One of the questions I get asked on a regular basis is, “How much should I ask for when setting up a Joint Venture? What percentage is reasonable?” And that’s a very good question. Different businesses have different profit margins. Some have higher overhead and costs of sales and than other.

• If you sell computer hardware, for example, you make a very small profit – most of your profit is in the software, service, keyboards, etc.
• If you’re selling a service, you make big profits, but you can also have varying costs.

So we have to keep this in mind.

• Some people have certain restrictions on their ability to pay out commissions, like certain financial planners or dentists.
• Others are not used to paying commissions, like the realtor who offered me $75 for a buying referral!

So here is a way to approach this challenge.

Step 1: Do Your Homework.

I know I keep saying that, but information is power when it comes to negotiations. That’s good news, because most people talk a lot, but don’t listen much, so when you listen a lot, you learn a lot.

• Find out about the business and its profit margins.
• Make sure they’re telling the truth when they say they’re not allowed to pay commissions. Sometimes, they’re just plain lying, because they’re cheap!
• Talk to their competition.
• Ask employees questions.

With this you will get a feel for the amount of profit they make, so you know what to ask for.

Step 2: Educate Them About the Money in the Back End

You might make no profit at all on the first sale (break even on the first transaction) but you can make a lot on future transactions, referrals, additional products and services sold through other vendors on a JV basis and on and on. If people understand the Back End correctly, they will be eager to give away a generous portion of the front end.

• Show them the principle of Incremental Profits (profits made when overhead and salaries are already covered and the new sale is incremental, like putting an extra seat into a seminar or serving another plate of food when the food cost is only 32%)

Step 3: Understand Negotiating Techniques

• By all means start high and drop, but don’t start greedy.
• Be prepared to walk away from any deal at any time.
• Remove risk from both parties.
• Work WITH the competition. Savvy entrepreneurs know their competition can be their greatest ally.

Most of all, approach any Joint Venture proposal from a position of strength – know more than the person you’re dealing with. Be well prepared.

Anything that is customized or personalized suddenly becomes very much more valuable. We like our own names and our company names and our sports team names, don’t we? So when we customize a product or service for an industry or a specific business, we create massive increased value at very little cost.

Here’s How It Works

You can private label an innocuous shampoo for a good hair salon and make serious money. You can make a seminar or sales training program industry specific and sell ten times as many. I was recently talking with someone who created exercise DVD’s. How about making one for seniors, one for travelers, one for children, one for ladies, one for teens, one for busy executives… then market each one through the marketing and distribution channels reaching that particular demographic? For example, you would Joint Venture with seniors publications and clubs, AARP and seniors tours to reach seniors with your seniors exercise DVD.

Private Label Training, Seminars or Teaching

When you find excess inventory, you can re-purpose it in this way. You can also approach someone who presents training, seminars or teaching, and Joint Venture with someone who has access a particular market segment, while procuring the rights to market their products and services to that segment and receive ongoing commissions. For example, how about Training for Realtors? Get more specific with Training for Female Realtors and you’ll make more money. The more specific, the more terrific.

Let Your Access Lead the Way

Which segment of the population do you have access to, or can you get access to? Once you have access to a demographic/psychographic sector, you can go out and find products that can be customized or relabelled for that sector. Once you have strategic alliances in that sector, it’s easy to expand to the entire sector.

I once did seminars for an Executive Women’s Club and ended up serving all their clubs nationwide. Had you set that up, you could have asked for and received up to 20% of all my income from that market, and that would have put at least $20,000 in your pocket. All it took to get me into that market was a friend making one, single phone call. One phone call can be worth $20,000 to you. Do Joint Ventures work? You’d better believe it!

Sales Tip

Specialists get paid more and have more credibility. Understanding more about an industry than your prospect positions you as an expert. In order to do this, use statistics and education to differentiate yourself from the generalists who think they can cure anything from recessions and receding hair to bad knees and bad attitudes.

Management Tip

The more you understand your prospect and his business, the more likely you are to sell to him. Train your employees to ask questions, make notes, do research and create industry specific solutions. Learn the language and jargon of the industry you’re targeting. Become familiar with their hopes, dreams, challenges and unique opportunities.

