Mentored by a Millionaire E-Book

Steven K. Scott

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 538

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Unlike any book you've ever read, Mentored by a Millionaire is made up of fifteen mentoring sessions in which you will be mentored in the strategies, skills, and techniques used by super achievers who have become the world's most successful men and women. You will be mentored in these sessions by Steve Scott, a man who has not only made millions himself, but has helped dozens of others make millions as well.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

PREFACE

Four Reasons Why This Book Is Going to Make a Phenomenal Difference in Your ...

How Do I Know These Techniques Will Work for You?

So Will These Strategies and Techniques Really Work for You?

Introduction

Four Types of People—Which Type Are You?

Comparison Charts

You’ve Just Been Given a Brand-New Porsche Turbo Carrera

I Gave Up on Most of My Dreams within Two Years of Graduating!

I’ll Bet My Resume Was a Lot Worse than Yours!

Once a Failure, Always a Failure ... Right? Wrong!

So What the Heck Happened? How Could a Habitual Failure Become a Multimillionaire?

Everyone Needs a Mentor

Four Questions You Should Answer Before You Commit to a Potential Mentor

Strategies and Tips for Identifying and Recruiting Mentors

What Qualifies Me to Be One of Your Mentors?

“But Nothing’s Ever Really Worked for Me Before. Why Will This Be Any Different?”

SESSION 1 - A New Software Package for Your Brain

Master Strategy 1—Reprogram Your Mind and Attitude to Achieve Extraordinary Outcomes

How We Were Erroneously Programmed for Mediocrity

Before You Reprogram, You Have to Trash Your Old Programming

The Three-Step Process of Reprogramming Your Brain and Attitude

—BONUS SECTION— - Activating Your Photographic Memory

SESSION 2 - Discovering Your Personality Type—You’ll Like Your Style!

You Are a Brand-new Porsche Turbo Carrera, Not a 1957 VW Beetle!

Master Strategy 2—Play to Your Strengths, Strengthen Your Weaknesses, and ...

The Five-Minute Personality Test

Great News about Your Personality Type

SESSION 3 - No Time, No Talent, No Money—No Problem!

Master Strategy 3—Power-Pass Your Lack of Know-How

Master Strategy 4—Remove the Limits of Your Limited Resources

SESSION 4 - Steven Spielberg’s Masterful Strategy for Maximum Achievement in ...

Master Strategy 5—Identify, Recruit, and Effectively Utilize Partners

Implementing the Four Steps of Effective Partnering

Four Essential Components to Effectively Utilize Partners

A Word about Manipulating with Fear

Strategies and Tips for Identifying and Recruiting the Right Partners

SESSION 5 - What You Say and How You Say It Changes Everything!

What a Difference This Key Can Make!

Your Communication Skills Will Either Accelerate Your Achievement or Slam the ...

Master Strategy 6—Become an Effective and Persuasive Communicator

The Four Challenges to Effective and Persuasive Communication

SESSION 6 - Using Your Master Key to Open Any Door

Hooking a Person’s Undivided Attention

Salting Your Conversation to Keep Your Listener’s Attention Level High

Using Emotional Word Pictures to Implant Understanding in the Listener’s Mind ...

Using the Three Greatest Motivating Factors to Recruit the Will

Preparing a Persuasive Presentation

—BONUS SECTION— Preparing a Logical and Persuasive Presentation

SESSION 7 - With This Technique You’ll Superachieve; Without It You Won’t!

Master Strategy 7—Gaining a Clear and Precise Vision of What You Want to Achieve

Vision Mapping—Your Porsche’s GPS System

SESSION 8 - A Vision without a Map Is Worthless!

Master Strategy 8—Using the Vision Mapping Process of Setting and Achieving Goals

Do I Really Have to Go into This Much Detail in Writing?

SESSION 9 - The Secret Strategy of the World’s Most Successful People

Master Strategy 9—Dreaming Bigger than You Can Possibly Achieve

SESSION 10 - The Billion-Dollar Difference . . . Better than Winning a Lottery!

True Persistence—It’s Not What You Think It Is

Creative Persistence—Edison’s Ultimate Secret for Success

Why the Skill of Creative Persistence Is Critical to Your Success

Master Strategy 10—Using Breakthrough Techniques for Creative Persistence

SESSION 11 - Removing the Single Greatest Roadblock to Achieving Your Dreams

Master Strategy 11—Overcoming Your Subconscious and Conscious Fears of Failure

SESSION 12 - Bring On the Critics . . . and Beat Them!

Master Strategy 12—Overcoming Your Avoidance of Criticism

SESSION 13 - Taking Control and Keeping It

Another Secret of Superachievers

Master Strategy 13—Taking Control of Your Life, One Day at a Time

SESSION 14 - It’s Easy to Become Positively Amazing

Positive Thinking Can Be Positively Stupid!

Master Strategy 14—Acquiring a Positive Personality

Seven Keys to Maximizing Your Relationships

SESSION 15 - Discovering the High-Octane Fuel of the World’s Most Successful People

Master Strategy 15—Gaining Passion for Your Visions

INDEX

Copyright © 2004 by Steven K. Scott. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone].

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. The publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services, and you should consult a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Scott, Steve, 1948-

Mentored by a millionaire / Steven K. Scott.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-471-46763-4

1. Success—Psychological aspects. I. Title.

BF637.S8S388 2004

158.1—dc22 2003018876

Dedication

To My Mentors:

In Life

My incredibly wise and loving wife, Shannon Smiley Scott.

My angelic mother, Minnie Joy Scott, and my courageous father, Gordon Scott.

