THE BOLD How to Be As Lucky As the Luckiest Person You Know

Transcription

1 FATE FAVORS THE BOLD How to Be As Lucky As the Luckiest Person You Know JAMES SKINNER MARK VICTOR HANSEN ROICE KRUEGER

2 How to Be As Lucky As the Luckiest Person You Know James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger shows what you can do to prepare for luck coming into your life. 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 1

3 The Authors JAMES SKINNER is the founder of two global financial groups that manage billions of dollars of assets. He is also recognized as one of the world s foremost business thinkers and appears regularly on Japanese television. MARK VICTOR HANSEN is the co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul empire and is the best-selling nonfiction author of all time. His goal is to make the planet work for all humanity! ROICE KRUEGER co-founded Franklin Covey, the world s largest training company, and has supervised consulting projects for 80 percent of the Fortune 500. NOTE: Ideas That Can Change Your Life is a collaboration of three of the world s most amazing authors, speakers, and thinkers. The first person I may refer to any of the authors. 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 2

4 How to Be Lucky in Life Fate favors the bold, the strong, insistent, consistent, and persistent person. You may say, Well, then, how does luck work? The three of us know something about luck. Because you are reading about our luck, you are lucky too. You will see why the three of us are not just a little, but a whole lot, lucky. We want even more luck for you. Does it seem to you that there are people for whom everything just works out? me? You might ask, Why doesn t that ever happen to Then again, maybe it does and you just don t notice. In this book, we want to share with you what luck is and what makes you lucky. 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 3

5 The three of us were tremendously lucky to get together, and I d like to share this experience for the first time. I was in Malaysia, and I was booked to fly home to Singapore. I had no idea at that time what flight anyone else was on. Deciding I wanted to go home early, I asked my assistant to book me an earlier flight. She came back and said, The flights are completely booked, and there are no seats. I said, So what? Get me a seat. We cannot; we cannot. I m wait-listed on first class (the policy on Singapore Airlines is that if you are wait-listed on first class you are guaranteed an economyclass seat), and I told her, I don t care if I have to fly economy, I want to get home sooner. She called up the airline again; this time the entire reservation system was down, so they couldn t do anything for anybody. 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 4

6 Well, I don t care if the computer system is down, I argued. The policy says that I should be able to get a seat to go home. Just tell them that whenever the system is up they need to make it happen. While we were discussing our options, the system came up and somebody had cancelled a seat in first class. I arrived at the check-in counter at the Kuala Lumpur airport, and just then Mark Victor Hansen showed up in the line behind me. We ended up sitting next to each other on the flight to Singapore. It was really amazing because Mark looked over at me and said, I woke up this morning and my body was shaking because I think I have figured out a way to sell a billion books. I ve got the code cracked. I replied, Well, I have a way to sell a billion books. An inquisitive look was in Mark s eyes as he replied, Well, how do you do it? 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 5

7 In about 45 minutes we came up with a plan that accelerated the way either of us sold books by 2,000 times. It was complete luck that we happened to be sitting next to each other on an airplane. As we look at all the luck that we have experienced in our lives, and remember all the lucky people that we have been privileged to associate with and learn from, we have identified some key principles used by all the lucky people we know. Those same principles can make you lucky too! Here s what we know about luck: Principle 1: To Be Lucky, Be Prepared The three of us were prepared to meet each other. Our life experiences, dreams, and goals brought us together. When the opportunity struck, we were lucky. 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 6

8 At four o clock in the morning one day, I had typed up how I was going to sell a billion books. When I heard someone else claim they could do it, I said, You ve got to tell me, because I ve already got my idea done, and it isn t going to change. When I heard the other idea, I thought, What a giant idea! Then James said, Look, you ve got to meet my mentor, friend, partner, and colleague, Roice. We ll have dinner with him. Before dinner was over, we had upgraded our plans and we had figured out five ways to do it. The point is, each of us was prepared for the meeting. We had been thinking about the goal of selling more books than had ever been sold before in history. We were ready to sit at the table and play at the highest level. Our preparation was mother to our luck! 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 7

