“What will it take?”

This is a powerful question, and yet people seldom use it.

• It gives the person being asked the question the opportunity to “Name their price”, as it were.
• This is very exciting because it gives you the opportunity to find out what that person really wants – their “Hot Button”, if you like, plus it is often relatively easy to get them what they want in order to grant whatever it is you’re requesting in return. Especially if you’re using Joint Ventures!
• This question also implies reciprocity – it is not selling or begging, but trading from a position of strength, insight, sensitivity and equality.
• You can remove the guesswork from your transactions by using this approach.

How to Use This Outstanding Question

You might say, “Mr. Faulty, I would like very much to enjoy the hospitality of your fishing lodge for a week with my wife in June. And I would like to trade you for the privilege. Now, in order to cut to the chase and avoid wasting your valuable time or offering you stuff that isn’t of interest to you, may I ask you, in exchange for that week at your Lodge, what will it take? What are you looking for that I might be able to deliver to you that could be more valuable than a simple monetary transaction?”

You might be amazed at the response.

• Mr. Faulty might respond that if you bring a party of six, he will only charge you for four people.
• Or he might be looking for a canoe that he can rent out to his guests, and you might just have access to one.
• Or he might want something that you can purchase with Trade Dollars.
• Perhaps he would be satisfied with advertising exposure that you could arrange through a Joint Venture.

Be well prepared for the meeting and, having done your homework, be well armed with some juicy options, like the aforementioned advertising exposure, seats on seminars, consultations, Gift Certificates (“How about I give you $10,000 worth of Gift Certificates that you can offer your clients in order to increase loyalty, referrals and return business, Mr. Faulty?”) and so on.

Discover What They Really Want

“You have not, because you ask”, could also be “You have not, because you ask the wrong questions”. And because you have not done your due diligence to find out what it is that Mr. Faulty really WANTS, as opposed to what you might imagine he NEEDS.

• Is it more important, for example, for him to get more guests or to make more money from his existing guests?
• Is it an introduction to someone, a new supplier, or access to a database?

Use this powerful question and you may be amazed at the responses you get. “What will it take?”

I will not tolerate dishonest businesspeople.  And sometimes, I feel like the Grim Reaper.  I have to burn bridges and cut them off from my own business and that of my friends.

My Rule of Thumb

I know it’s popular for mediocre people to overlook things, turn a blind eye and compromise, but if you’re serious about success you should always remember that compromising with a rattlesnake usually results in a painful death.

At any point in time, people are either building trust or destroying it, revealing who they really are by their actions.

What You Should Be Impressed By

This should be a no-brainer, common sense issue, but obviously not for many people. In business, smart people deal with you because they like you and trust you, not because you have a large database, large ego and supposedly large bank account. The only people who are impressed with that are sycophants, losers and desperate people. In honor of the fact that the average IQ on a bell curve is only 100 and that entrepreneurs are not exempt from that startling and sad reality, here is my little lesson in Building Trust 101.

Trust Killers

This is how you break down trust and let others peak under your Eagle mask to see a gobbling turkey hiding inside:

• Don’t return your calls promptly.
• Don’t reply to e-mails within 9 hours.
• Put people on hold.
• Break your promises.
• Show up late.
• Deliver late.
• Make excuses.
• Don’t shave.
• Answer your cell phone in business meetings.
• Insist on meeting near public transport because you can’t afford a car.
• Be cheap.
• Be unreliable.
• Try to sell stuff without creating reciprocity.
• Offer a computer printed business card.
• Lie.

Recognize a few past acquaintances there? If you do, make sure it’s a PAST acquaintance.

Don’t worry…There are still some winners out there.

Sure, it’s a small percentage and they’re not easy to find, but they’re out there and there is a way to find them! YES. You can build a WINNER MAGNET that will act like Eagle Bait, and this is how you attract those amazing people that restore your faith in mankind and bring them into your life like bees to the proverbial honey. And, before you balk at this radical approach, I can honestly tell you that it works very well for me. Do I have your rapt attention?

12 Ways to Build Trust and Magnetize Winners:

1. BE a winner yourself.
2. Expect and demand the best of yourself and others.
3. Deplore loser behavior.
4. Mercilessly cut losers out of your life.
5. Speak out.  Offend the losers.
6. Be more concerned about being respected than being liked.
7. Be politically incorrect. Rattle the cages of the herd. Frighten the socialists and the collectivists.
8. Respect you time and the time of others.
9. Come on time, prepared and looking your best.
10. Act boldly and confidently.  Warriors are not timid or concerned about the enemy’s feelings (and losers ARE your enemies in business) – they are strong, sure and they win battles.
11. Be loyal and caring to your troops.
12. Realize you attract what you are. The turkeys will attack you, but you won’t even notice them because you’ll be so busy working with Eagles.

