Rich Twin Poor Twin

I received a suggestion from a reader to offer mentorship to people to maximize their adsense profits today. This is a good suggestion and one which we already have experience with. This idea was actually one of the first things I thought about and did when we started making a decent amount of money through adsense about 2 years ago and we had even written a book on making money online.

I remember the first time I showed a friend our adsense accounts. His first words were: “Teach me” after the initial disbelief. But after we told him the “secrets”, it seemed like he did not think he could do it and just wanted us to do all the work for him and just collect the Adsense earnings. I believe all the information that is needed to generate revenue from adsense has probably been written about in blogs, books, or in forums. But it ultimately comes back to the individual and how much he wants it. Knowing what to do and then actually executing the actions necessary is not easy. I think the other main reason we stopped doing it and selling our book was due to greed and fear. We were greedy and feared what would happen if we taught too many people. Maybe in the future we’ll rebrand the book and start selling it again.

Having been schooled for most of our lives and Engineering being engrained into our heads through high school and College, our minds are wired to solve problems by constantly thinking about them until we actually do. Solving the problem is actually easy to do. The hard part is finding the root cause thats causing the problem and then maning up to do what it takes to solve it. We were the type of kids in school that talked about exam questions after the tests had been taken hours and even days before. We actually memorized problems and tried to figure out if we put the right answers on the papers. Our friends back then thought we were nuts for doing that.

People we talk to have just said to let the loss or setback go and just move on. Our progress for a comeback is really really bad because we did not let go of it yet and can not until we go back and find the root of the problem – its just in our nature.  It is also a lesson that was just meant to be learned. Yea people say diverisfy, diverisfy, diverisfy, but that is not the root cause that led to our setback. If one is to keep asking WHY? he can see it is not the cause of the loss or setback. It is good advice though. After days of thinking and asking the question WHY? we have come to see the major flaws in how we thought, acted, in our systems, and in our business. The next step is to solve these problems on our existing systems and carry them through to future ones.

Below is an illustration of how asking the question WHY can help you find the root cause of your problems. It is usually asking 5 whys but you can do more or less to get to the root of your problem. Take care in not going too far because God, religion, pursuit of happiness, and existance and purpose will probably be mentioned or appear. Then you got a whole new set of questions.

I don’t even have the words to describe the frustration we are going through right now. The total loss is around $200,000 or something but we don’t have an exact amount because we can’t log into any of our AdSense accounts. With server fees and programmer fees still bleeding us right now as I type. It’s quite depressing and the only reason why I decided to blog about this crap is because I read John’s post a few days ago. He did warn his readers about putting all their eggs in one basket way before this post but I just never broke the “engineer’s mindset” of trying to optimize systems with the training I went through in high school and college. I just thought that I could make sites with AdSense generating all the revenue. We never thought that this would happen to us. We were so close. We thought that it only happens in the movies – where the hero works so hard and is so close to achieving his goals and winning, but then losses everything because of something so small and stupid. Think of when Rocky lost all his fortune when his brother in law, Paulie signed a contract giving his lawyers power of attorney. Or when Tony Montana from Scarface lost everything because he got greedy and careless. We always thought that that would never happen to us and that we were smarter than that. One of the main things we have learned from this is that money can make you STUPIDER and lazier.

I think one of the possible reasons why we got banned for invalid clicks is because we logged into our accounts during our vacation in LA. Also it is possible that someone found our major sites and click botted for days when we were on vacation. We do not know if any of our sites were attacked or not but we have always purposely kept our personal sites like this blog low in traffic because I was scared that haters would do something like this. We have already appealed the bans but so far nothing but canned responses. There is no phone number or address or any humans there. Their forums are useless and replies just go unanswered.

