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Jay Abraham – Masters of Passive Income Program Summary version 1.01 Jay Abraham is still working out the design of a program to teach people to become skilled at joint venture creation. Masters of Passive Income (MPI) appears to be at least his third shot at recruiting a ―class‖, providing instruction, and getting them to brainstorm on monthly teleconference calls. Jay is both building a new product and figuring out how to most effectively install the necessary knowledge, motivation and experience in others. But enough about that. MPI involves a very high volume of material. It's tough to get through all the reading. A lot of the material is taken from interviews, which are not necessarily organized for efficient digestions. Moreover, once you have read a large quantity of material, it is nearly impossible to go back and refresh what you learned without extensive notes. The first purpose of this summary is to provide notes for effective review. The notes may help you cut down on reading time, or you may use them to make sure you are incorporating what you learned. Another problem with the material is the organization. Jay admits that he is a not a linear thinker. He tends to wander in one direction and then another. He provides good content, but the volume of the material requires organization for efficient digestion. The second purpose of this summary is to provide a better organization of the material. I have organized the material by topic and subtopic. I think reading the first 2 or 3 summaries (or the original material if you are just using the summaries for review) in each category is essential to getting the message. The organization I am offering may save you from some of the repetition in the material. Jay is using something called the ―Socratic method‖ of teaching. I recognized it on his first call. He confirms it in one of his interviews. However, Jay is not a master at using the method. The Socratic method is the prevailing teaching method in U.S. law schools. It requires the student to read and analyze the material before class (or before the call). The student preparation allows the teacher to call upon students to teach based on their own internalization. In law school, professors ask pointed questions and force the students to defend their reasoning. The idea is to make the student a master of the material through the challenge. Jay is trying to get students to share new insights through the discussion process, but I have yet to see any really helpful insights come from the calls. The JAMPI mastermind group is our own Socratic organization, if enough people want to use if for that purpose. By teaching what you learn, you develop your own expertise with the material. You help others learn through the expression of common perspectives. We also have the opportunity to bring outside material to the mastermind group, to add things to enhance Jay's instruction. For example, Awan has introduced us to Janet Switzer's material, which is more direct in many respects than Jay's instruction so far. The Relationship Currency is also likely to fit very well with Jay's material. I recent reviewed ―Made to Stick‖ by Chip and Dan Heath, which I think adds a lot of insight into Jay's copywriting material. I am looking at a couple of business blueprint products to see if there is ANYONE who has put together a really effective A to Z implementation product, adequate to taking students from a low level of implementation experience and moving them to effective action in building a new business or mentoring an existing business. If I find that no effective product exists, I will probably start working on creating an implementation process outline. So that is where we are today. This is version 1.01. MPI is a 13 month course. If I stick with this project, I'll continue to add summaries of additional material through the remainder of the course. In addition, if readers want to add reviews of material that relates to the subject matter, I may include some outside products in a later version of the program summary. This is a big volume for a summary, but just remember that we are trying to process and make accessible for review a huge volume of instructional material. I have taken the material for this version from what I have posted in the forums, so I am making it available to everyone without any waiting times. Take care of it like you would any other exclusive. Hopefully this word file format will be more accessible than reading the forums, and I will add more in future versions. If you have comments, please post them in the comments to this torrent. All the best! Table of Contents (p. 2) I. Mindset material * A. Personal Mindset: Brian Tracy on Paying Yourself What You're Worth (p. 3) B. Client Focused Mindset: Advanced Strategy of Preeminence (p. 5) Stephen M.R. Covey on Gaining Trust (p. 7) Chapter 1 of Jay's Book (not yet summarized) C. Organizational Mindset: Jay's Interview with Paul Lemberg (p. 9) Dr. Stephen R. Covey on Passion (p. 11) Brian Tracy on Maximizing Your Time, Goals and Efforts (p. 13) 21 Great Ways To Build A High Profit Business - Brian Tracy (p. 16) Jay's Interview With Sir John Harvey-Jones (p. 18) 12 Pillars of Strategic Business Growth (summary posted by Awan) (p. 19) D. Organization Management: John Dudeck - On Highest And Best Use Theory (p. 20) Jay's Interview With John Dudeck (p. 23) Jay's Interview With Tom Phillips (p. 24) II. Joint Venture material + A. JV Mindset The Power Parthenon (p. 25) Joint Venture Primer - Transcript #1 (p. 26) Jay's Interview With Tony Robbins (p. 29) Fran Tarkenton on the Meaning of Business Life (p. 31) Paul Lemberg - On Change (p. 34) Nine Drivers To Business Growth (not yet summarized) Abraham 101 Overview (not yet summarized) Quotations to Build Your Business By (p. 35) B. JV Tools Joint Venture Primer - Transcript #3 (p. 36) Barter Basics to Think About (p. 38) Partner or Perish (not yet summarized) Rethinking Inside The Box - Double O Matrix - Alan Coleman (not yet summarized) C. JV Presentation Joint Venture Primer - Transcript #2 (p. 39) Joint Venture Strategy Consultation audio (I recommend listing to this one.) (p. 42) D. JV Agreements 93 Referral System – Summary (not yet summarized) Other: Joint Venture Training Program Teleseminar calls 1 -13 (p.45) III. Copywriting material $ A. Advertising Mindset Copywriting Template (p. 55) B. Adverstising Tools 37 Million Dollar Headlines (not yet summarized) 100 Greatest Headlines Ever Written (not yet summarized) Brian Tracy on Paying Yourself What You're Worth As opposed to the preeminence material, this reading covered another aspect of mindset: how you think about your own life and goals. 1. Main Ideas: 3 Focal Points for success: 1. Goals 2. Measurement 3. Activity 4 Areas of Focus: 1. Income and Career Top people think in terms of their hourly rate There are generally 3 things you do that account for 90% of your income, everything else is support, complementary or can be delegated or eliminated. Get your time under control by finding your top 3, making them focal points, and stop doing things of low value. 2. Family and Relationships 85% of happiness comes from relationships People who are good with relationships measure face time. Kids need ten minutes/day; adults need more. 3. Health and Fitness Focal points are waist size and 300 minutes/week of exercise. 4. Financial Situation Focal point is number of years you could survive with no more income at current consumption rate. Goals is 20 years. 4 Ways to Change Your Life 1. Do more of something 2. Do less of something 3. Start something new 4. Stop something entirely. Zero based thinking: ―If I was not now doing this, knowing what I now know, would I start it up again today if I had to do it over? … If the answer is no, the question is how do you get out and how fast?‖ (Same question applies to relationships, employees, partners – would you hire them again?) Orientations of Successful People 1. Future orientation. Optimism. . Losers think about the past and look as causes as blame. Winners believe that the best is still ahead of them. Idealization. Winners imagine an ideal future. Winners think about how to reach it. Vision. Go through the 4 areas of focus and idealize your perfect future. ―Practice what we call back-from-the-future thinking. Back-from-the-future thinking is where you project forward into the future and you imagine that your future was perfect in every way. Then you look back to today and you say, ―What would I have of to do starting today in order to create that wonderful future?‖ If you are not making the progress you want in an area, you probably need new knowledge. Courage. 2. Goal orientation: 7 steps to goal setting. a. Decide exactly what you want. Be specific. b. Write it down and make it measurable. c. Set a deadline. d. Make a list of everything that you can think of that you'll have to do to achieve the goal…. Everything you could read, every person you could talk to, every obstacle you could overcome, every action you could take, what you could do more of or less of or start or stop. You write it down, write it down, write it down until you come up with 10, 20, 30 things. You keep adding to the list. Each time you think of a new thing, write it on the list. The more things you write down, we have found in psychology, the more you come to believe that you can achieve this goal. e. Organize the list. A list organized by sequence and priority equals a plan. f. Take action on your list immediately g. This is the kicker that's going to double your income, double your time off, and make you rich and successful. It is to do something everyday on your major goal. Whatever it is, do something everyday on your major goal. The ―Three P's‖ for writing goals: Present tense, Positive, Personal. (Example: It is December 15, 2007, and I am receiving a check for $20,000 from my best salesman.‖) Write down at least 10 goals, then go over the list and you imagine that you could wave a magic wand and you could accomplish any one of these goals within 24 hours. ―Most people who do this exercise will find that within 12 months they've accomplished eight of their ten goals. They're really quite astonished; eight of the ten goals will be accomplished.‖ The only question you ask is, ―How?‖ Winners always ask how. There's no such thing as failure, there's only feedback. If you try something and it doesn't work, you simply say, ―This is a form of information.‖ Quote: ―Imagine that there's a great power in the universe and this great power loves you and wants you to be successful and happy and have a wonderful life and live a long time.‖ That's all that this power wants to do. The only reason that you don't achieve it is because you don't listen, like your parents told you, ―You don't listen.‖ This great power knows that you have a perverse nature. You have a perverse nature in this sense is that you won't learn unless it hurts. You will not learn. You just kind of bullheaded; if it doesn't hurt, you're not going to learn. That's why it's very hard for us to get the great lessons of life out of books or out of other people's experiences, we have to suffer. There's three ways that we learn, three forms of pain. We suffer emotional pain. We suffer physical pain. We suffer financial pain.‖ ――Whenever God wants to send you a gift, he wraps it up in a problem and the bigger gift that God wants to send you, the bigger problem he wraps it up in…. I know many of you feel like its Christmas morning again at your house with all the gifts lying around, but here's what the superior person does. The inferior person blames other people. The inferior person becomes angry, depressed, lashes out, and so on and blames other people for their problems. The superior person says, ―I'm responsible for my own life, ―What am I meant to learn from this setback, this difficulty?‖ When you accept responsibility and you look for the lesson, first of all you'll always find a lesson. The second thing is while you're looking for the lesson you're mind becomes calm and clear and positive, and you become more creative and more effective, people admire you and respect. You become a better person when you're looking for the lesson.‖ ―The starting point is to identify it clearly…. ―What one skill, if you were absolutely excellent at it, would help you the most to build your practice? What one skill, if you were absolutely excellent at it, would help you the most to double your income? Whatever your goal is, what one skill if you were absolutely excellent at it, would help you the most to achieve your most important goal?‖ ―Whenever you say ―what's yours‖ the personally instantly gives you a learning and growth goal, instantly gives you something that they're working on to become better.‖ All skills are learnable. You are probably only one skill away from doubling the size of your practice and doubling your income. 2. How the Concepts Translate into Action for Me. I can bring more structure to my thinking. 1. Focus on Goals, Measurement and Action. 2. Write out 10 or more goals for the four areas of life: income, relationships, health and financial situation. 3. Start with my top 3, and write out very clearly everything included in the 7 steps, so that I am taking action and measuring key elements every day. 4. Only ask how. 5. Decide ―What's Mine?‖ (In case we ever want to ask each other that question on a call. Advanced Strategy of Preeminence 1. Main ideas: As a lawyer, I naturally have a position of preeminence with my clients. So Jay's concept fits very well with my experience in this area. Quote: They saw a distinct difference between giving information and giving advice. They saw their role as telling people, ―Here's what you should do about a problem, or a situation, or an opportunity,‖ and specifically supported it with a compelling, irrefutable set of definitive facts. They saw their role as helping people focus on issues they'd never fully verbalized. As a lawyer, I have specific knowledge about the law. Clients come to me for my expertice. My role is to give them specific advice about how to avoid or resolve specific problems. I take things that the client does not understand, and I educate them, so that they can make good decisions in their businesses. Quote: They felt like a key element of their function was connectivity and to help people take the next steps. It did no good to give them a data dump of information if they didn't know what to do with it, and why to do something. Their role was to connect all the dots, give them a plan, help them take the next step, protect them, make that step logical, appropriate, obvious and easy. They saw, importantly, their role of their ability to put into words what people wanted but could not articulate or put clarity on, and then build on that for them. As a lawyer, most of my clients are not capable of writing their own legal documents, filing them, and so forth. I must either do the work for them, or shepherd them through specific legal processes to make sure that the job gets done properly. I have spent three 20 hour days at a client's office before, showing them how to organize documents necessary to the sale of their business, or example. Because they lacked experience in selling businesses, they depended on my knowledge of what to disclose and how to document it. Quote: So, it's like the secret to making business really soar is to have a passionate awareness and commitment to a higher purpose, and the higher purpose is not your own enrichment. It's different kinds of financial, or psychic, or transactional enrichment of other people -- helping their lives be better, helping them be more fulfilled, helping them get more out of the process, or out of life itself. For a lawyer, the interests of the client must always be preeminent. Lawyers who work on transactions in which they have a personal stake have a "conflict of interest," and they must be extremely cautious about doing anything that would generate a benefit to themselves at a cost to the client. Quote: People will always pursue their wellbeing in a logical, rational way, but they will make their decisions on an emotional bent. It is always easy for a client to take the advise of a lawyer. There is a natural imbalance in knowledge that gives the lawyer automatic authority. But in other areas of business and personal relationships, there can be resistance to someone trying to provide a benefit to others. Quote: You've got to understand, your job is to acknowledge that reality of human nature and compensate around it. Reassure them, direct them. People will do more things to curtail making gains, because they don't want to look foolish. They will work harder not to look foolish than they will work to gain an advantage. It's human nature. Don't argue with it. Accept it and factor into your strategies and your actions this reality. Jay hasn't mentioned any techniques for getting past people's natural defensiveness, yet. And since I don't think he teaches hypnosis or NLP, I am expecting a lot from him as we move past the mindset topic. So far, I have heard him talk about the benefit to the customer, reducing the risk to the customer, and so forth. Quote: Most people think, ―What do I have to say to get people to buy?‖ Instead you should say, ―What do I have to give? What benefit do I have to render?‖ It's nothing to do with sales shenanigans or trickery or schemes. My purpose for all of you is to teach you how to become value creators or value generators. Perhaps the key is simply to have enough knowledge that you are always a value generator in your field. Again, I understand Jay's mindset. But the mindset also requires that we identify what we have to offer that will benefit other people. 2. How the concepts translate into action for me. In relationships that are not lawyer-client relationships, I have to apply the same principles. a. My focus has to be on how someone else can benefit from what I know. Before I can apply preeminence to any relationship, business or personal, I have to identify how I can benefit someone else. Jay indicates that benefits can be both financial benefits and emotional benefits. Just listening might bring value to others in some contexts. In any event, in order to "sell" my services or products to someone, I have to have a strategy for delivery of a benefit to them. b. The key is helping the person to realize the benefit. It has to be implemented through concerted action involving me and the client. Quote: Instead of making a conclusive statement, they felt they were much better off giving their client the ammunition that allowed them to make the conclusion for themselves. If I do my job correctly for anyone, they end up evolving to the decision thinking that some conclusion is their own. That is my intended outcome because it's much more powerful if you own it .... You never want to draw the conclusions. You want them to take an action that makes a commitment. Your commitment to them will never be as strong as their commitment to themselves. If they don't take action themselves, there's no power in it. Empowerment is a meaningless word unless you understand its implication. If someone is not already implementing a certain behavior, and if I can see it, then I have something of value to offer them. If I can help them implement the change, or use a new product to satisfy a need, then I have brought a benefit to their life. Getting them to take action, and make it their decision, is the key to putting yourself in a position of preeminence with them. c. I think that getting past people's natural defenses, getting into a position to really help people, and so forth, involves more than the ideas in this transcript. I think the steps need to do those things requires a discussion of some of the other readings, such as Covey Jr.'s material on trust. So to sum up the action steps for me, personally, I think I already understand the preeminence mindset. The next step is to identify opportunities where there are needs, and identify the value I can bring. I may already have some value or I may need to learn something new in order bring value to the situation. I understand Jay will cover opportunities and techniques after mindset. The final step, which comes back to mind set, is learning to build relationships involving trust, so that my position of preeminence leads people to make changes that benefit them. That becomes a source of passive income when my contribution is recognized and arrangements are made for payment. Stephen M. R. Covey Teleconference: Leading At The Speed Of Trust 1. Main Ideas. The key to preeminence is to establish relationships of trust with other people. Covey, Jr. states that if you have trust or confidence in other people, business can be transacted faster and at a lower cost. Quote: ―trust is always affecting speed and cost. … like a hidden variable that's affecting everything else. … But we often don't recognize it because it gets manifested in other ways. But when you have low trust you're going to see all kinds of bureaucracy creep in, and different types of cost creep in that are all part of compensating for a lack of trust elsewhere.