Basic Success Technique #23:
Identify Your Most Important MBIs (or Personal Constraints) and Focus on Getting Unstuck from Those that Harm You Most!

There may be one factor that constrains you much more than anything else. Identifying and improving this one factor may provide you with greater "benefits per effort" than anything else. (Google: "leverage point"; "problem solving techniques"; "theory of constraints"; "root cause analysis"; "fault tree analysis"; five-by-five why's; "barrier analysis"; "causal factor analysis"; "liebig's law"; triz; "psychological inertia"; "reverse salient"; "weakest link.") You may find a great deal on how to apply such methods in business, but rather little on how individuals can apply them to their personal lives. Why do you think this might be?

See also "SWOT Analysis."

Can you find even one website that focuses on helping individuals to identify and overcome what constrains them most? Maybe it's easy for people in a company to think in terms of: "Find out what constrains us most, and fix it!" Maybe it's much more difficult for an individual to say: "I'll find out what constrains me most, and fix it! Maybe DENIAL is involved!

Realize that you might have blind spots that prevent you from seeing what constrains you most. Ask yourself: "What am I missing?"; "What haven't I noticed?"

For some people, Idenics may be a good way to quickly identify and fix the most important things.

Suppose you have a "procrastination habit." As soon as you try to do something you find "uncomfortable," you put it off til tomorrow when you'll hopefully feel refreshed and energetic... So you never get around to doing it! Until you overcome your procrastination habit, everything else you try to become more successful might be a waste of time, effort, and money! Procrastination may be a "Make-or-Break Issue" (MBI) you need to handle first!.

From interacting with tens of thousands of people trying to make money online, we've come to the conclusion that about 98% don't succeed very well. What if most of them don't succeed because they're held back by one or more MBIs. We don't recall any of the "success books" we've read saying that there might be one crucial thing the reader needs to fix before he/she could make any progress toward success! Maybe that's one reason why most "success books" don't work for most people.

Mediocrity may be an MBI for some. There may be a hill or mountain to climb to Rise above Your Success Threshold.

Some people may remain stuck in mediocrity because they Fear Looking Stupid. They don't ask questions. For some, the only way to rise up from mediocrity to competence is to ask stupid questions!

Denial may be an important MBI for some. If they deny their mediocrity, what will ever persuade them to become responsible enough to take the steps to become more competent? What can make them realize that they need to "pay the price" to become more competent.

If you know people who have been trying for some time to make money online without success, then you can be sure that they've been "unlucky" and/or "stuck in mediocrity" -- particularly if they've been "blaming others or factors outside themselves."

If you've watched the early stages of any American Idol (TV singing contest) season, you may have noticed how many contestants were mediocre singers. You may have noticed some denying their mediocrity and blaming the judges. Denying their mediocrity can't make them better singers!

You may ask: "Well, specifically how do I identify my most important Make-or-Break Issue (or Constraint) so that I can start working on it?"

Good question! The answer is that you could look over BGRSS to see what might apply to you. Is procrastination an issue for you? How often do you "Not FEEL like doing" something you know you should do? Do you sometimes feel helpless? What robs you of your Personal Power?

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Basic Success Technique #24:
Apply the 80/20 Principle to Become more Effective and Efficient!

http://www.globalchange.com -- How to double your productivity as a leader -- Dr. Patrick Dixon, Futurist and Author of 12 books on global trends, including Futurewise and Building a Better Business.

"The point about the 80/20 Principle is this: do what works best especially in those parts of life that are themselves supremely important. There will always be a minority of methods, a minority of practitioners, a minority of reasons and approaches that produce overwhelmingly superior results. Identify these. Then multiply them." -- Richard Koch.

Brian Tracy: Apply the 80/20
Principle to Everything!

Click to Watch Video!

A most useful book: The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More With Less by Richard Koch. The most fundamental realization behind the 80/20 Principle is that there are imbalances in the universe -- it's inherently unbalanced. For example, in a particualr business 20% of the customers may account for 80% of the sales. The ratio needn't be 80/20; it could be 90/10, or 95/5, or some other ratio. Richard Koch:

"The 80/20 Principle asserts that a minority of causes, inputs, or effort usually lead to a majority of the results, outputs, or rewards... The reason that the 80/20 Principle is so valuable is that it is counter-intuitive. We tend to expect that all causes will roughly the same significance. That all customers are equally valuable... That all problems have a large number of causes. That all opportunities are of rouhghly equal value, so we treat them all equally... But this "50/50 fallacy" is one of the most inaccurate and harmful, as well as the most deeply rooted, of our mental maps..."

"Understanding the 80/20 Principle gives you great insight into what is really happening in the world around you... If we did realize the difference between the vital few and the trivial many in all aspects of our lives and if we did something about it, we could multiply anything that we valued... Up to a certain point, a new force... finds it difficult to make headway. A great deal of effort generates little by way of results. At this point many pioneers give up. But the new force persists and can cross a certain invisible line, a small amount of additional effort can reap huge returns. This invisible line is the tipping point." -- Richard Koch.

You can utilize the 80/20 Principle to identify which parts of this Success System will be of most potential benefit to you. Then you can skip (at least for now) the "less important" and FOCUS on those parts that will provide you with the greatest benefits from your least effort...

There's a great deal of value in Richard Koch's book The 80/20 Principle on how to apply the 80/20 Principle to your personal life, how it can be applied in business, and the benefits it could bring to society.

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Richard Koch also wrote The 80/20 Individual: How to Build on the 20% of What You Do Best. Product Description from Amazon.com:

"A new 21st century individualism is overtaking "corporation-as-king" capitalism, transforming the way we work and live. Today, real power rests in the hands of creative individuals like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, and Steven Spielberg, who are changing the world one great idea at a time. In THE 80/20 INDIVIDUAL, Richard Koch reveals the secret of their success: they discovered what they do better than anyone else and rode it for all its worth.

In this inspiring sequel to his classic bestseller THE 80/20 PRINCIPLE, Koch shows how to maximize success in your career and life by using the proven principle that 80 percent of changes in the world result from the most powerful 20 percent of actions and ideas. He'll show how to use your own powerful "20 percent spike" -- your most creative ideas and unique skills -- to measure the amount of value you bring to your employer, clients or customers. For most people, there is a huge disparity between their intrinsic value and the compensation they receive for their efforts. THE 80/20 INDIVIDUAL shows how to narrow that gap.

Drawing from his own success as an entrepreneur, as well as from the stories of scores of companies and individuals who have flourished as a result of an 80/20 mind-set, Koch offers a step-by-step method to remodeling a career or existing business, or creating a new one -- one that most benefits you. He provides valuable insights on finding 80/20 partners, hiring 80/20 employees, and running an 80/20 business.

By building a team that supports your efforts and excels in areas where you lack experience or knowledge, you'll be able to focus your time and energy on your strengths. Productivity and profits will soar because you'll be doing what you do best and enjoy the most. By using the 80/20 strategies outlined in the book, you can take control of your career and financial future."

Customer Review from Amazon.com

David Ross: Stand-alone, the 80/20 Individual needs not a predecessor, April 11, 2005

"After reading the 80/20 Individual without reading Koch's first book, I can say it is well worth the read on its own. The initial chapters of the book seemed like an autobiography to me and, frightfully, I almost put it down. But the author jumps off this base of case studies and solid historical references (besides being a hugely successful entrepreneur/consultant, Koch has also a history degree in his pocket), head-first into solid, practical content. I loved the no-nonsense language. The author takes the natural selection process of business life at face-value, even referring to the value-creating knowledge from a century of capitalism as "business genes." And without spoiling the story, I would summarize the idea as this: Take the absolute best of yourself, consumate your talents with the absolute best business genes you can seduce, and leverage the combination with a business structure that places you in the direct path of credit for the results. True to the buyline on the cover, this book "shows you how"."

