How much money does a Harvard graduate make?
It’s probably more than you guessed.
What about Harvard graduates who developed the single most important marketing skill (that most people have yet to develop)?
Believe me, it’s a heck-of-alot more than you think.
I’m going to show you how to make more money than the average Harvard graduate – that is, over twice as much.
How much cash would you drop to earn over twice as much as you’re making right now?
Well, this going to cost you a grand total of zero dollars and zero cents.
Not sure about you, but that’s the kind of math I like to see.
With this marketing skill, you can take your current cash-flow and double it.
Then double it again.
Now triple that, and you’ll be getting close to what you should be making after implementing this system (based off of my personal experience and the case studies below).
And again, it’s free (you’re very welcome), and backed by loads of evidence.
This one skill gives precision marketing an entirely new definition.
Just click on a chapter below to get started!
Table of Contents
Harvard Study on Vision and Goal Setting
You Are What You Eat (and Think)
3 Things That Give Your Marketing Vision Power
NY Times and Psychology Today on Visualization and Self-Talk
The Vision and Visualization Gameplan
Harvest – Take Action by Transferring Your Marketing Vision Into Reality
Plant Your Vision
“A person is limited only by the thoughts that he chooses.”
-James Allen
Lewis Carroll said, “Any road will get you there, if you don’t know where you are going,” but you know where you want to go right?
So we need a specific road, a path of the mind, created by a vision.
Harvard Study on Vision and Goal Setting
In 1979, a study was done on Harvard graduates, who were asked this question: “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?”
Or in other words, have you written down a clear, well-planned vision?
Here’s the initial results:
► 84% had no specific vision whatsoever.
► 13% had a vision for their future, but didn’t write them down.
► 3% had clear, written goals and plans to accomplish their vision.
10 years later, the interviewers interviewed the graduates of that class.
Here’s what they learned:
► The 13% with a vision were earning twice as much as the 84% who had no goals at all.
► The 3% who had clear, written goals and plans to accomplish their vision were earning 10 times as much as the other 97 percent put together. 1
The average Harvard graduate earns between $92,000 and $223,000.
That means the students with a written vision earned between $923,000 and $2.2 million.
It also means that if you’re pulling in an average profit of $44,000 per year , you’d be making $440,000 a year if you wrote out your vision and got similar results to the 3% in the study above.
Not bad.
Ready to learn the system?
You can use one of these methods to plant your vision.
The Mirror Method
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I love boxing. When I watch a fight, my fists and jaw clench as an electric surge of adrenaline shoots through my body. I may even throw a jab or two at my imaginary opponent as I cheer my favorite fighter on.
Have you ever done something like that?
Do you feel excitement when you watch the olympics, your favorite sports team, or a chase/race sort of scene in your favorite action film?
Have you ever found yourself (or *cough* seen your lady) on the verge of tears as you watch a tearjerker like Braveheart, Gladiator, or Cinderella Man?
It happens to the best of us, and it’s because of the mirror-neurons in our brains.
These neurons mimic the actions and feelings of the people we see, which helps us empathize.
It creates such a powerful psychological response that our bodies often give way to action, like me shadow-boxing in my boxers at an unresponsive television.
So what does this have to do with your marketing vision?
Harnessing the power of mirror-neurons literally transfers the power of a successful marketer’s emotions, actions, and will into your mind.
It’s not some hocus-pocus, spoon-bending psychic Jedi trick – it’s just what your mind is programmed to do.
You Are What You Eat
If you eat greasy McDonald’s and french toast every day for a year, what’ll happen to your body?
Same goes for your mind – it is what you feed it.
Use the Mirror Method by watching and listening to the most successful marketers you know of in your field.
Marketing seminars and conferences are a great way to fire up those mirror-neurons, and webinars will do wonders as well.
YouTube and Vimeo are littered with success stories and advice from people like Tony Robbins, Seth Godin, Tim Ferris, Steve Jobs and hundreds of the most successful marketers of our age.
Every time you watch and listen to them, you absorb not only their knowledge, but their belief – their vision, as your mirror-neurons mimic their confidence, clarity, body language, and successful trains of thought.
The SMART Method
In 1981, George Doran wrote a paper titled, “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. Way to Write Management’s Goals and Objectives”.
Since then, the SMART method of goal setting has saturated the corporate world, self-help guru material, and pretty much every college textbook that has anything to do with marketing or business.
It’s become cliche, but don’t let that fool you – it’s popular for a reason. It works.
This is the acronym:
► Specific
► Measurable
► Attainable
► Realistic
► Timely
When you pour your marketing vision onto paper or digital document, this method will make your vision a masterpiece.
Be Super-Specific.
Change “I’ll increase my bottom-line profit,” to “I’ll increase bottom-line profit by 225% on, or before April 22nd, 2020, by targeting and acquiring 279 new customers in my local market, so I can can fly to Thailand and live like royalty for a 12-month mini-retirement.”
How do you know your vision is specific enough?
Ask yourself:
► Who will I reach out to?
► What will I say?
