Customer Reviews

The Answer: Grow Any Business, Achieve Financial Freedom, and Live an Extraordinary Life

5 star:		(92)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Before I get into discussing this book I would like to tell a bit of a personal story relating to this book. It is a story that hopefully might even make the book even more interesting to prospective readers. To relate this story to you will make my review a good bit longer than normal, but please bear with me because this story really does have to do with what's in this book...

Last year I watched the international phenomenon, The Secret, which has swept the globe with its message: "Everything that you have, make or do happens because of your thoughts. Everything that happens to you, whether you wanted it to happen or not, was attracted to you by your subconscious mind. This is known as the Law of Attraction. If you want to have a better life, use the Law of Attraction to your benefit."

What The Secret was putting out there was that we are responsible for our own conditions but we need to align what we want in life with our subconscious before we can truly change.

I took this in as positive thinking, as a "philosophy", so to speak but I decided to give the Law of Attraction a try. But after putting a small amount of effort into its practice by trying to manifest some small things - a second trip to Egypt in the same year, an interview in a newspaper, etc., I found the Law of Attraction to be rather true in my life. Thus with no more guidance than the information in that film I started experimenting with one of my businesses last year, a business that hadn't been faring too well in the recent past. To my joy this business turned around and doubled in size within ten months. I then used the same principles to find my sweetheart and in a matter of weeks I found a wonderful girl, just as I had imagined her to be even before I knew her. And after that I turned my attention to a second business I had in December of 2007 and now it is double the size that it was when I started using these principles.

In the course of all of this I moved to Bangkok, Thailand, from Saigon, Vietnam. In Bangkok I have met many new and very interesting people. One day I was called out of the blue by a friend I hadn't seen in a while. She asked me to come to a showing of The Secret which was being held by a Belgian man named Guy, who was interested in the Law of Attraction. I dropped everything I was doing that Sunday and came to the showing. I came not so much to see the movie again, although that was a side benefit, but I really was interested to meet people who were using these principles in their lives so that I could compare notes and see how this was working in their lives. I was there to offer my experiences and to gain from others. Guy and I with another Belgian, Chris, formed our own monthly meeting group.

But something had always bothered me about The Secret: It wasn't enough. I felt like the information in The Secret was more of an advertisement than a practical way of doing things. I decided to focus on finding a guide, a teacher who could take me further into the nitty gritty of how we should use these principles to improve our lives on a day-to-day basis. I decided to "intend" a teacher to come into my life - a teacher who could show me both a much deeper understanding of what I was doing as well as how to use these principles in a practical way.

Two days after I made the intention of finding my teacher came the e-mail from Norm Goldman of BookPleasures.com. The public relations firm representing John Assaraf and Murray Smith was requesting a review of their new book, The Answer.

Recognizing John Assaraf's name from The Secret immediately, I jumped at the chance to review this book.

Coincidence? Stay with me. My story about this book doesn't end there.

I remembered John Assaraf's name especially for two reasons: First, one of the most poignant scenes in The Secret is when his six year old son finds a five year old vision board in a corrugated moving carton. In explaining to his son the purpose of this vision board John realized that the perfect home he'd wished for five years earlier was exactly the home he was living in at that time! (This amazing and thought provoking story is well covered in both the film and book versions of The Secret as well as in John's book The Answer, so I won't go into great detail about the matter).

The second reason I remembered John Assaraf's name is because it reminded me of a friend who I was trying to reach and had decided some time ago to find out about. At university I had a friend named Marc Assaraf. So the day the advance reading copy of The Answer arrived in my office in Bangkok I checked John and Murray's website for their One Coach business and I e-mailed John asking him whether he would be interested in helping me with any questions I had about the book (he responded that he would). But at the end of the e-mail I asked whether, just by chance, he had ever heard of someone named Marc Assaraf. It turned out that Marc Assaraf was John's own brother!

From my point of view, I could take this situation for a very, very wild coincidence, or I could take it that my receiving John's and Murray's book was a convergence of two intentions that I had clearly stated and wanted the manifestation of. Both answer could not be true.

To make matters even more "coincidental", the very day that I finished reading The Answer I received an e-mail from Chet Holmes inviting me to a conference call with none other than John Assaraf. I opened this e-mail less than one hour after finishing the last page of this amazing book!

