Robin J. Elliott: Joint Ventures with the Prophet of Profit, Training, Strategic Alliances

If you’re serious about success and if time is valuable to you, you only want to deal with Joint Venture Partners who are seriously motivated and make your interaction / project / JV a priority. On a scale of one to ten, a one means “I don’t care either way; I will give up at the first sign of resistance” and a ten means, “whatever it takes, walking barefoot over broken glass, naked, with my hair on fire”. You want nothing less than a ten. You want their full focus, attention, allegiance, and enthusiasm. However, you do not want to spend valuable time on them, only to find that their real level of commitment is only five!

How do you know whether or not someone is committed to the task and the outcome? How do you discover their level of dedication? Here’s how I learn what their level of devotion is. I believe actions speak louder than words, so instead of believing what they say, I simply watch what they do. Like a pilot in an airplane, I watch my control panel, and here is what I look for:

The speed at which they return phone calls, messages, and e-mails.

Whether or not they show up on time or cancel appointments. Winners seldom cancel and are always on time.

Whether they make excuses or take responsibility.

Their use of and respect for time and resources.

The people they hang around with.

Their personal presentation. Do they look and dress like winners?

How big they think. I want people to think bigger than I do, and deliver what they promise.

Do they deliver what they promise on time? If they’re always late, I start downgrading them.

How fast they pay others and me. This one tells you a lot. If they’re hurting for money, BEWARE.

Do they make time and make way for your project and relationship or do they have too many other things going on and other priorities?

Do they focus on the fast buck and immediate gratification or do they see the big picture? Are they on board for the long term?

Do they initiate, innovate, and improve on your ideas, or do they simply go along with you? How enthusiastic are they? Do they take ownership of their responsibilities?

Do they make themselves available or do they complain about too much work and pressure? Are they easily accessible or do they hide away?

Finally, I look for Joint Venture Partners who share my sense of URGENCY. I look for generous, committed, and smart people who are honest and professional. I need to know that they will do whatever it takes to achieve our common goals. You want people who are reliable and solid. The Members of the Joint Venture Forum abide by our Code of Ethics and believe in delivering real value. Be selective – be VERY selective – and you will soar to greater heights of success than ever before.

Have you ever seen an apricot on an apple tree? Or a banana hanging from an orange tree? I can sit in my garage all day long, drink gasoline and make car noises, but that doesn’t make me a car. If it meows, it’s probably not an eagle. Most entrepreneurs are so focused on sales, profits, cash flow and time, that they don’t take the time to evaluate options and people objectively. The fact is, appearances are only appearances: smoke and mirrors. And the reason why we should be aware of who people really are, is that we must carefully choose who we spend our time with.

Bob Harrison teaches us that “Birds of the feather flock together, and that flock is going someplace.” Whom are you flocking with, and where is your flock headed? He says that if you want big fleas, you have to hang with the bog dogs. Are you hanging with big dogs – big thinkers, or with losers? Your circle of friends and associates will largely determine your future level of success. Therefore, you have to be very careful whom you mix with. You can’t judge a book by its cover; you have to read it in order to judge it accurately. The people you bump into in a McDonald’s are different from those you meet at the Hyatt. Where do you spend your time?

At a meeting of the DollarMakers Joint Venture Forum, I introduced two people and I was paid a commission of 25,000 shares in a company. Those people don’t spend a lot of time in MacDonald’s. Successful people don’t think in terms of shortage, scarcity and doubt; they believe in abundance and winning. They are optimistic. They take risks. They spend money. They don’t make weak excuses. We earn within 10% of the income of the people we spend the most time with. If someone tells you he is a top business consultant and you find out that he works part-time in a government job, guess what? He’s a loser. He’s a liar. He’s a liability. Dump him, bump him, and move on. We know that if we change our thoughts, we can change our world. Your thinking is determined largely by the people you socialize with.