Jim Shaughnessy, Dr. Gary Smalley, Pastor Jim Borror, and Herb and Helen Selby.

In Business

My mentor who changed everything, Bob Marsh.

To Those I Love Mentoring Most:

My wonderful children: Hallie Rose, Sean Kelly, Ryan, Devin, Zach, Mark, and Carol, and my sweet granddaughter, Madeline.

My readers and listeners who come with hope and trust and leave with knowledge and skills.

PREFACE

Would You Rather Be Taught by a Teacher, or Mentored by a Millionaire?

The Strategies, Skills, and Techniques You Are About to Learn Have Empowered the World’s Most Successful People to Achieve Their Impossible Dreams. As you use these strategies, skills, and techniques, you will begin to move toward a level of success greater than you have ever experienced. This will be true in any endeavor to which they are applied: your job, your career, even your marriage. Unfortunately these strategies, skills, and techniques are not taught in high school, college, or graduate school. You will not experience their power by simply reading self-help books or attending motivational seminars. They are known only to an elite few and are learned and mastered only through the mentoring process.

While a good teacher or motivator may increase your level of success by 25, 50, or even 100 percent, a good mentor can increase your level of success by 1,000, 5,000, or 10,000 percent! For example, my business mentor increased my personal income by more than 56,000 percent. My relationships mentor aided me in the critical skills I needed to win back the heart and hand of my ex-wife and build the happiest and most fulfilling relationship either of us has ever experienced.

How many self-help books have you read? How many motivational speakers have you heard? After reading a good self-help book or hearing a great motivational speaker, chances are you felt like a new person. But how long did the feeling last? Within a few weeks you were right back into the same old feelings you had experienced before. The changes you expected never materialized. You felt frustrated and perhaps even like a failure. Even though you may have blamed yourself for failing, it probably wasn’t your fault. Many motivational speakers make a living speaking or writing, but have not achieved extraordinary success in starting, building, or managing a business. They often play the role of cheerleaders and can truly psych you up for a week or two. These talented and inspiring speakers and writers may have given you wonderful principles, exciting concepts, entertaining stories, and brilliant strategies. They may have truly inspired you to desire more success at work and at home. But, when they failed to equip you with the specific techniques and skills needed to apply their strategies to your daily endeavors, failure was unavoidable. You had no more chance of achieving extraordinary success than a soldier who is given a battle plan by a general, but sent into the battlefield without a weapon or any combat skills. So don’t blame yourself for not achieving extraordinary success after attending a motivational seminar or reading a self-help book. Simply stated, you were not adequately trained and equipped.

Cheerleaders may supply a burst of emotional enthusiasm, but they don’t throw the pass, score the touchdown, or win the game. Military generals plan great strategies, but they don’t shoot the rifles, drive the tanks, or fly the planes. To win a game, a battle, or a war, you need more than cheerleaders and strategists. You need men and women who are (1) effectively trained and (2) adequately equipped to accomplish their objectives.

Four Reasons Why This BookIsGoing to Make a Phenomenal Difference in Your Professional and Personal Life

1. You’ll learn the 15 master strategies of the world’s most successful people. These strategies have catapulted hundreds of ordinary people to unimaginable heights of success and wealth. They are not taught in colleges or business schools, but were discovered through personal experience or learned from mentors.

2. You’ll learn and master specific techniques to instantly apply each strategy to your daily life at work and at home. These techniques are simple and easily learned, and yet incredibly effective, resulting in the mastery of lifetime skills.

3. In 15 one-on-one mentoring sessions, you’ll be led step by step through each technique and strategy with interactive exercises that enable you to begin using each technique literally overnight.

4. You’re not being lectured by an educator or a motivational speaker. You’re being mentored by a man who lost 9 jobs in six years, yet became a multimillionaire on job number 10 because he too was mentored by a millionaire. Starting more than a dozen companies from scratch, my partners and I generated over $2 billion in sales, creating over $200 million in personal income.

How Do I Know These Techniques Will Work for You?

As you’ll learn in Session 1, during my first six years after college I was a hopeless and habitual failure. Then, as I began to use these strategies and techniques that I learned from my mentors, they empowered me to achieve levels of success I had never dreamed possible. As I became acquainted with others who had achieved phenomenal levels of success, I discovered they too had used these same techniques. As I read the biographies of many of the world’s most successful people, I realized that they had also used these same strategies and techniques. To my amazement, none of these life-changing dream-achieving skills are taught in high school, college, or graduate school. Every superachiever I have met or read about either learned these skills from a mentor or discovered them through personal experience.

As my success grew, I began meeting people who had wonderful dreams but had never succeeded in achieving those dreams no matter how hard they tried. As I helped these people to apply the 15 master strategies, they began to see their dreams come true, literally within weeks. In a number of cases, their incomes grew as well, rising from thousands of dollars per year to millions. To show how universally powerful these strategies and techniques are, I’ll share a few examples.

An Assistant Minister in Waco, Texas

Gary Smalley had a dream of writing a book to teach couples how to have a better marriage. For 10 years he prayed for the chance to see this dream fulfilled. Gary and I got together in 1978 and created a strategy to fulfill this simple dream. Gary has since written 15 consecutive best-sellers, helping millions of couples to achieve happier relationships. His organization, Today’s Family, has also impacted millions of marriages. His videotapes alone have sold over 6 million copies, making them the best-selling self-help tapes in history.

