To strike gold in the knowledge-transfer economy, it's not only important to have great client-getting systems and innovative strategies for building relationships with your clients and prospects…

… A great story helps, too. But for some reason, there's a part of MY OWN story I've never told.

I usually just talk about breaking free from the "Dilbert Cube," which I did about 20 years ago.

I also reveal how I discovered that great persuasion skills are only a small part of making the big bucks.

And I usually just tell about the good fortune I've had studying under Real Estate Gurus like Mike Ferry, Floyd Wickman, who taught me Cold telephones and Cold Doors, Craig Proctor, and Marketing legends like Jay Abraham, and Dan Kennedy.

I also mention that it's a blast to coach clients and watch them crank up their businesses.

(I'm not sure which is the MOST fun... taking struggling failures to outrageous success... or teaching the "already successful" to ratchet up the money-making heat.) But there was no such success way back when in the early days.

That's a part of my story I usually leave out. To me, it seems almost TOO embarrassing to mention. But recently I've seen the connection between my

"old-days" story and some of the insane things I see people doing to get clients.

So I'm dusting off a few details and dragging them out of the closet.

Here goes.

Back then, I didn’t “get” how dumb it was to chase clients.

It was like two poles of a magnet… the more you try to force them together, the more powerfully they repel each other.

So I’d go to networking events and hang out with (and hang onto) people afterward into the wee hours when I really just wanted to go to bed.

We’d talk shop and be best friends by the time the evening ended, but that was all she wrote.

And even though I got a few new clients occasionally, they were the worst kind… needy, complaining, and constantly wanting more of my time.

I thought I was just unlucky to have these kinds of clients. I was always dealing with their disruptions, emergencies, and taking their calls in the middle of dinner from unmotivated buyers and sellers So like the definition of insanity, I tried more of my local conferences and seminars and was like a chameleon… trying to be the “right” kind of the person you’d want to do business with.

Not only was I selling my soul, but it was also horribly time-consuming and expensive (dinners, missed opportunities at home with my wife and my children).

I won’t tell you how long this went on, that’s a story for another day, but it was an embarrassingly long time before I saw the light...

Worse, I did the same thing locally… going to business association meetings, Toastmasters, and the Kiwanis Club where I’d make lots of friends, but seldom get new clients (except the kind I didn’t want).

It was exhausting and a massive waste of time… just like making “friends” in online forums.

You can spend your whole day there and have nothing to show for it.

Thank God those days are over... at least for me. But it's a way-too-familiar story for many of my new clients when we first meet for coaching.

Because someone told them they needed to “get out there and connect.”

So they chase and chase until they're spread as thin as hotel toilet paper.

Which is a totally backasswards way to succeed. It may "sound" possible, but it's breaking the laws of human influence and persuasion.

And when you don't know the universal ‘laws,’ you can work 10 times harder than the next guy and make 1/10 as much.

As you know, natural laws are not a respecter of persons. Old, young, fat, thin, male, female, white, black, Asian, Hispanic... it doesn't matter.

If you break the ‘Laws of God,’ you feel the financial wrath of disobeying the smartest practices.

Put another way, it's called, "Losing your shirt."