‖ Quote: ―It always starts with yourself. So even before you say, ―How do I build trust with other people?‖ you first say, ―How do I do this with myself? How do I build self trust? How do I build this individual credibility that will then become the foundation for building extraordinary trust with other people?‖‖ Quote: 4 core areas that you build that credibility. 1. Integrity, the foundation of who you really are. 2. Your intent, which is referring to your agenda, your motive. 3. Capability, your skills, your talents. 4. Results. Quote: 13 Behaviors Of A High-Trust Leader (with quotes describing) A. Actions that create trust in your Character: 1. Talk Straight (―That's being honest, telling the truth, and using clear, simple language.‖) 2. Demonstrate Concern (―Tell people you care.‖) 3. Create Transparency (――Look, I'm trying to help create something we all can win by. Here's what's important to me. What's important to you?‖ ... You're counting the truth in a way that people can verify and validate.‖) 4. Right Wrongs (―just make things right when you're wrong. Apologize quickly. Recover. Make restitution where possible. Demonstrate some humility. Don't let your pride get in the way of doing the right thing.‖) 5. Show Loyalty (―I will speak about people as if they were present. I represent them.‖) B. Actions that create trust in your Competence: 6. Deliver Results 7. Get Better (―Be a constant learner. Get feedback. Act upon the feedback. Improve. You're always trying to get better and better at whatever you're doing.‖) 8. Clarify Expectations (―trust breaks down not because there's bad people involved, but because people's expectations of what's supposed to happen is different. And they've never taken the time to clarify them, to validate them, to discuss them, to negotiate them.‖) 9. Practice Accountability (―You hold yourself accountable. Hold others accountable. Take responsibility for results. … accountability is hard. This is tough love. This is discipline. But when people are held accountable -- when you yourself are accountable -- you will build trust in all your relationships.‖) 10. Confront Reality (―Take issues head on, even the tough issues, even the so-called ―undiscussable‖ issues.‖) C. Actions that build trust in both Character and Competence: 11. Keep Commitments (―make commitments.‖) 12. Listen First (―Understand what's important to them, because then you'll have influence with them. But if you just try to talk first and not understand you won't have anywhere near the influence, and they won't trust you near as much.‖) 13. Extend Trust (―extend trust conditionally…. Those that are earning your trust, you're careful how you extend it until they prove more and more. But those that have earned it, you extend it abundantly, because people respond to that.‖) 2. How the concepts translate into action for me. Demonstrating Character requires a person to have confidence. The thing that really stops us from straight talk, telling people we care, opening up emotionally or financially, being humble, and being loyal is our fear. We don't want to be uncomfortable or embarrassed. But when we demonstrate that we have so much confidence that we can confront those uncomfortable issues, people see how strong we are and naturally want to follow us. They know that they can count on us. The only way to have the necessary self-confidence is to be committed to doing what you know is right. Even if you get embarrassed, if the most important thing to you is doing the right thing even when it is difficult, you will never be afraid again. When you aren't afraid to do the right thing, you can actually overpower anyone that tries to take advantage of you. The strength of your confidence is more powerful that the vulnerability that exists when we open up to potential criticism. Demonstrating Competence accesses another set of resources. It requires learning, experience, measurement, analysis of what works, and so forth. It requires action. It requires discipline. Over time, you develop a track record of capability that you can count on and that other people can trust. Character is a decision you make about what you are going to do, right or wrong, actively or passively, effectively or defensively. Competence is what we gain by learning and working. So as we learn from this program, we have to begin to apply it to something if we want to develop competence. Jay's Interview with Paul Lemberg 1. The Main Ideas. This interview was very brief, but it had some key ideas to remember about strategy. First, you have to begin with a clear commitment to move toward a specific goal. Quote: ―The #1 entrepreneurial question is: Where do I want to go? You cannot be strategic if you don't know where you're going. Strategy assumes that it's about a range of resources and tactics in service of a specific important, significant goal or vision. You have a sense of where you want to be.‖ ―Where is the Company Committed to Going?‖ Second, strategy is the process of process of determining how you will use your resources to achieve your goals. Quote: ―Being strategic requires you have a mission. There's something important you're trying to accomplish in the larger sense of things. And your strategy from the get-go is saying, ―What are my best opportunities to achieve this end?‖ … From there you begin to set things in motion to achieve those ends.‖ Knowing one way to get to the goal is not enough to qualify as a good strategy. We should always be looking for an easier, faster way to achieve our objectives. Reviewing and improving strategy is a also an effective means to developing consensus in a group. Quote: ―O.K. But if there's an easier, faster, safer strategy to get you the $5 or $10 million would you be willing to examine that against this?‖ ―I'll do the session with the senior managers in a company, however many there are. Sometimes just one, once there were 27! It can get pretty hairy because they don't really agree. At least not at the get-go. They always agree when we're done. I have a process that I get people to agree on, simply by having everyone share what it is they see. And then to start to kind of harmonize them. I call it Creative Alignment.‖ Because any situation is fluid, refining strategy should be an ongoing process. An organization with flexibility will be able to constantly shift its allocation of resources to take advantage of opportunities. Therefore, an effective strategy should include mechanisms for measurement, review, and refinement. Quote: ―I used a formal strategic planning model for awhile, where you laid out all your action steps for the next upteen months and then you tried to execute them. And what I found was that you could only go a few steps and then your plan fell apart. Every time. And the reasons your plans falls apart is because you're not dealing with a static situation. You are dealing with people—who respond! And who are executing their own plans. Your market is not static. You do something and the market responds to you. The market could be your customers. The market could be your suppliers. The market could be your vendors. The market could be your competitors. But you do something and the market responds. … The strategy is how are you going to lay things out as best you can to get as far down the road as you can toward your vision and then you define some initial tactics and you execute them. The process I use now is called Iterative Strategy. First you define your vision and mission. You look as far as possible into the future of your market and your competitive landscape. Then you define major strategies to gain the greatest leverage (biggest output for the smallest input.) You deploy – or position – your resources based on that strategy – what you will expend quickly as well as what you will hold in reserve. Then you choose your opening tactics – and mobilize into action. Then you reconnoiter. Evaluate your strategy. You test and measure, and if necessary regroup. And make your next moves.‖ 2. How the Main Ideas Translate into Action for Me. I can apply the foregoing concepts about strategy to my own businesses and to this mastermind group. 1. Envision the goal of the organization. Where are we going to be in 6 months, ideally? 2. What resources to we have? How can we best use them to reach our goals? 3. As various members of the organization begin to develop their own internal vision for the organization, they need to begin to vocalize it. Through an ongoing exchange with other members of the organization, we can begin to see a harmony develop. The refinement process will help each of us optimize our own strategies. 4. As we implement, we will start to run into challenges and new opportunities. If we have done a good job of forming and refining our individual vision, we will be in the best position to profit from other opportunities. I started a thread for JAMPI masterminds – Goals. I think that would be a good place for people to begin expressing their vision for our mastermind group. Even if you don't feel like you have something new to add, you need to start writing so that you begin to internalize the fact that we have a mastermind group and you are a part of it. If you are just watching as others participate, you won't feel as ready to take advantage of your own personal opportunities. Even if you just piggy-back on what other people are writing, if you at least engage personally in the visioning and planning process, you will gain that much more experience which can be applied anywhere else in your life that you find opportunities. Dr. Stephen Covey on Passion 1. Main Ideas. In a knowledge economy, old concepts of a leader based on a hierarchy no longer make sense. The key to leadership in a knowledge economy is to leverage the different thinking and skills of a team. Quote: ―I surround myself with people who are different than me -- who think differently, who challenge … I would try to get them very involved in this development of this strategic plan so that they really have a clear sense of what the most important goals are, and also what the values are.‖ ―Leadership is not position. Leadership is a choice, and it's based on moral authority. When people envision themselves serving other people's needs, and increasing their own circle of influence through solving problems -- even if it's not in their own job, but it's inside their circle of influence – little by little people honor those people.‖ ―The knowledge worker age requires people to use their voice if they're going to succeed. The industrial age drowns out their voices and disempowers them, because it's based on a control model. It's not based on an unleashing of human talent.‖ Invest in people -in building relationships of high trust -in learning and sharing learning -in setting up empowerment agreements Quote: ―If you study Jim Collins' book, Good To Great, he shows that in every case without an exception of organizations that were good, but then became sustainably great, over a long period of time the number one quality was humility – the absence of ego -- combined with professional will. They had tremendous, fierce will. But it wasn't about them and their career and their reputation. It was about the people, the cause, the work, and it became obvious to other people.‖ Begin with the end in mind. ―What is it going to look like?‖ Then reverse engineer the process to arrive at the end. Quote: ―Leadership is the enabling power to everything else that takes place…. Even artists need leadership… need some kind of vision… some kind of strategic directioning… some system of accountability, of nurturance, of a servant leader. And that's what leadership provides.‖ ―It is an inside-out process. They've got to literally work on themselves… take more initiative to bring the people together to come up with a strategic direction, with values, and with a vision that people can emotionally connect to. And that is almost the first activity that such people do. Once they get that going, then their spirit is kind of a servant leader, to ―How can I remove obstacles for you? What can I do to help you further what you're trying to do?‖‖ ―The strategic means that you're focusing upon what are the over-arching purposes you're trying to serve? And what is your basic value proposition, or your basic good or service that can serve that in the markets that you're going after? So that you have to think through what those big goals are, and the main plans to accomplish those goals. … you need a context in which to operate in which everyone can operate. People should be on the same page about that strategic context.‖ The key to creating strong relationships is listening and discovering what is really going on inside the minds of customers. You don't agree or disagree, you just learn and develop a deep empathy. Discovering their strengths will help give them a voice and empower them to make a greater contribution. 2. How the Concepts Translate into Action for Me. The most important message that I took from this is that I can gain so much more productivity and leverage working with others when you identify their strengths. Leadership in a knowledge economy requires the leader to be able to develop a shared vision with other people. Leadership involves bringing out the voices of others and motivating them to contribute in ways that they are capable, but may have lacked the passion to act previously. To achieve the results of a leader, the leader must provide a vision, and then work with others to shape a mutual agreed upon vision in which all participate and add their own strengths. Brian Tracy on Maximizing Your Time, Goals and Efforts 1. The Main Ideas Idealization: ―If I had all the time, and all the money, and all the resources, and all the contacts, and all the everything that I would need, and I wanted to design my life perfectly, what would it look like?‖ Each person define their ideal in terms of what they are responsible for, if it is for the whole company, then define it in terms of the whole business. Look for overlap between people, looking for common vision and plans that link things together. Eventually you arrive at a vision for the company. Combine long-term vision with short-term focus on daily and hourly action to achieve the vision. A superior mind can hold to contradictory ideals and still function. Most success comes from clarity, most problems come from lack of clarity. Vision is based on values. The highest value is integrity = wholeness, unity, perfection. Inner integrity is complete honesty and truthfulness. Outer integrity is quality and excellence in everything you do. People do not buy a product, they buy how they expect to feel as a result of the purchase. Therefore, the best organizations concentrate on how you feel as a result of dealing with them, and their focus is on your feelings at every minute you are in the process. Ask ―what would have to happen for this company to …?‖ The most important attitude is optimism. 1. always look for the good. Believe that the world is conspiring to benefit you. Ask ―What is good about this? What can we find in this that we can benefit from?‖ 2. Seek the value or lesson in every difficulty. If you have a clear vision of what you want, it is never in question that you will achieve it. Psychologically, we only learn through emotions. Suffering aids learning. If you disregard the lesson from a difficulty, you will often make the same mistake again. Nature increases the pain until you learn the lesson. Then you can save yourself from greater pain in the future. 3. Focus on the future. 4. Be solution oriented. Always identify solutions. Pessimists get bogged down in the problem of who is to blame. But what has occurred must be endured, so it is better to focus on what you can do and do it. Focus on taking constructive, persistent action in the direction of your goals. Successful people have success habits. Leaders know what they are, and they never deviate from it. We look for honesty in the people we deal with. There will be failures. Success comes more quickly when we increase our rate of failure … meaning that we are not afraid to take action, despite the potential losses. People stop taking risks if they are afraid of getting out of their comfort zone and failing. People succeed because they push themselves outside of their comfort zone. They work until them master it and develop a new comfort zone with a higher level of performance. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly at first, and often it's worth doing poorly several times. Read Brian Tracy: Maximum Achievement People don't take action in the direction of their goals if they are not clear on what their goals are. People don't take action in the direction fo their goals if their goals are too big. People who success are intellectually honest. They look at their situation with honesty and assess what they are willing to do every hour of every day to get to where they want. Successful people have clear, specific written goals. The Theory of Constraints. Between where you are and where you want to go, there is always a constraint. It is the bottleneck that determines how fast you can progress. Identify what determines the speed at which you can achieve something. Focus you energy on alleviating the constraint. The natural tendency of people is to disburse their focus. You can stay busy all day with a diffused focus. To reach your goals faster, you have to focus primarily on the constraints. The job of a leader is to choose the area of effort. Choose focal point. Discipline yourself and others to focus their energy single-mindedly on reaching the result that will help you advance. It is difficult to keep people focused on a single result. There are too many interruptions from phone calls and people coming in, and little details. But the focus on the big picture generates big differences. Success comes from focusing your talent on your very biggest opportunities, all day, every day. The key person has to keep them focused. Otherwise, people tend to wander in their own direction, and work on the fun, little, easy, irrelevant stuff. Get ideas about what you can do by looking at what others are doing. Then you know it is doable. If you don't know how, ask someone in another town or another industry. After you identify your constraint, question it. What else could be your constraint? 