Needless to say, this was a conference call that I participated in and gained much from.

The Answer is a well written book that explains exactly how such a "coincidence" occurs. At least in the first half of the book it does.

In the first chapters John Assaraf explains scientifically how your mind and mine are connected to the world through our subconscious and how we can change the poor results we have been getting, whether it be relationships, financial, professional, etc. I really have to admit that when I first opened the book I felt a bit strange reading all about the science behind this. What I was looking for was the quick, practical tips that would help me to better use the principles of the Law of Attraction. (John Assaraf prefers to use "Law of Resonance"). By the middle of the book all of John's painstaking research that he shared made sense - John put all of his findings in so that we'd know exactly the whys of the how to make the changes in our lives. Don't get me wrong, I was not saying that the first part of the book was not interesting. Just the contrary, it was extremely interesting. I didn't see its necessity until later in the book when it all came together and then it all came clear.

John's long-time friend and business partner Murray Smith took the latter part of the book where he gave advice on how to determine where you might be in your business and where you want to go (some of this was covered in John's section of the book, though the two authors were coming from slightly different angles). Murray then gave some excellent tools for both entrepreneurs as well as people who worked for others to be able to use in order to turn their businesses around and to guide the reader on how reach their goals. Both Murray Smith and John Assaraf gave many examples of how their clients had discovered where they had been going wrong and turned their businesses and organizations around. There are also plenty of practical resources in this book for the reader to use immediately.

Trust me. If you want to enrich your life or change something in your business in any meaningful way then read this book. Devour it. Digest it. Once you have read The Answer of course you can draw your own conclusions on what these guys are saying. But I am willing to bet that if you follow their advice you will feel like magic has come into the way you do things. Planning becomes fun and effortless. You will see doors opening for you that before were not just only closed - some of the doors weren't even there! Take it from me: You have nothing to lose and so much to gain by using Murray's and John's advice. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know how to get more out of their life.

"The Answer" cost me a night's sleep.I picked it up to read after tucking the kids in at 9 and finished it at 1:30 and then was excitedly journaling and mapping out plans the rest of the night.

It's nothing short of amazing! Great philosophy is all well and good. But, when you can take what seems to be an ethereal subject matter like the law of attraction and lay out a real system of application and on top of that actually weave in PRACTICAL ACTIONS one can take to ensure we're "doing our part" to set ourselves up for receiving in business - that's just downright LIFE-CHANGING!!!!

To me, "The Answer" is the missing ingredient that brings the principles of "The Secret" to concrete fruition! The authors have given such a complete plan of both the mental and physical actions one must take to achieve success, that literally ANYONE armed with desire and enough determination to stick to it can and will see their dreams come to life! I am excited to share this great treasure with family, friends, my readers, audiences, coach clients ... everyone I know or come in contact with. It's THAT good!"

As a small-business owner, I was drawn to the title of this book like metal to a magnet. The Answer! The subhead reads: Grow any business, achieve financial freedom, and live an extraordinary life. That's quite a promise. I give this book five stars because of how it delivers on that promise; with a blending of philosophy on how to think more successfully with practical approaches on how to implement that success. It's not just theory, but rather a mix of metaphysical and step-by-step instructions bringing it all down to earth.

"Thought is the most powerful force in the universe." This inspiring idea forms the basis for the theories in this book. The Answer gives you tools to harness your thoughts and turn them into your dreams.

Here's the chapter list:

Introduction: The Question
1. Inside the Box: John's Story
2. The Search for How the World Works
3. The Law of Attraction
4. The Universe Inside Your Brain
5. How to Change Your Mind
6. Your Dream Business
7. The Neural Reconditioning Process
8. Neural Reconditioning FAQs
9. The Important Things: Murray's Story
10. Vision, Focus, Action
11. Your Ideal Customer
12. Innovating Your Business
13. Finding Your Business's DNA
14. Reaching Your Ideal Customer
15. Big Thinking
Conclusion: The Path

Appendix 1: Customer Survey Forms
Appendix 2: The Five Major Industries: Common Hot Buttons
Appendix 3: Distribution Channels, Marketing Strategies, and Marketing Tactics
Appendix 4: The Five Major Industries: Common Distribution Channels and Marketing Strategies