Richard Koch's The 80/20 Individual consists of 3 Parts and an Appendix:

• Turbo-Boost Your Career: Become an 80/20 Individual
  
  
• The Nine Essentials of 80/20 Success
  
  
• The 80/20 Revolution
  
  
• The Roots and Ramifications of the Revolution

In addition to applying the 80/20 Principle to increase personal and business success, The 80/20 Individual may be of great value to anyone interested in the future of individual freedom.

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Basic Success Technique #25:
Apply the Law of Forced Efficiency

Brian Tracy: The Law of Forced Efficiency

Click to Watch Video!

The Law: "There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important tasks."

Seven important questions (to identify "Leverage Points"):

1. Is there a "Make-or-Break" Issue (MBI) that's ruining my life, and that I need to handle first before I can expect to become significantly more successful?
2. What are my highest value activities? Which activities contribute most to my life, family, business, or career? Focus on your high-value activities.
3. Exactly what am I hired to do? (If self-employed: What exactly is my business?) What am I responsible for doing, completing, and/or achieving? Focus on doing specifically what you're supposed to do!
4. What can I do with the potential to make a real difference? What's special and unique about me that enables me to do what others can't? When appropriate, focus on this task.
5. How can I use of my time most productively right now? Consider three types of activities:
   1. Plan activities; make a must-do list; prioritize and select the most important.
   2. Complete tasks on your must-do list.
   3. Take steps, such as upgrading yourself, that will make you more capable, productive, and effective in the future.
6. How can I get the most leverage out of what I do today? Many systems, projects, and activities have "Leverage Points" -- areas where the application of effort will bring the biggest long-term returns. What can I do once, that will continue paying me indefinitely? What is constraining or holding me back most? (This could be an MBI.) Identifying and improving this one factor may provide you with greater "benefits per effort" than anything else. Google: "leverage point"; "problem solving techniques"; "theory of constraints"; "root cause analysis"; "fault tree analysis"; five-by-five why's; "barrier analysis"; "causal factor analysis"; "liebig's law"; triz; "psychological inertia"; "reverse salient"; "weakest link.") (You may find a great deal on how to apply such methods in business, but rather little on how individuals can apply them to their personal lives. Why do you think this might be? Maybe practically everyone in the personal improvement business has a Blind Spot about this.
7. What time-wasting, unproductive activities (and/or people who drain my time and energy) can I eliminate from my life today? There could be one or more MBIs in this area -- habits, activities, and/or people that waste so much time that they make your success difficult or impossible. If you're burdened by time-wasters, you absolutely need to reduce and/or eliminate them! Particularly beware of wasting time and money on "scam self-improvement" products and services that don't work!

Notice which of the "7 Questions" (above) and the "3 Keys" (below) are related to Being on Target. Find a balance between doing the most productive things right now, and doing the things that will make you most productive in the future, including maximizing your leverage.

Key #1: Set Priorities and Do the Most Productive Things First!

Key #2: Use More Discretionary Time to Increase Your Competence and Create Leverage for the Future!

Key #3: Reduce Time-Wasting Activities!

Some people live their lives in such a way that they "don't have time to improve themselves" -- or so they think. If your opinion is that you "don't have enough time to upgrade yourself," then you may want to check out what Gary Halbert has identified as "The Only Thing That Makes Any Positive Difference In Your Life!"

The implication of what Halbert says is that How You Use Your Time is the most important make-or-break issue. If you're not yet highly successful, chances are that you're not utilizing your time very well. If you do the right things during the time available to you, how can you not be highly successful?

According to Mike Brescia of Think Right Now!, if you concentrate on doing the most important tasks related to your responsibilities and on your list of things to do (and you put off only unimportant tasks), you will be in the top half of one percent of the human population. So the challenge for you is to identify your most important tasks and do them!

Mike Brescia also says that "...[I]f you want to make any kind of significant change in your life, you must take a lot of "uncomfortable" actions that are not "normal" for you to take." So keep in mind that some of the Steps in this JBP Success System may seem "uncomfortable" and "not normal" to you. YOU MAY HAVE TO EXPAND YOUR COMFORT ZONE! -- see One-Small-Step Booster.

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Basic Success Technique #25A:
Learn from the Example of Jack Johnson's Champion Mentality!

Jack Johnson provides a great role model for any success seeker. He demonstrated the development of personal power like few others have. Johnson overcame all the obstacles he faced, and persisted until he succeeded. At his funeral, a reporter asked his widow what she had loved about Johnson: "I loved him because of his courage. He faced the world unafraid. There wasn't anybody or anything he feared."

We are very fortunate to have Jack Johnson as a role model. You can find out more about him from the book Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise And Fall Of Jack Johnson, by Geoffrey C. Ward. A two-part documentary on Johnson's career by filmmaker Ken Burns was aired on PBS during 2005.

You are invited to get inspired by Jack Johnson's example of how to overcome obstacles and become successful...

In terms of his Champion Mindset, Jack Johnson was very advanced. Particularly remarkable about this is that he grew up during extreme racist times when some blacks were lynched merely for whistling at a white woman. Many whites treated Johnson with racist contempt, including in hundreds of newspaper cartoons and reports. He was attacked viciously in the media because an "inferior black" wasn't supposed to beat "superior whites." Johnson rose above it all. He had an "unstoppable desire to succeed!"

Jack Johnson was born in 1878 in Galveston, Texas. His parents were former slaves. Despite all the disadvantages of poverty and discrimination, Johnson became someone who succeeded bigtime as a heavyweight boxer. For several years, the top white boxers wouldn't fight Johnson because they were scared of him. Their excuse was that "they didn't fight niggers." Nevertheless, Johnson triumphed and became world champion. It's remarkable that a child of former slaves could develop his Champion Mindset to the extent that Jack Johnson did!

Geoffrey C. Ward: "At a time when whites ran everything in America, he took orders from no one and resolved to live always as if color did not exist. While most Negroes struggled merely to survive, he reveled in his riches and his fame. And at a time when the mere suspicion that a black man had flirted with a white woman could cost him his life, he insisted on sleeping with whomever he pleased. Most whites (and some Negroes as well) saw him as a perpetual threat -- profligate, arrogant, amoral, a dark menace, and a danger to the natural order of things.

The real Jack Johnson was both more and less than those who loved or those who hated him ever knew. He embodied American individualism in the purest form; nothing -- no law or custom, no person white or black, male or female -- could keep him for long from whatever he wanted. He was in the great tradition of self-invented men, too, and no one admired his handiwork more than he did. All his life, whites and blacks alike would ask him, "Just who do you think you are?" The answer, of course, was always "Jack Johnson" -- and that would prove to be more than enough for turn-of-the-twentieth-century America to handle."

It was as if Johnson had read The Ego and His Own by Max Stirner, understood and integrated it, made it his own, and implemented it in all areas of his life.

Geoffrey C. Ward: "Why he insisted on acting that way [essentially never accepting any limitations on himself] remains the essential mystery of his life... He was especially close to his mother, who told him again and again he was "the best boy in the world" and assured him he could do anything he wanted if he wanted it badly enough [emphasis added]... He saw himself as someone special from the first -- someone set apart, not subject to the limitations holding others back."

Jack Johnson was an outstanding example of someone largely free from the negative influences most of us experience while growing up. Even today, in many parts of the world, the negative influences heaped upon black children tend to be more severe than those dumped upon whites. (Much later in South Africa, Steve Biko identified as the biggest problem of blacks that in their own consciousness they regarded themselves as "inferior.")