► When will I communicate with them and when will they respond and when will we profit?
► Where will I launch this marketing campaign?
► Why?
Measurable.
“I want more clients” doesn’t cut it. “I’ll increase my client base by 23, in 6 months” – now we’re getting somewhere.
Is your vision measurable?
► How much?
► How many?
► How will you know when you’ve made it?
Attainable.
This is harder than it sounds. People love the idea of dreaming big; shooting for the moon, landing in the stars and such, but when you bite off more than you can chew, you choke…
…or grow. Is your glass half full or overflowing?
Dreaming big isn’t foolish – it’s what separates good from great.
That’s where it gets tricky.
If you believe, anything is possible, right?
Limitations are false realities created by poor perception aren’t they?
But if I try to believe, say, that I can visit every planet in the galaxy in less than a year – I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, nope – not happening.
Colossal ambition should always be balanced with an attainable mindset.
This is where most people fail by the way. They get in a rut and allow their “realistic” situation dictate their belief system.
Be careful with limitations. You can know them without succumbing to them. Just because your business has never brought you over $130,000 of profit doesn’t mean it won’t – unless it’s your perception and belief that it won’t.
Realistic.
Maybe it’s time to go elephant hunting, maybe it’s not. Are you strong enough? Do you have the tools of the trade, a proven system, and a solid team? Have you done it before?
If your elephant-hunting vision is realistic, you’ll make it happen, one bite at a time.
But what makes your vision realistic?
It’s simple.
When you’re both willing and able, it’s realistic. If you want to automate your business for example, to carve 6 hours out of your workday, but don’t have the skills to make it happen, that vision will only be realistic if you hire someone to make it happen.
Timely.
A vision with no timeframe is one step away from a pipedream. You may be swimming in a sea of Benjamins in a month… or a decade. Your timeframe gives you a sense of urgency and even more important, simplicity.
Here’s how.
When I create the vision to increase my profit by $70,000 within 7 months, I know I need to boost my profits by $10,000 per month – $2,500 a week, $357 per day, $45 an hour.
As strange as it seems, $45 an hour is easier to manage than $70,000 in 7 months.
It’s just how our brains work.
So write it out. Sketch it if you can. Post it where you’ll see it every day.
Know why you want it to happen.
Keep it as stupid-simple as possible with a super-specific timeframe.
Nurture Your Marketing Vision
Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.
–Leonardo da Vinci
Natan Sharansky is a spy, author, and chess savant.
He’s won the Congressional Gold Medal and many others, but before you get too jealous – his life was far from easy.
When the Soviets caught wind of his 007, ninja-footed antics, they snatched him upand hurled him into a 13-year sentence of forced labor and solitary confinement in an icy cell with no bed or bench to rest his head on.
For what seemed like centuries, Sharansky fought insanity with a mind game of his own.
He played chess.
Each day in the brisk loneliness of solitary confinement, he visualized one chess match after another. Thankfully, he was released early, but not before 16 months of prison, some of it in solitary confinement.
What does a few months of chess visualization do?
Well, it makes you a champion apparently.
Shortly after his release, Sharansky got some sweet, sweet revenge, by obliterating the Russian world champion, Garry Kassparov, at a chess exhibition in Israel.
As fun as battling insanity in a janky prison sounds, my vote is to skip the torturous parts and get to the good stuff – persuasion marketing, applied to your own mind.
What made Sharansky a champion? Visualization.
You can do the same from the cushy comfort of your living room sofa.
Let’s get to it.
Think about your vision. Visualize it (watch it play out as if it’s ALREADY a reality). Speak it.
3 Things Give Your Marketing Vision Power:
1. Seeing
2. Feeling
3. Hearing
You don’t need to see your goals accomplished to believe. It’s actually the opposite – when you imagine your plans and earnestly envision them like your sanity depends on it, they WILL become reality.
Use your imagination to paint a detailed picture of your vision. You can sketch your vision, paint it, or even sculpt it if you’re artistically inclined.
You’ve probably heard of vision boards and the positive self-talk that usually comes with them, and I don’t blame you if you’re a bit skeptical.
But keep this in mind – skepticism kills belief.
Forget the hype about the law of attraction, and the notion of “asking the universe and it’ll give you the desires of your heart”, just for a moment.
Let’s focus on the facts.
NY Times and Psychology Today on Visualization and Self-Talk
Professional athletes (Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, and Muhammad Ali to name a few) spend hours each day, visualizing. The New York Times reports that now, athletes call it imagery, because they use all the senses to fine-tune and enhance their performance.
Recent research shows that our brains respond to our thoughts by creating paths, literal train tracks of thought, that make up our belief system, which directs our actions.
It’s called neuroplasticity, and as Michael Formica from Psychology Today puts it:
“It means that collaborative talk therapy, by changing perceptions and perspective, can change the brain, which changes thinking and, by association, behavior – for real… it even means that all that New Age gobble-dee-gook about positive affirmations and positive thinking changing how you feel about yourself and your world might actually have some basis in hard science.”