Back to Bob Harrison. He says like attracts like. Georges hang around with Georges (a one-dollar bill) and Bens hang around with Bens ($100 bill) and buy Mercedes Benz’s! Whom are you spending time with and working with? Who belongs to your club? Abraham ($5) is a good guy, and Andrew ($20) is also a good guy, but if you’re serious about success, hang with Ben Franklin. Now George might impress you, but when you take him to the bank, he is only worth a dollar. Spending time with Ben Franklin time is worth a hundred times more than spending time with George Washington! Classify your friends and decide if you want to share their future or create you own.

Finally, a good way to find out that people really are is to find out what books they read. When you read a book by Churchill, you are reading his words in your mind. In reality, you are thinking his thoughts! If you think the thoughts of Winston Churchill, you will get the same kind of results that he got! Isn’t that exciting? When you know what books people read, you know a lot about them. You cannot change people, so don’t try; move on to winners. When you want apples, make sure you’re climbing a ladder that is leaning on an apple tree. Join the winners of the DollarMakers Joint Venture Forum: www.dollarmakers.com

Robin J. Elliott.

Watch the Apprentice and you’ll see Donald Trump doing it with a number of other partners. British Telecom and AT&T did it in 1998. Now Yahoo and EBay and also Dell and Google. Ford and Mazda did it. So did Toyota and General Motors, Sony and Ericsson, Texaco and Royal Dutch Shell… Verizon Wireless, with 51.3 million customers, is a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group, with 55 and 45 percent ownership respectively. I could go on all day, but the fact is we see Joint Ventures all the time with large business. It’s been going on for centuries. Why? Because it makes a lot of sense. It makes EVEN MORE sense when small businesses do it, especially when they do it with no money and no risk!

If it’s good enough for Wal-Mart, Sony and Pfizer, Disney and Nike, it will probably work for you, especially since you have nothing to lose. I recently talked with a friend of mine who is an expert in asset protection. He told me that most rich people have always used this system to protect themselves. It’s nothing new. It’s just that average people are not aware of it. The same goes for Joint Ventures. It’s really not rocket science. All it takes is a basic and objective understanding of value, money, supply and demand, and leverage. The biggest enemy of JV’s is ego. This is usually what prevents small business owners from taking advantage of this smart money making system.

The smartest people I know are brokers. They are free of overhead, risk, employees, inventory, limitations, barriers and cash flow problems. They link people up and triangulate deals and spend relatively little time doing it. The returns are unlimited and all 100% profit. You don’t have to sell your own products or services or even own a business in order to broker Joint Venture deals. You don’t have to know much about the businesses you deal with. Short learning curve, long passive income period, low or no risk or cost, high return – it doesn’t get better than that! High tech, low tech, slow tech or no tech, it doesn’t really matter which bsuiness you deal with or where it’s located – the principles woirk. And when a deal goes south, don’t worry – if you set it up correctly, there’s no loss!

Here are three ways that you can lose with Joint Ventures: First, deal with the wrong people. Second, you don’t understand the concept. And Third, you don’t take action. The DollarMakers Joint Venture Forum was created to provide JV partners and the training and support necessary for anyone, anywhere, to ride the JV Magic Carpet to Financial Success. This is my Personal Invitation to hop on board and fly away from the frustration, fear and failure that so many small business owners have to cope with every day. No more “feast or Famine”, no more creditors knocking and no more sleepless nights. Unless you’re partying with us in Hawaii at our DollarMakers Breakaway Event, that is.

For more information, visit http://www.dollarmakers.com/ – you’ll be glad you did!

Robin J. Elliott

We’ve all had that feeling of dread and discomfort when a certain customer darkens one’s proverbial door, haven’t we? I remember the last consulting client that I fired. I swore I would never consult again, and my level of peace and motivation has climbed steeply ever since. In fact, when I got home, Rika said, “You look radiant! Did you fire another one of your clients?” He showed up in the restaurant in the customary sunglasses – big clue there! – And I recognized that feeling that urged me to seek out a nice Benelli M3 shotgun and put him out of his misery. It would save a whole lot of people a whole lot of hurt. He is one of those “Big fish in a very small pond” who believes his own publicist – not that he can even spell the word. I think you get my drift.

