In Search Of Heroes Spreads Good News About Everyday, Real-Life Heroes Who Deserve Recognition For Their Good Works

When was the lowest point in your life and how did you change your life path to win a victory over obstacles?

Robert Channing: The lowest point in my life? You know what? I’m an optimist. There were two low points in my life. One was when I became a professional entertainer, and I was very optimistic. I studied all the best people in the world, and then I performed my show and I had another gentleman that was jealous.

I was probably only about 18 years old and this gentleman was 36. I was in the same market that he was in. He would try to shut me down and put me down, because he saw how strong I was when I was performing. People were attracted to me and they loved what I did.

It was the same type of mentalism that he did. Although it was different, it was my personality and he had a different personality. He was jealous. Actually, it hurt me. My own true feelings, I didn’t want anyone to feel bad about me. I didn’t want anybody to look down and say this guy was bad, or this guy is doing something wrong.

I almost felt guilty because I was doing so well for myself that people become jealous of what I’ve done. Ralph, have you ever dealt with that before? Have you done so well that people get jealous? How do you deal with those people?

Cameron Johnson: This question is kind of unique, because I am only 22 years old, and have lived only a very small portion of my life. I have yet to experience some of the many things many people would cite as the low point in their lives, whether it is family issues, wife, kids; whatever the case. Health.

I have been very fortunate that my family is very healthy and I have been very healthy, and my siblings and parents, and I pray that that continues. But I really don’t know I could say what the lowest point is. I am very fortunate. I am glad I could answer that question that way, though.

Ralph Zuranski: My lowest life point was after I turned away from God in high school. I went to a Catholic high school, and there were no girls there. Most of the time, I just thought about girls and sex. It was right about the time that Playboy came out.

I started taking vitamins and working out when I was 13 and that completely changed my life. It actually started my path from being a 99 lb. weakling to becoming a muscle bound anomaly in the universe. I was your typical nerd with a big nose, horn rimmed glasses, and plastic pen carrier, but I had muscles.

When I started taking vitamins and working out I suddenly had this huge surge of testosterone. So I was thinking, “I have to get a date! I have to go out with girls! I’ve got to find a girlfriend! I’ve got to have sex!”

So that was in direct opposition to what I had learned in Catholic school as far as being a virgin until marriage. So I went to UCSD which is sort of a revolutionary college. It had a lot of communist on the staff. You had to take a socialist program, Humanities, that talked about the reason why you were screwed up is that you needed to rebel and you need to get involved in mind expanding drugs and sex.

Just to rebel against what your parents told you and what society was telling you. It was the time of the Vietnam War and so I was disillusioned with what was going on and so I figured, “The reason why I’m screwed up is because I’m not having enough sex, drugs and rock and roll!”

Sharif Khan: As a very young child I grew up with a lot of racial hatred and prejudice because of the color of my skin and being a South Asian. I grew up with a lot of low self-esteem and low self-worth, and carried it all through my young adulthood. There was a tragic time in my life when my father passed away when I was 18 while I was going to high school in the States at that time.

That was a devastating experience for me because my father was my best friend and a beacon of light and hope for me, and he encouraged me to excel and be the best I can be. When my father passed away in a car accident, I fell in to a spiral of deep depression.

Because of my low self-esteem and low sense of self-worth, I didn’t see any way out and I was immersed in darkness and didn’t know where to turn. At the time, my father didn’t have any life or car insurance. I had to pay my way for my last year of high school (a private boarding school).

I ended up corking and uncorking blood specimen test tubes, working in a lab, and separating urine and stool samples all day long. Not the most exciting summer job for a student. Within a very short period of time, I became an alcoholic at 18 and I was passed out drunk on the streets of Queens, NY and on the subways and didn’t have a hope in the world.

That was the lowest point in my life and also a turning point in my life, because that was a point I decided. I knew where I was heading and I didn’t want to end up like another statistic. I wanted to get myself out of that situation. For me personally, it was turning to God. Letting go and letting God and saying, “Let Your will be done. I need Your help and guidance.” And God intervened in my life. That was an incredible turning point in my life and turning to faith and the Higher Power in me was what gave me strength and got me out of that situation.

Debra Berg: The ending of my first marriage of 17 years was my lowest point. At the time, I was running a business with lots of responsibility to others. And I was a role model to a number of people. It was hard not letting my personal life and struggles get in the way of being there for them. I

learned from the experience and went on to acquire a whole new career, which involved a steep learning curve in the computer industry. If I had not learned those skills, I would not have been able to produce my book the way I did nor earn a good income in the software industry. While I was single for 10 years, I had the time to do the research for my book and to take care of an ailing parent. I also met my new husband.

Click on each name to listen to the heroes interviews of Sharif Khan, Author of "The Psychology Of the Hero Soul," Debra Berg, Author of "The Power Of One," Cameron Johnson, Author of "You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want", Robert Channing, the World's Greatest Mind Reader and Mental Motivator and Ralph Zuranski, the Creator Of the In Search Of Heroes Program.

Sharif Khan is President and founder of Diamond Mind Enterprises, an organization devoted to transforming coal minds into diamond minds through the applied pressure of higher knowledge, wellness education, and leadership training. His vision is “to inspire the world with hope, faith, love, respect, excellence, and the courage to dream”. He is the author of the inspirational book about Promoting Heroes in the Workplace and Everyday Life in his "The PSYCHOLOGY OF THE HERO SOUL."
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Cameron Johnson started his first business at the tender age of nine. By age 12, his company was selling Beanie Babies™ over the Internet and he profited $50,000 that year. At the age of fifteen, he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company and published his autobiography in Japanese which became an instant best-seller.

At the age of 21, he has founded and sold more than a dozen businesses and has been featured in more than 250 media outlets worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, and MSNBC. He’s served as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and is a frequent speaker to a variety of audiences including high schools, colleges, and corporate executives.

In January, 2007, his new book titled You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want – With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship is being released by Simon & Schuster. Cameron Johnson lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Visit his official website http://www.cameronjohnson.com.
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Debra Schweiger Berg is an author, researcher, and public speaker. She holds both a B.A. in political science/economics and an M.P.A., (public administration) degree from the University of Illinois. As an undergrad, she staffed the Watergate hearings in Washington, D.C. Post-college; Debra was one of the first women to serve on the staffs of the Illinois, Kentucky, and Minnesota state legislatures. In all three states, she served as a finance analyst for billions of state agency dollars and led studies on special education, welfare, and education. Following that, Minnesota’s largest HMO recruited her as a senior financial analyst.

Then, in the mid-eighties and early nineties, she founded a successful international marketing and training company, TeamNet, Intl., in which she trained and mentored entrepreneurs. That success led to her eventual recruitment by Amdocs, Inc. and Gcom, Inc., both software industry leaders.

In 1995, Debra launched a 10-year personal quest during which she interviewed 130 of America’s new civic heroes, civic entrepreneurs. Her interviews exposed a hidden trend in America, which she chronicles in her book, The Power of ONE: The Unsung Everyday Heroes Rescuing America’s Cities. Debra speaks to a wide range of audiences and captivates them with tales surrounding her 10,000-mile quest and the heroes who’ve invented eye-opening, working solutions to America’s toughest social problems.

She’s received acclaim by the Pew Foundation and cited by the Chicago Sun-Times for her groundbreaking findings. Debra is presently the President of Power of One Publishing and of PowerQuest, a leadership training company that empowers leaders of all ages to realize a life quest.
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Ralph Zuranski is the creator of the The “In Search Of Heroes" Program. It is a local franchise business opportunity for individuals with high integrity. The purpose of the business is to train young people how to be successful in their personal lives and business.

The goal is to teach high school and college students how to generate income for their local ISOH Program, themselves and community businesses by spreading the “Good News” about local heroes and their businesses, if they have one. Students learn how to promote people, products and businesses on the internet and through local newspapers, TV and radio, using the latest techniques and technology.

Students learn the importance and value of spreading “Good News” in their communities about heroic individuals who deserve recognition for their service to others. This valuable information inspires everyone. It helps each person to take pride in their community and the good people that live there that are making a positive difference in the lives of others.

The businesses that deserve recognition for their integrity, service and generosity are also promoted. This increase in income allows local business owners the opportunity to give back even more to their community. With their increased financial independence, they can invest more time and money into worthwhile community programs.

The students become interns for their local “In Search Of Heroesä” Program. As they learn copywriting, online and offline marketing, website design and how to create audio and video programs, they provide these services to local businesses at a discounted price.

Many small local businesses need skilled help in marketing their businesses, but cannot afford high priced companies. Students are the perfect choice to use their developing marketing skills to help these businesses become more successful. As these businesses increase their revenues, the local community can afford to do more to help local community programs. Everyone benefits!

Posted by ralph at 03:43 PM | Permalink

What principles are you willing to sacrifice your life for?

Ralph Zuranski: I think, like you, that I’m willing to sacrifice my life for those who I love and I’m willing to sacrifice my life for freedom. If there’s an opportunity to sacrifice your life, to lay your life down for somebody that you don’t know, I think that I would be willing to do that because I trust in God.

I know that by living my life and trusting in Him and searching for what it is that He wants me to do, that if there is a situation where I had to sacrifice my life to save even one person, that I would actually do that because I know it’s a part of God’s plan.

Rather than trying to figure out from day to day just having the positive attitude which I think is important, I just trust in the Lord with all my heart and lean not on my own understanding. Acknowledge Him in all my ways and know that He will direct my paths.

My paths are completely different from His, and it takes a lot of faith each day to wake up and having no idea what God wants you to do. But just living from moment to moment and allowing Him to guide you with events that occur completely out of the view of what you had going on in your own mind of where you want to go, and doing it willingly, gratefully and thankfully.

A lot of times you don’t really want to do, but thanking God for that, and knowing that you are serving a greater purpose rather than serving yourself.

Sharif Khan: FREEDOM! Freedom is worth sacrificing my life for. Freedom to live our dreams, freedom to imagine, to hope and prosper from doing what we love doing, that is worth giving up our lives for. In North America, we do have economic freedom and political freedom, but that is not normal. We are blessed and privileged because more than half the world does not have the same opportunities.

Ralph Zuranski: You know, it’s funny that you’d say that about the 90% doing good and the 10%. One of the heroes that I interviewed is Gregory Allen Williams. He’s the black cop on Baywatch; he actually saved a man’s life during the L.A. riots. He said there is a little bit of bad in the best of us, and a little bit of good in the worst of us.

When anybody steps up to help someone, they too can be a hero at that moment in time. So he was willing basically to sacrifice his life if he had to, to help others that were in difficulty during the LA riots. What do you think are the principles that you are willing to sacrifice your life for?

Robert Channing: The principles that I’m willing to sacrifice my life for? I’ve been struggling with that. Only because I give so much; I give, I give, and I give, Ralph. It seems a lot of the time that it doesn’t come back to me by the people I give to.

I’ve learned that you should not ask for it back. Or expect it back from the people you give it to, although you would love to have that back. I’ve learned from studying different books and the Bible as well is that if you give it to someone; don’t expect it back from them.

It will come from somewhere else. It could come from a baby’s smile that you just had, a newborn baby of yours. It could come from, someone gave you a kind word on a plane or a smile or a thank you. Maybe you just won the lottery, you don’t know. But it’s going to come somewhere else.

Cameron Johnson: The principles that are of the most interest to me are helping others. Right now with this new book I have coming out I want to help young people and parents and the education system and everything, and also America, just improve and become better.

Financial literacy is something that is very, very much of interest to me, and one of the founding principles of my book is teaching financial literacy in the school systems, because they don’t do that.

They don’t teach it in high school; they don’t teach financial literacy in college unless you’re really in a business school or business classes.

I think that is so important, because debt is at an all-time high across America and the average college student graduates with more than $20,000 in just student loans, not to mention their credit card debt as well.

So I think those are some hot topics that need to be discussed more and need to be shared, and that is one of the reasons I wrote this book.

Debra Berg:Both my faith and the safety and health of my family are the things that I’m willing to sacrifice for.

Click on each name to listen to the heroes interviews of Sharif Khan, Author of "The Psychology Of the Hero Soul," Debra Berg, Author of "The Power Of One," Cameron Johnson, Author of "You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want", Robert Channing, the World's Greatest Mind Reader and Mental Motivator and Ralph Zuranski, the Creator Of the In Search Of Heroes Program.

Sharif Khan is President and founder of Diamond Mind Enterprises, an organization devoted to transforming coal minds into diamond minds through the applied pressure of higher knowledge, wellness education, and leadership training. His vision is “to inspire the world with hope, faith, love, respect, excellence, and the courage to dream”. He is the author of the inspirational book about Promoting Heroes in the Workplace and Everyday Life in his "The PSYCHOLOGY OF THE HERO SOUL."
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Cameron Johnson started his first business at the tender age of nine. By age 12, his company was selling Beanie Babies™ over the Internet and he profited $50,000 that year. At the age of fifteen, he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company and published his autobiography in Japanese which became an instant best-seller.

At the age of 21, he has founded and sold more than a dozen businesses and has been featured in more than 250 media outlets worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, and MSNBC. He’s served as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and is a frequent speaker to a variety of audiences including high schools, colleges, and corporate executives.

In January, 2007, his new book titled You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want – With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship is being released by Simon & Schuster. Cameron Johnson lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Visit his official website http://www.cameronjohnson.com.
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Debra Schweiger Berg is an author, researcher, and public speaker. She holds both a B.A. in political science/economics and an M.P.A., (public administration) degree from the University of Illinois. As an undergrad, she staffed the Watergate hearings in Washington, D.C. Post-college; Debra was one of the first women to serve on the staffs of the Illinois, Kentucky, and Minnesota state legislatures. In all three states, she served as a finance analyst for billions of state agency dollars and led studies on special education, welfare, and education. Following that, Minnesota’s largest HMO recruited her as a senior financial analyst.

Then, in the mid-eighties and early nineties, she founded a successful international marketing and training company, TeamNet, Intl., in which she trained and mentored entrepreneurs. That success led to her eventual recruitment by Amdocs, Inc. and Gcom, Inc., both software industry leaders.

In 1995, Debra launched a 10-year personal quest during which she interviewed 130 of America’s new civic heroes, civic entrepreneurs. Her interviews exposed a hidden trend in America, which she chronicles in her book, The Power of ONE: The Unsung Everyday Heroes Rescuing America’s Cities. Debra speaks to a wide range of audiences and captivates them with tales surrounding her 10,000-mile quest and the heroes who’ve invented eye-opening, working solutions to America’s toughest social problems.

She’s received acclaim by the Pew Foundation and cited by the Chicago Sun-Times for her groundbreaking findings. Debra is presently the President of Power of One Publishing and of PowerQuest, a leadership training company that empowers leaders of all ages to realize a life quest.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Ralph Zuranski is the creator of the The “In Search Of Heroes" Program. It is a local franchise business opportunity for individuals with high integrity. The purpose of the business is to train young people how to be successful in their personal lives and business.

The goal is to teach high school and college students how to generate income for their local ISOH Program, themselves and community businesses by spreading the “Good News” about local heroes and their businesses, if they have one. Students learn how to promote people, products and businesses on the internet and through local newspapers, TV and radio, using the latest techniques and technology.

Students learn the importance and value of spreading “Good News” in their communities about heroic individuals who deserve recognition for their service to others. This valuable information inspires everyone. It helps each person to take pride in their community and the good people that live there that are making a positive difference in the lives of others.

The businesses that deserve recognition for their integrity, service and generosity are also promoted. This increase in income allows local business owners the opportunity to give back even more to their community. With their increased financial independence, they can invest more time and money into worthwhile community programs.

The students become interns for their local “In Search Of Heroesä” Program. As they learn copywriting, online and offline marketing, website design and how to create audio and video programs, they provide these services to local businesses at a discounted price.

Many small local businesses need skilled help in marketing their businesses, but cannot afford high priced companies. Students are the perfect choice to use their developing marketing skills to help these businesses become more successful. As these businesses increase their revenues, the local community can afford to do more to help local community programs. Everyone benefits!

Posted by ralph at 03:43 PM | Permalink

What is your perspective on goodness, ethics, and moral behavior?

Robert Channing: I know everybody has struggled with that. I have. I would say that I’m 90% ethical and moral. There’s that 10% where sometimes you get tempted by money or greed or temptation of any kind.

Sex, drugs, rock and roll, whatever you want to call it. I think my integrity is up there with the top people in the world.

I think integrity is very, very important. If you cheat someone, you are cheating yourself. It’s a multiple effect. If you want to track that in business, if you do something well for someone, I’ve heard this, they are going to go out and maybe tell one or two people.

But if you would hurt them in any way, or take advantage of them, it’s going to multiply over 100 times backwards. You can track that as well, Ralph.

A friend of mine, Scott Holm that I hired as a business coach taught me that and we tracked it one day. It’s better to do well than it is to do badly. I’ve learned that all my life, you learn by trial and error as well. I think integrity is the number one pursuit of happiness in a balanced life.

Cameron Johnson: Well, I think being in the business world, especially after the Xeroxes, Anderson Consulting, and WorldComs of the world, I think business ethics and business morals have never been more important than they are today.

They are now teaching them in schools, whereas ten years ago they never even thought they would have to teach these classes, because they just assumed people knew these things.

But after the exploits of those companies, it has become such a hot topic, and I think business ethics are just the ability to run a successful business and to go home each night and sleep peacefully. I have always said that, and I believe it is the cornerstone and foundation for which successful businesses were built, were business ethics and strong morals.

Ralph Zuranski: That’s a good question. That’s a hard one, because there is a spiritual aspect to that which is so great. I think it has a lot to do with what type of faith a person has. That determines a lot what their ethics are and what they consider is moral behavior.

As a Christian Catholic, I read the Bible a lot and I basically follow the teachings of Jesus, as far as laying down your life for others and doing good to others. My favorite quote is, “How do you turn evil to good?” By loving your enemies and doing good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you, and praying for those who spitefully use you and persecute you. I think that’s the only way that you can really turn evil to good, is by providing good first, rather than by returning evil for evil.

Sharif Khan: I think that in every culture and every faith, of all the great teachers, that was the idea, the Golden Rule of doing good to others as you would have them do unto you. Doing it first, rather than expecting the world to do good to you first. It’s like priming the pump, you have to give first. You have to put something into the system before you will ever get something out of it.

That’s a very important question. We need to be able to ask ourselves, in business or in life, “Is it going to be a win-win situation for everyone involved? Is it going to harm anyone?” If it’s going to harm other people or negatively influence and impact other people around us then we should not pursue that avenue.
It simply comes down to: are we positively impacting other people, are we making a difference, and is it in line with our vision. A lot of people yield to the greed factor and try taking short cuts for immediate gain without consideration of others which leads to lots of problems.

Debra Berg: All of these are critical for a successful working society. Without the greater majority of citizens taking values and ethics seriously, our society would crumble. We’re in danger of this happening without people, like yourself, making a statement about their importance.
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Click on each name to listen to the heroes interviews of Sharif Khan, Author of "The Psychology Of the Hero Soul," Debra Berg, Author of "The Power Of One," Cameron Johnson, Author of "You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want", Robert Channing, the World's Greatest Mind Reader and Mental Motivator and Ralph Zuranski, the Creator Of the In Search Of Heroes Program.

Sharif Khan is President and founder of Diamond Mind Enterprises, an organization devoted to transforming coal minds into diamond minds through the applied pressure of higher knowledge, wellness education, and leadership training. His vision is “to inspire the world with hope, faith, love, respect, excellence, and the courage to dream”. He is the author of the inspirational book about Promoting Heroes in the Workplace and Everyday Life in his "The PSYCHOLOGY OF THE HERO SOUL."
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Cameron Johnson started his first business at the tender age of nine. By age 12, his company was selling Beanie Babies™ over the Internet and he profited $50,000 that year. At the age of fifteen, he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company and published his autobiography in Japanese which became an instant best-seller.

At the age of 21, he has founded and sold more than a dozen businesses and has been featured in more than 250 media outlets worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, and MSNBC. He’s served as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and is a frequent speaker to a variety of audiences including high schools, colleges, and corporate executives.

In January, 2007, his new book titled You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want – With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship is being released by Simon & Schuster. Cameron Johnson lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Visit his official website http://www.cameronjohnson.com.
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Debra Schweiger Berg is an author, researcher, and public speaker. She holds both a B.A. in political science/economics and an M.P.A., (public administration) degree from the University of Illinois. As an undergrad, she staffed the Watergate hearings in Washington, D.C. Post-college; Debra was one of the first women to serve on the staffs of the Illinois, Kentucky, and Minnesota state legislatures. In all three states, she served as a finance analyst for billions of state agency dollars and led studies on special education, welfare, and education. Following that, Minnesota’s largest HMO recruited her as a senior financial analyst.

Then, in the mid-eighties and early nineties, she founded a successful international marketing and training company, TeamNet, Intl., in which she trained and mentored entrepreneurs. That success led to her eventual recruitment by Amdocs, Inc. and Gcom, Inc., both software industry leaders.

In 1995, Debra launched a 10-year personal quest during which she interviewed 130 of America’s new civic heroes, civic entrepreneurs. Her interviews exposed a hidden trend in America, which she chronicles in her book, The Power of ONE: The Unsung Everyday Heroes Rescuing America’s Cities. Debra speaks to a wide range of audiences and captivates them with tales surrounding her 10,000-mile quest and the heroes who’ve invented eye-opening, working solutions to America’s toughest social problems.

She’s received acclaim by the Pew Foundation and cited by the Chicago Sun-Times for her groundbreaking findings. Debra is presently the President of Power of One Publishing and of PowerQuest, a leadership training company that empowers leaders of all ages to realize a life quest.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Ralph Zuranski is the creator of the The “In Search Of Heroes" Program. It is a local franchise business opportunity for individuals with high integrity. The purpose of the business is to train young people how to be successful in their personal lives and business.

The goal is to teach high school and college students how to generate income for their local ISOH Program, themselves and community businesses by spreading the “Good News” about local heroes and their businesses, if they have one. Students learn how to promote people, products and businesses on the internet and through local newspapers, TV and radio, using the latest techniques and technology.

Students learn the importance and value of spreading “Good News” in their communities about heroic individuals who deserve recognition for their service to others. This valuable information inspires everyone. It helps each person to take pride in their community and the good people that live there that are making a positive difference in the lives of others.

The businesses that deserve recognition for their integrity, service and generosity are also promoted. This increase in income allows local business owners the opportunity to give back even more to their community. With their increased financial independence, they can invest more time and money into worthwhile community programs.

The students become interns for their local “In Search Of Heroesä” Program. As they learn copywriting, online and offline marketing, website design and how to create audio and video programs, they provide these services to local businesses at a discounted price.

Many small local businesses need skilled help in marketing their businesses, but cannot afford high priced companies. Students are the perfect choice to use their developing marketing skills to help these businesses become more successful. As these businesses increase their revenues, the local community can afford to do more to help local community programs. Everyone benefits!

Posted by ralph at 03:42 PM | Permalink

What is your definition of heroism?

Robert Channing: I just spoke to my wife about that this morning; because I told her I was going to be on the line with you, Ralph. She said, and we agreed, it’s the people that make a difference in one person’s life.

If I can make a difference in my neighbor’s life that morning or that afternoon, maybe once a day and bring somebody up that’s been down or helped somebody, like I know you are doing with your family, that’s a hero.

To me, if I can change one life, I don’t know who quoted this before, but it’s a quote from somewhere. If you can change one person’s life, and make them happy, make them feel better about themselves or help them in any other way, you’ve actually helped humanity itself. That’s my definition of heroism.

Ralph Zuranski: That’s so true.

Robert Channing: Helping one person at a time.

Ralph Zuranski: I totally agree. Did you ever create a secret hero in your mind that helped you deal with life’s problems when you were young?

Robert Channing: Yes, I did. Well, God was my hero. I was brought up Catholic. I was an altar boy for 11 years.

Ralph Zuranski: So was I.

Robert Channing: I remember sitting in a small church. I came from a little town called Newport, New York. There were probably around three people in our little town, one blinking light, one Catholic Church and one Methodist church.

I remember doing my services in the evening, the Stations of the Cross. There were maybe like five or six people in the church. I’d be there myself before the mass would start. I’d be there, present with a Being and that’s what I believed that yes, there is a God, there is some Higher Power.

I think that by being by myself in that big open church and just thinking and being open to thoughts in the Universe and to God, is what opened my mind to reality and what I could do. I can’t describe it any more than that, it was just a feeling that I had come over me.

Ralph Zuranski: My definition of Heroism is similar to yours. It’s somebody that serves and protects, somebody that sacrifices their life in a way that enriches the people in their own family as individuals, or groups of individuals.

You look at some of the great spiritual leaders like Gandhi or Mother Teresa, or John Paul, the pope who just recently died. Those people gave up their own personal sacrifice of wealth, material possessions and fame to serve others.

I firmly believe just as you do, that it’s those people who serve and protect those in their community, that make a great sacrifice to make a difference, a positive difference in the lives of other people. They are continually working to make the world and other people’s lives better, the best that they possibly can by actually giving action on their part and showing that it’s not “do as I say” but “do as I do”.

Sharif Khan: It stems from the original word ‘hero’ which comes from the Greek roots servos and heros, which means to serve and protect. So self-sacrifice for the higher good and betterment of humanity is at the heart of being a hero. And what that implies is that the seeds of greatness lie within us all because we all have that innate capacity to serve. Martin Luther King said it best: “Everyone can be great, because anyone can serve. You don’t have to have college degree to serve. You don’t even have to make your subject and verb agree to serve…You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

Debra Berg: Doing what most people won’t do to help others because of difficult decisions that need to be made or obstacles that have to be overcome.

Cameron Johnson: I think a hero is someone who helps others and gives back. I think that is the simplest definition that I can give you. I know there have been so many heroes in my life that have served as mentors to me in the business world.

They have guided me along, and anytime I have ever asked anyone for advice, I have always been greeted with open arms and have been able to get great advice. A lot of those people have turned out to be my mentors, and a lot of my success is thanks to their credit.

So, I think those are the true heroes, those that give back more than they take from life. I think that is the definition of hero to me.

Click on each name to listen to the heroes interviews of Sharif Khan, Author of "The Psychology Of the Hero Soul," Debra Berg, Author of "The Power Of One," Cameron Johnson, Author of "You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want", Robert Channing, the World's Greatest Mind Reader and Mental Motivator and Ralph Zuranski, the Creator Of the In Search Of Heroes Program.

Sharif Khan is President and founder of Diamond Mind Enterprises, an organization devoted to transforming coal minds into diamond minds through the applied pressure of higher knowledge, wellness education, and leadership training. His vision is “to inspire the world with hope, faith, love, respect, excellence, and the courage to dream”. He is the author of the inspirational book about Promoting Heroes in the Workplace and Everyday Life in his "The PSYCHOLOGY OF THE HERO SOUL."
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Cameron Johnson started his first business at the tender age of nine. By age 12, his company was selling Beanie Babies™ over the Internet and he profited $50,000 that year. At the age of fifteen, he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company and published his autobiography in Japanese which became an instant best-seller.