80 percent of the constraints holding you back in your life are internal. ―What can I do immediately that will begin to alleviate this constraint?‖ Then force yourself to do it. The difference between successful people and failures is initiate. But failures think that they also have initiative. But when you look at their definitions of initiative, you see the successes have a higher focus and they are much more action oriented. They take important action immediately. The hardest part of being intensely action oriented is taking the first step. The repetition of acts of procrastination form the steel cables of habits that destroy the likelihood of success. You have to throw them off and form habits of taking action immediately. The quality of your thinking determines the quality of your life. Leverage-maximizing output per unit energy of input. Acceleration-the speed with which you can achieve your goals. There are many things going on in every business, but usually 5-7 are critical. Citical success factors are the ones that can be leveraged with minor changes. Your weakest critical success factor determines the degree you can utilize everything else. Therefore, identify your greatest weakness and then focus you energy on bringing that critical success factor up. Good people are free. They always produce more than they cost. Good people are the fastest accelerator, the fastest way to build your business. ―Do I need to hire a key person here? Or can I outsource?‖ Value your time. If marketing and sales are you most critical functions, measure what percentage of your time you spend on them each day. Are you getting diverted into less important tasks? Only do those things that reflect your desired hourly rate. Budget your time minute by minute. Don't do the ―stress relieving‖ activities (ie taking a break to call home, walking to the water cooler, etc.) Daily and weekly planning: on a Saturday or Sunday, lay out your week: things to do, appointment, travel time; then plan your day, everything you need to do. Anything less than 2 minutes, do it immediately. If I could only do one thing on this list, which would it be? Circle it. Prioritize top 5 or 6. Those are the important ones that you do. Everything else is stress relieving. If you can discipline yourself to do the most important thing, you will be successful. Always work from a list. Once you have decided and made your list, it is off your mind. Biggest problem is having all the things in your head that are undecided or unrecorded. When you get them all down somewhere, your mind goes calm and relaxed. Next morning, start on the most important thing you can do. What is the most important thing I can do that will make the biggest difference? What am I weak at? What is my greatest opportunity to work on, outsource, manage, accomplish? Build a system where you get a reward, a sense of accomplishment every time you get your most important thing done. Then you get the stress relief and reward by getting important things done. People who are stressed at work are either doing low-value or non-valuable things all day or are not rewarding themselves for getting the important things done. Ultimately, we are happiest when we know that what we are doing is making a contribution to benefit others. Something that makes a contribution is what you can really become passionate about. Zero-based thinking exercise… stress is a sign that you are in a zero-based situation. The situation bothers you. It is a distraction. It is a barrier to happiness. Each time you approach the end of a successful growth curve, get ready to begin the process again before decline begins. Concentrate on changing your discipline on an hour by hour basis. Some things in life are facts and some are problems. A fact is the time it takes for a plant to grown. You can improve the plant, but you can't make it grow faster. The time required is not amenable to a solution. Risk reversal is the key concept for accelerating the customer decision making process. Tie a benefit to a time period or deadline for action. Give them a reason to go forward now. 2. How the Concepts Translation into Action for Me. Leadership requires initiative. Don't be one the people that fools himself. Real initiative involves taking immediate action over and over again each day on the critical constraints that are holding your business back from faster success. Begin with a clear vision of your ideal. Use short-term activities to focus your hour by hour actions, bringing you closer to your ideal every day. Identify the critical constraints that need to be improved. Work on them first. Brian Tracy: 21 Keys to Building a High Profit Business 1. Main Ideas. The most important factor in building profitability is the thinking of the company's management and leadership. High profit companies focus on: Performance, Results and Profitability. The most important characteristic of an executive is: Flexibility. Thinking tool for Flexibility: ―Zero-Based Thinking‖: ―Is there anything that I am doing in my business today that, knowing what I now know, I wouldn't start up again today, if I had to do it over?" Primary reason for business failure: Inability to stop doing things that are no longer working and fire people who are no longer performing. You have to learn to be able to say, ―I was wrong!‖ ―I made a mistake!‖ and ―I changed my mind!‖ Circumstances change, information changes, and you have to be able to adjust 21 Keys to high profitability: 1. Develop a clear mission for your business. Your mission must be defined in terms of how you serve and benefit others. It must include a method to achieve your result. It must include a measure to assess results. It must include clear written values that everyone knows and commits to. What is your mission, and how will you know when you have accomplished it? 2. Determine exactly what business you are in. Define the business in terms of what your products and service do for customers. If railroads had defined themselves as being in the business of moving people and freight at the best prices, instead of their limited vision of running railroads, they would probably still be dominant. What business will you be in tomorrow, given the direction of your industry? The best way to predict the future is to create it. 3. Determine exactly who your customer is. Know your customers' demographics and values. Know what our customers want and need, both what they are and are not now getting from someone else. Know what it would take to get customers to buy from you. Practice Zero-based thinking. Who would your customers be if you want to be a high profit business in the future? What changes do you need to make to attract those customers? 4. Develop a competitive advantage, or don't compete. What do you do well? Build on your strengths. Define your strengths in terms of what your customers want and are willing to pay for. What could your competitive advantage be in the future? 5. Take a long-term view of the business. Identify the core competencies you will require, and begin to either develop or acquire them, so that you are well positioned for the future. Look at what is happening now, and identify the likely consequences in the future. What new capabilities will you need in 3 to 5 years? 6. Develop a clear sense of direction. Set clear targets for yourself and every part of your business. The greatest killer of motivation: ―not knowing what is expected.‖ GOSPA: Goals, Objectives, Strategies, Priorities, Activities. Activities are the specific daily functions clearly delegated to specific individuals with standards of performance and deadlines. 7. Focus on key profit areas. High profitability is the result of focus on highest profit products. What will be the high profit products of the future? 8. Set clear performance targets. What gets measured gets done. Humans have an urge to completion. To be happy, we need a beginning, middle and end to every task. 9. Manage by wandering around. 10. Develop an obsession with customer service. a. meet expectations b. exceed expectations c. delight customers d. amaze customers. When you reach d. level of service, customers tell other people about their experiences. Reward everyone who demonstrates the highest attitude in dealing with customers. 11. Put a strong emphasis on sales and marketing. Hire well, train thoroughly, manage professionally. 12. Appoint and support strong, effective key executives. 13. Staff well at all levels. Hire slow, fire fast. Interview at least three times and check references carefully. Provide a trainer until the new employee is comfortable in their position. 14. Teach, train and develop you people. 15. Develop a caring work environment. 16. Develop and maintain high levels of commitment. Best people will have a high level of professional commitment. Biggest problems will always come from someone who is uncommitted in some way. ―Is there anyone working for me today, who I wouldn't hire if I had it to do over?‖ 17. Run the business like a turnaround. 18. Form strategic alliances at all levels. Suppliers: improve quality, delivery time, inventory levels. Customers: make them see your business as a part of their own. Third parties: who offers other types of products and services to your same customers? Outsource and eliminate non-essential functions. 19. Provide outstanding quality, performance and service. Your most valued asset is the customers' opinion of you and how they talk about you to others. Organize your business to create the impression most conducive to high levels of repeat sales and high profitability for your most important products. 20. Dedicate resources to research and development. Assume that your current products and services will be obsolete in 3 to 5 years, what will be your next top selling products and services? If all you had was your customer list, what would you build your business to sell to them? 21. Create greal morale in your organization. a. the work is challenging and interesting. b. there is a high level of trust and support, not criticism for mistakes. c. there is open communication. d. boss cares about employees as people. e. everyone understands exactly what is expected. f. people feel like there are opportunities for advancement based on hard work and excellent performance. ―The key to leadership is for you to accept 100% of the responsibility for results, with no excuses, no complaining and no blaming of other people.‖ 2. How the Key Concepts Translate into Action for Me. The Zero-Based thinking concept can be boiled down to this: 1. Create a very clear mission statement of what benefit you provide to customers, and how you earn a profit. 2. Measure everything you do against your objectives. 3. Take the appropriate action to improve performance, and eliminate unnecessary activities and uncommitted people. Jay's Interview with Sir John Harvey-Jones 1. The Main Ideas The thing missing from most small businesses is absolute clarity about where they're trying to go. When people set a sense of direction, they generally set it well below their capability. The art of management is to grow in people sufficient self-belief that they begin to approach what they are capable of. Unless other people are following you, you are NOT out in front. If you aren't ACTUALLY charting the course, then you're not managing. Look for things you can do better. Compare your business to one you would like to emulate. Identify your most demanding customer and set your goal to supply them. Identify you most feared competitor and set your goal to beat them. Look at trends in your processes, which will tell you where problems are that can be improved. Purposeful marketing: identify specific target markets; identify a variety of approaches; measure the results; continuously stretch your goals for results. Ideas are easy and common; development is difficult; marketing is the real opportunity. Selling is not just getting rid of whatever you make. Selling is the transfer of the benefit and advantage of your product by the focus of the entire business. The company has to understand the advantage of the product, and work hard to increase the advantage to the customer. You have to be doing something purposefully to achieve something. Keep company, customers and competitors in mind. Customer mentality: even if you can't be disturbed, leave instructions to interrupt you for customers. You should only do those things that no one else in the organization can do. Grow the people. The first thing that only the manager can do is to demonstrate the priorities of the company. Look at how you would do each job. Look at where the time and the effort are going. Address both costs and sales simultaneously. High leverage is always available on the sales side. You can only reduce costs slightly. If you have the right product, you can always massively increase sales. People never seem to recognize the value of existing distribution channels. They are always too focused on the existing product. But it is the customer base that is key to everything. Talking to customers is key. You find out what they want (product or delivery), and give them what they want. Talk with them about what you think they should have, but give them what they want. People are different. They can also change from Monday to Friday. You have to offer choices, so there is flexibility in meeting a wide variety of wants. Business must be directed at some objective; and the challenge is to increase the rate of change, innovation, and profit generation. You must really reach out to customers and employees to do that. Business needs to be exciting, something you can boast about. You need milestones and rewards, with public praise, especially for selling. Problems are not primarily political. If we were more economically successful, more problems would be resolved. The wealth to solve problems is created by businesses, not by politicians. The leadership of business success is the most needed element for addressing the problems faced by society. 2. How the Concepts Translation into Action for Me. Begin with clear objectives. Set your goals high, based on supplying your toughest customer or beating your competition, or emulating someone who is a success. Measure. Focus on the customer, and make your marketing to the customer purposeful. Train employees to work with a purposeful customer focus. Awanputeh 12 Pillars of Strategic Business Growth Build your foundational mindset on these pillars to build your business: 1. Continuously identifying and discovering hidden assets and overlooked opportunities in your business. 2. Mining cash windfalls each and every month of your business. 3. Engineering success into every action you take or decision you make. 4. Building your business on multiple profit sources instead of depending on one single revenue generating source. 5. Being different, special, and advantageous in the eyes of your customers and clients. 6. Creating real value for your clients and employees for maximum loyalty and results. 7. Gaining the maximum personal leverage from every action, investment, time or energy commitment you ever make. (Be sure to test your approaches systematically. Testing conducted for phrases used in customer greetings in a furniture store showed that greeting the customer with the phrase "What ad brought you into the store today?" resulted in a 300% increase in sales over any other greetings!) 8. Networking, masterminding, brainstorming with like-minded, success-driven people who share real life experiences and shortcuts with you. 9. Turning yourself into an idea generator and recognized innovator within your industry, field or market. 10. Making growth-thinking a natural part of your everyday business philosophy. (Most people don't reach their goals because they don't have a clear idea of what they want to accomplish or, if they do, they're not doing anything to reach it.) 11. Reversing the risk for both you and your clients in everything you do (so the downside is almost zero, and the upside potential nearly infinite). 12. Using small, safe tests to eliminate dangerous risks and adopting funnel vision instead of tunnel vision in your thinking. John Dudeck – On Highest and Best Use Theory 1. Main Ideas. Create a positive image of yourself and your surroundings two years from today. What is it going to take to get you to that future? Think about your existing patterns of thinking and behavior. If you had a war between the existing habits and future image, which one would win? What has to happen to make your future image compelling enough to cause you to change what is necessary? Focus on that future image to provide direction and motivation. Problems: Lack of strategic thinking, basic discipline, integration, and process improvement. Most companies shift from sales activity to fulfillment activity, always letting one or the other get behind and then trying to catch up. Your skills are at the best they have every been, but you are stretched too thin. #1 problem of CEOs and Entrepreneurs = Web of Entanglements: Dated skill sets Unproductive meetings Busy work Appointments Obligations Lack of focus, clarity and fulfillment ―The world hates change. Yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.‖ —Charles F. Kettering ―By its very nature, change is unwelcome. Even positive change challenges one's equilibrium — the relative balance one attempts to maintain every day.‖ Defenses against change: Fear, Perfectionism, Low Self-Image, Stubbornness, Learned Victimization. Embracing change is the key to freeing yourself from the Web of Entanglements. 1. Strengths Theory. Working on your weaknesses is not going to make you great. Manage your weaknesses, but FOCUS on Strengths. Don't try to work with what you lack, work with what you have. 5 cues to identifying strengths: 1. Yearning: what do you feel drawn to do? 2. Rapid Mastery: what do you pick up quickly? 3. Flow: what steps seem natural or automatic or unconscious? 4. Excellence: identify moments that you find yourself doing excellent. 5. Satisfaction: what do you enjoy doing or completing? We all have 2 or 3 strengths, areas in which we can be highly productive. 2. Focus Chart Exercise. 1. List your Top Three Priorities or Professional Responsibilities. 2. For each: write out your key result areas, daily activities or tasks that correlate to progress on your top three priorities. 3. For each of those: write down the top three factors of success. 4. For each of those: write down the specific tasks that have to be done to make progress, gain momentum or complete the item. 5. Rank each individual task as it relates to you personally: A for Gifted, B for Excellent, C for Average, D for Underachieving. 6. Beginning with the D list, decide to whom you will assign those tasks. Try to give them to someone who is gifted or excellent at that item. Your only job will be to manage the process and outcomes. Do the same with the C list, next. You may want to delegate the B list over time. Share information from your chart with people who will be assigned various items, for the purpose of helping them understand exactly what they need to do and how it supports the objectives of the organization. Every employee can do a focus chart, beginning with senior management and working down. Instead of job descriptions, use Focus Charts when hiring people (or recruiting JV and mastermind partners). The thoughtfulness and clarity of the focus chart will help everyone utilize their abilities to add more value to the process. 