6) They Choose Bad Mentors

You must be careful who you choose as your mentor. People without money are very quick to offer their advice, and the world is full of people who claim to be life coaches, business coaches, or success coaches. The scary thing is that most of them haven’t achieved anything. If you find a life coach over the internet how do you know they’ve actually achieved something?

On the flip-side rich people can make for bad mentors too. In the movie Wall Street the character Gordon Gekko says: “Greed is good.” I made the mistake of taking this line to heart. I thought that greed was something from which I could draw motivation.

The truth is that greed is not good. Ambition and passion are good. Greed is destructive. The first thing that happens when you get greedy is that your ethics became compromised. You want to make as much money as you can as fast as you can. And it doesn’t matter who gets hurt along the way.

However if the person you are modeling yourself after is motivated by greed you do not need to follow in their footsteps entirely. You can pick and choose which characteristics to emulate. You can emulate their ambition but not their greed. You can incorporate their strategies without incorporating their ethics.

Be careful with who you pick as your mentor. Don’t pick the unshaven guy on the side of the road wearing the dirty sweat pants, but don’t pick the guy whose decisions violate your ethics.

5) They Are Controlled By Fear

Fear is a natural part of the business world. If the path to success were clear cut and infallible than everyone would be wealthy. Because it isn’t everyone must deal with situations that make him or her anxious. There are three different ways to process and manage fear. The first two options will destroy your chances for a successful and healthy life while the third gives you the mindset you need to use fear to your advantage.

1) They pretend that fear does not exist – The people who manage fear through ignoring it end up in a life filled with poverty and misery. By ignoring fear you let it control you because you neither acknowledge it nor learn how to deal with it. Unacknowledged fear renders you impotent in your efforts to reach your goals, and this is the most disempowered state for wealth and success.

2) They act in spite of fear – This way of dealing with fear allows you to achieve certain goals despite being afraid; however, this leads you to a place in your life where you are wealthy and anxious. Yes, you will have wealth, but you will constantly be afraid of taking the wrong step. These people are hung up on the idea of, “What if I fail?” or “what if I don’t hit my goal?” This results in a success lifestyle where you second guess all your decisions and live in fear of failure.

3) They embrace fear and let it motivate them – These people achieve their goals and do so by acknowledging their fear without letting it ruin their enjoyment of their success.

4) They Try To Reinvent The Wheel

Poor people always try to come up with something spectacular and new to make their fortune. This is the biggest trap you face as you work toward your goals. Instead of something new, what you need is a proven system, one that you know works and will help you gain successes.

Warren Buffet once said: “When I buy a business I want to make sure that the system is so good that even an idiot can run it because sooner or later one will.” I believe this statement, and that’s why I recommend the Straight Line System. It’s so simple that it’s being used to help hundreds of struggling companies and thousands of people to become wealthy.

What is the system that you have in place? Are you trying to reinvent the wheel or do you have one that is proven?

3) They Are Lousy At Business

If you don’t have any business experience it’s nothing to be ashamed of. No one is born with business skills. Someone has to teach or show you the ropes. This is why you must be careful when choosing your mentor. You want to make sure that you’re getting the best information available.

2) They Are Uncomfortable With Words Like "Sales," Marketing," And "Persuasion"

Either you’re selling and persuading or you’re failing. You may not sell products, but you have to have the ability to sell yourself and your concepts.

You don’t need to master persuasion, but you need to become effective at it. It is the most crucial skill that any person could have. Even Warren Buffet, who many don’t think of as being a master salesman, has admitted publicly that persuasion is the single most important skill he has.

You don’t need to become a hard-core sales person, but you have to learn how to become an effective persuader so that you can share your ideas, concepts, and visions with other people, so they can invest in you. If you are able to sell your vision people will follow you because you can show them the value your value as a human being.

Without the proper persuasive abilities you could create the next big microchip or the cure for cancer and no one would invest in your idea because you aren’t able to influence them to do so. If you can’t get others to buy into your ideas, you will fail at reaching your goals.

1) They Slave Away For A Paycheck

There are only two jobs where you can make real money if you work for someone else:

1) If you work in a job that gives you heavy commissions.
2) If you work in the investment banking industry and can leverage off of a huge company’s assets.

Other than these two exceptions if you really want to get ahead in life you have to own your own business. I am not saying that you need to quit your job immediately. That is not what I’m writing this for. Instead, I’m writing this to give you the mindsets you must have to start your own successful business without quitting your job, without having to put up a lot of money, and how to raise (not borrow) money cheaply.

At some point if you want to be wealthy you have to get into your own business. Otherwise you are a pawn in someone else’s game of chess.

squidoo.com