9 I remember the exact moment I learned this principle of preparing for luck. I was on the wrestling team. Now, if there s one thing I can tell you about any sport, it is that wrestling is probably the sport that has the least luck. There are only two people out on the mat, so you cannot blame it on your teammates, your mother, your father, or your coach. And guess what? There is no weather because we do the whole thing indoors, so you can t say, It was raining or It was snowing. It makes sense to say wrestling is the sport with the least luck. On our team were two world champions; one of them had been a world champion five times. We also had five people who were national champions, and most of them had been national champions five years in a row. It was an amazing team. One of these wrestlers was a guy by the name of John Borich. One day we competed against our rival high school. John Borich had never been defeated in any high school competition that I could remember, because he was a 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 8

10 national champion. There was nobody locally who could touch him. He would go out, pin them, and go home. The next match he would do it all over again: pin them and go home. One day, we went for a match with Grant High School, our biggest perennial rival. John went out on the mat, and about a minute and 30 seconds into the match he tried to execute a particular move. He rolled over, and his opponent caught him halfway through his roll. He was pinned instantly! The match was over. I remember on the bus on the way home, one of our teammates tried to comfort John by saying, Oh, he just got lucky. And John said, That s so stupid. The opportunity presented itself, and he exploited it. 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 9

11 We used to have this big sign in our wrestling room that the coach had put there: Luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparation. John s opponent was prepared to exploit this opportunity. The odds of beating John were not strong, and he knew it. But he paid attention for the right opportunity to present itself, and he defeated and pinned a five-time national champion. In other words, the real message is Be prepared! It s not just finding the opportunity; you have to be prepared to seize it. The opportunity to work with Stephen Covey appeared in my life. I had to be prepared. What did I have prepared? I had a couple of very simple skills, but very powerful ones: One was I knew how to sell. One of the very first programs that we ever launched was called The Masters of Executive 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 10

12 Excellence. Because I was able to sell, I was useful to the organization. Stephen could teach it, but I could sell it! If you are prepared, when the opportunity presents itself, you get lucky. Oprah Winfrey was making The Color Purple and she was sitting at lunch with Steven Spielberg, arguably the world s greatest director. He was writing in his journal the goals he was going to accomplish: He wanted to start a new company called DreamWorks with two partners, and he was going to make a billion dollars a year. Oprah asked him, Can I see your journal? He handed it to her. After reading his goals, she inquired, Do you mind if I copy that in mine? Spielberg was thinking that she was going to copy DreamWorks. She took her name, Oprah, turned it backwards to Harpo Productions, and she wrote, I need certain people as my partners, and I ll make a billion a year! The rest is history. She became the first female billionaire. 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 11

13 Why? Luck favors the prepared. Part of your preparation is writing down your goals. Oprah had prepared herself by writing in a journal. She saw her future. She saw a man who was doing the future. She modeled him. She said, I am going to be a person of action. Writing down goals and ideas is spiritual law. Ancient wisdom says, Write a thing; make it clear; it shall be established unto you. Some of you need to write down your goals. I teach it this way: Write 101 goals. That is your preparation. Keep adding to it. Do not cross them out like items on a grocery list. Write down Victory! when you achieve them. 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 12

14 Oprah became the first female self-made billionaire in history. Many people would say that was luck. It was preparation before it was luck! She wanted to be in The Color Purple; she read the book 20 times, and she met Quincy Jones. Quincy Jones told Steven Spielberg, You ve got to have this woman in your picture! The rest is history. So many people talk about wanting to be lucky. If you don t feel as though you are lucky right now, then you need to focus on your preparation. Opportunity Must Show Up! Some people say, I need to have a great opportunity or That guy had a great opportunity show up. But the fact of the matter is that opportunities are showing up all the time. 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 13