I feel really cheated with the payments pending to arrive in days when we got the ban emails for invalid clicks. Google does not pay publishers even for the previous month’s earnings if you get banned. There was no warning and it never entered my head that I could lose all of our adsense accounts. We never clicked on our own ads nor told anyone to do so. We even kept most of our sites a secret. It’s not even about the money. It’s about the businesses and passive income we worked so hard to build. I have no idea how we can come back from this. I think the only person who truly knows and understands what we are going through is Robert Kiyosaki who lost his very successful business because of some stupid little mistake. I guess it is true, that true success comes only after many failures with priceless lessons. This is the greatest failure/setback that we have ever had in our 25 years of life so far. It has really opened our eyes to strive to become better people, businessmen, and being more grateful. The measure of a man is not the amount of money he has or the amount of daily passive income but the wealth of happiness he has during his time on this world. When we were banking all that money everyday we should have been more grateful, less arrogant, more careful, and should have been happier. We never truly appreciated what we had until we lost it. I should have actually followed what I posted here: Strategy for Success.

During the last few days when we were really down feeling stressed, depress, and even suicidal – one of our old high school friend called us. Surprisingly it uplifted us. We had last talked to him about 2 years ago but during this unexpected phone call he told us that he was actually starting on his journey to mastering money. One thing he said was “Don’t worry guys, you’re gonna make a comeback.” We are neither poor nor rich now but the knowledge and experience including this painful $200K lesson which we have learned during our journey so far is priceless.

I do not know when/if we will ever post again here. Hopefully we’ll make a come back. Cherish your success and time. Be GRATEFUL for what you have and Good Luck.

Henry and Wilson

That question is very interesting to me because my twin and I wrote and published a book, Zero To Cash, on how to start with ZERO dollars and still get out of the rat race, quickly. But we found out that many people don’t even know what that means. Most just want to make a lot of money, thinking that that will solve their money problems. Now for those who do not know what is the rat race or what it means to get out of it, here is a short description of the two. Rat race is a term that generally describes a situation where person has no choice but to work. He needs to work and ‘put his nose to the grind stone’ to pay off expenses and liabilities. If he does not work he has no other source of income.

Now to escape or get out of the rat race, a person has to get enough passive income to cover all the living expenses and monthly liabilitity bills each month. You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Race So, the moment a person is generating the amount of monthly passive income EQUAL to his monthly expenses, he is technically out of the rat race because he does not have to physically work in a job to pay off those expenses each month, as long as he has those passive income streams flowing to him. In Robert Kiyosaki’s Cashflow board games, getting out of the rat race is the first half of the game and the toughest part. In that game, you can generate passive income through quite a few means just like in real life including Rental property, businesses, franchises, paper assets, and bonds.

If I had to start all over again right out of college with zero bucks I would do the following to get back to where I am now. The first thing if I was in a job is to read Robert’s books and maybe some other books. But in terms of raising financial IQ these books are the best I have found to start with.

1. Get a job. LOL you gotta start somewhere. Yea it can be humiliating and you can feel it eroding your spirit day by day but keep your goal in mind and power through. Fullfill your obligations to your boss and get those checks.

2. See where you are at. This is a must. Every month, or even bi monthly, generate a spreadsheet that shows your expenses ( car insurance, food, rent), amount of passive income, liabilities (monthly car payments, student loans, etc), and assets (stocks, savings, bonds). Remember, the moment your passive income = your expenses+monthly liabilitiy payments you are out of the rat race.

3. Basically setup all the bare minimum stuff you need: Get those paychecks, get a bank account, get direct deposit, get a credit card, GET a PC, Get internet, get paypal, get an EBAY account, get a cheap server from hostgator asap, frontpage or some web editting tool, Get clickbank, get a site to be approved by adsense, adbrite, azoogleads, YPN, textlinks etc etc., What I would do in this day and age is to start generating passive income through the internet with my own websites and by selling other people’s stuff and my own stuff (not physical products but digital ones).

