Collective Economy Can Make Your Dreams Come True

In one way or another, we all chase ‘contentment’ – an internal and external state of happiness and satisfaction. When it comes to business, contentment comes from knowing that your DreamChasing is on the right track and you’re successfully moving towards your goal of financial freedom.

Over the years I have come across tons of people in love with the idea of gaining financial freedom. They want to go after their hearts and achieve success – they say they want it real bad.

But before they realize it, they’re pulled back into the same old spiral which has consumed many a dreams. They start procrastinating. They buy all the books they can (even read some of them), attend every seminar, talk to all sorts of people, and yet nothing seems to work for them.

I personally know someone who used to run a small coffee shop and ended up inheriting a large sum – $6 million. He closed his shop and one year later his total wealth was down to $4 million. He had parted with $2 million in just 12 months and had nothing to show for it!

I first met him in Toronto and he was only an acquaintance I barely knew. As time went by, I started seeing him at most of our events and launches – Toronto, Dubai, USA. Earlier this year he bought personal coaching sessions with my brother, paying well into six digits. He flew all the way to Dubai, and in the following days I learnt a lot more about him. That was when he shared that he had a few million dollars sitting in the bank and wanted to put them to good use.

I asked him what he’d done in the last 12 months to grow himself.

His answer was: “I am looking for the right opportunity”.  

Here’s the short version of our conversation:

Me: Have you tried anything personally?

Oliver: No.

Me: why not?

Oliver: I want my money to make me money…

Me: But have you tried anything personally as yet?

Oliver: No.

Oliver: I want to do something that will set me free for rest of my life, something big.

Me: Define big.

Oliver: Something that will take care of all my financial needs.

Me: But you have 4 million in the bank already…   

Oliver: Not enough; I’m running out of money fast.

Me: How so?

Oliver: I invested in a few businesses.

Me: How did that pan out?

Oliver: It’s too early to tell…

Me: The businesses you invested in, are they with family members and friends?

Oliver: Yes, most of them.

Me: How many are still up and running?

Oliver: Some didn’t get off the ground, some went bust after I stopped putting any additional money into them and one is still running.

Me: What did you learn from all that?

Oliver: Never invest with family or friends.

Me: What else did you learn?

Oliver: Never do too many things at once.

Me: Anything else?

Oliver: Don’t invest in something you don’t know about and there is no such thing as guaranteed returns.

Me: What makes you think that?

Oliver: Every business I invested in where a family member or friend said “you can’t lose”, I lost.

That was a conversation from our first meeting. Learning as much as possible about the person I am coaching is the key to figuring out his/her real issues and challenges. Honesty is the key here. You can’t go to a doctor and expect him to cure you without trusting him and sharing everything.  The more I spoke with Oliver, the more I realized he was going through ATFS (I’ll explain what that means in a bit).

The next day I invited someone to join us for breakfast. Elizabeth is 5’6” and a gorgeous friend who specializes in nonverbal language. She can create a matrix of what is being said verbally and what is being said nonverbally. We also brought in four other parties who had business ideas and were looking for investment. The night before the investment meetings I had a small file on each of the four individuals. The file not only contained quick synapses of their idea but also had short details about the individuals.

About the founders:

Founder 1: Lost all of his money and is now looking for a job.

Founder 2: Works with the government.

Founder 3: Is a successful millionaire who sold his first business for millions.

Founder 4: Is an advisor to a rich property tycoon.

About their ideas:

Idea 1: A coffee shop.

Idea 2:  A social network for senior citizens.

Idea 3:  A new way to make calls, which according to the founder, would be the next big thing and can’t fail.

Idea 4:  A high-end ecommerce website for hard-to-find unique products.

Elizabeth and I, along with Oliver, met with all four founders one after the other.  They were all looking for investment. Did Oliver invest in any of their ideas? The result from this experiment was fascinating and I will share how you can get your hands on it in a bit.