At the age of 21, he has founded and sold more than a dozen businesses and has been featured in more than 250 media outlets worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, and MSNBC. He’s served as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and is a frequent speaker to a variety of audiences including high schools, colleges, and corporate executives.

In January, 2007, his new book titled You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want – With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship is being released by Simon & Schuster. Cameron Johnson lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Visit his official website http://www.cameronjohnson.com.
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Debra Schweiger Berg is an author, researcher, and public speaker. She holds both a B.A. in political science/economics and an M.P.A., (public administration) degree from the University of Illinois. As an undergrad, she staffed the Watergate hearings in Washington, D.C. Post-college; Debra was one of the first women to serve on the staffs of the Illinois, Kentucky, and Minnesota state legislatures. In all three states, she served as a finance analyst for billions of state agency dollars and led studies on special education, welfare, and education. Following that, Minnesota’s largest HMO recruited her as a senior financial analyst.

Then, in the mid-eighties and early nineties, she founded a successful international marketing and training company, TeamNet, Intl., in which she trained and mentored entrepreneurs. That success led to her eventual recruitment by Amdocs, Inc. and Gcom, Inc., both software industry leaders.

In 1995, Debra launched a 10-year personal quest during which she interviewed 130 of America’s new civic heroes, civic entrepreneurs. Her interviews exposed a hidden trend in America, which she chronicles in her book, The Power of ONE: The Unsung Everyday Heroes Rescuing America’s Cities. Debra speaks to a wide range of audiences and captivates them with tales surrounding her 10,000-mile quest and the heroes who’ve invented eye-opening, working solutions to America’s toughest social problems.

She’s received acclaim by the Pew Foundation and cited by the Chicago Sun-Times for her groundbreaking findings. Debra is presently the President of Power of One Publishing and of PowerQuest, a leadership training company that empowers leaders of all ages to realize a life quest.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Ralph Zuranski is the creator of the The “In Search Of Heroes" Program. It is a local franchise business opportunity for individuals with high integrity. The purpose of the business is to train young people how to be successful in their personal lives and business.

The goal is to teach high school and college students how to generate income for their local ISOH Program, themselves and community businesses by spreading the “Good News” about local heroes and their businesses, if they have one. Students learn how to promote people, products and businesses on the internet and through local newspapers, TV and radio, using the latest techniques and technology.

Students learn the importance and value of spreading “Good News” in their communities about heroic individuals who deserve recognition for their service to others. This valuable information inspires everyone. It helps each person to take pride in their community and the good people that live there that are making a positive difference in the lives of others.

The businesses that deserve recognition for their integrity, service and generosity are also promoted. This increase in income allows local business owners the opportunity to give back even more to their community. With their increased financial independence, they can invest more time and money into worthwhile community programs.

The students become interns for their local “In Search Of Heroesä” Program. As they learn copywriting, online and offline marketing, website design and how to create audio and video programs, they provide these services to local businesses at a discounted price.

Many small local businesses need skilled help in marketing their businesses, but cannot afford high priced companies. Students are the perfect choice to use their developing marketing skills to help these businesses become more successful. As these businesses increase their revenues, the local community can afford to do more to help local community programs. Everyone benefits!

Posted by ralph at 03:40 PM | Permalink

Robert Channing is one of the most amazing people that I have ever met. I met him at Joe Vitale’s seminar Spiritual Marketing Super Summit. He had coordinated the entire seminar, complete with the speakers and virtually everything that you could possibly imagine that goes with a seminar - maintenance and just creation.

Robert also is one of the most impressive people that I have ever seen, using his mind to bend spoons, to remember things and to know what people are thinking. It was incredible. I’ve never been more blown away by somebody’s presentation than Robert’s when he did a special presentation at Joe’s seminar. So Robert, how are you doing today?

Robert Channing: I’m doing phenomenal, Ralph, and thank you very much for inviting me on this. I’m very honored and I really appreciate you having me on today.

Ralph Zuranski: You know, your company is called the Power Performers and I know that you work a lot with scheduling movie stars, business leaders and some of the most important people in the world today to speak at conventions and events. Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about your company.

Robert Channing: Power Performers was created around nine years ago. How it came to fruition is I have been a performer since I was five years old. I started studying magic, mind reading, ESP and hypnosis. I studied with David Copperfield, Harry Blackstone Jr., some of the top mentalists and magicians in the world. I learned by actually watching them do what they do.

I learned from the best and I learned from the worst. I made it my life’s goal to be a performer, to be a mentalist, a mind reader, ESP motivational person. I studied Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

The first book I ever read on motivation was by Glen Bland. It was called the Glen Bland Method for Success. It just taught me how you can change your life. You draw a line in the sand and by just taking that step over; you can change your life by changing your attitude and your strategies with your mind.

When I was a child, Ralph, I learned how to do magic tricks and it brought attention to me. I didn’t have that; I didn’t crave that. My mother was fantastic, my father worked all the time and I never saw him. He was a great guy, never made a lot of money but I never knew that. I was a happy guy who played Army and Cowboys and Indians.

But as I grew older, I was into sports, and I was always into magic, how the mind worked and I became an entertainer. I performed at birthday parties for $15. For my first birthday party when I was 11 years old I performed for $15 and I learned I could make money doing it and people loved what I did.

Then I began to performing all over the world. I performed for different Presidents. I performed for corporations and for a lot of colleges and organizations. At that point, the people at the organization said to me, “Hey, Bob. Your mind reading ESP show is phenomenal. Do you have anybody else that can entertain at our event or speak?”

At that point, I said, “I have a friend of mine that can do human calculations. I have another friend of mine who is a rock star, Alice Cooper. He can come in and talk about, for colleges, drug awareness. He can perform.” Then I created the company Power Performers. So that was my unique selling proposition.

These were powerful people but are the best in their industry, just like you are doing, Ralph. You’re interviewing the heroes in different industries that are the best at what they do, the top 1%. And that’s what I did.

I created the speaker’s bureau, or an entertainment agency which is both. I promote the top speakers, entertainers, sports stars, and business leaders in the world to corporations, associations, colleges, private functions and organizations throughout the country. So hopefully that answers your question.

Ralph Zuranski: What is the dream or vision that sets the course of your life?
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Cameron Johnson: My dream is to remove all obstacles and become as successful as I can be, but along the way helping plenty of other people find their dreams and goals, no matter what that is; whether it is in the business world or any other facet of life. But that is kind of my dream and what I am focused on for my life.

Debra Berg: My vision is to create a broad awareness of America’s civic entrepreneurs and what they contribute. These people are altruistic, innovative citizens who have sacrificed much to create successful solutions to major social problems. My ultimate goal is to create an American Institute for Civic Entrepreneurs where these people can share their knowledge with their counterparts in other cities who are working on the same social issues. It will also be a place where they can acquire additional fundraising and promotional skills for their ideas.
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Click on each name to listen to the heroes interviews of Sharif Khan, Author of "The Psychology Of the Hero Soul," Debra Berg, Author of "The Power Of One," Cameron Johnson, Author of "You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want", Robert Channing, the World's Greatest Mind Reader and Mental Motivator and Ralph Zuranski, the Creator Of the In Search Of Heroes Program.

Sharif Khan is President and founder of Diamond Mind Enterprises, an organization devoted to transforming coal minds into diamond minds through the applied pressure of higher knowledge, wellness education, and leadership training. His vision is “to inspire the world with hope, faith, love, respect, excellence, and the courage to dream”. He is the author of the inspirational book about Promoting Heroes in the Workplace and Everyday Life in his "The PSYCHOLOGY OF THE HERO SOUL."
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Cameron Johnson started his first business at the tender age of nine. By age 12, his company was selling Beanie Babies™ over the Internet and he profited $50,000 that year. At the age of fifteen, he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company and published his autobiography in Japanese which became an instant best-seller.

At the age of 21, he has founded and sold more than a dozen businesses and has been featured in more than 250 media outlets worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, and MSNBC. He’s served as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and is a frequent speaker to a variety of audiences including high schools, colleges, and corporate executives.

In January, 2007, his new book titled You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want – With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship is being released by Simon & Schuster. Cameron Johnson lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Visit his official website http://www.cameronjohnson.com.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Debra Schweiger Berg is an author, researcher, and public speaker. She holds both a B.A. in political science/economics and an M.P.A., (public administration) degree from the University of Illinois. As an undergrad, she staffed the Watergate hearings in Washington, D.C. Post-college; Debra was one of the first women to serve on the staffs of the Illinois, Kentucky, and Minnesota state legislatures. In all three states, she served as a finance analyst for billions of state agency dollars and led studies on special education, welfare, and education. Following that, Minnesota’s largest HMO recruited her as a senior financial analyst.

Then, in the mid-eighties and early nineties, she founded a successful international marketing and training company, TeamNet, Intl., in which she trained and mentored entrepreneurs. That success led to her eventual recruitment by Amdocs, Inc. and Gcom, Inc., both software industry leaders.

In 1995, Debra launched a 10-year personal quest during which she interviewed 130 of America’s new civic heroes, civic entrepreneurs. Her interviews exposed a hidden trend in America, which she chronicles in her book, The Power of ONE: The Unsung Everyday Heroes Rescuing America’s Cities. Debra speaks to a wide range of audiences and captivates them with tales surrounding her 10,000-mile quest and the heroes who’ve invented eye-opening, working solutions to America’s toughest social problems.

She’s received acclaim by the Pew Foundation and cited by the Chicago Sun-Times for her groundbreaking findings. Debra is presently the President of Power of One Publishing and of PowerQuest, a leadership training company that empowers leaders of all ages to realize a life quest.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Ralph Zuranski is the creator of the The “In Search Of Heroes" Program. It is a local franchise business opportunity for individuals with high integrity. The purpose of the business is to train young people how to be successful in their personal lives and business.

The goal is to teach high school and college students how to generate income for their local ISOH Program, themselves and community businesses by spreading the “Good News” about local heroes and their businesses, if they have one. Students learn how to promote people, products and businesses on the internet and through local newspapers, TV and radio, using the latest techniques and technology.

Students learn the importance and value of spreading “Good News” in their communities about heroic individuals who deserve recognition for their service to others. This valuable information inspires everyone. It helps each person to take pride in their community and the good people that live there that are making a positive difference in the lives of others.

The businesses that deserve recognition for their integrity, service and generosity are also promoted. This increase in income allows local business owners the opportunity to give back even more to their community. With their increased financial independence, they can invest more time and money into worthwhile community programs.

The students become interns for their local “In Search Of Heroesä” Program. As they learn copywriting, online and offline marketing, website design and how to create audio and video programs, they provide these services to local businesses at a discounted price.

Many small local businesses need skilled help in marketing their businesses, but cannot afford high priced companies. Students are the perfect choice to use their developing marketing skills to help these businesses become more successful. As these businesses increase their revenues, the local community can afford to do more to help local community programs. Everyone benefits!

Posted by ralph at 03:40 PM | Permalink

Click on each name to listen to the heroes interviews of Sharif Khan, Author of "The Psychology Of the Hero Soul," Debra Berg, Author of "The Power Of One," Cameron Johnson, Author of "You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want", Robert Channing, the World's Greatest Mind Reader and Mental Motivator and Ralph Zuranski, the Creator Of the In Search Of Heroes Program.

Sharif asks question Ralph Zuranski: Let me just ask you, tell me a little bit more about your “In Search of Heroes™” program.
Ralph: It’s a program that I created back when I was a writer and photographer for the Coronado Eagle. I was disgusted by the Heroes like the rock stars, the sports stars, the movie stars or people that are basically just into money and fame. They don’t really give kids a good example of what it is to be productive human beings.

When you focus on material possessions and fame and the people’s lives are broken, they are in shambles, on drugs, involved in illicit sex; it is such a devastating aspect of people’s lives. I just thought we really need to look at who the real Heroes are.

From my experience, over my lifetime of being involved in professional sports, working with movie stars and working with incredibly important people, I’ve found that the real Heroes are the moms and dads. They are the people in their families that take their time and sacrifice to help and protect and serve those that they know that are in their family circle.

My mom and dad just recently had catastrophic illnesses last year, and I was the only child that decided to drop what I was doing, come back and live with my parents and help take care of them. I’m thankful that my wife came with me.

Now that I see how hard it actually is to step up to the plate and take care of your parents when they have catastrophic illnesses and how great are the sacrifices, I realized that the real Heroes are the people that are making a big difference in the lives of the people within their own families.

I thought that people really need to know this. That’s when I created the Heroes program, to take high school kids in search of local and national Heroes to just ask them, “Who are the Heroes in their lives?” Almost to a person, even the movie stars and important people in the community all said it was their moms and dads, or the coaches and teachers.

Ralph Zuranski: Cameron, What do you want out of life in ten words or less?

Cameron Johnson: Well, I think there are a number of different ways I could answer this, but most importantly, what I want out of life is that I want to leave the world a better place, and I want to motivate young people to do the best that they can do.

Ralph Zuranski:That’s pretty impressive. I was just looking at your bio. I was wondering if you could just share with everybody the stuff that you have done and a little bit about your unique book, The Power of One: The Unsung Everyday Heroes Rescuing America’s Cities.

It sounds almost like my In Search of Heroes program.

Debra Berg:Yes, yes. Well, that’s how I found you. I was searching on the web for heroes and I found you.

I’ve had a kind of interesting career. It has led me to what I do today. I’ve been an entrepreneur; I’ve worked for, as you mentioned, the legislature, I’ve worked in corporate America and so I understand all the different industries in this country.

As I was a business owner I ran into a very interesting couple from Romania who had helped overthrow Nicolae Ceausescu and we became good friends.

They ran across a Harvard study called Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital and they were demoralized by it because it maintained that people were no longer interested in their communities. My friends came to learn about democracy here and to take those insights home and teach their grassroots leaders. Their reaction to the study bothered me.

So that ten years of working for the legislature and doing studies on social policies caught up with me and I just couldn’t believe that people weren’t interested in helping others and in helping their communities. So I went on my own personal quest to find out what was really going on out there.

I came across an amazing new trend. I call it the New Civic America. It’s about people, everyday Americans, women and men from all walks of life, who are sacrificing big incomes, personal lives.

One man has even sacrificed an NFL pension to go and create a solution to major social problems like poverty, at-risk youth or crime.

That’s what I do. What I do is I get out there and I talk to people about what is going on and I encourage others to do the same.

Ralph Zuranski:Wow, that’s really amazing. That sounds like a wonderful work.

Debra Berg:It’s really fascinating and it’s so humbling to talk to these heroes. They are very altruistic, not in it for personal gain at all. They are out there to make a change, to make a difference in the world.

Their ideas are so good that they are now replicating across the country and in some cases all over the world.

Ralph Zuranski:You know, that’s funny. I just found an article in the newspaper about young people that came up to the one gentleman, Mr. Strickland. I think you are going to be speaking with him at a seminar for Mark Lewis down in Dallas?

Debra Berg:Yes.

Ralph Zuranski:He basically had people, especially young people, come up to him and tell him how grateful they were to have the opportunity to work with him and do something that mattered and that helped other people.

Debra Berg:Yes. And these people have drawn in lots of volunteers, lots of youth, and they have set a fabulous example, especially for the youth. And the stories and spin-offs from what they have encountered with these heroes and what they have ended up doing with their lives is also very inspiring.

Ralph Zuranski:I can imagine that it is. I’d like to go ahead and ask you a couple of the Heroes questions.

Ralph Zuranski:What do you want out of life, in ten words or less?
Debra Berg: Health, wealth, a successful marriage, and a network of friends helping others.

"Part One: The 'In Search Of Heroes' Core Master Mind Team Inspire and Encourage You As They Answer the In Search Of Heroes Questions"

Sharif Khan is President and founder of Diamond Mind Enterprises, an organization devoted to transforming coal minds into diamond minds through the applied pressure of higher knowledge, wellness education, and leadership training. His vision is “to inspire the world with hope, faith, love, respect, excellence, and the courage to dream”. He is the author of the inspirational book about Promoting Heroes in the Workplace and Everyday Life in his "The PSYCHOLOGY OF THE HERO SOUL."
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Cameron Johnson started his first business at the tender age of nine. By age 12, his company was selling Beanie Babies™ over the Internet and he profited $50,000 that year. At the age of fifteen, he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company and published his autobiography in Japanese which became an instant best-seller.

At the age of 21, he has founded and sold more than a dozen businesses and has been featured in more than 250 media outlets worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, and MSNBC. He’s served as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and is a frequent speaker to a variety of audiences including high schools, colleges, and corporate executives.

In January, 2007, his new book titled You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want – With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship is being released by Simon & Schuster. Cameron Johnson lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Visit his official website http://www.cameronjohnson.com.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Debra Schweiger Berg is an author, researcher, and public speaker. She holds both a B.A. in political science/economics and an M.P.A., (public administration) degree from the University of Illinois. As an undergrad, she staffed the Watergate hearings in Washington, D.C. Post-college; Debra was one of the first women to serve on the staffs of the Illinois, Kentucky, and Minnesota state legislatures. In all three states, she served as a finance analyst for billions of state agency dollars and led studies on special education, welfare, and education. Following that, Minnesota’s largest HMO recruited her as a senior financial analyst.

Then, in the mid-eighties and early nineties, she founded a successful international marketing and training company, TeamNet, Intl., in which she trained and mentored entrepreneurs. That success led to her eventual recruitment by Amdocs, Inc. and Gcom, Inc., both software industry leaders.

In 1995, Debra launched a 10-year personal quest during which she interviewed 130 of America’s new civic heroes, civic entrepreneurs. Her interviews exposed a hidden trend in America, which she chronicles in her book, The Power of ONE: The Unsung Everyday Heroes Rescuing America’s Cities. Debra speaks to a wide range of audiences and captivates them with tales surrounding her 10,000-mile quest and the heroes who’ve invented eye-opening, working solutions to America’s toughest social problems.

She’s received acclaim by the Pew Foundation and cited by the Chicago Sun-Times for her groundbreaking findings. Debra is presently the President of Power of One Publishing and of PowerQuest, a leadership training company that empowers leaders of all ages to realize a life quest.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Ralph Zuranski is the creator of the The “In Search Of Heroes" Program. It is a local franchise business opportunity for individuals with high integrity. The purpose of the business is to train young people how to be successful in their personal lives and business.

The goal is to teach high school and college students how to generate income for their local ISOH Program, themselves and community businesses by spreading the “Good News” about local heroes and their businesses, if they have one. Students learn how to promote people, products and businesses on the internet and through local newspapers, TV and radio, using the latest techniques and technology.

Students learn the importance and value of spreading “Good News” in their communities about heroic individuals who deserve recognition for their service to others. This valuable information inspires everyone. It helps each person to take pride in their community and the good people that live there that are making a positive difference in the lives of others.

The businesses that deserve recognition for their integrity, service and generosity are also promoted. This increase in income allows local business owners the opportunity to give back even more to their community. With their increased financial independence, they can invest more time and money into worthwhile community programs.

The students become interns for their local “In Search Of Heroesä” Program. As they learn copywriting, online and offline marketing, website design and how to create audio and video programs, they provide these services to local businesses at a discounted price.

Many small local businesses need skilled help in marketing their businesses, but cannot afford high priced companies. Students are the perfect choice to use their developing marketing skills to help these businesses become more successful. As these businesses increase their revenues, the local community can afford to do more to help local community programs. Everyone benefits!

Posted by ralph at 07:57 AM | Permalink

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.

44. What do you think about the In Search Of Heroes Program and its impact on youth, parents and business people?
Mike Filsaime: I think we are blessed to have people like you in this world Ralph that get heroes together out there to work and speak and to help young kids. We need more things like that in the world and I’m so glad to participate in a program like this. I know that you’ve created some butterfly effects that will change people’s lives and young people’s lives.

They’ll look back and one day they’ll do an interview with a successful radio show or television station. Someone will ask “What was it that changed your life?” They’ll say it was a program called In Search of Heroes and they’ll talk about it.

I think you are leaving a legacy here Ralph and I want to commend you and applaud you for what you are doing for young kids. It’s the most selfless act a human being can do. I am very proud of you.
_____________________
Paulie Sabol: I appreciate it, and I especially appreciate the diversity that it represents, that there is a place at the table for everybody. There is a hero that you can identify with. Even if there is a hero that you don’t fully identify with, you can grow in that identification with heroes that you might not even considered at first.
I know you’ve used the word acceptance a few times, but I think acceptance is a wimpy position. People don’t want to be merely accepted for who they are, they want to be celebrated for who they are. And that is what In Search of Heroes does. It celebrates the unique and consistent communications of success by different people.
Ralph Zuranski: That is probably the major paradigm of the In Search of Heroes program. It is the Help Enthusiastically Responsibly Optimistically Exceptionally Socially and/or Spiritually that stands for what heroes really are. They are the people that step into that moment in time and are self-sacrificing to help somebody else. They do it without any expectations of return.
I think that is what is truly needed in the world today. No matter who you are or what you believe, no matter what your sexual persuasion is, if you step out and help somebody else, at that moment in time, you rise above your own self interest and make a difference in the world and also eternally.
Paulie Sabol: Thank you for the experience Ralph.
Ralph Zuranski: Paulie, thank you for your time and how much you shared with us. I know it will resonate with a lot of people that need that assurance that what they are doing is at the right time and the right place.
____________________
Donna Fox: I think the In Search of Heroes Program is truly phenomenal. That you are able to see the hero in everyone and allow that heroism to trickle down and seed of heroism gets planted at a very young age.

Whether that seed gets the water and the soil and the nutrients it needs to grow is really up to the lessons that we teach young people as they grow. The seed is there but do we feed it? Do we nurture it?

The In Search of Heroes Program is going to do exactly that by telling every story of every person who is phenomenal, and every person is phenomenal. It builds and it grows.

If there is one person out there who hears this interview and thinks, “Donna is not all that special and look what she did. Now she is pretty successful. I can do that, too.” That is priceless.

Ralph Zuranski: That is very special. I wanted to ask you just one parting question. Do you have a life goal that you want to achieve before you die?

Donna Fox: That is a great question. It’s kind of the funny thing about goals, that once you make them there is another one right around the corner. My life goal is that there is always another goal right around the corner.

I don’t want to ever be done. I don’t want to ever retire. So that’s my goal, to have another goal.

Ralph Zuranski: Again Donna, I am so appreciative of your time and the incredible value of your answers. I’m so excited about being able to interview successful women that I have met at the internet conferences and women who are tremendous role models to the young women coming up.

There are a lot of men on the internet who are successful and it’s been hard finding women who are as successful as the men. It just is so critical to have female role models like yourself. So I really thank you for your time.

Donna Fox: Thank you so much, Ralph. It’s really important that we recognize that society recognizes success in dollar figures and success isn’t always about the money.

As much as we like to think it is, and as inspirational as it is because we imagine that our lives will be different if there is money in them, but really some of the greatest successes are like Mother Theresa. She didn’t have money. Absolutely she is a success story. She is truly a hero in anyone’s book.

I think when more people realize that heroism comes from within and isn’t about your checkbook or your bank account or the car that you drive but about the people you touch, suddenly those female heroes will start popping out of the woodwork.

I hope that for you, and thank you so much for having me be a part of this. It’s been truly my pleasure and a lot of fun, too.
________________________
TOM BEAL: I was real excited to hear about it in March 2005 when you first told me about it. I was really excited to hear that you were putting these things together for years. The wisdom that’s going to be shared I think is going to dramatically impact people’s lives.

Similar to when Napoleon Hill studied all the top experts of the 1900’s. I think the wisdom you have captured and are willing to share with the youth and society as a whole will positively impact future generations.

RALPH ZURANSKI: Tom, thank you so much yours was an astounding story.

TOM BEAL: Thanks for the interview. I appreciate it. Talk to you later, bye.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 01:19 PM | Permalink

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.

43. If you had three wishes for your life and the world, that would instantly come true, what would they be?
Mike Filsaime: I just want to live a long healthy life. I want it to be prosperous. I want to leave a legacy by helping as many people as I can along the way.
________________________
Paulie Sabol: Cool question. My first wish would be for a complete end of parochial and provincial paternalism, and to have it all replaced by a sex positive, body positive, diverse open and full panoply of the human expression. In other words, I would have the completion of the civil rights movement and the joyous expression of it for everyone.
Ralph Zuranski: Basically you’d like to have everybody accepted for who they are?
Paulie Sabol: That’s right. We don’t need to be burning witches. Second, I would wish for a totally healed globe and environment without wars of aggression and unlawful wars against sovereign nations. I wish we could just replace all those government tribalism with an anarcho village. Go right into true communities being autonomous and independent. It would be a beautiful thing in my view.
Then of course, in the spirit of fundamental abundance, my third wish would be to wish for three more wishes.
______________________
Donna Fox: I wish for more discipline to be able to really use my powers for good. I wish for more patience to really be able to impact and create those “aha” moments in the people that really need them. I wish for a receptive vessel in humanity because there are so many people who have so much good to do.

I think that sometimes we get closed off from being open to good because of media messages and just all of the trouble out there. So I wish that people were more receptive.
______________________
TOM BEAL: I wish that everyone could have the inner peace that I’m searching for. Or at least make the choice to begin that journey of inner peace. Have the faith knowing that everything does work for good.

Also, to boldly live the life to fulfill the destiny that they each have. I see a lot of people living half lives and walking sheepishly forward instead of boldly forward in their lives. I think that would be a tremendous thing to witness.
When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 01:18 PM | Permalink

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.

42. Do you have any good solutions to the problems facing society, especially racism, child and spousal abuse and violence among young people?
Mike Filsaime: Yes, I will say a statement that will shock a couple of people. Racism will probably be around for a long time. I don’t see how you can have so many different people that can grow up in different cultures and unfortunately there’s negative energy in this world and those people are going to see differences in other people as fear unfortunately.

I would hope that one day as Martin Luther King had this dream that everybody can let go on the differences and understand that those differences can bring us closer together.

If we understand that there’s racism in this world just as we understand that there’s hate. There will probably always be hate and there will probably always be love. Of course there will always be love.

As long as we know the right thing to do. If we focus too much on the racism and look at these leaders that are fighting for racism lets go back to the 1960’s. There were two major leaders out there.

It gets very tough when you start talking about faith, religion and politics and things like that. I’m not going to talk about the one leader that spoke about racism and did it in terms of anger.

I’ll talk about the one that did it in terms of love and that was Martin Luther King. What he did is everything that we are talking about today. If you have debt and you focus on how I can get out of debt then you are just going to get more debt.

If you have debt and focus on how I can have more success then you’ll have success and you’ll get out of debt. So it’s the same thing that Martin Luther King realized is that there is racism in this country. But don’t go out there and focus on the problem and say “There is racism. We need to do this and to do that and they need to recognize us.”

No, talk about the positive things like love and talk about getting together. Then all those things will automatically go out. To answer your question a little quicker is not to dwell on the negative things.

There is racism out there and a lot of bad things out there. All these kids are seeing it in their schools. There are bad kids in every school.