3. Desert Island Top Five. 1. List the 5 things you would most want to know that would tell you the most about how things were going in the overall organization, department, or job function. 2. Create specific goals and measurement for each person. ―In the absence of specific measures, people will invent their own or drift and those measures may or may not be true gauges of what matters most or how well they are performing their jobs.‖ A person's Top Five should be related to their Focus Chart. 4. Time Chunking vs. Time Stacking Fixed Activities: Absolutely must be done at a particular time, no matter what. Variable Activities: everything else. Stop treating everything that comes to your attention as a priority that has to be done now. Treat only goal-driven action steps as Fixed Activities. First, schedule the steps that take you toward your goals. Let Variable Activities be squeezed around them. You Must do the Fixed Activities when scheduled, to ensure they get done. Their time has to be non-negotiable. Never let Variable Activities take priority. Set aside chunks of time (2 to 4 hour blocks) to work on top priorities. Develop a hierarchy of priorities for spending time. List 5 activities that most frequently fill your waking hours and their proportion. Then make a list of the 5 activities and their proportions as they should be. Compare the two lists to identify where you need to make adjustments. 5. Preparation-Achievement-Revitalization (PAR) System Segment each day into Preparation and Achievement chunks. Schedule Revitalization Days (ie vacation) to increase productivity levels. Preparation Chunks: 2 to 4 hour chunk of time devoted to handling paperwork, answering emails, details, and activities that are necessary to clear the mind or reduce mind traffic. Achievement Chunks: 2 to 4 hour chunk of time devoted to your top three priorities with a special focus on financial results and the creation and growth of key relationships. 6. Strategic Decision Filter. Decision making: managing conflicting priorities. Select the top three or four filters based on your desired outcomes, and then create a plan for evaluating, implementing, tracking, and changing as necessary, those that are most important. Potential Filters: Most likely to occur, Biggest overall impact, Quickest impact, Most permanent impact, Least disruptive to existing operations, Most visible to key stakeholders, Quickest payback, Least up front costs, Easiest to implement 7. Triple A's: Actions, Assignments and Accountability. If every person in the organization has their own way of keeping track of critical actions, projects, initiatives, or to-do's, it is a problem. Everyone needs to be able to communicate precisely over time, using the same key terms, phrases, and definitions for every key concept or tool. Every organization has about 12 to 20 processes that need to be mapped out, put into critical paths and improved. Triple A's are a list of prioritized actions, projects, and follow-up items that everyone in the firm has. Each person's list should be different. List the item and a date for completion or milestone accomplishment. Never split the accountability for a project in two, having co-partners. 8. Other tips: Meetings. Assign an individual to create an agenda and solicit the input from those involved. Types of meetings: Informational, Status, how are we doing?, Problem solving, Decision making. To improve effectiveness, begin to use meetings more strategically. Determine in advance what the objectives are, what outcomes are expected, have an agenda, and stay on track by knowing how decisions will be made. A firm's leadership (no matter how few in number) must set aside the time for strategic thinking and the creation and execution of an operational road map. They should reassemble quarterly to plan for the next 3 months. Someone must hold the leadership accountable for making decisions, measuring, monitoring, diagnosis and adjustment. Clarity and Communication produce Commitment and Alignment (C+C=C+A) 2. How the Key Concepts Translate into Action for Me. Use the Focus Chart exercise to identify what needs to be done to achieve success, and to identify the right people to do each task, based on their strengths. Outsource if you lack strength in an area. Schedule Preparation Chunks of 2 to 4 hours for better time management. Schedule key activities for specific times. When a key activity is scheduled, that time must be non-negotiable, so that the key items get done. The Focus Chart seems like an excellent tool to me. It could really help with prioritizing and delegation. It could also help lower-level employees see the key role they have in saving time for others. Jay's Interview with John Dudeck 1. The Main Ideas Growth occurs in spurts. We always reach a point where no further growth is possible, given our existing knowledge and skill. Experience can be the problem: everything we accomplish or overcome adds a degree of complexity to our experience. The complexity can inhibit our ability to perform. The habits we form to succeed can inhibit us. The obligations we take on can inhibit us. And we reach the point where we can no longer get more done by simply working harder and longer in the same manner we have developed. We need to prune our habits, our obligations and the complexity. We need to simplify, and we need a system to support simplification. The Web of Entanglement is made up of: 1. Relationships 2. Habit patterns 3. Support structure 4. Knowledge Dudeck has 31 methods for coaching change for high performance teams. One solution is to constantly review and set new goals. More challenging goals may force us to pursue new relationships, change habits, improve support systems and expand knowledge. Strength Theory. Identify your top three responsibilities. List the tasks that go into making each thing happen. By focusing on what is most critical, you begin to break free from the Web of Entanglements. Trying to work on your weaknesses puts attention on the wrong thing and freezes people. At best, you end up with stronger weaknesses. Focus on strengths and develop the areas where you are gifted. Take those stregths to genius level through most constant focus. Identify areas of excellence, average, and incompetence. Identify people in your organization who excel in areas where you are weak. Assign, train, hire or JV with someone who can address your weak areas. Begin by delegating your lowest areas of competency and then move up the list. At least 70% of your workday should be focused on what you do the best. Manage the weaknesses, but don't do them. Write down who you will delegate to, and meet with them once a week. Address how people deal with time by Time Chunking. People are rhythmic. Work comes in bursts. Different people work well for different intervals. People need revitalization periods. High achievers generally revitalize for 4 days to 3 weeks, and then work like animals for three months. 2. How the Concepts Translation into Action for Me. Use the Strength Theory exercise to help people focus in the areas where they can make the greatest contribution. Help people give up or manage the little things that make up their own Web of Entanglement, making them less productive. Jay's Interview with Tom Phillips. 1. The Main Ideas All your key leaders should be involved in 3 areas of business growth. 1. Don't neglect your stable of current products, because they often have the highest profit margins. You may get tired of them before your customers do. 2. Every year, grow your present products and services. Add new products in a very deliberate way – only one jump at a time. Either add a new product in the same area you are already in, or add a new area using existing products, but not both at once. If you make 2 jumps at once, you won't know whether the new product or the new market is the critical factor to success or failure. 3. If you are interested in a new area, look at acquisitions. Even if you don't complete an acquisition, you will learn from it. Look at the people you might acquire in an acquisition. People closest to your customers should make suggestions for business growth. Use competitors as targets, to suggest opportunities for what you could do. Motivate by making agreements about common goals. You need to be the leader, not the doer. Empower others to initiate and implement. Be the best leader and develop your employees to do more. Entrepreneurs are organizers and leaders. They should not be the doers or micro managers. You must resist the urge to do it yourself. In the long run, it pays to develop the employee. 5 key resources. 1. People. Hire the best and cry once. A top expensive employee will build more leverage for your company than a cheap bad employee. Emphasize the recognition of people. Build pride. Build symbols that have meaning. Many jobs that carry pride pay little. 2. Customer base. 3. Products. You have to know the customer base in order to introduce a product. 4. Capital. Venture capital needs entrepreneurs more than they need money. You can also get money from sales, banks and vendor loans or customer prepayment. 5. Infrastructure. When you buy things, look for a good value. Then pass the item you are replacing down the chain, so that everyone is getting a new desk or whatever you are replacing. Green sheets: daily report on company sales for each product. Talk about your company values in annual reports, etc. 3 types of newsletters: 1. Subscription driven. Publisher creates, solicits subscriptions and fulfills. 2. Free newsletters. 3. Contract newsletters. Someone pays you to produce it and distribute it to their constituency. You provide a service to their customers, because you are good at generating content and production. 2. How the Concepts Translation into Action for Me. Focus on your 5 key resources. The biggest leverage comes from your people. Manage in a way that leverages your people as much as possible. Know your customers. Improve on your products and product base. Look at the best ways to leverage your capital. Don't overpay for money. Leverage your infrastructure to save overhead costs. THE POWER PARTHENON This is another short piece of material. It is another cornerstone of Jay's approach to growing a business: more customers, higher transaction value, more repeat sales. 1. Main Ideas: There are only 3 ways to grow any business: 1. Increase the number of clients • Referral systems • Acquiring clients at breakeven up front and make a profit on the back end • Guaranteeing purchases through risk reversal • Host-beneficiary relationships • Advertising • Acquiring qualified lists • Increasing the perceived value of your product/service through better client education Increasing your client retention rate by: • Delivering higher-than-expected levels of service • Communicating frequently with your clients to nurture them Increasing your conversion from inquiry to sale by: • Increasing sales skills levels of your staff • Acquiring clients at breakeven up front and make a profit on the back end • Guaranteeing purchases through risk reversal • Host-beneficiary relationships 2. Increase the average transaction value • Increasing your pricing and hence your Margins • Improving your teams' selling techniques to up-sell and cross-sell • Changing the profile of your products or • Using point-of-sale promotions services to be more ―up market‖ • Packaging complementary products and • Offering greater/larger units of purchase services together 3. Increase the frequency of repurchase — Get more residual value out of each client • Developing a back end of products that you can go back to your clients with • Running special events such as ―closed door sales,‖ limited pre-release and so on • Communicating personally with your clients (by telephone, letter) to maintain a positive relationship • Programming clients • Price inducements for frequency • Endorsing other people's products to your list 2. How the Concepts Translate into Action for Me. This is just a summary. The specifics of how to develop and effective referral system or other concepts are in other material. Joint Venture Primer #1 1. The Main Ideas. The kind of joint ventures we are seeking: dramatically expand income with minimal time, expense or risk. When you have little money or assets and no reputation, you have to devise ways to tap into other people's goodwill, capital, distributions channels, sales efforts, and so forth. Find their underutilized opportunities and make a strategic deal to help them realize more benefit. If you can turnkey it for them, no wise person would say no. Big companies universally do joint ventures to survive. 80 million small businesses have no idea how to do a joint venture. That is a lot of opportunity to educate and create opportunities. Quote: ―I have created a thousand marketing consultants. I have done professionals. I know the process and it is not a this or that. It is a sequence. The first sequence is you ground somebody and you get the mindset. You have to work on the mindset. Without the mindset nothing else will work. Then you get the proficiency. Then you help people figure out a strategy. Then you break down the tactics. Then you set them off to try it very safely and very very conservatively. Then you analyze the results. Then you guide them. Then you inspire them. Then you either adjust it. You may inspire, you may push, you may pull, you break through the barriers. Then you help them take what they are doing and turn into a system. Then you figure out what their game plan is. Then as they grow it you help them take it higher levels and you break down the barriers of glass feeling. Then after they have done it you give them away to even take it to a higher ground.‖ Common mistakes: 1. Getting trapped with the theory. Thinking you know it, intellectually; without the experience to know it transactionally. 2. Being intimidated. 3. Going after deals too big for you. The fastest way to success is to learn to JV by apprenticeship. Apprenticeship solves common mistake no. 1. You get some experience as you go through the process. You acquire proficiency by experience, just the same way that everyone learns to walk, talk, etc. You perform an assignment, your mentor checks it, adjusts it, corrects it, enhances, it, and advances you to the next assignment. Success rates:Read a book 7%; Audio tape 20%; Seminar 25%; Mentorship vitually 100% You have to begin by learning the JV mindset. You have to acquire the skill of seeing opportunities for JVs. You have to learn how to pitch the JV so that people agree to do business with you. 99% of businesses don't understand JVs, so joint venturing is very much an educational and nurturing process. You have to sell them on accepting the benefits that you can bring to them. To be successful pitching JVs, you have to convey trust. You must display confidence and certainty. You have to have a concept that makes sense. If doesn't even matter if it doesn't work. If they have the certainty that you have insulated them from the downside risk, then the only potential outcome for them is to benefit. When you have experience, you will be able to present with authority. The authority of a expert advisor conveys high certainty and confidence. Everything you present is conveyed with the mindset that you have the ability to make it happen. The deals you have done can establish your credibility. Then when you pitch people the upside potential without risk, they can't deny the common sense of working with you. Being able to sell business people on joint ventures requires conviction, motivation and passion. You must begin with a certain psychology and strategy and refine it by experience. Identify the keys from the experience. Accelerate learning through interactive analysis. What was the mindset? What was the execution? What did you learn? What could you tell others to do differently? What would you recommend? Go for the safe, certain, smaller deals first. Build a stream of income from several things producing $500 per month. Build perpetual income streams. The key to everything is to have control of the deal. Then you can sell your income streams or leverage them in other ways. Understand the odds. Start with small deals first: 1. You build your ability, confidence and psychology. 2. Wins build your reputation 3. You can build an income stream, which will support you when you want to make a larger commitment to a really big deal. Realize that it is a process. Be in it for the long haul. Quote: ―The average high ticket sales success takes nine to eleven progressive communications, and what you are doing with a joint ventures is selling a intangible high ticket sale.‖ ―And if you look at the best sales people, most sales people fail because they try it one time, they don't hit the result they want and they abandon into that prospect representing that line and they get disenchanted, whereas if you look at the great successes it is a sequential process where the dynamic of progression works to your advantage. Most people give up too soon.‖ Jay's pitch: ―I know that you do X well, but that you don't have the Y that you need. If I am willing to set something up for you, where I do all the work, are you willing to split the profit that I make with me? I can go and do this for one of your competitors, but I like you the best and wanted to give you the opportunity because I think we can have the most success together.‖ If Jay gets rejected, he turns it around with this pitch: ―If I were in your position, I would probably say no in the beginning, because I would wonder what the catch is, what he knows that I don't. But then I think about it, and he DOES know something I don't. He knows how to deliver markets that I am not going after. He knows how to turnkey it. And it will enhance my profit, if I put controls on it …‖ Jay has a lot of experience, so he can also educate people about the controls and structure that are needed on any deal. Case study examples: 1. One person's distress represents an opportunity for someone else. 2. Use an existing distribution channel to sell additional products. 3. Use existing relationships to introduce a joint venture partner. If you bring access to someone, you should start by asking for half the profit. 4. Make second and third sales using existing assets. 5. Identify underutilized assets and use them. 6. Use assets during a time of day when they are not utilized. Business to business sales are very profitable connections. 7. License successful selling methods from successful sales people. If you own a business, begin externally by asking: How can I get other people to open up new markets for me? How can I get other people to give me access to their products, selling systems, etc. How can I get advertising and exposure without paying upfront? How can I get markets? JVs can lower the barriers of entry into any business. You get to leverage the investment made by an existing business. You can use it to enter a new market or boost market presence. You can harness other people's knowledge base, learning curve, research, ideas to expand your horizons. Why JA teaches the JV program: 1. He is good at doing strategic alliances. 