4. BUY, CREATE, RENT or CONTROL Assets. Thats about it in 3 easy steps. Here are more details if you want to leverage the power of the internet: Start off by selling digital products on ebay – return is literally in the thousands to infinite here. Yes there is money in EBAY with eager buyers. A lot or little work is needed for digital products and the profits are huge if you know what you are doing. This is where we started and I would start here again. Learned a lot about setting up systems, pricing models, selling digital products, marketing, knowing your buyers’ wants and needs and write good ad copies here. Quick and instant cashflow here right into your paypal account. Make that first site of yours an asset by selling the same ebay products you sell with the addition of support, information, links etc. Get clickbank to sell more of your products and other similar products. Reinvest 80% of the profits back into the system and into new ones. Unfortunatley for those who are just starting, you will have to test a lot of systems until you find the one that fits your goals. You also soon realise that you must spend your money wisely to generate sales and the power of affiliates marketing your products for you.

5. Collect the cash from your paychecks, paypal account and start larger projects. Think BIG and focus on passive income steams from stocks (automated online trading systems and diviend paying stocks) and even savings accounts with 5+% return. Create a LLC or company to separate your accounts when you get enough cash.

6. Stay Hungry – read or listen to Tony Robbins. Buy or GET Robert Kiyosaki’s audio books and drill all of the information in your head. Listen to it everyday and night until the lessons are ingrained in your thought patterns on money. Go back to step 2 until you are out.

The rich think very differently than the poor. One considers something smart while the other usually considers the same thing as risky or stupid. What are your opinions on the following – is it risky for you or is it smart to you?

1. Getting and working in a high paying job?

2. Starting a part-time business?

3. Investing in a business (yours or other people’s), property?

4. Saving money? and finding ways to save more money?

5. Buying a large house to live in?

Here are our answers:

1. Getting a high-paying job is kinda smart. You need something to start off with, especially if you are brand new to the business of making money online. But it is foolish and risky thinking that you can climb the corporate ladder, capture your “dream job”, build an awesome “career”, while getting paid for a job, and think that it is safe and secure. layoffs happen and who wants to retire when they are 65? In the end, as an employee (for most) you build nothing and have really nothing to show for your work except paper experience to buff up your resumes. Also, if you really want to become rich, you realistically can’t acheive it as a high paying employee. Our businesses pulls in enough profit in a month to match our yearly incomes from our full-time jobs. Who will pay you that kinda cash per hour as an employee? The answer is You because in the end you are ultimately your own boss no matter who’s name is on the check.

2. Starting a part time business is smart for us. But for most it is risky and they just instantly say – “Do you know, that 9 out of 10 businesses fail?” Yea well one makes it and you actually learn to fight back. These are the same people who will not hesitate to go back to school for 4 more years to get their MS and PHD’s cacooning themselves and learning more and more about less and less. Real financial education is taught by doing and teaching. I just think about those years in HS when the internet boom was in its peak and I just cringe because in those years anyone with a brain and knoweldge/experience about money could have easily made a million bucks.

3. Investing is not just smart but is necessary for us. The first thing that the poor say is that investing is risky and that you will lose all your money. Yet they don’t even think twice before playing the weekly lottery or betting for their team to win the monday night game. Yea investing is a jungle and it can really beat you up if you don’t know what you are doing but thats just all the more reason to start small and learn to own it. In order to beceome rich you must not be afraid of investing and heck even make it a NECESSITY. Then you will expect (not just hope and pray like 90% of investors) to make a positive ROI, retun on investment. Its your choice – to sit on the side lines or starting small with your own business. One bit of advice from us, you master investing by investing in your own business rather than in someone else’s because you know it deeper. I just hope that those employees who are big into stocks, mutual funds, options, and paper assets really know what they are doing and are actually learning something.

4. Saving money is kinda smart to us but going that extra mile to save a few cents is just stupid and a waste of time to us. I remember and see people in super markets with stacks of neatly cut coupons holding up the line to save a few dollars. They do as much research saving money as a rich guy would do looking into increasing his profits and ROI. Why try to horde and save money when you have the ability to amplify it? Yea its pretty tough to amplify money if you NEVER tried. But its seems so easy to deny your wants and to mitigate them is it not? A funny thing my twin and I notice is that when there are big sales you see these same people overbuy and stock up on cheap food and supplies – necessities for living or expenses. Yet when the stock or real estate  market is taking a nose dive these people with small portfolios sell sell sell while the rich sees this, researches, and buy good deals on ASSETS. Seen it a hundred times already.

