You want to be free to do what you like, when you like, right?

You want to be free to go where you wish, when you wish, and to be able to afford to buy what you want. Ayn Rand said:

“Freedom is to ask for nothing, to expect nothing and to depend on nothing.”

Sounds good to me. But, to many people, this just seems like an impossible dream.

A Simple Plan to Create Freedom in Your Life

In fact, you can create this freedom in your own life to a large extent. It won’t happen overnight, but it can happen. You can consciously and systematically create this free lifestyle. I have. And you can, too. This is a technology, not some “Pie in the sky” scheme. It’s not MLM or Network Marketing. It’s proven and it works. Here is a simple plan to create freedom in your life: more than enough time and money and independence for you.

You Don’t Need Millions in the Bank to Retire

We should remember that Robert Kiosaki, in his “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” book, told us that you don’t need millions in the bank to retire.

What you do need is more passive income than you need to live comfortably on.

That’s not what some “financial planners” will tell you; they want to sell you lots of risky stocks and bonds and they tell you that you need millions in the bank. So, if you need $5,000 a month to live on and your income exceeds that, plus you have a little financial cushion stashed away for unexpected costs, you’re looking good!

Multiple Streams of Income Removes Risk

And we all know that it’s better, by far, to have multiple streams of income than just one. That way, we reduce our risk, don’t we? Not all your eggs in one basket. Have many baskets, so you can afford to drop some and still survive. Spread the risk. That way, you don’t lie awake at night, worrying about losing your income because of a crash in the stock market, a grumpy boss or a dishonest business associate.

10 Simple Steps to Create Time and Money Freedom

So, step by step, this is what we need to create time and money freedom and peace of mind, and all the quality of life that brings with it; ten simple steps:

1. Reduce and remove debts and overhead.

Most people buy things they don’t need and can’t afford, with money they don’t have, to impress people they don’t like. We need to reduce our monthly expenses and cut away the fat. Do you really need two cars and all the flash? The less you need to live on every month, the easier it is to get free. Take a good, hard look at your expenses and lifestyle. Do your things own you?

2.  Make sure you are properly insured against lawsuits and unexpected loss.

Get many quotes and be very careful which salesperson you talk with. Remember, the salesperson wants as much commission as he can get out of you. A healthy dose of skepticism is a good thing here.

When I was offered dental insurance and I looked at my benefits and costs, I decided to do without. It has saved me thousands of dollars. Read the small print; insurance companies really don’t want to pay you.

3.  Incorporate your business for protection and definitely have a business.

The tax breaks are excellent, especially if you’re a Joint Venture Broker as there are many more deductibles, including trips, entertainment and the like.

4.  Remove unnecessary costs and especially regular costs from your life.

5.  Organize Your Finances.

Visit your bank manager and the competition bank manager and an accountant. Look at refinancing and reorganizing your debts, line of credit, credit cards and mortgage – this exercise alone can save you a fortune and radically reduce your monthly costs.

6.  Simplify your life as much as possible.

What can be cut out? What is working, and what is not working? Are you attending a club or group out of habit, but not really getting any benefit anymore? And it’s costing you money? How much time and money will you save by leaving?

7. Educate yourself.

• Read Robert Kiosaki’s books.
• Read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”.
• Read “Think and Grow Rich” – again.
• Attend courses. Don’t go out and spend a fortune on schemes and dreams and “get rich quick” schemes. Be very careful. Attend free seminars but don’t buy stuff when the speaker turns into a used car salesman at the end and the mindless herd goes scurrying to the back of the room to buy his overpriced products. Sleep on it first. Don’t get emotionally whipped up.
• The more you learn, the more you earn. Understand money and debt.
• Examine your thinking and attitudes. We don’t have money problems; we have thinking problems.

8. Align yourself with winners, not whiners.

If we mix with people who are richer, wiser and more successful than we are, we will earn more as we learn more. Be open-minded and get that ego out of the way. People who are free can teach you how to be free. You don’t learn by talking; you learn by listening and then applying the new information.