When Gwen sets up her seminars of 150 people, how much would you have to pay to have her introduce you to all of them from the front of the room? How about $20?

How can I get radio time for pennies on the dollar, with ten times more credibility than a high-priced advertisement? It’s easy if you give stuff away.

How can you make money by giving away $100 to each of a thousand people? I’ll tell you…

People Want Something for Nothing

People don’t want to get sold stuff. They want stuff for nothing. And they want to be able to choose to buy – they don’t like being manipulated by a slavering salesperson. That’s why you love the cake samples in Safeway and often end up buying something fattening. When you stand in Starbucks munching on a tiny piece of chocolate brownie, which is generously offered as a sample on a paper plate, did you know that many people end up buying brownies because of that tantalizing taste?

The Old Vacuum Cleaner Salesman Trick… That Works.

Remember the vacuum cleaner salesman who showed up at your door with a five dollar set of steak knives and a three-dollar flashlight? He told that you his manager insisted he give away one of these precious and highly coveted gifts to some lucky homeowner who agreed to watch a riveting, sensational, thirty minute vacuum demonstration as he sucked minute bugs from a mattress, and which one of these two priceless offerings which you like? You chose the steak knives and two hours later you gratefully bought an overpriced vacuum cleaner.

Here’s How You Make Money Giving Stuff Away

• You offer Gwen two of your books and a complimentary consultation worth $100 as door prizes and you get exposed to 150 people in the room.
• You give away your CD’s or a gift certificate to clean the carpets in a house as a radio give-away. And if you’re not into carpet cleaning, could you set it up for a carpet cleaner, have him do the work and take 20% of all the resulting business? Of course, you could.
• You could have Jimbo distribute 1,000 gift certificates to his indebted clients, entitling them all to a complimentary Yoga class with Yippee Yoga. The certificates are printed and paid for by Yippee herself, Jim and his clients are ecstatic and when Yippee gets business out of this joint venture transaction, you obediently collect 20% of all the resulting income.
• Or you could kindly introduce Bob’s money to Sally[‘s project and make $25,000 for the effort as I did very recently.

A Great Idea You Can Use Too!

I spoke to a group of Newcomers in Toronto who were enjoying a Government-sponsored job finding program. The government spends many thousands advertising this course. The lecturer realized that he could save the civil servants tens of thousands of dollars by simply offering two movie tickets to any student who introduced a new student. It’s doubtful, though, that the government will accept his wise suggestion. Seriously, Joint Ventures opens our minds to many new opportunities, and the power of giving away stuff is only one of many simple yet powerful concepts.

How do you feel about telesales? Don’t you think,

“What an irritation – this salesperson hasn’t earned the right to call me, interrupt me and try to sell me something that I can easily buy from any number of trusted friends if I wanted it?”

That’s exactly how I feel about salespeople who call me up and pitch me on their products and services. There is no reason why I should even consider talking to them, let alone do business with them.

And yet, that’s how 95% of salespeople operate these days. There is a better way.

5 Guidelines for a Positive Response

Whatever you’re selling, even if you’re selling yourself into a job opportunity, the same principles apply. Guarantee the positive, even eager attention of the person you want to sell to, using these simple guidelines:

1. Get introduced to them by someone whom they know, trust and respect.
2. EARN the right – use the Law of Reciprocity to sow before you attempt to reap. Only the brainless and desperate still believe that works.
3. Know the person to whom you are pitching – do your homework. I have been approached by some geniuses who haven’t even taken the time to look at my website before calling me. Then you can push the right buttons and make them an offer they simply can’t refuse.
4. Whatever it is you’re selling, the person you are approaching has dozens of alternatives. Remember that and be prepared to differentiate yourself by adding massive, unprecedented value.
5. DON’T be CHEAP. Be prepared to spend some money to position and package yourself or you will simply reveal your desperation and ignorance. I had someone ask me to call him back so that he could save on the telephone call!

We live in a dichotomous business world – on the one hand, we have the highly sophisticated, slick approach that is often too well packaged to be believable, and then on the other the hand the coffee-stained, computer printed business card of the MLM’er. By using the above principles, you can elevate yourself to a position where you demand and get the positive attention of those you wish to sell to.

Wayne Dyer said:

“Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into.”

This is true in business as well as in life. We don’t have money problems; we have thinking problems. Many people have a “Shrinking Pie” mentality – they think in terms of shortage and limitations. They’re afraid of the competition. The fact is that everything you could possibly require for your business is already, easily available to you.