After lots of meetings and countless number of hours, I finally figured out what was stopping Oliver from turning it on. To test my theory, I decided to conduct another experiment, something much simpler and easier.

I could have given Oliver my own blueprint for starting or investing in a business. It would have easily helped him take his ideas and put them into action. But when things are just given to you, you don’t value them as much.

What I wanted was for him to think of an idea he could translate into a business and then develop his own action plan for it. I gave him a deadline of two weeks and two pricing options for the work me and my team would do to get everything in order.

Option 1: $0 to $500,000

Option 2: $50,000

Which option do you think he picked? Think about it yourself. Option 2 costs less compared to option 1 for the same services. But option 1 has an interesting twist which makes it very attractive for people who are really good at what they do and believe in their product’s potential to achieve the desired results.

Oliver went with option 1, which required him to create a schedule for things to do on a daily basis and then stick to it. He was charged $500,000 upfront, but it was divided according to the tasks he had to perform. And for every task completed within the deadline, he was refunded the corresponding amount.

So in essence, all Oliver had to do was live up to his own schedule, and if he did, all the help he received from me and my team of professionals would cost him $0.

At the end of the 14 days we had another meeting. Now you probably want to know what were the tasks he had planned, which tasks he actually completed on time, which ones were left and how much of his money was refunded? Don’t worry, I’ll share those details with you too.

Trap of the industrial age

We are currently at the crossroad between the industrial age and the idea economy. Our parents come from the former and our education systems also majorly focus on the same.  

Old money in the industrial economy had power which was used to control, motivate and influence. You are expected to stay within bounds, perform under restrictions yet produce results and be ready to suffer the consequences if anything goes wrong.

I have met and worked with people from many different countries and the conclusion is universal – most people want to do well in life but find all kinds of excuses to put things off.

The corporate world keeps finding better ways to do things using technology and keeps pitching the “company person” through HR hype.

So many people spend all their lives merely ‘dreaming of their dreams’ while they work for others. Should you not try something new to break free from this cycle and actually pursue what you want?

What comes after the Idea Economy?

This something new is what comes after the idea economy and it is called the Collective Economy. In an idea world, one idea can change everything. In Collective world, one cluster will grow anything.  Working together with collective actions, everyone wins.

The Pink Cow which guarantees jobs

Helping out one of my multimillionaire friend in Canada, I decided to sit in some of their HR interviews for senior positions, and I must say it was an interesting experience to say the least. Candidates who had made it to this stage had gone through a number of written tests and preliminary interviews before finally getting a shot at the panel interview.

During their interviews, some of the questions didn’t make sense to me at all, yet they were considered important.  Their head of HR (let’s call her Kathy) asked the following questions among others:

What is your biggest weakness?

What is your second biggest weakness? (She was very proud at the second question, “it gets most of them,” she said. “They prepare to answer for the biggest weakness but when they are asked about the second biggest, they are taken back.”  

Are you a company person? (This question didn’t make any sense to me. Which company was she referring to and what is the purpose of even asking this?)

My conclusion? The whole hiring process is overrated and outdated.

The current process

1. Write a nice cover letter (Doesn’t mean much. I can give you fill-in-the-blanks letters (download links at the end) which will put you way ahead of others).
2. Send in a CV (Normally filled with highlights of accomplishments from your previous years of experience).
3. Find out about the company and rehearse the questions you may be asked.
4. Show up for the interview, answer questions confidently and try to nail the job.

Doing something different

Just to prove a point, I picked a random person from the candidates and worked with her. We put together a cover letter and a resume (the panel didn’t know I had coached anyone).

Instead of going with the same old stuff, we started off the cover letter with the things she messed up and linked to a website which detailed how she fixed them.

Her resume showed her job title and job description as a summary and under all that we detailed what she actually did, instead of what she was supposed to do.  It was a quantification of sorts, clearly conveying how many tasks she performed as part of her job and their results.

For example,

Week 10

Expected tasks: 20

Completed tasks: 12

Reasons: A clarification as to why she wasn’t able to complete her tasks for the week.

