This isnt going to be an easy concept for alot of you, but it is essential that you stop living a lie if you wish to truly conquer your world. It is the man and woman that defines their personal truth and lives by that truth that has the most potential for power.

Make a personal resolution to live whatever truth that you wish. If you want to be a millionaire, if you want to help other people, if you want to be any specific kind of professional, you have to live that truth every day. Your every thought, word, and deed has to be in line with the truth you wish to live. That is the source of personal power. Good people like Mother Theresa and Malcolm X, and bad people like Adolph Hitler and Idi Amin (who until his death held the belief that Uganda needed him) had one thing in common – they lived their truth. Because that, they reached the pinnacles of power and people followed.

The Opposite of Living the Truth

The opposite of living the truth is obviously living a lie. Pastors who preach the piety of poverty and live in luxury live a lie. Politicians appointed to protect and defend the Constitution and then manipulate existing laws for their image and benefit live a lie. Self help gurus who dont help other people live a lie. Hypocritically acting in ways that are not consistent with your words and not holding up your end of promises and contracts are a few other examples.

Contrast that with Christians that live meager lives who help all they can, revolutionary voices that speak out against politicians in their own parties who abandon the standards set by this country’s founding fathers, and the Millionaire Mentors, whose goals are to help 100 people become millionaires (instead of making a million dollars for themselves).

People work jobs that they hate, doing things that dont match their skill sets whatsoever. If that defines you, you need to make plans for moving into a career field that reflects the truth you want to live. You cant truthfully say you are a deal maker and a business man if you clean warehouses at night. You cant truthfully call yourself a singer or dancer if you dont live the life of a singer or dancer. You either live the truth, or live a lie.

If you have  read The Evolution of a Hustler, you know the story behind how I came to be an inmate. There was a time that I called myself a Marine, but didnt live the principles that Marines are known for. My behavior revealed the truth, that somewhere along the line I rotted. You need to ask yourself if  your behavior is really the truth that you want to live.  The good thing about the Marines is that it provides young men and women with a pre-defined truth; a standard that determines ones personal conduct at all times. Similarly, religion provides a frame of thought that provides followers with a truth. The bad thing about religion and organizations like the United States Marine Corps is that demagogues (false prophets) are given places to hide. Dont be one of those people. If you  hope to get anywhere, be brutally honest with yourself. Honesty is more than a word. Honesty is a way of thinking that is reflected in your actions. Your actions then reinforce your truths, which then further influence your actions.

Re-Programming Yourself

In place of whatever undesirable truth that you used to hide, adopt and live by new truths that will affect your actions and your way of thinking. Do you want to live as a thief? Do you want to live as a con-artist, a fake, or a demagogue? Of course not, who does? The secret to abolishing those old truths is to define the truth that you really want to live and replace those old and undesired behaviors. Determine what you are not, then determine what you are. By verbalizing the truth to yourself, you are reprogramming your brain using a technique called Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP for short – more on this later).

“I am not a thief. I am able to find ways of making more money than I ever could stealing

“I am not a fake. I am who I am and the world can appreciate it or go to hell”

“I am not a failure. My actions today will reveal me as the success that I am”

” I am not lazy. I get more done than anybody that I know”

“I am not a demagogue. I embody the principles and philosophy of my school of thought always”

This isnt fake it til you make it. This isnt acting the part. This is living the part. This is walking the path.

Define your truth, and then live the truth.

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When I talk about making it rain, Im talking about money raining on you – not you throwing money on other people. For the entrepreneur and hustler, sales equal money. Website traffic equals money. Contacts equal money. Action equals money. One sale, one website visit, one contact, one act could mean the difference between a flood of money or a drought. Lets make it rain.

You don’t need an office. Your car is your office. Your briefcase, your backpack, your lunch table is your office. Customers wont come to you – you have to go to them. If they are on the basketball court, in the gym, at the club, in doctor’s offices, in chat rooms, in hotel conference rooms, at conventions then GO THERE! The phone is for followup calls, not initial contact. Its easy to hang up on a telemarketer. Its hard to be rude to someone standing face to face with you.

Hit the streets. Hustling is a numbers game. Get in customers faces, ask 33 customers a day for a $1000 sale and you get $10,000 per month. If you are making it rain, your schedule is 24 hours per day. Your workday is all day. Your work week is all week. Vacation time and family time are off limits, but every other time period is free game. Fish every lake dry, then find more lakes. Then come back and re-fish your old lakes. New customers come into the market every day. If you are selling milk, and I just bought milk, Im not a customer right now. If you come back in a week, you will have a sale. “NO” REALLY MEANS “NOT RIGHT NOW!”. If you cant close a sale, then close them on a follow-up phone call or appointment.

