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The Pledge: Your Master Plan for an Abundant Life (Agora Series Book 21) Kindle Edition
| Michael Masterson (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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Successful people don't sit around waiting for everything to be "100%" right or to be "absolutely sure" they will succeed. They don't need absolute assurance, because they realize life doesn't provide any. To get what they want out of life, they set specific goals and put together a formal plan to achieve those goals, one step at a time. Successful people know that the cost of failure is modest compared to that of inaction. Failure means they are smarter the next time. Inaction means there is no next time-there's only a lifetime of regret. In The Pledge: Your Master Plan for an Abundant Life, author Michael Masterson reveals how to become successful-and not just financially, but in every area of life. The book
- Offers simple tips to making immediate changes and to establishing long-term goals
- Details strategies on becoming more productive at the office and defeating depression
- Explains why simplifying goals into four major ones makes them much easier to achieve
The Pledge teaches readers how to start and finish projects they have been dreaming about for years, boost confidence, strengthen skills, build wealth, and enjoy life.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherWiley
- Publication dateOctober 26, 2010
- File size653 KB
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Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
Have you held dreams of success and happiness that you've failed to fulfill? Do you sometimes feel that, however much you've done, you are still, in part, an underachiever?
If so, there is good news. Your past failures have no bearing on your future. And if you can change the way you approach your work, you can change the way you live.
In The Pledge: Your Master Plan for an Abundant Life, bestselling author Michael Masterson teaches you how to reinvent your life by putting together a personal master plan. It's a formal contract between the person you are today (fed up with the problems and lack of success you've been having) and the person you have decided to be (the successful you who is healthy, wealthy, happy, and wise).
Masterson's unique approach to creating a master plan will change your life immediately and forever. It is based on the best principles of the great personal productivity masters (such as Dale Carnegie and Stephen Covey) and on discoveries he made during his climb from indebtedness to multimillionaire status.
The Pledge is not a book on goal setting. It is a blueprint for fundamental change. Once you have experienced even one day of Michael's revolutionary system, you'll be hooked for life.
Through his writing and personal coaching, Masterson has changed the lives of countless people. His office walls are covered with personal letters from people from all over the world who credit him with transforming their lives. Now it's your turn.
Once you set up your personal master plan, your effort will be minimal. You will start to see results immediately. You will have more money, more success, and more time to do the things you love. Most importantly, you will immediately begin to experience a truly fulfilling life.
In The Pledge, you'll learn:
- Why traditional goal-setting programs seldom work
- The Four Rules for master planning your life that will guarantee success
- How to make quick and correct decisions every day to enrich your life
- The secret of Accelerated Failure
- How asking one question will improve everything in your business and life
- The secret of the 4-Hour Workday (This one really works!)
Most people never realize their dreams. Not because they aren't smart or shrewd or motivated enough, but because when they do make an effort, it is too little, too late, or misdirected. You won't have that problem once you have set up your personal master plan. You will have already begun your journeya journey that will enrich your life from the very first day.
--This text refers to the hardcover edition.From the Inside Flap
Have you held dreams of success and happiness that you've failed to fulfill? Do you sometimes feel that, however much you've done, you are still, in part, an underachiever?
If so, there is good news. Your past failures have no bearing on your future. And if you can change the way you approach your work, you can change the way you live.
In The Pledge: Your Master Plan for an Abundant Life, bestselling author Michael Masterson teaches you how to reinvent your life by putting together a personal master plan. It's a formal contract between the person you are today (fed up with the problems and lack of success you've been having) and the person you have decided to be (the successful you who is healthy, wealthy, happy, and wise).
Masterson's unique approach to creating a master plan will change your life immediately and forever. It is based on the best principles of the great personal productivity masters (such as Dale Carnegie and Stephen Covey) and on discoveries he made during his climb from indebtedness to multimillionaire status.
The Pledge is not a book on goal setting. It is a blueprint for fundamental change. Once you have experienced even one day of Michael's revolutionary system, you'll be hooked for life.
Through his writing and personal coaching, Masterson has changed the lives of countless people. His office walls are covered with personal letters from people from all over the world who credit him with transforming their lives. Now it's your turn.
Once you set up your personal master plan, your effort will be minimal. You will start to see results immediately. You will have more money, more success, and more time to do the things you love. Most importantly, you will immediately begin to experience a truly fulfilling life.
In The Pledge, you'll learn:
- Why traditional goal-setting programs seldom work
- The Four Rules for master planning your life that will guarantee success
- How to make quick and correct decisions every day to enrich your life
- The secret of Accelerated Failure
- How asking one question will improve everything in your business and life
- The secret of the 4-Hour Workday (This one really works!)
Most people never realize their dreams. Not because they aren't smart or shrewd or motivated enough, but because when they do make an effort, it is too little, too late, or misdirected. You won't have that problem once you have set up your personal master plan. You will have already begun your journeya journey that will enrich your life from the very first day.