2. Most of the deals we will do are too small for him. But we may bring him deals that are too large for us. 3. We may uncover businesses in which JA has an interest. 4. You may come into contact with people who could be useful to JA. JA will be making money on the backend through ancillary opportunities. 5. JA likes to be forced to codify his thinking. He wants to pull out the key concepts from what everyone is doing and try to teach them and have everyone grow from their participation. 2. How I Can Apply the Concepts to Myself. I agree with Jay's insight into teaching the JV process. JV success begins with the mindset JA is teaching. I have specialized knowledge and a lot of experience putting together large business deals, but I have not previously tried to negotiate for an interest in the profits from someone else's business. Mindset from the first 8 reading assignments fell into the category of putting the customer's interest at the forefront, and building trust through both integrity and competence. You have to instill confidence, through both integrity and competence, to get someone else to buy into your JV concepts. The JV Mindset is the second concept. It involves learning to see opportunities in other people's businesses. The way you develop a passive income is bring the opportunities to people who will do the work and pay you from the profit. They don't perceive the venture as a risk to them, because they are already risking their capital in their current business. You offer them an additional profit without additional risk. In reality, you are leveraging their assets to produce additional income from both their business and yourself. With that mindset, the next step is to try some very small risk JVs just to build experience (a) pitching the JV concept, (b) learning how to control the JV so that it perpetuates, (c) building multiple sources of passive income, and (d) using all that to prepare for really big opportunities. It would be foolish to go straight for a really big JV deal and blow it because you didn't have the technical experience to back up your ideas. Jay's Interview with Tony Robbins. 1. The Main Ideas What are you doing that you are not getting enough leverage from? Recognize what you do. Measure and analyze. Determine how you can improve performance. Upside leverage: If you are already spending $X on something, then it doesn't cost any more to get a better result. Think about what could be underperforming: Sales people, Sales pitch, Advertising, etc. Test you headlines. Change only the opening statement. Measure the results. Everything in business can be measured by testing one alternative against another. For direct mail, change only the first paragraph. For sales calls, change only the first statement in the pitch. Make the first statement a powerful, self-serving result the prospective customer is going to receive from your product or service. They are buying a result, and benefit, an outcome that serves them. Ask what the ad means to the customer. If it doesn't contain the necessary benefit, then change it. ―What about your business gives a greater advantage or benefit to your customers?‖ Answers like ―service‖ or ―quality‖ don't mean anything. Know the marginal net value of each customer. Three ways to grow any business: Increase the number of customers. Increase the unit price of sale. Increase the frequency of sale. When you start a buying relationship, you have an inordinate opportunity to program the new customer forever. They are looking to you for guidance, and if they buy from you they trust you. If you show them the reasons why it is in their best interest to come and buy with you again, or obtain referrals for their other needs through you, you will get many more sales. In any industry, there are general ways that everyone does things. If you look outside your industries, there are much more broad ranges of illustrations of the possible ways to do things. Let your customers know, help them recognize, the unique benefits you provide. Go back to your old customers and re-emphasize the distinction of what you provided that brought them value, sell to them again or get referrals. Use a sandwich: combining half filling and half real tangible value. Denominate the benefits with a dollar value. Identify what they have done or could do with the dollars. For referrals, identify how their friends will thank them. Everything a business does is a process. Every process can be measured, compared, quantified and improved. Especially measure the steps in the sales process. Measure the dynamics and compare the results different approaches produce. Some factors impact the number of sales, a higher closing percentage. Some factors impact the dollar value of sales, a higher closing price. Where you are now is your baseline. Your variance is the difference in different performance levels over time. Don't drop what is working. Instead, build a broader base with several things that are working. Optimization: never do anything unless you can get the maximum benefit from your effort, continuously. Most people minimize their activities instead of optimizing them. Most people don't recognize the opportunities for optimization. Stop and ask what is possible. Optimal success strategy: plan to understand and incorporate maximum leverage, using methods inside and outside your industry. Superior mindset for the long-term is the client benefit perspective. Innovation is the bringing of superior value to the end user. If you always take the added profit from innovation, you can lose patronage. People also have to be shown how to appreciate the added value. Marketing provides the education of customers and prospects. Marketing increases demand for our services or products. Critical factors of sales leads: 1. Cost. 2. Conversion rate. 3. Unit of sale. 4. Residual value. JA learns from other as he teaches, by requiring them to illustrate their own understanding and techniques as they have applied them. 80% of your business from 20% of your customers, recognize and reward them. Ask a lot of questions, going deeper and deeper. Be specific. Be very specific about the result you want. Where does new business come from? Where could it come from? Who else stands to benefit from your growth? Who is in the position who already has must customers and has already spent time, money and action to get their goodwill and attention? Are they in a position to recommend or endorse me? How else can I benefit from the goodwill I have with my customers? How can I reduce their risk or lower the resistance barrier to the use of my products? USP. If you sell something hard like a product, adding something soft like a service might create a more valuable USP. Matrix for innovation: process of looking at and documenting everything that other people are using. You: what products or services have you purchased? What compelled you to buy? What about my desire motivated me? What was the outcome I was expecting? How did they convey that to me? What selling methods did they use? ALSO: make a point of inquiring of 2 or 3 people per day, how do you market? How do you express it? What has impacted your selling strategy? As you learn from them, document what resources they have that you could use. Take everyone who is not competing with you (geographical or product market), and contact them to exchange information. Then go to similar industries, not competitive but with common elements that you can learn from look to see what businesses have customers they're not maximizing where you could basically create a business that would be a joint venture relationship with them, or take advantage of the enormous investment and goodwill they have already made, the enormous money they are continually spending on facilities, equipment, personnel and advertising -- to sell or offer other logical extended products or services under the confines of the companies. Most businesses I look at sell one product or service -- they only think of themselves in the context of "I sell this product" when in fact the very acquisition of that product means that a customer has to have pre-done one thing and then post-do something else to make that product work. 2. How the Concepts Translation into Action for Me. I have viewed my businesses from a process standpoint for many years. I am in the process now of documenting the steps in each process, as a tool for training and to see if I can add more focus and leverage. Another thing I have in mind is measurement. Rather than measure every minor detail, it makes sense to me to measure just the critical areas. I will look at how I can benefit my businesses by measuring the cost of client acquisition and data about client purchasing. A final thought is about USP. There is a lot more work that needs to be done to communicate valuable concepts to clients, to build the client recognition of the benefits that they are receiving (or should be). Jay's Interview with Fran Tarkenton 1. The Main Ideas. You can generally make more money in an active business than by passive investment. The return on passive investment is based on risk. In business, you can make changes that cost little, but produce massive gains. Far more leverage available in an active business venture. Look at business processes: a bunch of steps that result in a sale of a product or service. Each step is a process, that can be identified, measured, compared, and improved. You will have new customers, repeat sales, and referrals. 3 ways to grow a business: 1. increase the number of customers. 2. increase the average size of transactions. Consider how you can add more advantages for the customer. Increase satisfaction, improve the relationship, and make more money in the process. 3. increase the frequency of purchase. Commit to building great relationships with customers. You can't allow a customer to fall to the wayside. If you look at customers as valued friends, then you are responsible to actively convey value to them. Find out who isn't dealing with your company. You have to maintain systems for customer creation and customer regeneration. You must know who is buying, what they are buying and how often they are buying. Maintain contact information, purchasing history and follow through records, to get them to the next transaction. Maintain the buying information for every customer or client that expresses an interest in your company or its products. If people aren't buying the right product or buying frequently enough, you can address that. Reasons customers stop buying: 1. Interruption: you stopped doing the thing that was causing them to maintain their relationship with you (i.e., a vacation). Easy to get back on track with a call or letter. 2. A bad experience. Look at is as a disservice to them, because if they were a client originally then they were getting the advantage you offer, and now they are not. Recognize who is not buying, and sell the benefit to them again. 3. They no longer need the product or service. Then you have to introduce something else that they need. If you can't call, send a letter which says that you were concerned but unable to call so you wanted to check in to see if anything was wrong or if there was anything you could do to help. If there is something we can offer or do differently to better meet you needs, please let us know (hours of operation, financing, other issues…) Identify everyone you have ever sold to. Call the big ones. Write to the rest. People appreciate the communication. It isn't pushing them, it is nurturing them, checking up on their needs. You may be doing them a real service by helping them initiate something they had been putting off. If they have been unhappy, it also gives them an opportunity to be heard. If you ask what you can do to make it right, they may appreciate your humility. Upsell by letting people know that you have more product or services to meet their needs. Have the mindset that your job is to help your clients get their needs met, and that it would be negligent of you not to let them know what else you can offer and how it will benefit them. Your clients are buying a result, not the product or service. They want the benefit that is derived from the product or service. When you look at it in terms of results, it is easy to see how a larger purchase will contribute to the best result. Often the customer does not know, and you need to make them aware of the full advantages available and the best way to get the best result. You are the expert, so it is incumbent upon you. You can't get the maximum advantage without knowing all the options. The best interest of your customer is full information, full education, all options to choose from. If you have a better alternative than what they came in to purchase, 30-60% of people will upgrade, which could dramatically increase your profit. You need to understand the cost of each sale in terms of advertising, opportunity costs, residual value, etc. The higher the cost of an initial sale, the more important it is to increase size of purchase and frequency of purchase. Increase quality for better performance and better result. Increase quantity for more benefit. Increase complimentary products or services for broader benefit. To increase frequency of sale, educate them to what their buying strategy should be, for maximum benefit to themselves. Program them to see the advantage of returning more frequently. Schedule a follow up appointment. Turn your enterprise into a continuous experience and event. The more fun or stimulation or positive it is to do business with you, the more people will return. That should be ingrained into your master selling strategy. Let people know that the constant experience is a part of your enterprise, that there are regular events to which they may be invited. Everyone wants to feel like they are a part of something special and enjoyable. It's all about relationships. A customer is not the product, they are a person with emotions and needs. The more you recognize and respect them, the stronger your bond with them. Happy customers produce more energetic companies. Instead of falling in love with your business, fall in love with your customers. There may be a time when you dismiss a customer: 1. If they are stealing from the well being of other customers that you want to serve. 2. Personalities clash and you can't service them properly. 3. If they need to go somewhere else to have their need met properly, because you don't offer what they really need. 4. The customer lacks an adequate appreciation for you. When you get rid of bad customers, it can help your business thrive. Success comes from really being able to convey to the customers the self-serving advantage to the customer that comes from buying from them, rather than from the competition. Unique Selling Proposition (USP) clearly conveys to the customer a superior benefit and advantage you provide over your competition. It is instant and evident. Pay for customers and results, instead of advertising. Begin by knowing the lifetime value of the customer. Then you know how much of the first sale you can give to acquire the customer. Go to your sales force, or approach your sales strategy, and make the appropriate deal to drive them to make sales and achieve the best results. Then you have to follow up with the new customers to reap the lifetime value of the additional sales potential. You have to understand the buying patterns of your customers. Lack of innovation comes from repeating what your industry currently does. Try things from other industries, try several things, employ all the methods that work effectively, that minimize risk and effort. It costs the same time, effort and money to send out a sales force to close 50% as 10% of their prospects. An ad costs the same whether it pulls 5 responses or 50. It costs the same, whether the initial sale is $100 or $200. Your strategy should be to maximize the result. Test your ideas. Find the best producing ones. Concentrate on those. When you become an innovator, you develop connections, and you become the person setting the rules. You owe it to yourself to get the most out of every contact you have with other people. 2. How the Concepts Translation into Action for Me. Instead of looking for passive investments of money, people who really want to make a lot of money need to look for businesses that have leverage opportunities. This is a concept that I can sell to people to build a massive joint venture network. The heart of any leveraging activity is measurement. We can look at processes and measure costs and results. We MUST look at customers and keep records relating to the key factors: 1. How much does it currently cost me to obtain a new customer? 2. Customer data for knowing and contacting must customers, past present and future. 3. Size and makeup of product purchases. 4. Purchasing frequency, cycles and lifetime. The heart of increasing revenue is improving communication with the customer from the view of what is in my customer's interest. Reaching new customers with my USP, and retaining them by reinforcing my USP. Increasing size of each sale by education about my USP. Increasing frequency of sale by education about my USP. Paul Lemberg – On Change. This short piece is more about introducing leverage as part of the strategy of any business. 1. Main Ideas. ―Your strategy is the direction your venture will take, because you said so. An invented strategy inspires you. It fulfills your vision for your company, and because you see how the realization of your strategy makes an important difference in the world, it inspires your team, your customers, and your prospects.‖ Definition of strategy as the ―...quest to overcome resource constraints through a creative and unending pursuit of better resource leverage.‖ Some things that provide leverage: Strategic distribution partnerships multiply your sales efforts. Borrowed money multiplies the effect of your invested capital. Training multiplies the effectiveness of an employee. Automated systems multiply the effects of your workforce. Marketing multiplies the efforts of your sales force. Mastermind groups multiply the effect of your intellect. Leadership, the greatest source of people leverage, multiplies the efforts of your entire team. 2. How the Concepts Translate into Action for Me. Think about your resource constraints. How do you get the most benefit from your resources? What can you leverage by combining resources with someone else? Quotations to Build Your Business By 1. Main Ideas. My favorites from the quotes provided: "The best way to predict the future is to create it." --Peter Druker "The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." -- Albert Einstein "You don't build it for yourself. You know what the people want and you build it for them." -- Walt Disney "The teacher, if indeed wise, doe not bid you to enter the house of their wisdom, but leads you to the threshold of your own mind." -- Kahlil Gibran "You are searching for the magic key that will unlock the door to the source of power; and yet you have the key in your own hands, and you may use it the moment you learn to control your thoughts." -- Napoleon Hill ―Most entrepreneurs fail because you are working IN your business rather than ON your business." -- Michael Gerber 2. How the Concepts Translate into Action for Me. Get a clear vision of how to do a JV. Then figure out how to help your prospective partners to identify with your vision. Help them through the same process you are going through of mindset, learning and doing. Joint Venture Primer #3 1. Main Ideas: Quote: ―Step one: steal underpants. Step three: profit. He really had never gotten around to figuring out what step two was.