Some have it worse than others. But if you focus on the positive and align yourself with the positive students in the school and you can overcome it. Focus on the good and you’ll have good in your life. Don’t focus on solving the problems by looking at the problems. Focus on solving the problems by looking at the solutions....
____________________
Paulie Sabol: Good solution is such an interesting question because if good means practical, easy, simple, ready to implement immediately, I’m not sure that I do. I think I am lacking in that. I’ve shared with you before that from time to time when I see the scope of the problems I get discouraged and uncertain.
I will tell you that I absolutely believe that fundamental abundance is the solution to most all of those problems. If you look at things like racism, what a lot of people don’t know is that racism has often been used in history, for example, to thwart the labor movement. While racism will be incited as the way to say, “Look, those people over there, those different people, are coming over here to take your good jobs.”
Sexism has been used in the same way to thwart the labor movement. There is a great movie out right now about a woman coal miner in Colorado and how she had to break down the all boys network, and even the labor unions were being played against her, and the fears of difference were made.
We don’t even need a labor movement if we have fundamental abundance. The labor movement is designed to protect laborers from management. But if there is fundamental abundance, we don’t even need that, much less with management and what I like to call small capital, not because they don’t really fall into the category of big capital, but because they are small minded.
What small capital tries to use when they use the race card, when they use the violence, and this isn’t suggested to be an excuse Ralph, but very often people would have a behavior pattern that might include violence, fall into that behavior pattern because of financial struggle.
So fundamental abundance would reduce the number of triggers. Now they still want to work on the inner work, but fundamental abundance would decrease the incidents. It would put somebody in a resourceful position.
So that is my solution – help me do it.
_____________________
Donna Fox: Whew! Now I feel the burden of being a hero right there! Wow! There’s a lot of weight to that question.

We all have needs and the needs for food and shelter, clothing, warmth and love is so profound and so strong that we can’t think past it if those aren’t met.

I don’t know the cure for hunger. I don’t know how to clothe or house everyone on the planet. But I do know how to love them. That’s the one thing I can pretty much figure out.

Nothing is going to be wrong with the world where there is more love. And from love other things get figured out. It’s from a position of love that charities are created.

It’s from a position of love that someone finds the hero in themselves and goes on to do extraordinary things. Without that basic emotion being met, all of the evil in the world, all of the pain and the bad stuff, the spousal abuse, the child abuse, it all comes from a place that is other than that.

So much like I say, almost jokingly but actually quite serious, I make the world a better place by being nice, we would all make the world a better place if we would just have a little more love and be a little more nice.
______________________
TOM BEAL: Yes I think that goes right back to what other heroes have told you, start with yourself. There’s nothing we can do, not one thing can I change in another person.

I can only change things in me I can only choose within the spirit of influence I have which is through me. If I can be that light house making the right moves and making the right choices and setting an example then that’s the best I can do.

If everyone were to take that responsibility and to choose to set an example in their own sphere that would solve most if not all the problems.
When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 01:16 PM | Permalink

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.

41. How are you making the world a better place?
Mike Filsaime: By helping others. Teaching people what I know and teaching people how to take action. I know that these butterfly effects that we are having with other people like Jason, Dennis, James and Keith is making them able to become heroes to other people.

That butterfly effect is now becoming a ripple effect and those people they are helping will become heroes for other people. It can go on for years and years to come and that’s leaving a legacy.
____________________
Paulie Sabol: I am making the world a better place by focusing on creating opportunity for the disenfranchised. First, I run the original entrepreneurial internship program that I have seen a number of the mentors and experts that I have in my mastermind recreate and respectfully imitate.
That is changing lives. It is giving an alternative. The statistics says the number of individuals graduating high school who really have no appropriate place, they are not college bound, they are not wishing to tie themselves to the tyranny of a time clock. They are looking for something more.
But they are looking around and not finding anything. I saw this burden and I responded to it. It has been profoundly effective. Multiply that, I am creating a foundation called the Eagle Foundation which is Economic Assistance for Gay and Lesbian Entrepreneurs. I am basically creating a virtue capital, instead of venture capital, opportunity for gay and lesbian people who want to start their businesses.
Those are the ways in which I am helping.
Ralph Zuranski: Well, that’s a great way to provide opportunities for everybody no matter where they’re at, that they know they too can do good things not only for themselves and achieve their dreams, but also help society at the same time.
_____________________
Donna Fox: I try to make the world a better place just by being the best “me” I can be and really just trying to touch people from the position of light and from a position of good.

Life is way too short and we don’t know when our last day is. We don’t know when we are checking out. It’s too short to be burdened by problems and negativity and stress and angst and all those negative feelings, that while it’s important to recognize and feel them once in awhile, not to dwell on them.

Being nice is the way I make the world a better place.
_______________________
TOM BEAL: I think by choosing to be in the game and by choosing to put this energy out. Also choosing to tell my story. And as you heard choosing to tell some situations that may make some people feel uncomfortable.

That goes back to being uncomfortable. Some people have actually asked me, Tom why did you tell that story? Why did you tell about your wife and the car wreck?” I feel it’s a story that needs to be told because someone out there needs to hear it. My hope and my prayer is that it is out there and it’s going to open up someone’s heart.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 01:15 PM | Permalink

39. Why do you think you were selected for this unique honor?

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.

Mike Filsaime: I look good in photos. (Laughter)I think that you and I Ralph had an opportunity to build a very good friendship over the last year and a half. We’ve had an opportunity to see each other and we both know that we want to do what’s right in the world.

I think everything we spoke about in this call about attracting negative and positive energy is that you and I both put out positive signals. I think it was just a matter of fate that we had an opportunity to meet and do this call today.
____________________
Paulie Sabol: Before I answer that, let me say one other thing about your being the modern Earle Nightingale, Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, or whatnot – this is an important point that I’m going to make. What excites me even the most, if I had the choice to be a part of the Internet In Search of Heroes as an Internet hero, or to be a part of Napolean Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, I would choose the Internet heroes.
The Internet is global. It is worldwide. It is truly democratic. Information on it seeks to be widespread and free. There is nothing wrong with paying for information, too, but for the most part, this is going to transmit to people that it could actually be illegal to give somebody a book about positive thinking, but they can get on a web page about it.
So in my mind, it is actually cooler because the Internet is worldwide. It is diverse and it includes everybody.
____________________
Donna Fox: That’s not an easy question because I truly don’t know why you asked for this interview. I could make lots of guesses. I could make lots of guesses based on things that I would like to be recognized for.

You didn’t know about my adversity when you asked me, so it wasn’t that I had overcome adversity. You knew hardly anything at all about me, actually, when you asked me to be a Hero.

So what I can guess you noticed is that I show up, and simply that I’m there and that I’m making an effort and hitting some balls out of the park every once in a while.

That I show up to the practices and I think that’s what you noticed.
_____________________
TOM BEAL: By choosing to be in the game. Just by choosing to attend seminars your life can and will be changed. By getting in the game and going out and being with other people who accomplishing great things. That’s the simple answer.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 01:12 PM | Permalink

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.

Why Do You Think You Were You Selected To Be Interviewed as a Hero?

Mike Filsaime: As long as I can realize that I can continue to help people then my life gets changed as I see other people’s lives get changed by any influence I have about it.
_______________________
Paulie Sabol: Yes, it will. I did want to explain why I thought you selected me for this unique honor. I really do hope and believe that it is important for me to do this because as a gay man, it is essential for that on average one out of ten young people who are gay, bisexual, lesbian, transgendered, and even more than one out of ten who are questioning, wondering and curious, because of the high incidence of suicide in the disenfranchised.
Look at the number of gay teenagers who commit suicide. In some estimates, the percentage is a whopping 300-500% increase in the likelihood of suicide just because of the difference in sexual orientation. I am here to say to those individuals that there is something to live for. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is even a love at the end of the tunnel.
So just make it. Correspondingly, that is how it is going to change my life as well. My life is going to change because I’m going to have a place, a very easy place to send somebody. I’m going to be able to send them to In Search of Heroes.
When I know when they express that they want a more intimate, personal and profound experience of who Paulie Sabol is, and who the other mentors and heroes in their life are, I have a place to send somebody simply.
That is going to change a lot, because I have a choice to either not respond to that question, and use the time on something else, but now I have the ability to respond to the question every time. There will never be a lack of time or ability. So that’s how it is going to change things for me.
Ralph Zuranski: Well, that is what the Heroes program is all about. It doesn’t matter what your sexual orientation is, or what your philosophical orientation is, or what your religion is, that at any moment in time, you can be a hero if you just reach out to help others.
____________________
Donna Fox: I’ve always wanted a cool title. Now there was a time in my life when I wanted to have business cards printed up that said, “Donna Fox, Intellectual Gumshoe.” I thought that would be a great title.

But now I can have business cards that say, “Donna Fox, Hero” and how cool is that?

Jokes aside, I think that it’s a tremendous honor to be recognized as one of your heroes. But with all do respect, it is life as usual. It’s not about how it affects my life. It’s about how it might affect somebody else’s life, and that’s what makes it a great honor.
_____________________
TOM BEAL: Hopefully it will fulfill my burning desire which is to assist the people and understanding that there are steps you can take today to achieve your dreams and goals.

Hopefully my story has been inspirational to someone whether they’ve gone through similar circumstances or have heard something in my story that would trigger them to strengthen their power of choice muscles and their decisive muscles and willingness to take action.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 01:14 PM | Permalink

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.

38. How does it feel to be recognized as an Internet HERO?
Mike Filsaime: Oh I’m honored. It’s something that’s difficult to put into words. I am honored to be on this call and as long as I know what I keep on doing what’s right in my heart I know I can be an example for others & not let anybody down.

If I do let anybody down it’s because I’ve made a mistake I can acknowledge it and apologize for it and move on. You can’t live the perfect life because you want to be the perfect life for other people. Along as you go out everyday with good intentions most of the time you’ll end up doing the right thing.
________________________
Paulie Sabol: Naturally, of course, it is a terrific honor. Not only is it a joyous experience in and of itself, it would be if there were no other heroes in the entire collection. But the ability to be among this who’s who of heroes you’ve assembled. It is kind of like if I were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame that would be a great honor.
But the real honor is being among people like Pete Rose, and all of these other individuals who have touched back all through time, and will continue to touch forward through the rest of time. Yes, it is a tremendous honor.

Ralph Zuranski: It is amazing to stand in the hall of heroes and the great men of our time. It is interesting to basically accept people on the way that they are and look at them according to what they are accomplishing and what their attitudes are and how they treat other people. It is kind of neat to sort of be like the Earl Nightingale or the Napolean Hill of my era to be able to ask people that are successful on how they did accomplish the dream that they set forth in their lives.
_____________________
Donna Fox: That’s a great question Ralph. I remember when you asked me to do a Hero’s interview and I was tremendously flattered and tremendously touched.

I didn’t for a moment think that I didn’t deserve it, though, because who am I to say whether or not I’m a hero. It’s not my role to decide if I’m a hero or not.

You saw something in me and I love you for that. That’s great. Maybe somebody else won’t, but heroism is very personal. You may like Superman or you may like Batman. To many people Batman is nothing because he didn’t have any special powers. But he had great toys, so maybe that makes him a hero to you.

The real-life heroes, not the super heroes, they are the same way. It’s very personal whether or not you decide someone is a hero or like we like to think everyone is a hero.

It feels wonderful that you recognized that in me and it’s very special and I am so appreciative.
__________________
TOM BEAL: Humbling. I’m just a normal person. The funny part is dealing with all these other people I’ve been able to be ok with that because they are all normal people too.

Whether it’s Jim Kelly or Jeffery Gidemer they are just doing the best they can with what they know how. I feel that’s all I’m doing and that’s all anybody that’s listening to this is doing.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 01:11 PM | Permalink

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.

37. How do people become heroes?
Mike Filsaime: By just living a good life. People look up to you when you do things right. That’s a simple answer for a complicated question. How to become a hero is simply just living the life that you know is right. Then people will look up to you.
_______________________
Paulie Sabol: The first answer is a day at a time. You become a hero one day at a time. This is the other part of it. Do you know how you become a villain? One day at a time. You become a hero or a villain one day at a time.
So let me tell you what the difference is. If the path is the same, what’s the difference? For your case, we will brand the hero’s edge. The hero’s edge works this way. Today there will be a challenge. You will respond to that challenge with the simple discipline of heroism or you will respond to it with the simple neglect of villainy.
I may have said this once before, but I want to be clear. When I am making this hard juxtaposition, of course there are shades of gray. But for the purpose of this, let’s just say the only thing that it takes for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.
Our only choices are heroism or villainy. So today when that challenge comes, we are either going to respond as a hero, with heroism, or we are going to respond with neglect which is villainy. In doing that today, we won’t notice a big difference. It is sort of like if you had the choice today to read a book on a subject area that you’d like increase your strength in.
If you read it today, a chapter, you may not know a whole lot more, right? You may not notice the difference. But what happens if you read a chapter a day a year from now? Now you’ve read maybe ten different 36 chapter books. That’s a huge amount of information. That’s going to make a huge difference.
What if you do that for the entirety of your junior high years? You do that for three years. You’ve now read 30 books. In many cases, that is as many authoritative books as there are on a subject. You are really an expert at that moment. It is the same way with heroism.
The act of making the decision to act like a hero right now – in the action of doing so will seem to make no difference at all, but the compound effect of making the simple decision of discipline to act like a hero rather than the simple act of neglect, villainy, over time will make all the difference in the world.
That is why the ability to move into your destiny as a hero is assured. That is why you can trust the truth. That is why it must happen. All it takes is the little act of discipline. It is not hard to do. Is it hard to read a chapter today? Is that extraneous and take hours and hours of time to read a chapter? No, just a little bit of time.
But the compound effect over time assures greatness. That is how you become a hero today.
Ralph Zuranski: That is one of the things that has been so outstanding in doing the Hero’s interviews, is that the majority of the heroes that I’ve had the opportunity to interview have said that is has been all the great men that they’ve read stories about, and become their mentors in their mind, their virtual heroes, because they didn’t have people that were heroes in their lives.
____________________
TOM BEAL: By choice…choosing to build a foundation of ethics, honesty, belief and faith. There’s a quote and let me see if I can get this right, “I’m going to improve myself for you. I love you so much I’m going to improve myself. To choose the best you that you can be is all it takes to be a hero.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 01:10 PM | Permalink

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.

36. What are the things parents can do that will help their children realize they too can be HEROES and make a positive impact on the lives of others?
Mike Filsaime: The first thing a parent needs to do is lead a life by example. You can’t be a hypocrite and tell your kids they shouldn’t smoke weed when you indeed smoke weed. Kids are smarter than what parents give them credit for.

Even if they don’t consciously see it subconsciously they pick up on things. A parent needs to live their life by example then they need to let their kid know how much they love them. They need to share that and express that and let that kid know that they are the best thing that’s ever been put on this earth.

When the kid starts to understand that they need to instill the properties in these kids of the laws of reciprocity to know that when you have what you want or when you’re going through that point in your life & trying to achieve what you want you have to always make sure you help other people get what they want.

As you are always a student looking up to your hero there is always somebody looking up to you. So you have the dual role of the student and the hero. When people look up to you as a hero you have to be there for them.
____________________
Paulie Sabol: I think that the number one thing that parents can do is get out of the kid’s way. Very often, as you’ve talked about, we want people to be as much like us as possible. You see this with very young children, where it seems to be a requirement to say which parent the child looks like. “Oh, he really looks like you,” as if the child would be rejected and abandoned if they looked different.
This is what is so subtly corrosive about those comments. They come off of our lips almost like blinking, a reflex behavior. The very best thing that parents can do is get out of their kid’s way.
We get a lot of young people who are interns with us. I in fact have a MySpace dedicated to that process, www.MySpace.com/internship. You can actually see a number of the young people who have become interns. Not one of them came to me in a way that I could describe as really having had a perfectly nurturing, care-giving parents.
And I’m not sure that any of us will have that perfectly. But what I can tell you is that when those parents made the decision to get out of their kids way, let them go on this internship experience, let them move to another State, move into another place, learn all about entrepreneurship, and many of these parents were really employee minded people.
This was not a value system that they understood. They only understood working hard for money, not working smart and working the system. But when they got out of the way, not one of these interns has had anything less than a dramatic transformation. In almost all cases, except for two that I can think of, have created substantial amounts of wealth, and in two cases, more wealth than their parents.
__________________
TOM BEAL: Exposing them to the proper things. Not letting them watch the movies that have all the violence and the bad things occurring and the TV programs that have the same things.

But, exposing them to the empowering books and videos that can show them heroes. That can also give them hope and give them people and things to aspire to look up to.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 01:09 PM | Permalink

Listen to Cameron Johnson's In Search Of Heroes by clicking this link.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, hopefully the “In Search of Heroes” program will help that.

Cameron Johnson: I think so.

Ralph Zuranski: That would be good news.

If you had three wishes for your life in the world that would instantly come true, what would they be?

Cameron Johnson: This is kind of a tough question, because I could probably think on this for several weeks and still not come up with an answer that hits me and strikes me a special.

But I want people to be happy, and that sounds like such a cliché or a beauty pageant answer. But I want people to be happy and to be able to help others, and to get satisfaction out of that.

So many people and so many young people are depressed, and they live these very difficult lives, and there are these huge pressures from their parents and from outside sources to make the best grades possible. I think making good grades is very important, and it helps you get into a good school, or get a good job and everything like that.

But when people go so far as to go on antidepressant medicine because they are so depressed because of their grades. Or at the high school I attended there was a young guy who was a few years older than me. He was literally stressing out about his college applications, and he committed suicide.

That story will stay with me for the rest of my life, because there is really no reason to let things—nothing is that bad. One wish would be for people to be happy and help everyone else.

Number two would be to try and do whatever it is you want to do, and that sounds like a cliché, also. But if you want to start a business, find out what the first step to starting a business is, whether it is an Internet business and you need to come up with a name and register the domain name.

Or that’s a brick and mortar business, and you need to go sign a lease and move into your small location. Every business should start small.

Then third I would say, a very strong wish I would have would be for young people and families and adults and everyone just to have a stronger relationship with their families, because I think that strong family relationships and connections really help give back.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, you know, I really believe that is true.

Cameron Johnson: Me, too. It’s really powerful.

Ralph Zuranski: What do you think about the “In Search of Heroes” program and its impact on youth, parents, and business people?

Cameron Johnson: I mean, just imagine if every single person in this great country and in the world could hear all of these interviews, and what they would take away from them. You know, the people that we can touch are really the people who are normally seeking out help.

They are actually the ones who have the ambition and motivation to take the first step, though, and actually go and find positive influence such as the “In Search of Heroes” program. But I think its impact on youth, parents, and business people is only positive. I think that anything that is positive is good.

I think positive cash flow is good! So I think positive impact is so powerful, and I think that I am thankful that you have spent so much time doing these interview and creating this program, because there is so much value in it. So many people can learn so much from all the different people you have interviewed.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, that is true. I appreciate you taking your valuable time, Cameron, to answer these questions, because I know it will be inspirational in particular to people that are somewhere around your age, either somewhat younger or older.

But it is such a great example to see somebody like you who is so successful at an early age, and just understanding how important the key ideas that you talked about are.

Cameron Johnson: Yeah, well, thank you very much, Ralph. I hope a lot of people get enjoyment out of this, and a lot of people listen to it.

Ralph Zuranski: I am sure they will. Well, thanks again.

Cameron Johnson: All right! Thank you, Ralph

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cameron Johnson started his first business at the tender age of nine. By age 12, his company was selling Beanie Babies™ over the Internet and he profited $50,000 that year. At the age of fifteen, he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company and published his autobiography in Japanese which became an instant best-seller.

At the age of 21, he has founded and sold more than a dozen businesses and has been featured in more than 250 media outlets worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, and MSNBC. He’s served as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and is a frequent speaker to a variety of audiences including high schools, colleges, and corporate executives. In January, 2007, his new book titled You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want – With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship is being released by Simon & Schuster. Cameron Johnson lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Visit his official website http://www.cameronjohnson.com.

Why work for someone else when you can call your own shots, pursue your dreams, and find success on your terms by starting your own business? So many people end up bored with their jobs, stuck in the corporate grind, never following their true passions. As wildly successful young entrepreneur Cameron Johnson shows, you don’t have to live that way. We’ve entered a new age of entrepreneurship, with the Web making it easier than ever to start and run your own company.

As Johnson’s remarkable story reveals, the entrepreneurial way of life is a great way to make sure you love what you do—and offers the potential to achieve extraordinary success by following your gut and going for what you really want.

What about the risks? Don’t you need lots of money? Don’t most start-ups fail? Johnson shares his essential secrets to entrepreneurial success that show you how he got into the life at very low risk, and with very little money, took an idea that excited him and ran with it, achieving great success and satisfaction with businesses he loved. He didn’t have an MBA; he didn’t even have a college degree. But he had learned the simple but vital secrets he reveals.

Cameron Johnson is a seriously happy entrepreneur who started his first business when he was nine with $50 and a home computer. Before he’d turned twenty-one he’d started twelve successful businesses and was offered $10 million in venture capital to grow his hot web company CertificateSwap.com—praised by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the leading-edge “Web 2.0” business successes—even bigger. He has never taken out a loan or racked up any debt, and every one of his businesses has been highly profitable—so profitable that he’d made his first million before graduating from high school, and he’s put away enough cash that he could retire today. But that’s the last thing on earth he’d want to do; he’s much too happy starting up new companies.

Through the story of his own impressive career so far, in You Call the Shots, Johnson takes you behind the scenes of entrepreneurial success and empowers you to hit the ground running with your own great business idea, no matter how young you are or how little money you have to invest.

Cameron Johnson had started, run and sold 12 successful companies by the time he was 21. His business successes have been featured in Time, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, USA Today and many more, as well as on the Today Show and Good Morning America. When he was fifteen he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company, and his autobiography, 15-Year-Old CEO, published in Japanese, became an instant best-seller. He has consulted to Fortune 500 companies and spoken at the Wharton School, among others. Every one of his businesses has been a success, even in the worst days of the Internet bust. As a freshman in college, he started CertificateSwap.com, an online marketplace for gift cards, which was a runaway success and for which he was offered $10 million in venture capital. He lives in Blacksburg, VA.

Advance Praise for Cameron Johnson and You Call the Shots

Cameron Johnson wrote me a letter when he was eight years old. I didn’t write back to him, but I responded with a surprise for him when he visited New York City. Thirteen years later, he’s given me a surprise—he’s written a terrific book! No matter what your age, you will enjoy and learn from Cameron’s book about his accomplishments thus far. I’m sure there will be more to come.
— Donald J. Trump

You Call the Shots is for everyone committed to following their dreams. Cameron Johnson thoroughly outlines the strategies it takes to remove obstacles to entrepreneurial success. This book is essential reading for anyone with a passion for life.
— T. Harv Eker, #1 New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

If you want to be an enlightened money-maker, read my friend Cam’s brilliant book now—and apply it.
— Mark Victor Hansen, coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul
and One Minute Millionaire series

Cameron Johnson’s extraordinary entrepreneurial journey has made it possible for him to develop more sophistication and business savvy by the age of twenty-two than most professionals accumulate throughout an entire lifetime! In You Call the Shots he shares his personal secrets, experience and advice in a warm and friendly way that’s sure to motivate people of all ages.
— Jennifer Kushell, New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Young & Successful: How to Get Everything You Want Without Waiting a Lifetime

Posted by ralph at 02:49 PM | Permalink

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.

35. Why are HEROES so important in the lives of young people?
Mike Filsaime: We need people to look up to. Part of the human spirit is knowing that we can’t do it alone. Having a negative person in our lives can be detrimental.

Having a hero helps us to block out everything. We want to work with that hero because a hero believes we can achieve our best. The hero sees us with crystal clear glasses. They can see the future. They don’t judge us. They love us and they see the best part of us when a lot of people don’t.

They bring out the things in us that we don’t even see. So it’s very important for a young kid to have a hero to work with because sometimes that hero is all they’ve got and can bring the world out for them.
_______________________
Paulie Sabol: Heroes are in that list. We talked about those two lists that there are going to be. There is going to be the list of heroes and examples, and the list of have-nots and warnings. The reason heroes are important is because I think a lot of messages out there try to tell young people, “You’re young, you don’t know anything. You’ll never amount to anything. You’re view is unimportant. You’re concerns, the things that you care about are fleeting and trivial and moving on.”
But here is what is powerful – when young people, like those who are listening right now, go ahead and start to collect from history, from all over, use the Internet and search. You will find heroes in your areas of interest. What they will realize is just like I did, that I wasn’t alone.
When I was at that place where I was being chucked out of the church, they will realize they are not alone. They weren’t the first to face these indignities. They won’t be the last. And they will also be among those people who overcome them and have that joyous community to support them.
Again, in my viewpoint, we were all born to be these heroes, to discover our secret destiny and our secret lives, as these kings and priests. This is important because there are leaders of the way when we understand the heroes.
______________________
Donna Fox: I think heroes are the first time when we as young people learn to think big. When a little boy puts a towel around his neck and pretends to be Superman it’s the first time he is thinking beyond his abilities. He is hoping to be something amazing and incredible.

When we start little with the heroes in our imagination, and now we are talking about heroes in the traditional sense, the people who are truly amazing or super heroes, they teach us to stretch.

When we talk about heroes in our sense of it that everybody is a hero it’s really important for us to be heroes for children because they need to learn how to be adults.

Everyone will teach them, so it’s important we know what they are teaching them.
______________________
TOM BEAL: Heroes give hope. I think people especially children need hope. Especially in my circumstances reflecting on my childhood, I needed some hope thinking is this how it’s going to be? As a child you don’t know any better.

You only know the circumstances you are surrounded by so I thought everybody was going through the difficulties I had until I reached a point where I thought I was the only one who thought these circumstances were occurring. I feel hope is something as a society as a whole needs.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 01:08 PM | Permalink

Listen to Cameron Johnson's In Search Of Heroes by clicking this link.

Ralph Zuranski: How does it feel to be recognized as an Internet hero?

Cameron Johnson: Well, I don’t know that I would go that far, but it is an honor to get an e-mail from one person saying I have motivated them in business in any way, or helped them try to find success. I probably get 100 e-mails a month just like that, and that is motivation for me.

At the same time, it’s extremely rewarding and surreal, and almost unbelievable, so I totally can’t even put words to it.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, why do you think you are selected for this unique honor?

Cameron Johnson: I think through interviews and through talking and everything, I think there is just so much value that can come out of just a conversation.

By sharing a conversation, just as we are having right now, Ralph, with an unlimited number of people, I just think so much value is created for them, and so much value is created for you and me by having this conversation, that I think it just creates value and gives back to society.

Ralph Zuranski: How will being recognized as an Internet hero change your life?

Cameron Johnson: Well, hopefully it will change the life of others and of the people listening. But also it changed my life just by thinking about the questions we have talked about today, and I hope that further discussion on these questions will not just help me, but help everyone who is listening.

Ralph Zuranski: How are you making your world a better place?

Cameron Johnson: I am trying my best! I have a book coming out that is not a book I wrote to try and sell and become a best selling author. That is really not one of my goals.

But one of my goals is to help young people and parents and adults and everyone, business leaders and small business owners make smart and educated business decisions. I think my book can help do that, and I think the book will definitely help change society, maybe in a very small way, but in a way.