15 One of the other things I teach is that opportunity is the only thing that is unlimited in business. My hero has always been Abraham Lincoln. I was born in Lincoln, Illinois. Abe Lincoln said, If you prepare, opportunity must show up. Get the Skills You ve got to prepare for wealth, for happiness, for health, for friendship, for collegial relationships, and for your spiritual work. Whatever it is that you want to have in your life, you need to be prepared with is skills. I remember meeting Roice; it was one of the great lucky moments in my life. I wanted to become the licensee for Franklin Covey in Japan. When that moment arrived, I d had 14 years of preparation: learning to speak the Japanese language, learning the Japanese market, and building relationships and contacts there. All that cleared the way for the next bit of luck. Believe it or not, the first translation into Japanese of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People did not sell well in 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 14

16 Japan. It had been done by Japan s largest publishing company, and they only sold 5,000 copies! We had the skills to re-translate it and make it immaculate. How many did we sell? We sold a million in the first two years. That is preparation. It s really fun when we go into the bookstores in Japan, and there is The 7 Habits, which I translated, and my book The 9 Steps of Success, sitting right next to Dale Carnegie. People say, You were lucky; you came across The 7 Habits, but it doesn t have anything to do with luck. It has to do with whether or not you are prepared, if you have the skills and the goals, and the dreams and aspirations. Then all the things that are necessary to make it happen show up. Principle 2: To Be Lucky, Use Positive Language To be lucky, you have to use lucky language, and lucky language is positive language. 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 15

17 To have positive language, you have to think positively. You have to see, you have to believe in yourself and then you have to reflect that belief in the words that you use. Shut off all the media, the newspapers, and the television. Protect yourself from anything that promotes negativity in thought, in word, or in deed. I remember when we first were rejected in Japan because we were not Japanese. We had flown to Dallas Texas to meet with Dr. Dee Groberg, who had the authority to give us the license or to reject us. From the very start, Dee was giving us the cold shoulder. On the last day of our meeting I sat him down. I said, Dee, we re in Dallas, Texas. I ve never actually been to Texas before. I m not from Texas; I m from Oregon. You may say this is hard, and it can t be done, but I m used to life being hard. I started work at the age of 11. Hard is OK. I can deal with that. 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 16

18 I used a very particular phrase, a very positive piece of language that I want everyone on earth to remember. Tell me what we need to do. We will do it, I said. We ll produce any result. You tell us exactly what to do, and then if we can t do it, we ll leave you alone. It is almost impossible to say no to that! Furthermore, we did what was asked of us. They said, Look, we want you to go sell a seminar. We want you to fill a room. We re going to come and teach it. You ve got to fill a room. We filled the room, and we taught the seminar. Not only did we fill up the room, but we also translated the manual into Japanese. We had it printed. We prepared all the slides, and we had a product display table that had every product that their company had ever developed, including some products that Roice and Dee had never seen before. They didn t know how we d scrounged them up. We had called every department in the company, and we d gotten them to give us a sample 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 17

19 of every product that they had ever sold, developed, mocked up, or thought of. Being positive is key. We didn t use negative language with them, and we didn t use it with ourselves. Soul? Mark, how did you prepare for Chicken Soup for the We taped our success goals on the mirror at my house and posted them in Jack s house, my office, and Jack s office; and then we embellished our list. I had interviewed the 101 bestselling authors because I wanted to be prepared, and I was prepared. One of the authors was Dr. Scott Peck, who wrote The Road Less Traveled, which had been number one for 12 years and had made $40 million. He told us all these keys to being a successful writer. For example, you ve got to do at least one interview every day for the rest of your life. Everyone thinks they are going to be number one. You guys are going to sell 20,000 books, and that is going to be good; we re going to do cartwheels. Then 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 18

