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Mind Games: How to Program Yourself for Success •  W  hat that quart of mush perched at the top of our shoulders really IS good for … •  Two core beliefs you must have to succeed in life … •  F  our visual images that power-up your sales copy, rocket your response and make you richer, quicker … • Much more By Clayton Makepeace, Billion-Dollar Marketer, Publisher and Editor, The Total Package

Dear Business-Builder, Despite what parents, teachers and cable TV have told you … Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, alien UFOs, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster are NOT real … Politicians, televangelists, Oprah and Dr. Phil are NOT more qualified to dictate how you live your life or how you spend your money than you are … The CIA, FBI, Mafia or the Klan did NOT assassinate John, Bobby or Martin … NASA did NOT fake the moon landing … and the Pentagon did NOT attack itself on 9/11 … Jesus did NOT paint his own face on that insurance building in Tampa and that is NOT the Virgin Mary gazing up at you from the toasted cheese sandwich that sold on Yahoo for a bazillion bucks. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, it’s only fair to tell you that these are only my opinions. And as we both know, opinions are like (lessee … how can I clean this up?) they’re like necks: Everybody has one. So, as long as I’m sticking my neck out, here’s another opinion for you: All this “when-you-wish-upon-a-star” Tinker Bell twaddle going

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around today is a fraud. Gurus who claim they’ve found a shortcut – who promise you can “think” your way to riches instantly and without hard work – are full of beans. And if someone claims he can teach you to magically create or alter objective reality with nothing more than “happy thoughts,” the smartest thing you could do is keep your hand on your wallet and back away from him v–e–r–y s–l–o–w–l–y. Call me an old-stick-in-the-mud if you like, but to me, the notion that a simple human thought somehow affects events in an infinite number of universes, or galaxies or solar systems seems just a bit of a reach. It seems just a tad grandiose to suggest that – simply by thinking nice thoughts – I can turn the sky green, or leaves blue, or make Angelina Jolie hot for my chubby pink and white body, or get the Bucs into the Super Bowl again, or cause Congress to balance the budget. … Not to mention, delusional. Hell. I’ve thought hard about it – many times – and I can’t even get Priscilla the hound dog to stop pooping in the foyer! Fact is, I wouldn’t let a single one of the New Age sages and pap peddlers who get rich selling that stuff within arm’s length of my money or my wife. I mean, jeeze Louise – just look at them: This one’s paunchy. That one’s bald. He’s got a face like a horse. She’s had so many facelifts, that dimple in her chin used to be her belly button. What’s up with that? Can’t their all-powerful, god-like, universe-altering brains … all their miraculous, reality-altering thoughts … all their “secrets” … correct their own obvious imperfections? Frankly, I wish they’d all just shut the hell up. Or better yet – put their money where their mouths are. I’d pay big bucks to see a gaggle of those guys stand on a railroad track and attempt to stop a speeding locomotive with nothing more than wishful thinking. Know what? It’ll never happen. And why? Because despite all their hype and horsepucky, those sunshine charlatans would end their lives as a grease spot on a cow catcher. And they know it.

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But sadly, as long as it’s still possible to get rich pumping vast quantities of sunshine up good peoples’ patooties, you can bet your last dollar they’ll never go away.

Having said all that, however, a brain can come in pretty handy – IF you use it correctly … Now, don’t get me wrong: The human brain is a wonderful thing. And I highly recommend that you have one if you plan to do much in life – and (please, God!) especially if you plan to vote. And yes, your beliefs and thoughts actually do help influence how successful you’ll be. But not in the mystical, metaphysical, booga-booga ways the teachers of tripe claim they do. See the thing is, your brain can be your greatest ally or the #1 obstacle to your success. The validity of your core beliefs about yourself, others and the world around you will either block you, or free you to create the success you desire. Here’s some stuff I hope will free you …