“I am an innovator. This is a term of distinction, a term of honor, rather than something to hide or apologize for. Anyone who has new or valuable ideas to offer stands outside the intellectual status quo. But the status quo is not a stream, let alone a ‘mainstream’. It is a stagnant swamp. It is the innovators who carry mankind forward.”
~ Ayn Rand

“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte

Strong and successful entrepreneurs make decisions fast and stick to them. They don’t wait for the cat to fall out of a tree or Grandma to buy a new dress. They don’t have twenty committee meetings before they decide whether or not to order the Beef Wellington.

• They say, “Yes” or they say, “No.”
• They are fast on their feet.
• They don’t find excuses to procrastinate.
• They will weigh the information, do their due diligence and decide.

You don’t have to run after them for a decision, either; they will get back to you when they say they will. They are winners.

“All I needed was a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’.”

One seminar attendee gave me SEVEN reasons why he wouldn’t be able to attend an event. At the end of his whining, I said, “All I needed was a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’.”

Winston Churchill put it this way: “They are decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.” And George Canning said,

“Indecision and delays are the parents of failure.”

Those who vacillate, dither, hesitate and flounder are simply fearful of making ANY decision. They are afraid of the consequences of agreeing and equally terrified of the results of disagreeing. As Tony Blair once said of a certain politician, “Weak, weak, weak!”

Be willing to make decisions.

The chairman of Mesa Petroleum said,

“Be willing to make decisions. That’s the most important quality in a good leader. Don’t fall victim to what I call the Ready- Aim-Aim-Aim Syndrome. You must be willing to fire.”

Any decision is better than no decision. “I’ll get back to you” and “I’ll think about it / discuss it / review it” usually means, “I’m too scared to decide – please leave me in my misery and go find a real man”. Let us decide to decide. Let us be warriors and Eagles. Let us be confident, courageous and focused. Time is money and the window of opportunity doesn’t wait. Seize the day!

When you ask the right Joint Venture questions, you open the vault to riches. People like to talk about themselves, their goals and their problems. When we help them make their dreams come true and offer solutions for their problems, we all win and everyone makes money.

5 Possible Power-packed Joint Venture Approaches

Savvy Joint Venture Brokers know that it’s all about the right approach. Here are five powerful approaches that you can use, today, to make real money, real fast.

1. What do I have to create, bring to you or offer you in order for you to write me a check for $2,000 per month / $10,000?
2. What do you want, more than anything else, in your life and your business, and why?
3. If I was to bring you business and customers that you don’t have and would not have had, what percentage of the gross sales would you offer me?
4. If I could show you how to make money from your existing resources, with no cost or risk to yourself and without any time spent, would you share the resulting profits with me?
5. If I could double the amount of people in your restaurant, given that you have a 32% food cost and all your overheads and fixed costs are already covered, would you pay me 20% of every bill I generated?

If you help other people to get what they want, you will get what you want. And by asking the right, open-ended questions and being honestly interested in the other person, you find out what they want. And when someone responds negatively or offers a meager commission, simply walk away – the world is your oyster and there are unlimited Joint Venture opportunities out there.

5 Ideal Parameters of a Good Joint Venture

The 5 ideal parameters of a good Joint Venture are:

1. No money
2. No risk
3. Very little time
4. Lots of leverage
5. Big potential

Ask the right questions, do your due diligence and always be ready to say, “No.” Personally, I only work with Members of the DollarMakers Joint Venture Forum.

Our Joint Venture Broker Bootcamp Graduates are trained to find and exploit lucrative Joint Venture opportunities. Through our powerful DollarMakers Joint Venture Forum, they have access to hundreds of other Members worldwide, as well as meetings, a Convention, Tele Conferences, support and Joint Venture opportunities.

I asked the bell captain to call a cab for me to get to the train station for my trip to Ottawa. He replied that, with all the freezing snow Montreal was enjoying that morning, a cab would take 45 minutes to arrive! Shock and awe – what was I to do? I had meetings and a seminar lined up in Ottawa – carefully planned down to the last minute. I couldn’t afford to miss that train!