5. Buying a large house just ties up too much money. If you plan to flip it, then start small and do your research and find people who have already done it successfully or unsuccessfully to guide you through your first several deals. You can also learn more on this at: IamFacingForeclosure.com

I recently opened up one of my old notebook that I had used for writing down my goals last year. The notebook contains many random stuff, ideas, drawings, doodles, notes and usernames for emails, etc. I was flipping through this one because it did not have many pages in it and found a page where I set down some serious goals. Goals that I thought seemed to look IMPOSSIBLE or just really BIG for me back then. Surprisingly I actually got most of the goals I set on that page or have come very close to reaching them. I actually don’t remember writing the goals down but I do remember that I wanted to write down my most wanted or biggest goals first. Take a look at the picture I took of that page in the notebook:

1. $10,000 in passive income per month. Check.

2. Corvette, Red. I got enough money for it but haven’t looked at cars lately. I’ll get one soon enough.

3. Alienware ALX. Got an Alienware 7500 instead.

4. CAL-M for WoP Team. This was a goal I had to get my Counter-Strike Source Team from CAL-Open to CAL-Main. Done.

5. 1000 Sales of WoP Book/Guide. Done. We sold our 1000th book back in December.

6. Choice to QUIT job without caring about money. Done. My twin and I now have a choice. We can work or not work in our company.

This is actually not the first time I flipped through a notebook I used to keep goals and ideas down and found out my goals were actually manifested into reality. I started writing down all my goals one day when I woke up. It was actually at work that I picked up the notebook that all new employees at our company received and started writing down random stuff, ideas, goals, etc. I later read books and heard tapes talking about the magic in this seemingly haphazard, whimsical, and even weak or boring approach to getting things down or starting point to achieving something you want in life. I strongly suggest you try this out no matter how crazy it may seem. Also note that you should not care about the size of the goal you set because it is just big in your head. It may appear to be small or weak for others. So if you want to get anything you wish for then write it down. Just be a kid again and ask for anything you want because LIFE will give it to you if you just ask for it. That’s just my personal opinion.

If you have been reading or following this blog, you probably know the first one I’m going to talk about. That is staying hungry. To my twin and I, being hungry is cruicial if you want to get what you want. I won’t repeat the article about staying hungry here but would like to just mention that there are two forces which drive your hunger. Its pain (hurt) and pleasure (want or desire) which set the bar for your hunger. Learning to control these two forces will help you master staying hungry and on course. And controlling these forces are about 90% mental. You can whip yourself into a white hot heap of anger or hate of the situation you are in and force yourself to change just by thinking of all the negative aspects of the situation, think of all the wonderful things that can be or do both – think of the pain and pleasure.

The second H word that is often overlooked or that is lacking in many “highly educated” people is Humility or being Humble. I don’t mean that a rich guy should wear rags to show humility here. What I mean is that a person should KNOW that he does not have the answers to everything and that there is always someone who knows more than he does. In school we were all taught to act like we know all the answers and to avoid making mistakes. But in order to master money, finances, or any thing in life, you must accept the fact that you can learn a lot from others and that you just don’t have all the answers. You can not shut yourself out or turn your brain off to new ideas just because you think you have the answers or are just taking advice from the same types of people around you. So many people with college diplomas go out to the real world and start making money with thier new high paying jobs and never want to learn anything else on the subject; thinking that they have it taken care of now. They hiss at Robert Kiyosaki’s books or other REAL life educators of finances and don’t even open their minds to the possibility that they might find some truth or wisdom in their teachings. Simply put, they are not humble enough to learn from others who can shave decades off their journeys. In business you see these same guys try to do everything themselves.