You have every right. The simple, objective fact is, there is absolutely, positively no reason why you shouldn’t have it all. Billionaires are not a billion times more deserving than you are. Nor are millionaires a million times smarter than you. If IQ points were dollars, Steven Hawking wold be lots richer than Bill Gates. Plenty of dumber people than you are living spectacularly successful lives. Not to mention folks with less talent and who are uglier or fatter. People who started out poorer than you make it to the top every day. So do folks with lousier health and severe physical limitations – and who suffer far more persecution than you ever will. Want to light a fire under your career? Examine and then disabuse yourself of the false beliefs that block you and the excuses you use to let yourself off the hook. Once you fully realize – deep down, at a cellular level, with every fiber of your being – that you deserve this just as much as the next guy or gal, there

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is no obstacle you can’t surmount, nothing; repeat: NOTHING will be beyond your grasp.

It’s completely up to you. Nobody cares as much about your success and happiness as you do. Nobody’s willing to work as hard to make you successful as you are. If you wait for some guru, or some philosophy, some deity or “the universe” to make you successful, you’re probably going to be waiting a long, long time. It’s only when you invest the time and effort to do the practical things required to succeed that true miracles begin to happen. Case in point: In 1968, I was a high school dropout earning $1.40 an hour. Today, I’m a high school dropout who (in a good year) earns nearly 1,000 times more: That’s a 96,328% raise in pay. Pretty miraculous, huh? Want to know the secret? Want to know how I did it? By working my butt to the bloody bone for nearly four decades – that’s how: Investing the skull sweat required to learn every blessed thing I could about my craft … Enduring the humiliation of rejection – repeatedly – by companies I would have done just about anything to work for … Slaving over a hot typewriter 40, 60, sometimes 80 hours in a week to produce the best sales copy I was capable of … Quietly enduring pride-shattering criticism of my beloved work product – often by pompous morons who couldn’t write a winning sales letter if you’d held a gun to their heads … Rubbing my own nose in my failures until I’d painstakingly extracted every last lesson I could learn from them … Doing it all for peanuts at first and scrimping and saving just to keep my family fed, housed and clothed … And, of course, by finding the strength and the stones to get up each

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morning and do it all over again … for years … and even when my own family doubted I’d ever make it to the top. I guess I could have just stayed in bed and “thought” or “believed” my career into existence. Lucky for me; I never read the right books.

Visualize Triumph So how did I – and every other top marketer on the planet – willingly, even eagerly endure what you must endure to succeed? By understanding that, while the human brain may not be able to create new universes on demand or alter objective reality, it is capable of doing more than just reasoning, learning, remembering and keeping your hat up. I’m constantly amazed at how many great marketers use creative visualization to unlock their creativity and to find the motivation to keep going when it would be easier just to quit. Fact is, most top marketers I’ve interviewed hold four visual images in their minds during the creative process … 1. Visualize your prospect. Live salespeople have a huge advantage over us direct response types. Since they’re eyeball to eyeball with their prospect, they can know precisely how he’s responding to everything that’s happening in the sales conversation. They can read their prospect’s body language … facial expressions and even the inflection in his voice. And they can use that information to identify unspoken objections … sense skepticism and assuage it with proof elements … judge when the prospect is growing tired of the conversation or becoming distracted … and much, much more. Perhaps the greatest difference between top marketers and everyone else is that they have developed a sixth sense that tells them what their prospects are most likely to be thinking and feeling as they move through their sales copy. After I’ve consumed my research and before I begin writing a promotion, I like to take a few minutes just to think about the person with whom I’m about to have this conversation. Who is he/she? Where is he when your direct mail package appears in

