'm loyal, I'm faithful. Loyalty and faithfulness are priceless values, and it's good that you have them. Just be clear on what you're loyal to, the vehicle or the treasure. You should show loyalty to everyone who crosses your path, the loyalty of being yourself, the loyalty of people always being able to count on getting the best version of yourself in everything you do, the loyalty in helping in any way you can. That is the loyalty you owe everyone around you, and that is the loyalty you owe yourself.

The idea that excites you and that you want to turn into money will be your lighthouse. You will work hard. You will come across a lot of people along the way. Some will stick around longer and others not so much, but you will have a planned route and a treasure in mind. The fruits of your labour will come.

It never fails. The only people who are not successful are the ones who don't start and the ones who give up. All the others are successful, and in order for you to become successful, you need to possess three qualities that you can find in the majority of people, patience, resilience, and unwavering enthusiasm. Number 11, let's talk about patience. You need to be patient because you don't yet master all the dynamics involved, and what you do combines itself with everything that happens in the world to produce your result.

No matter how much action you take, the world doesn't produce what you want instantaneously. There are many pieces to the puzzle. There are many players. There are circumstances that need to change and do, but in their own time. You also need to be patient with your associates, your followers, and with your leaders and mentors.

Remember that they have their own ideas that they are developing and transforming into money and resources for a better world. Your objective can only be reached as the result of a unique combination of goals achieved by everyone around you. You need to be patient with everyone because each one of them is cutting through the jungle that is their own path, and by doing so, clearing the way for your idea to become a reality, and you need to be patient with yourself. You don't know everything. You can be sure that the things you don't know that you don't know are in greater number and have greater importance than the ones you think you know.

What you don't know you don't know is what will get you to your goal, so be patient with yourself. Give it everything you've got every day. Study, practice, and model. You're the best if you do your best, regardless of whether or not you got the results you wanted in the timeframe that you wanted. Some years ago, Sylvia was having dinner at my house with some other friends and business partners, and he repeated something I heard him say for 10 years.

What I want is to chase the sun. Imagine if we all owned houses in some tropical paradise, and we lived there any time we wanted to, and of course, we'd all have a good internet connection. We'd all be there, Huy, Paola, four or five more of us, and we'd be there with our kids. We would work for a bit, go for a dive in the crystal blue ocean, come back to our beach huts or our porches right there on the sandy white beach and work some more. Coconuts, tropical fruits, amazing food, drinks, and laughing till we drop, having fun in each other's company.

We would make some videos, take some photos, write some articles, and post them online. And living this lifestyle, we could earn a thousand euros a day. And when we got tired of being there, we would leave everything behind, take our laptops and our credit card, and go somewhere else. With a change of clothes and our backpacks, we would repeat the same thing, but in a different location anywhere in the world. My wife, Melissa, said from the other side of the table, Belize, I've been looking into living in Belize and looking for places to stay.

I would love to do that there. I have even calculated the cost of living, prices for everything we need, including flights, rent, and food. At this time, none of us were making any money. Little we did earn was hardly enough for us to make our bills. But Sylvia's excitement made our imaginations run wild.

Melissa, my wife, who had to make one chicken stretch into 12 meals and was already used to saving money on everything so we could survive, had already been looking around online, building a dream in her mind and her imagination, Belize. The vision made us all get emotional, and our imaginations filled with the images of beaches and the lifestyle. Belize became a symbol of freedom from that moment on. We didn't quite know where to start. We were already doing our very best without great results.

Three months later, we were nowhere closer to Belize than we were before. A year passed, and we still weren't any closer. Actually, nothing seemed to have changed. At least it didn't look like it had. Today I know, during that time, we were growing.

We grew enough to become people who earn 1,000 euros a day. But at first, when we were sharing that vision, we were not those people, not yet. A year went by, one year of endless struggle, trial and error, study, practice, modeling, and nothing. These results are not typical, and not everyone can achieve them. But I did, and Silvio did as well.