Johnson either removed all notions of "inferiority because of being black," or never had any such notions in the first place. But Johnson went further, in the tradition of Max Stirner, he seemed to have removed all notions of subservience from his mind. Reportedly, Johnson was kicked out of church for stating that God didn't exist and the church was a domination over people's lives. It seems clear that Johnson didn't accept that anybody or anything had the right to be a domination over his life.

Geoffrey C. Ward: "In two decades as contender and champion, Jack Johnson would never once enter the ring against a white opponent in front of a crowd that was anything but overwhelmingly hostile, and as the years passed and his fame and notoriety grew, the curses and racial taunts [ he'd been hearing since he faced Jim Scanlon back in Galveston would sometimes be supplemented by threats to murder him. Johnson would later admit he'd sometimes been affected by what he called this "pressure," but he refused ever to show his concern. The more the crowd jeered him, the more he grinned and taunted his opponent and joked with the reporters at ringside as if he didn't have a care in the world."

People are free and powerful by nature. Practically all "unfreedom," helplessness, and powerlessness they suffer from, they have acquired or learned. Much of it could be a result of abuse by parents and teachers.

Some people may get frightened and scared when confronted with the the idea of being naturally free and powerful. There may be an overpowering psychological "Inner Wimp" in your mind that blinds you to your freedom and power. If so, the next step for you may be to overcome your wimp.

If what you notice most about Jack Johnson is his "in-your-face arrogance" (or his audacity, brashness, brazeness, disrespect, insolence, rebelliousness, rudeness, etc.) -- and you find these traits objectionable -- then your inner wimp may be "alive and well!"

On the other hand, we hope you can see Jack Johnson as an inspiring example of what can be achieved... a role model to emulate!

If you often find yourself complaining, it's the inner wimp at work. If you regularly feel helpless, hopeless, deperate, or depressed, then most likely your inner wimp may be "alive and well!"

Another important factor may have been "education." Johnson had only five years of "formal education." He may have been mentally strong enough to not get brainwashed by his teachers -- see Dumbed Down by "Education!

Most "modern subservient humans" have little or no awareness of how they have been effectively forced into submitting to "agreed-upon subjective social reality." Johnson's a href="/surf2a/1#BST5A">Champion Mindset was so strong that he understood this very well:

Geoffrey C. Ward: "In 1929, long after his [Johnson's] boxing life had ended, he cooperated in writing a series of syndicated articles about his career. In one, he argued that the outstanding black heavyweights of that era, Harry Wills and George Godfrey, would never reach the heights he [Johnson] had reached, in part because they were from the Deep South and therefore "grew up with the thought implanted in their minds, through generations of tradition, that the COLORED man was not equal to the WHITE. The inferiority complex which was planted in their grandfather and his father has never been shaken off and never will be shaken off."

Johnson had a considerable intellect. In addition to being a masterful calculating strategic boxer, he was also an inventor. On April 18th, 1922 he was granted U.S. Patent #1,413,121 for improvements to a wrench used to work on racing cars.

Monte D. Cox (Jack Johnson, The Galveston Giant..."Master of Ring Science"): "Jack Arthur Johnson, often called "Lil' Arthur" and the "Galveston Giant" by his contemporaries, became heavyweight champion of the world in 1908. In so doing he destroyed the colored barrier by stopping Tommy Burns in 14 rounds to become the first black heavyweight boxing champion. He had a 10 year unbeaten streak during which time he defeated all of the top fighters of the period. [emphasis added] He fought the other highly avoided black fighters of his day, including the clever master strategist Joe Jeannette 10 times, the hard punching Sam McVey 3 times, and gave the great Sam Langford a beating in their only meeting. His championship reign covered the years 1908-1915 when the giant "white hope" Jess Willard finally defeated him."

If you could acquire the kind of Champion Mindset Jack Johnson had, what would it be worth to you? Is it possible to acquire or develop it? What would you be willing to do to get it?

And if you got it, would it guarantee your success? Would you have to add anything to "back it up?" Would you have to do some hard work? See Organize Your Life to Create Structural Tension so the Path of Least Resistance Leads You Where You Want to Go.

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Basic Success Technique #25B:
Live Your Life More Consciously!

Steve Biko had an "unbreakable mindset." He refused to be a slave of an oppressive culture and refused to be a slave of an even more oppressive political system. He founded the "Black Consciousness" movement. Unfortunately, his body was "breakable." He was effectively murdered by white policemen in 1977 at the age of 30. In 1987, Richard Attenborough directed the movie Cry Freedom, a biographical drama about Biko starring Denzel Washington and Kevin Kline.

Steve Biko and
Black Consciousness

Steve Biko "The logic behind white domination is to prepare the black man for the subservient role in this country. Not so long ago this used to be freely said in parliament, even about the educational system of the black people. It is still said even today, although in a much more sophisticated language. To a large extent the evil-doers have succeeded in producing at the output end of their machine a kind of black man who is man only in form. This is the extent to which the process of dehumanization has advanced."

Much of the history of South Africa up to 1994 can be described as an attempt by whites to domesticate blacks. Steve Biko can be seen as someone who attempted to bring about a movement to free his fellow blacks from at least certain aspects of the domestication. He was the founder of the "Black Consciousness Movement" in South Africa in the 1960s. Biko recognized that the biggest problem was that blacks in their own consciousness regarded themselves as "inferior." In terms of the culture in South Africa -- including the languages used -- the notion was planted in the minds of whites that they were "superior beings" and in the minds of blacks that they were "inferior creatures."

Note that Jack Johnson was also very aware of this phenomenon.

Practically all whites and blacks were nonconsciously enculturated in this manner. Biko recognized this phenomenon and advocated that blacks had to free their consciousness from the "inferior-creature" shackles. Biko refused to be a slave of the culture and refused to be a slave of the political system. He became world-famous and was visited by people like Robert Kennedy. Biko was also the greatest threat to the white rulers in South Africa. White police effectively murdered him in 1977. The murder was "whitewashed." In 1987, Richard Attenborough directed the movie Cry Freedom, a biographical drama about Biko starring Denzel Washington and Kevin Kline.

Biko saw the struggle to restore black consciousness as having two stages, "psychological liberation" and "physical liberation": "The first step therefore is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth."

Biko used the term "the conscientization process" to describe what we might call recovery from "submitting to subjective social reality."

Steve Biko thought that "psychological liberation" needed to come first and would make "physical liberation" possible. What might both black and white people have to do to liberate themselves psychologically? For an outstanding example of someone who has liberated himself psychologically, watch the videos and listen to the audios of Stefan Molyneux.

Basic Success Technique #22:
Maximize Your Time Usage!

The above video is indirectly related to time usage because if what you're doing is "on target," you'll automatically make better use of your time.

Halbert, one of the greatest marketers ever, describes how he couldn't pay the bills because he spent the money on postage. He was clearly operating in failure territory. Then he essentially asked: "If my situation were such that I would be beheaded if my next mailpiece didn't work, what would I write?" That was the catalyst that enabled him to "flip his success switch." Virtually in an instant he shifted from failure to making a huge success of his life.

His major realization was that he had to be "on target!" Sell something people want. Better still: Sell something people can't do without! Halbert has also written that, "The best market is a hungry crowd."

"The Only Thing That Makes Any Positive Difference In Your Life!" -- Gary C. Halbert

Extracted and edited from The Gary Halbert Letter -- Copyright © 2003 Gary C. Halbert. All Rights Reserved. (Emphases and comments added)

...I am about to illuminate something you really, really need to think about. Listen: In only 365 days from today, one more year will have passed into history. No matter who you are, 365 days is all you are going to get in the next year. By the way, that comes out to 8,760 hours... or 525,600 minutes... or... 31,536,000 seconds.