When you visualize, you’re not just wishing, hoping, or daydreaming.
You’re literally creating a path in your brain. This path leads to belief and action, which inevitably creates your vision in reality.
That’s how, and why it works.
So whether it’s a written list, a series of stories in your mind palace, vision board, sketch, painting, or sculpture, visualization (or imagery if you prefer) is the key.
The Vision and Visualization Gameplan
► Read your list (or describe your visualizations) out loud at least 3 times a day.
In the morning, afternoon, and evening.
The best times are immediately after waking, and as you fall asleep, because this is when your subconscious mind is most open to your conscious purpose.
► Use your body language.
According to Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Albert Mehrabian, 93% of communication is nonverbal.
So if you only read your list, you’re missing out on up to 93% of your communication powers! Use your body to communicate your vision as you read. Stand straight and tall, with fiery determination in your eyes. Fold your arms with an unshakeable confidence, raise them in victory.
► Speak your words boldly and powerfully, with joy and conviction.
Yell it. Scream it. State your truth calmly and quietly. Smile and laugh as you see yourself achieving what you’re reading, and feel what your future self is feeling.
► Think about it constantly (3-5 times a day to start, increase as you see fit each week).
Be obsessed, and don’t let logic kill your vision. Use those brief windows of free time in your day to create. Think about your list as soon as you wake – as you sip your coffee, while you’re in the shower, on the drive to your office, in the elevator, on the way home, and especially as you lie in bed, waiting for sleep.
► Tell no one.
Nothing kills a marketing vision faster than skepticism, so defend it like a pissed off mama bear. Like it or not, you’re surrounded by skeptics who’ll tear your dream into bleeding, hopeless shreds with “rational” advice.
They’re not evil or vicious.
They believe they’re helping when they say things like, “but realistically,” or “let’s think about that logically for a second,” or “I like where you’re headed, but how…”
You are the authority of your niche and your marketing vision. No one else.
That kind of advice puts you in a box, and your success is waiting outside of it.
Harvest – Take Action by Transferring Your Marketing Vision Into Reality
“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
-Napoleon Hill
Start with goals most familiar to you. Bite-sized visions bring bite-sized successes, but your journey is a long and epic adventure, not a 100-yard dash.
Graduate from one marketing success to the next, because with each victory, your belief will grow.
You’ve heard people say “if wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” but that’s a poor definition of a true and sincere wish backed by belief.
Here’s a better horse analogy.
Black and White
In your mind, there’s 2 horses. One is a dark, sinewy horse and its name is Unbelief. The other is bright and determined horse whose name is Belief.
An unbreakable rope is attached between them, and they fight a never-ending battle of tug-of-war. Sometimes Belief wins, sometimes Unbelief, but both are always there.
This is where it gets good.
The horse you feed most, wins most.
You don’t need to work hard when you work smart by feeding your belief.
(Webinar automation is another brilliant form of working smart by the way.)
What Drives Your Actions?
Belief without action is dead, but that doesn’t mean you should start by taking action.
It’s the polar opposite.
Look at the orchard. Those trees aren’t huffing, sweating and pushing to give birth to a tribe of apple-children with the sheer force of their will and actions. But year after year, they produce fruit. Lots of fruit.
What’s their secret? They have an instinct that naturally and organically produces.
When you sincerely believe your marketing strategy, you create a marketing instinct that causes actions and income to flow from you freely, without the constraint of fear and disbelief.
That’s why your marketing vision should be birthed from your passion, from what you love.
If you find yourself stressed out, working ridiculous hours to make yourself successful, step back for a second. Do you really believe in your plan? Are you working from a state of fear or faith – pessimism or passion?”
Fear is a powerful motivator, but it only produces in small bursts that deplete your energy and endurance.
So devote yourself to passion-fueled actions that feed your stamina instead of depleting it. Like Steve Jobs said, “you’ve got to find what you love… the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
Final Thoughts
Some of the greatest things in life are free.
Life-changing ideas come to us freely, with no price tag, agenda or obligation.
The single most important marketing skill you can develop is belief, and I’ve shared with you the methods that not only work for me, but for thousands of the most successful people you’ll ever meet.
What you do with this idea is what counts.
Will you use the power of belief for you alone, or will you share it with people who need it?
I want to encourage you to give, because for all the getting I’ve done with this method, nothing served me or fulfilled me more than giving what I’ve been given.
It’s not entirely selfless – the more I give, the more I get. Even if that weren’t true, the fulfillment I get from helping is more than enough.
That’s why I want to give you the opportunity to invest in the lives of the people around you, not just by sharing the powerful system I’ve given you, but by sponsoring a kid like this little guy, who lives in a gang-infested neighborhood with little or no positive influence:
The Chavez Boxing Foundation helps under-privileged and at risk youth who need to know that someone cares about them.
I can personally vouch for Pete and his staff – they do wonders with these kids, and I can’t thank them enough.
If you can, go their website and send them a donation!
Notes
Harvard Study Source: “What They Don’t Teach You in the Harvard Business School, by Mark McCormack”