In the last two and a half years, I have visited 22 countries and regions, and the vision that we had at that dinner is coming true. I was in a hurry at that time. I needed to make lots of money. But the universe doesn't care about what I need. It cares about what I have to give.

As my friend Miguel says, the one who didn't know what a link was when he started his internet marketing business, the universe works in prepaid mode, which means that we have to give a lot before we receive a little. It also means that when we give it everything we've got, the universe answers, giving us much more than we could ever ask for. When is payback? When the universe decides that it's time. When the stars are aligned, and your idea is fulfilling its role of making the ideas of the people around you a reality.

So remember, be patient with the universe. It gives you more than you could dream to ask for. Be patient with others. They have their own paths, and they are not there for the sole purpose of being your allies. You are also their ally.

Be patient with yourself. You still don't know much of what you need to know, and you don't know what you don't know. Do your best and trust yourself, and then you'll become the person you need to become, and that takes some time. Number 12, resilience, the art of being reborn. There is a quality in visionaries and in all successful entrepreneurs that is not very common in most people, resilience.

You will need it if you want to take a valuable idea and make money with it. There are those who don't dedicate themselves to their passion. They don't involve themselves, body and soul, in something because they're afraid of not making it happen, and of having to deal with failure. There are those who prefer not to gain much so that they don't have to take the risk of losing much. They don't know that failure or success doesn't matter.

What matters is the outcome. What remains after success and what remains after failure is completely in your hands. I usually say that it does not matter what happens. What matters is what you do with what happens. One day you will see results, and another day you will also stop seeing them.

Your idea will be fruitful one day, and another day it will not. You'll be excited one day, and the next day you will not. You will gain things and you will lose them. I know this is going to happen because winning and losing are part of the same equation, and you need to master both. I like Harry Potter, and one of my favorite characters is Professor Dumbledore.

He's one of the most powerful wizards of all time, a living legend, and his personal symbol and pet is a phoenix. In case you don't know, a phoenix is a mythological creature with the peculiarity of having tears that heal every wound and of self-combusting at the end of its life, around 500 years, and then is reborn from its own ashes. Healing wounds with tears and being reborn from ashes turn the phoenix into a symbol of resilience, the ability to get back in the game after being defeated. Losing something you once had is great, and I'll tell you why. There is a strange economy running the universe.

When you gain something, you lose something else, but also, when you lose something, you gain another. It never fails. Some people struggle tirelessly. They never give up while they're in a fight, and one day, the universe starts answering back, giving them a great deal back. That person feels success, tastes it, and knows it's well-deserved.

They obviously had a price to pay. This person stopped being, having, and doing certain things in order to become, have, and do other things. Some things were lost in order to obtain others. That's the way it is. But one day, for various reasons, that person loses what they had worked so hard for.

Maybe they're in an even worse situation now than they had ever been. This is a turning point and a true test. What would you do if you had fought all your life, conquered everything you dreamed for, only to lose everything? Would you quit? I'll tell you what successful people do.

For them, quitting isn't an option. They just start again. They know that with every accomplishment comes a loss, and with every loss comes an accomplishment. This is the power of the phoenix, to recreate itself from the ashes, to heal all wounds with its own tears. This means that you should focus on what you gain every time you lose, because you always gain something in this strange, universal economy.

You can go back to your project. You can go back to gathering resources and associates, and start rebuilding in the knowledge that you will do even better this time, because you yourself are better. Don't worry about your ego. You don't have to prove that you are better than everyone else. Taking responsibility for your mistakes and moving on is part of the secret to becoming indestructible.

Be indestructible like the phoenix. Number 13, be enthusiastic 24 hours a day. I don't know if you've ever had the experience of hanging out with someone who is always excited, constantly smiling, and doesn't have a care in the world. I have, and I don't like it. It's not natural.

It feels fake because it is fake. It actually becomes very difficult to speak to someone like that. For some reason, they created a force field that doesn't allow you to approach issues in a productive way. They probably feel they need to protect themselves from something, and that's the defense mechanism they use. The truth is that there are hardships, yes.

