I wrote this article a few years ago. I was gung ho teaching the 67 steps. today I find my Playground more useful, because of its methodology… But this article has so many useful thiigs, I decided to republish it.

I had an interesting insight this morning.

Putting a price tag on any product, service, or coaching is going to be a lie. My strategy sessions. My 67 step coaching. My health consultations. My Water Energizer. My Heaven on Earth…

Really, almost any product.

For one main reason:

You, The Buyer, create the value for yourself!

Nothing has value without someone saying it does, without someone valuing it. So that means, that the issue is value or valuation. If we didn’t have different values, if we valued everything the same, the world would be a lot easier place to navigate.

Around the time of the second world war and the Holocaust, a German boy puzzled himself with the same questions. Fatherland, Jews, peace… he had these heavy duty questions, and he saw that each person he observed valued those differently.

His original name was Robert Schirokauer. He changed his name to Robert  Hartman later. He came to the United States and developed theories and even a measuring tool of people’s values… I took his test, back in 1998-ish, this is how I know about him.

What I found out in that test, Value Profile, shocked me… in fact shook me to my core: I didn’t value people. I didn’t value them higher than stuff… in fact I treated people as tools, and not more. I used people and then I set them aside when I didn’t need them. I had no use for them when I had no need for them.

Since then I have grown, and most growth came from this newfound awareness of how I value, or don’t value things.

I have found that most people are unaware of what they value, and are surprised at their own actions, or inaction.

They don’t know that how they value things effect their lives more than anything else.  They don’t know is that the value is entirely up to them, that value can be grown by activating “value”.

I grew up with an appreciation for education. Appreciation is the verb saying “you value.: The root of the word is precious=valuable.

I instinctively knew, then tested, that my participation increases the value. I am what people call “the eager beaver student.” The one you hated in school, and maybe even now. This is probably why I actually learned the material they taught in school, because I knew that my participation is what actually creates the value.

I KNEW that my participation is what actually creates the value

I am still the same way… although the type of participation has changed… it is no longer school… or rarely.

Anything that doesn’t allow for participation I can’t learn. You can only learn about… Useless. Participation is the enzyme, or catalyst that activates the value you get.

There is no value in the thing… un-activated value is not value. It cannot exist in reality.

Recently I have tested this theory of mine with a student who wasn’t doing well at the time. I decided to give him opportunities to activate the value, advise him how to do it, and see what comes out of it.

I had done it before, but wasn’t documenting it… so this was going to be proof positive… or not.

I encouraged the student to use teaching to activate what he wants to  learn.

I also suggested that he takes on a study partner or two. And then asked him to present the material to two different classes I teach.

Like Cinderella, he responded and now he is my pride and joy. He is smart, has good questions, and is getting a whole lot out of his studies.

Yet… he still struggles with the idea of value. He is looking for value, tries to see it, doesn’t yet understand that value is created. That there is no value in reality. Value is a function of languaging, in the speaking… we call it “calling the shot, a fully and totally word phenomenon.

Your relationship to your word as your power tool is the difference between living a life you love and live it powerfully… or a so-so, humdrum life where you are floating, on the big ocean of life, in a boat without a rudder.

What gives direction to life, to your actions, and how you feel about yourself and your life is the rudder… the words that you speak as an act of creating yourself and your life.

We call that conscious speaking declaration.

Everyone I know thinks that positive thinking is about any thought or any speaking… but it’s the view of an uneducated, unconscious, can’t tell their ass from a hole in the ground person, and a total misunderstanding of the principle.

Not every word is a rudder, and not every word changes reality, the reality of who you are and how you see the world.

As long as your integrity, your relationship to your word is low, no word changes anything, including your promises.

But once you raise your integrity to 10%, you get into the zone where you can declare… Declare what lights you up, declare what is important to you, declare where that ship of yours is going to go.

The relationship between word and you becomes stronger at around 30%… The people I measure have a level of integrity between 1% and 10%, people who have done well as my students had as high as 30% integrity.

