People I respect
Below are just some of the people I have a lot of respect for who you may know, or have heard of. I picked 17 of them.
They are in no particular order, but I did rejig some of the sequence to create a bit of a story as you’ll see.
Here’s the thing: I truly believe that fundamentally everyone on this planet has the same personality characteristics, but we express them in different ways. So I, and you, can only see in other people what we already have in ourselves and to the same degree. So if you see someone as incredibly creative in the area of business, you are just as creative in that area too, or in other areas of what I call the LifeGrid: so you may be incredibly creative in the area of Health or Family.
There’s an opportunity at the bottom of this page for you to tell me who you respect the most and why, and/or to give me feedback on this page.
Here’s my list…
I had a lovely chat with Vic Conant of Nightingale-Conant a few years ago about marketing. Vic and I talked about Eckhart Tolle (author of The Power Of Now and A New Earth) – this was about 2 years before Tolle’s book sales exploded. Vic has very astutely grown N-C into a very large supplier of CD sets on personal and business development…
Paul Scheele, co-owner of Learning Strategies has been a good friend over the last 15 years. I first met him in London about 6 months before he launched The PhotoReading Personal Learning Course on tape! I told him I’d love to promote it in the UK when it was released, and he was up for that. We went on to sell more than 10,000 sets on tape and CD, spending around US$850,000 to promote it through direct mail in the UK. (The photo of Paul is with my son Felix when he was younger.)…
Pete Bissonette is Paul Scheele’s business partner. As President of Learning Strategies he has grown it from a 2-man operation to one with 30 full-time staff. Like Paul he is always on the lookout for new teachers and processes to help customers make giant strides in their lives. He is also a great friend. The photo below was taken when Paul and Pete flew me over to run one of my Effort-Free Life seminars for their customers. (You can see us with our Effort-Free Life badges on.) Pete is on the left and Paul is on the right….
Gary Bencivenga is a phenomenal copywriter. I attended his copywriting summit in New York and learnt a tremendous amount from him about communicating with potential buyers, and using the power of the unconscious mind to tap into genius ideas. His Persuasion Equation is superb…
Doctor Tom Orent is a brilliant marketeer who has transformed hundreds of dental practices around the world. At his home he showed me a giant wall full of his goals, all affixed with little magnets, so he can see what he’s working towards at any moment. This was one inspiration to fix my own set of goals and photos all round my office walls to keep me on track. (See my goal-filled office photo here.) Tom is also very persistent: for example I told him about the upcoming one-off Gary Bencivenga seminar I mentioned above, and he tried to book a place but was told it was sold out. So he wrote a long letter to Gary explaining why he thought he should be allowed to come, and sent the letter together with a beautiful vase. Gary let him attend the event, which Tom loved as much as I did…
I met best-selling author Robert Scheinfeld at dentist Dr Tom Orent’s home, and we spent 3 days together while Tom explained the intricacies of his business and Bob and I took detailed notes. (The event was called Fly On The Wall, and was a high-priced event with just me and Bob in attendance.) I had read Bob’s book The Invisible Path To Success which I enjoyed. He’s a terrific guy who is passionate about helping people move on in life…
Over breakfast one morning, Robert Scheinfeld asked me if I’d heard of Dr John Demartini. I said I owned one of his books, but I hadn’t got round to reading it yet. (This was before John was featured in the film The Secret.) Bob said he’d met him at an event hosted by Jack Canfield, and that John had phenomenal energy. He encouraged me to check out John’s material on personal growth. Within a few months I had attended one of John’s seminars in Edinburgh, Scotland, and learned some interesting ideas from him…
Uri Geller has a great business mind, always looking for new opportunities. He rang me a few times over the years to discuss opportunities for us to work together, then I spent a wonderful few hours in his home in Reading, England. I love his enthusiasm and dynamism. The photo below was taken at his front door…
