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Robert Allen has been teaching ordinary people how to achieve extraordinary success and financial freedom for over 25 years.   He is the author of some of the most influential financial books of all time including five colossal New York Times bestsellers:

Creating Wealth
Nothing Down
Multiple Streams of Income
Multiple Streams of Internet Income
And
The One Minute Millionaire: The Enlightened Way to Wealth
(co-authored with Mark Victor Hansen – see the May 2003 cover of Healthy Wealthy nWise)

Today there are literally thousands of millionaires who attribute their success to Robert Allen’s systems and strategies.

The National Speakers Association has named him America’s Top Millionaire Maker.

Whether you’re a loyal employee inside a growing company or a solo entrepreneur Bob can show you how to build rapid financial success – even starting from nothing.

As proof he once said:

Send me to any city. Take away my wallet. Give me $100 for living expenses. And in 72 hours, I’ll buy an excellent piece of real estate using none of my own money.

Challenged by an L.A. Times reporter to live up to his claim, he flew to San Francisco, and under the reporter’s watchful eye, proceeded to buy 6 properties in 57 hours.

The headline read, Buying Homes Without Cash – Boastful Investor Accepts Times’ Challenge and Wins.

Most people assume that It takes money to make money.

Bob believes, and demonstrates, that the source of true wealth is an internal reservoir of passion, persistence, and powerful systems.

Without question Robert Allen is the unparalleled expert in showing average people how to go from a little to a lot in a short period of time.

In fact, it was through Bob’s mentorship that Ric and I learned the techniques to purchase a company to provide the infrastructure for another one that we had started ourselves – with none of our own money (as he is so fond of saying ).

He’s a popular guest appearing on hundreds of television and radio shows including Good Morning America, Regis, and Larry King.

He’s been the subject in numerous international publications including the Wall Street, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Barons, Money Magazine, Readers Digest, and now we are honored to have him with us here in Healthy Wealthy nWise.

Liz Thompson: Bob, does a balance between health, wealth, and spirituality play a role in your personal and in your business life?

Robert Allen: The balance between spirituality and wealth has always been extremely important for me . The health wasn’t for a long time, it is now!

Liz Thompson: It is now? (laughing)

Robert Allen: The older you get the more you realize, Hey wait a second this body isn’t going to last that long!

Liz Thompson: Right…

Robert Allen: So, the answer is yes it’s a very important part of my life. All three, mixed into a very important balance. The Spiritual part is critical, the family part is critical, the money part is critical, they are all extremely important you can’t have one without the other…

If you destroy one you destroy them all. It’s kind of like the win-lose philosophy. It’s either win-win or lose-lose there is no in between.

It’s the same with balance. You’re either balanced or you’re going to lose it all.

So stay balanced. It’s what a good friend of mine calls The speed of going slow.

Liz Thompson: The speed of going slow, I like that.

Now has your philosophy developed over time, or are there aspects of it that are rooted in your childhood, through mentors and parents, or friends? And how has it developed, as you’ve grown older?

Robert Allen: I’ve always been pretty much set since I was young in my own spiritual beliefs. What you can and can’t do.

A lot of people don’t have those boundaries, they have legal boundaries, where you can and can’t cross the line or break the law.

I believe there is internal law, and that internal law is sometimes narrower than the legal law. I try to play with in those boundaries – the boundaries of internal law.

Sometimes my friends wonder why I very rarely work after 6 o’ clock at night unless I’m going on the road doing a speech. Once or twice a month I might have something in the evenings, Saturdays and Sundays are pretty much off limits, I just don’t generally work during those times, unless I’ve scheduled it. Never on a Sunday, rarely on a Saturday, rarely after 6 pm.

I have a deal with my wife as long as I stay with in those boundaries she will stay married to me.

Liz Thompson: (laughing) Sounds like a good deal.

Robert Allen: More importantly, my spiritual upbringing…I’m a Mormon…has been extremely important to me. I just try to not step across that line.

Liz Thompson: So you like to use your own internal guidance as opposed to something that is imposed on you by other people – like you’re earlier example of legal boundaries.

Robert Allen: Right, I do, and it’s very intuitive. You know, I’ve gotten opportunities to make money in all kinds of different places and it’s intuitive for me.

If it doesn’t feel right, I can’t go there.