--This text refers to the hardcover edition.About the Author
MICHAEL MASTERSON has developed a loyal following of more than 450,000 subscribers with Early to Rise (www.EarlyToRise.com), an e-newsletter published by Agora, Inc. Throughout his remarkably successful business career, Masterson has been involved in two businesses that grew beyond $100 million (one of which has grown to nearly $300 million), two more that exceeded $50 million, and several that surpassed the $10 million mark. He is also the author of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon.com bestsellers Ready, Fire, Aim; Seven Years to Seven Figures; Automatic Wealth; Automatic Wealth for Grads . . . and Anyone Else Just Starting Out; and Changing the Channel (with MaryEllen Tribby), all published by Wiley, as well as Confessions of a Self-Made Multimillionaire.
--This text refers to the hardcover edition.Review
"As a lifelong believer in taking action, I wholeheartedly recommend Michael Masterson's latest (and, in my opinion, greatest) book. The minute you begin reading you will be saying 'Yes! I can do this!' and your success-oriented mindset will take flight. Michael clearly articulates that the doing-nothing method guarantees failure whereas doing something guarantees results."
-- "Bob Cox, author of Flip the Success Switch and The Billionaire in You""I've been an admirer of Michael Masterson's work for many years, which is why I was so happy to see him tackle the all-important subject of his latest book. What I especially like is that he didn't take the route of many self-development authors and simply offer worn-out, generic advice...The Pledge is loaded with practical, simple, effective strategies that really work."
-- "Robert Ringer, author of To Be or Not to Be Intimidated? and Restoring the American Dream""This wonderful, warm, insightful book is loaded with great ideas and practical methods that help you achieve more in every area of your life."
-- "Brian Tracy, author of Getting Rich Your Own Way""What a happier, richer, more satisfying world this would be if everyone could be personally mentored by Michael Masterson, as I've been. Unfortunately, that's simply not possible. But here's the next best thing. In The Pledge, Michael doesn't just challenge you to achieve the things you really want. He reveals the specific, concrete steps to make it happen. You can't put a price on this kind of knowledge. And I don't know anyone who wouldn't benefit from reading this book."
Product details
- ASIN : B004A15BBS
- Publisher : Wiley; 1st edition (October 26, 2010)
- Publication date : October 26, 2010
- Language : English
- File size : 653 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 226 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 0470922400
- Lending : Enabled
- Best Sellers Rank: #965,909 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #2,270 in Personal Finance (Kindle Store)
- #5,136 in Personal Transformation
- #7,227 in Business Life
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

MICHAEL MASTERSON has developed a loyal following through his writings in Early to Rise (ww.earlytorise.com), an e-newsletter published by Agora, Inc. that mentors hundreds of thousands of success-oriented individuals to help them achieve their financial goals.
Masterson has been making money for himself and others for almost four decades. At one time or another, he's owned and run multi-million dollar companies that were public/private, onshore/overseas, local/international, service-/product-oriented, retail/wholesale/direct mail, and even profit/not-for-profit.
Masterson is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestsellers Automatic Wealth: The Six Steps to Financial Independence; Automatic Wealth for Grads... and Anyone Else Just Starting Out; Power and Persuasion: How to Command Success in Business and Your Personal Life (all published by John Wiley & Sons); and Confessions of a Self-Made Millionaire. His next book, Seven Years to Seven Figures: The Fast Track Plan to Becoming a Millionaire (John Wiley & Sons) will hit bookshelves in October of 2006.
Customer reviews
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He shares how he's achieved incredible success as a very successful NY Times bestselling author, extremely successful entrepreneur, master copywriter, real estate investor, written and produced four feature-length movies, created a nonprofit that has it's own community, and he's had several other successes just by creating and using master plans.
I highly recommend it to anyone I know that wants more success in their lives at a much faster rate!
This book had the potential to be an early version of "The Compound Effect" but it veers off on some unexpected tangents. Although I greatly admire the author's accomplishments and would love to emulate his lifestyle some day, he does recommend some time-saving strategies that are not viable for most people, including the 2-minute shower. But overall, the book is good. I especially liked that he wrote about additional topics you don't usually see discussed, such as how to get moving after you find yourself in a funk. That took courage and I think his strategy will work.
What really got my attention here is to stay focus.He provides the right tools of asking the right questions which which help the reader understand why Peter Drucker once warned"The most serious mistakes are not being made as result wrong answers .The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions."and above and beyond setting strategic boundaries that Steve Jobs coined" People think focus means saying yes to the thing you have to focus on."he later said "But that it is not what it's means at all.It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas.".The Plegde gives you the steps by steps tools to build wealth.I highly recommend it to any executive who is willing to things happen in their life and the customers they serve.
In "The Pledge," Masterson takes the strategies that he has used and put them forth as a system to follow...almost like a recipe. He also provides tools that can be used to "discover" yourself. It is a way of engaging your mind and heart as you create a better and more fulfilling plan for your life.
I felt "The Pledge" was inspirational as well as motivational. It reminded me that you do have to work and add value to the world around you, but that when you work hard in the right way, the level of success is higher and it comes to you naturally. Your quality of life is much more to your satisfaction all the time, because people were meant to help other people.