Then I realized that the bell captain was still there, talking. He was saying, “But, Mr. Elliott, why not take the underground to the train station? It’s right around the corner, here.” In only twenty minutes I was at the station via the underground, saved money on the cab and enjoyed a great, relaxing train ride to Ottawa.

Has Conditioning Got in the Way?

When he walked into the huge seminar venue in the Toronto hotel, he seemed pretty professional and successful Well dressed and groomed, poised, aware. He handed me his business card and I was impressed. Thirty minutes into my seminar, I asked the audience, “How many of you think this looks ‘Too good to be true’?” and the same man put up his hand. Shock and awe! It was hard to believe that this sophisticated businessman was, in fact, seriously handicapped by his mental conditioning. We all are. How many wonderful opportunities have we all missed, because our conditioning got in the way? We all have mental programming that hampers and restricts us.

We don’t have money problems, we have thinking problems.

The same goes for technology – I searched for YEARS to find a way to record sound bytes on my computer at home and then to e-mail them. It only took one e-mail from Member Andrew Cavanagh in Australia, and within ten minutes I had the solution, which has been working great ever since.

We don’t have money problems, we have thinking problems. And the same goes for everything else. We already have whatever we want and need – it’s all in the way we think. Understanding that we have mental blocks is the first step on the road to overcoming all obstacles on our way to success.

The Fastest Way I Have Discovered to Get Over Blocks

Other people know things that we don’t know. They have different perspectives and they know how to get to the train station. The fastest way I have discovered to getting over, under and around mental blocks is by associating with a wide variety of Eagles through our DollarMakers Joint Venture Forum.

Hundreds of ethical people around the world with a Joint Venture Mindset are available to help me to succeed in a win/win way. They have different frames of reference, experience, skills, connections, access and resources that are readily available. We help each other to see through the mental blocks and solve problems. Together, we can do amazing things.

It’s amazing how many people I see doing crossword puzzles. In coffee shops, on planes, in airports, in trains. Rika likes doing jigsaw puzzles. Many people enjoy chess. They’re all solving problems and making connections.

When I first read Zig Ziglar’s statement,

“You can get anything you want out of life, if you’re prepared to help enough other people to get what they want”,

I realized that the more value I could create and the more people I could reach, the faster I would reach my own goals. So the puzzles that I enjoy are “value” puzzles: How to connect the dots and link the right people and resources in such a way that I create massive, unprecedented value. It’s called Joint Ventures.

JustLook at How the Big Guys Do Business

This is how I’ve done business and done well for nineteen years.

• We don’t have to create competencies; we can borrow them.
• We don’t have to own or buy resources – we just need access to them.

Ericsson and Sony work together. Disney, Amex, Pfizer and IBM all excel at Joint Ventures. Wal-Mart formed a Joint Venture with Mexico’s Cifra, which significantly shortened its learning curve about the Mexican market. It is said that 20% of the revenues of large companies are the result of Joint Ventures and that 50% of those Joint Ventures are with their competition, yet only 1% of small and medium businesses understand and use this powerful business tool to create fast and large profits at virtually no cost or risk.

It’s all about leveraging exiting resources and hidden assets. And it requires a certain mindset. And it doesn’t take years of academic study; it takes one day to get started.

Everything You Need is Already Available

The most important component of a successful Joint Venture is finding the right people to work with. One has to be careful to select ethical, professional people one whom one can rely. Secondly, you have to learn the mindset and understand how to select and approach potential Joint Venture partners and then to set up the deals in a win/win, no cost or risk manner. Once you get it, it’s like riding a bicycle or becoming a physician – you can work anywhere in the world, without any resources. Everything you need is already available through someone else.

A Game Where the Winner Gets Paid

Brokering Joint Venture deals is a wonderful and very rewarding game. It’s better than jigsaw puzzles because it creates value wealth, and great relationships. Real money, real fast, in the real world, with no downside – that’s why I love Joint Ventures. Remember “Six degrees of separation”? It’s true. And “What goes around comes around”? It works. I set up one Joint Venture yesterday that instantly exposed me to four thousand people. On my own, that would have taken a lot of time and money. Together, we can do amazing things.