20 we did a million and a half in a year and a half, and then 50 million, and then 144 million. Now our goal is a perfect 20/20 vision, because we re prepared to sell a billion books. Now, no one has ever done that before in a human lifetime. when! We didn t talk in terms of if, we talked in terms of What s the problem with that one word: if? If gives you a fall-back position so you can use an excuse of breaking a leg or getting sick or slowing down. If means it might not happen. If connotes the negative. It lets you off the hook, and you don t get the force you re capable of delivering. But a when says I m committed! It s interesting I published a book in Japan called The 9 Steps of Success, and I said I was going to sell a million copies of this particular book. Everyone said it 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 19

21 couldn t be done. After we printed 30,000 in the first edition, we printed 30,000 more copies in the second edition for a total of 60,000 copies. People on Amazon were writing, Oh, that guy said he was going to sell a million books, and look, only his core audience has even bought the thing! I m looking at it saying, Only my core audience has bought it yet! And we re now at 250,000 copies and growing. I really want to zone in on the principles. The principles can be used by anybody, anywhere, in any country. You ve got to be prepared, and you ve got to talk positively. You ve got to say, When we do it and We will do it and We re going to do it and We don t care how hard it is; just tell us what we have to do. I remember when we went to set up a publishing company in Japan. Japan has a really strange publishing industry. There are two wholesalers, with 68 percent of the market. You have to have an account with them to get your book distributed. Everyone told us we couldn t get an account with them. But we asked anyway. Can we have an account? And they said No! And we said, 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 20

22 OK, well, what would we have to do to get an account? They said, If you did this and this and this and this, then you could have an account. So we went back and we did this and this and this and this; and two weeks later we went back and said, We ve done everything that you ve told us. So we ended up with an account with every wholesaler in Japan. That publishing company still exists today in Japan and has published many, many best sellers. You need to use positive language, and you need to be prepared. Principle 3: To Be Lucky, Associate with Lucky People You become like the people you hang out with, my mother said. It s the truest thing that any mother has ever taught her son. 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 21

23 When I was in a program about 15 years ago by Tony Robbins, 9,000 people were at NASA Coliseum to hear him. I am ten years older than Tony. I was making a million a year, but he was making $137 million that year even though we were teaching the same principles. One evening, at 12:45 a.m., I found him going to get in his own private jet and fly home. I asked him, What is happening here with the difference between your success and mine? His response was, Tell me how many of the people in your Mastermind Group are millionaires. I said, Every one of them. He said, There s your problem. I thought, Aha! I immediately got four billionaire friends. A billionaire has the same 24 hours you do; they don t have any more. I learned it is what you do with those 24 hours and whom you associate with during that time that matter. I took Tony s advice, and my wealth shot up. When you change your thinking, augment your association patterns, and are prepared, you will also change your results. 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 22

24 What does a billionaire want from me? The billionaires I hang out with need a lot of things from me. They need self-esteem; they need reinforcement. They are still human beings, and they have to have somebody. Maybe you do not have any billionaires in your neighborhood, which is fine; there are plenty of billionaires. For me, a billionaire is someone who wants to sell a billion books. For me a billionaire is someone who wants to change the life of a billion people on the planet. Find people with a billionaire mindset and become billionaires together! Would you say that in order to be successful, to do what you want to do, you have to associate with unlucky people? No. Just the opposite. Do you want to work with people who are unprepared to take advantage of opportunities? Do you want to hang out with people who have tattoos that say Loser? 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 23

25 Do you want to be with people who speak negatively and are always dumping trash into your mind? What you need to do, no matter where you are, is look at the people around you and look for the people for whom life is going well. If things seem to work out for certain people around you, you need to spend time with these people. They are going to teach you why things are working out for them. They will model success for you. Not only that, but they will join in your dream with you; they will find ways to make it happen. We just had just encountered this phenomenon with a gentleman who had been assisting us superbly in the Maldives. We asked him, What do you want to do in your life? He said, I want to own my own boat. We immediately wanted to help him do this because we saw someone with a positive image. We wanted to join in with him. Not only will you learn from successful 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 24

