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So I recently talked with a young man named Blake. Blake told me he was looking for a “wonderful job”. So I asked him to describe this most wonderful job to me.

His description included: autonomy, working on his own program, to his own schedule, lots of money, of course, and travel, the ability to use his creativity, bonuses for innovation, etc. He wanted lots of freedom, but he said he works very hard. He also said he was creative, professional, and dedicated. I asked him what kind of boss he wanted. He replied with:

“Someone who really understands me, allows me to play to my strengths, and encourages me”

I told him, “You know what, Blake? You can have a job exactly like that. I know how you can get it. In fact, you can design your own job description, and you can even decide how much you will earn, including rewards for innovation, creativity, and professionalism. What’s more, I have the perfect boss for you - someone who really knows you, and more than that, CARES about you!” He was bouncing off the walls with excitement, begging to hear more.

I said, “The boss is YOU. Your own business. Total freedom, along with total responsibility, no limitations, and the world at your feet.”

At this point he predictably became angry. He said he wanted the “SECURITY” of a paycheck.

I answered…

“You should trust yourself more than anyone else in the world, Blake. Why would you feel more secure handing your life and income to someone else who doesn’t care about you? Is your self-esteem really so low? Here’s the real question, Blake: You know yourself, your abilities, and your work ethic. Would YOU hire YOU? If you would, here’s your perfect opportunity - start your own business - employ yourself!”

Guess what his next objection was - “It’s so risky to start a business.”

I agree completely. That’s why I teach people to start the best business in the world - no overhead, no risk, unlimited potential, flexibility, creativity, income, and freedom: being a Joint Venture Broker. Say no more!

I watched a movie the other night in which the two characters are more interested in drinking and carousing than working, so one, who’s wife is supporting him financially, takes a sheaf of resumes with him every morning and gets his friends to call his house and leave messages asking him to attend employment interviews. That keeps his wife / mother happy until she discovers the lies. Many men are like little boys, supported by their hard working and long-suffering wives, who actually believe their useless, weak husbands are businessmen. They’re not even real men; a real man supports his family.

‘Busy’ or ‘Working’ Does Not Mean Productive

Many entrepreneurs drag the old employee mentality with them into the world of business. They feel they have to prove to everyone that they’re busy, as though that equates with “productive”. “Busy” or “Working” does not mean productive at all. We feel we have to justify our time, and so you see people attending meetings for the sake of attending meetings. They create ridiculous business plans that only fool bank managers (say no more) and will fly across the country at the drop of a hat so that they can tell their wives, who pay for the flights and the hookers on the other end, that they had a business appointment. If you’re not making money, you’re wasting time. Might as well watch a movie.

This morning I had a spot of breakfast, returned e-mail for 30 minutes and then went skiing on Mystery Peak for few hours. It was wonderful, powder snow, flying down a mountain in a snowstorm, then driving down into the sunshine afterwards to stop for a hot cup of coffee. At home I lazed in the Jacuzzi for a while, watching a few snowflakes fall on the spring cherry blossoms outside (only in Vancouver) before eating the delicious lunch Rika had prepared for me. Then I spent two hours working, and that’s it for today. Two and a half hours of effective, focused work that will make good money and keep my Joint Ventures on track. Much better than attending unproductive meetings with other broke people where we all convince each other how well we’re doing, so that we can continue the illusion that we actually have businesses. I’m writing this on the patio, sipping a cup of Tetleys and enjoying my life.

Business is about Results.

I once called one of my salesmen after a meeting, and his mother/wife reported that he was having a bath. When he called me back, he apologized profusely for lying in the bath instead of making sales calls. I replied, “Hey, Jonathan, I don’t care if you lie in the bath all day, as long as you make sales. You don’t work for me - you work for yourself! Anyway, you’re on commission, so if you’re not producing, you’re not earning, and you know that if your sales drop too low you’ll get fired. I’m not your mother.” I’m not interested in your stories, excuses, what you do with your time, or how long you work - I’m interested in results. Business is about results, not lies and smokescreens - that’s for employees.

Shed the Employee Mentality and Spend More Time with Your Loved Ones.

Joint Venture Brokers can spend all day skiing or kayaking or hiking or reading a book, make one or two phone calls and a few e-mails, and get rich. We choose whom we work with, when we work, what we do, and when we do it. My personal schedule comes first and business comes second. I call the shots. Most entrepreneurs work too hard for too little. They spend a lot of time wearing the mask of success and going through the motions, when they should be relaxing by the pool with their loved ones. They’re almost worse than employees. Shed that employee mentality and focus on net, after tax profit. Concentrate on results, and be very selective. Joint Ventures provide that exciting and lucrative opportunity. Joint Ventures are about making dollars, not excuses. Do what you love with people you respect, and you’ll be good at it and make money.