A Professor at Arizona State University

Professor Claude Olney created a seminar to help his struggling students at Arizona State University raise their grade point averages. He dreamed of offering a set of cassette tapes to college students at other universities. We created a plan that resulted in the creation of audio- and videotaped seminars for grade school, high school, and college students. The result was the best-selling educational tape series in history. These tapes changed the lives of millions of students and made the professor a multimillionaire within one year.

A Makeup Artist in Los Angeles

Victoria Jackson was a talented but struggling makeup artist in Los Angeles. She had created a cream makeup base that was unique, and she had tried to market it for eight years with little success. Although she had hundreds of jars of product in her garage, she had all but given up. Using the strategies from this book, we created a plan that resulted in the development of an entire makeup line with over 160 products. Within five years, Victoria Jackson Cosmetics had realized sales of over $300 million, and Victoria had become a multimillionaire.

Two Fitness Equipment Inventors in San Diego

Tom Campanero and Larry Westfall had created a wonderful but very big and heavy piece of fitness equipment. For nearly 20 years they demonstrated their machine at hundreds of conventions. Unfortunately, their sales reached only 5,000 units per year. In 1996 we created a plan using the strategies and techniques in which you are going to be mentored. Today, seven years later, the redesigned Total Gym has sold over 2.5 million units, generating nearly $1 billion in sales. In addition to becoming the single most popular piece of home fitness equipment in history, the Total Gym is currently used by over 7,000 athletic and sports medicine facilities to rehabilitate and train over 7 million people per year.

So Will These Strategies and Techniques Really Work for You?

The people in these examples were no different than you and me. They were ordinary people who had tried hard to succeed for years. And yet they had only achieved moderate success at best. You see, even though they had truly tried their hardest, they had not yet discovered the keys that could open the doors between them and extraordinary success. Once they were equipped with those simple keys, the doors were easily opened. These are the same keys that will be placed in your hands during our 15 mentoring sessions.

Now if you still don’t believe that these strategies and techniques can make that big a difference in your life, maybe you’ll believe what a few well-known Americans have written about these strategies and their awesome power to effect change in anyone’s life.

“Steve Scott’s uncanny insights and strategies are so specific and easily applied, I believe they can empower any reader, whether a college student, small business owner or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company to achieve levels of success they haven’t yet dreamed of.”

Donald Trump

“Steve Scott not only proves you can achieve your ‘impossible dreams,’ he takes you by the hand and gives you the knowledge, the steps, the confidence and the power to achieve every one!”

Chuck Norris

“Steve Scott gives us the specific strategies and techniques that we need to learn and use to achieve our most valued dreams. He not only shows us how to make our most impossible dreams possible, he shows us how to make them probable!”

Christie Brinkley

“He gives you a clear and concise roadmap to achieving more success than you would ever think possible. If you follow it, you’re sure to get there.”

Dick Clark

“If you follow his steps, you’re sure to achieve your impossible dreams.”

Joe Montana

So will these strategies work for you? Absolutely! All you need to do is learn them and then diligently apply them to your daily life. A house key left on your car seat won’t open the door to your home as long as it remains on the seat. And yet, when picked up and placed into the door’s lock and turned, it will easily open the door every time. The same is true here. Read about these keys and leave them on the pages of this book, and they will do nothing for you. Lift them off the pages and use them, and they’ll open doors that you have never even dared to approach, much less attempted to open.

As you begin each of the 15 mentoring sessions, realize that these are not simply chapters in a book. There is no deadline to complete a session or finish this book. This book is not about me; it’s about you. At the end of each session there is a section entitled “Actions for Traction,” in which you’ll find a set of interactive exercises that will enable you to apply and master the strategies and techniques you learned in that session. Complete each session and set of exercises in your own time. As you do, you will immediately see changes begin to take place. Your level of creativity and productivity will skyrocket. Your relationships at work, as well as at home, will begin to improve, gradually at first and then very dynamically. Your enthusiasm, passion, and fulfillment will reach levels that you only thought were possible for other people.

Because it’s important that you only seek out mentors who are truly qualified in the area in which you are being mentored, this is the only section in this book that is about me, while the 15 mentoring sessions are all about you. So let’s begin!

INTRODUCTION

From Habitual Failure to MultiMillionaire—All It Took Was a Mentor. Now It’s Your Turn!

Getting to Know Your Mentor and Your High-Powered Vehicle for Extraordinary Success Have you ever wondered why only a few people achieve their dreams and why most people don’t? I went to high school with Steven Spielberg. We sat next to each other at nearly every football game—he was in the band and I was in the color guard. He played a great clarinet and at the time I thought that he would end up becoming a studio musician. However, he dreamed of becoming a film director. He had been making amateur movies since the sixth grade, and movie making was his true passion. Unfortunately, he was not a good student and his applications to the UCLA and USC film schools were rejected. In high school he had been a C-minus student (in a good semester) while I had been a B-plus student. I completed college on an academic scholarship, and he dropped out of college. And yet, by the time we had both been out of high school for 10 years, he had directed more than a dozen television shows and two feature films including the number one box-office hit of the decade. I, on the other hand, had flunked out of eight jobs and was earning less than half of the income of the average wage earner in America.

So why was Steven achieving most of his dreams while I was failing to achieve most of mine? The answer was simple: He was doing the things that those elite few who achieve their impossible dreams do, while I was doing the things that the vast majority of adults do who don’t achieve their dreams. Interestingly, those things that were driving Steven’s success are not taught in high school, college, or graduate school, while I was doing all of the things we are taught to do in high school and college. Now if that doesn’t pique your curiosity, maybe this will. As soon as I began doing the same things that Steven had been doing, I too began achieving my impossible dreams. My first eight jobs had lasted an average of eight months each and my annual salary had only reached $13,000 per year. I began using these strategies on my ninth job and doubled that company’s sales from $30 million to $60 million within three months. Within a year I had found a mentor and formed a new company with him, and my income skyrocketed from $13,000 to $150,000. This job has now lasted over 26 years and has generated a personal income of over $200 million for my partners and me.