How Do You Get at It?

You can unlock this vault through Joint Ventures. Whatever it is that you need, be it space, advertising, distribution, a sales team, labor, equipment reputation, a database or anything else, as long as someone else has it, you can get access to it!

Most businesses have underutilized resources. Not every resource in every business is fully utilized. I visited my printer the other day to discuss the printing of my new book and I found that he also, at time, has excess capacity or inventory.

• Could people put more seats into their seminars?
• Add a few more seats in a restaurant?
• Do they have inventory that isn’t moving?
• Idle staff members?

Of course they do.

See the Opportunity & Make It Worth Their While

Once we realize that these resources are all available to us, be they seats on aircraft, rooms in hotels or credit, memberships, cars, printers or time, we have to understand how to access that resource with no cost or risk to us. Once we realize that the Law of Reciprocity works very well when understood, just like gravity, we can simply use that law. We can barter, trade, or simply set up simple Joint Ventures to leverage resources.

• How big do you think?
• What do you expect?
• How confident are you?

This will determine how much you can get.

Real-life Examples

If you ask for a million, you might get it. If you ask for a hundred… You simply have to give the owner or controller of those resources a good reason to share them with you. If he gets what he wants, you can get what you want. Here are some real-life examples from Barternews.com:

1. Peter Pocklington acquired 50% of the Edmonton Oilers from Nelson Skalbania in 1977 in exchange for a Rolls Royce, a 15-carat ring, and a Renoir painting.
2. Continental Airlines traded five terminal gates it had at Los Angeles International to United Airlines for several of their gates at the Newark (NJ) airport.
3. Star Wars creator George Lucas’ company Lucasfilm is quietly negotiating a huge barter deal that will see one company having the toy manufacturing rights to a new series of his upcoming films. Offers reportedly approaching $1 billion are on the table with Lucas getting a sizable equity (ownership) stake in the toy company with which he eventually barters.

Your Only Limitation

Your imagination is your only limitation. Together, we can do amazing things. It’s hard to do it alone, and you don’t have to. ASK. “You have not because you ask not.” Be bold. Find out what the other person wants and trade. Everything you need is readily available and waiting for you!

When an attorney, J. Jamail, was asked to represent Penzoil in court in the late 1980s, he agreed to barter his services for a percentage of the award if he won the case, instead of charging an hourly fee. He won the case again Texaco and when Penzoil was awarded $3 billion, Jamail earned about $420 million.

When we believe in ourselves and our abilities and we think about how we CAN accomplish something, instead of why we can’t, we realize that we don’t have money problems; we have thinking problems.

Be Creative – You ALREADY Have Everything You Need To Make It Work

Every resource your business needs is already available to you through someone else, be it:

• legal services
• space
• advertising
• labor
• distribution
• access
• reputation
• membership or skills.

There is no shortage – there is only abundance. I use a simple illustration in my seminars: I ask the audience to imagine a huge barrel of stinking garbage and rotting meat. I tell them there’s a million dollars at the bottom of the barrel and ask how many would dive into the barrel and climb under the rotting mess to get the money.

My point is this:

If you believe the money is there, you will climb into the putrid garbage and duck underneath it and search until you find the prize. But if you don’t believe it’s there, you won’t even try. You won’t pay the price if you don’t believe the award exists.

J. Jamail believed in himself, his skills and his client. He was confident and courageous. He created his success. There is a solution for every challenge and that solution is available through another person / business. Joint Ventures enable us to access everything we need and want, and, if we do it right, we can do it with no money or risk. We simply have to have the right mindset.

Why Most People Fail in Business

The reason why most people fail in business, in my opinion, is that:

1. They try to do everything themselves and
2. They give up to easily.

They very soon forget the million dollars at the bottom of the barrel and focus instead on the long hours, frustration, stink and work. A savvy Joint Venture broker might simply find someone with a long stick and agree to pay him a percentage of the prize for fishing the money out of the barrel, while he goes on to look for more opportunities, much like Penzoil did with Mr. Jamail.

Think HOW rather than IF

It’s not “IF I can do it”, but rather “How can I do it.” IF stands for Instant Failure. Paul J. Meyer encouraged us to “Enter every activity without giving mental recognition to the possibility of defeat.” He told us:

Crystallize your goals. Make a plan for achieving them and set yourself a deadline. Then, with supreme confidence, determination and disregard for obstacles and other people’s criticisms, carry out your plan.

Now THAT’s what I’m talking about! That’s the attitude that will tract winners to you. And, buy working together with optimists and achievers, we can accomplish amazing things.