Key lesson learnt:  How to impress your boss even if you haven’t finish your work…click here for more details (this link took them to her job search site).

The grid we used was visually efficient, and just by looking at it you could tell what tasks she was assigned, how well she did in each one of them and what was her performance working alone and/or with a team.

We also listed other details like what she learnt from her boss, how she facilitated the company and the challenges she faced. There was also a section for ‘lessons learned’ when things didn’t go according to plan (I will share the gird with you too).

We basically took the typical cover letter and CV and changed it around completely. The final package included a hard copy, a USB and a URL – you could either view it on paper, insert the USB into your computer or open up her website.

When they looked at it, they were baffled:

“This is different. During my last 20 years in HR I never saw this before. She actually listed her weaknesses honestly,” said one of the panel members.

Standout and you win

The panel members typed in the URL given on her CV and went online to see it.  On the web version we had added more appeal – pictures, ideas, infographics and unanswered questions.

We used the basic fundamentals of web designing and the “don’t make me think” concept, making it very easy for the interviewers to navigate and browse.

They ended up spending more time going through her CV than any other. Remember, prior intent of the person is the key to ROI. For example, when someone reads an article about your idea in the newspaper and visits your site, their chances of becoming a user are high.

In this case, the panel was already intrigued with her CV and her online website was only strengthening her case. With so many candidates appearing for an interview, the only people interviewers hear are people they choose to hear. Malcolm Gladwell calls it “Thin Slicing” – when the first ten seconds decide the person’s fate.

However, our unique approach and honesty ensured that the girl was not among those ignored that day. She was no longer being interviewed. It was more like ‘you’re hired; we just want to know more about you.’

So yes, doing something new, something that makes you stand out can lead you to success, even in the corporate world. Imagine how you would do if you applied the same to your whole business?

The power of fresh air

The power and effect of doing something new, something untested – risky yet fresh, can only be understood by those who have turned their dreams into realities; those who went against the tide.

As seen in the example above, doing things differently and breaking the norms can put you way ahead of others in today’s world. As a matter of fact, it is the only way forward. Playing it safe doesn’t cut it anymore. If you aren’t moving ahead, you’re only going to be left behind.

Another thing which really fascinates me is that despite knowing that the majority of the world’s wealth is held by capitalists, those who run successful businesses, people continue to work as employees for someone else.

In one of events I asked an attendee: Do you want to start your own business?

I have asked the same question from so many people, and the answer is mostly yes.

Then I ask: So why don’t you?

Answer: Don’t have the money.

That was when I decided to put together a team and search for all the answers to this question. I honestly failed to understand why people find it difficult to jump into business. So, we started researching extensively, analyzed various projects, talked to different people and gathered all sorts of information and used math to build a model of failure. Some of the more common reasons people gave were:

• Don’t have time
• No money to start a business
• The time is not right
• Can’t take the risk

(The entire list of reasons we uncovered in our research will be made available later.)

After analyzing all the information we collected I grouped people into different subsets.

The biggest reason why people don’t start their own businesses is:

Not knowing what to do

Yes, this is the single biggest reason for people not starting their own ventures.  This holds true for people who don’t have money and even for those who do. Oliver’s example is one such case. He has millions in the bank but doesn’t know what to do with them.

If you are part of this group, you have the intent to start a business, you probably have some money and you’ve even read books and attended seminars, but you can’t figure out what exactly it is that you need to or should do.

Not knowing what to do is the biggest obstacle. I will be sharing my own blueprint for this later on. It’s not all you need to be successful, but it’s important for taking the first step.

Success itself is the result of persistence – not stopping, and taking on step after another. I will also show you examples of how I used this blueprint to start my own business.  

Collective Economy deals with not knowing what to do because what you need to do is already defined by people with years of experience in producing successful online ventures. If you fall in “not knowing what to do” CE is for you.

