Mark is currently serving as Founder and CEO at Simpleology, a web application that doubles your productivity (and your free time) by simplifying your life.
Author of over a dozen books translated into 20+ languages. Several of which were #1 best-sellers. Including … The Irresistible Offer, Integration Marketing, The Worst Case Scenario Business Survival Guide, The Great Formula, and more.
Serial entrepreneur with 30+ startups under his belt. Widely recognized as the “father of online marketing” for his pioneering work in the early days of the Internet. His startups include Aesop (the first ebook publishing company), ROIbot (the first online ad-tracking company and first client-side SAAS), SearchHound (the 2nd pay-per-click search engine, years before Google), StartBlaze (first ever traffic exchange system, the 36th most visited site in the world 6 weeks after its release), Neurogizers, and more.
Have you ever wondered why you watch so many motivational videos yet your life stays the same?
Or you get all motivated, excited, psyched up, and hyped up, and you improve your life by a tiny bit… but you never get the breakthrough you were hoping for. Frustrating, isn’t it?
So why is it that motivational videos don’t work?
Before I answer that, let’s clarify one point. I am not here to motivate you. I cannot motivate you. People watch my videos, looking for me to be their motivator, but I’m just a merchant of truth.
I simply tell you the truth, what it actually takes to be successful. Only you can motivate you.
When you watch motivational videos, you get this temporary energy that gives you the illusion that you’re actually doing something. What you really need is something more permanent.
What you need is skills. If all you have is motivation and no skills, then you won’t get anywhere. For example, you could watch Bruce Lee’s movies 10 to a 100 times but you’re still not going to be Bruce Lee.
You can watch his videos, my videos a thousand times but you don’t develop your skills, your life stays the same. I can’t transfer my skills to you through my videos.
However, when you combine motivation, tenacity, and drive with skills, you get results.
So how do you develop those skills? Here’s the formula. You need to imagine a triangle and each point of the triangle represents an important point.
Point #1: Proximity
Point one, you need proximity, and proximity equals power. You need a mentor to learn from and give you feedback. That mentor has to be physically close to you, as close as possible.
This is why motivational videos don’t work – it’s a far distance between you and your mentor. But if I’m coaching you through a class, that’s closer. Even if it’s online, if it’s live, we are interacting with each other and I’m answering your questions.
If I’m coaching you one-on-one, that’s the best, but obviously, I cannot coach everyone that way. One-on-one gives me more time to mentor and motivate you, but you must also immerse yourself in what you’re learning.
Point #2: Immersion
When you immerse yourself in the skills you are learning, you will improve much faster. Watching a video here and there will give you a little energy boost but it won’t do much long term.
You need total immersion. When you dial up the intensity, you will start to see results. But to see real improvement, you will need experience.
Point #3: Experience
Now you have a mentor who is teaching you and you’re immersing yourself in what you’re learning. Finally, you have to put these new skills into practice. That’s how you develop a skill.
It’s the same when you are learning martial arts. You’re not going to learn it by watching 100 martial arts videos. You need a sifu, an instructor, to give you feedback. You will also need to immerse yourself in classes once a week or more. After class, you need to practice a few hours a day, and gain experience by sparring with a partner.
When you’ve gained some experience, you go back to your mentor, get proximity and feedback, and immerse yourself in class again. Then you build up more experience. This is how you build up a skill.
Motivation itself means very little if you don’t have the skill to back it up, so this will save you a whole lot of time.
This triangle should give you some insights about why you feel stuck after watching all these motivational videos. The videos give you the illusion that you are actually doing something with your life when you’re not.
Unless you’re committed to develop that skill set and change your life, you won’t get to that next level. You won’t move ahead and you won’t stay motivated.
Kevin Harrington, known as an original “shark” on the hit TV show Shark Tank, the creator of the infomercial, pioneer of the As Seen on TV brand, and co-founding board member of the Entrepreneur’s Organization— has pushed past all the questions and excuses to repeatedly enjoy 100X success
His legendary work behind-the-scenes of business ventures has produced well over $5 billion in global sales, the launch of more than 500 products, and the making of dozens of millionaires. Twenty of his companies have each topped $100 million in revenue.