So for me it’s a combination of both, intuition – your own Inner Knower – and what I call inspiration. It’s just that you’re inspired, your Heavenly Father, your higher power, wants you to do this and doesn’t want you to do that.

I think there are both; we have two guidance systems.

We have our own guidance system where the higher powers says Hey as long as your playing within the lines of the boundaries that we’ve given you then do whatever you want.

And there’s the inspired stuff too where we’re told, Oh by the way if you’d like to get there faster you might want to try this….

Liz Thompson: Right. (Laughing) Hey listen up.

Robert Allen: So it’s combination of both intuition and inspiration.

Liz Thompson: Well that’s interesting, I haven’t heard stated quite that way before, and it makes a lot of sense. Then again the perfect balance between those two would be where you’d want to be.

Robert Allen: Right, exactly.

Liz Thompson: Ok. Well, who was one of the more influential people in your life who helped you develop these philosophies and become who you are today.

Robert Allen: I’d hate to be cliché but my dad was very important…

Liz Thompson: Not cliché at all.

Robert Allen: I remember him getting into the car one day with me and he was always a career-corporate person. He was the head accountant for a series of sugar factories in western Canada, so he worked his entire life from his 30s to his 60s – got the gold watch….

I just remember one day, sitting there in the car and he looked at me… I don’t know what was in his mind…. I have no idea why he said this, but he just said, Bobby don’t ever work for anybody else.

It’s just one of those things you never forget. I must have been 10 or 15.

I was a young kid.

I had no future understandings, but as an entrepreneur I’ve just always felt that I’m unemployable.

Liz Thompson: (laughing) I can relate.

Robert Allen: And I want (laughing) to be unemployable for the rest of my life.

Liz Thompson: Definitely.

Robert Allen: So, that was important to me and then I really don’t have any major mentors that where there before college.

My grandfather was an entrepreneur.

He owned an American Tile store for decades and was a major entrepreneur in South Alberta.

My dad was just almost the exact opposite, he tried, but in the depression era he had some entrepreneurial failures.

He ended up getting a secure job and a paycheck. He stayed there for the rest of his life so I never saw any other models, but entrepreneurialism was in my blood.

My grandfather died before I was born. But as I go back and study the way he was, I say, Hey, that’s like me. I never really saw much of it, but it was in my blood boiling the whole time.

Liz Thompson: Hmmm. Now I know you started to make a lot of changes right after college and actually in college too. What were some of the influences for you there?

Robert Allen: Well, the influence was this. Let’s send out my application to the 30 largest corporations in America and let’s work like my dad worked and get a job. Lets be a career person.

I really hadn’t figured out I was an entrepreneur at that time.

Until I sent out my application to these 30 companies, General Food, General Electric, General Mills, General Motors, Generally anywhere I could think of….

Liz Thompson: (laughing)

Robert Allen: I got 30 rejection letters.

All 30 of them said No.

Part of me was furious, thinking Hey don’t you see who I am, I mean don’t you see the talent I’ve got. How could you possibly turn me down?

It was devastating, it was demoralizing.

Then there’s also the part of me, the entrepreneur that came out in me and was saying, Wait a second, if you tell me that I can’t do what I know I can do, I’m going to prove to you that I can. In fact one of these days I will make more money than you guys that signed those letters to me combined!

You can’t tell me that I’m not worthy!

Liz Thompson: I hear the beginnings of your famous challenges coming here. (Laughing)

Robert Allen: That’s right, that’s right.

That’s the entrepreneur.

The entrepreneurs love to be challenged. They like it when somebody tells them they can’t do it.

I didn’t know at the time these rejections were going to form such an important part of my life.

So, I said, Ok, well if I can’t go in that direction I guess I’ll go to the other direction.

I went into real estate investing.

I started buying real estate with a mentor who was a multi-millionaire in my church group.

He was very successful and a very spiritual guy – and his father was the voice of God in the The Ten Commandments.

So if you’ve ever listened to The Ten Commandments that was my mentor’s dad’s voice.

Liz Thompson: Wow (laughing)

Robert Allen: He was still alive at the time and he would sing for us and you would hear his deep, deep voice and would say Hey that’s God – what do you know.

Liz Thompson: (laughing)

Robert Allen: His father was a neat guy and he was a very profound entrepreneur so I kind of fell under his shadow for a while and that was a very influential time in my life.

I started the entrepreneurial life I have today.