When Steven Spielberg and I ran into each other 20 years after we had graduated from high school, we discovered that we had done the exact same things, only in two different fields. He had applied these strategies to making films and I had applied them to marketing products. But Steven and I aren’t the only ones who have used these strategies to achieve our most desired dreams. As I began to study the biographies of many of the world’s most successful men and women, I discovered that they too had used these exact same strategies to achieve their extraordinary dreams. From Washington and Jefferson to Edison and Ford; from Helen Keller to Oprah Winfrey; from John D. Rockefeller to Bill Gates—it didn’t matter how destitute their beginnings, or in which century they lived. Even their educational attainments seemed quite irrelevant. It didn’t even matter to what kind of dreams they applied these strategies—whether creating a nation, building a new company, or merely breaking through to a better way of life. They simply applied these strategies to their pursuit of their most cherished dreams, transforming those dreams into reality.

The First Law of Extraordinary Success

People who achieve ordinary outcomes do so by using conventional approaches and methods taught in schools and used by the masses. People who achieve extraordinary to near impossible outcomes do so by using a different set of master strategies that are universally and consistently used by superachievers and are virtually unknown to the masses.

The Second Law of Extraordinary Success

Superachievers learn these master strategies from mentors (the fast way), or through the agonizing process of trial and error (the slow way).

Four Types of People—Which Type Are You?

When it comes to levels of achievement, I’ve observed that there are four types of people: drifters, pursuers, achievers, and superachievers.

Drifters are those who move through life like a raft on a river, going with the flow wherever it takes them. They only exert as much effort and creativity as is necessary to stay afloat, no more and no less. This is the bottom level of achievers, which I believe represents about 50 percent of the adult population.

Pursuers are those who want to set their own course and pursue dreams, and though they achieve some of their dreams, they fail to achieve most. They lack the knowledge, resources, effective strategies, and critical skills necessary to achieve significant or extraordinary outcomes. I believe that this next level of achievers represents about 25 percent of the adult population.

Achievers are those who also set their own course and power their way to various destinations regardless of the flow of the river. They set significant goals in either their personal or professional lives and consistently achieve those goals. However, they rarely achieve extraordinary outcomes because their strategies are based on conventional wisdom and they rarely perform outside the box. They do not utilize the strategies, skills, and techniques that are critical for achieving extraordinary outcomes, or superachieving. This is the third level of achieving and represents the top 24.99 percent of the adult population. (If you are counting, this level brings the total of all three levels to 99.99 percent.)

Superachievers are those who get out of the river altogether. They use a set of strategies and skills that empower them to pursue and achieve extraordinary outcomes and impossible dreams consistently in their professional or personal lifestyle. Rather than being limited by the river, they know no limits. They consistently and habitually achieve extraordinary outcomes in any area to which they apply their master strategies for superachieving. Because they have learned the skills and techniques that are necessary to implement these strategies, doing so ultimately becomes second nature to them. The good news is that all of these master strategies, skills, and techniques are learnable. This level represents the top one-tenth of one percent of the adult population. Moving from the level of a drifter, pursuer, or achiever to the level of a superachiever is as easy as learning these strategies and skills and beginning to utilize them on a daily basis in every important area of your life. I know, because the first six years of my postcollege life were spent drifting, and in a single year I moved to the level of a superachiever.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Comparison Charts

In each mentoring session I am going to give you side-by-side comparison charts such as the one above, where I graphically compare the differences between the strategies and actions of drifters, pursuers, achievers, and superachievers. You will likely see where you currently fall in any given comparison, and then you’ll see what you need to do to move from where you are into the superachiever strategies, skills, attitudes, or behavior. Remember, the only difference between my first 10 years after high school and Steven Spielberg’s first 10 years was the fact that I did what the masses did and he did what the superachievers did. As soon as I began doing what superachievers do, I too began to experience the kind of extraordinary outcomes that were a daily occurrence in Steven’s life.

You’ve Just Been Given a Brand-New Porsche Turbo Carrera

Our dreams are like cities and towns on a map of America. Some are only a few miles away, while others are on the other side of the continent. Imagine that your dreams are represented by destinations scattered all over America. If your only method of transportation were walking, what would your chances be of ever achieving your dreams? While you might achieve those nearest to you or within a 50-mile walk, you probably wouldn’t even start a journey that would require you to walk across the Rocky Mountains or swim across the Mississippi River. Unfortunately, our greatest and most desirable dreams are usually the most distant destinations. Once we become adults and realize how distant they really are, we don’t even begin the journey, much less complete it.

Side-by-Side ComparisonHow People Pursue Their Dreams

Now, imagine that, unlike everyone else who can only pursue their dreams by walking, you have just been given a brand new Porsche Turbo Carrera. It has a top speed of 180 miles per hour and the most advanced computerized navigational system in the world. What would your chances be of achieving your dreams now? Imagine being able to drive to any dream you have, no matter how far away or how rugged the terrain. While everyone else is giving up on their most treasured dreams and simply taking whatever they can get in a single day’s walk, you can cruise to your most important dreams at 180 miles per hour. That’s the incredible power of the 15 master strategies that make up your new “Porsche.” In our mentoring sessions I will put this Porsche into your garage. I’m also going to give you the keys to start it, instructions on all of its incredible accessories, and all of the high-octane fuel you’ll need to make your journeys to your most cherished and distant dreams. You’ll not only be able to make the trip, you’ll achieve your dreams in record time! However, before we begin our sessions I’d like to take a few minutes to tell you a little about my personal journey. Why? Because when you compare where you are now with where I was before I was mentored in these strategies, you will see that you are starting off a lot better than I did. I think you’ll become convinced that “If Steve Scott with his dismal track record could succeed, then anyone can succeed using these strategies.”