Landmark Education’s system is to hide why they ask you to do certain things… The purpose of the guest game and other promises is to strengthen your integrity, and debriefing is to strengthen your responsibility.

Not surprisingly participants hate it… If I were at 1% level, I would hate it too. But I am not, and never was.

Not surprisingly I was the exception, I got immense value out of my participation in Landmark. The correct wording is “I created immense value out of my participation in Landmark…” As I said, the value is made by you, it cannot be received.

And even if you SEE VALUE when you buy, the value disappears unless you keep on creating it by your participation.

One of my 30% integrity people sent me a thank you note today after I thanked her for her unsolicited donation:

Thank you so much and you are welcome for my somewhat small donation. You are worth every penny to me .  The time you spend with us, the research and all the thinking and catching you do and articles you write, if put in to money no one would afford it. You and your work are really priceless. ~ Amy

Wouldn’t you want to get value the way she does? Start strengthening your relationship to your word, and you can be like her.

1. the value is in the eye of the buyer…
2. the value literally changes with what the buyer can and will do with what they bought.

The buyer needs to become ready to use the coaching and generate big value with it.  Cooking recipes come to mind. Unless you know cooking without recipes, unless you develop a feel for what works together, every recipe will be a disaster for you.

Here is an example.

My egg-coffee

I am violently sensitive to and addicted to the A1 milk protein that is like morphine, addictive. So I am better off not putting it in my coffee. So I have developed a coffee recipe that uses egg yolk and ghee to make the coffee creamy. But if you don’t add sweetener: I use stevia, it will be horrid. And if I don’t add salt, enough salt, it will be still horrid. When the right amount of each is added: it is delightful. And good for you… unless your eating style is Separator, like mine.

Update: after a while this egg thing became disgusting and unpalatable to me… so I stopped it.

Nowadays I have one cup of coffee a day with A2 milk butter. There is only one A2 milk butter on the market in my town, and only in one store… President, a French butter. It’s good for me. I put the coffee and the butter in my VITAMIX and make it foamy and completely emulsified. Butter floating on the top of coffee is thoroughly disgusting to me.

Or I make hemp-butter in the Vitamix, and use that… Just as good as butter.

Value is created by you… but can you create value? Are you ready?

Back in 2004, I attended an online-marketing conference in Washington DC. I ran into this awkward dude, Tellman Knudson, and we started to chat. He said that I was sitting on a goldmine. That was invisible to me…

He told me, in about an hour “session” what it is I should do to mine the gold instead of sitting on it.

It was all wasted on me. It actually increased my sense of worthlessness… I had no “access” to the value in that coaching. Later I did every course, every coaching program of his, with the exact same result… Except, now, 15 years later, I am starting to implement…

About a year later I ran into famed marketer, Alex Mandossian, who spent two hours with me, because HE got excited about the goldmine I was sitting on.

I remember watching what he did on his computer to show me… but it was all the work of a magician: I didn’t see what he did with his hands… It was also useless to me.

Later I spent another 30 grand on useless-to-me coaching, Rich Shefren, and many others… I got not a single cent return on my investment.

Five years later I did a course with Henry Gold, he is still around. He comped me into his course, because we had lunch in Las Vegas… Hey, sometimes all it takes is to be entertaining to get a course for free.

This whole “marketing” thing started to make sense by then. I started to see what I could learn to do…

Six years of no useful action, no results up to this point! Oh, and some 30 grands.

I sweet-talked another of Henry’s students into teaming up with me. The setup worked. I volunteered to be the one who would teach a class to do what I could not do, what I didn’t understand, but I saw that without that, without faking till I made it, any goldmine would remain just an uncomfortable thing to sit on.

It worked…

I created an eight module course. Unfortunately people got tired or discouraged and never did the last two modules. I haven’t even created the video for modules seven and eight… are still on my “to learn” list.

Without students to teach it… it will remain unlearned.

I priced my course so low that it was a no-brainer for anyone who wanted to learn the content. In addition, I gave hands-on consulting, for free, because I needed the practice, I needed to learn what I was teaching.

It worked for me. I have observed my students even after they finished the course. They all became marketers. With the six modules of the training.

