Grant Cardone - If You're Not First, You're Last - Sales Strategies to Dominate Your Market and Beat Your Competition

A man named Sangeeta Iyer conducted research that validated this theory and wrote about it in an article titled “Healing Is Believing: The Placebo Effect.” This is an excerpt:Placebo is any treatment that is devoid of specific actions on the patient’s symptoms or diseases that, somehow, can cause an effect upon that patient. A placebo can be a “sugar-pill”; or fake surgery/therapy can even be effective. In recent years, the effect of the placebo is becoming as great as that of a given medication.

A person’s beliefs and hopes about a treatment, combined with their gullibility, seem to have a significant biochemical effect. Positive results from a placebo are being noticed in patients being treated for a variety of disorders from depression.

At this point, the more cynical reader will ask, “Grant, are you saying I should just believe things are good when they really are not—and then everything is going to turn out good?” The answer is yes, I would suggest that you have a better chance at success if you fool yourself into thinking that things will improve—and that you can have a hand in improving them.

Reality is an interesting element to decision making because it seems to change drastically depending on whom you are talking to. Ask three different people how they feel about today’s weather (let’s say, 85 degrees and sunny), and you will probably get three different responses: (1) It’s great! I love the summer; (2) It’s terrible. I’m sweltering in this suit; and (3) It doesn’t matter much to me. All three are the truth for the individual expressing them, and each response will influence the outcome of that person’s day. So it’s merely a question of how you see a situation—and occasionally convincing yourself that you can change the outcome.

At some time or another over the course of your career, you will experience business cycles during which things slow down. Your clients hear the same negative news you do, and bad news never fuels positive outcomes. They don’t want more negativity; they can get that free at home from their TV in seemingly unending amounts. They don’t want to see it on your face or in your actions, responses, or attitude. Act competent, exude success, and be positive and optimistic regardless of what is happening around you. Potential customers will be much more attracted to—or at least intrigued by—positive people. I was cohosting my regular weekly radio show in Los Angeles, talking about the importance of being positive in getting a job when unemployment rates are soaring. A caller texted the radio station saying, “That guy Cardone is obnoxious.” I responded by saying,

“The guy who finds me obnoxious probably really admires and loves me, and that is his way of saying it.” I wasn’t being arrogant—I was looking for the positive. A woman I wanted to date years ago said the same thing about me—and she just delivered my first child! She simply couldn’t resist my positive attitude, relentless follow-up, unwillingness to take no for an answer, and commitment to continue to show her attention—even after she had labeled me obnoxious.

I have endured several serious recessions as an active member of the business world, and sooner or later, they all end. None of them will last forever, and the way you handle yourself during that time has more to do with your current and future situation than the economy itself. Your attitude affects everyone around you—those at home, at work, and everywhere in between. I want my wife, daughter, four dogs, employees, colleagues, clients, and friends to see me as someone who instills hope and a positive attitude, especially when things are challenging.

I would suggest that everyone reading this immediately adopt a kind of program that focuses on positive thinking and offers constructive solutions. The positive attitude you need to succeed in business is not on CNN, CNBC, FOX, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, or any of the other cable or radio channels or any newspaper printed in the United States of America. In fact, the media that depend on bad news for their revenue are even starting to become concerned about losing viewers due to the vast amount of negativity that they regurgitate in such phenomenal proportions. While they’re not likely to cease this activity—after all, it’s the commodity they’re selling—they’ll probably escalate coverage of what they call the news to another level of shock and chaos. As my friend and direct-mail genius John Hamlin says, “All I need to know about the news I can get from the weather report.”

If you are really committed to advancing and conquering, then I suggest that you replace your TV, radio, and newspaper time with programs designed to shift your attention to the positive and solution oriented. For instance, I created a program called Rules of Success that consists of 13 simple steps designed to be executed over the same number of days that will immediately improve your attitude and reset your focus on the exact solution-actions to guarantee your success. In order to truly create your own economy, you must invest every last ounce of energy in the solution, not the problem. This doesn’t mean that I don’t watch TV at all. I just pick programs that limit the time I spend viewing crisis-type reporting, such as Planet Earth, The Food Network, ball games, or movies of my choice. I feel that this kind of programming allows me to be educated and entertained without feeling down every time I watch TV.

People who abandon positive attitudes might not even be aware of market recovery when it occurs due to the blindness they’ve adopted and the poor work ethic they’ve made into a habit. I for one have never met anyone who didn’t believe in the importance of attitude in terms of its contribution to one’s productivity and future. More than 95 percent of all attendees at my seminars and people with whom my company consults believe that they don’t do enough to train themselves to be positive and maintain positivity.

However, it’s not as simple as instructing someone to “just be positive”—especially in a culture filled with billions of regular negative transmissions. Some books even suggest that simply thinking about what you want will allow you to “attract” those things. While this sounds great, and I believe it is true to some degree, this theory doesn’t consider all the other thoughts outside of your awareness that you’ll also attract. Telling someone to just be positive in an environment that is very negative is like telling someone who is swimming in the ocean not to get wet. Your friends, coworkers, family members, and others unintentionally but freely contribute negativity to your life each day. You have to counter this type of input with data that will shift your attention to a more solution-oriented outlook. Otherwise, you’re apt to pay the price in the form of reduced business. Use my Rules of Success program every morning, and in 13 days, I promise you that your life will be dramatically different. It might be so pronounced that people will ask what you are doing differently! Fill your day with a disciplined schedule and reduce your television intake to recorded programs with no news.

Do something positive every day that makes you feel good. Do it early in the day, during the day, and again in the evening. It could be anything from working out or taking a walk in the morning, to saying something nice to a coworker during the day, to sitting down for a meal and some conversation with your family in the evening. Record your goals at the beginning and end of each day the same way; this will give you two opportunities to pay attention to where you are going. What you give your attention to is what you will end up with. Think poor and you will be poor. Think solutions and you will find many! If you spend more time on advance-and-conquer strategies, you will advance and conquer.