‖ Very few people are making all the money they want or using their resources to their best advantage. They don't know how to put thing together OR they won't get around to either verbalizing or doing it. When you go to somebody and you can turnkey a deal for them and you do all the work and you put together all the elements and you connect all the dots that is very appealing. Jay's Mindset: a passionate belief that the businesses he was helping needed him to make these things happen, more than he needed the income. Two kinds of leverage: 1. Incur debt or other obligations. (Very risky.) 2. Capitalize using other people's underutilized assets and opportunities. (Low risk.) They have already made an enormous investment in capital, effort, and assets. You show them how to take advantage of that investment. You make the rules in joint venturing. The key is to understand and control the elements of the JV, so that you have a preemptive hold on the deal. Look for connections. Look at the continuum of life. If you are in a certain situation, then in addition to the first thing you purchase, you WILL have a need for various other products and services. Look at what is logically related, before, during and after. Consider the entire profile of the customer, from the product to the age of the person. Once you have done one deal, and have some assets tied up, think through all the other avenues where you could apply those captive assets. (You already have one end of the deal tied up.) You have to make connections with other people. If you don't' sell well or connect with others well, you can find someone that can provide even that for you. Newsletter owners are an excellent example of a distribution channel that may be untapped with regard to all the products and services that can be introduced to purchasers. Not just one sale, but multiple repeat sales of multiple products. You can even expand outside the scope of the newsletter. They may be selling in their niche already, but if you look at the continuum of life and all the characteristics of their subscribers, there is no limit to the number of other subject in which their readers might have an interest. If you can tie up the rights to do certain types of promotions, you become the hub. Bartering advertising is a very high leverage opportunity. You can trade $10,000 product for $10,000 advertising. In a JV, the advertiser's overhead may be only $1,000, and they will have $9,000 to share with you as a JV partner. If you or your JV partner barters or sells the product for less than its $10,000 price, you can effectively convert it to cash. You don't' have to confirm a barter deal until after you have the products converted to cash. Look for companies willing to trade because the marginal cost of each product is low. In the JV context, you can build a lot of profit division with the margin. This also gives you a lot of flexibility to barter it with other products, especially those which also have high margins. Maintain the mindset that you set up each end of the JV separately for yourself. If you just put the two ends directly together, you may lose your leverage. Tie up each end separately. Finalize each deal with one end as soon as you are sure you have the other end also tied up. Tie something up, create a profit center out of it, and you can even sell it back to the same company. (Buyout provisions in your agreement.) Create an organization to become your client. (Example, AARP was invented by an insurance company, so that they could offer insurance to AARP members.) Mentors are very helpful. They can lead you through transactional experiences, which ensures that you gain the knowledge of how to do by experience. Quote: ―That the defining factor and monster success in the 21st Century is an organization or an individual's ability to creatively collaborate with other people who have pieces of the puzzle they don't.‖ The network you build will become worth millions of dollars to you. It will be full of JV partners that have the ability to do something as part of a collaboration on multiple potential deals. 2. How the Concepts Translate into Action for Me. You will be one of the few people who visualizes the entire process and knows how to put it together. The key is to control the prospective deal by making agreements with people that have underutilized assets. Then you can orchestrate each end of the JV. Keep in mind that you are building a network of JV partners, some of whom you can continue to build multiple JVs with. Consider all of the resources of each member of your network. Barter Basics to Think About One of the premises behind a lot of Jay's JV examples is the barter concept. You can acquire advertising, for example, in barter form. You can provide it to someone with a product or service to sell in barter form. They you can convert the barter to cash in various ways. So the barter basics are important to understand. This was a very brief piece of material that everyone should probably read. 1. Main Ideas. Barter strategies: 1. Save cash 2. Increase sales 3. Pay expenses with soft dollars 4. Print your own currency, usable only at your business 5. Paying with your own currency also extends the time of your payment. 6. A certain percentage of your barter credits will not be redeemed. (Have an expiration date.) 7. You can sell bartered products for cash and/or profit. 8. Create a barter profit center. Create a clearing house, where employees, customers, and/or others can exchange things. [You could even stock products in your barter center.] 9. Home Shopping Network began with bartered items being sold. 10. Expand advertising budget without cash. 11. Finance rapid growth without cash. 12. Convert barter credit to more profitable uses. 13. Turn excess inventory into cash without losing regular business. 14. Recycle advertising dollars by requiring advertisers to spend money with you before getting reimbursed as barter. 15. Stockholder benefits can be paid in barter goods or credit. 16. To prevent existing cash customers from turning into barter customers (thereby losing your cash revenue), you could designate it for new accounts only. 2. How Concepts Translate into Action for Me. Determine how barter can apply to your products and services. Determine what products and services you could acquire by barter. Identify appropriate barter community. Consider barter script of your own. Joint Venture Primer #2 1. Main Ideas. When you are pitching a JV idea, you have to consider the reservations of your audience and the reservations of your audience's customers. If you are giving product away, so that your audience keeps 100% of the first sale, they you have to demonstrate that it is worth their effort to clear your inventory. They are worried about the consequences of failure: exposure, opportunity cost, getting stuck with something that doesn't work. 1. They didn't think they would get enough of a result. 2. They didn't know how well you would respond in fulfillment of orders. 3. They didn't know if their customer would like the product. 4. They were worried about being in the middle of customer service problems. Turn each negative into a positive: 1. We will give you six extra of the product, in case there is every any problem with fulfillment, you can make the delivery. 2. REALIZE, we are giving you 100% of the revenue, so we won't make any money unless they order again from us. It has to perform above expectation. We have everything to lose if we fail to perform or if the product fails to perform. 3. We will fulfill promptly to satisfy both you and your customer. 4. Provide testimonials to prove that you and the product perform, above expectations and better than our competitors. 5. Only run 4 commercials. Give it a test run. If we fulfill and the product fulfills, then run the planned 1000 commercials. You can give away a different percentage of the revenue for different circumstances. You can give away all of the first X number, and then you get everything on the rest. Put yourself in the place of your audience (not looking at your cost, etc.) You aren't doing the JV for the profit of the first sale. You have another way to benefit. But you will never get there if you have not been sensitive to the mindset, perspective, concerns and psychology of the audience and the audience's customers. Make sure that the offer to the audience's customers makes the audience look superior to their customers. Make it look like the audience is doing more for their customers. What you are selling makes the end customer feel like your JV partner really gave them something of value. After you have the audience and their customers as subscribers, you can sell them other more expensive and profitable products, too. Upsell on your initial JV. Take the resources from the JV and combine them with the resources of another JV to cross sell the two JVs. Newsletter business have an extremely valuable asset, which is the goodwill of a market. But most newsletter businesses do not understand the possibility of JVs with their subscribers. The assets and resources of their subscribers are much greater and untapped for JVs. Begin by getting their trust. Get their trust by guiding them. Help them to better, whether or not you are compensated. After you help them make a little more money, ask for their trust to show them how you can both make a lot more money without any risk. 1. Show them how to use JVs to bring products to their audience on terms that can only be obtained through a JV, because the cost in the market is much higher. 2. Study the way they communicate, so that you use the same form of communication. 3. Provide guarantees that are better than the guarantees used in their market. 4. Add bonuses or accelerate the delivery of the benefit, without risk. 5. Be transparent. Show that you are doing it for the benefit of the JV and how you expect to benefit from earning their trust. 6. You may be doing 2 JVs – one to use the media and one to provide the product. You may be bringing someone else's product to someone else's market. Your ability to bring the necessary elements together is why you deserve the lion share of the profits from the ultimate windfall created by the JV. Sometimes, the best compensation you can get for putting together a JV is the endorsement of the media. You can come back with your own product or another JV and use that endorsement to promote a much larger deal. Before you propose any deal, think through what would move your audience to action. Other than money, what would motivate them to action? It is not the responsibility of the joint venture partner to appreciate the implication of the proposition you are making. It is totally incumbent on you. 1. You have to run the numbers for them. Invite their input as to your conclusions on the numbers. 2. Then explain that the real key is that the profit from the JV is a windfall. 3. Then explain that it is not the money that is the primary benefit, it what they will do with the money! 4. Then paint the picture in terms of what really motivates them to action: the new Mercedes, the family vacation, etc. 5. Then emphasize how MANY TIMES they will be able to enjoy that motivating benefit from the profit you will build for them. You have to rehearse the mindset, conceiving the JV and pitching the JV. Athletes don't become superstars without practice, and you can't become a JV superstar in your mind without experience and practice. All companies have voids. Some have excess capacity they can profit from. Some need new products that they don't have. Others have a need for a service. Others need value added information and products for their existing line. … Go to them with the piece they need to create synergy. … Look for companies that are doing well at the stage they serve. Look for those that are the perfect vehicles to use as leads for bigger more expensive products and services. (For example: financial newsletters might reach people with billions of dollars in investment capital.) Go to people that are suppliers. Show them how to supply someone else's product at a greater profit. Show both sides how to JV and save themselves the overhead that the JV partner provides as an existing part of their business. All companies have inquiries from people that do not become customers. Those inquiries can be turned into sales of other products. They inquired because they had a need, but the first product did not fulfill it. Maybe they need a less expensive product. Determine the need and find a way to supply the product that fills the need. Show a company its weakness, problems, under-utilization or other void. They show them that you understand it in a way that can turn it to a benefit. The investment they have already made can be used to make more sales. Think of all the scenarios. Every opportunity can probably be structured into 5 or more different strategies for JVs. Pick the strategy that fits best for the company and your own profit strategy. Lay out the details, so that they can trust you. Don't hold back and tease people, or they may doubt that you can back up your promises. If you work for a company: 1. Take existing products to people who trust you, and make a JV between your employer and your contact to sell to your contact's market 2. Bring companies with back end products, and make a JV between your employer to sell the products on the back end to your employer's customers. 3. Create JVs where your employer provides leads from people who don't buy from your employer, referring them to companies who can sell complimentary products to those people. If you can acquire someone's sales force for your own selling, then you can also acquire that sales force and create a second JV to sell a third person's product. Look for one-time opportunities, when you see an event coming: For example, if a seminar is not sold out, get the rights to the unsold tickets. 1. You can sell them at a discount and keep some of the profit. 2. You can fill the seats and take part of the sales at the seminar. 3. You can give them away at a discount or free, as part of a promotion for another JV or to create more opportunities down the road to sell to those people. Understand return on investment. There are many resources that companies have already invested in. If they are underutilized, then the return on investment is limited. Using them requires no additional investment, it is all return. You can afford to give some of it away, because the return on investment is measured by the life of the resource. Show companies what is possible. Animate them with the sense of what is possible. Whatever you lack, or whatever a JV lacks, you can get it. You can JV and bring the missing needed piece to the JV. Anything you lack or don't' have time for, someone else can provide. There is a lot more money in JVs than anything else, but you have to work with people who are going to make the JV happen. People who just passively theorize but don't take action aren't worth the time. 2. How the Concepts Translate into Action for Me. There are four parties to any JV. 1. I am the person who conceptualizes the JV, pitches the vision and makes it happen. 2. My primary audience is a person or company with a market. They are going to deliver my message to the purchasers. They have already invested in capturing the market, so every dollar they make is return on investment. Their main concern is the impact of the JV on their relationship with their customers. You have to leverage the JV to make them look good to their customers. 3. My secondary audience is the customers of my primary audience. They are going to purchase. 4. Product and all the pieces of product fulfillment can be provided by me, by my primary audience, or by third-party sources, either as part of the JV or coming from a second JV that I put together. To appeal to a provider of product, the vision of the JV compares cost of acquiring customers to the benefit of the customer. The provider can offer you part of the value of one or more sales, depending upon the frequency and size of purchase you are able to bring to them. Walk through the steps of putting together the four parties to the JV. 1. Think of all the people and companies that can work as a primary audience for you. All they need is a list of customers or potential customers that they can contact. They could be a media company, a company with existing sales data, or just a resource of names. 2. Then think of all the ways they can reach their customers that makes them look good, while they offer a product that you will provide. If they are already spending to reach these customers, there is little or no added costs. This is what make the JV appeal to them. 3. Then think of how to appeal to your secondary audience, so that they purchase. 4. Then look for all the products that you can create, or that you can JV with someone else to provide. What is the cost of fulfillment? What is the return on investment for the product? Select the most profitable products that fit your vision of the relationship between the primary and secondary audience. 5. Look at all the possible scenarios for a potential JV. Select one or two. Create your vision for the JV. Create and rehearse your pitch to the parties involved. Be prepared. Put the JVs together. 