In this podcast, Kevin shares how he started with zero sales, then skyrocketed to success and a million-dollar enterprise when he learned that closing high-priced products didn’t take more effort than selling products at lower prices. Later, he discovered the world of infomercials and the reason why “tease, please and seize” is the magic formula.
When TV viewership started to drop, Kevin adapted to new ways of marketing. With digital marketing came social media and an abundance of other ways to build publicity and establish a brand. Kevin discusses these in his latest book, Key Person of Influence.
His strong personal brand led to recognition and an invitation to join a panel of sharks on the show, Shark Tank. Investors, called sharks, evaluate pitches and decide if they want to invest or not.
Kevin’s legacy includes the “but wait, there’s more” expression that has become part of our cultural history. He’s launched massively successful products like The Food Saver, Ginsu Knives, The Great Wok of China, The Flying Lure, and many more.
Kevin’s been called The Entrepreneur’s Entrepreneur and the Entrepreneur Answer Man, because he knows the challenges unique to start-ups and has a special passion for helping entrepreneurs succeed.
Let’s start by defining what high-income skills are. It’s a skill that can make you a minimum of $10,000 a month or $120,000 a year. It’s a skill set that you developed that can deliver value to the marketplace. With a high-income skill, you are still trading hours for dollars, but it’s high dollars.
Also, it’s a high-income skill, not a job. If it’s a high-income job, then your value is not determined by the marketplace, but by a manager or a boss. There’s little you can do to dramatically increase your earning ability or income. However, the more you improve your high-income skill, the more you make.
Start With A Skill That’s Your Foundation
Let me give you an example. The very first high income skill that I developed in my early 20s was copywriting. I was writing ads and sales letters for entrepreneurs and companies. I was making about $1000 a month, which for me at the time, felt like a million bucks. Back then, even $10,000 a month felt like a lot of money.
Eventually, as I was writing copy for clients, they started asking me how to use the copy I was writing for them. I started giving them advice. So from my first high-income skill, copywriting, I transitioned into my second, marketing consulting. Then I was making over $100,000 a year doing that.
My third high-income skill was internet marketing, and that increased my income even more. People started to ask me to teach them what I was doing, so I did my first seminar.
A few people came to my first seminar. Then later on, I got a dozen, which grew to hundreds of people. That’s when I developed my fourth high-income skill: public speaking. These workshops gave me a very good income, over $120,000 a year.
From public speaking, I started speaking on other people’s platforms, where I would offer my programs. That was my fifth high income skill – platform selling. I gave 60 to 90 minute talks to deliver value and close people to invest in my program, which sold for $1000 to $2000. It worked out to $10,000 to $50,000 in sales.
Start Stacking Your High-Income Skills To Increase Your Income
As I made more money with my high-income skills, I got into investing because I had the money. Because I had the money and the high-income skills, I started to build my influence. I met more business people and started doing the LIBOR, a kind of deal making brokering where I would collect a commission as a middle person.
Over the years, my businesses have had ups and downs. I’ve made great money and lost millions over the years. But because I rely on my high-income skills to make money, I can count on them to always make the money back if I make a bad investment.
Year after year, I count on my high-income skills to increase my earning ability and make 10% or more each year. And just to clarify: high-income skills don’t have to be just in sales and marketing. I have a friend who is a ballroom dance instructor who makes $10,000 a month in cash, so that’s another high-income skill.
You can be a graphic designer, programmer, or freelancer. If you’re delivering value into the marketplace, helping people, solving their problems, and you charge good money for it, that’s a high-income skill.
What should you invest in? Answering that is like recommending what car you should buy because it depends on what you want. What’s a good investment for me might not be a good investment for you. Instead, I will teach you a good example to follow by showing you how rich people invest their money.
Invest In Something You Understand
Tip number one, rich people invest in something we understand. For example, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have a great relationship, but Buffett doesn’t invest in tech companies. He doesn’t invest in technology stocks. As one of the best investors of all time, Warren Buffett invests in what he understands.