Liz Thompson: Fascinating. So I have to ask, has the lack of balance in your life ever harmed you or kept you from reaching you goals?

Robert Allen: I…I can’t remember a time, no.

Liz Thompson: Really, so have you always been in balance or is it a process of going in and out and catching yourself?

Robert Allen: I don’t go out of the lines very often. Although my wife might disagree with me…

Liz Thompson: (laughing) Well we won’t interview her…

Robert Allen: Don’t interview her (laughing)

Liz Thompson: (laughing) we won’t let her rat you out.

Robert Allen: I work hard and I play hard. September, October, and November were really busy months and I was very extensively committed, but December 17th I got on a plane with my family and we went to Tahiti, and I didn’t do anything for almost 13 days.

Liz Thompson: That’s great.

Robert Allen: We rented a skippered yacht and we just went over there, and floated around the islands of Tahiti and did what we wanted to do.

I’ve barely, just barely came back into business life. (Laughing)

Liz Thompson: Right (laughing), you’re still on Tahiti time.

Robert Allen: That’s right I’m still on Tahiti time. That’s true, for real, it’s hard getting back into it, but then I get back into it and I get really, really involved.

I don’t see myself as being a major over committer, probably because I have a lazy streak.

Liz Thompson: (laughing) Well that’s good, it balances out your workaholic streak!

So, we’ve determined that you’re pretty good at keeping yourself in balance at all times. But, has fear stopped you from achieving goals or holding you back?

Robert Allen: Oh, yeah. Yeah that has stopped me; I remember before my bankruptcy, I was always afraid of what people would think. When you have a lot of money you have to protect it.

Liz Thompson: Right…

Robert Allen: The more you protect it the more you pull in and stop doing what made you great in the first place – taking risks.

One of my fears was that I didn’t want people to think of me as being the millionaire guru.

One of my biggest fears was the infomercials, which I really pioneered.

I hated the way they were portraying me because that’s not me.

Me getting out of my Lear Jet, me getting out of my Rolls Royce, me getting on my yacht.

I don’t do any of that, zero, and that’s the way they wanted to portray me.

They thought that I had to have the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous approach in order to reach my audience.

And I let them do it for a while – for the first five or six years of the 80s.

Then we had a financial upside down for a while, and I said I’m not going to do it. I don’t want to go on the television and be that image that they want me to be. I’m going to say my message that’s true for me and I’m not going to say what’s not true for me.

You see I was afraid of how my audience would perceive me, instead of saying Wait a second that’s not that way I am. Let me tell you the wealth secrets the way I understand them.

I was really to afraid to be bold enough to just come out and say what I believe to be true.

Liz Thompson: So, how do you deal with that fear and finally just push beyond it?

Robert Allen: Well when you lose everything, you lose the fear, because there is nothing else to lose.

Liz Thompson: Well, I guess that’s true.

Robert Allen: There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore, you’ve lost it all, and you’re still alive.

You still put your pants on one leg at a time, you still have people who love you, still go to church every week, you still have children.

Hey you still have to make some money to bring it in the door.

Well, what am I going to do to bring money in the door?

Well if I’m going to bring money in the door, if I’m supposed to teach principles of wealth then I’m not going to teach those principles unless I teach them the way I understand them.

I remember a friend of mine, now my partner, Tom Painer, coming down to California where I had moved to lick my wounds. Here’s how the scene went:

He said, Let’s do it again.

I said, I’m not going to do it again because they won’t like what they hear.

Why don’t you just say what you believe?

Well, I’m not going to teach a seminar unless we’re bringing some higher power into it.

Well why don’t you do that?

Because I don’t think they’ll like it.

Well who cares!

He really had to scold me a little bit.

But we started writing the new seminar right then, and we created it the way I wanted to teach it, not the way that I though I was supposed to teach it.

Liz Thompson: You know, we actually dealt with some of that when we started Healthy Wealthy nWise. Worrying about what everyone was going to think about the vast amount of spirituality we wanted to put into it and the different types.

Ric and I kept thinking, We don’t want to offend this group, and we don’t want to offend that group.

Finally we just gutted it out and said we’re going to do it how WE want it – and it works.

Robert Allen: Yeah, well you just tell the groups that you don’t want to offend, I’m sorry if you’ve been offended by this go away.

Liz Thompson: Yes. (Laughing)

Robert Allen: Go away because you’re going to get a lot of this.