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his hand? What else is going on in the room as she’s reading your Web copy? What core beliefs does your prospect have about companies like yours, products like yours and/or about the subject at hand? What dominant emotion is your prospect most likely to experience as you raise this subject with him? If you were attempting to make this sale in person, what would you say? And more importantly, how would your prospect respond to the things you’re saying? Then, instead of attempting to write red-hot sales copy, have a simple chat with your prospect – all the while, sensing how your prospect is most likely to be responding to each proposition and promise in your copy. What’s the best way to develop this sixth sense? Two things:  irst, practice on real folks in the real world. Next time and every time F you have a conversation with someone, have your “feelers” out. Look for cues that tell you what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling about the conversation. Make this a habit – and before you know it, you’ll become a pro.  econd, make a habit of reading direct response promotions through the S prospect’s eyes. Instead of looking for techniques the copywriter used, visualize how you think a typical prospect is most likely to respond both intellectually and emotionally to every headline, subhead and block of body copy. I think you’ll be amazed at what you learn … how much stronger your copy becomes … and how much higher your response climbs as you develop this skill. 2. Visualize your client. This technique has more to do with energizing you, motivating you and unleashing your creativity … As I’m writing, I hold a mental image of my client being absolutely blown away by the brilliance of my first-draft copy. I see myself delivering my copy … the phone rings … and my client raves about how off-the-hook powerful this promotion is. See, I only tell folks I do this for the money. The truth is, the ego boost I get from impressing my clients is every bit as rewarding for me. And visualizing that emotional reward gives me more than enough

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motivation to do what’s necessary in each draft to produce the highestquality work product I’m capable of. 3. Visualize your payday. Gary Bencivenga does this. I do this. And so does every other top marketer I know. The mental image goes something like this: The phone rings. It’s the client. My promotion is blowing the doors off of everything else they’ve ever mailed. His phone’s ringing off the hook; each call is a new customer placing an order. Plus, every day, the Post Office pulls a huge tractor trailer up to his offices and unloads bags stuffed with more orders. They had to add two more shifts just to count the money that’s pouring in. And best of all, they’re just rolled out – three million pieces – and my $150,000 royalty check is in the mail! I see myself walking out to my mailbox and finding the check. Proudly showing it to my wife. And I lose myself in all the cool things I’m going to do with that money – and all the other royalty checks that promotion is going to earn me in the year ahead. Hey – if that isn’t enough to make you pull out all the stops, nothing will! 4. Visualize how your success will change your life. When I first began freelancing, the money wasn’t so good. I barely made enough to provide for my family. So I went on a shopping spree. Not a real one, mind you; it was just a fantasy. A friend and I sat down and made lists of all the things we wanted and all the things we wanted to do in our lives. We designed our dream lives in painstaking detail – and put it all down on paper. And when I say “painstaking detail,” I mean I wrote down where I wanted to live (Prescott, Arizona), then researched how much my dream house would cost me there. I picked out my dream car, went down to the dealer and worked out what the color, options, price and payments would be. I wanted to become a private pilot, so I visited the local flight training school to see what that would cost, how long it would take. And I wanted my own airplane; so I shopped around for just the right one.

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Then, I added up what all the things I wanted would cost me. And figured out that when I got my income to just $75,000 per year ($223,917 in today’s dollars), my dream life would be mine. Because if you don’t have a clear vision of where you’re going, you’ll never get there. Until I went through this exercise, I had only half the picture. I knew what the vision was costing me. But the rewards I was working for were fuzzy; unfocused. Now, I could see my dream house; smell the leather in my dream car. They were real. From that moment on, I had a crisp, crystal clear mental image of why I was going to work every day. Why I was putting in the long hours. Why I was enduring the humiliation of rejection and failure. And then, I did something else: I began bringing my rewards forward. Rather than waiting years to realize my full vision, I gave myself small rewards along the way. I took my first flying lesson. Moved the family to Prescott (although not to my dream house). And every time a piece of my dream life fell into place, I was reborn. Give it a try – you’ll be amazed at the energy and enthusiasm it brings to your work! Hope this helps … Yours for Bigger Winners, More Often,

Clayton Makepeace Publisher & Editor THE TOTAL PACKAGE

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