Also, you know the non-profit organizations I am involved with, and the speeches that I give, I get so much reward from that. So that is definitely how I get so much satisfaction these days.

Ralph Zuranski: Do you have any good solutions to the problems facing society, especially racism, child and spousal abuse, and violence among young people?

Cameron Johnson: I think that it is just a lack of positive influence, and a lack of heroes in the country and in the world. I don’t even enjoy watching the news anymore, because anytime you turn on the news, the only things you see are the number of shootings that occurred today, or car accidents, or anything else. It’s almost impossible to find a good, heartwarming story.

Or if you do, it is on page 12 of your newspaper. So I mean I feel like we are doing it to ourselves, and it is ridiculous, and it’s disturbing, and I don’t know how you change that. Because we, as a society, only get to see whatever it is the media brings out to us.

There are so many hundreds of thousands of positive stories that we never hear of, that we would really rather hear about, because it motivates all of us to try and do things like that rather than go out and commit crimes.

I think that that’s part of our society’s and our country’s fault, but I don’t know how we are to go about changing it. But it needs to happen.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cameron Johnson started his first business at the tender age of nine. By age 12, his company was selling Beanie Babies™ over the Internet and he profited $50,000 that year. At the age of fifteen, he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company and published his autobiography in Japanese which became an instant best-seller.

At the age of 21, he has founded and sold more than a dozen businesses and has been featured in more than 250 media outlets worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, and MSNBC. He’s served as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and is a frequent speaker to a variety of audiences including high schools, colleges, and corporate executives. In January, 2007, his new book titled You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want – With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship is being released by Simon & Schuster. Cameron Johnson lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Visit his official website http://www.cameronjohnson.com.

Why work for someone else when you can call your own shots, pursue your dreams, and find success on your terms by starting your own business? So many people end up bored with their jobs, stuck in the corporate grind, never following their true passions. As wildly successful young entrepreneur Cameron Johnson shows, you don’t have to live that way. We’ve entered a new age of entrepreneurship, with the Web making it easier than ever to start and run your own company.

As Johnson’s remarkable story reveals, the entrepreneurial way of life is a great way to make sure you love what you do—and offers the potential to achieve extraordinary success by following your gut and going for what you really want.

What about the risks? Don’t you need lots of money? Don’t most start-ups fail? Johnson shares his essential secrets to entrepreneurial success that show you how he got into the life at very low risk, and with very little money, took an idea that excited him and ran with it, achieving great success and satisfaction with businesses he loved. He didn’t have an MBA; he didn’t even have a college degree. But he had learned the simple but vital secrets he reveals.

Cameron Johnson is a seriously happy entrepreneur who started his first business when he was nine with $50 and a home computer. Before he’d turned twenty-one he’d started twelve successful businesses and was offered $10 million in venture capital to grow his hot web company CertificateSwap.com—praised by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the leading-edge “Web 2.0” business successes—even bigger. He has never taken out a loan or racked up any debt, and every one of his businesses has been highly profitable—so profitable that he’d made his first million before graduating from high school, and he’s put away enough cash that he could retire today. But that’s the last thing on earth he’d want to do; he’s much too happy starting up new companies.

Through the story of his own impressive career so far, in You Call the Shots, Johnson takes you behind the scenes of entrepreneurial success and empowers you to hit the ground running with your own great business idea, no matter how young you are or how little money you have to invest.

Cameron Johnson had started, run and sold 12 successful companies by the time he was 21. His business successes have been featured in Time, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, USA Today and many more, as well as on the Today Show and Good Morning America. When he was fifteen he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company, and his autobiography, 15-Year-Old CEO, published in Japanese, became an instant best-seller. He has consulted to Fortune 500 companies and spoken at the Wharton School, among others. Every one of his businesses has been a success, even in the worst days of the Internet bust. As a freshman in college, he started CertificateSwap.com, an online marketplace for gift cards, which was a runaway success and for which he was offered $10 million in venture capital. He lives in Blacksburg, VA.

Advance Praise for Cameron Johnson and You Call the Shots

Cameron Johnson wrote me a letter when he was eight years old. I didn’t write back to him, but I responded with a surprise for him when he visited New York City. Thirteen years later, he’s given me a surprise—he’s written a terrific book! No matter what your age, you will enjoy and learn from Cameron’s book about his accomplishments thus far. I’m sure there will be more to come.
— Donald J. Trump

You Call the Shots is for everyone committed to following their dreams. Cameron Johnson thoroughly outlines the strategies it takes to remove obstacles to entrepreneurial success. This book is essential reading for anyone with a passion for life.
— T. Harv Eker, #1 New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

If you want to be an enlightened money-maker, read my friend Cam’s brilliant book now—and apply it.
— Mark Victor Hansen, coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul
and One Minute Millionaire series

Cameron Johnson’s extraordinary entrepreneurial journey has made it possible for him to develop more sophistication and business savvy by the age of twenty-two than most professionals accumulate throughout an entire lifetime! In You Call the Shots he shares his personal secrets, experience and advice in a warm and friendly way that’s sure to motivate people of all ages.
— Jennifer Kushell, New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Young & Successful: How to Get Everything You Want Without Waiting a Lifetime

Posted by ralph at 02:47 PM | Permalink

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.

34. Who do you feel are the real heroes in our society today that are not getting the recognition and rewards they deserve?
Mike Filsaime: The teachers and the pastors and the kids that are working with the youths in the YMCA & the Big Brother Program and things like that. Those are the real heroes out there today.

One thing I really want to talk about is those people that are serving this country over seas. Some of them are so young they don’t even realize how important they are or even what the cause is that they are fighting for. But they are real heroes.

As a mastermind unit together they build up and defend the strongest country in the world and give us the freedom we might take for granted.
___________________
Paulie Sabol: The people who are the real heroes who are not getting the recognition they deserve are the people who are speaking out boldly and with their conscious. They are concerned about wars of aggression and rumors of additional wars. They are very concerned about your privacy and your rights being eroded, besmirched and generally trampled upon.
They are worried about a system of government and a system of elections that can be flawed and tampered and can be frankly stolen. These people who are speaking a truth that we are even afraid to hear and they continue to do it boldly.
They are using the Internet, and they’re making Internet videos, and they are educating. They are going directly to the people. Those are the heroes. Not only are they not getting the recognition that they deserve, quite often and quite frankly, they are being torn apart, torn down, and chewed up by the system that usually has the power and all the methods and means of communication and mediation.
Ralph Zuranski: Sometimes we look at the politicians. We look at the leaders of business. We see that they’ve lost honesty and integrity, and the only sin is being caught in the evil things that they do. Thank God for the people that are willing to speak out for what they believe is true.
___________________
Donna Fox: We could be here a long time for this list. It would include teachers, parents, teenagers, mothers, single mothers, single fathers, and children. There are amazing heroes who are children out there that don’t get the attention they deserve.

Now because sometimes being a hero is really just about moving forward and doing something for others and even doing something for you in the process, every child that lends a hand to another child and children can be pretty cruel. A child that is kind is a hero.

Nobody rewards them. We don’t reward our police officers and our firemen, the people who are saving our lives, nearly as much as we should be. Or the pilots and the stewardesses that make airplane travel great.

Or the staffs in hotels that keep the bathrooms clean for us. Or the ticket taker in the subway station. Or the people who keep the roads clean. Everyone does something to help us.

We don’t realize how many people touch us all day long. There aren’t nearly enough sung heroes in this world. There are far too many unsung heroes. There are just far too many.
_______________________
TOM BEAL: Oh boy. The heroes would be the firemen, police, teachers and all those people are creating so much impact. The military are in some cases taking a lot of heat yet they are protecting the freedoms we embrace. Also those teaching the kids proper things whether its teachers, firemen, police officers, those people I feel are a little under appreciated.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 01:06 PM | Permalink

Listen to Cameron Johnson's In Search Of Heroes by clicking this link.

Ralph Zuranski: Why are heroes so important in the lives of young people?

Cameron Johnson: I think young people need someone to look up to. I was able to make a connection, for some strange reason, with business leaders that are 40 and 50 years older than I was.

But I think heroes, whether it is a neighbor or a parent, a local business leader or a sports star or an athlete, I think they are so important because they give young people the drive and ambition to say that, “There is no reason why I can’t do that, also. There is no reason why I can’t be a professional athlete. There is no reason why I can’t be a business star.”

I think they are crucial to young people, and I think if young people had more people to look up to, more positive influences, then they would be that much more successful.

Ralph Zuranski: What are the things that parents can do that will help their children realize that they, too, can be heroes and make a positive impact on the lives of others?

Cameron Johnson: I think our society has become so disconnected, parents and young people. It is not that young people are just trying to be rebellious and not connected to their parents, although there is a time period when young people do that.

I think that it is just that there is a disconnect on the relationship, and whether it is because parents don’t talk to their kids about what it is they do on a daily basis in their job, so that means when kids get to college and they have to choose a major, they really don’t know anything about any industry and they don’t really know what they want to do.

I read a statistic the other day that more than 70% of college graduates enter a field other than the one they graduated in. Or they end up going back to school to major in a different field, which means they just spend more money on education, which is great.

I am a huge fan of education and a great supporter of education, and believe that education is the key to success. But we have to look at these things from a younger age and an earlier standpoint, like they do in so many other countries that are getting so much further ahead of us. That’s because we have this reverse mentality of not setting goals earlier in life on what it is we want to do.

I think parents can be a huge influence on their children and on their nieces and nephews and on society by being more involved in trying to help their kids find out what it is they want to do. Get them involved in internship programs or sports in high school, or even earlier. I think it really pays off in the long run.

Ralph Zuranski: Cameron, how do people become heroes?

Cameron Johnson: Well, I think the only thing you need to do to be a hero is to help someone else. So if you can give back to anyone, then you are being a hero.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Cameron Johnson started his first business at the tender age of nine. By age 12, his company was selling Beanie Babies™ over the Internet and he profited $50,000 that year. At the age of fifteen, he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company and published his autobiography in Japanese which became an instant best-seller.

At the age of 21, he has founded and sold more than a dozen businesses and has been featured in more than 250 media outlets worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, and MSNBC. He’s served as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and is a frequent speaker to a variety of audiences including high schools, colleges, and corporate executives. In January, 2007, his new book titled You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want – With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship is being released by Simon & Schuster. Cameron Johnson lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Visit his official website http://www.cameronjohnson.com.

Why work for someone else when you can call your own shots, pursue your dreams, and find success on your terms by starting your own business? So many people end up bored with their jobs, stuck in the corporate grind, never following their true passions. As wildly successful young entrepreneur Cameron Johnson shows, you don’t have to live that way. We’ve entered a new age of entrepreneurship, with the Web making it easier than ever to start and run your own company.

As Johnson’s remarkable story reveals, the entrepreneurial way of life is a great way to make sure you love what you do—and offers the potential to achieve extraordinary success by following your gut and going for what you really want.

What about the risks? Don’t you need lots of money? Don’t most start-ups fail? Johnson shares his essential secrets to entrepreneurial success that show you how he got into the life at very low risk, and with very little money, took an idea that excited him and ran with it, achieving great success and satisfaction with businesses he loved. He didn’t have an MBA; he didn’t even have a college degree. But he had learned the simple but vital secrets he reveals.

Cameron Johnson is a seriously happy entrepreneur who started his first business when he was nine with $50 and a home computer. Before he’d turned twenty-one he’d started twelve successful businesses and was offered $10 million in venture capital to grow his hot web company CertificateSwap.com—praised by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the leading-edge “Web 2.0” business successes—even bigger. He has never taken out a loan or racked up any debt, and every one of his businesses has been highly profitable—so profitable that he’d made his first million before graduating from high school, and he’s put away enough cash that he could retire today. But that’s the last thing on earth he’d want to do; he’s much too happy starting up new companies.

Through the story of his own impressive career so far, in You Call the Shots, Johnson takes you behind the scenes of entrepreneurial success and empowers you to hit the ground running with your own great business idea, no matter how young you are or how little money you have to invest.

Cameron Johnson had started, run and sold 12 successful companies by the time he was 21. His business successes have been featured in Time, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, USA Today and many more, as well as on the Today Show and Good Morning America. When he was fifteen he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company, and his autobiography, 15-Year-Old CEO, published in Japanese, became an instant best-seller. He has consulted to Fortune 500 companies and spoken at the Wharton School, among others. Every one of his businesses has been a success, even in the worst days of the Internet bust. As a freshman in college, he started CertificateSwap.com, an online marketplace for gift cards, which was a runaway success and for which he was offered $10 million in venture capital. He lives in Blacksburg, VA.

Advance Praise for Cameron Johnson and You Call the Shots

Cameron Johnson wrote me a letter when he was eight years old. I didn’t write back to him, but I responded with a surprise for him when he visited New York City. Thirteen years later, he’s given me a surprise—he’s written a terrific book! No matter what your age, you will enjoy and learn from Cameron’s book about his accomplishments thus far. I’m sure there will be more to come.
— Donald J. Trump

You Call the Shots is for everyone committed to following their dreams. Cameron Johnson thoroughly outlines the strategies it takes to remove obstacles to entrepreneurial success. This book is essential reading for anyone with a passion for life.
— T. Harv Eker, #1 New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

If you want to be an enlightened money-maker, read my friend Cam’s brilliant book now—and apply it.
— Mark Victor Hansen, coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul
and One Minute Millionaire series

Cameron Johnson’s extraordinary entrepreneurial journey has made it possible for him to develop more sophistication and business savvy by the age of twenty-two than most professionals accumulate throughout an entire lifetime! In You Call the Shots he shares his personal secrets, experience and advice in a warm and friendly way that’s sure to motivate people of all ages.
— Jennifer Kushell, New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Young & Successful: How to Get Everything You Want Without Waiting a Lifetime

Posted by ralph at 02:46 PM | Permalink

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.

33. How important is it to have trusted friends or a master mind group to bounce your ideas off?
Mike Filsaime: It’s extremely important. In the terms of the Napoleon Hill mastermind I don’t know if it’s that easy to structure a mastermind that well. The closest you can get to that the better.

Like I said before your income is the average of your four closest friends. If you want to give yourself a raise you have to start associating yourself with people at higher levels that you want to be like.

That’s what happens with the mastermind. You don’t want to associate yourself with the mastermind of losers because you will become a loser to the tenth degree. If you associate yourself with a winner in a mastermind and that’s not really the scope of this call, to talk about what a mastermind really is.

But, just so if any young kid is listening if I could explain the power of the mastermind. The mastermind is a result of what happens when two or more people get together. Ralph I could have one idea that’s a very good idea and you can one idea, so together we have two ideas.

When you and I get together and we talk about that idea we can say “You know what we should add?” You say “How about we do this?” and we are working together. What results in that is a third idea. Now two people can achieve a third better idea than the two we had by ourselves.

That’s the power of the mastermind. It’s the result of what happens when two or more people get together. When you get 8 to 10 people together in a mastermind that exponential formula I just gave you is what makes the results become exponential.
___________________________
Paulie Sabol: I’m going to alter your question. I think to just bounce your ideas off, it is not essentially important. I think to truly respect the power of the mastermind; you should come to it with a little more complete a position than just an idea you are bouncing.
I actually believe that the mastermind, the group of partners with whom you can develop what you are working on, is essentially important. The way you do it is you focus on enhancing what’s working.
Very often in our lives, and we talked about this, you might look at your report card, and on your report card you might have an A in English, an A in Mathematics, and maybe somewhere on that report card you got some other grades, but maybe Social Studies or Civics, and you got a D.
Very often in our life, we spend the rest of our time trying to focus on getting that D up. In fact, sometimes we’ll get our message from our parents saying that this report card is pretty good, but this D – you’ve got to get this up. Even our caregivers will focus on the weakness.
One of the things I’ve found in the mastermind is the power is that you can focus on your strengths, your ability to enhance somebody else’s idea with your strength. They bring their strength, so you don’t focus on becoming average at everything; you focus at becoming excellent at some things.
That is why I think it is important and really important to select how you use your mastermind and your mentors.
____________________
Donna Fox: Napoleon Hill on his deathbed said that the mastermind was the key to success. It was the element, the surprise, the secret of the rich. I couldn’t agree more.

Especially as internet marketers, it is so easy to stay alone in front of our computer. There is so much busy work we could be doing. But ultimately nothing really happens when you stay at home.

You have to get out. You have to meet people, because people are who we learn from. We learn that we aren’t alone in our process. We learn that somebody has been through everything before.

As individual as adversities may seem, and as individual as problems may seem, people go through them. People pave the way for us and we need to be out and around people constantly.

One of the things, as I teach real estate investors, we are told that we need our teams: our accountants, our attorneys and lawyers. I say throw out the idea of needing a team because you already have one: the whole world is your team.

Everyone out there is available to you as a team member. Most people are willing to help you if you are just willing to ask. Absolutely masterminds are the most valuable thing.

When you open up your mastermind from a tiny little group to the idea that the world is your mastermind, then there isn’t anything you can’t get the answer to.
___________________________
TOM BEAL: Master mind is extremely vital to success. I talk about Jim Kelly. In his Hall of Fame induction speech he didn’t get up there and flex his arms and say “I’m Jim Kelly and I made it to the NFL. I deserved it.”

He gave credit where credit was due. He gave credit to his coaching staff, to his linemen, his team mates, his receivers who were able to run the routes and catch the ball and his running backs. In life you need to have your team.

One of the lessons I learned in studying all these success things at an early age was how to become a self made millionaire. I think that’s a total fallacy. I think it probably can be done but it takes ten times longer than if you were to choose to be a team millionaire. How can you assemble the proper team to assist you in accomplishing your goals much more quickly?
RALPH ZURANSKI: How does the master mind team make a positive difference in your life?

TOM BEAL: The master mind is there to help you in times of difficulty, to overcome adversity and also pushes you and holds you accountable with some of the goals and stride to achieve your goals.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 01:05 PM | Permalink

Listen to Cameron Johnson's In Search Of Heroes by clicking this link.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, who are the heroes in your life now?

Cameron Johnson: The heroes in my life now are people that are very close to me, and of course my dad is a hero to me, and my mom, and my family. But in the business world it is very similar to what I grew up with. Michael Dell and several people in the technology industry serve as my heroes.

Ralph Zuranski: How important is it to have trusted friends or a mastermind group to bounce your ideas off?

Cameron Johnson: I think it is so important that you have trusted friends. First of all, if you have friends you can’t trust, then you can’t bounce an idea off of them. You have to be able to trust your friends, and your friends also need to be able to trust you, likewise.

I think a mastermind group is so rewarding, because it is not just rewarding to you to be the center of that group, but it is rewarding to everyone who gets to participate. I am a participant in several mastermind groups, and I have one myself.

It is so rewarding to just bounce ideas off for each other and help all of us move forward and be more successful. I think it is also probably one of the most important things you can do, and the most cost effective, to bounce an idea off of someone before you spend the money or go out and write the check to do it. So I think mastermind groups are so rewarding and so valuable.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, how did they make a positive difference in your life?

Cameron Johnson: I think they save you a lot of time! They save you a lot of time from trial and error. You can read books about things that have worked and things that haven’t, and you can also ask people that have been in that exact same situation.

You can see what decisions they made and whether they would agree that they were the right decisions or the wrong decisions. You can use that advice to move forward, and hopefully to make better decisions in your life, and to save time.

Because we are only here for a certain amount of time, so we need to be as effective as we can be. So I think that is exactly how they can make a positive difference every day.

Ralph Zuranski: Who do you feel are the real heroes in our society today that aren’t getting the recognition and rewards that they deserve?

Cameron Johnson: Well, when you just read me this question, on of the first things that just came to my mind was that Warren Buffet just gave $43 billion to charity and he made the news for three days. He didn’t do it because he wanted his name on the cover of every newspaper for a certain amount of time, or anything else.

But he is clearly a hero in that every value that he created his entire life, almost every penny, has been given back to charities. With Bill Gates’s foundation, a large portion of his donation went to Bill Gates’s foundation, and that is exactly what Bill Gates’s passions are now.

He has already set a time frame for when he is leaving Microsoft and how he is going to be less involved. He is going to be working with the charity full time because that is where he gets value, and that is where he gets rewards.

I think those are true heroes, those that give back in every way possible through the creation of these successful businesses that they have built. They are now able to give back to our entire nation and the world. They are there for the long term through their donations.
------------------------------------------------------------------

Cameron Johnson started his first business at the tender age of nine. By age 12, his company was selling Beanie Babies™ over the Internet and he profited $50,000 that year. At the age of fifteen, he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company and published his autobiography in Japanese which became an instant best-seller.

At the age of 21, he has founded and sold more than a dozen businesses and has been featured in more than 250 media outlets worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, and MSNBC. He’s served as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and is a frequent speaker to a variety of audiences including high schools, colleges, and corporate executives. In January, 2007, his new book titled You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want – With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship is being released by Simon & Schuster. Cameron Johnson lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Visit his official website http://www.cameronjohnson.com.

Why work for someone else when you can call your own shots, pursue your dreams, and find success on your terms by starting your own business? So many people end up bored with their jobs, stuck in the corporate grind, never following their true passions. As wildly successful young entrepreneur Cameron Johnson shows, you don’t have to live that way. We’ve entered a new age of entrepreneurship, with the Web making it easier than ever to start and run your own company.

As Johnson’s remarkable story reveals, the entrepreneurial way of life is a great way to make sure you love what you do—and offers the potential to achieve extraordinary success by following your gut and going for what you really want.

What about the risks? Don’t you need lots of money? Don’t most start-ups fail? Johnson shares his essential secrets to entrepreneurial success that show you how he got into the life at very low risk, and with very little money, took an idea that excited him and ran with it, achieving great success and satisfaction with businesses he loved. He didn’t have an MBA; he didn’t even have a college degree. But he had learned the simple but vital secrets he reveals.

Cameron Johnson is a seriously happy entrepreneur who started his first business when he was nine with $50 and a home computer. Before he’d turned twenty-one he’d started twelve successful businesses and was offered $10 million in venture capital to grow his hot web company CertificateSwap.com—praised by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the leading-edge “Web 2.0” business successes—even bigger. He has never taken out a loan or racked up any debt, and every one of his businesses has been highly profitable—so profitable that he’d made his first million before graduating from high school, and he’s put away enough cash that he could retire today. But that’s the last thing on earth he’d want to do; he’s much too happy starting up new companies.

Through the story of his own impressive career so far, in You Call the Shots, Johnson takes you behind the scenes of entrepreneurial success and empowers you to hit the ground running with your own great business idea, no matter how young you are or how little money you have to invest.

Cameron Johnson had started, run and sold 12 successful companies by the time he was 21. His business successes have been featured in Time, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, USA Today and many more, as well as on the Today Show and Good Morning America. When he was fifteen he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company, and his autobiography, 15-Year-Old CEO, published in Japanese, became an instant best-seller. He has consulted to Fortune 500 companies and spoken at the Wharton School, among others. Every one of his businesses has been a success, even in the worst days of the Internet bust. As a freshman in college, he started CertificateSwap.com, an online marketplace for gift cards, which was a runaway success and for which he was offered $10 million in venture capital. He lives in Blacksburg, VA.

Advance Praise for Cameron Johnson and You Call the Shots

Cameron Johnson wrote me a letter when he was eight years old. I didn’t write back to him, but I responded with a surprise for him when he visited New York City. Thirteen years later, he’s given me a surprise—he’s written a terrific book! No matter what your age, you will enjoy and learn from Cameron’s book about his accomplishments thus far. I’m sure there will be more to come.
— Donald J. Trump

You Call the Shots is for everyone committed to following their dreams. Cameron Johnson thoroughly outlines the strategies it takes to remove obstacles to entrepreneurial success. This book is essential reading for anyone with a passion for life.
— T. Harv Eker, #1 New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

If you want to be an enlightened money-maker, read my friend Cam’s brilliant book now—and apply it.
— Mark Victor Hansen, coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul
and One Minute Millionaire series

Cameron Johnson’s extraordinary entrepreneurial journey has made it possible for him to develop more sophistication and business savvy by the age of twenty-two than most professionals accumulate throughout an entire lifetime! In You Call the Shots he shares his personal secrets, experience and advice in a warm and friendly way that’s sure to motivate people of all ages.
— Jennifer Kushell, New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Young & Successful: How to Get Everything You Want Without Waiting a Lifetime

Posted by ralph at 02:44 PM | Permalink

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.

32. Who are the HEROES in your life now?
Mike Filsaime: Yes, the marketers that I have great respect for. I almost don’t want to name them because I’ll probably forget some. I guess if I have to name some they are some of my good friends like Tom Beal, Paulie Sabol, Donna Fox and Stephen Pierce and Armand Moran. Frank Kern was an early hero of mine.

Brad Fallon is a very good friend of mine. If anyone is hearing this I probably could list another 50 but those are some very good friends and heroes. Chuck Smith is a very good friend of mine. A young man coming up that really has a good heart and I like what he’s doing is Sterling Valentine.

I think he’ll be a hero for a lot of young kids for years to come. Those are just some to name a few. As I said there’s probably another 50 I could name.
___________________________

Paulie Sabol: The current heroes for me are people like Elle Whizell because of his ongoing and consistent fight against anti-semitism. Similarly, Dan Savage, whose helping to overcome homophobia. Michael Moore for fighting ignorance with such humor.
Really, true progressives anywhere, true individuals who realize that we don’t want to go back to the days when we didn’t have running water. Progress is a good thing. It is not the only thing, but it is a good thing. Who really believes at the heart of their heart that tomorrow can be better than today.
_____________________
Donna Fox: I truly see heroes everywhere. My finance is my hero. He takes care of me. He keeps my life light. Where I am prone to be a workaholic he brings levity and simple things.

My business partner is my hero. He keeps drive and motivation in me, and inspiration and brilliance. I am constantly amazed at Paulie’s brilliance. So he is one of my heroes.

Ralph, you are one of my heroes for putting this site together. This program is incredible. If there is one little thing that I can say that can help inspire someone to find the hero inside them, then you are amazing. You are the hero.

Everyone around me is my hero. If I can just figure out what lesson they have to teach me. That is the real trick.

We have all been in this situations where we are like, “This person has nothing for me. I’m just going to get out of it.” Try to remember that they have something to teach me or they wouldn’t be in front of me.

Everybody has something to teach me. I just have to figure out what it is.
___________________________
TOM BEAL: Right now there are a lot of heroes I’m fortunate to be working with. I’m actually working with some of my heroes, people I looked up to and still look up to. Best selling author Jeffrey Gidemer, I work with on a regular basis. He’s a hero. He has certain qualities that I’m looking to emulate.

A person I’m working with right here in this office, Mike Filsaime and just the attributes he has in assisting others in accomplishing their dreams and goals. Jim Kelly, the NFL Hall of Fame quarterback.

In fact I’m the president of the company I formed with him. To see the life of faith and how to truly overcome adversity, the adversities I’ve stated are nothing compared to Jim’s story. I did interview him and you can see that at jimkellylive.com and he talks in depth about a lot of adversity and how he was able to overcome it.

So seeing someone who puts my adversity to shame on a scale and here’s the fun part, it’s not a competition everybody has their own. It’s all relative but how are you dealing with it?