I would highly recommend getting this book along with another that I read early this year and has meant a lot to me. It seems that there are a lot of similarities between what Masterson writes here and the concept of Serendipity as described by Madeleine Kay. The book I'm referring to is Serendipitously Rich: How to Get Delightfully, Delectably, Deliciously Rich (or Anything Else You Want) in 7 Ridiculously Easy Steps . It too moves you positively on a path of change in your life and it also gives you practical steps that teach you how to make decisions based on serendipity.
Top reviews from other countries
The biggest negative of all, honestly, is that the book itself is poor. Don't get me wrong, it's life-changing and I still strongly recommend it. But what I mean is this: there is only ONE chapter that you need to read in the book, and that's the second one: 'How To Turn Your Biggest Dreams Into Reality'; this is the chapter which tells you how to set your goals as according to your core values, and how to work towards those goals every single day - it's amazing. The rest of the book, however... well, let's just say I didn't remember any of it after reading it. Apart from that essential second chapter, the rest of the book is basically fleshed-out generic "positive thinking", "do as I say" diatribe, with Masterson showing his age; gloating rabidly about his own achievements and telling you what's good for you. Masterson comes across as an old-fashioned elitist who mistrusts anything that isn't work - it's as if he's been following his own system for so long, that he's become quite literally obsessed with it, and he strongly encourages, if not demands, that you do EXACTLY the same. It seems to have turned him into quite the robot.
His obsession with productivity and his outright terror at anything unproductive is quite laughable; for example, he recommends limiting your shower to two minutes per day (since that extra 13 minutes could be spent working on a novel or something). He tells a story about how he and his wife decided not to buy a television until all their kids were out of the house, in case it turned them stupid, and even with his last kid leaving for college, he still tells of his paranoia that he may become "addicted" to it, thus corrupting his perfect 'goal-setting' system. One imagines that if you interrupted Masterson with a five-minute chat, he'd become enraged at you for putting him five minutes behind his daily schedule. At one point, he shows that he even schedules "dinner and conversation" with his own wife, and the way in which he writes, one assumes that he sticks to the time restraints of such a dinner and conversation very strictly. He also makes a distinction between 'Golden activities' (i.e. activities which he thinks EVERYONE should do because they WILL make them better people) and 'Acidic activities' (activities which he thinks NOBODY should do because they WILL turn them into idiots); 'golden' activities include meditating and appreciating art, while 'acidic' activities include watching TV shows that aren't documentaries, and listening to - and he makes it specific - rap music. At no point does Masterson even hint that any of this is opinion, so he basically comes across as a boring, rich, elitist old man telling you what he thinks is good for you.
At one point, the book delves into the... purely surreal. There is a point in which he goes off on a several-page tangent about how you should (nay, MUST) have lights with dimmers on them in your office, and how you should kit your workspace out with a whiskey bar and/or a Chinese tea station. Seriously. Now it doesn't take an idiot to work out that... most people simply just can't get away with doing this. This book is meant to be aimed at average people like you and I, so why on Earth is Masterson even entertaining the idea that you 1. even have your own office, 2. can afford your own whiskey bar, 3. have space in your office said whiskey bar, and 4. will not be fired on the spot for ripping out your office's light fittings and dragging in your own whiskey bar?! He also recommends carrying a pillow around with you so that if you're tired, you can just lay down under the nearest table and have a 20-minute power nap... especially if you're at work - no, that won't get you fired on the spot.
I'd like to remind you here that I still strongly recommend this book. In fact, this isn't the only Masterson book I've read - I recommend them all, but I have similar complaints with all of them. To summarize, definitely buy the book - it'll change your life. But only read the second chapter, since Masterson himself isn't a fun writer to read; the rest of the book is fleshed out with generic self-help buzzwords and diatribe and Masterson being pretentious and weird.
And if you're looking to get unstuck in your life I do believe it can help. There are some great tools, exercises and stories in here to inspire you and give you what I think is a much needed perspective in the world full of get rich quick promises and I need it now mentalities.
So if I like the book and think it's good and useful why the 3 star rating? Well - if this was the only thing I had ever read from Michael Masterson I probably would have given this a 4, but I have read every business book he's written. His ideas have changed my business and my life. I am a HUGE fan and admirer of him and his work.
But, as a long time fan of Michael Masterson, I would highly recommend so many of his other books before I would recommend this one. I am a pretty practical person and feel that books like Automatic Wealth and 7 Years to 7 Figures have FAR better applications than this one. I like the tone and overall message of this but just feel Automatic Wealth is a game changing book for anybody that takes it and uses it. This book plants seeds that you may harvest later but I bet most people will read it, enjoy the read and move on. Lives remaining the same. It really depends what you're looking for in a book, but for me, this isn't as hard hitting, to the point or as structured as some of his others. (Automatic wealth being my personal fave)
Plus I had read at least half of this book before - whether through his newsletters or his other books. It felt fairly regurgitated to me. I kept waiting for the big new idea or the cool story I didn't know and it wasn't there.
If you're new to Michael Masterson or you have only read a bit of his stuff to date then you will probably REALLY like this book - but I would still suggest you pick up one of his other books first!! :)