ABC = ALWAYS BE CLOSING

What do you do? Whatever that is, let everybody know! If you are a blogger aka freelance journalist, tell everybody you meet and know. If you sell chicken, tell everybody you meet and know. If you sell jewelry, books, T-Shirts, DVDs, organic fruit, sex toys, dog collars, or billboard space, tell everybody you meet and know. If you specialize in something, be proud of it and be known for it. Have you made a single penny online? Are you a dancer? Are you a political pundit? Tae kwon do red belt, youth counselor, member of the Farmers Association? Whatever is unique about you, make it known. Otherwise, youre just another salesperson. Just another hustler.

And make no mistake about it – EVERYBODY IS IN SALES, WHETHER YOU KNOW IT OR NOT! You are selling yourself to get a promotion, you are selling yourself to get more men or women in your life. You are selling yourself to make more money, to win friends and influence people. That means ABC (always be closing) applies to you. Close your boss (“Heres why I should be a floor manager immediately…”), close the opposite sex (“Im impressed with you, so lets exchange numbers and meet wherever at whatever time”), close friends (“Youre good people, why don’t you stop by the house and watch the fight Friday with me and a few ladies”).

When it comes to sales – ask for the order! Most salespeople set up meetings with potential customers, everybody is all smiles and giggles, and then the salesperson leaves without asking for the order. The customer knew you were a salesperson and, therefore, you were going to ask them to buy. Maybe they had already decided to buy before you even showed up! But since the salesperson didn’t ask for the order, the customer is left thinking “WTF was he even here for?” Meanwhile, the salesperson thinks he has had a successful appointment. Ask the customer to buy when you first walk in their door. If they reject you, come back with “I was just kidding, of course youre not ready yet, because I haven’t shown you what my product can do for you”. Then, instead of launching into a pitch, find out whats important to the customer. Get into their world and into their head. Think like them so that you can get them to think like you. Then ask for the order again.

After asking for the sale, be quiet. First one to talk looses. Heres the right way to do it:

The Hustler: “Ok, you like this and that about my product. Lets get some paperwork done. How does that sound?”
Customer: “…………………………………….”
Customer: “Lets do it”

Heres the wrong way:

The Buster: “Ok, you like this and that about my product. Lets get some paperwork done. How does that sound?”
Customer: “…………………………………….”
The Buster: “bbbbbut if you want to think about it I will come back”
Customer: “Let me think about it”

Make it rain in good times and bad. Just because you are on a hot streak doesn’t mean you can sit back and relax. Work consistently. If you put in 8 hours during the bad times, put in 8 hours during the good times. If you make fat tips or commissions one week, don’t take the next week off. Again, work consistently. If you are doing what you love – then this will be easy to do. If you hate what you do, this will be impossible – therefore, you need to quit! It makes no sense for you to get paid to do what you hate when you can get paid doing what you love. I had to keep a job that I hated until I built up my income streams doing what I love. Its called “straddling”. You keep one foot in the job and the other in your passion.

Every person you meet is either a customer or knows somebody who could become one of your customers. Therefore, keep them in the Blackberry. Call them every other week to find out whats going on in their world. Ask them about their wife, kids, probation officer. Ask them about their jobs, recreational activities, their goals. Ask them if they have reconsidered buying from you. Ask them if they can give you the number to somebody who can use your product right now. Do this every day for 10 people that you have met in the past. If you don’t have 10 people to call, go meet 10 people.


Let me wrap this up by putting it in terms that most men can understand. Have you ever seen another man who was shorter than you, had less money than you did, and was only average in the looks and height department but still had more and better quality women than you did? Its because he hit the streets, the clubs, the parks, the mall, asked for the number, asked for the date, asked for the open relationship, and provided social value to the woman (If you have one quality woman, other quality women will see that, making you instantly more attractive and socially valuable). Dating is a numbers game. Talk to 1000 high quality females, and if you have a 1% success rate, you have 10 high quality women you could be kicking it with. Even Forrest Gump had better than a 1% success rate. Same thing with making it rain.

Sounds hard? It is.

Early to bed, early to rise, get your hustle on and monetize.

Popularity: 14% [?]

I’m going to open up a few free spots for anyone who would like to sponsor World Domination with Arthur Pledger in order to get your blog or business some free traffic.

What you get is a 125×125 ad ABOVE THE FOLD, FREE OF CHARGE in my sidebar. I don’t care if your blog tiny or gargantuan. I don’t care if you have 2 page views per day or 2 Million. This will give me a chance to figure out this whole sponsorship thing, while you get some free exposure.

You’ll need to provide me with the 125 x 125 banner for the ad. Depending on how well this thing works out, I will select four additional sponsors for a total of six to run, free of charge, until April. You will pretty much be approved as long as youre not a spammer or pedaling something I wouldn’t approve of (sex toys, escort services, etc).

Here’s how you do it and what I need if you’re interested

If you’re interested, please email me with the word “Sponsorship” in the subject line

• Write one paragraph for me on something you did in the last year that you’re proud of.
• Your website URL
• A description of your blog and/or business
• Why you’re interested
• Your pitch: why should it be your ad?