I Gave Up on Most of My Dreams within Two Years of Graduating!

I chose Marketing as my college major because I dreamed of a career in the advertising or marketing department of a major corporation. After receiving my degree in 1970, I quickly discovered there were no marketing jobs available for people without experience. I couldn’t land a single interview with any marketing department of any corporation in my hometown of Phoenix. My dream had vaporized within 60 days of graduation. Consequently, I accepted a job as a management trainee for a life insurance agency. Unfortunately, the initial focus of that job was learning how to sell life insurance. While the other management trainees seemed to be selling one to two policies a week by the end of our first month, I wasn’t selling a thing. In fact, in the five months that followed I only sold two policies—one to my best friend and one to myself. Even more frustrating to my boss, I quit the day before he planned to fire me. My first job had lasted only seven months.

I’ll Bet My Resume Was a Lot Worse than Yours!

I didn’t do much better with my second job. I was recruited to help start a new business. It was my first chance to make millions, but instead it left me broke. That job only lasted six months. Then came job number three. I actually got an entry-level job in the marketing department of a giant corporation 3,000 miles away from home. It looked like I was finally going to start a meaningful career path. Two days into the job, my wife had our first child, a gorgeous baby girl. This of course made me want to succeed more than ever. Even though I was only earning $12,000 a year, I gave this job my all. After my first nine months I thought things were going pretty well. I had just come back from lunch when my boss (the senior vice president of marketing) walked over to my desk and asked me to come into his office. I could feel my heart starting to race. I was sure he was calling me in to give me a raise. After all, when he hired me he told me that I would be qualified for a raise after a six-month probationary period. “Have a seat,” he said as we walked into his spacious office. He walked over, sat on the corner of his desk, smiled, and said three simple sentences that I will never forget: “Steve, you are the single greatest disappointment in my entire career! You will never succeed in marketing! You have 20 minutes to clean out your desk.”

I was shocked! I was 23, married with a child, and 3,000 miles from home. As I walked over to my desk I noticed the other employees in our department purposely looking the other way, and sneaking peaks at me as I tearfully began to clean out my desk. (While I was at lunch they had been told that I was going to be fired as soon as I returned.) I dumped the contents of each drawer into a paper bag, and the last personal item remaining on my desk was a picture of my newborn daughter. As I looked into her eyes, I felt sick. Daddy was a total failure. I had been out of college for less than two years and had already lost three jobs. It was obvious she was going to grow up playing in the courtyards of low-rent apartment buildings. Little did I know that I was going to lose six more jobs in the next three years. As I began each new job I acquired new dreams of how I would succeed. But my only means of pursuing those dreams were my walking shoes, and each dream was simply too distant with too many insurmountable obstacles to allow any hope of achieving them.

On my fourth job, I actually worked for two different subsidiaries of the same corporation. Even though my resume showed one job lasting nine months, it was really two that lasted a little over four months each. When my immediate supervisor warned me that I was going to be fired in two days, I beat my boss to the punch and quit. After five months on job number five, a real estate developer offered to back me in my own business. Thinking I couldn’t do much worse than I had in a corporate environment, I took him up on his offer. Unfortunately he went broke eight months later, and so did I.

I was hired by a small catalog company on job number seven, and had real hopes of succeeding. My salary was only $1,000 a month, but the owner promised to give me a 50 percent raise in four months if I could double the customer response to his catalog. I completely revamped the catalog and doubled its response in three months. When my raise wasn’t in my pay envelope the following month, I confronted my boss. Instead of giving me a raise, he gave me the boot. He was having an affair with the company bookkeeper and felt she needed a raise more than I did. So much for job number seven. Jobs number eight and nine lasted four months each. I was 27, a father of two, and had been out of college for less than six years when I left my ninth job. The only thing worse than my failure to hold any job for more than nine months was that my income had not grown to even half of the average income for wage earners in the United States. Not a very impressive resume, is it? How about you? How many jobs have you been fired from? How many have you quit? How many companies have you started that failed in less than a year? I’ll bet your resume is a lot better now than mine was in May of 1976. The table on the previous page shows what it looked like.

My Resume—May, 1976 Graduated from College, B.S. in Marketing, 1970

Once a Failure, Always a Failure ... Right? Wrong!

If you had been a personnel manager looking at my resume in 1976, chances are pretty good that you would not have considered hiring me. Of the nine jobs I had held since college, not one lasted more than nine months, and I had never received a pay raise in a single job. You would have likely reasoned, “This guy’s a real loser!” Although you would have been justified in your reasoning, you would have been dead wrong. If you have ever heard the adage, “Once a failure, always a failure,” I am now telling you that nothing could be further from the truth. I started job number 10 on May 10, 1976, and have now held that job for more than 27 years. More important, I have loved nearly every minute of it and have achieved countless “impossible dreams” that were an entire continent (even oceans) away. My partners and I have created more than a dozen multi-million-dollar businesses from scratch, selling over $2 billion in goods and services. And all of this was started with only $5,000 in cash and a dream.