Bad things happen to good people, and there is nothing wrong with punching the wall a couple of times and letting out a cry of frustration when we feel like it. It releases pent-up emotions, and it's good for us. The enthusiasm I speak of is passion, a form of energy that drives you to do things, lots of things, and very quickly. It is a positive emotion, and it makes you feel good. That's enthusiasm.

But where does it come from, and how do you get it? It's easy, really. There are those who need to see good things in order to feel excited. They tune their level of enthusiasm according to the circumstances they live in. If they are successful, they are excited.

If they're not, they lose their excitement. Now, since enthusiasm is the energy that moves you to do things, if you don't have results, wouldn't it be a good idea to use more enthusiasm to produce more and do better? That would be the logical thing to do. But many people think that enthusiasm comes from results. Since they do not have the results they would like to have, they're not excited, and because they're not excited, they don't put passion into the things they do.

They do everything with heavy hearts, and they do it slowly and badly, and because of that, they have even less success, which results in even less enthusiasm. This is, at the very least, stupid. It's stupid because it's based on the fake belief that enthusiasm comes from obtaining results. The reality is that enthusiasm doesn't come from results. Enthusiasm comes from your vision.

When you have a great idea, you feel it in every cell of your body. You get goosebumps just from thinking about making your idea work. You see the outcome when it's not yet visible, just like I mentioned when I was talking about having a vision. You can see the end result in your mind, and you get emotional. This is where enthusiasm is born.

This is where the never-ending supply of fuel resides that will power all your actions, regardless of your circumstances. On successful days, you're excited because success is validating your decisions and your actions, and that gives you confidence in your path. Success. only validation. On the days you fail, you're excited because you fought and lost against a huge adversary.

Next time, you'll know how to deal with it, and you will want to retaliate quickly. You can't wait to face that same adversary again, because now you're prepared. Failure is an opportunity for assessment and evaluation. Don't you agree that it is the easiest thing in the world to be excited every day, 24 hours a day? And isn't it the best way to live, having a vision and an endless amount of energy?

Making a Commitment Is there success without complete and total commitment? I've asked myself this question more than once. There are people who do little things and have some results, and people who do a lot and have big results, but commitment isn't about doing more or doing less. There are people who act like bulls, they put their heads down and charge without stopping for anything or anyone, but commitment also isn't sheer will or brute force. There are people who say that they are committed to making their idea work, they talk about how they really want to accomplish it, but commitment also isn't wishful thinking.

There are people who don't think about anything else besides their idea, total focus. That's fantastic, but focus is also not commitment. I will tell you what my understanding of commitment is. When I quit smoking, I did it because I felt that I had smoked my fair share and I was ready to be someone else. I did the same thing when I quit drinking.

I no longer saw myself as a drinker, the same when I asked Melissa to marry me, I no longer saw myself as single, and I did exactly the same thing when I decided to become rich. I decided to become a different person, healthy, happy, rich. It seems absurd to say that you want to change something and then not be willing to give anything up. I couldn't have married Melissa and stayed single. I couldn't be healthier and continue drinking and smoking.

The same way, I couldn't become rich by remaining poor through my decisions and my actions. Does that make sense? When a decision is made, you have to realize that the person that will achieve the objective is not the same person who made the decision. It never is. You will transform along the way, slowly being molded by the process into someone else.

That became clear to me when I understood that even if I won the lottery, I would never be a rich man, but only a poor man with money. I realized that I was poor not because I didn't have money, but because I didn't have the correct mindset. So even if I won the lottery, it wouldn't have made no difference, because even though my bank account had grown, my mind had not. All of my thoughts and decisions would continue to come from a place of scarcity and not from a place of abundance. My mindset would take me right back to being as poor as before.