At the end of April, I will send you a bill for $5 to keep your banner on the site. If youre getting decent traffic, pay for the banner. If not, you can bail. No risk, no hard feelings. I will be making my banner choices in 5 days, SO HURRY UP AND ACT NOW!

Popularity: 12% [?]

“Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have. The course of history shows us that as a government grows, liberty decreases.” – Thomas Jefferson

Read that statement again. Granted, this post is going to apply to bloggers more than anyone else, but is a great example of government intervening with an insatiable hunger for money and involvement. Pace Lattin, one of “the most influential men in online media” and runs one of the most successful newsletters around, gave me permission to republish a great article that he wrote concerning the FTCs new involvement with the online community.

By Pace Lattin (c) 2010

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is one of the most unique parts of our government. It has a wide range of powers given by law, which encompass among other things the ability to pass rules and regulations against unfair and deceptive acts or practices. The FTC often issues “guidelines which are no more than notices that they will push for prosecution or civil action against individuals in violation their guidelines. Although these guidelines are often up for public debate, they are not passed by any governing body such as Congress, yet affect us often more than any newly passed law would. While many people see that the FTC is a consumer rights entity within the government, a growing number of people see that the FTC is a part of a growing, overreaching government that is interfering with the ability of businesses and often individuals to conduct business in this market economy.

I’m not claiming that the FTC should NOT prosecute obvious fraud, where consumers are clearly being scammed – such as not delivering a product as promised or the mass distribution of unsafe toys. That being said, the FTC’s guidelines and civil actions are quickly crossing the border of infringing not only on our ability to do business, but our First Amendment Rights to Free Speech. The Right to express one’s self and opinions, whether it is political or business related is an inherent part of our society and the foundations of our business community. The courts have ruled that advertising is a form of free speech, which cannot be infringed upon anymore than any other opinion, written or spoken.

Recently the FTC issued guidelines (http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/ 10/endortest.shtm) (which means, as said, we plan to bring action against someone) that regulate bloggers. Bloggers are a unique part of our economy, a throwback to the creation of this Country when people would often hand out pamphlets to express their opinion, in order to get attention to their cause. Bloggers are often people, like myself, who have taken the initiative to put their feelings down and write, taking the power away from larger media organizations, and putting it into the hands of the individual. As one knows, blogs often express anything from political opinion to diet tips. They are sometimes political, commercial, religious, or just something someone did in order to express their frustration at their parents. Whatever the reason is, they are a wonderful expression of our First Amendment Rights.
Yet the FTC believes that bloggers are so unique, that they need to be regulated in a way that hasn’t ever been proposed to mainstream media. The FTC recently issued regulations in which they clearly state how bloggers who engage in commercial activity, should clearly state how they are related to the product, and make it obvious they are engaging in business, or have been paid to endorse the product. This uniquely affects the interactive advertising community, because it could easily be interpreted that any link, any mention of a product that would in turn create a sale (such as an affiliate link) would have to be clearly mentioned as an advertisement or state the nature of the relationship.


Additionally, more and more the FTC is engaged in the business of deciding what is considered an “authentic or substantiated” claim by an endorser or a product. While they have for the last decade or so, been more involved in cases in which they believe unsubstantiated product claims have been made, they are specifically targeting bloggers – and their opinions. This growing trend is more and more disturbing, as it gives the government the right to make assumptions on the quality and accuracy of claims of businesses – and then in theory, the accuracy of claims of individuals. It asks businesses and bloggers to basically “prove” what they are saying is correct, even if it is an opinion. They must substantiate according to the FTC, all their claims.

This is unique in nature, because it places an undue hardship often on small businesses and bloggers, who cannot afford to hire research teams or a huge law firm to assist them in the creation of their materials. A sole-proprietor who discovers that perhaps his home-made fig bars have lead to increased weíght loss and energy, in theory, will have to prove and substantiate his claims before he could buy advertising on Google that states that these bars can help in weíght loss. It could prevent a small business owner from selling knitted goods on Ebay, because the claim that they have kept her warmer than any other coat she owned, might be subject to scrutiny. They have to worry that the government, the FTC might intervene at some point and bring action against them based on perception and supposition. It gives bureaucrats, non-elected officials an extreme amount of power over small businesses in this Country.


The right of Free Speech in this Country is quite interesting, because it allows people to express their opinion, even if they are wrong. It assumes that no opinion is inherently wrong and opens up the possibility of debate. It also assumes that most adults are intelligent enough to make their own decisions regarding their dislikes, their opinions and the products they want to buy. The government, acting as “Big Mommy” is more and more interfering and saying that they want to regulate what we see and hear – that despite a huge Internet with tons of information, we can’t do our own research and decide if a product is what we want. We are giving the government more power than has ever existed before: the ability to sanitize what we hear and see before it’s released to the public. “Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have. The course of history shows us that as a government grows, liberty decreases.” – Thomas Jefferson

Popularity: 7% [?]