So What the Heck Happened? How Could a Habitual Failure Become a Multimillionaire?

How could a total corporate failure see such an unimaginable turnaround? Did my IQ jump 100 points between job number 8 and job number 10? Did I go through a major personality change? Did I attend a success seminar or buy a set of get-rich-quick tapes? Nope, none of the above. Only two things changed—the same two things that are going to change in your life, beginning today. First, I found a mentor who had achieved many of his impossible dreams. Second, he put a Porsche Turbo Carrera in my garage, handed me the keys, and taught me everything I needed to know to drive it to each of my dreams, no matter how far away they were. It was the same Porsche I’m giving you, made up of the same master strategies, skills, and techniques. Best of all, these strategies, skills, and techniques are not complicated or difficult. They are easily learned and utilized regardless of your lack of talent, resources, educational attainment, or previous experience.

American Telecast’s Original Partners

Now as hard as it may be to believe that these techniques could enable someone with little relevant skill or education to achieve extraordinary success, the fact is they will do just that. Look at the ages and backgrounds of my partners and me in 1976 when we started our business. My mentor (who was nearly broke at the time) mentored all of us into multimillionaires.

Notice that not one of us had any experience in direct response television marketing; writing, directing, and producing television commercials; business administration; media management; telemarketing operations; fulfillment operations; or manufacturing. And yet all of these functions were required for us to succeed. Each one of us is an irrefutable proof of the life-changing power of the strategies and techniques you are going to master in our mentoring sessions.

Critical Distinctions

Teacher: Someone who imparts information but relies on the learner to determine the importance, validity, and correct way to use that information.

Mentor: Someone who coaches the learner into a correct understanding of important information that is critical to achieving a specific goal, and coaches that person through the process of effectively applying that information.

Ideal mentor: A mentor who has achieved extraordinary success in an applicable or similar endeavor by using the information and processes in which he or she is coaching the learner.

Everyone Needs a Mentor

Every person I’ve ever known or read about who has achieved his or her dreams in any area of life has had at least one mentor in that particular area. Henry Ford credited one of his mentors—his former boss, Thomas Edison—for his success. Francis Ford Coppola mentored George Lucas; Sid Shineberg mentored Steven Spielberg and Bob Marsh; and Gary Smalley and Jim Shaughnessy have been my greatest mentors, professionally and personally.

In Which Areas of Your Life Do You Need a Mentor?

The fact is that you need a mentor in any area of your life in which you want to achieve significant success. Mentors will not only enable you to achieve extraordinary success, they will help you achieve it far more quickly than you would ever be able to without their help. I have been blessed to have had incredible mentors in every important area of my life. I’ve had business mentors, creative mentors, and a mentor for my marriage and parenting relationships.

How to Find the Right Mentors

Although you can’t drive to your nearest shopping center and find a store called Mentor Mart, finding the right mentor for any given dream or project need not be as hard as you might think. It does take a little effort and little time. It can be as simple as finding a book written by an expert who has already achieved success in the area in which you are seeking help, or it can be as involved as identifying and recruiting someone you can interact with on a consistent, regular basis. You may choose to start your search in your own company or among people you currently know, but you don’t have to limit your search to them.

For example, if you sell real estate for Century 21, your search for a mentor might begin by looking for the most successful salesman currently working for Century 21. However, you should also consider seeking out the most successful Century 21 salesmen who have retired. Or, you can choose someone who’s been incredibly successful selling something other than real estate. And then there are sales experts who now write and teach seminars for a living. You can study their books or attend their seminars. Even though I haven’t talked with Zig Ziglar for years, I consider him a great mentor. His books and tapes have significantly changed the way I look at life and relate to others.

Unfortunately, it’s just as easy to recruit a wrong mentor as it is to recruit a right one. A few years after my company began marketing Gary Smalley’s video series on relationships, the airwaves became full of so-called relationship experts touting their books and videos on relationships. And yet, two of these “experts” received their degrees from a non-accredited diploma mill from which you could buy a Ph.D. for a few thousand dollars. One of these experts was currently in her fifth marriage. One of her many failed marriages had been with one of the other experts who was selling his books and tapes. In fact, his book on relationships has become an all-time best seller. I don’t know about you, but the last person I want to mentor me in my relational skills is someone who hasn’t been able to succeed in his or her own relationships. These people tend to teach what they think will work rather than what they have personally experienced and proven to work.

Four Questions You Should Answer Before You Commit to a Potential Mentor

1. What degree of success has he or she personally achieved in his or her area of expertise? I would never recruit a mentor for my marriage who had failed in a marriage, and I would never recruit a mentor in business who has never succeeded in business.

2. How legitimate are his or her credentials? Today people can buy degrees in just about any field they want. I would rather be mentored by a person with no credentials than one with bogus credentials. My mentor in business didn’t have an MBA. In fact, he never attended college at all. But he was a marketing and entrepreneurial genius.

3. Is he or she a man or woman of integrity? This may be a little harder to check out, but it’s worth it when you can. Discover all you can about potential mentors’ reputation. Do they practice what they preach?

4. Does his or her personal experience reflect the degree of success you are dreaming of achieving? Only recruit mentors who are living examples of what you want to achieve. Millions of couples seek marriage counseling from counselors who are not happily married themselves or have even failed in their own marriages. The wife of one of my best friends sought advice from a female counselor who was totally unqualified by virtue of her credentials and personal experience. The counsel she received was terrible and resulted in a devastating divorce. When it comes to your marriage and family, please check out your counselors’ credentials and personal experience in depth. Good counselors are great mentors for couples wanting a better marriage. Bad counselors are more destructive than dynamite.