I was having lunch with a Member recently in Beverly’s on Main at Wasaga Beach in Ontario and she told me how she used to fire customers in her hair salons years ago. She said that the whole atmosphere in the salon would lighten and improve when a “difficult” client was let go. In the DollarMakers Joint Venture Forum, I have refused Membership, fired Members and refused to renew others when we find that we have hooked a rotten fish. As business owners, we simply cannot afford to accommodate rotten apples and we have a responsibility to our other Members, employees, customers and associates, not to allow Customer Contamination.

The good news is that, sooner or later, people will reveal who they really are. They start off with a good impression (unless you’re really tuned into your intuition or you’re married to my smart wife) and from then on it’s a slippery slope, because they cannot consistently act in a way that is not congruent with their real values. The problem is, they can hurt some of your staff and customers along the way. The same goes for employees – they can do a lot of damage before you wise up and fire them. How can we apply damage control early?

My Scuba diving instructor used to say, “Equalize early and often.” Let’s apply this to a system for keeping our businesses clean and free from the wrong people. First, do a lot of due diligence and checks. Do your homework. Ask the competition, employees, vendors, and customers of the person applying to get involved in your life. Second, make sure you have created a way to get rid of people legally, quickly and easy. (Not with the shotgun.) Third, constantly monitor behavior and look for red flags. The red flags that I look for are showing up late, canceling appointments, not keeping their words, addictions like nicotine, alcohol, pot, sex, food or ego and personal presentation. (They can be immaculately groomed but if they stink of tobacco, they might as well leave right now.) Be aware.

How does an organ grinder discipline his monkey? True story: if he beats the monkey, the monkey will lose all creativity, fun, and initiative and withdraw. So on a regular basis, he kills a chicken in front of the monkey. Just to remind the monkey to behave. When you keep your operation clean and consistently remove the sociopaths and losers from your life, you will find the quality of people that you attract improving all the time. Be very loyal to the sheep and merciless with the wolves. It works for me. By the way, the Benelli M3 can be used in both Pump-Action and Semi-Automatic modes.

Robin J. Elliott www.dollarmakers.com

What is your self-image? How do you see yourself? When you look in the mirror, do you see a salesman, a wife, a worker, a leader, or a sucker? How would you describe yourself? Only you can decide how you wish to perceive yourself. This self-image has a lot to do with how you handle adversity. When you have a big vision and exciting plans, it’s a lot easier to boldly go where few have dared. However, when your objective is mere financial survival, keeping your job and toeing the line, every little bump in the road seems like a major setback.

Albert Einstein said, “Great spirits encounter violent opposition from mediocre people.” Do you see yourself as a great spirit? How motivated are you to make your dreams come true? Thomas Edison said, “I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” Conformists and cowards are always ready to quit. They turn tail at the first sign of discomfort. In addition, they always blame someone else. They flit from one fad to another and never achieve anything of significance in their lives.

Frederick Douglass said, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.” When your goals are worthwhile, important and valuable, your passion is high and your commitment will blow away any hindrances along the way. When you’re looking at the sun, you hardly notice the shadows.

On my bathroom mirror, I have large yellow sticker that says, “UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS”, and when I look at my pretty face, I see this just above my head. My self-image is that of a warrior. I was drafted into the army at seventeen but I have always had some military involvement and interest, ever since I can remember. I watch the Military Channel. Recently in Hawaii, there was a military parade one day. I took more photos of the parade and the military aircraft and vehicles than anything else! True warriors do not retreat. They do not desert. Warriors are focused and courageous.

Sam Walton understood winning. He said, “High expectations are the key to everything.” The bigger your goals, the easier it is to overcome difficulties. To a warrior, the enemy is a mere distraction to be destroyed and overcome on the way to victory. Losers worship obstacles – that is their excuse to be mediocre. They build statues to honor army deserters. Who is your enemy? Anyone who gets between you and your goals. Do not fraternize with the enemy. Chose your soldiers in arms carefully.

Finally, Ted Turner said, “Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise.” Whatever you focus on will increase. The only attention your enemy should get is whatever it takes to take him out of the picture – then get back to work. Be not discouraged. Be an Eagle. Fly high. Insist on winning. Set higher goals. Join the DollarMakers Joint Venture Forum.

Robin J. Elliott www.DollarMakers.com