Now, let's say you are rich as hell and you are willing to pay dearly to have more time in the coming year than other people. Let's say you want just 10 extra minutes and you are willing to pay one million dollars for each of those 10 minutes.

You can't buy them. They're not for sale.

You couldn't even buy one extra second... for 100 billion dollars. Time is not for sale. Not at any price. During the next year, nobody is going to have more time than you and nobody (except those who go to "Check-out City") is going to have less.

So what? Well, here is the "so what" of it: The difference from where you are right now, today... and where... you will be 1-year from today, depends on one thing and one thing only. It depends on...

What You Do With Those 8,760 Hours You've Got To Work With In The Next Year

What you think about isn't going to produce any change whatsoever. What you plan isn't going to create any change either. How you feel isn't going to make a difference. What you read; what you learn; what you study; what you discover... none of these things... none whatsoever... is going to make a scintilla of difference about where you are 1-year from today. Get this straight in your head: The only thing (except for pure happenstance) that is going to make any difference at all in your life... is...

What You Do!

[Comment: What you DO is primary. How you FEEL has a major impact on what you do and how well you do it -- see "Raise Your Mood Level!" An important principle is to perform actions that produce LEVERAGE. You can do what makes you more EFFECTIVE and EFFICIENT. What you do today can enable you to produce increasingly more in your future. What you READ, STUDY, LEARN, and DISCOVER can raise the quality of what you "Do!" in your future. What you THINK and PLAN can also improve what you "Do!".]

So, what are you going to do with those 8,760 hours you've got to work with in the coming year? Actually, what you are going to do with a lot of those hours is outside your control. For example: You've almost got to spend approximately 2,920 of those hours sleeping. True, you could sleep less... but... that will almost certainly be counter-productive. The most recent research indicates the vast majority of Americans need MORE than eight hours of sleep per day... and yet... most of us get less.

Which, of course, makes us a nation of people who are sleep deprived... and... sleep deprived people suffer from fuzzy thinking, make bad decisions, and are more at risk for all types of health problems.

Whatever you do, don't try to become more productive by getting less sleep. That tactic will backfire on you...

...After deducting the time we need to spend sleeping, we're down to 5,840 hours to work with in the coming year. Let's say you are neither rich, retired nor retarded. That means you've got to spend a significant amount of time earning enough fungolas to support yourself and your family. To do this, let's say you work the proverbial 40 hours per week. Also, you've got to get ready for work, get to work and get home from work. Some of you have a long commute, some are lucky enough to work at home... but... I'm going to decide arbitrarily, we need to add an average of 10 hours per week to get ready, and get to and from work. Let's give you a two week yearly vacation... which means... you are going to use up 2,500 of your hours (50 hours per week times 50 weeks per year) on work-related activities.

We are now down to 3,340 hours we've got left in the coming year.

Ah, but we ain't at the end of our deductions yet. No Sir. But rather than belabor the obvious, let's make one sizable deduction for what I will designate as "Absolute Necessities of Life." This might include playing with your kids, giving time and support to your spouse and friends, brushing your teeth, shopping for groceries, getting your car repaired, shaving, taking some "down time" to let yourself recharge and so on. The time necessary to take care of the "Absolute Necessities of Life" will, of course, vary from individual to individual... but... I can't even imagine this taking anyone (who actually has a life) less than 3 to 4 hours per day so... this means... we're going to have to whack off at least another 2,000 hours from the stash of time we're allotted for the coming year.

I'm going to stop with these deductions. You've got the idea by now, don't you Boopsie?

Let us inch a bit closer to the truth: You really do not have 8,760 hours to decide what to do with in the coming year. In truth, with so many of your hours already "spoken for," you probably don't even have 1,000 "discretionary" hours to decide what to do with in the next year. That gives you something like 2 hours and 42 minutes per day with which you have to work to change your life for the better.

And, I feel certain, most of you have lives so jam-packed that... the truth is... you only have a fraction of even that small amount of "discretionary" time each day. And, I bet whatever amount of discretionary time you do have, I bet you use almost none of it to seriously advance the quality of your life. And, if you care... if you truly care... about elevating your status and achieving your goals...

This Has GotTo Stop!

You simply must use your discretionary time intelligently... or else... you don't have a rat's ass of a chance of getting anywhere that's worth being.

So, what do you do first? I'm gonna tell you but, before I do, I want to make an important observation: Many people hate it when I write newsletters like this. These readers don't want to get the fundamentals right... no... they want to skip right to the "details." But your life is already filled with details... none of which... are doing doodley squat to enhance your life. You cannot intelligently decide which details you should really attend to... unless... you are clear and accurate about what your guiding fundamentals must be.

Here's something else: Success is not complicated. It is simple. The real answers are... so simple... they are downright corny. But simple does not mean easy. Running the Boston Marathon is very simple. All you have to do is keep putting one foot in front of the other for 26+ miles.

Simple as pie. Hard as hell.

I want you to be one of the "Masters of the Millennium." I want you to achieve more in the year 2,000 than you have achieved in all the previous years of your life. That means you've got a lot of details to attend to in the year 2,000... plus... you've got to attend to the right details. I've got less than two months to help you get this in laser-sharp focus. Let's see if I can get a commitment from you. Just for approximately the next 30 days. Just from the time you read this letter and the time you read next month's. This commitment will cost you maybe $20.00 or $30.00 and will take less than five minutes of your time for each of the next 30-days.

Here's all I'm going to ask you to do: Go to a local drug store, a Radio Shack or wherever and get yourself an el cheapo, microcassette tape recorder and 30 of those little bitty microcassettes.

Keep your el cheapo recorder with you all the time and use one microcassette each day to keep a "time diary." Use it approximately once every hour of your waking hours. Your audio entries should only take seconds. They should be something like this:

That's all I want you to do. I know, I know. You're way ahead of me. You already know what this is all about. You already know the basics of my evil scheme to change your life for the better.

Bullshit!

You don't have a clue. Please just trust me on this. All you've got to lose is $20 or $30 and a couple or three hours out of one lousy month.

All you've got to gain is everything you've ever lusted for.

Look, stop thinking you're so damn sophisticated. So damn smart. So far above doing a simple exercise like this. Let me tell you something...

You Don't Know Shit!
Give Me A Chance To Help You!

Sincerely,

Gary C. Halbert

---

How a Truck Driver Made His "Personal Competence and Power Shift (PCAPS)" and Became Financially Independent!

Interview by Frederick Mann & "DL" (edited, with comments added on 10/18/08).

On January 24th, 2004 I (Frederick Mann) received an email from "DL" in Texas:

"I have been able to use your example and recommendations to become entirely debt free, build a small fully paid for home on my own fully paid for property, and live entirely off my online income. Thank you Frederick."

I asked DL if I could use the above as a testimonial and also if he would be willing to be interviewed by me. He agreed, emailing me on January 25th, 2004:

"It is pretty incredible the difference you've made in my life. I've had this dream for years and never was able to make it happen. I have a good education and I've had a few pretty good jobs, but never could seem to make myself stick with them for more than a year or two, and I never seemed to save anything. After I quit I would spend a period of time on the street or wandering around when my last paycheck ran out.

My present circumstances would not impress some people. My monthly income is not large (but enough to live comfortably). I meant to hold onto my last job a little longer, while I continued to rapidly build my online income, but I was working as a long haul truck driver, and when my license came up for renewal in California the DMV sent me a notice that a thumbprint and SSN were now required by law. It was the last straw. Thanks to you I had a way to tell them to stuff it."

The interview below was conducted between 1/25/04 and 1/31/04:

FM: What is your age, marital status, etc?