Robin J. Elliott

Let’s define a regular business - I’m not talking about being a self-employed salesman, like a financial planner, handyman, gift basket creator, consultant, coach, craftsman, website designer - someone who sells their own time. That is simply stupid, since you have limited time and it’s your most valuable resource, so you should NEVER sell it unless there is a significant back-end with huge leverage, and 99% of these people don’t have that in place. I’m talking about a business like a lube joint, a printing business, painting business, fencing business, restaurant, hotel, retail store, dry cleaner, hair salon.

Most regular businesses involve taking up a lot of your time, huge risk, limited income potential, “Feast or Famine” income cycles, employees, inventory, competition, and silly little profit margins. Most owners of these businesses make little money, or they make great money, but they have too little time to enjoy it. After dealing with thousands of business owners in different industries over many years, I think I have a pretty good idea of their challenges, limitations, and risk.

I Never Met a Dollar I Didn’t Like

I don’t want to deal with employees in a socialistic society where they have more legal protection than I do. I don’t want to deal with the increasing cost of overheads and advertising. I don’t want to deal with customers I don’t like or respect, just because I need their money. I don’t like risk, period. And I never met a dollar I didn’t like, so high profit is important to me. And at 55, living in beautiful British Columbia with a wonderful wife of 22 years, my time is too valuable to spend with anyone I don’t like and respect.

But if I HAD a regular business, I would use Joint Ventures to duplicate and leverage that business through the roof. Then I would sell it, and simply broker Joint Ventures, as I do now. I don’t want a franchisor who is really my boss, to tell me what to do and how to do it. I don’t want to deal with unscrupulous suppliers, off-shore competitors, difficult, brain dead  customers, or be at risk from changes in local laws, environment, buildings, politics, or weather that I can’t control. The world is changing, as you might have noticed. Conventional business has become extremely risky.

Even if you GAVE Me a Business - I Would Turn It Down.

If you GAVE me a business, ANY business, I would simply give it back. Don’t need it, don’t want it. Keep it. Over the years, I have been offered shares in businesses, pieces of business, you name it. Never made any sense to me. I have been that self-employed salesman, too, and I simply had too much self-respect to continue as a mercenary prostitute. I was quite ready to shoot a few of my esteemed “Consulting Clients” and swore I would never be desperate enough (or crazy enough) to debase myself like that again.

The reason why most people get into conventional small businesses is usually because they don’t know that they have an option - that’s why I’m a Joint Venture Broker. I do what I like, when I like, where I like, with whom I like, IF I like. My freedom is simply too important to me.

If you listen carefully to people, you will hear clues that allow you to set up lucrative Joint Ventures, whether they buy or sell. The role of the Joint Venture Broker is to solve problems by linking supply and demand. You need to know what people want in order to solve their problems, and that is accomplished by listening. You can dramatically enhance your listening skills by following a specific track and allowing people to tell you what they want.

The starting point to is to hear them say something about a difficulty, a pain, a problem, a challenge, or an irritation, some barrier they’re facing or some detour that is causing them to lose money. The areas of pain are freedom, money, and work/ business.

Next, get them to elaborate on their challenges by asking them open-ended questions and making notes about their replies. You want them to revel in their pain, recognize that they have a problem, and indicate their level of motivation to solve their problem. Ask how the issue affects them, their feelings about it, the impact on their family and the effect on their future; if they don’t solve the probelm, what consequences will they suffer, with the emphasis on the word, “suffer”? What will their lives look like in a few years if they remain on this slippery slope?

Then, ask them how things would change if you could provide them with a solution, the effect on themselves and their family, their peace of mind and security, and their future. Get them to elaborate and sell themselves on how good things would be if you helped them solve their problem. They are standing in an obnoxious,  mental pool of trouble, excruciatingly aware of it, and looking over the river at the beautiful place they could be, and you’re the bridge - you’re the middleman that is going to use Joint Ventures to solve their problem. They are now motivated and ready to work with you.

Take your time, focus, make notes, and don’t send e mails, watch TV or browse the Internet while listening. Don’t get distracted -  listen for the Hot Button - hear what they REALLY want. Then find a professional DollarMakers Member that can provide the solution, negotiate the money, get the agreement in place, link them up, and get paid. When your JV partners are well educated and ready, you can move fast to provide solutions and create more residual income. This afternoon I set up a trackable, lucrative JV in ten minutes. Why so easy? I know the person whom I called, he understands JV’s, and he does a great job. He’s a Member of DollarMakers, he[’s attended a Bootcamp, and he has a track record of being reliable. The trust is in place, so the JV was set up, win/win, fast. I estimate it will make me on average only about $600 - $900 per month on average, but for ten minutes, I reckon it’s worth it.