As a self-help author myself, I read over 100 books a year on success, happiness, and making money. I have taught Financial Stress Reduction Workshops for the past 18 years, and I am intimately familiar with the problems business owners encounter while trying to create and build their businesses from scratch. It takes a lot to impress me these days, but I have to say this new book by John Assaraf is one of the best I've ever read. A featured teacher in "The Secret", he and his co-author Murray Smith have built 17 multimillion-dollar companies in the last 20 years. They know "The Secret" of making money in your business, and their new book gives you not just "The Answer" but many answers to the questions business people have in their minds, number one of which is "How am I going to make money in my business?"

They outline the quantum physics in a way that is completely understandable (did you know that Hungarian author and philosopher of science Ervin Laszlo calls the field that underlies and connects all things the "A-Field" in homage to the Akashic Records?), and I loved this description of the building blocks of our physical reality: "...once you look deep within the heart of atoms, these `indivisible particles' are not at all like the neat little miniature solar systems of billiard balls everyone had expected, but were something far messier: They were something like tiny packets of possibility." Your atoms are made of possibility! But they are completely practical in their exhortation to apply the Law of Action as well as the Law of Attraction: "Because if all you do is sit around and visualize, the men in the overalls with the big trucks will come and take away your furniture." How true! And it made me chuckle at the same time.

The book illustrates the work you need to do to become successful, training your mind to focus on success and organizing your business to produce the money, security, happiness, and leisure time that everyone desires. How to create a revenue plan, design a sales process map, understand the three conditions of the Law of Compensation, demographics and psychographics, and more are outlined in step-by-step, easy to follow instructions.

This is a book I will re-read again and again - it will be a constant resource guide on my desk from now on!

Chellie Campbell, author
Zero to Zillionaire and The Wealthy Spirit: Daily Affirmations for Financial Stress Reduction

Before I got halfway through this book, I was so excited I wanted to go ahead and write a glowing 5-star review of it. But I decided to wait until I finished reading the entire book, and I'm glad I did, because the second half is nothing like the first. It is obvious that this book was written by two very different authors. I would describe the first half as "What The Bleep" meets "The Secret" . . . only it is an improvement on both. It takes the information in the DVD "What The Bleep" and makes it completely understandable. And it takes the promises of "The Secret" and makes them believable, adding in the practical aspects of taking action. I was so inspired by the first half of this book that I reclaimed a vision I had started to lose sight of, and miracles to support that vision began to appear in my life immediately. And then I went on the second half of the book, which I would describe as Business/Marketing 101. It was like taking a college class on how to establish and grow a successful business . . . complete with all the homework. There were so many lists to make and surveys to conduct that I felt completely overwhelmed, and very bored. It almost gave me the impression that you could ignore the first half of the book and succeed in business by sheer marketing savvy alone. I know this information is helpful . . . and probably necessary . . . but it was so complicated and detailed that it took the wind right out of my sails. You will note that I still gave this book a 4-star review, because that is how good the first half is. And hey, if you are a very business-minded individual, you might think the second half is the best part, and that's fine. I'm just sharing my personal experience with you.

Steven Lane Taylor, author of Row, Row, Row Your Boat: A Guide for Living Life in the Divine Flow

You must buy this book if you watched or read The Secret and didn't understand what to do next. You must buy this book if you didn't watch The Secret, but have a small business of ANY type. In the first book I have ever read of this type (and I have over 3,000 in my personal library), John and Murray examine the power of quantum physics and spirituality, consciousness and pure, plain common/business sense and distill it into a workable path to create the life of your dreams. I'm not kidding when I say "workable path". Step by step instructions, interaction and learning abounds here. You WILL have a clear road to your own success by the time you are finished and not just a few AHA moments, but many - prepare to be astonished and prepare to build your new life!