OK… so what am I talking about?

I have always dreamed of teaching… teaching those who can use what I teach. Who will use what I teach.

But there was this disconnect. People who could, or could have used it… they were buying the thousand, two thousand dollar coaching packages from other coaches. Programs that were above the level where they could ACTUALIZE the value.

People, says the Peter Principle, always want to go to the level where they are incompetent… it’s like the Dark Side guides them there. This is the biggest reason those programs produce only 1-2% results… this is why Frank Kern, a famed marketer, decided to leave the lucrative field of teaching. It is demoralizing to teach and produce little or no success for your clients and students.

And me and my little course that cost a pittance, compared, were left with the people who were like I was: they could not fully use my coaching, unless I spent time with them, one-0n-one. Goldmine… no shovel. lol.

In 2016 I started to use Tai Lopez’s 67 steps as my coaching material… It’s like a book club. Everyone reads the same book, and then get to converse about it.

This morning, in my answer to a student who already has a fledgling business in skin care, I started to see what I have been missing all these years:

Before you can be coached to achieve stuff, you have to become worth a damn.

Tai’s 67 steps, in spite of its shortcomings, is the schooling you missed in the matters of life.

If you do that program the way it is meant to be done: you allow the steps to take you around and show you life and principles in all areas of life… if you look at your life, your knowledge, your memes differently… if you get into the habit of reading, and read a lot… it does prepare you to be coached.

Then you use being worth a damn for something that actually makes money, gives satisfaction and fulfillment, allows for relationships that work, and enjoy and maintain good health and vigor.

It is not business coaching. It is not health coaching. It is not relationship coaching. It is still prep school… What you are going to use it is your choice, not mine.

Imagine that you want to become a medical doctor.

Prep school for a doctor wannabe is getting knowledgeable in biology, chemistry. And get volunteer/work experience in dealing with patients, work in a lab… etc.

Here is what I found on Google this morning:

• Decide on medicine. …
• Complete undergraduate science requirements.
• Get volunteer/work experience in health-related fields.
• Consider a broad pre-med course selection.
• Develop staff/faculty advisors.
• Prepare for the MCAT.
• Take the MCAT exam.

Between you and me, to create a business, to be a marketer, to be able to sell what you create, you need a lot of capacities opened, lots of knowledge, lots of skills, and 360 degree view of the field.

• 20 capacities are needed to be activated to become a medical doctor.
• 10, to become a marketer, for example.

But you think that marketing is easy because people don’t learn marketing in school… no entry exam, no grades… just life and a lot of learning and even more failing in the field.

Out of 10 ideas I test, only one succeed.

You don’t even know what you don’t know. A lot of it is mindset… and a lot if it is individual skills…

OK, I am getting quite long-winded here…

Here is what I saw:

You should consider the 67 step coaching (combined with the 53 invisibles!) as the premed… preparing you to be trainable.

It will take you a lot of work. I promise.

Your choice is this: to be a dilettante, perpetually seeking, betting on instant riches and big red buttons… or become a reliable, count-on-able competent human who can and will succeed. That process is what we call “self-actualization”.

It took me, it has taken me 15 years. That included doing the 67 steps, diligently, for three whole years, 36 months, every day every day every day.

I have noticed that when marketing coaches speak, now I can connect the dots. I can take actions on some of the ideas or the instructions.

I have become more coachable.

What is coaching in that last sentence?

I’ve watched this Korean series on Netflix where the main character spent most of his life playing baduk, the game of go, a board game, as strategic as chess. Also played competitively.

He started at kindergarten age. His ten “coaches” helped him develop muscle memory, with a hands on approach.

Anything worth learning is like baduk (the go game),

• you need to become the right person, and
• you need to learn the right moves for the right reason.

50% mindset, 50% muscle memory.

When I say muscle memory, I could also say “long term memory”… where the actions become instinctual.

