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

We know “You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince” and “Duds Lead to Studs”, so we often justify time wasted with losers, posers, wannabes, has-beens, and conmen, justify pearls cast before swine, and are consequently tempted to kill more often than is healthy. Throwing them up against the wall and hoping some with stick gives you a sore back and dirties the wall. I have learned in the past few months to become an obsessive compulsive QUALIFIER to avoid killing someone out of pure frustration.

In the past, I would believe the lies or losers and arrogantly and idealistically convince myself that I could change a duck into an eagle. Then I learned that it is better to pre-qualify people. The more selective I become, the more rewarding my relationships have become. “Some will, some won’t, so what? NEXT!” is fine, but why spend so much time shouting, “Next”? Learning to say “No” will save more time, since by the time you get to “Next” the blood pressure has risen, the hands on the clock have moved, and you have wasted time that could have been spent with a more deserving character. Spend more time with less people.

And so, to provide you with a few clues to conmen, here are six Red Flags that can save your precious resources:
1. Victims – look out for self-pity, blaming of parents, excuses, or self-absorption.
2. Track Record – People seldom change and they need to demonstrate this ability before you vest to much in them. Give them a few small tests to make sure they are even able to change.
3. Back doors – if they insist on back doors, escape routes, Plan B’s, “money-back guarantees”, and other revelations of their inadequacy, weakness, and putrid self-esteem, you know they have failed again, before they even begin.
4. Second-guessing, analyzing, and questioning your guidance and instructions right at the outset – find a cattle brand and put that “L” on their foreheads to protect others from them in the future.
5. Any signs of socialism, entitlement, arrogance, or being cheap should instantly disqualify them.
6. Anyone touting a resume is really waving a bright, red flag.

Make people qualify for your attention. Raise the barrier. Increase the price. Reserve the right to reject. Qualify and select, and remember that you’ll only accept 3% of the applicants. Don’t confuse peasants and laborers with entrepreneurs. Have them do a personality assessment at their own cost. Make them earn the right to your guidance. And at any time, do not hesitate to terminate the relationship. Spend more money on royal banquets than you do on wart ointment.

Robin J. Elliott www.DollarMakers.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 doen’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.DollarMakers.com

What LABEL do you have on yourself? Tim Larkin tells an interesting story about when he had to train an elite counter-terrorist, law enforcement unit. The problem with this unit was their inability to properly anticipate ambushes or potential assassination attempts. The reason was that the unit was in defense mode, or reaction mode. They called themselves an “anti-terrorist” unit, which implies they are to defend their clients, whereas a “counter-terrorist” unit is there to HUNT terrorists. To solve the problem, Larkin changed their name (label) to Counter-Terrorist and had them practise reverse roles, so they learned to think like the terrorists. They became “At Cause” instead of “At Effect”.

In business, you are either a passive order-taker or a hunter. When I sold furniture, I stood there hoping people would come into the store so that I could sell them furniture – a passive, reactive, “at effect” position that drove me nuts. When I sold life insurance I became a HUNTER. I was proactive. I became the CAUSE, the initiator, the Producer. And so I took control of my income and my life. The label I had on my head changed. I took responsibility for my sales. I couldn’t blame the weather or the competition anymore. It was up to me. I saw myself differently. The fisherman stands there, waiting for the fish to bite. The hunter goes and looks for his prey. I don’t fish; within thirty minutes I would be storming into the water with a club to find those elusive creatures.

This is a very important part of your success in business: You’re either waiting for people to bring you deals and opportunities, or you’re creating those deals and opportunities. When Rika and I go to a mall and we see empty stores, I know that many of those people took a huge risk and lost their life savings and more, because they wanted to stand behind a counter and smile and pose while the world beat a path to their door. At Effect. When people didn’t show up and they couldn’t make their payroll and lease at the end of the month and they lost their money, they blamed the economy, the mall, the weather, and poor old George Bush. After all, “They couldn’t help it”! What could they do? It wasn’t their fault! Pathetic. Weak. Useless.

Change your mental label. Become “Unstoppable” – a “Money Machine,” a “Warrior”, a “Conqueror”, an “Adventurer”. See yourself as a producer, a pioneer, a First Cause, and creator, and an initiator. Make it happen. Take the lead. Insist on victory. Step up. Kill the terrorists before they get to you. Create the future you want. DollarMakers is here to assist you in that.

Robin J. Elliott www.DollarMakers.com

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.

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.

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.

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. DollarMakers is 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 www.DollarMakers.com

You know, you’re really only one or the other. Listen to this: “Does the spoon taste the soup? A fool may live all his life in the company of a master and still miss the way. The tongue tastes the soup. If you are awake in the presence of a master, one moment will show you the way.” – the Buddha. Some people start off as spoons and then one day they become a tongue. One can spend hours and hours with a great teacher and not get it, then suddenly, somehow, there’s an epiphany, and that is your moment of understanding, your breakthrough, and everything suddenly becomes clear. And you’re never the same again.

The stronger one’s conditioning, the more spoonlike we are, and it takes longer to arrive at that defining moment. So hang in there – it takes time to break through that wall of cynicism, but eventually the sunlight peeks through, the scales drop from one’s eyes, and VOILA! You GET IT. “Egad! I never realized, Fotherington! It’s as plain as the nose of your face!”

Sad thing is, when dozing in spoon mode, one could become a little jealous of those tongues out there, revelling in the revelation and raking in the old cash, “licking their chops”, as it were. One feels a little out of place, as though surrounded by dozens of Kiss fans, tongues lolling about like damn dogs, so one tends to get a little nasty, and probably flounce out and miss out on that life-giving broth. Cutting off one’s tongue to spite one’s face…. Not smart. It takes some of us a little longer, is all. Don’t give up – come on in, the soup’s great!

Actually, the Buddha hit the nail on the head when he used the word, “Awake”. You have to be awake, and I translate that as “Hungry”. If you are hungry enough, you’ll see through that veil of pessimism and doubt, and your motivation will burn through the fog of fear. A spot of faith and a dollop of trust do wonders to help the medicine go down. And nothing tastes sweeter than the realization that you can actually have all the money you want, faster, easier, and with more fun than you ever believed possible, using Joint Ventures.

So when the information is not penetrating, don’t shoot the messenger, break the mirror, or decide that you can’t do it. Just remember the old spoon and tongue analogy – a “spoon” becomes a “tongue” when it spends enough time in the soup, especially if it’s thirsty. Personally, I’m a slow learner and a slow reader. I sound each word in my mind when I read, and I need to hear things a few time before I understand the context completely, but I have learned to be patient with myself, because I know from experience that when I get it, I REALLY get it, and then I’m unstoppable. Release your inner tongue!

Now I’m peckish – tea and a ginger biscuit sounds good.

Robin J. Elliott www.DollarMakers.com