Easy money, Honey! There are thousands of goldmines out there just WAITING for you. This is an untapped source of serious money. Want to know more? Settle down with a cup of tea and a ginger biscuit - this information could radically change your financial situation forever. I’m serious.

A very large percentage of small and medium-sized businesses have no website, no e-commerce, no up-to-date database of customers, no back-end income sources or Joint Ventures in place, no referral systems, no upsells or bundling, and no regular, effective communication with their customers. Many of them see forty or fifty new customers a day, and yet they don’t get them into a database. All that money is left on the table - for you to share in!

If you approached a business that had forty or more new customers and regulars coming in every day, you could make them the following offer, and you would have a lot of takers lining up to make you money:

“I can offer you a new, complete, professional, e-commerce website with links to ten Joint Venture partners, (that’s ten additional, pure profit income streams that I will set up for you) plus a number of back-ends, and build you a database and weekly ezine, plus put upsells and bundling in place. I will set up a lucrative referral system for you and manage the entire project, update it, and make it work. It will cost you not one dime, take none of your time, entail no risk whatsoever, and seriously enhance your image with your customers. It will seriously increase your sales and profits. At the same time, it will reduce your customer attrition rate and increase customer loyalty, purchase frequency, and transaction amounts. Most important, it will differentiate you from your competitors and add massive additional value. And it won’t cost you a cent.

I will own the URL (domain name) and the passwords, and I will take 40% of the resulting profits (that’s money you wouldn’t have had, anyway!) Now this might not be for you, of course, and that’s OK with me - I just wanted to make you this offer before going across the road to your competition.”

You use their existing reputation, customer flow, resources, and infrastructure to make money. You piggyback on an existing business. And you can do this with ten businesses simultaneously!
Oh, the website. You will be amazed to hear that a website like that is available for $997 and $50 per month, with full, total support, and you can sell banners and advertising to cover the initial investment. See http://www.youarethewebmaster.com/ and use this idea to make a lot of money.

Want to learn more? Attend our Toronto Joint Venture Broker Bootcamp April 19!

Robin J. Elliott
www.jvwisdom.com

How are you perceived, labeled, and described by the people whom you meet and those who truly know you? Are you a pain in the ass, the guy next door, just another typical, desperate salesman, or the Knight in Shining Armor, the Guardian Angel, the Magic Bullet, the Genie in a Lamp? Are you a time waster or a solution provider? Are you interpreted as pain or profit? Do people eagerly switch off the phones, make time, and cancel appointments to meet with you? Or do they make excuses, elude you, and hide away from you?

When your entire raison d’etre is to sell them something, regardless of what they want or need, or take something without generous recompense and reward, you’re just another begging peasant pretending to be an entrepreneur. When you pitch and push and vomit your “Elevator Speech” over everyone in sight, you’re just another parasite, a mosquito to be evaded, a leech to be squished. You’re like the smoker outside the mall entrance - someone to be despised, avoided, shunned, and glared at. But when you are a solution incarnate, a bridge to better business, a Horn of Plenty, a Fixer, a profitable partner, you’re welcomed like the Prodigal Son.

You control your label, and the label had better be a true indication of what’s inside the bottle. Too many people label rat poison with “Your Friendly Uncle”, but they don’t last long; you can fool some of the people some of the time… You decide how you will be perceived, and whether you will be sought after or excluded. How do you become a magnet, a center of attention, a golden child? By BECOMING a solution. That, after all, is what a genuine Joint Venture Broker is. Some think a JV Broker is someone searching for people to promote their product. No - that’s a stupid salesperson who doesn’t understand what a broker is. That person is simply broke. In more ways than one. A real broker is a solution provider that gets well paid for his service.

Genuine, 24-Carat Joint Venture Brokers are honestly interested in helping others solve their problems, diminish their pain, and achieve their objectives, by linking them up with others and getting paid a piece of the resulting, ongoing profits. Real JV Brokers are actually catalysts, links, solutions, facilitators, synergists. The JV Broker is a rain maker, a lightning rod, an energizer, who flies in through the window like Superman to help you solve your overwhelming problems and link you to the resources you need. Everyone loves Smiling Superman, but we loathe slick salespeople. People are generally more sophisticated, cynical, and sensitive than we think.

A real Joint Venture Broker is sans ego, sans hidden agenda, sans ulterior motives or manipulative moves. He is usually an invited guest, for whom the best chair at the table is reserved. His coat is taken by a deferent manservant and he is served first by doting waiters, because he has earned the respect of all. You can have whatever you want by providing others with what they want.

Robin J. Elliott
www.jvwisdom.com