9. Maintain the Joint Venture Broker mindset.

In everything, maintain the Joint Venture Broker mindset: “No Money, No Risk, Very Little Time.” You don’t have to pay for things when you understand Joint Ventures. You can trade, barter and Joint Venture.

10. Become a Joint Venture Broker and create multiple streams of increasing, passive income.

• Maximum potential
• Unlimited opportunities
• No geographic limitations
• No industry limitations
• Anyone can do it, regardless of education, age or background.
• All you need is access to a telephone. If you have internet access, even better.
• Work from home, a car, a beach, a forest, a hotel, an airport, or a wheelbarrow if you like.
• And you don’t have to go out and buy a business, sell stuff, sign leases, employ people or buy inventory. You can use existing resources – everything you need is available through other people and other businesses.

Big business understands the leverage and reach available through Joint Ventures.  Don’t create a competency or distribution channel - borrow one! Share the love, as it were.

H&R Block and 7-Eleven

H&R Block Inc. and 7-Eleven Inc. signed a three-year agreement Wednesday that enables Block customers to cash refund loan checks at 1,100 7-Eleven stores in the United States.

Yahoo! and Starbucks

Online dating is growing in popularity. And people who meet online typically like to meet for the first time in a coffee house like Starbucks. Armed with that data, Starbucks teamed with Yahoo! Personals to produce an “Espresso Dating Guide” that can be found exclusively online. The guide offers advice such as what to wear on a first date, what to talk about and, if necessary, how to end the date gracefully. Starbucks is running a print ad campaign to support the online site.

Time for small & medium business to get in the game!

The ego-driven, “Lone Ranger” mentality of the typical small to medium business owner is expensive and risky. Big business has been using Joint Ventures for a long time because they have the ability to be objective, bottom line oriented and unthreatened. Now it’s time for small and medium businesses to benefit as well.

After the Joint Venture Broker Bootcamp I presented in Toronto on Sunday, one of the Delegates, the owner of a well known eatery on Bloor street, reacted fast and immediately started arranging Joint Ventures that will bring him serious profit with very little risk and negligible cost.

You don’t even need a business to JV!

The good news is that you don’t even need a business to benefit financially from brokering Joint Ventures. It’s just a matter of seeing the opportunities, much like the stereogram analogy. At first, a stereogram looks like a nonsensical arrangement of patterns, but when you look long enough, a 3D picture magically emerges. Joint Venture brokers simply link supply and demand and take a piece of the ongoing action. There is literally no end to the opportunities available and the potential income, especially since it’s all 100% profit to the broker.

Got a database?

When I hear of a person who has a good relationship with a large number of other people, I see massive opportunity. By providing all those people with what they want, value is created. We get paid in direct proportion to the value we provide. The more people you help, the more money you can make.

Linking 1,000 people with solutions and being paid on every transaction is great, especially when you don’t have to provide the services or carry the inventory – you simply link A and B and become a little tollgate. You stand on the money bridge and collect. No cost or risk to you, and very little time.

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.

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.

When you’re ready to start doing Joint Ventures, you should look at opportunities that fit the following criteria:

1. No Cost & Risk

There should be no cost or risk to you and it should not involve a lot of time, and definitely no selling.

2. Worth Your Time & Effort

The deals should be able to create enough money per deal to be worth your time and effort.

3. Pick Excellent Partners

You should only work with people you like and trust, who take action and are reliable. Don’t deal with whiners, losers or flakes.

4. Quick Turn-around Time

Look at the turn-around time. If you’re bringing leads to realtors or financial planners (insurance salespeople), for example, their deals generally take a long time and often fall apart, whereas certain deals are time sensitive (like a seminar) and people have to make fast decision, so the deal happens or it doesn’t in a shorter period of time. We want high-return, no risk (to EITHER party), little time invested, no money invested, and a quick turn-around time.

5. Multiple Complementary Income Sources

Structure your multiple income sources to complement each other. Instead of a “feast or famine” scenario, have different businesses with different busy cycles in the hopper, so that you get an even flow of income. Also look for synergies between the different demographics and buyer needs so that the same customer can buy from more than one income source.

