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Everyone has always told me that I should “keep an open mind”.

They usually tell me that to guilt me into believing their untested theories about business.

“Keep an open mind” is one of those super-replicating beliefs that sounds so right that everyone passes it on without thinking (*cough* 97% of scientists agree that… *cough*).

For a long time I believe it. After all, who knows what’s really right? Can anything really be known? Beyond good and evil, right? Wrong.

The reality is, some things produce results, and some things don’t. It doesn’t matter how good someone’s intentions are, or how strong their conviction is…

When you’re in business, the only things that get results are the things that get results.

If you’re not in business for results, fine. If you’re in business for art, or spiritual enlightenment, or politics, fine. Go ahead and “keep an open mind”.

But if you want results, keep your mind closed and guarded like Fort Knox. Do not let the theory junkies invade your most precious asset.

I never recommend anything either I or my students have used to get results. Even this concept, a “closed mind”, I only recommend because it’s gotten me results.

So, the next time someone says “I just had this amazing idea! What if you do this and then that? Wouldn’t that be amaaaaazing???”…

…ask “What results did you get from this?”

If they can’t tell you specific metrics, seal your mind tight like an oyster until they’ve piped down.

We live in a guristic world overrun by quacks and theory-junkies. Take good care of your mind!

– Aleksander Vitkin

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One of the things that makes business very difficult is that it takes a lot of imagination.

You have to constantly imagine, “what would happen if I did that?”

Those who develop an excellent ability to imagine are able to do 100s if not 1000s of “thought experiments” every single day.

They are able to cognitively rearrange the things they’ve observed in reality, to accurately understand extremely complex systems in mere seconds.

They can think multiple moves ahead, and come up with brilliant tactics and strategies, and learn extremely quickly.

On the other hand, those who neglect their ability to imagine are either unable to do thought experiments, or they are able to do only extremely basic thought experiments.

They are only able to use tactics and strategies that are given to them by others. And they must use them blindly, with no idea whether they’ll work or not. Every action is a leap of faith.

Clearly, great achievements can often come much faster to someone with a good imagination.

Developing a good imagination is largely a matter of practice at using a particular style of thinking.

For example, with sales:

You have to ask “What would happen if I said that? How would that person likely respond? What other ways might they respond? And why would they respond those ways? Would that keep the sale on the straight line, or not? What else could I say instead?”

This is the kind of thinking we teach in the mastermind.

Yes, we do give tactics and strategies, but our most important goal is to equip our students with a highly independent method of success, so that they can succeed in almost any situation

One of the “must watch” videos for entrepreneurs is “Fun to Imagine”, with Nobel Prize recipient Richard Feynman, because it is the premiere example of HOW TO IMAGINE.

You can watch him do it in real time, and instantly upgrade your own ability.

Do you have any other methods that you used to upgrade your imagination? Would love to hear them, thank you.

– Aleksander Vitkin

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By that I mean, the client:

Reaches out to you
Tells you how much they love your work
Changes their schedule to talk with you
Listens with interest and attention
Hopes that you’ll agree to work with them
Lets you choose tactics and strategies
Doesn’t haggle over price
Says please and thank you
Merrily complies with your requests
Brags to their friends about you

Wouldn’t that be so… refreshing?

But… how do you get there? Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any known trick or tactic.

Because, you see, it’s simply the size that counts.

The size of your big, fat, juicy… carrot.

Until 2016ish, I was making a yuuuge mistake. Yuge. Believe me.

I was trying to [metaphorically] “beat my clients into submission” to get my clients to behave how I wanted them to.

I was so over-eager to do business on my terms, that I’d sometimes become literally enraged when I was getting my way. (I don’t mind admitting that — “No failure only feedback”, you know).

Then I realized.

My carrot was too small.

There simply wasn’t anything motivating my clients to give me the freedom to do business on my terms.

And let me tell you, one does not simply grow a massive carrot overnight. These things take time and energy.

What I can tell you is… it’s possible.

If you want to one day do business on your terms… the first step is to desire it.

Really desire it. That means use reason to independently:

Figure out what “doing business on your terms” means to you
Figure out what’s so good about it
Figure out if it’s worth pursuing
Conclude that you want it for sure

With those boxes checked, you’ll begin to think about how you can achieve it.

That’s where the carrot comes in.

I’m convinced that the only thing that will make clients let you do business completely on your terms is “toward motivation”.

The value you provide has to be so high, that it’s simply worth if for them to give you all this respect and freedom.

What do you think here? Have you found any other ways to reach a point where you’re doing business on your terms?

– Aleksander Vitkin

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6 months after I started, he flicked an envelope across the table at me…

And he said, “This 2% pay raise represents what you’re now worth to us”.