DL: I'm 59 and divorced from my second wife now, since the fall of 2002. I've been pretty much a loner and wanderer for much of my life.

I had been very interested in freedom issues since the late sixties when I read Harry Browne's 'How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World.' I had a good computer and a couple months severance pay and a LOT of motivation to make some money off the Internet.

FM: When did you start following some of my recommendations?

DL: I came across your website around the fall of 2001. I was just about to be laid off from a very good telecommuting job...

FM: How much capital did you start with?

DL: Well I initially put $200 into e-gold. [FM Comment: e-gold is no longer a viable e-currency or payment system.] I used an exchanger... It turned out to be a scam, and other than one lame excuse email I never heard from them or my money again. My first valuable lesson in my new field of endeavor. I had started with several MLM type ventures, some of which were promoted on your website. I spent a lot of long hard dedicated hours posting, promoting and spending money on various promotional programs. I must have put in 2 or three thousand bucks and none of them made me a penny except the Gideon Group promoting Zibycom. I had a little success with that, but it eventually kind of petered out for me also.

[FM Comment: Internet marketing may not be as easy as many people are led to believe. The chances may be that for every marketing action you take that works, there are 99 that don't work. You also don't have a boss who tells you what to do. To succeed, you have to LEARN TO DO WHAT WORKS!]

I had discovered that the goals I had in life were not really compatible with the beautiful Russian lady I had met in Moscow and brought back to the US the year before. The Terra Libra website had given me a lot of ideas about how I wanted to arrange my life. In the final analysis I just couldn't bring myself to go back to job slavery for the foreseeable future to support her in the style to which she wanted to become accustomed. I was really not interested in the "American Dream" at all anymore, if I ever had been.

While I took my couple of months severance trying to see how I could make a living on the Internet, to her disgust, she went off to Russia for an extended visit. When she came back I was broke, and I had discovered I actually didn't need her.

She moved in with my sister, with whom she had become good friends and soon met and married a man who was happy to give her what she wanted. I moved into a tiny little old camp trailer I owned which I moved to a cheap trailer park at the end of the flight path of Bakersfield's biggest airport. There I endured triple digit temperatures without airconditioning while I continued to struggle with online money making.

I read what you said on your site about "passive" programs being the best chance for the average person to make money online. [FM Comment: "Passive" programs enable you to earn without recruiting or sponsoring people.] I had already borrowed some money from my Mom to pay my pathetic space rental and food, etc. I went back and borrowed $1,000 to invest in some HYIPs. [FM Comment: High-Yield Investment Programs, of which about 99% are scams. It's important to realize that this is a challenging area in which to make money. To succeed, you have to LEARN TO DO WHAT WORKS!] (I know, I know!) I did not listen to what you said about how to distribute the money, but stupidly put most of it into some schemes that paid like 50% per week, which quickly folded, Like Alpha Alliance, Privacy Gold and Diversifund. Some of the others were pretty good programs but were at or near the end of their somewhat truncated productive periods and I didn't make a lot off them, like Gold Capsule.

FM: With which programs have you enjoyed the most success?

DL: I did make a bit of money with a little 1% per day ponzi called Sunny Fund. I got into CBLH, Celtic Traders and a couple others I'm still in like Capital Building Club and SCIG. But basically I had to go back to work, driving a beer truck to pay back my Mom. I became suspicious that I had some guilt remaining unresolved, and was quite likely being unconsciously self-defeating in my behavior. I decided to follow your example and let Mike Goldstein at "Idenics" give me a hand. After my sessions with Mike on the telephone, things began to change for me. It didn't seem to me like there was any dramatic change in my behavior patterns, but things did start rapidly improving. It felt like my "luck" had changed. I got a job with a long haul trucking company, sold my trailer and lived in my truck, staying with my Mom when I got home to Bakersfield. Therefore I was able to plow a lot of my wages into HYIP programs.

[Comment from Mike Goldstein: "DL says that after his sessions with me he felt his "luck" changed for the better but he couldn't really "put his finger on" what had really changed in his behavior. This type of thing is not all that unusual. Many times people don't know what really happened, just that things are different. It's kind of an odd phenomenon when a person really deals with some piece of their case, or when something that has been on automatic for a long time comes off of automatic and they now have control over things. I've seen instances where I've worked on some issue that has been bugging a person for years, it gets finally handled, and afterward they don't even remember what the issue was or that the work we did was instrumental in handling it!"]

FM: How was the work you did with Idenics different from other things you've done to improve yourself?

DL: As I may have mentioned, some other things did have positive effects for me. Rebirthing, or vivation was one such practice. Some things I did in Scientology helped. However, I found Idenics to be the quickest, least unpleasant, and the most cost effective thing I ever did to handle my own blocks to success and happiness. Many of these places that start out helping people end up being subverted from their original purpose and end up exploiting people or dramatizing their own inner conflicts through their clients. I found it hard to believe that a few short easy sessions conducted over the telephone could make such an astounding difference in a persons level of success and happiness, but the proof is in the pudding as they say.

FM: Would you recommend Idenics to other people with issues they want to resolve? If so, why do you feel it would be a good idea for them to try Idenics?

DL: Yes, I definitely do recommend Idenics. I have a page on my website telling people about it, I have recommended it to others and plan to do it even more often in the future. They can bypass a lot of unnecessary expense and effort by using Idenics facilitation and get a lot more gain in a small period of time. Maybe there is something better, but I have yet to discover it, and I have always had a lot of interest in this area. Despite all my experience and research into such things I have never found anything superior in convenience, cost-effectiveness or desired results.

FM: Which money-making programs are your current favorites?

DL: Well I will always have a tender spot in my heart for the Nova-Lights programs. The first program for which I really implemented one of your compounding strategies with real success was with "Star-Game" (SG). I had been in some programs that had made me some money, some that folded and left me nothing, but it was pretty much hit and miss. I really started to hit my stride at the beginning of 2003 only a year ago. In January I made a $50 spend to SG. I made another $50 spend a little over a week later. Then I neglected it for a couple of months while I waited to see if it was going to stick around.In mid April I looked at it again and it had become $250 with daily compounding. I started to put in $100 per month and soon took out my original principal. Now I was in the "can't lose" situation. Within six months I had back in my pocket what I had spent into SG and there was still $1,000 compounding away every day for me. That's when I got really excited and the light went on upstairs. It became a steady bi-weekly stream of income to fund other programs, while it also continued to grow toward the "$10,000 strategy" mentioned on your site. I did the same with Pegasus, Get Weekly Profit and others. Lately they have had some problems, but in my opinion the admin have shown a remarkable amount of responsibility and integrity in the way they have handled the situation. They could serve as a real example for some other program admins that get lost in denial, and finally just go into overwhelm and blow with whatever dough is left from the ruins.

FM: The Nova-Lights programs died on January 28, 2004; how does that affect your overall situation?

DL: It hurts a little. But I don't believe in putting too large a portion of my money into any one program no matter how good it looks. I made a good profit off of the Nova-Lights programs, and am well ahead if I never get a cent back in refunds. All such programs promise refunds when they close, few are sincere. Of those even fewer actually are able to repay, yet I have received refunds of principal, and I just suspect Nova-Lights may be one of the few that makes them. We will just have to wait and see. As I mentioned before, with these programs it really finally clicked that even a small amount compounded daily can add up quickly with a legit program, and that you need to take earnings as they begin to accumulate and put them into other programs. I am into 26 active programs at this time, including all but one of your Perfectly Performing Private Programs. Also, some I got from Olga Fortunato, Leland Rothmore, and Boulat Rafikov, among others. Many of those programs were entered with money from Pegasus and Star Game. The knowledge I got from you, that has worked for me in the real world, will stay with me, and will put money in my pocket for years to come.