The second biggest reason for not starting a business is:

Fear of losing

If you fall into this group, you have figured out what you want to do but you are still not ready to start working. The main reason here is the fear of losing. You are afraid of taking losses – your mind has too many ‘what ifs’.

No one can really blame you for your fear. After all, research and stats show that most businesses fail in the first year. And those which do make it ahead, tend to fail in the second.

Many would say the first step in overcoming this fear is to understand and realize that ‘it’s okay to fail’. If I tried my best, gave it my all and learnt a valuable lesson in the process, I am fine with failing. Sounds reasonable right?

Well to me it doesn’t!

‘Trying your best’ isn’t enough. It’s too vague. A fish can try its best to climb a tree but a monkey will always do it faster.

I have seen way too many people ‘working hard’ and trying to look busy.

Will Smith failed and went broke until he was able to get up again thanks to ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’, the popular sitcom.

Nicolas Cage, another renowned actor, earned $150 million in his career, but went broke and admitted to People Magazine three years ago that he owed $14 million in taxes.

Why businesses fail will be covered later. For now, you need to focus on getting past your fear of losing.

You need to be confident in your ability to succeed. If you doubt yourself, so will everyone else, and that includes your own employees. A lot of people will tell you not to do something, or that you’ll fail, but you should consider who you decide to listen to, who are those people really talking about? You or themselves?

Make sure you have a solid foundation

If you are traveling from Canada to USA but move towards China, you might eventually get to USA because the world is round, but it will take you much longer and cost considerably more.

The same can be said for your business. You can get over your fear of failing by making sure you have a clear path and a solid foundation to lay everything on.

It pains me to see people lose their hard earned money in a new business because they set themselves up for failure from the get go. Albeit unknowingly, they take steps which actually place them in an unfavorable position and collapse it all.

Collective Economy also takes care of fear of losing. They say 9 out of 10 businesses fail but those are individual businesses. When you join forces with thousands of people where collectively every person within the cluster works together on that one business, how will you fail? You will have thousands of customers from day one, thousands of marketers from day one and thousands of man-hours that can be used to grow from day one, but most importantly, you will have Collective knowledge, connections and resources of 1000s of people.

Doing it alone is tough

We can write a whole book analyzing failures.  There are all kinds of genuine reasons why businesses fail and we came across lots of them during our research. While a detailed list of those reasons will be made available to you later, for now I am going to share the simplest yet the biggest reason why most people fail in their business ventures.

It’s like ‘home advantage’ in sports. The same teams and players have been seen to perform about 10% better in home games. It’s why support matters, and incidentally, the biggest reason for business failure, according to my own research, is ‘going at it alone’.

Collective Economy makes sure you are not doing it alone. You are working with thousands of people who all have your best interests at heart, not because they know you but because Unity is the foundation of it all. Everyone within the collective cluster knows, collective actions make everyone win.

Personal happiness

How many people have you met who are alone and happy?

What are all the things people do to get rid of boredom?

There are billion dollar industries which thrive because they know you don’t want to be alone or sit idle doing nothing.

If in our personal life we consider happiness to be connected with people, with sharing and going out to see the world, why is it that we fail to see our businesses in the same light? The truth is, just like it is in life, being alone is tough in business too.

A look at the venture capital industry

If you look at the venture capital industry, cases of investment in a one-man team are very rare. Good teams often win and startups with co-founders have higher chances of success. Look at any major tech company and you’ll find that it was started by more than one person.

Google had Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Facebook had three more founders apart from Zuckerberg and Microsoft was the brainchild of Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

Being alone in a venture is highly discouraging and very often leads to people giving up. A team on the other hand brings diversity and energy into the mix. Regardless of how good you think you are, there are no ‘know-it-alls’ – each team member brings something to the table and each one has an important role to play in the success of a business. Look at where they are, CE makes you smarter than Larry, have a more powerful cluster than Mark and an operating system stronger than Gates.