I’d obeyed every word, jumped through every hoop, taken every piece of advice, and hugely improved my work, for a 2% raise.

That was the exact moment I decided to quit. 3 weeks later, my resignation letter was on his desk.

I haven’t had to work a single day in a job ever since.

If you’re stuck in this zero-appreciation, “job trap”, don’t worry.

There’s still time to fix it. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Even if things seem tough, trust me, there are awesome business models out there and clients who will like you, appreciate you, respect you, and be thrilled to pay you well.

Don’t have the exact skills they’re looking for? You can learn any skill. I’ve seen people learn skills from *scatch* and make $20k/month after a year.

Outside of the job world, it’s possible to make your life truly off-the-charts awesome. Your work quality can determine your pay rate, instead of a boss.

At first, things can seem scary/difficult/confusing… but sink your teeth into entrepreneurship for 6 months, and you’ll be shocked at how far you go.

Do you agree?

– Aleksander Vitkin

The post The Worst Thing a Boss Ever Told Me? appeared first on BusinessMentor.com.

What is possible for one person, is usually possible for another. Especially in the business world.

Especially if we’re talking about goals like profiting a million dollars a year — that’s only a medium-size accomplishment in the grand scheme of things, isn’t it?

Many, many people have done it. And many of those people… if you met them, you’d think “well if THIS PERSON did it… surely I can”.

You know, deep down, that anything “preventing” you from reaching such a goal is most likely a self-imposed limitation, rather than a real one.

But, why do we impose these limits? Why do we “drive” with the gas and the brake on, at the same time?

I think part of the reason is that we know that the path to high profits has things in store for us that we want to avoid. Things that frighten us, anger us, disgust us… things that we wish didn’t even exist.

We know that to get to the goal, we have to go through these horrible things. So we delay our goals. We delay them, delay them, delay them. All to avoid “bad experiences”.

If you were completely fine with the horrible things that may occur on your journey toward your goal, you’d probably go a hell of a lot faster.

So here’s what you want to do:

Those things that you think are so horrible? See if you can reason your way to viewing them as “probably not too bad”.

Don’t just tell yourself it won’t be too bad. Really reason it out.

Reason your way out of anger, out of fear, out of disgust, out of contempt… and come to the logical conclusion that what you’re avoiding “probably isn’t too bad”.

Maybe you can even reach “It probably wouldn’t even be as bad as things in my life right now that I accept as normal”.

Hopefully, that helps you feel a little more confident in pursuing your goals.

– Aleksander Vitkin

The post What is Stopping You From Profiting $1 million Every Year? appeared first on BusinessMentor.com.

The big deal about proof is NOT simply that it gives weight to your words and makes your prospects believe what you’re saying.

Proof also makes YOU think differently about yourself. When you’ve got video evidence, verbal testimony and performance data to show that you walk the talk, you’re MORE CONFIDENT.

You’ve probably felt the frustration of being certain that you know something, or can do something, and yet no matter what you tell people, they refuse to listen.

It’s tough. It sucks. But for the time being, we live in a proof paradigm. A credibility paradigm. So you’ve gotta play the game for now. (Until we get to the “reason” paradigm when people trust your words simply because they are perfectly logical).

If you don’t have irrefutable proof that you can whip out at a moment’s notice to back up your claims, then every word you say is going to be laced with doubt.

You might think you can fake it. But stand up from the kid’s table, and try to play your proofless hand against a shark. Not so easy now, is it?

I’ve heard “fake it till you make it”.

I think “fake it until you can prove it”, is better.

But even better than that…?

Get out there right now and get proof of your achievements!

When you’ve got the proof, you’ll feel like an enhanced version of your former self.

No longer held back by the knee-jerk skepticism, you will be free to boldly make your claims.

Get the proof, and your prospects will see the sincerity and certainty on your face, and hear it in your voice. You got this.

– Aleksander Vitkin

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There have been other times where a tiny number of injected concepts woke up entire populations and led them to extremely large scale cultural paradigm shifts.

Aristotle introduced “Reason’.

The Founding Fathers injected “Life, Liberty & The Pursuit of Happiness”.

Francis Bacon introduced “The Scientific Method”.

Newton/Liebniz introduced “Calculus”.

In fiction, The Joker injected “Accountability”.

What could we introduce?

One idea is “Originality”.

Too often, people I meet tell me rehashes of rehashes of rehashes of ideas (sometimes the foundational idea isn’t even good!). No originality. Only guristic dogma.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s a single original thought in their heads.

You must have noticed this, right? Ask yourself — how many people do you know who blow your mind with original thought that instantly upgrades your point of view?

But… what if things weren’t like that?

What if we found a way to let the whole world know:

Original = good.

Unoriginal = bad.

