These strategies put money in your pocket faster than anything I know, in fact, help you climb the preverbal mountain of success.

I’m often asked, is there one thing you can do to turn up the money metabolism faster than anything else? The more politically correct answer is…

There is not one thing, there are a number of equally important things. It’s good to know at this point that there are not 100 or 1,000, there are just a handful of critically important things that you need to know to do well.

In other words, you need to “MASTER” them…

But I can say with absolute authority, 2 very distinct decisions, have lead more than most, to my success and they are…

First and for most, key strategy number 1 has been my desire and keenness to TAKE MENTORS in my life.

And secondly, recognising the need to BE THE WIZARD in your category or industry…

So let’s deal with these one at a time. I believe they are as important as each other.

You see, I figured out very early in life that you don’t get paid more for inventing fire, by that I mean in a business sense, discovering that you can rub a rock and a stick together and create fire.

By the way, I am going to reveal here who my mentors have been, so maybe that would be useful to you also.

I have spent my life taking mentors in all aspects of my life, basically, I didn’t want to go through the pain, cost and wasted time “re-inventing the wheel”. Simply, I knew somebody had already “figured it out” and “paid the price” so I didn’t have to.

My first mentor was my father, who as it turned out, was a drunken abusive alcoholic. By the way, this is not easy for me here to reveal this story, but I believe it may be useful to some of you.

As far as I can recall, every night of my childhood, my dad drank 6-8 big bottles of beer until he had drunk himself into a stupor, cussing and cursing, speaking a language no one understood. I won’t bore you further with the details, but suffice to say, instead of copying my fathers poor behaviour, I unconsciously made a decision to do the opposite.

You see, my father was my first mentor, he showed me…

What Not To Do

And that’s arguably as important as showing you what to do.

Then after being fired, along with other staff members (down sizing) by a multi-national company at the ripe age of 22, I took my first business mentor who showed me what to do.

His name is Owen McGrath. 37 years ago, Owen owned “High Wycombe Hardware” and he still does, except now his children Thumper and Matthew run it. Owen has retired or is close to it.

The reason Owen’s hardware store has survived the changes, brought about by 7 day trading and the advent of mega hardware stores, are the same reasons, I chose to ask him to help me for back then.

Owen’s hardware store is stacked to the rafters. There is virtually nothing he doesn’t stock, the trick is finding it I suppose. But then you always had and still do have personal service in helping you find it. Regulars, including myself, were often offered a cup of tea, and I suspect they still are.

It’s a model that worked then that is still working now. Anyway, like most mentors, Owen was incredibly generous to me, he taught me everything I needed to know to start up a hardware store just like his, so the likelihood of failure for me was enormously slim.

And I went on to do another hardware store, plus a further 15 or so traditional businesses using Owen’s model. Owen was my first introduction to marketing, although he didn’t call it that and neither did I.

I suspect Owen’s reason for being a “marketer” was based on the same question I asked myself then and still do now…

How can I get them to shop with me as opposed to each  and every competitor in my industry?

You see, that’s a marketing question. It’s only 20 years later when I took on a new set of mentors that I understood what I had become. I had become a marketer, I by and large didn’t work in my businesses, I worked… ON THEM

This would be a good time to publically thank my primary mentors from along the way, and I’m sure to leave someone out and I apologise for that.

But in no particular order, Dan Kennedy of the Glazer-Kennedy Organisation (http://dankennedy.com/), is a true genius of marketing. Another true genius would be Jay Abraham (http://abraham.com/) from “The Abraham Group” and more recently, I’ve added 1 more genius, Chet Homes (http://www.chetholmes.com/) from “Business Breakthroughs International”

All these mentors have 1 thing in common, firstly in my experience they are true geniuses, secondly it would have to be their generosity in openly sharing their knowledge with people that may otherwise never of figured it out on their own.

In fact, recently I revealed some information, curtsey of Chet Homes and Business Breakthroughs International, which revealed the buying psychology of your target audience, what is the total audience for a product or service at any one point of time.

I also revealed how “product data”” is far more powerful than “product data”. Again, curtsey of Chet Homes and Business Breakthroughs International, I can’t thank them enough and nor should you for their generosity.

Of course, there are a lot more people willing to teach then there are qualified to teach. Your job is to sort the “wheat from the chaff”. Where these gentlemen are concerned, I’ve done it for you.

Here is a neat way to sort the “wheat from the chaff” that I do, that may help you…

Ask your “would be” mentor for the name and phone number of a handful of people who they have done business with in the past and who would do business with them in the future.

Frankly, if they can’t answer those questions, I would move on. Don’t try and rationalise around it.

Again, thank you to the generosity of my mentors, hopefully my generosity is useful to you also. I’ll deal with be the “WIZARD” in my next rant. Apologies, I have ran out of time here.

All the best,

Mal Emery