After absorbing “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” and other books by the amazing Robert Kiyosak and working with many “Business Owners” I realized that most of us are unaware of the requirements for retirement. We tend to fall for the lie that we have to invest a fortune with various characters, usually in the form of “investments” or the purchase of businesses, and get into massive debt, in order to have the hope of retiring one day.

Here’s a simple question: If the genius offering you the solution to retirement is steeped in debt and working as a salesperson, what right does he or she have to tell YOU about retirement?

A Very Simple Formula for Retirement

Here’s a very simple formula for retirement:

Create increasing, passive / residual income that exceeds the amount you require to live comfortably each month.

That doesn’t mean:

• you’re out there selling stuff all day.
• It doesn’t mean that you need a fortune just to break even every month.
• Or that if you stop working, you go bankrupt.
• It doesn’t mean that you lose your savings if your business fails or the stock market crashes.

It means you are very secure. It means you have multiple streams of passive income, from different sources / industries, low-income requirements and minimal, if any, debt.

Do You Have a Plan?

Every business should have an exit strategy. We need a specific action plan that will take us where we want to go.

You’re at risk if…

• you’re selling time.
• you’re depending on one income source
• you think that things don’t change or that that the economy doesn’t change.
• all your income is through your business. All your eggs are in one basket.

If you focus on duplication, leverage and diversification, if you reduce risk and overhead while increasing income, you’re on track. And most of all, remember this: It’s not about income – it’s about net, after tax, profit. It’s about the bottom line, not ego.

How long does it take to retire?

As long as it takes you to create increasing, passive / residual income from different sources that exceeds the amount you require to live comfortably each month. And of course you want to minimize tax and create a comfortable, growing, financial cushion.

You don’t have to accumulate massive savings. (And when you’re asked to invest, ask the salesperson to prove how much they have invested in the same venture.) There are some excellent investment opportunities out there, but they are few and far between. I know of very few.

Use Joint Ventures!

The system I use is Joint Ventures. Have done for 19 years.

• I leverage existing resources and hidden assets.
• I don’t have to own a business to make money from that business, and all my income from Joint Ventures is 100% profit.
• I carry no risk, leases, licenses, overhead or employees or inventory – I don’t have to – someone else insists on doing that.
• I can work internationally with no cost or risk.

So can you. When you fly to another city, do you buy a jet and learn how to fly it? You can just rent a seat. Joint Ventures is my system of choice.

One of the questions that comes up in every talk, seminar or Bootcamp I deliver is:

“I have been feeding people business and leads for ages and I never got paid. How do I change that now, without offending and alienating these people who are my friends?”

It‘s a good question. First of all, as a decent, self-respecting capitalist and business person, you should get paid. And secondly, we don’t want to distance our business associates.

4 Simple Steps

For years, you’ve been sending and referring business to people that has been worth, perhaps, tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to them. Now, you realize you have left a lot of money on the table unnecessarily. Here’s the best way I have found to turn this situation around with tact and finesse. It works well.

1. First, you identify the people to whom you want to continue sending business on the understanding that you will be fairly and adequately compensated for it.
2. Then, you do some research homework (usually with their competition) to find out what their profit margins are so that your expectations are reasonable regarding the commissions you expect. These commissions could be once-off or an upfront payment with ongoing residual payments on all ensuing sales.
3. Once you are comfortable with the commissions you expect from referrals in the future, you set up a meeting with the person to whom you wish to continue sending referred business.
4. At the meeting, you have a simple script to follow that won’t upset the person.

Follow this script:

This is what you say, even if you have never received any referrals from this person:

“You know, Bill, I have been having a good look at the Joint Venture opportunities in my business and I read something that really put me on the spot and I have to apologize to you. Up until now, I never offered you any compensation for any business you refer to me. I realize now that that is not fair to you. We all deserve to be paid for what we do, of course, and it was not ethical of me to accept leads from people without offering to pay a fair and reasonable commission. So, from now on, I will pay you 20% (or whatever is right and generous for you) on any business you send me. And of course, you will do the same, right?”

What to do if you’re not happy in the end

At this point, if he refuses to pay you for future referrals, or if he offers you too little based on your research, don’t argue or fight. Simply agree and never send him business again. Instead, find someone else to refer your business to. Ascertain exactly how much he will pay you, how it will be determined, be specific, for example an exact percentage gross profit or net profit, will there be payments on all ongoing business or not, should he add taxes, at which point will he pay, will he pay weekly or monthly, etc. Confirm this in writing after the meeting. Also include what you will pay him!

This simple system can be worth a small fortune to you. Joint Ventures work.

Check out this page about Memorandums of Understanding or MOUs at JVWisdom which you can use to put your simple agreement in writing.