Liz Thompson: Exactly!

Robert Allen: I’m looking to avoid the people who don’t resonate with me.

Before I wanted to please everybody. When you please everybody, you please nobody, because the people you’re really trying to reach don’t want to be pleased, they want you to tell them the truth.

Liz Thompson: Exactly

Robert Allen: They want the unvarnished truth – not the glossed over politically correct way to say it.

Then the people who will be offended if you don’t do it right, you’ll lose them anyway because they’re going to be offended by everything you do. So, just find the people who you’re supposed to talk to.

It’s a hard lesson to learn. It was a multi multi million-dollar lesson (laughing)

Liz Thompson: (laughing) Those big lessons usually are pretty expensive.

Robert Allen: Yes, but hey I learned and I’m not afraid anymore, so I just say what’s true for me and if people like it, then they like it. If they don’t like it then we’re not supposed to talk to them.

They can go find somebody else they’re supposed to talk to.

Liz Thompson: Now is that when you actually started, in your mind, developing the concepts for the One Minute Millionaire? I mean did it start way back then or was that something that came much later?

Robert Allen: Oh yes. It was a long time coming actually, it was a long time learning, but the bottom line is, that’s where it all came from. It just hadn’t been articulated as well as I articulated it there, and even now there is still more I have to get out there.

Liz Thompson: I see.

Here at Health Wealthy nWise we believe strongly in the power of intention to manifest outcomes and we’d like to know what your current most important project is and what intention you would like us to hold and help you with.

Robert Allen: Well thank you.

I want to create a million enlightened millionaires.

Liz Thompson: Wonderful, so how can we help you do that?

Robert Allen: Well, obviously, I think you are. That’s what Healthy Wealthy nWise is all about.

Liz Thompson: Right

Robert Allen: I think there’s a new paradigm.

I think the old capitalism is over its done.

I think it’ll take a while to get out of our system but the first 200 years was necessary.

Did you see that movie, A Beautiful Mind?

Liz Thompson: Yes, it was wonderful.

Robert Allen: The whole movie is about what we’re trying to do with the enlightened millionaire.

Adam Smith says that, Capitalism is enlightened self-interest. You pursue your self-interest and everything will be ok.

Well, I don’t think that’s enough. The whole movie was about this theory that the guy won the Nobel Peace Prize for.

The theory was basically, if you want to win the most, everybody has to win.

The way you win the most is not for you to doggedly pursue your own goals, but for you to doggedly pursue your own goals and the World’s goals at the same time.

Liz Thompson: Right.

Robert Allen: So that’s what the enlightened entrepreneur does.

The enlightened entrepreneur says I’ve got a business and I’m going to make money at it, but the purpose of that business is to bless the rest of the world.

Not only do I bless the world with the products I create but also I get to bless the world with the profits I create.

Liz Thompson: hmm – I love it!

Robert Allen: Gee, I’ve never said it that clearly before. Thank you very much.

Liz Thompson: Well thank you for the beautiful insight.

Robert Allen: You know Paul Newman’s, Newman’s Own is an enlightened business.

He’s going to give away all the profits they make. In addition, if you read the brand new book he just came out with Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good. Have you read it?

Liz Thompson: I haven’t read it, no.

Robert Allen: It was one of those books I read in Tahiti.

It’s brand new, and it talks about how they created their company from scratch.

I was really amazed by reading it. How doggedly determined they are to make sure their products are extraordinarily good. I didn’t realize how much effort they go through and how much intense rejection they go through until they find a product that they really are extremely happy with.

Liz Thompson: Wow, well their products are very, very good. I’ve liked every one I’ve ever had.

Robert Allen: Yes, isn’t it amazing?

The reason that it works is not because he just slapped his name on it. It’s because he’s passionate about creating a product that is worth putting his name on.

It’s not just Hey I’m going to give all the money away so you should by the product even if its junk.

He’s saying, These products are great, they’re the best in the world, and all the profits are going to be given away.

Now that’s an enlightened concept.

Liz Thompson: Exactly.

Robert Allen: So there are a lot of principles of the enlightened entrepreneur and tithing there. He does 100% tithing.

Liz Thompson: Yes, that’s pretty extreme and its great!

Robert Allen: That’s really extreme, it’s really incredible.