26 people, they may join in and help you with resources and opportunities. This man s story is such a key example. He works at a hotel in a resort and makes only $500 a month. Yet, by putting himself in a position of service (and his service was phenomenal: we showed up on the beach and he d immediately be running there with towels), he made us want to hang out with him. All of a sudden, here is this regular guy hanging out with three multimillionaires, who are now talking about financing his fishing boat. This is how you get lucky in life, even if you are making only $500 a month! I am a student of Andrew Carnegie, who inspired Napoleon Hill to write Think and Grow Rich. One of the things about Carnegie that impressed me happened when he bought the biggest house in Doornock, Scotland. His mother was going to do the decorating for him, and it happened to be raining hard when she went 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 25

27 shopping for furnishings. She was dripping wet and disheveled when she came into the most elegant store in town. Most people walked by her. One of the workmen said, Ma am, can I get you a chair? He got her a chair and a towel, and he took care of her. The next day Andrew Carnegie sent a messenger to the store, and he basically said, My mother is coming back here, and there is only one fellow who can help her buy all the furnishings for my house in Scotland, and that is the man who took care of my mother. Six people in your store didn t pay any attention to her because she looked wet and dowdy and didn t have an umbrella with her. The person who took care of her will get all the business. Oh, no, no, no! the store manager responded. There are more qualified people in fashion and design. No, we want this man because he took care of my mother. 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 26

28 I d like to say something about associating. Sometimes we think of this word in terms of our personal associations, the building of our relationships; but there is another way of associating. It is associating with your mind. Learn from others; study those who are successful. If you have the opportunity to attend a seminar or a lecture, that is a wonderful way of associating because you can learn the principles and concepts that the speakers and attendees use to become successful. You need to fill your minds with the biographies of successful people, whether those people have become successful in wealth, politics, inventing, or whatever. Study whatever you want to become good at. I suggest you buy a bunch of biographical videos for $20 each. When I first caught on to this principle, I bought $4,000 worth of biography videos: everything from Ray Kroc and his success with McDonald s, to Thomas Edison; and I thought Wow! I have watched 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 27

29 the videos multiple times. What I get from them permeates, penetrates, and fills the space in my mind. Now I want to talk about another way to associate. It s called virtual association. I went bankrupt 33 years ago. I lost $2 million of other people s money in one day (I have since paid it all back). My life had been turned upside down; things were not going well. But I had been reading books. I said, Now wait a second, I have access to these wonderful minds! I had what we now call a virtual mastermind: I had Napoleon Hill, Andrew Carnegie, and Walt Disney guarding and guiding me. I grew up loving them. I also admired John Kennedy because he said, Let s land a man on the moon. I had the greatest speaker at the time, Dr. Martin Luther King. I felt as though I actually had conversations with them. My clients would say, Well, we need this, this, and this. And I would think of my virtual masterminds and inquire, What would you say to them? You can get access to the best minds in the world if you study them, if you do your homework. 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 28

30 I had the opportunity one summer of taking care of some orchards for a recluse, a brilliant man who was on the school board in our district. I would go see him inside the house from time to time, and he would teach me. One day he asked, Roice, where are you going to go for your university? I fired off the names of two or three Ivy League universities; I wanted to impress him. He looked at me and said, Why are you going there? I said, I want to learn, and I want to have that name behind me. He thought for a minute and then said, Roice, I would advise you to do this: Find the university that has the finest teachers in the field that you want to be in and then suck their brains out. In other words, make the emphasis on the learning, the association. I wanted to make sure that my kids got the best education. We wanted them to go to a public school. We live in a very nice neighborhood, and the school had teachers with a master s degree or above. I sat with my 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 29