I also have enjoyed and made good money with ComShares and Cash Domain. I like the use of the Euro with ComShares. It impresses me as being one more dimension of the diversification idea as it applies to currency.

FM: Along the way, have you suffered any severe losses?

DL: Well, other than the money I lost right at the beginning, there was a period right after the 9/11 tragedy when it seemed a lot of programs that were piggybacking off some of the others like Diversifund went belly up. I lost $100 here and $200 there, but it taught me something about the nature of true diversification.

It was still a little discouraging, but for the most part I could shrug it off. The last real loss I experienced was with "UnderGround Trades." I really didn't expect them to fail so quickly; they looked good to me. I think they took in a lot of people, including some I had believed were pretty savvy. I had put in more than I usually do with a new program. I had $1,600 of my gold in it and a paper profit of almost a thousand when it went under after only a couple of months. After deducting my referrals I had a net loss of $1,500. No heart breaker, but it stings when your total capital is no bigger than mine was at the time.

FM: Can you tell me about your attitudes or inner strengths that enable you to continue despite the setbacks?

DL: Frederick, there has been a time, a couple of times in my life; when I had my back right up against the wall, and I could see it was all over and there was nothing left I could say or do. When that happened I found that I suddenly found myself shifted to a sort of external perspective. I sort of let go. When I did that it was as though I discovered that under all the illusions and confusions of life there is actually a layer of something like solid bedrock, and none of the things we think are so important in this life really mean a damn thing. It then turned out that things were not as dire as they appeared to be at the time, and it has been my experience that this is nearly always the case. Things are never as black as they can seem right at the time of a sudden loss or threat.

After that it's easier to look on these things as a game, and stop taking them so damn seriously. When you lighten up a little the losses seem to mean a lot less, and how you play the game and what you learn from it means a lot more. I think you then also find that you have fewer losses, and a lot more fun.

FM: Please tell me about your formal education?

DL: I got an AA degree at my local community college in Bakersfield. Went on a two year volunteer mission for my church, I was a devout Mormon at the time. And then attended BYU in Utah where I got my BS in Psychology. I entered Grad school intending to be a Clinical Psychologist, but soon got disillusioned about the profession, and I was married. We got pregnant and I had to quit and get a job. I had taken some computer courses in Cobol and Fortran computer programming and was able to land an entry level position with the Contra Costa County Data Processing Department in Martinez, CA.

FM: How have you further educated yourself?

DL: I am a voracious reader and although I have wasted a lot of hours with novels of questionable value, including a lot of sci-fi which I enjoy, I have also read a lot in the pop psych and human potential areas. The text from "A Course in Miracles" was very helpful to me. Despite the beauty of the writing, it requires concentration to stick with and follow what the Author is saying. I found it really gives me a sense of peace and unjangles some of the anxieties I often find bubbling around under the surface of my mind when I read it.

I'm also interested in natural and physical sciences. I have also had a chance to live in many parts of the country and observe a lot of different kinds of people. I lived for several months at "Consciousness Village" in the Sierra Nevadas when Leonard Orr the founder of Rebirthing owned it. I did a little training and coaching under his direction. Also met and took a course from Phil Laut who together with Jim Leonard founded the Vivation school of Rebirthing.

Incidentally, Phil also wrote the book 'Money is My Friend' which I probably could have benefitted a great deal from. I also took some courses at the Church of Scientology, and read all the books of L. Ron Hubbard. I have worked as an underground hard rock drift miner in Arizona. I lived for a while among the street people of Seattle and San Francisco. Rode freight trains. Worked for a while in Hollywood as a bit player and extra, and met a lot of celebrities.

FM: Did any of your jobs contribute to your ability to earn a full-time online income?

DL: Yes, both of my computer jobs were helpful, in fact without the last job with Dynarc I don't know when, if ever, I would have gotten the idea to try making an online income. I hadn't realized the Internet had come so far. I also had some background and success in personal sales, although I had no love of it. My erratic lifestyle also made it relatively easy for me to live very frugally. If you start from scratch like I did you need the self-discipline to put some money aside to invest in programs, and pay your dues, while learning the ropes. This gave me the edge, or "jump-start," that enabled me to be independent and debt free so quickly. Otherwise I still would have gotten there, but it would have been a lot longer trip.

FM: I've recently become very interested in the "Unstoppable Factor," particularly as covered in the book 'Unstoppable: 45 Powerful Stories of Perseverance and Triumph for People Just Like You.' [FM Comment: I no longer regard Unstoppable... as a particularly good or useful book! Nevertheless, I think that "Becoming Unstoppable" is most important!] How unstoppable do you consider yourself?

DL: Totally 100% unstoppable. The only thing that has ever even had the slightest effect at deflecting me or turning me aside was the realization that I was trying to do two diametrically conflicting things at once. By that I mean achieve a goal that contained two impossibly conflicting elements, or trying endlessly to have and be something that never was and never will be in this world.

That's when I realized one's greatest strength is often also one's greatest drawback, Frederick, due to the bipolar nature of this world. A person who knows he is unstoppable will butt his head against an impenetrable wall for years of wasted time because he doesn't know the meaning of the word quit. A person's tolerance for pain is truly awesome sometimes, but it does have a limit, thank goodness.

FM: What did you learn from your parents about money?

DL: You know, my Dad had a pretty good relationship to money and excellent self-esteem, but he was very poor at teaching it. In fact the lessons I learned were the very opposite of what he would have wanted to teach me consciously. I really learned no connection between my behavior and receiving. I learned to keep my opinions to myself and passively do as I was told in order to receive. To me, personal ability, self-motivation, work and knowledge, were totally unrelated to the rewards a person got in life. I was split off from any responsibility for my own abundance. My Dad actually shielded me from decision making and its consequences, and I developed no real sense of responsibility at all.

Of course at some point I had violated my own personal integrity and buried the guilt of self-betrayal, and the loss of self-respect that resulted from these decisions was significant. These would come back to haunt me many times in my life, until I got some of these issues handled.

I worked summers on my Dad's cotton and melon farm and he put all my wages away for my "volunteer" mission for the church. Everything he thought I needed he bought for me. He paid for my education. I failed to learn the true meaning of responsibility on my own until very late in my life. I also developed a very low estimation of myself as you can probably appreciate. While I give her full credit for my love of reading and literature, I tended to mirror my Mom's attitude, which was pretty passive, negative, depressed and dependent in those days. I've come to understand that my parents are both pretty remarkable people, considering their accomplishments, and I no longer blame them for the problems I had. Nevertheless, I do consider my start just a bit handicapped in the productivity and money- creating areas of life.

FM: Did you learn any specific money skills from your parents?

DL: I did have some good examples from my Dad. He had a knack for using numbers to make realistic estimates and potential earnings from various money making propositions and projects. He was a very practical and grounded person. Without even a high school education he became quite cultured and eventually the head of a couple of corporations that employed many PhDs and highly educated people. Many of these people were totally impractical, and if left to themselves would be totally unable to create and market a product that people would buy. My Dad had an ability to confront potential trouble sources and handle them with charm and tact. As I said, I had many good examples, but it was only as I got the confront and confidence to actually personally apply what I had seen modeled, that these examples began to do me any good. I still remain rather ungrounded, dreamy and fuzzy in my thinking and behavior at times. I'm afraid my Dad despaired of me sometimes because of that. He used to call me "unconscious."

FM: What attitudes about money did you learn from your parents (good or bad)?

DL: I guess money itself was fairly neutral in our family. We had some of the usual opinions about money you get from a family with a religious orientation. However, they did make the distinction between money being the root of all evil, and a greedy desire for money above all else being the root of all evil.