6. Put it in writing!

Put the deal in writing - who does what, how they do it, when they do it, how payment takes place, the exact amounts or percentages paid, when payment takes place, etc., the more detail the better so that there are no misunderstandings later on. Do you get paid on the first transaction or on ongoing transactions?

7. Get Educated!

Attend the DollarMakers Joint Venture Forum Member meetings and conference calls and attend Bootcamps so that you stay connected and keep on learning. Remember, if there’s no risk to either party and a deal doesn’t work out, nobody gets hurt, so don’t be afraid to fail. Also, some people will not want to Joint Venture with you. Don’t take it personally; they simply don’t understand value yet.

8. Come Prepared

Create an action plan and be prepared to do some research on people whom you intend to approach. For example, what are their profit margins, underutilized resources and needs? What kind of reputation do they have? Google them, check the Better Business Bureau, run a credit check, ask around.

9. Maintain Your Confidence & Strength

Be upbeat and optimistic when approaching potential Joint Venture partners, but never be desperate. You don’t need them. Be prepared to walk away from any deal at any time.

10. Think Big & Take Action

Finally, business is a numbers game. The more people you talk with, the more you try, the more you fail,  the bigger you think, the better. Joint Ventures is the fastest, best and most fun way to make an unlimited amount of money with no risk, little time and no money, that I have ever seen. Make it happen!

The best part of Joint Ventures, as well as the easiest and most lucrative, is “Piggybacking”.

When I was 11 years old, my favorite game at school was similar to piggybacking. Small guys like me would ride on the backs of big, strong guys and we would try to pull our opponents over. They key to winning was strong arms and a strong “Horse”. I had strong arms and I always chose a strong horse, so I usually won.

A Strong Recommendation

In business, the book, “Horse Sense” by Al Ries and Jack Trout applies the same concept. This book was personally recommended to me by a multimillionaire client of mine, many years ago. I read the book three times.

A Lucrative Piggybacking Example

I recently talked with a man who has 1,200 people in his database. I suggested he offer them Membership in my DollarMakers Joint Venture Forum at a great discount. By sending out two e-mails and one voice broadcast and adding value, for which I would pay, and by mentioning the opportunity in his e-zine, we estimated that he would have at least 120 join (10%). That would earn him significant money, at no cost or risk to him. That’s piggybacking – and it’s that simple.

The same can be done with shared advertising, mailings, e-mails, e-zines, direct mail, seminars and business opportunities. Riding on the back of existing distribution, reputation, reach, access and exposure is very effective.

Consider the Power of Partnering

• Don’t buy a 747 to fly to LA – simply rent a seat.
• Don’t own the overhead or create a competency; borrow it.

Consider the power of partnering: everyone wins by sharing underutilized resources and Hidden Assets. And here’s the Good News – you don’t need to own the resource, be it a database, distribution route or relationship – you simply make the connection – it’s called “Triangulation”. No risk or cost, no downside, lots of fun and lots of money. You don’t need a business to set this up. Link me up with someone else and take a piece of the action. Link Bob up with Sally and get paid on all ensuing business over the next two years, why not?

The key to successful piggybacking…

is a strong horse and a strong rider – both parties should be ethical, generous, smart, professional and proactive. That’s the hard part. I know people whose databases I wouldn’t touch with a 20 foot pole. Be selective; be VERY selective.

Talk with Members of the DollarMakers Joint Venture Forum and if you want to make a lot of money easily, remember that all it takes is a bit of thought. It’s not hard work and there’s no risk if you’re dealing with the right people.

The Bottom Line

Bundle a product or service with one that is already selling well or add a product or service to an existing database or distribution route – that’s piggybacking, and it can create increasing, multiple streams of passive income for you.

Which are you right now?