Strategies and Tips for Identifying and Recruiting Mentors

1. Determine the specific dream or area of your life for which you want a mentor. Do you need a mentor to help you in relationships; to help you in your profession in general; or to help you in a particular area of your job, career, or profession, such as managerial or marketing skills? I’ve had two important mentors in the area of relationships and one key mentor in business.

2. Create a list of potential mentors for each dream or area you’ve decided on. Using your prioritized list of dreams, and starting with your most important dream, make a list of the people you respect most who might be able to give you insight, wisdom, and advice for each dream. List the names in order of preference. In other words, the person at the top of each list should be the person you would choose if you could pick anyone in the whole world. Even if you don’t think there’s a prayer of this person giving you a minute of his or her time, he or she should be at the top of your list.

3. Starting with the mentors at the top of your list and working down, write down the status of your current relationship with each one. (Boss, friend, acquaintance, friend of a friend, total stranger, and so forth.)

4. Write down everything you know about that person through either your personal experience with them or second- or third-hand knowledge.

5. Research everything you can about your potential mentors. What are their likes, their dislikes, their passions? How do they spend their time on and off the job? What motivates them?

6. If your potential mentors are mere acquaintances or strangers to you, do you know anyone they know? If you do, begin to find out all you can from that person, and consider using that person as a reference when you make your initial contact with a potential mentor.

7. Prepare to contact a potential mentor on the phone or in writing with a brief proposal or request. Whether you plan to make your contact in person, on the phone, or in a letter, you need to prepare your proposal or request well before you make the contact. If you are contacting someone who knows your reference but doesn’t know you, your reference should be stated in your opening sentence. Your next sentence should touch on the quality or qualities that you so admire about this person. You should then briefly explain why those qualities are so important to you and how you want to gain this person’s insight and wisdom in making those qualities a part of your life. Finally, ask if the person could spare a brief amount of time each week or month (a lunch, breakfast, coffee break, or round of golf) in which you could ask questions that might help you grow in this particular area.

8. Make the contact. Nothing beats a personal appointment. Depending on your potential mentor, that strategy may or may not be practical. If you can’t make an appointment to see him or her, the next best thing is a phone call. Only use a letter when you have failed to get a meeting or make the contact by phone. Regardless of how you make your contact, make it brief and to the point. Any mentor worth his or her salt (unless retired) already has a very busy schedule, and if he or she thinks future contacts with you are going to take too much time, he or she will either turn your proposal down outright or simply avoid you like the plague.

9. Follow up. After you’ve made your first contact, follow up with a brief note of appreciation, commenting on something specific that the potential mentor said or did.

10. Go to the next person on the list. If your first choice for a mentor turns you down, be sure to find out why. Then go through this same procedure with the next person on your list.

What Qualifies Me to Be One of Your Mentors?

You can see that I believe that you should never recruit advisors, counselors, or mentors in any area of your life until you know they are truly qualified by their own experience to serve in any of these critical roles. So the first question you should ask is, “What qualifies Steve Scott to be one of my mentors?” I am not qualified to be your mentor by a genius IQ, a Ph.D. in business, or my skills as a writer or speaker. Nor am I qualified simply because I have made millions of dollars. What does qualify me to be your mentor is a single fact: I have learned and effectively used a specific set of strategies, skills, and techniques that have enabled me to achieve my impossible dreams in my business pursuits, my financial goals, and my relationships with my wife, my children, and my friends. My partners and I have enjoyed a successful batting average and have set sales records that have never been equaled in our industry of direct response television. Financially, with less than 80 employees, we have generated billions of dollars in sales and achieved all of our financial goals, making tens of millions of dollars in personal income. But I also know the power of these strategies because they have not only worked for me, they have worked miraculously for many others whom I have known personally. If you allow me to mentor you in these strategies and skills, and apply them to the pursuit of your professional, financial, and personal dreams, they will work for you as well.

“But Nothing’s Ever Really Worked for Me Before. Why WillThisBe Any Different?”

If this is your question, it’s a great one. If pursuing your most cherished dreams requires you to metaphorically cross the continent or traverse overwhelming obstacles such as the Rocky Mountains or the mighty Mississippi River, will changing brands of walking shoes make any significant difference in your chances of successfully “walking” to your dreams? Absolutely not! If I were simply handing you a different pair of shoes, I would say that the chances of our sessions making any difference in your life would be zero. It really doesn’t matter to me how many things you’ve tried in the past or how many times you’ve tried them. They are like changing shoes. In this book I am not handing you one more pair of shoes. Unless you have been personally mentored by someone who has achieved extraordinary success—even the near impossible—you have not ever received what I am going to give you in this book. I am going to put you in the seat of a Porsche Turbo Carrera, teach you how to drive it, fill the tank with the highest-octane fuel, and give you a credit card to keep it filled, just like my mentor did with me. That is why our sessions together are going to change your life, regardless of how many times you have failed in the past.

In our first session you are going to discover something about yourself that no one has ever told you—not your high school teachers, your college professors, your corporate bosses, your minister, or even your mother. Simply stated, you are going to discover the incalculable computing power of your Porsche’s onboard computer and how it can be used to accomplish goals you never imagined possible.

Actions for TractionWHERE THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD

YOU’LL NEED TWO TOOLS FOR OUR MENTORING SESSIONS

If you are simply reading this book for entertainment or to acquire a little knowledge, you will need nothing besides this book to do just that. However, if you want to be mentored and master the strategies of the world’s most successful people, then you will need two tools: (1) A loose-leaf notebook in which you can perform the exercises that I give in the “Actions for Traction” section at the end of each session and (2) a second loose-leaf notebook that will become the road atlas to each of your dreams. Your only assignment for this session is to get the two notebooks, along with a dozen tabbed dividers and paper that you will need for each of the mentoring sessions that will follow.