FM: What emotions (good or bad) do you associate with money as a result of how your parents raised you?

DL: On the "good" side I guess a certain amount of pride that money meant you were pleasing in the sight of God and was the expected and deserved reward for hard work done well. On the bad side was the generally accepted, but unspoken guilt, that if you were really loving and righteous you would give all your surplus wealth for the work of the Lord. My Dad actually did give an honest 10% of all he earned and quite a bit more to the church, as well as raising a family of nine children.

Of course, even the good has its drawbacks, since I now think a healthier attitude would be that hard work and struggle are not necessarily the price of abundance. My attitude at the time was that I might as well resign myself to not having any, as I had no chance of getting any of my own.

FM: What money-associated behaviors have you mimicked from your parents?

DL: I mainly have mimicked my mother I'm afraid. She has always been rather impulsive with money. Seldom having it, but when she does, spending it like a sailor on shoreleave, with no real thought for tomorrow. Goodness, I hope she doesn't read this. Actually she had the same problem I did. She came from an incredibly poor family of Okies that came west in the dust bowl days. She married my Dad at 14 years of age, and I have already alluded to how he was a "take charge" Aries kind of guy who gave her no more responsibility in the money area than he did us kids. He made all those decisions and he was pretty good at it. He gave his life in a sense to leave her well off and she blew all the money in two or three years. She has finally gotten to where she has a pretty successful little business of her own and lives a very comfortable life.

FM: Do you suppose any of what you learned from your parents, your formal education, or your jobs hindered your ability to earn a full-time income online in any way? Did you need to unlearn anything that you learned from your parents, your formal education, or your jobs?

DL: And how! I think the biggest obstacles I had to overcome to be successful in life were the things I learned, or was resisting, from all three of those sources. This world's schools and institutions are not designed to make you an independent thinker, innovator or entrepreneur. Probably my Dad's greatest advantage in his success in life was that he did have so little formal education, and no family life. He was an orphan and escaped from an orphanage at an early age to make it on his own. The orphanage was an institution and a tough one, but it encouraged self-reliance and responsibility, because that was the only way that it could survive during the depression. It was totally self-sufficient. They didn't get a lot of support from the state as would be the case today. They raised all their own food and made most of their own clothing.

FM: What are your current attitudes toward money and how do you think they might change in future?

DL: I look more on it now like a flow of energy and a way of keeping score in the game of life. I still think that the eventual Real Work and contribution of my life may have little to do with my money motivation. Nevertheless, often your first responsibility is to take care of your own needs in life before you can indulge yourself in finding and doing the work you truly love, especially when little market exists for it. Practically speaking one may need to produce some of what the culture and certain of its manipulators have induced people to think they want. Or you may have to align your product with those things considered wanted and needed if you desire to become comfortable financially. And you need to be comfortable financially if you want to have the leisure to be creative in the areas you choose. Civilizations have only progressed to the point they have given at least some of their citizens leisure to pursue their own interests creatively. Nevertheless, I have sometimes felt myself uncomfortable with that sort of compromise. A sort of misfit.

People will pay for what they think they want, not what you think they really need. You must either market it in a way that leads them to want it, or resign yourself to producing what they will actually pay for. That is the nature of reality in the marketplace. This means you have to show people how it can benefit them. I think you may have to make some of those compromises if you want to start out making money in HYIP. You may need to invest in some programs in which only those who know what they are doing will make money, and the masses of ignoramuses will get hurt. Because ponzis are easier to find when you are starting out than nice safe long-term programs. Many of the people you promote to will blame you for their losses, instead of the fact that they didn't follow instructions. The reason I like HYIP in spite of this is not just the convenience and financial privacy it offers me personally, but that I see it as building the infrastructure of freedom.

FM: You earlier mentioned Harry Browne's 'How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World'; have you also read 'Seven Simple Steps to Personal Freedom: An Owner's Manual for Life' by Gerry Spence?

DL: Oh NO! How could I have missed that? I have heard of Gerry Spence. I have something to look forward to. Thanks again, Frederick.

FM: Were there any notable obstacles you had to overcome in order to consistently earn money online?

DL: I had to overcome a sort of mental laziness. I had a tendency to make decisions on impulse, and I had difficulty being consistent about keeping records. Both of these things can really bite you in this field. I also needed to develop a certain amount of patience and live very frugally for a while to build my portfolio. Fortunately I had learned to be very comfortable with a minimal lifestyle. This stood me in good stead while I was plowing everything I could spare into my programs.

FM:: Do you consider yourself good with numbers?

DL: Not particularly. I first got the idea of going into Psych because I was under the impression that it was one profession you didn't need any higher math to succeed in. I didn't know until later I'd have to plow through advanced statistics classes to graduate. It was a squeaker. However, I did get As in my one course of Business Math at Bakersfield College.

FM: What are the most important lessons you've learned in order to be able to earn a full-time online income?

DL: Keep good records. Be aware of and try to pay attention to the little cues and clues that tend to reveal bad programs and incompetent people. Usually, whenever you make a mistake that costs you a lot, you later realize that there were little signs that you ignored, clues which went right past you that you can see clearly in hindsight. Ask questions of yourself and others. Be patient, this is like growing a tree not winning the lottery. You plant a seed, some will grow and others wither right away. Water it and tend to it, you can force it a little, but rapid growth is usually shaky and weak, and can collapse on you. After a while you have several growing concerns which reach a level where they take off. Just keep adding a few new ones and culling out the losers and you will eventually succeed.

FM: What about security?

DL: I think security is vital for anyone doing HYIP. You do become a target. The fact that you have an active e-gold account becomes known pretty quickly. You will notice how many fake e-gold scam emails you start receiving. I have purchased Red Hat Linux, although I haven't yet installed it. In the meantime I keep up my patches and have made some custom security changes to my Windows OS. I have virus software that I update frequently and ZonaLabs personal firewall. I have Steganos security suite, and my passwords are all random strings including numbers and upper and lower case letters. They are on an encrypted file and there are also some other second layer of security features for that file that I would rather not disclose here. I am very careful about opening attachments and visiting suspect websites. When I do inadvertently do so, or have any suspicions I run my anti virus scans and change my passwords. I use mail-vault and safe-mail for most of my email activity, as they screen html code and scripts and use SSL secure socket connections which gives a little more protection to your email files and sensitive communications.

FM: How do you convert the e-currencies into cash to buy food and pay bills?

DL: I was accessing my digital currencies with the offshore ATM card... I don't keep a regular bank account. I don't trust them, from a privacy standpoint they mostly stink. I don't use a SSN, which almost all will give you a hassle about. Mostly I don't feel like it is "building freedom" to support their businesses. My opinion is that much of the human suffering from wars and corrupt power mongers comes from the international financial elite banking families. I'll gladly experience a little inconvenience or added expense to avoid supporting them.

You do have to be careful and do some due diligence before using a new company you find online. I got in a hurry and found a site on the Net that promises to send your e-gold via Western Union to any place in the world within 24 hours. SCAM! I notice Fund-Gold.net is still up. I would think I might have learned that particular lesson with Flat Rate Gold Exchange. But, I figure I must have needed a booster shot for my stupid virus!

FM: Do you promote the programs you're in to others?

DL: Yes, but not to the degree I want to begin doing... I want to get into some of the new generation of MLM type programs you are featuring on your website. I just got started with SNWBS and I am eager to start doing some promoting again. (I finally put my website back up onto a free host, combining it with my literary and philosophical personal website www.xandara.com, and joined MegaBooster.) I'm looking forward to some good things! [FM Comment: DL's "Xandara" seems to have dropped off the Internet. Also note that most of the programs and companies mentioned in this interview may no longer exist!]