31 children, personally, in six kindergarten classes, the last one being Ms. Fellows. my life. Oh! I wanted to be in kindergarten for the rest of She danced, she sang, she had the kids whisper in each other s ears, she was multilingual, she could play the piano, she let them roll around on the ground, and she took them on field trips. I entered my youngest daughter in her class. At the end of the term, Ms. Fellows sat down with my wife and me and said, Patty and Mark, your daughter doesn t have the emotional maturity yet to go to first grade. How can you fail kindergarten? I asked. She said, You want children to fail now rather than in fourth or fifth grade. To her credit, Melanie did not know that she took two years with Ms. Fellows in 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 30

32 kindergarten. As a result, Melanie was perfectly prepared for first grade; she is now a middle-school kid, her academics are superior, and she has been student body president. They may be recluses, academicians, leaders, or former politicians, but there are people out there who can take you to the next level. In my book The One Minute Millionaire I listed 12 questions that you should ask a millionaire, such as How did you become a millionaire? What was the system? Can it be duplicated? Would you do it with me? You ask those kinds of questions, and they will love to answer. The other thing that is important to this process is knowing that if you want to associate with lucky people, you must find needs they have that you can fill. Bingo. You absolutely can work for lucky people. I had a mentor at one time by the name of Paul Dunn. At one time in his life, Paul Dunn was a manager of a 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 31

33 supermarket. They had just opened a new supermarket in their chain, and they d finished recruiting and hiring all the staff. Right after they d hired the last person, a young man walked into the supermarket. He found the manager, read his name tag, and said, Mr. Dunn, I ve come to apply for a job. Mr. Dunn replied, We ve already filled the positions; there are none available. Oh, I see. But I have something that you need. I ve told this story to thousands of CEOs and executives, and I ve asked how many are intrigued by this question. Invariably all the hands go up. Everyone wants to know what this kid has got that the manager needs. Mr. Dunn was curious too. He asked, So, boy, you ve got something I need? What is it that you have that I need? 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 32

34 The young man said, I have service, and you need it. Your store will succeed or fail based on the level of service that you provide to your customers. You need service. I have it. Here s what we do: You don t need to pay me. Let me work for one week; and if at the end of one week I have not proven to you that I am invaluable to your store and that you absolutely need me, then I will walk away and you will never hear from me again. Needless to say, Paul gave him the job. I ve asked thousands of chief executives, Without knowing anything else about the individual other than what has just been said, how many of you would hire this individual without even looking at his résumé? Invariably, over 80 percent of all the chief executives I have ever worked with would hire the individual, without even looking at his résumé, just based on his attitude. If you want to invite luck into your life, you can ingratiate yourself with great and powerful people of the world, and you can associate with lucky people, learn 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 33

35 everything they have learned, and become phenomenally lucky in your life. This young man became the next general manager of the store when they opened up a store in the neighboring town. Principle 4: To Be Lucky, Be Bold! That brings us to our fourth principle: To be lucky you must be bold. The young man in the previous story was bold. We must be bold outwardly and in approaching other people, but we must also possess internal boldness: being bold with ourselves. We must move forward and be bold. from? Otherwise, where is the opportunity going to come How are we going to be prepared? 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 34

36 How will we approach the lucky people we need to associate with? We ve got to be bold to do it. W. Clement Stone said, If you ve got everything to gain, and nothing to lose by trying, by all means try. This reminds me of H. Ross Perot he got fired at IBM for making more money than the chairman of the board. So he said, I ll start my own company. He knocked on 80 doors, and 80 doors said no. The 81st door said yes and gave him a $4 million order for his little company called Electronic Data Systems, which he later sold to General Motors. The point is he didn t get paid $4 million if you divide $4 million by 80, he was paid $50,000 every time he was told no. Perot was willing to work for free, every no essentially meaning No, we re not going to pay you. Everybody ought to apprentice. Most people want it to be Give me the money, and then I ll work, but that s not the way it should work. 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 35