I worked with a real estate company to help them increase sales and saw the “tortoise and the hare” fable come to life right before my eyes. One of the salespeople (the tortoise) was slow, not highly skilled, not a great communicator and she had a long commute to work, which cut into her flexibility. But she was steady, consistent, reliable, very enthusiastic and totally focused and committed to reaching her goals. Some of the other “hare” salespeople tended to be highly skilled and polished, but they were often erratic and unfocused. They worked in fits and starts. They got side-tracked. The tortoise beat them every single month. The results I see a salesperson accomplishing are in direct proportion to his or her consistency and focus.

The “Magic” Formula

The formula for Momentum is p=mv where p is momentum, m is mass and v is velocity. If we were to translate that into sales, momentum would be branding and results, m would be the amount of effort, action and focus and v would be enthusiasm and belief or:

Your Brand’s Momentum = Your effort, action and focus + Your enthusiasm and belief

It’s the Accumulation of Great Action

Branding and momentum is not achieved overnight. It takes consistent sowing and nurturing to build a brand, whether that brand is you, your website, your product or your business. Imagine someone pushing a car up a hill. As they push, they gain momentum and it gets easier. If they stop and let go of the car, it starts rolling back down the hill! Momentum is a vector. That simply means that momentum is a quantity that has a magnitude, or size, and a direction.

Are you headed in the best direction?

Some businesses have momentum in the wrong direction, and they require a turn-around expert to deal with them. We need to be sure that our efforts are taking us in the right direction and we need to know why we want to move in that direction.

Use this Reality Check

• It’s good to stand back and take along, hard look at your business.
• Re-evaluate your goals.
• Look at your activity.  Is it building momentum and the branding you want?
• Are your sure you’re creating the right image?
• Most of all, focus and consistency should be built into all your systems.

As Michael Gerber tells us in the E Myth, work ON your business, not IN it. And continually adjust and improve upon every aspect of it. Concentrated effort and persistence is the mark of a winner. Once you gain positive momentum in the right direction, make sure you continue to feed the fire, and the sky’s the limit.

How much should you make from a Joint Venture?

• 10%? 20%? 50%?
• Should it be of the net or gross profit or off the top?
• How do you decide?

This is an important consideration, especially for people who are used to paying peanuts and those who are used to accepting a few crumbs. Entrepreneurs who understand business and profit are more likely to pay and demand reasonable commissions.

Look at the Profit Margin & Be Generous

For example, when people attend a DollarMakers Joint Venture Broker Bootcamp, I pay the referring Members up to 50% in commissions! My cost of putting an extra chair into a Bootcamp and a few extra cups of coffee and donuts, plus a workbook, is negligible. I can afford to be generous. My DollarMakers Joint Venture Forum Members earn thousands in commissions every month. But if I was selling computer hardware, with a profit of around 6%, I could not afford to pay such a generous commission. Large profit margins demand high commissions; real business people understand that. And there are other ways to reciprocate, other than financially – but that’s a subject for another blog or the Bootcamp.

Avoid Ridiculous Offers Like This

A realtor approached me with the typical offer: “Send me a buyer or a seller and I will pay you $75 for a completed sale.” So you get $7,000 and you expect me to accept $75? Are you kidding me? I’ll take 50% of the realtor’s commission or no deal. Am I being greedy? No – I pay 50% and so can they. If you don’t ask, you won’t get. Desperate realtors will not agree to this, but the smart realtor who has built in multiple Joint Venture back end sales into every transaction will jump at the opportunity.

50% of something is better than 100% of nothing. It’s business they would never have had. When you show them how much business that one deal can generate over the years and the Marginal Net Worth of a customer, they might see the light.

A Smart Business Owner Knows

Most entrepreneurs don’t understand their acquisition cost, attrition rate, profit margins, back end value or Joint Ventures. That’s why they feel they have to grab every up front cent they can. When they understand the big picture and they want to create increasing, multiple streams of passive income, they will become generous in their referral fees and commissions.

My Standard

I personally don’t accept anything less than 20%, but it all depends on the big picture, margins, reciprocal consideration and value. Remember the big picture and demand to be paid a fair amount or walk away. There are many opportunities out there but very few people who understand Joint Ventures, so you can call the shots.