Incubators

Incubators are taking over the investment world by storm. Every major city has at least one today. According to the national incubation association, in 2005 alone, North American incubation programs assisted more than 27,000 companies, which provided employment for more than 100,000 workers and generated annual revenues of $17 billion. Why? Because incubators put a whole bunch of likeminded people in one place to compete with each other with everything they got.

Why do Incubators work?

Incubators are hot because they bring together everyone an entrepreneur needs to have a good chance at success.

Most programs are three months long but their duration varies from industry to industry. Incubation allows entrepreneurs and their teams to polish their idea, gain some traction and try to shine on demo day (present their idea in front of investors to raise capital).   

For you, the most important thing to realize is that being part of an incubator means you don’t have to go at it alone.

How can Incubators work better?

Although the companies in the incubation don’t work with each other, just by putting likeminded people in the same place produces better chances of success. Bundle this up with support provided by incubator creators and chances are improved. Imagine if the companies in the incubation worked collectively rather than individually, what will happen to their success?

Learning from the mistakes of others and getting the right help is key

Imagine how many people do the exact same business for the first time in a different location and fail? This is true when it comes to real world businesses and is also true for internet ventures.

The major reason behind this is lack of research. People don’t consider what others, who came before them, did wrong. They jump into things without tools, knowledge or information and are essentially doing it all alone.

What if you could benefit from the business acumen and experience of others? People who have spent years erecting businesses can be standing beside you to help your business grow too – a business Oracle of sorts. Imagine Collective Economy.

Collective Economy will help you succeed

Me and the other founding members wanted there to be a better way for people to create income streams based on their knowledge and contacts. And we asked, what if there was a repository that helped you conceive, choose, decide, design, develop, host and market an idea?

That led us to the concept behind Collective Economy, which will be as strong as the total knowledge and experience of the community behind it. The cluster will have the people who can guide you every step of the way and help you succeed.

Solving the problem of “doing it alone”  

As we saw earlier, doing it alone is one of the biggest reasons behind failure, and Collective Economy is primed to counter exactly that. It brings together each and every person you need to truly be successful in one industry at a time.

The Leverage community includes:

• Businessmen
• Investors
• Database experts
• System admins
• Designers
• User interface specialists
• Developers
• Amazing writers
• Marketing/Advertising specialists,
• Social Media pros
• People who are great at SEO

We will provide a full list of what is already available on Leverage.

Here’s what Leverage members get

The number one thing you will get is a better future, where you will benefit from 1% efforts of thousands of people. You won’t just get advice or suggestions on what you should be selling; you’ll also have actual resources and people, who are part of Leverage, available to help you sell, guide you, provide you with a step by step plan on what to do and how to do it.

One of the prerequisites for joining the Leverage family is that you must be willing and able to help others. We don’t want you to just pay and get in. Part of the 2 hours a day you contribute towards Collective Economy will be used to help others within it.

Your own knowledge and experience also becomes a part of the community. For instance, if you are really good at social media marketing, you can write a detailed and proven plan, which will then be shared with every other member.

We already have some of the top minds in marketing, operations, technology, sales and business developments with years of experience producing successful businesses. The whole point of the Collective economy is to get people to share their knowledge and you will be the beneficiary of the entire cluster. Others will contribute to your success as you lend a hand for theirs.

If that’s not enough, there is more

Every member of Leverage family takes an oath to help other members, regardless of their physical location. So if you are in Dubai and I am scheduled to visit Dubai in the coming days, I can reach out to you through the internal network and connect. You can take me around and we can chat about business.

Similarly, if you were interested in connecting with a banker in Canada, other leverage family members with the appropriate connections can make introductions.  

What does every idea need?

There is a very simple secret I learnt after spending 20 years running my own businesses. It was something I had gone through a number of times, and after having finally figured it out, I could only laugh at my own stupidity for not figuring it out earlier.

It took me 20 years to learn something that now seems so obvious. Tons of people ask me how I started all these businesses. They want to know how I did it, and now I’ll be sharing my own blueprint, a step by step plan to guide you from zero to hero.