Bringing in the higher power and making principles that are win-win. You know it’s got to be win-win.

If it’s not win-win we don’t do it.

It’s the concept of inner wealth and having an eternal time line, following intuition, and worth-ship.

Worth-ship is not just worship, but it is knowing that you already are a millionaire.

Why are you feeling so bad because you see somebody driving a better car than you are?

You’re already a millionaire; you already possess assets on your enlightened balance sheet that make you a multi-millionaire – you just wouldn’t sell them.

You won’t sell your kidney; you won’t sell your left eye.

Liz Thompson: (laughing)

Robert Allen: You wouldn’t sell one of your children unless they’re in their teenage years.

Liz Thompson: (laughing) Then nobody would give you anything for them anyway.

Robert Allen: That’s right; you’d have to pay somebody to take them off your hands. (laughing)

You won’t sell your relationships, you wouldn’t sell one of your best friends, and you won’t sell the things that you already possess that make you a multi-millionaire.

You’re already in the top 1/10 of 1% of the wealthiest people on the face of the earth just by virtue of living in North America. Compared to the rest of the world you are so far beyond them in terms of wealth and opportunity that it’s embarrassing.

Yet we begin to think like we don’t have enough money. We think that we’re poor.

You’re not poor; you’re a multi-millionaire, so now you’ve got to take what you already have – your assets you already possess, the genius you already received from your higher power, that you came into this earth with it – take your multi-million dollar enlightened balance sheet and the assets and talents you have, and go do something with them that’s going to make the world a better place.

Complete, perpetual, philanthropy; that’s another one of the principles of the enlightened entrepreneur, and being fearless and not allowing people to hold you back from living your destiny.

Stewardship is another principle of the enlightened entrepreneur, first realizing it’s not your money, it never has been, and it never will be.

Take the house you live in today, you say you own it, but when you’re gone someone else is going to live in that same house.

When they’re gone someone else is going to live in that same house.

The house is going to last longer than you will. So, steward it, make sure that is gets transferred and passed on to future generations.

Anyway, if you want to know what Mark (Mark Victor Hansen) and I want help in, its that kind of stuff.

We just believe that we’re one of the hundred butterflies that have gotten the same idea – this isn’t unique.

The enlightened entrepreneur is a concept that’s starting to come out.

It’s blossoming and I think it’s going to take hold.

It’s going to take another 50 years for it to take hold but there’s going to come a point when the purpose of a business is not to make great products just to make great products and profit, but to have those profits make this world a better place.

Liz Thompson: I completely agree.

Well if you could give our readers one piece of advice on how they can move towards this and balanced abundance in their lives, as well as being an enlightened millionaire what would that be?

Robert Allen: It always starts with purpose.

What is your purpose?

Purpose in general is the specific component.

Now this is my personal belief, my spiritual belief, it may not be yours or any of your readers’ but I believe we existed before we came here.

That we existed in what we call a pre-existence, you were you and I was me.

We were trained and tutored through eons of time to have this experience called life, to gain a body and to go through challenges, to learn to grow, and to exercise faith.

When we go back it will become clear to us that we had forgotten where we had come from on purpose.

That God didn’t want us to know the future; he wanted us to have an opportunity to faith our way through it. Then we’ll learn, we were with our heavenly father before we came here and we’ll be with him for millennia afterwards.

When we came to this planet we came with talents and gifts, specific opportunities that were ours to discover and uncover, desires and interest that are very unique to each person and in order for you to become wealthy in the truest sense you have to realize you’re here to learn.

You’re here to learn how to love.

Those are two critical things to your general purpose, but the specific way that you learn and you love is to take the gifts that you’ve been given and learn how to magnify them and to give them to as many people as possible.

That’s the way you love specifically.

The way I love is in taking my talent for making financial concepts simple, and publicizing them throughout the world to as many people as I can, to cause people to realize that they can be financially successful in an enlightened way.

So that’s what my purpose is.

When I get up in the morning that’s what I do.

How many people can I spread that message to?

Then I talk about the enlightened millionaire and creating a million enlightened millionaires.

I believe that’s part of my divine purpose that my Heavenly Father really wants me to do that.

Liz Thompson: Well Bob, thank you very much for sharing that with us and for sharing your time.

Robert Allen: Thank you, it’s been my pleasure.


To find out more about Robert Allen and his work go to http://www.oneminutemillionare.com

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