6. Think long-term. Can you leverage your primary audience or your market access again and again to continue making sales of additional product? Can you build trust as a foundation for larger and more frequent purchases? Joint Venture Strategy Consultation (Most of my notes for the audio – I recommend listening to the audio) Track 0101 A lot of people put all the effort into signing JV contracts and then sit back and think the dollars are going to roll in based on the partners. - but partners may not understand marketing, customer service, or many other things -you have to follow through and make sure that performance occurs, that understanding is there, etc. -you need to be able to control it!!! Track 0102 Hot Seat participant wants to move closer to affinity groups Take undervalued business relationship of a membership organization by branding private label services More credibility More sustainability More profitability and cost savings Track 0103 (Pitch by Hot Seat company getting the consultation) Track 0104 JA feedback begins on strategy and sales pitch: You must begin with a Master Strategy: Most compatible targets: Associations, Organizations, publications, affinity-based companies, businesses of any kind that have continuous and meaningful contact with target audience. systematically offer turnkey sustaining program to all current customers and past customers (because they may just need something else to buy for relationship to continue) own that niche for people who want (1) something of value for their customers and (2) an additional stream of income target top 1000 companies versus focus on dream 100 companies? (combination: low hanging fruit that is easy to get short-term, dream relationships long-term strategy) STRATEGY ISSUE #1: who are you going to target? (identify individual companies) Identify the prospective paths, referral routes to your end user How are you going to get the relationship or pay for referrals? Before you pitch, you have to ask a LOT more questions (see JA's pitch below) Explain the commitment before you ask for the commitment (JA gives his shot at the pitch) Begins by recognizing what the organization has accomplished. Asks what was the owner's motivation to build the organization Identifying keys to relationship between company and customers/members Then recognizes that company has brought significant benefits, products to the customers Asks owner to identify what some of the benefit are that have been provided Then says, I want to give you my vision for something else that you can provide Give a comparison of your company to what else is out there, to show how it is something that the company's customers would really want, has value to them. We are looking for long-term relationships with organizations like yours, to create for you a customized program tailored to what is best for you and your customers, and then bring together the best product with the best benefits, then we provide the turnkey marketing to reach you customers by email, website, direct mail, etc.; and we provide that systematic strategy to make an initial contact with your customers and then follow up to support and continue marketing to anyone who has not subscribed … Then testimonials provided. And the byproduct is that your organization gets in income stream based on what your customers purchase. Track 0105 Then JA talks about the financial and other benefits to the customers. Then JA talks about the revenue to the company. And this shouldn't be the motivation, because the benefit to your customers is the motivation But this is the kind of money you will earn if we are successful, which I think you will because we have really created a powerful marketing and support program to make this happen. And let me ask you what you might do with that stream of income. This is what you are trying to do as an organization. If you had this kind of additional revenue, these are things that you might do with that money to build your business or realize some other dream that you have. And we have an agreement where we spell out exactly what we are going to do for you and how you will be paid. And if we don't perform, you can kick us out. Because we set this up, so that your members benefit first, and you benefit second, and we only benefit if you are satisfied and we continue to earn you business. I put myself in your place, and I thought what should you ask me, what should you know about my company before you make a decision on this. 1. I would like to know more about the people that you serve. 2. I would like to know the certainty that you can deliver. 3. I would like to know how long you have been able to sustain your current customers. So I would like to provide you with a list of our customers … And I would like to show you the marketing program that we have prepared … And you can even use this marketing to grow your own client base And you have probably used this kind of service in the past, and your customers probably have, so if we need to cover the cost of changing service providers, we will do that … Realistically, most affinity marketing doesn't bring results because it is not part of a sustained program. Most people don't buy on the first contact. Most people buy after 7 to 9 contacts. So if you only pitch something to them once, you are not going to get a strong response. But if you use the sustained marketing program that I have provided, you will definitely see the kind of numbers we are talking about over time. And you can turnkey this and offer an extra stream of income on a similar basis for your customers to offer to their clients. Take what JA has presented, transcribe it, make a script for yourself to use. Incorporate the ideas into your direct mail and other marketing. Strategy: figure what everyone else is not doing and do it. Tactical: the presentation Strategy: what is the target's primary concern? The benefit to the target's customer base. That is why JA marketed to that concern above others. Strategy: here is what we think the issues and problems are, are we right? Strategy: demonstrate that you have covered all the bases, but they never lose control Strategy: let them know that it is a sustaining process that will fit their customers, customized as they would like it Strategy: their customers will buy in over time, producing income to the target Strategy: show them what that revenue will allow them to accomplish (company or personal goals) Strategy: but that isn't the reason you should do it, it should be the best thing for your customers (their major concern) Strategy: and I am going to prove we can do it by giving you these customers who can provide testimonials. Track 0106 Don't even work on the tactical until you have a larger strategy that it fits into. Because very few things will be accomplished with a single tactic. Trying one thing won't do it. You will achieve nothing if you stop after one communication. Send letter, follow up call, testimonial, sample your product, etc. Leverage with people that have already created relationships improves the return on marketing and shortens the time to acceptance. 1. You have to really paint a picture of the benefit, their end benefit. They won't automatically associate the achievement of their goals with the achievement of what you say the results your product produces. 2. You have to let them know what effort will be required of you and them (ie how long the marketing system requires) before you will get the anticipated sales results. Track 0107 3. Let them know what you are going to do to turnkey it, take the risk and effort out of it for them, and how you are going to make a benefit for their client that their client will thank them for bringing to them. Making those points answers the essential objection of ―why should this work, when other things haven't?‖ A. It is a process, not an event, and we understand that and have a program and a process to achieve the success that other programs and other companies lack. Instead of skirting the issues, say ―Let me tell you the questions you should be asking …‖ and ―Here is what sets us apart …‖ ―These are the things you need to know about us …, and here is what we need to know about you …‖ Storyboard the presentation and analysis JA just did, so you can use it for yourself. Picture funnel. At top: major issues of interest to your target: ―Four biggest problems faced by …; Three reasons that x problem …‖ [They have probably had one of the problem, and they can understand your explanation for the failure or problem] Next: let me tell you how you solve that. Next: how to buy Next: how we work (which fits with how to solve the problem and buy, making you the logical choice.) … at the bottom of the funnel, the logical conclusion is that they buy. Track 0201 Make sure that the tactics you are using support your larger strategy of who you want to ultimately leverage and who you want in your network that will build and build the success you want. Then figure out the sequence and tactics to fit your strategy. Once you set up the people, you let them know, we are so well connected, we can bring you other quality services, which allows you to control an endless distribution channel. If someone wants a product, why not find a provider and be the key to bringing that product to your market and other people's markets. Your distribution channel is underutilized if you don't build it to bring additional products. To maintain the best relationships for your distribution channel, you have to have the kind of integrity which involves bringing value to the end user and make your network look good and also share in the income when appropriate. Who implements? A. The company that sets up the strategic alliance. It won't be as important to them. They won't execute effectively. You have to communicate with them that you are going to do it for them turnkey without taking away their control, without exploiting them. If it's your primary business, then you do it. You drive it, because they are going to keep doing what they have already been doing as their primary business. Okay, here are the reviews of the first four calls from the Joint Venture program. So far, I recommend just reading the notes below for 1-3. Call 4 might be worth listening to, if the notes hold something that interests you. I would not bother to listen to the first teleseminar from the new material. I have listened to the entire 90 minutes and this is all I produced in notes: Call 1: JA's JV program: 1- Do JVs for your own business 2- Find JVs for others and take an interest 3- Finding deals for JA 4- Pick up deals from JA Keys to attractive JVs Person has a market, and they are looking for a product Market can be client list, referral network, distribution channel, etc. Easier to bring a product to an existing market Problem with getting involved with a startup is lack of positioning and capital They don' t have ability to do test marketing to measure what will work Linkedin.com Networking resource Good introduction - put in profile information that markets you as a deal maker Services businesses are easier to scale Manufacturing requires more work to affect changes Call 2 was a little bit better. It started out with a bit more content, and then got weaker. I wouldn't take the time to listen to it, but here are my notes with time references if something sounds interesting to you: Call 2: 2:00 Where to start looking for JV opportunities: in an industry where you are familiar. Who do you approach? People you already know; people who are easy to get to; then build a referral network. 9:00 set up Deals presented to JA need to be clear enough for immediate decision. Deal-making is a cumulative science/process. 14:00 Example of credit card processing opportunity. There was a good deal, but it was presented with the wrong structure. Think about all the different levels which can be structure for JV. 21:00 Example: godaddy.com Example of providing large number of products (upselling opportunities), many products offered through JVs 22:00 Example: teaching business seminars in Asia, created network of Asian companies available for JVs with American companies looking for opportunities in Asia. 46:00 To find the opportunities, ask, ―Of the people I do business with, what other things do they need in order to be successful, meet another need, or solve their problems?‖ Profile each of your clients. What do they do with you? What do they do with others? What gaps exist where you could identify an opportunity? 48:00 Dentists and other professionals offer huge opportunities, because they may be very good at what they do, but may not be skilled at business. Many opportunities to provide a benefit to their business and financial circumstances. 49:00 When entering into agreements, be sure to clearly define calculation of costs and profits. 57:00 Rita describes the bio/profile that she provides to clients. She lists both professional qualifications and business experiences. Like call 2, call 3 started out alright. But once Spike starts interacting with the group, the call loses most of its value. Here are the notes with approximate time marks. Call 3: 3:00 1. Look for people who have a need for what you do. 2. If you have access to other people's products and services, look for people who need the things to which you have access. 3. Who are the people that are trusted by your prospects? Look for access points, endorsements, and ways to leverage the prospects' trust of those people to advance your opportunity. 4. Trust your network. Easier to contact people when you analyze your network and look for opportunities there. 6:00 People will be qualifying you, you need to also qualify them. Pick the right deals with the right people. Make sure that the parties have the ability to fulfill. Look for people who have untapped demand for their product. Look for under-utilized and under-performing assets; assets which can serve multiple purposes simultaneously that are not being utilized to capacity. Could be customer lists, distribution systems, employees, space, etc. 11:30 Either bring an opportunity or a solution to a problem. Good if you have access to organizations and affiliations within industries that JA can bring a product to. 18:00 Measurement is extremely important. It should be the first issue raised with a prospect: What is the cost of acquiring the client? How much revenue does each client generate from the initial sale? What are their repurchase patterns and value? What is their referral value? The answers help identify the opportunities that make sense. 24:00 Look for market validation. If it is working in another location or industry, it may work for you. Sometimes you can borrow from what a competitor is doing successfully 26:00 present ideas in terms of the values that are important to them. 28:00 Example: a caller analyzes one of her opportunities at various levels. What are long-term goals? Ongoing discussion of people's ideas and reactions from Spike Understand the market Understand the profit Sell your knowledge, expertise and relationships 1:07:00 problem of checking records (profit verification) If you don't have the expertise, you may need to bring someone in to help you Call 4 had a lot more meat to it. Call 4: 19:30 First questions to ask to identify JV opportunities What other non-competitive buseinsses serve my target market? What other businesses serve your target market? Identify them for What additional products or services to my customers want or need? 21:00 Qualifying opportunities. Startup: little or no capital or revenue - generally disqualifies the opportunity 22:00 Suspect: not a startup, but not yet a setup, has most of the following: Capital, revenue, established in business, established infrastructure, market potential Underutilized assets Underutilized relationships Adequate margins (growth needs to lead to increased profit) Company leaders willing to look at doing it better, faster, cheaper, growth (attitude) If you have to convince them to consider, they fall into suspect category 25:10 Setup: all the above elements of a suspect, plus: They operate in an area of need They have a small decision-making group (rather than layers you have to work through) The deal has a significant upside (per your own criteria) Limited or manageable downside Organization has a bias toward taking action (Jay has little tests to determine this) They make little requests, then ask when it will be available, If the get it done on time then they have a mindset of action and execution. Also consider their mindset for: accessibility, capability, directability If it is a one-time opportunity, charge more upfront. If it is a scaleable and sustainable opportunity, you can get paid more on the back end. Consider profitability as an indicator of likelihood for success Once you develop a reputation, people will begin bringing deals to you You must have criteria to evaluate which ones you will look at and accept 37:00 Workable deals and margins Next stage: you develop a proposal of some sort They need to understand concept of incremental cost and allowable cost How much money can they allocate to add an additional client? They know what they spend on new clients and what the return per client is They need to understand back end sales and cross selling It is not about the initial transaction. It is about the revenue over time from the client. That is the basis upon which they are going to share income with you. Consider the cost of servicing additional clients or servicing existing clients They need to have the capacity to increase activity and increase profit Margin represents the amount of additional revenue from which you can ask for some 43:55 Also consider strategic impact. Does doing this deal help bring us closer to one of our personal objectives? Consider degree of control. If you are putting your reputation or brand on the line, you have to have control over its use. Cost of fulfillment. More investment of time and other resources needs to have greater return. Small cost of fulfillment can be done easily, regardless of return. Risk of liability. Fees need to take risk into consideration. 49:00 Relationship, Knowledge, Expertise grid You need to make a very long and useful list of your resources and contacts. Do it for your own business or as a profile of another business. You are going to look for companies that you can match up with, or sets of companies that you can put together, because one has a resource that can benefit the other. 51:00 Mindset: have an ―other person‖ focus. Your presentation has to convey the benefit to the customer. 55:00 opening lines for comments You can get some information from Dunn and Bradstreet about companies To figure out how to put opportunities together, look at what other companies in the industry are doing that is similar and applicable to your customer How do you avoid having a customer steal you idea without paying you? Work with people you know and trust. If you are offering to create enough value, you can have them sign an agreement. Either get paid up front (in which case you may get paid before you give the idea) or negotiate terms for continuing compensation. If you bring expertise or access, then they can't cut you out initially. Only give them a piece of the idea. If they treat you well, share more. That way you continue to have value, and they can't prudently cut you out. 1:13:00 Good industries for opportunities: 1. Anything online: there is already a lot of JV activity and affiliate programs 2. Media companies: lots of unsold advertising can be used in JVs 3. Professionals and service providers: they have an expertise, but lack marketing ―Business in a box‖ has a lot of legal templates that may be useful. Microsoft also includes a lot of templates. 1:23:30 Homework Complete the relationship, knowledge and expertise grid Read 20 marketing mistakes - most companies can benefit from this information Read Abraham 101 for mindset Continue developing your prospect list Call 5: 13:00 To prepare to present a JV, you have to understand what the concept means for all parties. You have to have it internalized and be able to convey it. 14:00 Successful companies are risk averse. You have to foresee how to allocate and manage risk. Four critical components of getting someone to say "yes": 1. Opportunity for all sides clearly understood and realistic. 2. Risks to all sides understood and considered manageable. 3. Validation exists in another company, organization, market, or industry 4. Consistent with the goals and objectives off all parties 19:10 How do you prepare? Anticipate and prepare answers to questions and objections. Even if you don't have the answer, you can be prepared to react to anything that is raised. Add your own questions to Spike's list, below. They may have these questions, even if they don't raise them, so you may want to address some on their behalf as questions they should be asking. Quantify the answers and be as specific as possible when appropriate. 21:10 Presentation Development Questions: a. Where is the opportunity for each party? b. What is the benefit to each party? c. What is the potential strategically, tactically, financially for each party? d. Where are the risks? e. How will they be managed, avoided, or solved? f. What other companies, organizations, industries, markets, etc. have done similar ventures and been successful? g. Why were they successful? h. What measures are being proposed to assure the same successful outcome? i. What other companies, organizations, industries, markets, etc. have done similar ventures and been unsuccessful? j. Why were they unsuccessful? k. What safeguards, corrections, measures are being proposed to prevent the same unsuccessful outcome? 