How am I dealing with it? That’s all that really matters. It doesn’t matter how anybody else is dealing with it wrong or right. How are you dealing with it and how can you make it better.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 01:04 PM | Permalink

Listen to Cameron Johnson's In Search Of Heroes by clicking this link.

Ralph Zuranski: How important was it to believe that your financial dreams would eventually become reality?

Cameron Johnson: I think, in order to set a goal, or set a dream, you have to actually understand that this has to be a realistic goal. So I think it is almost crucial that we are able to believe that we can make our dreams come true, if we just take the necessary steps in achieving those goals, and accomplishing them.

So I think it is crucial. It is hard to set a goal or have a financial dream for yourself if you are not going to believe that it has a chance of being real. So I think we need to set realistic goals, and then I’d say that is 100% valuable.

Ralph Zuranski: Why is it valuable to know exactly how much money you want to have in your bank account, and when?

Cameron Johnson: I think the first question to ask is why do you want that amount? What is that amount of money going to do for you that you don’t already have now? Is it going to buy you things you don’t have, or is it going to pay off debts, or make you more financially stable and make you happier that way?

But why do you think any amount of money will make you any happier than you are now? So I think that is kind of the first question to ask yourself. Then, if you actually put a dollar amount on that, then I think you need to put a date on it, too, and then use that as a goal to be there by that certain time.

But the first question I would say is, “Why do I want this amount of money? Why do I think I am going to be a happier person? Why do I think I am going to be healthier or love my family any more, or anything else? Or my family is going to love me any more?”

Why would you think that is going to happen, just because you have that amount of money in the bank? You know, money does not buy happiness, by any means. So I think that is an important question, too.

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah, I think that is, also. What is your definition of heroism?

Cameron Johnson: I think a hero is someone who helps others and gives back. I think that is the simplest definition that I can give you. I know there have been so many heroes in my life that have served as mentors to me in the business world.

They have guided me along, and anytime I have ever asked anyone for advice, I have always been greeted with open arms and have been able to get great advice. A lot of those people have turned out to be my mentors, and a lot of my success is thanks to their credit.

So, I think those are the true heroes, those that give back more than they take from life. I think that is the definition of hero to me.

Ralph Zuranski: Did you ever create a secret hero in your mind that helped you deal with life’s difficulties?

Cameron Johnson: Well, fortunately, going back to the previous question, I have lived a charmed life and I have had very few difficulties, other than some arguments with my parents when I was growing up.

I always admired successful business leaders, and I would read business book about the Donald Trumps and the Michael Dells, Bill Gates, and Richard Bransons of the world. That kind of always helped me stay motivated, because I had my dreams or my goals set on being a successful business leader myself. So that kind of helped me along.

-------------------------------------------------------

Cameron Johnson started his first business at the tender age of nine. By age 12, his company was selling Beanie Babies™ over the Internet and he profited $50,000 that year. At the age of fifteen, he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company and published his autobiography in Japanese which became an instant best-seller.

At the age of 21, he has founded and sold more than a dozen businesses and has been featured in more than 250 media outlets worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, and MSNBC. He’s served as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and is a frequent speaker to a variety of audiences including high schools, colleges, and corporate executives. In January, 2007, his new book titled You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want – With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship is being released by Simon & Schuster. Cameron Johnson lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Visit his official website http://www.cameronjohnson.com.

Why work for someone else when you can call your own shots, pursue your dreams, and find success on your terms by starting your own business? So many people end up bored with their jobs, stuck in the corporate grind, never following their true passions. As wildly successful young entrepreneur Cameron Johnson shows, you don’t have to live that way. We’ve entered a new age of entrepreneurship, with the Web making it easier than ever to start and run your own company.

As Johnson’s remarkable story reveals, the entrepreneurial way of life is a great way to make sure you love what you do—and offers the potential to achieve extraordinary success by following your gut and going for what you really want.

What about the risks? Don’t you need lots of money? Don’t most start-ups fail? Johnson shares his essential secrets to entrepreneurial success that show you how he got into the life at very low risk, and with very little money, took an idea that excited him and ran with it, achieving great success and satisfaction with businesses he loved. He didn’t have an MBA; he didn’t even have a college degree. But he had learned the simple but vital secrets he reveals.

Cameron Johnson is a seriously happy entrepreneur who started his first business when he was nine with $50 and a home computer. Before he’d turned twenty-one he’d started twelve successful businesses and was offered $10 million in venture capital to grow his hot web company CertificateSwap.com—praised by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the leading-edge “Web 2.0” business successes—even bigger. He has never taken out a loan or racked up any debt, and every one of his businesses has been highly profitable—so profitable that he’d made his first million before graduating from high school, and he’s put away enough cash that he could retire today. But that’s the last thing on earth he’d want to do; he’s much too happy starting up new companies.

Through the story of his own impressive career so far, in You Call the Shots, Johnson takes you behind the scenes of entrepreneurial success and empowers you to hit the ground running with your own great business idea, no matter how young you are or how little money you have to invest.

Cameron Johnson had started, run and sold 12 successful companies by the time he was 21. His business successes have been featured in Time, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, USA Today and many more, as well as on the Today Show and Good Morning America. When he was fifteen he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company, and his autobiography, 15-Year-Old CEO, published in Japanese, became an instant best-seller. He has consulted to Fortune 500 companies and spoken at the Wharton School, among others. Every one of his businesses has been a success, even in the worst days of the Internet bust. As a freshman in college, he started CertificateSwap.com, an online marketplace for gift cards, which was a runaway success and for which he was offered $10 million in venture capital. He lives in Blacksburg, VA.

Advance Praise for Cameron Johnson and You Call the Shots

Cameron Johnson wrote me a letter when he was eight years old. I didn’t write back to him, but I responded with a surprise for him when he visited New York City. Thirteen years later, he’s given me a surprise—he’s written a terrific book! No matter what your age, you will enjoy and learn from Cameron’s book about his accomplishments thus far. I’m sure there will be more to come.
— Donald J. Trump

You Call the Shots is for everyone committed to following their dreams. Cameron Johnson thoroughly outlines the strategies it takes to remove obstacles to entrepreneurial success. This book is essential reading for anyone with a passion for life.
— T. Harv Eker, #1 New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

If you want to be an enlightened money-maker, read my friend Cam’s brilliant book now—and apply it.
— Mark Victor Hansen, coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul
and One Minute Millionaire series

Cameron Johnson’s extraordinary entrepreneurial journey has made it possible for him to develop more sophistication and business savvy by the age of twenty-two than most professionals accumulate throughout an entire lifetime! In You Call the Shots he shares his personal secrets, experience and advice in a warm and friendly way that’s sure to motivate people of all ages.
— Jennifer Kushell, New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Young & Successful: How to Get Everything You Want Without Waiting a Lifetime

Posted by ralph at 02:38 PM | Permalink

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.

31. What were the qualities and attributes of your secret hero or your real life heroes when you were growing up?
Mike Filsaime: I guess what I always liked about Superman was
that he was the most powerful super-hero out there yet but what was great about it was he had his Achilles heal which was kryptonite. As powerful as he was there was always a way to take him down and he was able to overcome it.

With my dad he was just my dad so I had that unconditional love from him. He’s still around today and we talk all the time and we have an incredible friendship.
_________________________
Paulie Sabol: One thing about the Knights Templar that were so encouraging, is that they had a belief that said wherever you are, adopt and understand the people who are the local people. The Knights Templar gave people aid. Pilgrims who were making a journey to a place where they were going to have a peak experience, a life experience, perhaps once in their life they would make this journey.
The Knights Templar would help along the whole way. They adopted a procedure to help protect their fellow travelers by looking like the locals, by blending in, by knowing that they had a gift and a secret message, but realizing that the way in which you showed that you are gifted is not outwardly, but it is inwardly.
It is through the process of protecting the pilgrims who are on their journey. That is one thing that I totally admired and loved about them. Then of course they were truly noble heroes in almost King Arthur, Knights of the Round Table, sense. How could you not like them?
Ralph Zuranski: It is funny. I think the world is waiting for people that are willing to accept people where they are at on their journey for their self-realization of who they are and why they were put on the face of the earth. I think those people are real heroes who are going to accept people on who they are and what they are and willing to travel with them and help to encourage and support them in their specific path along their life journey.
___________________

Donna Fox: I truly see heroes everywhere. My finance is my hero. He takes care of me. He keeps my life light. Where I am prone to be a workaholic he brings levity and simple things.

My business partner is my hero. He keeps drive and motivation in me, and inspiration and brilliance. I am constantly amazed at Paulie’s brilliance. So he is one of my heroes.

Ralph, you are one of my heroes for putting this site together. This program is incredible. If there is one little thing that I can say that can help inspire someone to find the hero inside them, then you are amazing. You are the hero.

Everyone around me is my hero. If I can just figure out what lesson they have to teach me. That is the real trick.

We have all been in this situations where we are like, “This person has nothing for me. I’m just going to get out of it.” Try to remember that they have something to teach me or they wouldn’t be in front of me.

Everybody has something to teach me. I just have to figure out what it is.
------------------------------------

TOM BEAL: Helping others, being a servant and proper decision making.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 01:03 PM | Permalink

Listen to Cameron Johnson's In Search Of Heroes by clicking this link.

Ralph Zuranski: Sounds like you make decisions very quickly and stick with them. [Laughter]

Cameron Johnson: Often times we buy in with emotion, then we try to rationalize later from facts and reasoning.

Ralph Zuranski: But I am sure you have had some doubts and fears with some of the decisions you have made in the different businesses you were in. So how were you able to overcome your doubts and fears?

Cameron Johnson: Well, I try to use the same principle that I just shared; I don’t really think about it and try to second guess it. When I was in college at Virginia Tech, I started an Internet company called CertificateSwap.com, and I took my second semester off of college to go out and raise ten million dollars in venture capital.

We were subsequently offered ten million in capital, but I actually turned the offer down, and we ended up selling the company instead.

Now that offer, had we accepted it, we might have grown into a hundred million dollar company, and it could have been one of the biggest or stupidest decisions I’ve ever made. But I still don’t question the decision and I have moved on with it.

I still to this day think we made the right decision to sell the company. So I am able to overcome doubts and fears just by accepting and, like we were talking about earlier, trusting my intuition.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, that is rare for most people to do that. A lot of people are afraid to trust their intuition.

Cameron Johnson: Right.

Ralph Zuranski: Would you readily forgive those who upset, offend, and oppose you?

Cameron Johnson: Yes. I try to be very good about forgiving people. I always like to think that I might remember things and look at a person differently, but I forgive them for whatever actions or words or anything else that they say or do to me.

I think it is important that we forgive, because we are all going to have bad days, we’re all going to make mistakes. So I think we have to be able to be quick to forgive. But not necessarily quick to forget, you know?

Ralph Zuranski: Yeah, yeah. Do you experience service to others as a source of joy?

Cameron Johnson: Yes. I have always enjoyed giving back. I am involved with several non-profit organizations now, and I serve on the board, and I try to give back and donate my time to high schools and other local events that I can try to help at.

I really do get a joy out of it, and one would say since I live such a successful or very busy business life, how could I actually get such a joy donating my time and doing stuff like that. But one of the most rewarding things I do is that I am fortunate that I am successful in business so I can have the time and have the money to be able to give back, and I really appreciate that.

My parents introduced me to that when I was just ten or eleven years old, and I started giving money to our local church. I really got satisfaction out of it.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, when was the lowest point in your life, and how did you change your life path to win victory over the obstacles that you were facing at that time?

Cameron Johnson: This question is kind of unique, because I am only 22 years old, and have lived only a very small portion of my life. I have yet to experience some of the many things many people would cite as the low point in their lives, whether it is family issues, wife, kids; whatever the case. Health.

I have been very fortunate that my family is very healthy and I have been very healthy, and my siblings and parents, and I pray that that continues. But I really don’t know I could say what the lowest point is. I am very fortunate. I am glad I could answer that question that way, though.

Ralph Zuranski: That is really a blessing to be able to say that. There was one other hero I interviewed, Jeff Dedrick, who has sort of a charmed life, and it had a lot to do with his parents and how he was raised. So I think parents really are a huge factor in what type of life their kids have.

Cameron Johnson: I agree, a hundred percent.

-------------------------------------------------------

Cameron Johnson started his first business at the tender age of nine. By age 12, his company was selling Beanie Babies™ over the Internet and he profited $50,000 that year. At the age of fifteen, he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company and published his autobiography in Japanese which became an instant best-seller.

At the age of 21, he has founded and sold more than a dozen businesses and has been featured in more than 250 media outlets worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, and MSNBC. He’s served as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and is a frequent speaker to a variety of audiences including high schools, colleges, and corporate executives. In January, 2007, his new book titled You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want – With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship is being released by Simon & Schuster. Cameron Johnson lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Visit his official website http://www.cameronjohnson.com.

Why work for someone else when you can call your own shots, pursue your dreams, and find success on your terms by starting your own business? So many people end up bored with their jobs, stuck in the corporate grind, never following their true passions. As wildly successful young entrepreneur Cameron Johnson shows, you don’t have to live that way. We’ve entered a new age of entrepreneurship, with the Web making it easier than ever to start and run your own company.

As Johnson’s remarkable story reveals, the entrepreneurial way of life is a great way to make sure you love what you do—and offers the potential to achieve extraordinary success by following your gut and going for what you really want.

What about the risks? Don’t you need lots of money? Don’t most start-ups fail? Johnson shares his essential secrets to entrepreneurial success that show you how he got into the life at very low risk, and with very little money, took an idea that excited him and ran with it, achieving great success and satisfaction with businesses he loved. He didn’t have an MBA; he didn’t even have a college degree. But he had learned the simple but vital secrets he reveals.

Cameron Johnson is a seriously happy entrepreneur who started his first business when he was nine with $50 and a home computer. Before he’d turned twenty-one he’d started twelve successful businesses and was offered $10 million in venture capital to grow his hot web company CertificateSwap.com—praised by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the leading-edge “Web 2.0” business successes—even bigger. He has never taken out a loan or racked up any debt, and every one of his businesses has been highly profitable—so profitable that he’d made his first million before graduating from high school, and he’s put away enough cash that he could retire today. But that’s the last thing on earth he’d want to do; he’s much too happy starting up new companies.

Through the story of his own impressive career so far, in You Call the Shots, Johnson takes you behind the scenes of entrepreneurial success and empowers you to hit the ground running with your own great business idea, no matter how young you are or how little money you have to invest.

Cameron Johnson had started, run and sold 12 successful companies by the time he was 21. His business successes have been featured in Time, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, USA Today and many more, as well as on the Today Show and Good Morning America. When he was fifteen he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company, and his autobiography, 15-Year-Old CEO, published in Japanese, became an instant best-seller. He has consulted to Fortune 500 companies and spoken at the Wharton School, among others. Every one of his businesses has been a success, even in the worst days of the Internet bust. As a freshman in college, he started CertificateSwap.com, an online marketplace for gift cards, which was a runaway success and for which he was offered $10 million in venture capital. He lives in Blacksburg, VA.

Advance Praise for Cameron Johnson and You Call the Shots

Cameron Johnson wrote me a letter when he was eight years old. I didn’t write back to him, but I responded with a surprise for him when he visited New York City. Thirteen years later, he’s given me a surprise—he’s written a terrific book! No matter what your age, you will enjoy and learn from Cameron’s book about his accomplishments thus far. I’m sure there will be more to come.
— Donald J. Trump

You Call the Shots is for everyone committed to following their dreams. Cameron Johnson thoroughly outlines the strategies it takes to remove obstacles to entrepreneurial success. This book is essential reading for anyone with a passion for life.
— T. Harv Eker, #1 New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

If you want to be an enlightened money-maker, read my friend Cam’s brilliant book now—and apply it.
— Mark Victor Hansen, coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul
and One Minute Millionaire series

Cameron Johnson’s extraordinary entrepreneurial journey has made it possible for him to develop more sophistication and business savvy by the age of twenty-two than most professionals accumulate throughout an entire lifetime! In You Call the Shots he shares his personal secrets, experience and advice in a warm and friendly way that’s sure to motivate people of all ages.
— Jennifer Kushell, New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Young & Successful: How to Get Everything You Want Without Waiting a Lifetime

Posted by ralph at 02:36 PM | Permalink

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript

30. Did you ever create a secret hero in your mind that helped you deal with life’s difficulties?
Mike Filsaime: When I was a kid I was a Superman fan and I don’t know if Superman helped me deal with any difficulties but I used to put the towel on my back and run around the house in my underroos and fly around. I had my little Superman expressions and things like that.

It was good to have those fantasies but I think the real heroes I had was my dad. He’d get home late like 11:00 pm at night. He’d sometimes wake me up and I would be there sitting there at the kitchen table.

He’d be putting cheese & jelly on saltine crackers and we’d talk. Any problems that I had I’d talk to him about.
_________________________
Paulie Sabol: I did and it is very interesting. The hero that I created at the time when I was a youngster was a knight. You can see that this medieval theme has been fairly consistent in my life. What really fascinated me the most was when this knight would come and allow me to know that from now on, I would be protected during the nighttime.
I have a very clear and vivid sense of even the visual appearance of this imaginary, secret hero. What totally blew my mind was later in my life I began studying like I mentioned before people like the Knights Templar and Jacques DeMolay who was the grand master of the Knights Templer, I had no idea that the exact outfit and the exact way that I had fitted my knight, the symbols that were on him, were all the symbols of an actual Templar knight.
It has always fascinated me because I’m not going to suggest to anybody that it really was a Templar Knight, or that my memory didn’t alter as I continued to study, but whatever it is I feel very much as if that group and organization which is so consistent with my sense of what is important now, including the importance of having more light, it doesn’t seem coincidental to me.
Even if I pulled it out of the collective subconscious that is who my secret hero was
_____________________
Donna Fox: I have always been a huge fan of Wonder Woman. From the time that I was a little girl till now, if you go and look at my computer my desktop on my computer is a picture of Wonder Woman.

I sometimes open my seminars with Wonder Woman as my opening screen, like the title screen. Where my name would be I have Wonder Woman because she’s my alter ego.

Not only is she beautiful and amazingly powerful, but she has that great lasso of truth so she can always get to the bottom of things. She can always find out the ethical, the integrity, the truth in any situation.

Those being my highest values I really honor the honestly of the lasso and kind of wish that I had it all through my life, to be able to have that lasso of truth.

Just the concept of a wonder woman is someone that causes awe, that causes wonder, amazement, and that can be so many things. For me every mother is a Wonder Woman.

I’m not a mom and I don’t deal every day with what it must be like to raise children and to have a household. I am in awe of every mother that manages to manage their business of their home as well as, in most cases in this world, some other type of job or career or business on the side.

They are all wonder women to me. All women are Wonder Woman because they are all amazing.
______________________
TOM BEAL: I had a period when I was younger and I named myself like Batman, Superman and my name was like 10 super heroes in a row. I wanted everyone to call me that. I tried being that but I love the American Legion cartoons and stuff like that.

I would always have little toys and create conversations with some of these super heroes. Also kind of like I explained “What would your mentor do?” I’d think well what would superman do or batman do in this type of scenario? I’d have fun with it as a kid but also there would be some wisdom.

I feel in some of those things there would be some wise choices being made. If it was a superhero that was being portrayed normally they were for good and making good choices.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 01:01 PM | Permalink

Listen to Cameron Johnson's In Search Of Heroes by clicking this link.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, do you have courage to pursue new ideas?

Cameron Johnson: Yes. One of the things I have always been able to do ever since I was basically nine years old was to have the courage, whether it was to start a new business or whether to buy a lot of inventory when I started the Beanie Baby business.

It started because I took my sister’s Beanie Baby collection, and she was six years younger than me, so she was about six years old at the time, and I sold it on eBay when eBay had just started, and I sold it for $1,000. I gave her $100, so I was happy to have made $900, and she was happy to make $100.

What it taught me was that I needed more Beanie Babies. So I went out and became a retailer for Beanie Baby manufacturers, and I basically took my life savings at the time, which was several thousand dollars, and I purchased several thousand Beanie Babies.

But I had to have the courage to do that, and the courage it takes to take calculated risks is a lot better than just taking irresponsible risks, but I think they pay off in the long run. Being able to have the courage to do that has always rewarded me very well.

Ralph Zuranski: Were you willing to experience discomfort in the pursuit of your dream?

Cameron Johnson: Sure. I think no one appreciates or no one likes discomfort, but it is necessary, and it happens to all of us. There is nothing we can do about it but to accept it and to deal with it and continue pursuing our dreams, whatever they may be.

We have to understand that it is not, we are not going to be floating on cloud nine all the time, or floating in the clouds. I think we have to be able to experience discomfort and move on, and deal with whatever the problem or issue it is. Then go from there.

Ralph Zuranski: Is it beneficial to make decisions quickly?

Cameron Johnson: I think that can depend on the situation and also the decision that you are making, depending on how big the decision is and what kind of results the decision might have, negative or positive.

You know, I definitely try to think through every decision. Before I make a decision I like to think about the consequences, so I think it can be beneficial to make decisions quickly but I’d also say that I like to think through everything very thoroughly first, as well. I think that is very important.

Ralph Zuranski: Are you slow to revise or reverse on important decisions?

Cameron Johnson: Typically, when I make a decision, I don’t look back and I move on, no matter what that decision is. I went to a boarding school in high school and I left the sophomore year.

I came home at Christmas break and I didn’t want to go back because actually, to make a long story short, I met this girl and I didn’t want to go back to an all boys’ school, and I’d just gotten my license. But my dad said, “You are going back; I’ve paid this amount of money for your tuition.”

So I said okay, so I went back to school. A week later I called back and said, “Dad, I will reimburse you the tuition. I don’t want to stay here.” And he said, “Okay, if you want to write me a check for $25,000, then you can come home.” This was when I was in 10th grade, and I said, okay, that was fine.

I paid my dad $25,000, which was a big decision at the time. But I never looked back; I never regretted it, and I never, of course, tried to reverse it.

I have made several decisions since then that, once I make them, I just move on and accept it, and hopefully you don’t have to reverse or revise a decision. So I think that it is important, especially on decisions we can never change, that there is no use fretting over them or second guessing, or anything of the sort.

We have to move on. So I would say I normally don’t revise or reverse decisions like that.

-------------------------------------------------------

Cameron Johnson started his first business at the tender age of nine. By age 12, his company was selling Beanie Babies™ over the Internet and he profited $50,000 that year. At the age of fifteen, he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company and published his autobiography in Japanese which became an instant best-seller.

At the age of 21, he has founded and sold more than a dozen businesses and has been featured in more than 250 media outlets worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, and MSNBC. He’s served as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and is a frequent speaker to a variety of audiences including high schools, colleges, and corporate executives. In January, 2007, his new book titled You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want – With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship is being released by Simon & Schuster. Cameron Johnson lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Visit his official website http://www.cameronjohnson.com.

Why work for someone else when you can call your own shots, pursue your dreams, and find success on your terms by starting your own business? So many people end up bored with their jobs, stuck in the corporate grind, never following their true passions. As wildly successful young entrepreneur Cameron Johnson shows, you don’t have to live that way. We’ve entered a new age of entrepreneurship, with the Web making it easier than ever to start and run your own company.

As Johnson’s remarkable story reveals, the entrepreneurial way of life is a great way to make sure you love what you do—and offers the potential to achieve extraordinary success by following your gut and going for what you really want.

What about the risks? Don’t you need lots of money? Don’t most start-ups fail? Johnson shares his essential secrets to entrepreneurial success that show you how he got into the life at very low risk, and with very little money, took an idea that excited him and ran with it, achieving great success and satisfaction with businesses he loved. He didn’t have an MBA; he didn’t even have a college degree. But he had learned the simple but vital secrets he reveals.

Cameron Johnson is a seriously happy entrepreneur who started his first business when he was nine with $50 and a home computer. Before he’d turned twenty-one he’d started twelve successful businesses and was offered $10 million in venture capital to grow his hot web company CertificateSwap.com—praised by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the leading-edge “Web 2.0” business successes—even bigger. He has never taken out a loan or racked up any debt, and every one of his businesses has been highly profitable—so profitable that he’d made his first million before graduating from high school, and he’s put away enough cash that he could retire today. But that’s the last thing on earth he’d want to do; he’s much too happy starting up new companies.

Through the story of his own impressive career so far, in You Call the Shots, Johnson takes you behind the scenes of entrepreneurial success and empowers you to hit the ground running with your own great business idea, no matter how young you are or how little money you have to invest.

Cameron Johnson had started, run and sold 12 successful companies by the time he was 21. His business successes have been featured in Time, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, USA Today and many more, as well as on the Today Show and Good Morning America. When he was fifteen he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company, and his autobiography, 15-Year-Old CEO, published in Japanese, became an instant best-seller. He has consulted to Fortune 500 companies and spoken at the Wharton School, among others. Every one of his businesses has been a success, even in the worst days of the Internet bust. As a freshman in college, he started CertificateSwap.com, an online marketplace for gift cards, which was a runaway success and for which he was offered $10 million in venture capital. He lives in Blacksburg, VA.

Advance Praise for Cameron Johnson and You Call the Shots

Cameron Johnson wrote me a letter when he was eight years old. I didn’t write back to him, but I responded with a surprise for him when he visited New York City. Thirteen years later, he’s given me a surprise—he’s written a terrific book! No matter what your age, you will enjoy and learn from Cameron’s book about his accomplishments thus far. I’m sure there will be more to come.
— Donald J. Trump

You Call the Shots is for everyone committed to following their dreams. Cameron Johnson thoroughly outlines the strategies it takes to remove obstacles to entrepreneurial success. This book is essential reading for anyone with a passion for life.
— T. Harv Eker, #1 New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

If you want to be an enlightened money-maker, read my friend Cam’s brilliant book now—and apply it.
— Mark Victor Hansen, coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul
and One Minute Millionaire series

Cameron Johnson’s extraordinary entrepreneurial journey has made it possible for him to develop more sophistication and business savvy by the age of twenty-two than most professionals accumulate throughout an entire lifetime! In You Call the Shots he shares his personal secrets, experience and advice in a warm and friendly way that’s sure to motivate people of all ages.
— Jennifer Kushell, New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Young & Successful: How to Get Everything You Want Without Waiting a Lifetime

Posted by ralph at 02:33 PM | Permalink

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript

29. What is your definition of heroism?
Mike Filsaime: A hero to me is a mentor, a person that has unconditional love for the people that they are working with. I don’t see heroes necessarily in terms of Babe Ruth. Those are icons.

I don’t want to tell people to change the way that we can talk in this country. You can have sports heroes but the true heroes need to be the fathers and uncles and the teachers.