That’s the same with me. I don’t invest in cryptocurrency, but I have friends who have made five to twenty times on their investment. They study how it works and they give me tips. I trust my friends but I won’t invest in it because I don’t understand it. I avoid doing what amateur investors do.
Don’t believe in hot tips or what people tell you to buy or you’ll be doing what amateurs do. Especially don’t believe in the get rich quick mentality. Only invest in what you understand, but always be on the lookout for investment opportunities.
Look For Investments And Investigate Good Deals
Rich people are always looking for investments, or something called deal flow. We want deal flow coming to us from all kinds of sources, such as brokers or high net worth friends, or even the internet.
I have a simple rule: 100, 10, 3, 1. It means you look at a 100 potential investments, then narrow it down to 10, then narrow it further to 3, and then you might do 1. So every day, hundreds of investment opportunities come across my desk, but I turn down 99.9% of them.
When it comes to investing, rich people use logic, not emotions. For example, when buying real estate, don’t get caught up in how much you love the neighborhood or whether you love the carpet color.
What you should care about is the numbers. Ask yourself, does this investment make sense? Use your logic to decide.
When it comes to stocks, amateur investors lose money because they get greedy when stock prices go up. They don’t want to sell because they want to ride the winner. Then the prices suddenly drop and they lose money. They wait for the stock to bounce back up, but it drops some more. When the price had gone up, they should have sold some shares and gotten some profit.
If you’re asking me how to invest your money, it tells me you’re not a sophisticated investor. If you’re not sure what to invest in, then invest in yourself. Invest in training or upgrading your skills. You can get a better return when you invest in yourself than if you invest in property, business, stocks, or cryptocurrency.
Read that book, go to that event, take the training, or hire that consultant to help you. Don’t hesitate! I always invest in myself, so investing in yourself is the greatest investment with the greatest returns.
Is it reading thousands of books or attending thousands of trainings and workshops? In my case, I can tell you without a doubt that the secret to my success is my two mentors.
You’re probably wondering: how did my mentors make me rich? As you’ve probably guessed, any mentor has absolutely no obligation to make you wealthy. That mentor is already where you want to be in your dreams. What I can tell you is this: Don’t choose just anyone to be your mentor.
Most people follow someone on social media and choose that person to be their mentor, but I don’t believe in that. Who you learn from is much more important than what you learn. Just like in martial arts, who is your sifu? Your sensei? Your instructor?
Select Your Mentor Carefully: You Will Become Them
More important than your learning style is who you choose are your instructor. A true mentor is life changing. So look closely at the person you want to follow. Look past all the glam and glitz and think about whether you resonate with this person.
Do you connect with the person you have chosen as your mentor? Are your values aligned? Do you understand what that person is teaching? These points are critical. The person you are going to learn from is the person you will become.
If you want to be successful in business, you want to learn more than how to make money. A true mentor leads by example as a role model and teaches you other aspects of life. It’s not a linear approach!
So be very selective who you learn from. Now, once you’ve found the right person to be your mentor, how do you approach him or her?
First, don’t go to a potential mentor with a sense of entitlement. I see this on YouTube a lot in the comments. Don’t ask your mentor to help you out or answer a question. Why should that person help you out if you don’t even understand the basics of business?
For my first mentor, Alan, I worked for him for next to nothing for almost one year. The second mentor I paid tens of thousands of dollars to learn from him. You might be wondering why I did those things.
I wasn’t investing in my mentor. I was investing in myself through my mentor. So do whatever it takes to bring value to the table. Just because someone is successful, doesn’t mean they are under any obligation to help you succeed.
It’s like Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” Don’t ask what the mentor can do for you, ask what you can do for your mentor. Bring your mentor value, and don’t ask for anything in return.
My first mentor, Alan, never directly taught me anything. He just carried on his business and I observed and asked myself questions about why Alan was doing things a certain way.
My mentors opened doors for me. But I was the one who walked through the doors. I was the one who implemented what they taught me and created the Dan Lok brand and what success I have today.