Note: If you would like to save a lot of time, you can purchase preprinted copies of each notebook by calling my assistant at [phone] or visiting my Web site at www.stevenkscott.com. The first is entitled Mentoring Session Notebook, and the second is entitled Vision Mapping Journal. Both are provided for your convenience. You can make your own, but I’ve found that most people I have mentored have preferred the convenience and ease of the preprinted notebook and journal.

SESSION 1

A New Software Package for Your Brain

Reprogramming Your Onboard Computer for Extraordinary Success

Your Porsche Is Equipped with the World’s Most Advanced Computer. Unfortunately, factory technicians have mistakenly programmed it to limit its top speed to 15 miles per hour. Who wants to pursue their dreams at 15 miles per hour? In order to get the kind of performance you want, you must reprogram the onboard computer to remove the limit to your speed. The master strategy we are going to focus on in this session is the reprogramming of your onboard computer. Once you’ve reprogrammed it, get ready for the ride of your life.

For years, Michael L.’s mother had told him he would never amount to anything. By the time he graduated from high school, he was convinced she was right. He graduated number 299 out of a class of 301.

Bill L. didn’t make it as far as Michael. He dropped out of school in the sixth grade.

Tom E.’s mom believed in him, but his schoolteachers didn’t. He only made it through his first three months of first grade. The school headmaster thought he was mentally retarded.

George R.’s mom and dad dropped him off at an orphanage at the age of seven and never had anything to do with him again.

Tom M. was only four when his father died. His mother handed him and his brother over to an orphanage.

Knowing their beginnings, the oddsmakers in Vegas would have gladly bet against any of these boys ever achieving anything significant with their lives. And yet, even though all five had rough starts in life, their names or their achievements have become known to all of us.

Master Strategy 1—Reprogram Your Mind and Attitude to Achieve Extraordinary Outcomes

Michael L.

After graduating from high school at the bottom of his class, Michael L. did even worse in college. However, because he could throw a javelin farther than any other high school student in America, he landed a track scholarship to the University of Southern California. Unfortunately he flunked out his freshman year and ended up sleeping on park benches in Santa Monica. Even though Mike failed to achieve any success whatsoever in high school or college, he went on to become the most successful television actor, writer, and director in Hollywood history. Every single television series that he wrote, directed, or starred in became a huge prime time hit. No other actor, writer, or director has ever batted a thousand in television. How could someone who had failed so miserably become so extraordinarily successful? And yet, that is exactly what Michael Landon did.

During the 1980s, Mike became one of my best friends in Hollywood. As we got to know each other, I discovered that the same strategies that had been responsible for Steven Spielberg’s success and mine had also worked miracles in Mike’s life. Although each of us had plenty of evidence to justify our early beliefs that we would never succeed, all three of us made an awesome discovery—one that changed the course of our futures from unrelenting failure to unimaginable success. Interestingly, none of us made this discovery on our own. Instead, it was revealed to each of us by our mentors. They were the first to see it in us, the first to point it out to us, and the first to make us true believers. As one of your mentors, it is now my privilege to lead you into this same discovery. Before I do, let me tell you the rest of the stories about the other would-be losers. Like Steven Spielberg, Michael Landon, and myself, these boys seemed destined to failure by their early beginnings. And yet their destinies began to change as they discovered and became believers in this same truth.

Bill L.

Had Bill Lear not dropped out of school in the sixth grade, he would have read in the high school physics books of his day that it was impossible to make a radio small enough to fit into an automobile. Fortunately, he never read those books and went on to invent the first car radio. You could say that this was a fluke had he not also invented the autopilot, which radically changed the course of aviation. And later in his life, when the world’s leading aviation companies said that there was no corporate market for small jets, and that building a prototype of such a jet would cost more than $100 million, Bill created his prototype business jet for under $10 million and provided corporate aviation with affordable, practical, and reliable Lear Jets years before the aviation giants followed his lead.

Tom E.

And who would have given Tom E. even a prayer for success? After being pulled out of the first grade by his mother and being judged mentally retarded by the school’s headmaster, Tom’s business life didn’t seem any more promising. Working for the railroad at the age of 12, he was fired after only a few months on the job. And yet, this grade-school dropout not only invented the process of recording sound and making motion pictures, he gave us the first electric light bulb and over 1,000 other patented inventions. Even though he created more breakthrough inventions than any man in history, Thomas Edison would be the first to tell you that he was not a genius. Instead, he made the same discovery that you are about to make, and built his future on the exact same strategies that you are going to learn and begin to implement in our remaining sessions.

The Orphans

And then there are the orphans. George Ruth became known as the greatest baseball player of all time (and gained the nickname of “The Babe”), while Tom Monoghan and his brother started a pizza store that Tom turned into a chain with dominoes as its logo.

While each of these men achieved their impossible dreams by implementing these life-changing strategies, the foundation for doing so was securely laid when they discovered one truth that is just as true of you as it was of them. Although you may believe it about them, you may find it hard to believe about yourself, but I will give you all the proof you will need. First, let me clue you in on a secret. In our last session I told you that I was putting a brand-new Porsche Turbo Carrera in your garage. Guess what? You’re not only the driver, you are the Porsche! Each strategy we will be discussing is part of your new design and is just waiting to be utilized.