To me, a lack of originality is the quickest tell that someone is not an independent thinker. It is the quickest tell that they are, rather, a leaf in the wind, a product of society, an empty vessel, a dogma parroting puppet.

I want to show people the possibilities of how they could be. I want to show alternate life paths, alternate ways of thinking, alternate methods for achievement. And I want to let them choose what seems better.

How would you prefer to be? Original or unoriginal? What will you think about today so that the next ideas you express are original?

– Aleksander Vitkin

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Self Development has 2 goals:

• High self-esteem
• Valuable results

Let’s define those! (I’ve learned that whenever you begin to analyze something, you have to define what you’re analyzing, otherwise, it’s utterly useless).

Your self-esteem is your level of certainty that your mind is competent and that you are worthy of happiness.

Your “results” are the real-world goals you achieve and the things you obtain.

How should self-development be taught so that you get high self-esteem and valuable results?

It should be taught so as to improve your general ability to think. Why? Because your ability to think is your fundamental tool in life. Again: Your fundamental tool in life is your ability to think.

As of 2019, that is not being taught. Not at all.

What’s happening is people who have moderate financial results are parroting content from Napoleon Hill, Werner Erhard, Brian Tracy, and Eben Pagan.

It’s all the same content, with each guru throwing in their unique blend of “emotion pumping” to make it seem more valuable.

And don’t get me started on the dogma. The world has zero need for more 20-30-year-old guys running around parroting dogma about the ideal morning ritual, meditation technique or dopamine diet.

Under the veil, it’s nothing more than You are enough, you can do it, you deserve it, take action now.

It was good to get us to this point. But now it’s simply “old”.

There’s something new.

It’s called Independent Thinking.

It’s about committing to stone-cold logic and truth and considering your own mind to be the supreme authority over what is true, what you want, and what you should do to get it.

A mentor has a rule, though it is NOT to spew dogma and make you feel good. The role of a mentor is to give action-oriented advice, results-oriented advice, and help you clarify your thinking.

If you massively enhance your ability to think, you’ll never need to be passed from guru to guru like a used rag.

You’ll be equipped to develop your own method for improving yourself that suits your strengths and ambitions.

Listen. You have the same potential to think as anyone else. You think a guru’s brain is made from premium goo that you didn’t get? It’s not. They’re not that much different from you. They’ve practiced content delivery a lot more, but when they sit down to work, they’re pretty much the same as you.

I have friends who are extremely successful, but if I copied what they did, I’d crash and burn in a blaze of brokeness, because their personal method doesn’t work for me. I need to use the method I developed for me because it works with my strengths and ambitions.

To start thinking better, begin to ask yourself questions like:

“What does that mean?”
“What is true here?”
“How can I know what is true?”
“What are the similarities?”
“What are the differences?”
“What a goal and why would I want to pursue it?”
“What is self-esteem and how do I get it?”
“What results do I want and why?”

Get your own answers from your own mind, not from gurus parroting content and pumping emotions. YOU are the authority.

– Aleksander Vitkin

The post How to Do Self Development in 2020 (A New Approach) appeared first on BusinessMentor.com.

Carl Jung called it “Individuation”. William James called it “Self Esteem”. Kurt Goldstein called it “Self-Actualization”. These days we call it “Self-Development” — the path toward your highest potential.

I have noticed that people who do self-development tend to do better in business. Why? Because business and self-development work synergistically:

Business accentuates your strengths, and self-development fixes your weaknesses.

If someone solely focuses on their strengths, they will be ignorant to their weaknesses and keep failing for unknown-to-them reasons.

So how should we do self-development for good results?

Rainforest retreats? Meditation retreats? Spirituality retreats? I’m not convinced. From an empirical results point of view, these are not very effective. There is a huge correlation between the people who do these things, and the people who are permanently stuck at 2-3k per month.

Here’s my current perspective:

The “self” in “self-development” is your mind. Therefore, self-development is about improving the quality of your mind. That is, improving the quality of your thoughts.

Less ignorant thoughts. Less rageful thoughts. Less scared thoughts. Less guilty thoughts.

More certain thoughts. More correct thoughts. More positive thoughts. More rational thoughts.

So you’re after things like “epiphanies”, “insights”, “realizations”. And yes, you need to “contemplate” and “reflect” to have those. But you need to contemplate and reflect on the “right thing”.

What is the “right thing”? Your own personal performance during work.

Why? Because your raw nature is fully exposed when you work.

To develop your self, you should ask questions like this:

“What are my thoughts about myself and reality?”

“What should my thoughts about myself and reality be to achieve excellent performance during work?”

If you frequently take time to sincerely ask yourself that question, you will uncover problems, which you can independently figure out how to fix.

And as you fix those problems, you will become a useful participant in your work and life, instead of a hindrance.

– Aleksander Vitkin

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