Frankly, I am amused and a little bit shocked by this dialog. Seriously folks - one review said it best when he compared this nonsense to a book on using "the Force" - same goes for any manic follower of the secret series ... I am a statistician, highly successful, and have built this career on four basic principles:
#1 Working harder than the people I am competing against
#2 Communicating information in a more effective way than my competitors
#3 Being in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing (this is not "luck")
#4 Effective networking (I mean real relationships with the right people, not the insincere, cheesy, and ineffective back scratching this whole super-positive-power-thoughts crowd subscribes to)

When I win a job, it's because I have clearly communicated to the right people that I offer a better product - NOT because I wished for it more than the other guy.

As for one reviewer's "scientific approach" (she obviously swallowed the material hook, line, & sinker) ... as she is a statistician and business behavior consultant (whatever that is) ... I would be VERY leery of any statistician arguing that you can homogenize a group by "effort, activity, & skills" and then make the leap to "since all that is the same, the only variable left is how much they wish for it" ... is she serious? With this kind of talk, she would be the last person I would hire. "By science" your next step should be looking for quantifiable and measurable factors that can be isolated. You cannot measure how well someone wishes for something (a.k.a. uses the mysterious "laws of attraction").

As to the author's argument for "quantum physics" based on experts he has consulted ... seriously? Either they do not understand what they saying, or they are not experts. We know so little about quantum physics that the very best minds in the field are nowhere near capable of making these kinds of assumptions and "quantum leaps" (I couldn't resist) the authors have. We know almost nothing about it, and generally operate on vague theories. When early astronomers first began to *suspect* that the earth was actually rotating (vs. the universe spinning around the earth) - their bakers (i.e. business men NOT in the astronomy field) had absolutely no capability to conclude that men (through wishful thinking) could actually control the speed at which the earth spins ... even if they did have "meaningful conversations" with real astronomers.

In short, if this kind of stuff makes you feel good, and do good things, treat it like any other good fiction book (buy it, read it, enjoy it). But let's not delude ourselves for one second that this is science! Trying to prove this feel goodery is actual science only proves one thing: that you are delusional.

On a positive note, I will admit that this book is written for the delusional audience; someone who perhaps really thinks they are working as well as their more successful neighbor, and so, unable to admit weakness, must find some other X factor. Thus, they get "the answer" ... and if it actually (as a side benefit) gets them to open their eyes to the concept that better performance is also needed, and they change their behavior and as a result are more successful, then I guess, in a round-about-way it has worked, and done a good thing.

These authors (and all their 5 star reviewing groupies) operate on the same ethical level as a used car salesman - it may be a good car, but you can only trust the guy about as far as you can throw him. Don't believe me? Just look and see how many of them mark this review as "un-helpful" just because my comments poke fun at the mumbo-jumbo.

John and Murray have done a wonderful job of bringing the Law of Attraction down to the runway level of business and showing you specifically how to take ACTION to get done what you need to get done in order to start your own business or take your existing business to the next level.

Each chapter builds on the last in a proven 'how to' system that anybody, who is serious about their success, can implement.

Everything you need to know in order to reach the next level in your work and in your life is in this book.

This is a MUST READ for any serious entrepreneur!

Machen MacDonald
Author The Power of CoachingThe Power of Coaching - Managing the TIME of Your Life

John and Murray are brilliant at taking theory and showing you how to actually apply the principles. The difference in their material is that they created a duplicable system that once learned can be applied to any business over and over again. They actually have the personal experience of having grown numerous successful multi-million dollar companies.

I joined their Business Mastery program a year ago and can not rave enough about how it has changed my life and given me a crystal clear understanding of the steps I need to take to grow my business.

They combine the 'inner work' with the 'outer action' into a seamless system that, with commitment, anyone can learn. I highly recommend buying The Answer and if you are a business person and want to take your business to the next level, join their Business Mastery Program too! onecoach dot kom

This book does not seem to be very well known. This is one of the few books I have read twice. The best take away information it is how your brain builds neural pathways. Very fascinating stuff and explains SCIENTIFICALLY exactly how "The Secret" works. For those of you who did not grasp The Secret, this will explain it in terms you will understand. The kind of person that does not get The Secret will get this book and then get "The Secret". I am not a big advocate of the secret only because you can get that kind of quality information and so much more in Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" and that book will certainly serve you much better. My advice, buy this book. Read this book, understand your brain better. The brain is the most powerful device on the planet and we all have one, I find it down right irresponsible to not learn how to use it properly. Thanks for taking the time to read my review.