Those are the heroes of this world and people like you with what you are doing with young kids. I think a hero, has to do with some type of adult figure working with a young child.
____________________________
Paulie Sabol: My definition of heroism is the person who takes the hero’s journey. This is the journey that will include going to Chapel Perilous. You are going to face some of the darkest parts of yourself and the darkest parts of the rest of the world. You are going to encounter naysayers.
You are going to encounter jealous people. They are going to try and sabotage. Sometimes the messages you’ve internalized are going to come in and sabotage. If you want my sense of the ideal experience of heroism, I would encourage you to read the book Percival.
You will understand this message that gets me so excited, this idea that you were born to journey, you were born to discover something magical about yourself. That is what heroism is, taking the journey often means giving up some stuff along the way. It also means finding mentors, travel companions, your pals, and even an occasional betrayal.
However, in all of these mystic stories of the hero’s journey, the result in the end throughout history has really been godhood, being raised up to the highest places and into the mysteries.
I’m not meaning to suggest that anyone become God or doesn’t, that’s not what I’m talking about. But what I can say is this – the best books in the world are filled with examples of heroes and have-nots, examples and warnings.
My wish for you, right now as your listening, is to be listed amongst the examples and the heroes.
Ralph Zuranski: It does take a lot of courage to be able to seek and be the best that you could be and embrace the journey that the universe has in store for you, and know that there will be ups and downs, there will be challenges, they will be unimaginable, but also the excitement of being better than just a mediocre individual that experiences the dullness and boredness of life.
______________________

Donna Fox: I think a hero is someone who does something that is amazing. Whether that be the tiniest little thing, if it is amazing to me then they are my hero. I try to see the hero in everyone, like see the Buda in everyone. It’s very similar.

Everybody has something about them that sparkles, something about them that is incredible, and it’s just finding that gem, that little diamond inside everyone. Everybody is a hero.

So that’s my definition of hero: it’s everyone.
_______________________
TOM BEAL: Whew, heroism. I think my definition of heroism is going back to that other statement. Someone who is doing the best they can and has a goal and is committed to being better tomorrow than they are today. I feel like that’s a hero.

Kind of like the definition of a goal like Earl Nightingale said, the pursuit of a worthy goal or ideal. So anyone who’s in high school and going to class and doing their homework is a success because they are pursuing that worthy ideal or goal.

As long as anybody is committed to being better tomorrow than they are today, in my min d that’s a hero.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 01:00 PM | Permalink

Listen to Cameron Johnson's In Search Of Heroes by clicking this link.

Ralph Zuranski: Is it valuable to have highly charged emotions about achieving your goals?

Cameron Johnson: I think it’s crucial. I get so excited and so fired up when I am achieving my goals, and I think having so much energy and everything else just helps you move along and helps you push forward in the hard times or in the slow times.

I think being able to motivate yourself is one of the greatest abilities, and one of the most crucial abilities for an entrepreneur to have. I definitely feel it is so valuable to have highly charged emotions.

Ralph Zuranski: Is it useful to take a positive view of setbacks in misfortunes and mistakes?

Cameron Johnson: Definitely. I have always tried to learn from my mistakes or learn as I go along, and each of my businesses has built on the previous business. So each business is a little bit bigger than the previous business and that is just because I have learned as I have gone along.

If you make a mistake, that is okay. But to make the same mistake twice, there is really no excuse for it. So I have always tried to learn from my mistakes and to always move forward.

A setback is just something that slows you down; it is not something that is supposed to turn you away or tells you to quit trying or quit following your dreams. So, definitely.

Ralph Zuranski: Do you feel that optimism is valuable?

Cameron Johnson: Of course. I think optimism is so valuable because you have to have a positive outlook, and you have to be able to be optimistic about what it is you want to accomplish.

If you can’t be optimistic and be positive, then it is very difficult for you to wake up each morning and get out of bed and go do whatever it is you are doing. You have to be able to be positive and be proud of what it is you are contributing.

Ralph Zuranski: Do you maintain a sense of humor in the face of serious problems?

Cameron Johnson: Yes. I think humor can often fix serious problems. I think some serious problems aren’t really that serious, and I think humor sometimes brings them down to a ground level.

I definitely use humor in the business world, and when I give speeches and talks and do consulting. I totally believe in humor and in lightening people’s lives.

Ralph Zuranski: Do you take time out of your day to feed your subconscious positive thoughts about you, your goals, and your dreams?

Cameron Johnson: I try to. I try to take time every day to forecast and look at my progress and just have some positive thoughts. I like to just have some down time every day and it’s just not possible. But I would like for it to be, and I try to make it so that every day I have time to do those things.

But sometimes with traveling and business and everything else, and personal life, and trying to be in three places at once, it can be difficult.

But the down time is probably the most enjoyable and relaxing, because I am able to reflect on whatever it is I am working on, and to, hopefully, also help me push forward with new projects.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cameron Johnson started his first business at the tender age of nine. By age 12, his company was selling Beanie Babies™ over the Internet and he profited $50,000 that year. At the age of fifteen, he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company and published his autobiography in Japanese which became an instant best-seller.

At the age of 21, he has founded and sold more than a dozen businesses and has been featured in more than 250 media outlets worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, and MSNBC. He’s served as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and is a frequent speaker to a variety of audiences including high schools, colleges, and corporate executives. In January, 2007, his new book titled You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want – With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship is being released by Simon & Schuster. Cameron Johnson lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Visit his official website http://www.cameronjohnson.com.

Why work for someone else when you can call your own shots, pursue your dreams, and find success on your terms by starting your own business? So many people end up bored with their jobs, stuck in the corporate grind, never following their true passions. As wildly successful young entrepreneur Cameron Johnson shows, you don’t have to live that way. We’ve entered a new age of entrepreneurship, with the Web making it easier than ever to start and run your own company.

As Johnson’s remarkable story reveals, the entrepreneurial way of life is a great way to make sure you love what you do—and offers the potential to achieve extraordinary success by following your gut and going for what you really want.

What about the risks? Don’t you need lots of money? Don’t most start-ups fail? Johnson shares his essential secrets to entrepreneurial success that show you how he got into the life at very low risk, and with very little money, took an idea that excited him and ran with it, achieving great success and satisfaction with businesses he loved. He didn’t have an MBA; he didn’t even have a college degree. But he had learned the simple but vital secrets he reveals.

Cameron Johnson is a seriously happy entrepreneur who started his first business when he was nine with $50 and a home computer. Before he’d turned twenty-one he’d started twelve successful businesses and was offered $10 million in venture capital to grow his hot web company CertificateSwap.com—praised by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the leading-edge “Web 2.0” business successes—even bigger. He has never taken out a loan or racked up any debt, and every one of his businesses has been highly profitable—so profitable that he’d made his first million before graduating from high school, and he’s put away enough cash that he could retire today. But that’s the last thing on earth he’d want to do; he’s much too happy starting up new companies.

Through the story of his own impressive career so far, in You Call the Shots, Johnson takes you behind the scenes of entrepreneurial success and empowers you to hit the ground running with your own great business idea, no matter how young you are or how little money you have to invest.

Cameron Johnson had started, run and sold 12 successful companies by the time he was 21. His business successes have been featured in Time, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, USA Today and many more, as well as on the Today Show and Good Morning America. When he was fifteen he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company, and his autobiography, 15-Year-Old CEO, published in Japanese, became an instant best-seller. He has consulted to Fortune 500 companies and spoken at the Wharton School, among others. Every one of his businesses has been a success, even in the worst days of the Internet bust. As a freshman in college, he started CertificateSwap.com, an online marketplace for gift cards, which was a runaway success and for which he was offered $10 million in venture capital. He lives in Blacksburg, VA.

Advance Praise for Cameron Johnson and You Call the Shots

Cameron Johnson wrote me a letter when he was eight years old. I didn’t write back to him, but I responded with a surprise for him when he visited New York City. Thirteen years later, he’s given me a surprise—he’s written a terrific book! No matter what your age, you will enjoy and learn from Cameron’s book about his accomplishments thus far. I’m sure there will be more to come.
— Donald J. Trump

You Call the Shots is for everyone committed to following their dreams. Cameron Johnson thoroughly outlines the strategies it takes to remove obstacles to entrepreneurial success. This book is essential reading for anyone with a passion for life.
— T. Harv Eker, #1 New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

If you want to be an enlightened money-maker, read my friend Cam’s brilliant book now—and apply it.
— Mark Victor Hansen, coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul
and One Minute Millionaire series

Cameron Johnson’s extraordinary entrepreneurial journey has made it possible for him to develop more sophistication and business savvy by the age of twenty-two than most professionals accumulate throughout an entire lifetime! In You Call the Shots he shares his personal secrets, experience and advice in a warm and friendly way that’s sure to motivate people of all ages.
— Jennifer Kushell, New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Young & Successful: How to Get Everything You Want Without Waiting a Lifetime

Posted by ralph at 02:31 PM | Permalink

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript

28. Why is it valuable to know exactly how much money you want to have in your bank account and when?
Mike Filsaime: You need to have specific goals. The more abstract something is the harder it is to envision it. There are people that have taken a $100.00 bill and written three zeros at the end of it and they have taped it to their roof of their bed so every time they woke up they would see that they wanted to make $100,000 a year.

They take their bank statements and they white it out and they type in the number they want to see in their bank account. It’s just envisioning what they want and by doing that they manifest it.

It can come true and I believe it will come true if you start living the life that needs to be lived in order to achieve those things. You just can’t say “I want a million dollars.” and continue to work at the bakery and not do anything about it.

I will tell you that when you start focusing on those positive things you will attract those opportunities into your life. When you are decisive in nature you will take action on those things.
I actually remember losing a deal because it was the very first time we had heard of this, a check taking up to two weeks to clear. So those are things that you cannot have any control over, no matter what I believed, that was just the way it was now.
I really was inspired at my core that I had no choice but to figure it out. The more my results, the more my belief and confidence increased. I am really much more of an act first guy, believe later.
_________________________
Paulie Sabol: Again, I am probably going to sound like the contrarian here, and say for me it is not particularly important. For me, whether I had the belief or not, I had no choice but to take action. I had taken on and really believed that it was required of me to meet certain responsibilities.
And some of those responsibilities that have and do and continue to require financial freedom, financial abundance. So I really believed I had no choice but to figure it out, to make it happen, to do whatever I had to do.
Even at that time when I was investing into that coaching program, I had to put that on a credit card, because it wasn’t the best time. Especially, in a lot of the kinds of businesses I do, like real estate. It is very cash intensive. I might have on a given day, five million dollars worth of real estate that I own and have equities in, but I may not actually have two thin dimes to go make a telephone call with.
Because it is all in the property. It is all waiting for a check to clear. I promise you I won’t get political here, but when you add in things like the Patriot Act, which are allowing my financial transactions to be delayed and slowed down and looked at with a hermeneutic of suspicion, when you add in factors like that, it sometimes completely changed our business.
I actually remember losing a deal because it was the very first time we had heard of this, a check taking up to two weeks to clear. So those are things that you cannot have any control over, no matter what I believed, that was just the way it was now.
I really was inspired at my core that I had no choice but to figure it out. The more my results, the more my belief and confidence increased. I am really much more of an act first guy, believe later.
Ralph Zuranski: Was it valuable for you to know exactly how much money you want to have in the bank and when?
Paulie Sabol: Yes it is. It is valuable to know and here’s the reason why. When you know this, what you want, when you want it, how much, then you have a way to evaluate if your systems are working.
Or if it is time to go back to the drawing board, go back to the educational tools that are out there, and re-tool up, if you are not meeting those points. No matter what number you pick right now, no matter what amount you want in your bank account right now, somebody will have it.
The big question comes – will it be you? The reason that it will be you, is again, I submit to you, not because of the beliefs, not because of the clarity of the vision exclusively, but because of the systems, the resources, the friendships that you establish, and that you bring into bear in alignment with that vision.
If you don’t get there, then you know that it needs tuning. It is kind of like if you want to come and visit me in Chicago, Ralph. You got into your car and set out to drive, you knew the terrain, and you knew how long it would take, and the fan belt or the drive shaft breaks down to make it not work.
You aren’t going to get there on time because the system doesn’t work; the vehicle you selected had a problem. It is important because it lets you evaluate that.
But there is one way in which it is not technically important, Ralph, and that is that it does not make anyone a failure because it took longer.
Ralph Zuranski: That is the truth. I know that personally in my own life. I’ve had to defer my Heroes program for two years because I had to take care of my mom and dad. I did it by choice because I loved them, and realized that people are more important than any goals or any amount of wealth that you can gain.
______________________
Donna Fox: Goal setting is an interesting thing. I once read that people who set goals, and they set one-year goals and five-year goals and ten-year goals, they always fall short of the one-year goals.

They are usually about right on with the five-year goals and they blow away their ten-year goals when the tenth year comes around. That being said, the study seemed to show that all the people that make goals are far better off than the people who don’t make goals.

So I think it’s important to have a number in mind, something that you are shooting for. Whether it’s the right one, don’t get bogged down on the right one. Just decide on one so that you have something that you are moving forward to.

You won’t make it in a year because we don’t make our one-year goals but we make our five-year goals and we exceed our ten-year goals as long as we set them.
_________________________
TOM BEAL: Setting parameters like that are pretty important I feel. Because just saying I want a lot and not putting a time frame on it doesn’t quantify it and doesn’t give it the proper energy to create that or manifest it. I think taking an exact figure in a time frame is one of the smart things you could chose to do.

I want x amount, pick whatever x is for you because it’s all relative. What’s a lot to me are pennies to others and vice versa. So what is your x and by when do you want it? And how are you going to do that?

Just by stating it, you better have a plan because how are you going to do that? I’m going to provide value. Ok, who are you going to provide value to? Pick that crowd. What am I going to provide that is of value that they are willing to part with their hard earned finances to invest in?

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 12:59 PM | Permalink

Listen to Cameron Johnson's In Search Of Heroes by clicking this link.

Ralph Zuranski: Is it valuable to have highly charged emotions about achieving your goals?

Cameron Johnson: I think it’s crucial. I get so excited and so fired up when I am achieving my goals, and I think having so much energy and everything else just helps you move along and helps you push forward in the hard times or in the slow times.

I think being able to motivate yourself is one of the greatest abilities, and one of the most crucial abilities for an entrepreneur to have. I definitely feel it is so valuable to have highly charged emotions.

Ralph Zuranski: Is it useful to take a positive view of setbacks in misfortunes and mistakes?

Cameron Johnson: Definitely. I have always tried to learn from my mistakes or learn as I go along, and each of my businesses has built on the previous business. So each business is a little bit bigger than the previous business and that is just because I have learned as I have gone along.

If you make a mistake, that is okay. But to make the same mistake twice, there is really no excuse for it. So I have always tried to learn from my mistakes and to always move forward.

A setback is just something that slows you down; it is not something that is supposed to turn you away or tells you to quit trying or quit following your dreams. So, definitely.

Ralph Zuranski: Do you feel that optimism is valuable?

Cameron Johnson: Of course. I think optimism is so valuable because you have to have a positive outlook, and you have to be able to be optimistic about what it is you want to accomplish.

If you can’t be optimistic and be positive, then it is very difficult for you to wake up each morning and get out of bed and go do whatever it is you are doing. You have to be able to be positive and be proud of what it is you are contributing.

Ralph Zuranski: Do you maintain a sense of humor in the face of serious problems?

Cameron Johnson: Yes. I think humor can often fix serious problems. I think some serious problems aren’t really that serious, and I think humor sometimes brings them down to a ground level.

I definitely use humor in the business world, and when I give speeches and talks and do consulting. I totally believe in humor and in lightening people’s lives.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cameron Johnson started his first business at the tender age of nine. By age 12, his company was selling Beanie Babies™ over the Internet and he profited $50,000 that year. At the age of fifteen, he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company and published his autobiography in Japanese which became an instant best-seller.

At the age of 21, he has founded and sold more than a dozen businesses and has been featured in more than 250 media outlets worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, and MSNBC. He’s served as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and is a frequent speaker to a variety of audiences including high schools, colleges, and corporate executives. In January, 2007, his new book titled You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want – With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship is being released by Simon & Schuster. Cameron Johnson lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Visit his official website http://www.cameronjohnson.com.

Why work for someone else when you can call your own shots, pursue your dreams, and find success on your terms by starting your own business? So many people end up bored with their jobs, stuck in the corporate grind, never following their true passions. As wildly successful young entrepreneur Cameron Johnson shows, you don’t have to live that way. We’ve entered a new age of entrepreneurship, with the Web making it easier than ever to start and run your own company.

As Johnson’s remarkable story reveals, the entrepreneurial way of life is a great way to make sure you love what you do—and offers the potential to achieve extraordinary success by following your gut and going for what you really want.

What about the risks? Don’t you need lots of money? Don’t most start-ups fail? Johnson shares his essential secrets to entrepreneurial success that show you how he got into the life at very low risk, and with very little money, took an idea that excited him and ran with it, achieving great success and satisfaction with businesses he loved. He didn’t have an MBA; he didn’t even have a college degree. But he had learned the simple but vital secrets he reveals.

Cameron Johnson is a seriously happy entrepreneur who started his first business when he was nine with $50 and a home computer. Before he’d turned twenty-one he’d started twelve successful businesses and was offered $10 million in venture capital to grow his hot web company CertificateSwap.com—praised by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the leading-edge “Web 2.0” business successes—even bigger. He has never taken out a loan or racked up any debt, and every one of his businesses has been highly profitable—so profitable that he’d made his first million before graduating from high school, and he’s put away enough cash that he could retire today. But that’s the last thing on earth he’d want to do; he’s much too happy starting up new companies.

Through the story of his own impressive career so far, in You Call the Shots, Johnson takes you behind the scenes of entrepreneurial success and empowers you to hit the ground running with your own great business idea, no matter how young you are or how little money you have to invest.

Cameron Johnson had started, run and sold 12 successful companies by the time he was 21. His business successes have been featured in Time, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, USA Today and many more, as well as on the Today Show and Good Morning America. When he was fifteen he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company, and his autobiography, 15-Year-Old CEO, published in Japanese, became an instant best-seller. He has consulted to Fortune 500 companies and spoken at the Wharton School, among others. Every one of his businesses has been a success, even in the worst days of the Internet bust. As a freshman in college, he started CertificateSwap.com, an online marketplace for gift cards, which was a runaway success and for which he was offered $10 million in venture capital. He lives in Blacksburg, VA.

Advance Praise for Cameron Johnson and You Call the Shots

Cameron Johnson wrote me a letter when he was eight years old. I didn’t write back to him, but I responded with a surprise for him when he visited New York City. Thirteen years later, he’s given me a surprise—he’s written a terrific book! No matter what your age, you will enjoy and learn from Cameron’s book about his accomplishments thus far. I’m sure there will be more to come.
— Donald J. Trump

You Call the Shots is for everyone committed to following their dreams. Cameron Johnson thoroughly outlines the strategies it takes to remove obstacles to entrepreneurial success. This book is essential reading for anyone with a passion for life.
— T. Harv Eker, #1 New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

If you want to be an enlightened money-maker, read my friend Cam’s brilliant book now—and apply it.
— Mark Victor Hansen, coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul
and One Minute Millionaire series

Cameron Johnson’s extraordinary entrepreneurial journey has made it possible for him to develop more sophistication and business savvy by the age of twenty-two than most professionals accumulate throughout an entire lifetime! In You Call the Shots he shares his personal secrets, experience and advice in a warm and friendly way that’s sure to motivate people of all ages.
— Jennifer Kushell, New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Young & Successful: How to Get Everything You Want Without Waiting a Lifetime

Posted by ralph at 02:25 PM | Permalink

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript

26. Was there anyone who helped give you the willpower to change things in you life for the better?
Mike Filsaime: Yes, my dad. My dad’s nick name for me when I was a kid was top shelf. I wrote about that in Butterfly Marketing. My dad is my hero and my mentor. My dad always used to talk to me in positive ways.

He brainwashed me a little bit. He never told me I was better than anybody else. He told me I could be the best and I can run with the best. I never realized what a difference that made until someone that you look up to in your life says negative things to you.

Maybe holding a beer can and saying “You are nothing but a piece of garbage. You are going to turn out to be nothing just like your grandfather on your mother’s side.” Kids are impressionable.

I watch some of these movies these days where you are a hero to run around with a gun and drive a Hummer and talk about “popping caps”. And sayings like “get rich or die trying” and other things. Again these kids are impressionable today. As much as those things may be entertainment they are really poisonous to the youth of our society.

Get rich or die trying is a terrible, terrible thing for people to look up to. And these young kids actually look up at these stars and say I want to be like this person.

The messages in those movies are horrible because those people end up having success at the end of the movies. So it’s telling you that you need to be a thug or die trying. Man, it just bothers me. There are so many better heroes out there to learn from.
______________________
Paulie Sabol: Yes, actually. Not necessarily connected to all the difficulties, but in the overall sense, there is one person that I actually alluded to earlier. I said I had hoped to get a chance to say more. Without a doubt, it is Mr. Robert Allen, who is the best selling author of Nothing Down. It is a real estate book.
He provided a path that both influenced me financially, but he also was the person who I was mentioning to you that I joined a $30,000 club to be able to hang out and be mentored by him. In the course of just the first year of doing that, he has opened up for me both by specifically spending time with me, but also by just allowing me to see somebody who was given a higher performance operator.
I had the ability to see for myself. The gift of letting me start to connect with my intuition is something that if he would have told me that would be the benefit I would get, I would have passed on the opportunity. I wouldn’t have made the investment if he had told me that was the reason why.
And my failure to have done so, would have prevented so much of the change that is making my life even better and better. So we just can’t even imagine what we are going to get when we connect with the very best people on the planet.
______________________
Donna Fox: I really wish that I could say there is this strong mentor in my life at those times, that there was a driving force and somebody to lean on. But I think in hard times, more than any other time, you feel alone.

When I think back on those times the only person I leaned on was me. It was the only person I had the ability to lean on at that time because I felt like the only person in the world.

In hindsight when I was a teenager my mother was there. She would have helped but I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t reach out. When I was going through a divorce, my family could have helped. My friends could have helped. But I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t reach out.

I got a little bit better later on as I was going through financial troubles and feelings of fraud and at those times I shared those feelings with my business partner and my fiancé who mostly couldn’t understand them because they saw the me that I see now.

They saw the me outside of the adversity and I think that is important to remember when you go to people to help they are going to see the positive in you because people do that. They see the positive in you.

At the time when you are really low you may not be ready to hear that. So ultimately during those down times I turned to me and I still think of myself as being the only asset that I have that no one will take away from me.

Really try to focus on improving “me” and building “me” and growing “me.” If I am all I have, then I still have something pretty good.

_________________________
TOM BEAL: Oh boy. Books, tapes, mentors and my grandfather. My grandfather was probably the stable rock I had in the chaos as a child. My mother was 17 so he was at an age where people his age were having kids.

Through all the adversity I lived with him a lot. He owned a business, a hardwood flooring business. I would go with him when I was about 7 or 8 or 9 years old with him and lay some hardwood floors and he taught me.

He’d say “Tom go clean up that room up we were just in.” I’d go clean the room. He’d say”OK everything is good but you didn’t clean this room over here.”

I called him ‘Papa.’ I’d say “Papa we weren’t even in that room.” He’d say “Exactly, Tom the lessen in life is to leave a place better than when you got here.” And if we could all do that, leave this place better than when we got here I think that pretty much sums it up.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 12:56 PM | Permalink

Listen to Cameron Johnson's In Search Of Heroes by clicking this link.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, what are your perspectives on goodness, ethics, and moral behavior?

Cameron Johnson: Well, I think being in the business world, especially after the Xeroxes, Anderson Consulting, and WorldComs of the world, I think business ethics and business morals have never been more important than they are today.

They are now teaching them in schools, whereas ten years ago they never even thought they would have to teach these classes, because they just assumed people knew these things.

But after the exploits of those companies, it has become such a hot topic, and I think business ethics are just the ability to run a successful business and to go home each night and sleep peacefully. I have always said that, and I believe it is the cornerstone and foundation for which successful businesses were built, were business ethics and strong morals.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, what place does the power of prayer have in your life?

Cameron Johnson: Well, I am religious and I think prayer is so important, because there has to be a higher power that we all look up to. It helps guide us in the tough times and it is very important to me.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, what principles are you willing to sacrifice your life for?

Cameron Johnson: The principles that are of the most interest to me are helping others. Right now with this new book I have coming out I want to help young people and parents and the education system and everything, and also America, just improve and become better.

Financial literacy is something that is very, very much of interest to me, and one of the founding principles of my book is teaching financial literacy in the school systems, because they don’t do that.

They don’t teach it in high school; they don’t teach financial literacy in college unless you’re really in a business school or business classes.

I think that is so important, because debt is at an all-time high across America and the average college student graduates with more than $20,000 in just student loans, not to mention their credit card debt as well.

So I think those are some hot topics that need to be discussed more and need to be shared, and that is one of the reasons I wrote this book.

Ralph Zuranski: Well, are your actions and goals consistent with your beliefs?

Cameron Johnson: Yes; I like to think so, at least. I try to act on them. I set my goals based on where I want to be and where I believe I should be. I try to act accordingly to get there. So I totally believe that those two things are in line.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cameron Johnson started his first business at the tender age of nine. By age 12, his company was selling Beanie Babies™ over the Internet and he profited $50,000 that year. At the age of fifteen, he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company and published his autobiography in Japanese which became an instant best-seller.

At the age of 21, he has founded and sold more than a dozen businesses and has been featured in more than 250 media outlets worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, and MSNBC. He’s served as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and is a frequent speaker to a variety of audiences including high schools, colleges, and corporate executives. In January, 2007, his new book titled You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want – With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship is being released by Simon & Schuster. Cameron Johnson lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Visit his official website http://www.cameronjohnson.com.

Why work for someone else when you can call your own shots, pursue your dreams, and find success on your terms by starting your own business? So many people end up bored with their jobs, stuck in the corporate grind, never following their true passions. As wildly successful young entrepreneur Cameron Johnson shows, you don’t have to live that way. We’ve entered a new age of entrepreneurship, with the Web making it easier than ever to start and run your own company.

As Johnson’s remarkable story reveals, the entrepreneurial way of life is a great way to make sure you love what you do—and offers the potential to achieve extraordinary success by following your gut and going for what you really want.

What about the risks? Don’t you need lots of money? Don’t most start-ups fail? Johnson shares his essential secrets to entrepreneurial success that show you how he got into the life at very low risk, and with very little money, took an idea that excited him and ran with it, achieving great success and satisfaction with businesses he loved. He didn’t have an MBA; he didn’t even have a college degree. But he had learned the simple but vital secrets he reveals.

Cameron Johnson is a seriously happy entrepreneur who started his first business when he was nine with $50 and a home computer. Before he’d turned twenty-one he’d started twelve successful businesses and was offered $10 million in venture capital to grow his hot web company CertificateSwap.com—praised by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the leading-edge “Web 2.0” business successes—even bigger. He has never taken out a loan or racked up any debt, and every one of his businesses has been highly profitable—so profitable that he’d made his first million before graduating from high school, and he’s put away enough cash that he could retire today. But that’s the last thing on earth he’d want to do; he’s much too happy starting up new companies.

Through the story of his own impressive career so far, in You Call the Shots, Johnson takes you behind the scenes of entrepreneurial success and empowers you to hit the ground running with your own great business idea, no matter how young you are or how little money you have to invest.