37 Our friend Earl Nightingale said, If you want heat out of the fireplace, first you ve got to put in the wood. You ve got to be prepared, you ve got to light it, you ve got to stoke it. Then the heat will come out. You ve got to give some before you can get some. Once that heat starts coming out, sometimes it s just a matter of having the boldness to ask for something. Some time ago I was involved in selling a company I had developed. We were getting down to the closing negotiations, and I woke up one morning feeling a little bit bolder than usual. So I called up the CEO of the company that was looking into purchasing us. I said to him, I think we re almost there. He d been thinking that we were already there! But I had awakened the next morning feeling just a little bit bolder, and I said, If you can throw in an extra $210,000, I think we can close the deal. He said, Done. I was thinking, All you need to do to make $210,000 is pick up the phone and ask for it? 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 36

38 What s the opposite of being bold? Being timid? Will fate bless you and will you be lucky if you re timid? Turn that idea around. We cannot be timid. We must state what we want, we must associate with the right people, and we must be bold. I taught this principle to a new employee who worked at one of my companies in Japan. I told him, You need to be bold. You need to be able to go out into the world and ask for and insist on getting what you want. So figure out what it is that you really want and have the boldness and the temerity to go out and ask for it. He started thinking about it, and he said, That girl in the HR department who hired me is really terrific! Everyone considered her the goddess of the whole company. Every guy wanted to go out on a date with her, but everyone was too afraid to ask. The new employee went over to the HR department and asked, Would you like to go to Disneyland on Saturday? She 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 37

39 replied, I d love to! Saturday came, and they were going around Disneyland, enjoying the rides and having a good time. He looked over at her and said, Would you like to marry me? Nobody had ever asked her before! Her response was If you ll have me. That is bold! I learned early on when in high school that the most beautiful women sometimes don t get asked to the prom because everyone assumes they have already been asked. That is why you have to be bold. If you want something good, you have to ask for it. You have to go for it. Change the Basis of Comparison We want to do something that is bold sell a billion books in a day. That is bold. By the way, if we come up with just half, that s still 500 million books. That is more than anyone else ever sold. We set out to write 100 books in 100 days, and it has never been done before. It usually takes at least 100 days to write one book (and usually much more than that). 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 38

40 As soon as we were bold enough to have that goal, writing three books in a day or three books in a week started to seem like fairly easy tasks. If you think about it, if you said you wanted to sell a million books in a day and we said how about a billion books in a day a million would look easy! When we started this project, we went out and sold 2 million books in the first ten minutes. It is all conceptual. W. Clement Stone says you figure out how much you can make in a year let s say $100,000, which is a lot for the average salesperson and squish it down. (Do sound effects so you multi-sense it.) Get it down to a month. Now you go for $100,000 a month. Now squish down to a week, now a day, now a second. It s all conceptual! Napoleon Hill said, Whatever the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve. I tell people you need to take some bold, massive action on your goal. George S. Clayson, in his wonderful book The Richest Man in Babylon, said, The men of action are favored by the goddess of good luck. This is 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 39

41 such a great line. You need to be men or women of action, people who are willing to go out and actually do something. You also need to be children of action. Absolutely. Make Your Own Fate As we refer back to the title of this book, Fate Favors the Bold, we want to look at it this way: We can really make our own fate by being bold. Boldness will create that fate, which will create that luck, if we are prepared, when we have that positive language, and if we associate with the right people. I want everyone who is reading this to think about whatever it is that you want right now. What would be a bold, massive action on such a tremendous scale that it would be absolutely impossible to fail? One of my great mentors in this field is Dee Hock. He founded the Visa Card, which is the largest 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 40

42 commercial venture in history. Two months after starting the Visa card, Dee asked 3,000 banks to join his system. Now I ask, when was the last time you talked to 3,000 customers? He did it in the first 60 days. He was so bold; his action was so great, that it was absolutely impossible to fail. All 3,000 banks joined the system, and it became the largest commercial venture in human history. Don t be timid. Be bold. Bold has action and power within it. Make it work for you. With our best wishes for bringing luck into your life, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, Roice Krueger 2007, James Skinner, Mark Victor Hansen, and Roice Krueger, All rights reserved. 41