Statistics show that only 1% of lottery winners continue to be rich after 10 years of winning, which is the same percentage of rich people in the average population. Commitment means embracing changes that are placed in front of you, which are the result of the process you chose to live. I will repeat that. Commitment means embracing changes that are placed in front of you, which are the result of the process you chose to live. I will explain.

When I asked Melissa to marry me, I willingly gave up the freedom to choose being with other women. I voluntarily gave up that freedom in exchange for a decision I had made. When I quit smoking and drinking, I decided to give up the freedom to choose between smoking or not smoking, drinking or not drinking. When I'm having dinner, everyone can decide if they're having wine or something else. Not me.

I gave up that freedom on the day I decided to quit drinking. I'm no longer free to choose to drink wine. The decision to quit drinking was mine, and like all other decisions, they imply giving up the freedom to continue to choose. This is the price to pay for a decision. To give up the freedom of choice voluntarily by choosing one thing and not another.

When you have 20 euros in your pocket and you use them to pay for your dinner at a restaurant, you're giving up the freedom to use that money on a book or night at the movies. You gave up your freedom of choice for the simple fact that you chose. Do you understand? Commitment is more or less the same. Giving up your freedom of choice by choosing.

When I made the decision to become rich doing what I do today, I simultaneously made two decisions. I chose to become rich, but I also chose to do what I'm doing today. I could have chosen not to become rich and decided on some other goal, but I decided to become rich. I could have chosen to become rich doing something else, like playing the lottery or bets or real estate or the stock market, but I didn't decide that. I decided that I was going to achieve my goal using this vehicle.

These two decisions came from one commitment. I voluntarily gave up the freedom of choosing other goals so that I don't have to always be deciding the same things all the time. If for my business to run smoothly, for example, I have to be in an event every three months, I already know that I have to be there because I gave up the freedom to decide not to be there when I made the decision to choose this business, exactly the same way I gave up the freedom to choose to have wine with my meals on the day I freely decided to quit drinking. This way, I voluntarily gave up the freedom of being able to do certain things when I freely decided to do others. Yes, giving up the freedom of choice after making a choice is called commitment.

Well, that's what it is for me anyway. And one of the fastest ways to get you closer to making your dreams a reality is the simple fact that you don't have to decide the same things all the time. Imagine if you had to decide whether or not to do these things every day. Imagine me holding a cigarette, pondering if I was going to smoke it or not. Imagine me in front of a bottle of whiskey, pondering if I would drink it or not.

Imagine me looking at Melissa, pondering if I was going to stay with her or not. This is why many people are always starting their lives over again. The fact that they don't make a long-term commitment leads them to make a decision based on the frailty of the previous one, and so on, and so on. Since they are always deciding the same things, there comes a day when they are going to decide to say no to something they had already said yes to. When they said yes, they invested a fortune in time, money, and skills.

But now, since the yes became a no, everything falls apart, and all they worked for is lost. How many people do you know to whom this has happened? What you feel now is temporary, but your dreams are forever. When you make a decision, you're automatically saying yes to all the decisions that come after that one. When you can no longer choose to say no, things start to happen.

Opportunities are going to appear for you to act upon, places for you to go, and things for you to see. You'll be certain that all of these things are beneficial to your success. And if your gut is telling you to say no, you no longer have the freedom to do so. This is an easy way to say yes to everything. Everything that you feel is important to your process.

And curiously enough, that for me is the true definition of commitment. Number 15. Living in the now. There is one thing that you need to do now that will take you to the next level. You have been pushing it to the back of your mind throughout this conversation, but you have been thinking about it every now and then.

It could be starting your online business, finally connecting with your mentor, taking action, finding a business associate, gathering the necessary resources and relevant information, or just making the decision to finally do what you have to do for long enough to transform your vision into an income-producing machine. There is something you know that will bring you closer to your goal, and you know that you have to do it eventually. Now is the time to do it. Right now. Leave me here.

I'm good. If you just do that one thing you need to right now, it'll be worth the time you spent here with me today. Just go do that specific thing that you already know you need to do to take it to the next level. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you soon.