Cameron Johnson had started, run and sold 12 successful companies by the time he was 21. His business successes have been featured in Time, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, USA Today and many more, as well as on the Today Show and Good Morning America. When he was fifteen he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company, and his autobiography, 15-Year-Old CEO, published in Japanese, became an instant best-seller. He has consulted to Fortune 500 companies and spoken at the Wharton School, among others. Every one of his businesses has been a success, even in the worst days of the Internet bust. As a freshman in college, he started CertificateSwap.com, an online marketplace for gift cards, which was a runaway success and for which he was offered $10 million in venture capital. He lives in Blacksburg, VA.

Advance Praise for Cameron Johnson and You Call the Shots

Cameron Johnson wrote me a letter when he was eight years old. I didn’t write back to him, but I responded with a surprise for him when he visited New York City. Thirteen years later, he’s given me a surprise—he’s written a terrific book! No matter what your age, you will enjoy and learn from Cameron’s book about his accomplishments thus far. I’m sure there will be more to come.
— Donald J. Trump

You Call the Shots is for everyone committed to following their dreams. Cameron Johnson thoroughly outlines the strategies it takes to remove obstacles to entrepreneurial success. This book is essential reading for anyone with a passion for life.
— T. Harv Eker, #1 New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

If you want to be an enlightened money-maker, read my friend Cam’s brilliant book now—and apply it.
— Mark Victor Hansen, coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul
and One Minute Millionaire series

Cameron Johnson’s extraordinary entrepreneurial journey has made it possible for him to develop more sophistication and business savvy by the age of twenty-two than most professionals accumulate throughout an entire lifetime! In You Call the Shots he shares his personal secrets, experience and advice in a warm and friendly way that’s sure to motivate people of all ages.
— Jennifer Kushell, New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Young & Successful: How to Get Everything You Want Without Waiting a Lifetime

Posted by ralph at 02:24 PM | Permalink

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript

27. How important was it to believe your financial dreams would eventually become reality?
Mike Filsaime: You set your goals and I have to be honest with you, I’ve been setting goals all my life and never achieving them but it sent me in the right direction. I set a goal years ago that I wanted to be a millionaire.

Sometimes you say to yourself “Well that’s a great carrot to go for.” What ends up happening is that when you get there you have to re-evaluate and set new goals. You have to start thinking bigger and thinking more philanthropic.

You want to start thinking how you want to affect lives and help people achieve success and dreams they want out of life. Of course I can still make money doing that. There is nothing wrong with charging money for mentoring programs.

If you believe in what you are doing and that people will spend $5,000 a year and it can bring them from making $5,000 a mo nth to a$100,000 a month, well they’ll pay you 10 times for what it is.

Sometimes you have to pay for information. Like I said before you have to be a student of learning. So those are some of the things we are doing right now. I believe in higher learning. When you ask that question about positive thinking and achieving goals, I think it all boils down to having a positive attitude.
___________________________
Paulie Sabol: Again, I am probably going to sound like the contrarian here, and say for me it is not particularly important. For me, whether I had the belief or not, I had no choice but to take action. I had taken on and really believed that it was required of me to meet certain responsibilities.
And some of those responsibilities that have and do and continue to require financial freedom, financial abundance. So I really believed I had no choice but to figure it out, to make it happen, to do whatever I had to do.
Even at that time when I was investing into that coaching program, I had to put that on a credit card, because it wasn’t the best time. Especially, in a lot of the kinds of businesses I do, like real estate. It is very cash intensive. I might have on a given day, five million dollars worth of real estate that I own and have equities in, but I may not actually have two thin dimes to go make a telephone call with.
___________________
Ralph Zuranski: I know you have been very successful in the last couple of years after you overcame the credit millionaire, sort of like epiphany, that you were the right person at the right time because you were experiencing exactly what you were writing about.

It seems that a lot of people teach exactly what they need to know at the time that they need it and that’s why they are the best teachers because they are actually going through it at that time.
Donna Fox: The whole time I was really struggling to be an entrepreneur, living off of credit cards, I only looked at the job ads three times. I quickly remembered what I was running away from, the fear of being stuck in a job working a lot of grueling hours for somebody else and making a living instead of making a life.

That kept me focused and it kept me motivated. So yea, I did kind of turn to the dark side and look at the want ads every once in awhile when I though it would be nice to go out for dinner once in awhile for a change.

But ultimately it was that I knew that the best thing for me would be to make it successful, and in 2005, which was really a pivotal year for me, I made a decision not to renew my law license.

I took away my safety net. Instead of swinging from trapezes and knowing there was a net underneath me, I took the net way and I grew tremendously.

Once I was willing to get rid of that safety net and know that I had to catch the other trapeze that was coming, that there was nothing saving me but making it work and being successful.

Ultimately I believe that that moment was my tipping point. At that moment I told the universe that I was serious about it, and it’s made all the difference.
______________________
TOM BEAL: Financial dreams, here’s the thing, through all that adversity and poverty as a child there was a lot of brainwashing as far as what people who were wealthy did and how they did people wrong. All the normal stuff people hear like money doesn’t grow on trees and all the other negative stuff.

But knowing and having faith in the law of sowing and reaping and the law of cause and effect, knowing that if you’re able to contribute value you will be compensated. If you’re doing the best you can just like when I was in the marine corp. Circumstances are the way they are but if I can just continue to provide value I’ll be rewarded.

I was rewarded with promotions and such. In the free world the more value you are able to contribute to more people you’ll be rewarded. It’s just a matter of how much value you are providing. You can do a check by taking a look at your bank account. That will tell you exactly how much value you’re providing people at this particular point in time.

It doesn’t mean you can’t change it or improve it. Recognize where your starting point is and then see how you can contribute more value. There’s a quote by Zig Ziglar that says basically all your dreams can come true by the amount of people you help their dreams come true.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 12:58 PM | Permalink

Listen to Cameron Johnson's In Search Of Heroes by clicking this link.

Ralph Zuranski: What do you want out of life in ten words or less?

Cameron Johnson: Well, I think there are a number of different ways I could answer this, but most importantly, what I want out of life is that I want to leave the world a better place, and I want to motivate young people to do the best that they can do.

Ralph Zuranski: What is the dream or vision that sets the course of your life?

Cameron Johnson: My dream is to remove all obstacles and become as successful as I can be, but along the way helping plenty of other people find their dreams and goals, no matter what that is; whether it is in the business world or any other facet of life. But that is kind of my dream and what I am focused on for my life.

Ralph Zuranski: How important is it for you to stay focused on your primary goal?

Cameron Johnson: I think setting goals is the first step in being successful, and in order to reach those goals you have to stay focused, and I think it is the most crucial aspect of succeeding in life; setting one goal in life and then reaching it and setting another goal.

So I believe in short term goals in addition to long term goals. But the short term ones are the ones that help you get through, and I think it is so crucial for you to stay 100% focused all the time.

Ralph Zuranski: Do you follow your hunches and intuition?

Cameron Johnson: Yes. You can say I am guilty or one of the best people at following hunches and intuition. But when I believe in something, I totally act on it right away. Of course, I go through and do the necessary research and due diligence. But I very much act on my intuition.

Ralph Zuranski: What specific philosophy or philosophies guide your life and your decisions?

Cameron Johnson: Well, I was raised by my parents, who are both entrepreneurs. My dad owns a Ford dealership back home in Roanoke, Virginia, that my great-grandfather started back in 1938. And my mother inherited a very successful business as well, that she sold more than 20 years ago.

But they both raised me on the principle that you have to work for things you want in life, and that nothing is going to be handed to you. That’s what motivated me to get started at an early age, and to choose a career path that is different from the traditional path of graduating from high school, going to college, going to work for a company and moving your way up ten or fifteen years down the road.

So my philosophy has always been to create whatever it is I want, and I work for myself, and that is kind of what I have enjoyed so much, is the instant reward and gratification of working for yourself and motivating yourself to do great things.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cameron Johnson started his first business at the tender age of nine. By age 12, his company was selling Beanie Babies™ over the Internet and he profited $50,000 that year. At the age of fifteen, he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company and published his autobiography in Japanese which became an instant best-seller.

At the age of 21, he has founded and sold more than a dozen businesses and has been featured in more than 250 media outlets worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, and MSNBC. He’s served as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and is a frequent speaker to a variety of audiences including high schools, colleges, and corporate executives. In January, 2007, his new book titled You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want – With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship is being released by Simon & Schuster. Cameron Johnson lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Visit his official website http://www.cameronjohnson.com.

Why work for someone else when you can call your own shots, pursue your dreams, and find success on your terms by starting your own business? So many people end up bored with their jobs, stuck in the corporate grind, never following their true passions. As wildly successful young entrepreneur Cameron Johnson shows, you don’t have to live that way. We’ve entered a new age of entrepreneurship, with the Web making it easier than ever to start and run your own company.

As Johnson’s remarkable story reveals, the entrepreneurial way of life is a great way to make sure you love what you do—and offers the potential to achieve extraordinary success by following your gut and going for what you really want.

What about the risks? Don’t you need lots of money? Don’t most start-ups fail? Johnson shares his essential secrets to entrepreneurial success that show you how he got into the life at very low risk, and with very little money, took an idea that excited him and ran with it, achieving great success and satisfaction with businesses he loved. He didn’t have an MBA; he didn’t even have a college degree. But he had learned the simple but vital secrets he reveals.

Cameron Johnson is a seriously happy entrepreneur who started his first business when he was nine with $50 and a home computer. Before he’d turned twenty-one he’d started twelve successful businesses and was offered $10 million in venture capital to grow his hot web company CertificateSwap.com—praised by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the leading-edge “Web 2.0” business successes—even bigger. He has never taken out a loan or racked up any debt, and every one of his businesses has been highly profitable—so profitable that he’d made his first million before graduating from high school, and he’s put away enough cash that he could retire today. But that’s the last thing on earth he’d want to do; he’s much too happy starting up new companies.

Through the story of his own impressive career so far, in You Call the Shots, Johnson takes you behind the scenes of entrepreneurial success and empowers you to hit the ground running with your own great business idea, no matter how young you are or how little money you have to invest.

Cameron Johnson had started, run and sold 12 successful companies by the time he was 21. His business successes have been featured in Time, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, USA Today and many more, as well as on the Today Show and Good Morning America. When he was fifteen he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company, and his autobiography, 15-Year-Old CEO, published in Japanese, became an instant best-seller. He has consulted to Fortune 500 companies and spoken at the Wharton School, among others. Every one of his businesses has been a success, even in the worst days of the Internet bust. As a freshman in college, he started CertificateSwap.com, an online marketplace for gift cards, which was a runaway success and for which he was offered $10 million in venture capital. He lives in Blacksburg, VA.

Advance Praise for Cameron Johnson and You Call the Shots

Cameron Johnson wrote me a letter when he was eight years old. I didn’t write back to him, but I responded with a surprise for him when he visited New York City. Thirteen years later, he’s given me a surprise—he’s written a terrific book! No matter what your age, you will enjoy and learn from Cameron’s book about his accomplishments thus far. I’m sure there will be more to come.
— Donald J. Trump

You Call the Shots is for everyone committed to following their dreams. Cameron Johnson thoroughly outlines the strategies it takes to remove obstacles to entrepreneurial success. This book is essential reading for anyone with a passion for life.
— T. Harv Eker, #1 New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

If you want to be an enlightened money-maker, read my friend Cam’s brilliant book now—and apply it.
— Mark Victor Hansen, coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul
and One Minute Millionaire series

Cameron Johnson’s extraordinary entrepreneurial journey has made it possible for him to develop more sophistication and business savvy by the age of twenty-two than most professionals accumulate throughout an entire lifetime! In You Call the Shots he shares his personal secrets, experience and advice in a warm and friendly way that’s sure to motivate people of all ages.
— Jennifer Kushell, New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Young & Successful: How to Get Everything You Want Without Waiting a Lifetime

Posted by ralph at 02:21 PM | Permalink

Click Here to listen to Donna Fox's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Mike Filsaime's heroes interview and read the entire transcript.
Click Here to listen to Paulie Sabol's heroes interview and read the entire transcript
Click Here to listen to Tom Beal's heroes interview and read the entire transcript

25. When was the lowest point in your life and how did you change your life path to one of victory over the obstacles you were facing at that time?
Mike Filsaime: I’ve been fortunate Ralph that I haven’t had, knock wood of course, and I will (Knock, knock), any deaths in my immediate family. My parents got divorced when I was in my mid-twenties so that didn’t affect me the way it could have.

Maybe it would have affected someone who was 8 years old. I lost my grandfather. We knew each other but we didn’t know each other well. So “knock wood” again there hasn’t been any type of tragedy or anything like that.

However, I had financial tragedy and stress back in 1998. I was in the car business. I left the car business for 6 months to get involved with a real estate investor who turned out to be nothing more than a con man. He took me and about six other people in on this con. It was a con by driving a Mercedes and having a house that wasn’t his and all these other things that we believed were his.

His intentions were good. His intentions were to use our credit and our money to buy houses and repair them and flip them. What ended up happening, remember what we said about taking on too many projects, he was trying to buy too many houses at a time.

While he was trying to put all this construction in and collecting the mortgage payments and when the cash flow went negative he started keeping the mortgage payments and putting it in his own pocket.

Several months later we found out that the whole project went bankrupt. Since it was our credit and our money he lost nothing. We had him arrested and we filed charges and put all that stuff behind us.

What it left me in 1998 was $70,000 in debt and 3 foreclosures and 3 repossessions. One was for a Mercedes Benz and one for a Ford Exhibition and a Harley Davidson. I had signed for all these things for him under the business name.

Also the credit card machine and three foreclosures were in my name so I had no choice at that time but to file bankruptcy. They were coming after everything I owned. If you look at all these successful people out there like Stephen Pierce, Mark Victor Hansen, Armand Moran and Joe Vitalie there’s one thing you can be comfortable in knowing.

The school of hard knocks happens to all of us. So we must stop with the self-pity. Everybody’s got their own story. I heard recently that everybody is going to tell you “My parents left me when I was three years old and I was put up for adoption.” Ok, well so what, everybody’s got a story.

Let it go. Stop holding on to it and let that be an inspiration to people when you’ve overcome it. Start thinking positive and stop dwelling on it on that. Eighty-five percent of the people in the US have grown up in a dysfunctional family.

You are not alone. So stop thinking about that you were given these bad things. I think that 9 out of 10 successful people that are multi-millionaires in this world have gone through major tragedies or bankruptcy or financial tragedy.

It’s ok to let those things happen. You can’t be embarrassed and say “Oh I don’t want anybody to know that I went bankrupt.” Hey, it happens. We’ve made mistakes in our life. We have to learn from them and move on.
___________________________
Paulie Sabol: I was an active member of a church at a point and time. I began to read and understand different truths from our common sacred text, our common basis of our seemingly shared belief systems.
My views changed very, very dramatically in those periods of time. Even though I could make my case of where I felt like this was my inspiration, where I felt like it was soundly based doctrinally, that group of people rejected me.
They rejected me in a very formal way. There is actually this kind of secret language within this worldview. Basically the language is that they cast me out of the church in the name of Jesus.
What that was communicating to me and to every other member of that community that was full of friends and people that I cared about, is that they were basically saying and treating me like I was in their mind, an evil, malevolent spirit, just because I saw things differently.
Just because I believed, for example, that from my reading of their text, there was no eternal hell that anyone went to, because I didn’t see any reason that somebody could not be a person who expresses their sexual orientation as a same-sex orientation and be a servant to many, and in this case, at that time I would have said a child of God.
It was a very, very difficult time because at that point in my life, that was about 70 or 80 percent of all my social relationships, all my contacts, all of my sense of identity and importance and self-worth, not to mention all the residual fears I had at that time, because it was a place that really saw the universe and God as an angry, spiteful, demanding authoritarian, patriarchal, sort of character.
So it was very, very difficult. It thrust me into a lot of uncertainty. The way that I was able to turn it around was simply through time. I found new relationships. I found other people had believed the same thing I had at other points and time.
I found out that some of the others were treated much worse than me. Jacques DeMolay, the head of the Knights Templar, was burned at the stake for similar beliefs. So the first thing I started to realize was that I didn’t quite have it as bad as some others had had. I wasn’t alone, and it was huge to realize I was not, in fact, alone.
Then finally I was really able to turn it around because of something that happened very recently. I was very resentful. I was very oppositional. I had a lot of struggles with people who were members of organized religion.
One day, a person who was actually a minister of a church, we’ve had discussions, and he certainly challenged and took some exceptions, and had some questions about what the role of homosexuality is as it relates to spirituality, as it relates to blessings, and all of these things.
He lost his luggage on a plane, and we were at the same place. He asked me if I would pray with him? I will, but you’ve got to know I’m not really a prayer person, I don’t really believe the same things you do, I would actually consider myself an atheist, an agnostic, but I can certainly call upon my overall belief systems and your language patterns and pray.
I sat down and prayed for him. I prayed what I knew were some of his scriptures. I prayed that he would have a peace that passed all understandings, and keep his heart and his mind through these tribulations. I did the whole thing.
Afterwards he came up and talked to me. The cool thing was that he hadn’t been able to get through, he couldn’t even talk to anybody who could find his bag, or would even acknowledge that it had been on the plane. Right after our prayer, he picked up the phone, he got through to the airport, and one hour later he had his bag.
But even before he had his bag, he told me he had a lot of rethinking to do because your prayer bore witness to my spirit. For me, that was like coming full circle. You have to understand what it was like to be in this environment that you considered your social and protective cocoon of making it as a young adolescent.
Here they are basically saying you are a child of Satan, not a child of God, and sending you away so that at the end you might be saved as though by fire. Now here we have this person who is a religious leader, and he’s saying, “Your prayer bore witness to my spirit.”
May I share one other down time with you, too?
Ralph Zuranski: You bet.
Paulie Sabol: Because this is another one where it shows that sometimes the way you overcome takes a little bit of time. That story took a little bit of time. That closure story really only happened two years ago.
Here’s another case. My best friend when I was a youngster died way too early in his life. He died when he was 18 or 19 years of age. He was coming home from college for Thanksgiving, and as you can probably guess, in all the cliché ways, got hit by a drunk driver and he died.
It was interesting because he was my best friend when I was a little kid, from four to eight. When I got the news, I hadn’t really seen him any other times than that. We both moved, but I got this news that he had died because his parents were in the same community that I had grown up with, and my grandfather was in this community.
I was invited to the funeral. I want to tell you, Ralph, I couldn’t go. I couldn’t bring myself to go because in my mind, as I was even envisioning what the funeral would be like, I mean I had this little child’s casket, and I realized this was really emotional for me right now.
I would go there and what I would see would be out of alignment with what I was experiencing inside. I was losing my little buddy. So I couldn’t go. But then another thing happened. About one year later, two of my other friends were actually murdered by a third friend. We used to get together and play cards and play other games. We were in this gaming group together.
This one friend actually murdered two of my other friends. Now if you can imagine something putting you into turmoil, that’s going to do it. That really does it. You’ve got murder cases going on. You’ve got funerals. You’ve got friends not knowing what they’re going to do.
Again, I was invited to the funeral. I talked to another friend of mine and let me tell you this story about when my friend Johnny died. And I explained why I didn’t go. Now I’m feeling even more like I’m uncertain. I had never gone to a funeral yet by this time, by the way.
She worked in hospice, so she was actually around people who were dying of terminal illnesses all the time. So I thought she would have some good advice. That is definitely one of the things I’ve found out in my life that help you, is to find a coach or a mentor who can give you some guidance because they have specialized knowledge.
So I asked her about it. She said something to me that totally changed my life. This is a case of where a message did it. She said, “Paulie, you don’t go to the funeral as much for you, but you go to the funeral for the survivors, for the people who are remaining who have lost something.”
So I went. Now, remember, we had a Saturday gaming clique. We got together once or twice a month, pretty much did only one thing. I don’t want to suggest it was an insignificant relationship, but it only was what it was.
I go to the funeral. I introduce myself to the father of the husband (these two got married at a young age together – and they were both killed). He says that he remembered one time when you guys first met. We had first met when I 16 or 17 and didn’t even drive yet.
So this dad had driven the son over to my house when we had one of our first gaming experiences. He said, “I just want to thank you. You were such a good friend to my son.” He gave me this big hug and he started crying and I started crying. I totally got it.
For awhile I was actually feeling depressed again about not having gone to Johnny’s funeral, because of me. But I realized, Johnny was the one in this case who died. He was the one who I wasn’t going to have another chance with. But I was able to go to his parents and go another time and connect with them and say, “You know, Johnny and I had such a good time. I’m so disappointed that he was taken from you and the rest of the world so soon.”
Again, able to come back and make up for it and give them that acknowledgment that he was special and important to me. Even after I had seemed to miss the first opportunity. But it is because I had additional learning.
Ralph Zuranski: One of my dear friends that was on the frontline of alternative medicine just died last week of an unexpected heart attack. I just wrote his eulogy today. You think about how powerful it is, the people that have impact on your life, and how life and death can make such a big difference in your perspective on what’s going on in your life at this moment and particular time.
____________________
Donna Fox: There have been quite a few low points in my life. I’ll just work reverse chronologically until you decide to stop me because it’s too depressing.

As early as two years ago I had just published a book From Credit Repair to Credit Millionaire and I was broke. I had left my job in 2001 to start a business and I had some savings.

My ultimate goal was to start a business and go back to work but then September 11th happened, the marketplace changed, and when it was time for me to go back to work there were just no jobs available in my field.

So I decided to keep working on my business a little big more and that is actually when I started and got involved in the internet and got involved in speaking and training and found that I loved it.

But at that time, right when I had published that book, I hadn’t had income for two and a half years. Not a dime in income for two and a half years. I was living on credit cards, Ralph.

I was literally living on cash advances on credit cards and shuffling them around, and almost ironically practicing my credit millionaire strategies to keep my head above water while I’m trying to build a business teaching other people how to make millions of dollars by borrowing money.

So there is just this very interesting time in my life where I struggled with feelings that I was a fraud. Who was I to tell people about wealth building when I have $40,000 in credit card debt because I’ve been living off them for years?

Then I realized that is exactly why I am the right person because I’m teaching people about how to use credit. I may have $40,000 in credit card debt but it’s basically business debt because it’s money that I was essentially paying to myself as a salary.

I could have loaned it to my business and then paid myself a salary if I wanted to do it that way.

It’s kind of hard to think about the low points because after you get over them you tend to find the positive in them. Another low point in my life was right after I graduated from law school. I was also getting a divorce.

It was just a terrible time in my life. My husband and I loved each other so much but we just could not be married. It turns out we never really should have been married. We should have just been friends.

Now he is a great friend of mine. We are practically best friends. But at that time it was so low and I felt scared because I had just gotten out of law school, I didn’t have a job so I was job hunting, I was going to be alone, I had tremendous debt over my head from my student loans, and yea, there were days when I hid under the covers.

It was just a tremendous low point, but it passed. If it doesn’t kill you it will make you stronger. It made me stronger.

The last one I want to talk about is not something I have ever said publicly before, ever. So this is a first. It’s a first for In Search of Heroes.

I got pregnant when I was 16 and in high school. I first thought about an abortion but that didn’t feel right. Remember I said I like to check my decisions based on my feelings. Nothing felt good about that.

But I had plans in life and a baby was not part of the plans. So I made the decision to give the baby up for adoption. I’m not going to get through this without crying. I went through an open adoption so I actually interviewed and picked the parents for my daughter.

Probably the lowest point in my life, and the hardest thing I have ever done, was actually handing my daughter over into the arms of her new mom. I just thought the world was going to end. Nothing could be good after doing something like that.

I remember it was really the way to give her the best life I possibly could and also give me a chance, because I was still a baby, too, and I needed to give myself a chance. So yea, it was a tremendously low time.

As this knocked-up teenager I felt like a screw-up. You would not believe, but now because I did an open adoption and actually my daughter turns 18 this year, so there is a chance she might come back into my life.

Because I’ve done an open adoption, every year I get pictures. Every year I saw this wonderful little thing that cost me so much pain, grow into this amazing individual. And I think that is what adversity in life is about.

Real change doesn’t happen until there is adversity and real growth. She could go on to change the world. Maybe it’s not my job to end poverty. Maybe it’s her’s.

If I hadn’t experienced that adversity, that amazing life wouldn’t have happened and I wouldn’t be who I am now. I got so much growth and so much strength from that experience. If I had just kind of skated through my high school years I don’t know if I would be here today.

So gosh, yes, adversity sucks when you are in it. There is nothing worse than when you are at the life lows. But when you can look back and realize how far you have come, and you will come far because you can’t stay low. The human spirit is too strong to stay low.

When you look back and think about the amazing things that have happened you just have to embrace those adversities, you have to embrace the low times in your life.
______________________
TOM BEAL: Wow, the lowest point. That’s a good question. Here’s one and it’s a weird one. I was the number one honor graduate in boot camp and had three merit choice promotions in 4 years, I was the man. I was like the kid on the block. I was like the epitome of a marine.

I was up for MECP, Marine Enlistment Commissioning Program. They were going to take me out of the enlistment and put me in college and have me come back as an officer. At the same time we had just been transferred from Cherry Point, North Carolina to Yuma, Arizona.

Little did we know there had been a circumstance there with hazing. This was right around the time of the movie with Tom Cruise called “A Few Good Men”. So hazing is like what fraternities do and all that fun stuff. But we didn’t know that since that event occurred they said the next time something occurs like this we are going to set a precedent.

We didn’t know that. We picked up a couple of dead beats that got passed over to our platoon and everyone wanted to get this one kid. I didn’t and wasn’t for that stuff. Basically I was there to make sure it didn’t get out of hand.

To make a long story short, I made sure it didn’t get out of hand but everybody that was there was busted including me. So I went in the matter of one sentence from being the top person in that whole base basically to being demoted.

Internally to be at the top of your game and have the carpet pulled out from under you and have the package ripped up was probably the toughest point in my life.

Because, I knew that I had done good and physically stopped this from getting where it shouldn’t have been. But I also chose to be there. I own the fact that I was there and also own the fact that I did make sure this kid didn’t get harmed in any way.

But, I chose to be there. By choosing to be there I chose to be demoted. It took me a long time to own that. So that was the lowest point. I was able to overcome it and getting meritorially promoted once again.

It took me a couple of months to work through that. I had to learn it is what it is. I was worrying about it but knew there was nothing I could do about it other than be the best that I can today. I decided to be the best that I could and I ended up getting promoted again after that.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 12:55 PM | Permalink

Listen to Cameron Johnson's In Search Of Heroes by clicking this link.

Cameron Johnson started his first business at the tender age of nine. By age 12, his company was selling Beanie Babies™ over the Internet and he profited $50,000 that year. At the age of fifteen, he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company and published his autobiography in Japanese which became an instant best-seller.

At the age of 21, he has founded and sold more than a dozen businesses and has been featured in more than 250 media outlets worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, and MSNBC. He’s served as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and is a frequent speaker to a variety of audiences including high schools, colleges, and corporate executives. In January, 2007, his new book titled You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want – With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship is being released by Simon & Schuster. Cameron Johnson lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Visit his official website http://www.cameronjohnson.com.