FM: What advice would you give to people just starting out in their attempts to earn money online?

DL: I think your statement that "passive" programs offer the best chance for the average person to make money online is very true. It can be pretty discouraging to spend the hours posting, cutting and pasting, setting up group mail and other email handling systems, autoresponders, joining safe lists, deleting spam, and on and on that the average person does to promote. Only to see little money coming in for all their efforts, and hours in front of the computer. By contrast, passive programs are easy money. That is not to say that they don't also take a while to make significant profits, but with a much smaller outlay of energy and drudge work. Second, I would advise new people to copy the successful actions of someone who is and does and has what they want to be, do and have. It is relatively easy and cheap to give an appearance online of expertise and competence. They need to be aware that there are a lot of second raters and some outright criminals out there with websites. There seems to be a preoccupation with appearances in our age. The Internet will teach you about substance. I don't care much about appearances anymore, give me something real. It is like you said about the good that is displayed, and the bad that isn't mentioned. Don't be afraid to experiment and learn from the "failures." You will leave them behind you, because what is real sticks, and success is real. Failure really isn't. It is a nothing, because it is actually just a minor element of success. Okay, maybe for some people a major element. You know who you are, see Mike Goldstein!

FM: What advice would you give to people who've tried without success to earn money online?

DL: Be persistent, but don't keep on doing the same things that don't work, and beating your head against the wall. That's masochism. Try a little different approach. Add something, delete something. Try to define the areas that are failing in the activity and discover the real "why" of the failure. Form a hypothesis, do something to correct the "why" you have identified, then make a fresh start. Reality will tell you if you have found the right "why." If you keep blundering around you will eventually find the opening into success you're looking for. When you know someone else is succeeding at the activity you already know that it can be done. He is doing something you are not, or not doing something you are. Find out what it is. The difference between total success and abject failure can sometimes be a very small thing.

Be open-minded enough to consider that you might be a victim of self-defeating actions stemming from unresolved subconscious conflicts. In my opinion it is much more prevalent reason for failure in life than most people realize. We are at the top of the evolutionary ladder. Obviously humans are designed for success by a million years of trial and error. If you are not succeeding in the way you desire on a regular basis look at the patterns in your life. Be honest with yourself. You owe that to yourself if to no-one else. Then if what I am saying resonates, try Mike Goldstein at Idenics, or some other healing modality that others have reported success with. Your best first investment might be in yourself.

FM: There's a lot of material on BigBooster.com and BuildFreedom.com to assist people to achieve whatever personal development is necessary for success. I now believe that the following are among the most important:

1. "Ostrich Factor" -- many people (often grossly and dramatically) overestimate their level of competence. Just watch "American Idol" to see how most contestants grossly overestimate their ability to sing!
2. "Doing Things Right Factor" -- My experience with large numbers of people indicates that most have a poor appreciation of the need to do things right. They suffer from a kind of "cognitive disconnect" between their actions and the results they produce.
3. "Subconscious Factor" -- many people suffer from "programming" they're not aware of that causes them to get stuck in self-defeating behavior. If you check out the book 'Simple Steps to Impossible Dreams: The 15 Power Secrets of the World's Most Successful People,' by Steven K. Scott, you'll learn about certain "Chains" that hold people back. Scott says this about Chain #1: "You've been programmed for mediocrity from your youth." You're not aware of most of this programming because it's subconscious. Mike Goldstein's Idenics is the most effective and efficient method I know of to handle the "Subconscious Factor."
4. "Blind Spot Factor" -- people tend to have blind spots that prevent their success.
5. "Peter Principle" -- probably, most people trying to make money online, are trying to "promote themselves to above their level of competence."
6. "Denial Factor" -- many people deny the factors that hold them back: incompetence coupled with intellectual, psychological, and emotional issues.
7. "Arrogance Factor" -- some people, the further below their success threshold they operate, the more they suffer from false pride.
8. "Success Threshold" -- to succeed, you have to move above your Success Threshold!
9. "Personal Competence and Power Shift (PCAPS)."
10. "Helplessness Factor" -- the first step in overcoming helplessness may be to implement the "Why-Can-Do Booster."

What do you think of the above outline?

DL: Well I have to admit that you have added a couple of things that I have not yet evaluated, but I will. I am very impressed, as always, at the diligence and intelligence you have exerted in an effort to make success and independence achievable and accessible to everyone. People are complex, and their patterns of weakness and strengths mean that the barriers that stop one person may not be an obstacle for someone else. I think you have done a wonderful and comprehensive job of identifying the most common problems and obstacles we stumble on in our way to success, and generously providing remedies for many of them.

FM: What are the most important things you would suggest to someone who has never tried to make money online as to how to get started and become successful?

DL: I think it is easy for newcomers to online money making to get confused and overwhelmed when they first come upon the frenetic world of online promotion. Everyone is making fantastic claims and saying a lot of the same things. These people who try it first get excited because they believe everything, or at least most of what they are being told. They jump in and try something, and find it isn't as easy as the promises and hype led them to believe. They work a lot of grueling hours doing essentially boring and repetitive things, fail to receive the instant success they expected, and then go to the other extreme of not believing anyone.

Finding one or two people who are credible, and to whom you can really relate, can mean a lot. I came to your site initially because I was interested in freedom. I had already gotten pretty burned out on MLM, and similar programs, even ones promoted on your site that I wasn't able to make work, even with a lot of motivated effort. You had credibility with me because you had a purpose that was in line with mine, and it consisted of more than just a desire to make some money. I could see that making people freer, more independent, healthier and wealthier was in line with your high-order purpose. You had an ethic that included others in your well-being. This was an identifiable ethical motive for helping people. Seeing this made me feel you were not simply out to use and exploit others, like many do on the web. And you were identifying the reasons I had not succeeded, and actually offering solutions.

Among the success solutions you had identified was Idenics, something that I obviously needed as a key to achieving the personal goals I had failed for many years to reach. Would I have tried it unless you had some credibility with me? Probably not.

As I mentioned previously, you also suggested that if a person had no real talent and will to be a successful promoter, perhaps a better chance would be to get into "passive" programs. That was a piece of advice that gave me the fresh approach to online money-making a lazy guy like me was looking for.

Communication is the key, and also the strength of the information age. Finding a communication line, and through sharing and pooling information, cut out a lot of the mistakes that a person would normally have to slog through in order to find the successful actions alone. Networks of trust develop, that form into lines following natural leaders. These are people that you have learned to trust, who are a little more experienced than yourself. Part of these true leaders own learning, and the final step at becoming a master at this or any game, involves teaching someone else what they have learned and thus confirming it to themselves. At the same time they develop a junior who will take their place in the line, so that they can move up a notch. This is how progress occurs in a cosmic sense. If you are new, find one of these lines and get into it.

FM: What are your goals for the future and how do you plan to achieve them?

DL: I hope to continue to expand my financial success through further learning, and more importantly, through practicing more effectively the things I already know about HYIP and expanding into some of the best matrix or MLM type programs you have identified. And I also want to refine my situation in the areas of personal and financial privacy.

I plan to use the leisure I have created for myself to write a book on my experiences in HYIP, and life, and get it published. I also have some plans for my little homestead that I am looking forward to implementing.

I also have a desire to write some more fiction, and finish some of what I have already started writing. Along more grandiose lines, and I think everyone should have a couple of those kinds of goals, I have the seed of an idea that I am also developing into a philosophy of life. I am hoping that someday it may form the basis of a movement that will bring a little more peace and happiness into the world. I call it Xandara. [FM Comment: DL's "Xandara" seems to have dropped off the Internet.]

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