As an immigrant myself, I understand the hopes, fears, dreams and unique problems faced by immigrants, no matter where they are in the world. Immigrants often face challenges that only other immigrants can understand. Often their qualifications are not accepted or they have no local experience, so they accept whatever they can get. Having worked with hundreds of immigrants, I know how hard it is to start all over again.

Common Barriers to Success for Immigrants

• Immigrants don’t always understand the culture in their new home.
• They might be afraid of risking their savings.
• They often don’t realize just how different things are in this new world.
• They sometimes face racism, xenophobia and people who take advantage of their vulnerability.
• They want to be accepted and blend in to their new environment, but it can be very strange and difficult.
• Money problems can lead to loss of self respect, shame, relationship problems and withdrawal.
• I know of a number of immigrants who ended up divorced from their spouses, their dreams crushed.
• Others lost their savings and will have to work until they die.

– UNLESS THEY FIND AN ALTERNATIVE.

Joint Ventures is the Alternative You’ve Been Waiting For!

The good news is that any immigrant, in any country, can use Joint Ventures to create an income fast, with no money or risk, no database, no business experience and no connections or support system. Just like I did. You don’t need money, reputation or inventory. As long as someone else has it, you can access and leverage it, if you know how.

My Story

When I got to Canada, the condominium agent didn’t want to rent me an apartment because I was new in the country with no track record or credit record here! Talk about starting over. I got a friend of mine, the head of the US Peace Corps for Southern Africa, to send them a testimonial. That worked. Ridiculous, but that’s what many immigrants face. You can’t get a job, because you don’t have “Canadian experience”. Chicken and egg. But I didn’t want a job – I didn’t need one!

Free Yourself

You don’t need to accept a minimum wage job or drive a cab or kowtow to some idiot boss. You can create multiple streams of income and financial independence using Joint Ventures. Don’t buy a business. Don’t get a job. Get smart. Use Joint Ventures.

What Brokers Do and You Can Do Too

Joint Venture Brokers leverage other peoples’ money, credit, reputation, resources and access. The money they earn is 100% profit. And they get all the tax breaks that any other business gets. They don’t sell time, they take no risks and they carry no overhead. They can live in a cardboard box and use a pay phone. They don’t have to sell anything. All they do is link people up with businesses supplying the products or services they want and need, and get well paid for it – win/win/win. They have a JV mindset and build bridges between supply and demand.

Anyone can do this. Immigrants have the courage to leave their comfort zone, home and friends, security and support system. They are courageous. They richly deserve the rewarding world of Joint Ventures.

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
- Calvin Coolidge

You can’t teach someone persistence. People will become sufficiently persistent to succeed only when their desire for their goal exceeds the pain and discomfort they have to endure in order to reach it. It’s simply a matter of comparison: the pain of living without your objective has to exceed the pain of paying the price to accomplish that goal. Which pain is greater?

What’s Your Motivation Level

Everyone is motivated. Motivation means “A motive for action”. Some people are motivated to lie in the gutter with a cigarette and bottle of liquor. That’s what they want to do, that’s why they’re doing it. Others live mediocre lives, because they don’t want real success badly enough to pay the price to obtain it.

When Success is Guaranteed

How do we guarantee success? DESIRE. When you want something badly enough, when you are prepared to do whatever it takes to get it, you will become persistent. And when that happens, success is guaranteed.

When to Not Bother

On a scale of one to ten, one being “It doesn’t matter” and ten being “Nothing will stop me”, how badly do you want to reach your objective? If it’s anything less than a twelve, don’t bother. FIND something that you want more than anything else. That desire will burn away fear, slothfulness, excuses, lack of attention, distraction, compromise, mediocrity and even fatigue. People who are seriously motivated are persistent and dedicated. They set extremely high standards and will pay the price. They LOVE their objective.

Persistence is…

Persistence is the result of finding your true purpose and the result of persistence is massive success. To find your purpose, it’s good to spend time with others who already know what their purpose is. Those people will inspire you and their energy will start to invigorate you. You will seek what they have, which is purpose. And what you honestly and sincerely seek, you will surely find.

“They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigour.”

- Eric Hoffer