Why work for someone else when you can call your own shots, pursue your dreams, and find success on your terms by starting your own business? So many people end up bored with their jobs, stuck in the corporate grind, never following their true passions. As wildly successful young entrepreneur Cameron Johnson shows, you don’t have to live that way. We’ve entered a new age of entrepreneurship, with the Web making it easier than ever to start and run your own company.

As Johnson’s remarkable story reveals, the entrepreneurial way of life is a great way to make sure you love what you do—and offers the potential  to achieve extraordinary success by following your gut and going for what you really want.

What about the risks? Don’t you need lots of money? Don’t most start-ups fail? Johnson shares his essential secrets to entrepreneurial success that show you how he got into the life at very low risk, and with very little money, took an idea that excited him and ran with it, achieving great success and satisfaction with businesses he loved.  He didn’t have an MBA; he didn’t even have a college degree. But he had learned the simple but vital secrets he reveals.

Cameron Johnson is a seriously happy entrepreneur who started his first business when he was nine with $50 and a home computer. Before he’d turned twenty-one he’d started twelve successful businesses and was offered $10 million in venture capital to grow his hot web company CertificateSwap.com—praised by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the leading-edge “Web 2.0” business successes—even bigger. He has never taken out a loan or racked up any debt, and every one of his businesses has been highly profitable—so profitable that he’d made his first million before graduating from high school, and he’s put away enough cash that he could retire today. But that’s the last thing on earth he’d want to do; he’s much too happy starting up new companies.  

Through the story of his own impressive career so far, in You Call the Shots, Johnson takes you behind the scenes of entrepreneurial success and empowers you to hit the ground running with your own great business idea, no matter how young you are or how little money you have to invest.  
  
Cameron Johnson had started, run and sold 12 successful companies by the time he was 21. His business successes have been featured in Time, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, USA Today and many more, as well as on the Today Show and Good Morning America. When he was fifteen he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company, and his autobiography, 15-Year-Old CEO, published in Japanese, became an instant best-seller. He has consulted to Fortune 500 companies and spoken at the Wharton School, among others. Every one of his businesses has been a success, even in the worst days of the Internet bust. As a freshman in college, he started CertificateSwap.com, an online marketplace for gift cards, which was a runaway success and for which he was offered $10 million in venture capital. He lives in Blacksburg, VA.
 
Advance Praise for Cameron Johnson and You Call the Shots
 
Cameron Johnson wrote me a letter when he was eight years old. I didn’t write back to him, but I responded with a surprise for him when he visited New York City. Thirteen years later, he’s given me a surprise—he’s written a terrific book! No matter what your age, you will enjoy and learn from Cameron’s book about his accomplishments thus far. I’m sure there will be more to come.
— Donald J. Trump
  
You Call the Shots is for everyone committed to following their dreams. Cameron Johnson thoroughly outlines the strategies it takes to remove obstacles to entrepreneurial success. This book is essential reading for anyone with a passion for life.
— T. Harv Eker, #1 New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
  
If you want to be an enlightened money-maker, read my friend Cam’s brilliant book now—and apply it.
— Mark Victor Hansen, coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul
and One Minute Millionaire series
  
Cameron Johnson’s extraordinary entrepreneurial journey has made it possible for him to develop more sophistication and business savvy by the age of twenty-two than most professionals accumulate throughout an entire lifetime! In You Call the Shots he shares his personal secrets, experience and advice in a warm and friendly way that’s sure to motivate people of all ages.
— Jennifer Kushell, New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Young & Successful: How to Get Everything You Want Without Waiting a Lifetime

Read the Transcript Of Cameron Johnson's In Search Of Heroes Interview

Ralph Zuranski: Hi! This is Ralph Zuranski, and I am on the phone with Cameron Johnson. Cameron is one of the heroes I met at Joe Polish’s carpet cleaning convention, where he taught carpet cleaners how to be incredibly successful. Cameron was Mr. X, the secret speaker that Joe Polish brought in to impress all the other individuals.
 
How are you doing today, Cameron?
 
Cameron Johnson:  Doing great, Ralph. How are you?
 
Ralph: Good. Could you tell everybody a little about you because I am sure not many people know about you?
 
Cameron Johnson: Sure. Well, I started my first business when I was nine years old. It was a printing company, printing stationery, greeting cards, and things like that for friends, family, and relatives, and the company grew from there.
 
When I was twelve years old I sold Beanie Babies over the Internet, and my company grew to become the number two Beanie Baby retailer on the Internet. When I was twelve, I made $50,000 selling Beanie Babies.
 
When I was 15 I transitioned to an Internet company. The company sold online advertising, and we grew to have close to 200,000 in 80 countries, and we are displaying about 15 million ads per day, which at the time was about $15,000 in daily revenue.
 
Since then I have had several other companies and I am 22 years old now, and I have got a new book that is on the horizon, coming out in January. I have had 12 companies before I turned 21, and I just recently turned 22.
 
Ralph Zuranski: Wow! What is the name of your book and what is it about?
 
Cameron Johnson: Well, the name of the book is You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way and Live the Life You Want, with the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship.
 
What it does is talk about all the different businesses I have started, and sold and run successfully over the past twelve years, and bottles it all up in a package that is unique, because not only is my age unique.
 
But it gives you insight into some of the different businesses I was able to start, being so young, and how I was able to do that, while also managing or attempting to manage a normal high school life, and to grow my businesses that way.
 

Posted by ralph at 10:28 PM | Permalink

23. Do you readily forgive those who upset, offend and oppose you?
Mike Filsaime: I am so forgiving to a fault. I think that’s the Scorpio nature in me. I was born October 26. I almost go into everything that I do with the expectation that I’m going to do everything I can right. I hope this person does too but if they don’t then so be it.

I try not to hold a grudge. I’ll kick and scream sometimes and say “Oh man I can’t believe this guy did this to me.” But you have to get over it. If you are going to dwell on the negative things and in the past think instead of what you could be doing if you are working on a project and moving something forward.

I’ve been burned so many times. I could basically tell you on a weekly basis how I get burned. But look where I am in my life because I let it go.

I say “Ok you know if that happened and this & that got shut down or this person did this & that then I hope in my heart this person changes their ways so they can be a better person. Because if they don’t they’ll only have bad things happen to them.”

I don’t wish that upon them. There was a person recently that we didn’t get along with each other in Butterfly Marketing. Remember I said you may have fire your bad friends, well this guy wasn’t behaving. I had to fire him as a customer and refund him.

So he now is going around in forums and tongue & cheek beating me up a little bit. I’m not going to play down to that game. I sent him a very polite email and apologized that we got off on the wrong foot.

I said “We can do better things in this world if we both put positive energy out there. I give you my word I’ll never say anything bad about you regardless of what you continue to do to me.

However, maybe one day we’ll meet and let’s not have any uncomfortable feelings when that happens. I always believed that if you don’t have anything nice to say about people then don’t say anything. And right there, do I have faults with that? I’m sure I do.

I’m sure there are times I may have a cup of coffee or a drink with somebody and a topic will come up and I’ll probably talk in ways that I shouldn’t about somebody. But publicly you should never do anything like that. Without a doubt you have to be able to forgive people and forgive yourself.

You have to know when you’ve made faults. You have to say I’m sorry and apologize to people and reach out to them before they reach out to you if you believe that they may be upset. You have to let it go and don’t associate with those types of people but you can definitely forgive them.
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Paulie Sabol: I do think it is important. I think it is exceptionally important. First, we wouldn’t spend so much time thinking about what others think about us, Ralph, if we knew just how little they did. One of the areas where I’ve had great success and wealth is in real estate.
In real estate we have tenants. That’s where I found what a lack of forgiveness to be like. It is like somebody being a tenant inside your head. So I do make it an effort and a habit of mine to not long hold upon grudges. But I do want to be completely candid and frank and transparent with all of your listeners.
I still get hurt very easily. I do get offended at times when people don’t intend it or mean it. That is the other good reason to forgive them. Very often, it wasn’t even what they were going after. Some of your smartest listeners, who catch more nuance and subtlety, some of your marginalized listeners who are aware of hatred and bias and different aspects of judgment and prejudice, they are going to have moments when they get hurt and offended.
People oppose them. I don’t think that is a failure by any means, but it is an opportunity to get quickly back towards your future through forgiveness.
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Donna Fox: I think forgiveness is really kind of crucial to my business sanity. I have had those moments where just recently somebody is infringing on one of my trademarks. That is huge! I am angry with that person.

But I’ve come to forgive them and it’s relatively recent. It’s still going on and he is still infringing on my trademark even now as we speak. But forgiveness is important for me, not for him. He doesn’t care if I forgive him. He really doesn’t.

It’s kind of the process of letting go of the anger, letting go of the hurt. When I got started I used to get mad at people who opted out of my list! Now I rejoice in it.

Now I look at it as good. I don’t want somebody who doesn’t want me. So it’s just a process that we go through where we get these little small hurts and then we realize that they are just that, small hurts, and we don’t have to be hurt by them.

So we kind of forgive them globally. I have forgiven everyone who ever will in the future opt out of my list. It’s just not a hurt any longer.

I think it helps us grow to be able to forgive but if I was still now, years after starting being an internet marketer, getting upset every time somebody opted out of my list, I wouldn’t move forward.

Forgiveness really helps us learn from an experience and take the next steps forward.

Ralph Zuranski: That is kind of an interesting perception. I don’t think I ever got mad at the people who opted out of my list, I was just thankful that somebody opted in.
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TOM BEAL: The person that’s hurt the most by not forgiving is you and me. If I’m willing to hold that energy and not forgive somebody and hold that inside its only self-limiting. They are living their lives and they have no clue.

It’s one of the most important things I had to overcome. I thought “How could my family do the things they did?” But in reflection I can look back and say they did the best they could with the time and place they were. No one was out to get me.

People make decisions and they did the best they could or the best they were able to at that particular time. They probably made wrong choices just as I have made wrong choices.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 12:52 PM | Permalink

19. Were you willing to experience discomfort in the pursuit of your dream?
Mike Filsaime: Absolutely! Again that’s the frame that you define yourself for or align yourself with. In my opinion I don’t think that somebody should just quit their job today even though their job is creating pain in their life. You can’t just quit your job and say “Well I’m going to go out and be an entrepreneur.”

That’s good if you have $50,000 in the bank. If you have nothing in the bank then you have to morph into the next thing. You have to work at your current job and leverage that income and time where you’re not working there into building the new business that you want so that you can walk away.

As an example, when I was in the car business I was making good money. I was making $150,000 plus per year. It was killing me but I knew I had to stay there in order to build the foundation of my business that I wanted to build on line.

It was difficult to run both. It was very, very difficult to run both. Then when the time is right it will come. It came to the point where I was talking to the owner and we just decided one day it was time for me to move on.

I took the leap. It was the scariest thing that I’ve ever had to do Ralph. I actually cried outside of the dealership. My other sales people came up to me and said to me “Hey don’t worry about it. Everything is going to be ok.” I couldn’t believe he gave me an ultimatum saying “You work for me or work for yourself.”

I took the choice and stuck my hand out and said “Thanks it’s been a great five years. The other people were saying “How could you walk away from this making $150,000 a year?” I was so emotionally upset that I was one of the best managers in the auto group and that he would actually be so upset that I was trying to better my life in a non-conflictive way that he made me choose. I was so emotional I couldn’t talk to the guys. I was saying “I don’t care this is…”

One of the reasons I was crying is that the chains just let go. It was an emotional charge. They saw the tears as me being upset but more than anything it was that anger and that happy emotion that came out. It was that happy anger of breaking free of the chains.

I was saying, and in not so polite of words so I’ll tone them down, “Screw that. He doesn’t understand what he just did for me. He doesn’t understand that he gave me a choice. I didn’t have the strength to ask him myself. This is a celebration! This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Then I had to get home and tell the family that I no longer have a Toyota Forerunner demo. I no longer have medical benefits and an income or all these things. But to me it was liberation. Because of that I was able to go from $150,000 to making $850,000 last year.

So far this year I’ve made over $3,000,000. Sometimes you have to be able to be willing to “break or cut your wrist” or almost shave the skin off your arms while you are pulling your hands out of those things that bind you. _______________________________________
Paulie Sabol: Willingness is a curious word. I suspect we’ll have the discomfort one way or the other, however, the ability to have comfort is significantly more dependent upon pursuing our dreams than it is upon…in other words, we will assuredly never be comfortable if we give up on our dreams.
We will absolutely experience the worse kind of discomfort, the discomfort of regret, Ralph, is much stronger, is much longer lasting, than the discomfort of being outside of what we know and having all the answers and taking the action to pursue our dreams.
I really point out that we’re going to have the discomfort one way or the other. So we might as well be willing to experience the discomfort in pursuit of our dreams, because we will have no choice but to endure the discomfort and regret if we don’t.
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Ralph Zuranski: I know a lot of people are paralyzed by fear and they are afraid to do things or make changes in their life. A lot of times they are actually constrained by the people that are a part of their peer group.

They know if they make any changes that they are going to be rejected and they are going to go ahead and suffer a certain amount of punishment from their family and friends. I know a lot of people they are just trapped in their relationships and they can’t get out. How do you get out of the relationships or how do you deal with that because I know it is sorrowful, not only for you as a person but also the people that you do have to leave behind.

Donna Fox: It’s a great question and I would love to say I had some kind of magical system that I use or way of looking at it. But frankly, Ralph, what I found is mostly I don’t notice.

Just all of a sudden I realize, “Hey, I haven’t spoken to this person in a while” and realize that I’ve moved on or maybe they have moved on. Who knows, maybe we’ve each moved on in different directions.

But when we get caught up in our day to day activities sometimes those big changes we don’t notice. They are big changes for the good or sometimes big changes for the worst.

I know we’ve all had the experience where suddenly we are ten pounds heavier than we used to be and we certainly didn’t see them going on ounce by ounce. So I don’t really notice that loss enough to be able to comment on the occurrence of it.
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TOM BEAL: Discomfort? I put my self in discomfort because the more you become comfortable I feel the less you are moving forward. If you are not uncomfortable many times a week your life is too complacent and you’re not going to reach great things. I deal with top people.

I deal with Hall of Fame quarterbacks, movie stars, singers, and top marketers. Not everything works for all these people. They make mistakes. They have things that fail. But they don’t quit, they just keep going.

Ok that one didn’t work out, how can I learn from it, how can I get better results? You’ve heard about all my accomplishments but we don’t have time to hear about all my failures. That would take 3 or 4 days if not 3 or 4 weeks.

I’m just too darn stubborn to quit. So put yourself out there. The more uncomfortable position you can put yourself in, obviously ethically and honest and following those proper guidelines, you’ll get used to it and work your muscles up. Then you’ll be able to choose more wisely on projects where a couple of years ago you may have turned that project down.
When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 12:37 PM | Permalink

21. Are you slow to revise or reverse an important decision?
Mike Filsaime: That’s correct. Yes I think that when you believe something is right in your heart, don’t listen to everybody. Take everybody’s advice into consideration. That’s a good question. You see we are on a ship and we are going to the new world. We don’t know exactly where it is but we know it’s there.

We have our captains and other people that are helping us and telling us “Our calculations show us that the wind is blowing us this way. We need to shift our direction two degrees.” That doesn’t mean you have to stand firm with your feet dead in cement once you’ve made your decision.

You want to stay along the same path and make small changes along the path that you believe is right. But don’t just do a complete 180 degrees because at that point you are going to get lost in the ocean and just sink.
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Paulie Sabol: I am slow to do so. In fact, the universe is slow to do so. There is the natural law of inertia that tells us that a body at rest tends to stay at rest, while a body in motion tends to stay in uniform motion unless acted upon by an outside force.
So this is the way that I apply it. I am slow to change a decision until there is an outside force. Now my recommendation is if you can get the outside force in a feather, if you can get the message way ahead of the game, and you can adjust and course correct, do so.
Because very often, if you don’t get it in the feather, you’re going to get it in the Mack truck. The outside force of the Mack truck, which is kind of metaphorically saying, you will continue to make the same mistake, and more of the same results, and perhaps higher impact from those results, until you do change.
So while it is valuable to stick with long term, even through the downsides and the occasional disappointments of a system that works, it makes good sense to quickly change your mind, and as quickly as possible when the results are not fulfilling and are not what you want.
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Donna Fox: Gosh, such a great question! I like to think that I can recognize when I’m being fearful of a decision that I’ve made the wrong decision versus knowing that I’ve made the wrong decision. But who really knows?

I think it’s important to have flexibility. Thankfully, as internet marketers, we have a lot of flexibility built into our lifestyle. We have this phrase in our business where we start to vacillate abut a decision. We simply say, “It’s testable.” That is ultimately what it is about.

Who cares if I have made the right decision? It’s more important that I have made a decision to go forward. And if I want to question the decision, in most cases it’s something that I can test and let the market decide who is right.
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TOM BEAL: It changes with information. For instance I can make a decision right now based on the information I have and believe it whole heartedly and would die for that decision but then new information may come up. If new information comes up that turns the table on it then you can decide again or choose differently.

But obviously for ethics, beliefs and honestly you have to have a foundation on those. Otherwise if new information arises I’m open to hear. If I’m walking this way and somebody says I can walk this way and get different results I’m willing to hear them. But based upon that I can continue to walk in the direction I’m in or choose to go off a little bit.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 12:39 PM | Permalink

20. Is it beneficial to make decisions quickly?
Mike Filsaime: Yes absolutely Ralph. As you’ll see you’ll be talking to a lot of people and we all quote famous people and successful people. Especially quotes from Napoleon Hill.

Napoleon Hill teaches that one of the habits that he notices about all the successful people he interviewed was that successful people are decisive in nature. Successful people make decisions very quickly. And they change them slowly.

Unsuccessful people make decisions very slowly and they change them very quickly. I saw that in the car business. What that means is if I ask you “What color is a blue shirt?” You say it’s blue because you know it to be true.

Sometimes we know the right answer but we were brought up to say “Never make a decision right away. Always sleep on it. Always think about it.” That’s a bunch of nonsense but we have to look at the people that taught us that. They were people that lived their structured life where they made $472.63 a week

Those are the people that are teaching our kids today. I want the kids listening today to know that when they know something is right to make the decision. Stick with it and make it through and focus on that decision you made because you knew it was right.

If it turns out to be the wrong decision then we go back and we talk about what we learned from our mistakes. I will venture to say that 19 times out of 20 your gut instinct is right and you know the right decision. The mistake that people make is they say I’m going to sleep on it.

It’s like me saying “Here you give me $5.00 and I’ll give you ten tomorrow.” Then you say “Well let me think about that.” And the next thing you know you end up saying “I remember when Snapple came out. My friends bought it but I decided not to buy it. I remember when Google came out and I was going to but the stocks but I didn’t.”

Because they knew it was right but they didn’t act on it. What ends up happening is that when they do end up making a decision they say “Everybody bought Google. I waited a year and half and I’m going to buy Google now.”

They buy Google for $110.00 a share and tomorrow it goes to $109.00 a share. Remember unsuccessful people make decisions slowly and change them quickly. It took them a year and a half to make the decision then all of a sudden they say “Oh wow, I just lost a dollar. Let me pull my money out of the market place.”

Next thing you know as they pull their money out of the market place it goes up to $115.00 and they lost the opportunity when they had the right decision to begin with. So that’s an example that I can give you.

To answer question in a nutshell when you have a decision should you act quickly? I believe the answer is unequivocally yes.
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Paulie Sabol: Historically, it always has been. I think the benefit of making quick decisions is becoming even more clear now, and I would encourage every one of your young heroes to read a book by Malcolm Gladwell called Blink. Blink shows us that even if we are amateurs at something, if we don’t have degrees, if we haven’t become fully immersed in an area of study, the fact of the matter is, our quick momentary intuitions are often more right than the experts are.
So the ability to make a decision, to realize you’ve made a decision, and then to put motion behind that decision is exceptionally valuable.
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Donna Fox: I think that it is definitely a major success principle to be decisive in nature. Quickly is relative. You might decide what you want from a restaurant menu in 15 seconds and that could be quick.

You might take a minute and that would still be quick to some people. You might decide about moving into a new home and making a decision about a home. That could take months.

So “quickly” is relative. I think what is most important is to decide and if, as you are listening to this, you are having trouble making decisions in your life, start with the small ones. Start making decisions with a menu.

Sit down and say, “I’m only going to look at this menu for 30 seconds” and then make a decision. Just force yourself to make decisions that don’t matter because ultimately most decisions in life really don’t matter. They are small things.

What’s that book, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff? Being decisive does help.

You also asked about procrastination and I have found the key to overcoming procrastination, because you are right, we all do it. We all procrastinate, especially we internet marketers because it’s so easy to start our day and start reading email and the next thing we know we are surfing the web and reading people’s blogs.

All of those things are valuable things to do but they don’t build out business’s bottom line. I took a tip from Brian Tracy. He has a book called Eat That Frog.

What he says is if you have a number of frogs to eat, if you take the biggest, ugliest frog first then all the other frogs seem easier. I like to call that concept “kiss the frog” which is a bit more palatable and sometimes when you kiss the frog you get a prince.

So each day I have my frogs and I line up four or five frogs each day that are the things I will most likely procrastinate on. But I try to make them things that generate revenue for my business, that actually move me forward.

If I take the biggest, ugliest one that I am most likely to procrastinate on and get at that first thing in the morning before I open an email, before I do just about anything other than drink some coffee, suddenly my whole day is better because I have got something done right away.

It’s just that simple restructuring of my day, making it the first thing that I do, that makes all the difference. Again, it’s back to that idea of little tiny improvements, kaizen.

My friend would call it the butterfly effect. How one little thing that you can do right now can make a tremendous difference in the future. It also makes a tremendous difference in procrastination.

Ralph Zuranski: It sounds like you make decisions fairly fast but take a fair amount of time deciding and making sure that you do make a good decision. You never know what the outcome of the decisions is.

I guess that’s the weird thing about decisions. You don’t know which way they are going to turn.
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TOM BEAL: Oh, 100%! Napoleon Hill had an egg timer to answer the question whether he was willing to pursue the study of success not compensated by the richest man in the world. That doesn’t sound like a pretty logical choice to make but he took it on.

But he had an egg timer and little did he know that Andrew Carnegie, he found out later, as soon as he posed the question to him & after a couple of days of downloading what this would require & how Andrew was going to make the correct contacts, he had an egg timer.

The ones that said “Let me check with my wife, let met me do this.” they didn’t make the cut. You have to be decisive based upon full information. Once you have full information then make up your mind, yes or no. The more you can flex that muscle of decision making the more quickly you can rise to the top.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 12:38 PM | Permalink

18. Do you have the courage to pursue new ideas?
Mike Filsaime: Oh yes. The easiest way to get your family to get behind you is to prove them wrong in the first place. When they start telling you, “Enough already! You have a job already & that’s where the food comes from. Why don’t you go out and get a real job instead of chasing these Mickey Mouse dreams and blah, blah, blah? I’m sick and tired of hearing about these names you keep talking about.”

That’s negative energy and you have to put your force field up. You have to do what the entrepreneur spirit inside knows you can do. Then all of a sudden when that check comes in of $34,000 then you’ll see how quickly the friends or people in your life say “Oh wow, that’s great! How can I do something like that? Can I have that to go buy something?”

You just have to do what you know is right and they’ll come around when they see the success or they’ll get out of your life. Sometimes you need to fire your negative friends & fire the negative people in your life. If you are married to a negative person you have to understand that you can’t change people.

I would never endorse people to fire the negative people in their life when they are their kids and their spouse. All you can do is be who you can be. Be the best you can be and what will happen is that hopefully they can see the type of person you are and want to be more like you.

You can’t change somebody and keep trying to change people from who they are. They can only change themselves. They do that when you stop batting heads with them. You just have to sometimes say “This is the life I want to live.” Either they are going to come along with you or they won’t. But you can’t forcefully try to change them.

We are talking about everything we’ve spoken about on this call. It’s about honor, ethics, faith and knowing what’s right & believing what’s right. Sometimes we get into a position where we did get involved with the right person in the beginning.

That doesn’t mean it’s over. It means they have to realize that you are the right thing in their lives and they have to walk towards you. Sometimes you can’t force them to do that.
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Paulie Sabol: Absolutely. I think it does. One thing that I would also like to say about this, it also takes courage sometimes to continue on a path and pursue old ideas. Really, I think pursuit is what requires courage, whether the idea is new or whether the idea is true and trusted.
In fact, sometimes it would be a mistake to pursue an idea simply because it is new, because your current path, your current idea is working for you. So what I would add to that is one small little point. One of the best ways to be courageous, even if you are feeling a certain amount of fear, and you’re wanting to test a new idea to see if this is one of the keys, one of the elements, that will maximize the probability of your success.
Remember we talked about that you want to have the highest probability of success as possible, and that is what you want to act toward. Well, when you are trying a new idea, try it small first. Don’t bet the farm.
If you want to discover if a spiritual path is for you, don’t give up all of your belongings and run away from home. Test it small. Grab the sacred text and read them in the quiet places over weeks at a time. Don’t just rush out and entirely change everything, because you might throw away the good along with eliminating some of the negative things that you want to eliminate through the process of change.
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Donna Fox: There is no question that it takes courage to pursue new ideas. Not one single question in my mind.

But courage isn’t the absence of fear. Courage is preceding forwards in the face of and in spite of fears. It is said that you are most like the five people you hang out with, so if you want to improve yourself hang out with better people.

The natural consequence of that is that it leaves the old five people behind, and it’s kind of sad. If you think about it, to think that I might leave the five people that are closest to me behind as I grow it is very, very sad.

But you can’t bring them with you. They have to come on their own. What I have found as I move through these people as I grow and friends come in and out of my life.

Like my friends from high school. I don’t talk to any of them any more. I still love them all dearly but they aren’t close friends any longer. They have moved out of my life.

People move in and out of your life at all times. But what I have found is that the people who are moving in my life are always really amazing and really interesting and fascinating people.

Some of them can move onto the next level with me, and that is what you really hope for. You hope to find those people who can continue to be the five people in your life that you would most like to be like.
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TOM BEAL: It’s like a muscle; the more you work it out the more easily it will come to you. In the beginning as in anything when we had to learn how to peddle a bike it was a very difficult task. When we learned how to walk it was a very difficult task but the more you do it the more you get used to it.

You need to exercise that muscle. First you need to exercise your power of choice and your power of decision. Then once you get that muscle worked up then you can choose quickly and correctly.

You can decide on good manners fast. Then you’ll also be able to take action upon your ideas. Everybody has good ideas. People listening to this have probably had many $1,000,000 or plus ideas.

But the fact of the matter is not many of them have taken action upon it. So it’s a matter of choosing. It’s a matter of narrowing it down.

You talked about focus. Take all your ideas and see what’s the most fulfilling and satisfying one that you could choose to become real. Act as if it’s real all ready then take steps to make it and implement it.

When Mike created the The "Butterfly Marketing Program" that is worth it's weight in gold, his joint venture partners were ready, willing and able to recommend the program to their loyal mailing listmembers. In five short days, there was over $1,000,000 in gross sales. It was time for Mike to reap the rewards promised by Earl Nightingale because of the quality and value of Mike's "Butterfly Marketing Program."

Posted by ralph at 12:35 PM | Permalink