• I have since learned that unless you have a lot of knowledge in your long term memory, you are trying to use your RAM, random access memory, that is too small… and you’ll drop most of the information and you never amount to much.
• I have learned that rote memorization served a purpose: to develop your memory… your long term memory. The more knowledge you can recall and use, the more you can add to it, the more new stuff will make sense and become a part of the network of knowledge you need to become anything other than a physical worker, an office worker, a cog in the machine.

If your desire is to become more than a cog in some machine someone else built, you need to learn new things.

Developing your memory and having a network of knowledge is mandatory to learn enough new things, as many new things as it takes to start a business, or to change your career.

If you are someone who has coasted in life because you are “brilliant”, you probably didn’t develop your memory, so you never actually learned to learn.

• You read books and you don’t remember.
• You listen to audios, and you don’t remember.

Your first job will be to memorize… so you can have long term memory to hang stuff on, so the new stuff can stick to something that is already there.

You’ll hate it, all “brilliant” people do. But if you want more than what you can now have, you must.

I’ll find some good classes for memory developing… other people had discovered the connection long before I did.

And then, when you have the equipment, you can be coached to be a consistent winner.

He, our young Baduk playing hero in that Korean movie, had to quit at the stage where he had the abilities, the equipment, but didn’t have the money to live on…

• I have never met a violin virtuoso who played the violin as a hobby.
• I have never met a brilliant marketer who did marketing on the side.

For many people what prevents them from amounting to much is their insistence to do everything other people seem to do: play computer games, clean the house every day, shop every day, watch television, youtube videos, drive their kids everywhere, look at their phone every minute, fret, cook, whatever things “other people” seem to do all the time… And they look so happy on Fakebook!

But you can be worth a damn and not amount to much. You can have a job, and have job satisfaction. You can be healthy. You can have a family that works.

But to make a name for yourself… that is a 10 times bigger job…

You need to know what you aspire for. Ahead of time.

• I always knew that I wanted to stand out.
• I always knew that I wasn’t going to be satisfied to be just one of many.

I chose my path early… this part: standing out.

So I quit everything where I could not be number one or number two, the way famed General Electric CEO Jack Welch knew, who sold off all divisions that he didn’t have the potential to be number one or number two, and heavily invested into the ones that he kept.

I allowed many “talents” to atrophy for the sake of talents I can hone to become number one or number two with.

• Music
• Languages
• Pantomime
• Dance
• Mathematics
• Architecture

Of course, context is decisive, so I made creating context my number one area of expertise.

Your ability to invent context depends on your integrity number, the relationship between you and your word. Mine is 70%. I have never measured anyone’s integrity higher than 10%. Most people have 1-3%…

Creation of context, is a skill, a lot like playing the violin. You can be so-so in it, or you can become a Paganini.

You don’t need to become a Paganini of creating context to be successful in life… but you need to become good.

I now have one student who got his feet wet in creating context. And another one, following in his footsteps.

All of Tai’s steps are context creation, by the way. You just cannot see it. Why? Because context is invisible. And so are principles.

Everything looks different when the context changes.

Magical. Without the magic wand.

OK… your turn… if you think you’d like to start this process, these are the steps:

Get your Starting Point Measurements

Or buy a “strategy session” with me so we can see if you are suitable to become a client/student. If I accept you, I’ll refund what you paid for the strategy session… If not, I keep your money minus the fee for the Starting Point Measurements.

We’ll see what we’ll see…

PS: I coached in a lot of courses in Landmark Education.

My favorite was the 17 week long course, where I could take the participants through a whole journey.

I started each 17 week relationship with two questions: do you want to do the 150 dollar, the 1,500 dollar, or the hundred thousand dollar course?

This was as close as I could ever get to activate the relationship between the self and the word… to enable the participant to create value.

The second question was: what will potentially take you out of this course? People, surprisingly, knew. And they told me.  Me, armed with this knowledge, could bring them back from quitting.

I learned this from Werner Erhard who used to interview his staff members and their intendeds before they tied the knot… He asked: what will break you apart, what will make you want a divorce.

You know what you want… and you also know what will take you out… take you out so you won’t have it.

Tell me so I can fight against it with you.

Read the original article: Do you get the promised value when you buy something?