David Hughes runs the UK branch of Nightingale-Conant. He has a real zest for knowledge, a youthful enthusiasm and a ready laugh which makes him a joy to talk to and do business with. When he offered to promote my Effort-Free Life System CDs to his customers, I asked him if he would be willing to share a personal challenge with me, so that I could show him the core processes in the System at work, which would mean that he would be able to share this interaction with his audience. Typical of David he said yes, and he proceeded to tell me of a significant frustration he had at the time with a member of staff, and he willingly let me challenge him to look at the issue in a new way. (See the resulting testimonial here.) Not too many business owners would be as open to working in that kind of way…
Mike Dooley (featured in the film The Secret) has a great business at www.tut.com and has hundreds of thousands of subscribers to his Notes From The Universe. He was a great interviewee for my newsletter CD, having a great sense of humour, and some wonderful metaphors and analogies. He includes this interview with his second major CD release called Leveraging the Universe and Engaging the Magic. Mike creates little miracles wherever he goes. Click here (it’s a page I wrote on neat coincidences) to read how he bumped into David Hughes (above)…
Neil Asher ran New Insights Life Coaching until recently: a very successful company helping people to become life coaches. He has a real thirst for personal development, and we’ve had many long conversations about it on the phone and in person. (Click here for an interesting article I wrote featuring Neil.)…
Dan Kennedy is an extraordinary marketer. When I was developing my CD set The Effort-Free Life System I decided it would be worth my while to have a one-day consultancy with Dan at a price of US$7,500, As Dan couldn’t see me for about 3 months due to his heavy workload, we arranged a one-hour call to address my most pressing questions. I got my $7,500 of value from that call: the other 6-7 hours at his home were simply the icing on the cake. (That CD set alone generated millions of dollars of revenue.) Dan has a real heart and a great eagerness to share his knowledge with others. His day’s consulting rate is now US$18,000 according to his autobiography, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading.
(See this page, half way down, for a story of how I came to give a waitress called Dana a $1,000 tip as a result of one of Dan’s seminars.)
For those people who own a business and want to grow it quickly, Dan’s worth his high fees….
Mike Litman’s story of his rise from failure to success has been a great inspiration. I bought 2,000 copies of his superb book Conversations With Millionaries to give away as a Christmas present one year to the subscribers to my paid-for Effort-Free Life Newsletter. He writes with energy and passion and has built an amazing coaching business and a substantial following…
Joe Vitale (featured in the film The Secret) is an incredibly prolific writer and a superb marketer who I thoroughly enjoyed interviewing for my Effort-Free Life Newsletter (which came with a free CD every month). Joe has a way of seeing niches and business opportunities which other people miss. And he’s fun to be around too…
Stuart Goldsmith is a dear friend, an amazing entrepreneur and a brilliant writer. When I had a big challenge in my life 2 years ago he was enormously supportive, and I’m very grateful for that. His 500,000-selling book The Midas Method is well loved by many of my clients for its clear process for making your goals become real. His other books, Privacy and Seven Secrets of the Millionaires, are excellent too…
Bob Proctor (featured in the film The Secret) is a great inspiration. I’m sure that it was he who has made the old classic Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles a must-read for people interested in prosperity consciousness. He invited me to attend one of his seminars in the US so we could discuss business, and we had a very helpful discussion which eventually led to me promoting Bob’s video-based programme You Were Born Rich to tens of thousands of our customers in the UK to great success…
Peter Thomson is an amazingly prolific creator of books, newsletters, audio programmes, seminars and more. We have spent many delightful hours in conversation about product creation, marketing, and so on. He soaks up new information like a sponge and quickly finds ways to share this knowledge with his enthusiastic clients and subscribers. I also love the way he acts like a newlywed with his wife of 20ish years!…
Who do you respect?
What do you respect about them?
Do you see that personality trait in yourself too, and to the same degree?
I’d love to know!… Simply fill in the form below. (I’ll also send you an exclusive ebook and mp3 that’s not on this site or available in any other way apart from submitting a message.)
Here’s a page about people I respect who you are very unlikely to have heard of.