Generally speaking, even if you start working on your idea alone, in time you’ll need:

• Capital
• Co-founder
• Specialized resources
• Updated information
• Competitor analysis
• Dedicated employees
• Plan for expansion and transition
• And more…

What we are trying here is to wake you up, so you can realize that the success of your future hinges upon so many things you can’t possibly do alone. This same success can come much faster when you have world of resources at your fingertips through the CE.

Still think you should go at it alone?

Alright, I’ll give it to you. You may have an amazing idea. But do you know web development? Can you build a complete web project on your own? Even if we assume that you can, does that mean you can write just as well too?

I highly doubt that. It is not possible for any one person to be the best at everything. If your writing is weak for instance, it will prevent you from taking your dream project to the level it deserves.

But guess what?

In Collective Economy Hunain from Daj and Suzan from CreativeExperts can help you fine tune all your content. They can provide you with step by step example on exactly what to do do, how to do it and when to do it. In the process, they can help you draft a clearer picture for your audience and consequently present your task in a way that you could only dream of.

If you aren’t a professional writer and doing it alone, it won’t matter how hard you try, it will take you a long while. You won’t be able to pull a rabbit out of a hat in a short period of time but in CE you have the resources at hand to pull an elephant out of the hat instead.

So why risk your future? Why not let the Collective Economy handle it for you, so you can focus on the area of your expertise?

Similarly, you may already be spending lots of money on Google Adwords and Facebook marketing. These big conglomerates literally milk people who don’t have the experience or the time to understand how PPC works.

On the other hand, people like Zak and Mazen have already spent well into 7 digits on online advertising and have learnt from their mistakes (they are now certified professionals). Not only can they reduce your advertisement spending but also increase your conversion rates considerably.

Even if we talk about search engine optimization, lots of new comers think they can read up a little on the internet and conquer the world with meta tags.

If you didn’t know already, Google makes changes to its search engine nearly twice a day (1.3 to 1.7 times to be precise)

How will you stay on top of everything Google does?

Not only will you have to learn everything there is to SEO, but you’ll also need to gain practical experience alongside staying up to date with the constant stream of new developments in the industry.  As you read from the last post, Collective Economy takes advantage of Google’s blind spot to not only rank, but do so multiple times on demand.

The best part of the Collective Economy is that thousands of people will come united to help you create a better future and you won’t be DreamChasing alone.

Conclusion

Every now and then you come across something which defies odds, something which can change lives. When that happens, what do you do? How do you handle it? And most importantly, how do you benefit from it?

This is one of those times, one of those moments. By now you know Collective Economy is “the next big thing”.

Sharing economy did wonders for what was possible and what was perceived to be private. Along with it, fortunes were made and new directions were set. Companies like Uber, Airbnb and Breather changed our perceptions and allowed us to use our private assets to make life easier for others, all the while making money. Renting your empty room to a total stranger took the Trust Economy to a whole new level. Those who rented through Airbnb actually behaved much better in private homes compared to hotel rooms.

People in hotel rooms used their towels and threw them on the bathroom floors while those who stayed at people’s homes behaved with much more respect. In the process, Airbnb rented more rooms in the USA than all hotels combined together.

Who wins in Sharing Economy?

The biggest advantage of the Sharing Economy went to those who started the venture and the handful of investors who put money in it.

Who wins in Collective Economy?

Collective Economy allows you to plug into a cluster and collectively everyone works towards a common goal, a united direction and produces results unmatched by anyone else.

“I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people’s efforts than 100% of my own efforts” – John D. Rockefeller

Collective Economy allows you to earn from 1% of of thousands of people’s effort rather than 100% of your own, focused in one single direction with the intention to dominate. Every person in the cluster wins.

This is your chance to come out of the bubble and build a future for yourself and for your loved ones. Unity is your way out of all your problems and united we all win. Tomorrow you will see how much work has been done behind the scenes and what the Leverage 300 think about CE.

Please provide your feedback and questions in the comments below and don’t forget to share this with your family and friends.