29:30 You don't have to have the answer to each question. When you don't you can ask others to help provide answers, but you can even raise it to the JV partner and tell them you don't have the answer but that you should work to find an answer before you go forward. Additional Points: 32:30 a. Have a clear goal in mind, ways to objectively measure it, and effectively manage it. 34:10 b. Look for partners with compatible goals, cultures, and personalities. 36:10 c. Manage the relationships AND the venture. 37:50 d. From obstacles comes opportunity. They would be doing it themselves if it wasn't an obstacle for them. 40:30 e. Create credibility and instill confidence. 41:50 f. Marketing is about conveying value. 42:50 g. Sales is about conveying trust. 43:50 h. Ask questions and listen. JA uses Socratic method to question, learn and teach. 46:50 open lines 1:08:00 How do you find out what other companies have done to be successful, that can be applied to JVs? (Just stay informed by reading, talking to people in different industries, develop your own network, develop your own expertise, internet resources, contact someone who might know.) Call 6 To find JV opportunities, you MUST complete your self-survey of who you know and potential opportunity connections that you have. If you interview people, you may find opportunities just through bringing up the relevant topics. You have to be committed to doing the homework and applying what you learn. Start-ups involve more work. There are always companies that are looking for ways to expand their business. If they have the right resources, they may just need someone to come in and take the lead. Don't use email to make the first contact. Use email for people you know well enough that they will give appropriate attention to your email. Start with people you know. Start with people who can access the people you need. Methods to address Risk Aversion: 1. Test your ideas with them. Don't propose to make global changes to their business or full rollout without some validation. 2. Performance based compensation 3. New profit center Types of deals a. Add-on products and services b. Cross promotions c. Referral systems and networks d. Bonuses and product/service bundling e. Unconverted Leads f. Soft©\marketing g. Getting control of a product or market h. The Abraham Group Consulting Services Ways to get paid a. Flat fee b. Commission c. Revenue Share (Make sure that contract contains a mutual performance provision.) d. Equity e. Barter f. Reciprocation g. Publicity and Goodwill 55:30 open lines 1:02:00 Opportunity mindset: so many opportunities: go to a conference or show locally and just meet people and ask them about networking and business opportunities. You can meet people very quickly at these types of events, because that is part of reason everyone is there. (You can share opportunities for your business, their business, or look for opportunities to teach what you know.) 1:14:00 homework: Read case studies for examples of JVs and other business case studies Fill out your "Relationships, Knowledge, Expertise" materials (foundation for finding deals and identifying correlations for opportunities) Identify a relationship, and then use the Development Questions from the last call to formulate a plan and prepare your presentation of the JV idea. NVinc.com (business formation resource example) Call 7 Profitability and probability (pick deals with high probability.) Types of deals/Case Studies a. Crusher waste and bike trail (cost savings, using waste examples) b. Executive Art consultation/broker (sales commission from artists for selling their art and fee from businessmen for decorating their offices) c. Unconverted competitor leads (already spent the money on marketing, keep the name and info and determine how to profit from it. Referral network, another product, etc.) d. Apartment rental: referral relationships for furniture rental, restaurants, moving, etc. e. Real Estate Agent: referral relationships for landscaping, pool service, moving, junk removal, etc. f. Factoring, asset based financing, legal settlements g. Expert/consultant networks (refer to each other in network) h. Consigner services i. Consignment j. Corporations, organizations, associations discounts k. Host an expert, seminar, workshop l. Limo companies: referral relationships for hotels, food, etc. m. Priceline, Ebay, Amazon: capture names i. Created the market ii. Became the toll booth Criteria for The Abraham Group a. Set-up (established resources, no new investment needed) b. Leverageable (once it is set up, can use it again in other businesses) c. Scalable (once it is set up, can enlarge it or use it in other markets) d. Sustainable e. Brand sustaining or enhancing (for JA, it has to fit well with his brand) f. Existing marketing g. Likely annual return to the Abraham Group in mid©\six figures 42:50 The Entrepreneurial Mindset a. Look at everything and ask "Where's the opportunity in this?" b. Be flexible c. Have a bias toward action d. Understand marketing is the life force of all business achievement e. Focus on the present f. Be tenacious g. Be pragmatic-don't take unnecessary risks h. There is a logical order to things, have a plan and work it i. Have certainty, faith, and a positive expectation j. Use leverage to your advantage k. Become an idea-generator, an innovator-ask why, how, what if 1:01:00 open lines Marketing=engage, educate, direct (tell them how to buy from you) Recommended books: Freakonomics, The Culture Code, Blink, The Wisdom of Crowds, The Long Tail Call 8 If the risk is significant or the money involved is significant, use appropriate contracts. On small deals, a letter of understanding or other short agreement should be sufficient. Before developing a ¡°franchise¡± be aware of franchise laws in your state. Open lines for specific callers missed previously. (No other participants wanted to go.) 32:10 JA presentation. Joint Venture is a long-term relationship to generate increased incremental income, where you bring tangible added value to someone else or the catalyst that turns the concept into money. JA was able to see the resources that companies had invested in to develop credible markets, and that those resources were available and underutilized. By accessing them, new income could be generated with minimal investment of time and resources. Must understand: 1. show people the certainty of the deal 2. show that it is all revenue that they would not otherwise have 3. eliminate risk 4. give them control of the economics Many opportunities to use underutilized media or advertising resources. Step 1: tie up the media or other resource. Step 2: utilize it for another JV and collect the revenue. Many opportunities to take someone's inventory and place it, where locations take it on consignment and keep a share of the sales revenue. Identify traffic areas where products can be sold. Identify products and services that can be bartered, particularly when barter with one person can be converted to cash by sale to someone else. Identify people (like newsletters) with credible relationships with markets with identifiable interests. JA's simplest deal: showed a business that did printing but had terrible marketing how to get $10,000 of marketing in exchange for $10,000 of printing. JA used the marketing for which he had bartered to sell for $10,000 in printing. JA then sold the printing for cash. Most creative deal: Found a company that was only selling 5% of leads. Paid them for the names of the 95% that they did not close. Used the list to make money. Most lucrative deal: JVs with people who were credible with large audiences. (ie, had Tony Robbins promote his $15,000 seminar and filled it, making millions with seminars, shared revenue with Robbins.) The greatest ability to make money: see possibilities (vision) AND be able to compel people to take action required to turn it into revenue. Buy rights, assets, distribution, brands, processes, sales forces Perform functions (like reactivation) Add products, create a front or back end, show order takers how to upsell Increase productivity, efficiency, teach ideas License access, license things they don't even know they have Insert ads in their offers and communications Leverage endorsements Buy the rights to a recorded program, transcribe it, use it as a sales tool or product; interview people, record it and use it as a sales tool or product. Once you have the product, you can make revenue from it forever. Start with companies that are already set up. It is possible to make any idea work, but if it is going to be difficult or risky avoid it. Look for companies that are weak in marketing. Company should be big enough to execute, but small enough that you can deal with the owner. Get paid on income, profits, usage, savings, productivity, monthly fee, other types of fees, barter systems, [use points as an expediting fee (they use up the points and you save money without needing to sell anything else), sell the idea for part of the cash savings] Pay people a small fee to sell your stuff. Toll booth concept: put yourself in the middle of people that are trading, buying and selling, doing business. Get a transaction fee, royalty, etc from the situation on recurring basis: per sale, per appointment, per lead, etc. Come up with a new bonus, a new sales angle, a new headline. Test it. If it works, take a share of the increase in revenue. Start with ideas that are the easiest to monetize. If you want to learn this, start with a mentor. Someone who can help you understand the ideas AND turn it into action and into revenue. Then start getting the low hanging fruit. There is going to be some revenue that is the easiest to get. Start with that. Audit your available resources, skills. Get what you need. Get who you need. Bring the idea and hire what you need, keeping as much as you can. Do it through your company, your employer or someone else's company. Same concepts apply, you just arrange a different mechanism to control the process. Start with company that uses only one form of marketing, you bring another form of marketing and take a percentage of the revenue simply from the new marketing concept. Add internet. Own their internet. Leverage it on sale of the company per contract. Win/win. Start with what ypu know, where you have contacts. Othersie, you are wasting leveraging your own assets. Starting from scratch is the worst idea. Get clear on what you want to do. List ways to do it. Prioritize. Bring your passion to make it happen with other people. Don't compromise yourself by doing less profitable deals. Call 9 Ideas for approaching business owners: "What would it be worth to you if..." If not interested, "Who is your closest competitor?" 10:00 effective elevator speech (quick pitch: concise, tangible value or benefit to them or another, give them the ability to assess what you do.) "You know how when ...? [describe scenario that sets up your pitch]" Example: "...someone wants to access a specific distribution channel, but they don't have the expertise or resources to do it?" Now you have engaged them in a conversation, and you are controlling the direction. "... Well, what I do is ¡ [make your quick pitch]" Consider who is in a position to refer opportunities, clients, customers, products, markets to you. 14:30 open lines If you want to get into newsletters, start by looking at online newsletters, see who is not advertising, see who is doing the same thing and might be open to additional methods of leveraging their assets. 30:45 back to Spike (for lack of questions from callers) Don't resell JA's stuff off the shelf. Instead, find a specific industry that needs the ideas, and create a product or work with JA to make a customized product for that industry. 40:00 open lines again Problem: person is running into JV opportunities where people want money up front. Example: dead airtime on radio. Keys: 1. You have to get to the right person. (General manager) 2. Position it on a standby basis. Do it once. If you like it, continue. Otherwise, stop. 3. Consider telling them what you will sell the spots for, and how you will split it, or negotiate some structure. 4. Sell it: No downside, unsold airtime is merely a lost resource. Give evidence of your ability (worth their time to deal with). Is this program a mentoring program? Or is mentoring going to continue after we take the test and get certified to bring deals to JA? Is JA just going to keep upselling us after we get through this program? "The Windfall Profits Paradox" article by JA. Some people sell it for $10-200. Helps for positioning and credibility. Call 10 It is time to take what you have learned and put it into an actionable plan. At some point, you have to take all or your notes about who and what you know and establish a clear vision that you can articulate to someone else. Reaching Success requires of vision, passion, strategy, and commitment to action. In "Strategic Thinking and The New Science," T. Irene Sanders tells us, ¡°Strategic thinking has two major components: insight about the present and foresight about the future.¡± You have to be able to see something beyond what exists today, and understand how to get there. a. Reflect on where you started and take pride in where you are b. Begin formulating a vision of where you are going, what you need to get started, the relationships and resources you need to enlist. i. Who will benefit from your vision ii. How will they benefit iii. How can they help you in return c. Start detailing the key steps to turn your vision into a reality; determine the benchmarks to measure your progress, and the parameters to direct your time, energy, resources, and creativity. i. What is the most important/strategic thing you can do first? ii. What are the next major activities you need to take or delegate? iii. What does success look like and how will you measure your progress? iv. What do you need to prepare for, ensure, or guard against? v. What resources, assets, or strengths do you have or have access to assist you? vi. What resources, assets, or strengths do you need to obtain, supplement, outsource, or create? 23:00 Open lines Missing from Dudeck interview: PAR time mgt (Preparation time, Achievement time, Restoration time) 4 hour blocks for Achievement time (maybe work up to it from 30 minute blocks) Achievement time is focused on most critical things you need to do. Dudeck Book: ¡°How to Get an A in Life.¡± [$29.95 at http://tdg.mediuscorp.com/] On the Dudeck audio: Strength assessment: diagram strengths, and then subsets of those strengths. Focus on your strengths and doing the things that are the most focused and most productive. StrategicCoach.com also suggests focusing just on your strengths, and then recuperation days. Track how you spend your time, currently. Then you can find what you need to change. Call 11 Don¡¯t wait to become a master of the concepts before you start using them. You have to start trying in order to get experience using what you are learning. Maximum Outcome versus Maximum Income ¨C go after deals that have value beyond just the immediate dollars (especially high likelihood of outcome). The key to leverage isn¡¯t just about the length of the lever and the fulcrum; it¡¯s also about knowing where you stand. You have to understand your position. Do you want to be an income producer or business©\builder? The Spike Humer Short Course in Management: 1. Be motivated by long term vision and directed by immediate priorities a. The future creates the present. 2. Leverage the talent, time, and energy of other people by engaging them in your vision¡ªfor their reasons 3. Do only what you do best and better than anyone else around you 4. Delegate functions, not tasks 5. Focus on service before self©\interest 6. Hire slowly and fire fast Your path to greatness: Not about how great I am, or the course; it¡¯s about how great you can and will be. Inadvisable compensation: 1. Ascending Compensation 2. Minority equity with only performance©\based compensation 3. Variable or performance based compensation with a turnaround Open lines 47:30 Ideas to help you write a book/ebook 1. testimonials or case studies ala JA style 2. record sessions with clients, transcribe and use material 3. use a ghost writer to fill in your own outline Everyone in the program will be given a test to ensure they understand the material, before they can be certified to bring JV deals to the Abraham Group. Call 12 Coaching: may not have done it Mentoring: has already done it Masterminding: need subgroups to make personal interaction effective Networking: better for specific business ventures For this group, biggest need is to realize that the most important thing is to get started. Leadership comes from within ¨C You need to know that you are capable. Therefore, start small and develop the confidence. Start with someone you know. Ways to find out what is important to a business or a person: ask to see their Mission Statements, Vision Statements, Business Plans. That can help you find their aspirations and opportunities, and can help you get their attention. Understanding them will also help you build credibility. SWOT Analysis Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, threats You can also use this to determine how to best help the company and what to watch for. Be a Builder of Profit Pillars- introduce new marketing avenues and streams of income. Be an information resource Be a hub of other experts (your network) Ads for JV Partners-you can engage people to do anything you don¡¯t want to do, even find JV partners and opportunities. Contract provisions to consider: Multi©\tiered Payments Transferable Rights of Ownership, Revenue, or Equity Right to Audit Survivability 28:40 open lines Bernie Zick, How to create a really killer elevator pitch. (90 minute audio- see Encounter with Jay Abraham audio series.) Resources: Andy Miller article Barter article Partner or perish Sample JV letters Stephen M.R. Covey article Call 13 1:20 open lines Spike exchanges pleasantries with participants and listens to their concerns. The bottom line is that everyone would like to put together JV deals. Any surprise there? Qualify the people you want to work with and set requirements. Be willing to walk away from people who do not want to pay your fee, meet your standards, or who don¡¯t qualify. You are better off in the long run to only do it right. Copywriting Template I have synthesized all the different templates into one list of four steps, with various elements listed as options under each step. 1. Get Attention. Promise most important benefit in headline a. Superscript – teaser b. headline – attention of desired audience c. subhead d. salutation 2. Arouse Interest. Immediately enlarge on your most important benefit Tell specifically what reader will get. e. Opening Hook: if you …, then … Focus on the Customer Describe Persuade Proof and Testimonials Establish credibility. f. Your Story 3. Stimulate desire. Show the Advantage g. USP h. Appeal i. Benefits, Benefits, Benefits j. Bullets Build Value Differentiate you from competition Write with Enthusiasm; transfer enthusiasm to the prospect. Tell the reader what he will lose if he doesn't act. 4. Close with Asking for Action. Rephrase your prominent benefits in the closing offer. k. Bonuses l. Don't Decide Now – you can't lose m. Price dropdown – justification n. Risk Reversal – guarantee o. Close the deal – buy now p. PS
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posted: | 10/18/2010 |
language: | English |
pages: | 55 |