Bob Serling — A Joint Venture Strategy That Gets People's Attention

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What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys, Mount Wolf and Joe Fear.

Hey, what's up? Welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. My name is Matt Wolfe. I'm here with my business partner and co host, Mr. Joe Fear. And today we've got a killer, killer guest for you. His name is Bob Serling. And we actually heard about Bob probably back in about 2009. ISH was about the first time his name came on our radar. He was doing a lot of licensing stuff with people like Tony Hawk and Frank Kern and some, some real big, big names. And, you know, we got this opportunity to pull him on the podcast and have a chat with him. Joe has actually worked with him on some projects in the past, and when we got this opportunity to have him on the podcast and talk to him, you know, we had to, we had to grab this opportunity. Bob is such a brilliant guy. He's done so much, he's met so many people, networked so much and just has some extraordinary stories and some extraordinary philosophies on business. And today in this podcast, we're going to talk about his strategy to get more joint ventures to promote your products. Everybody seems to do joint ventures wrong. The common wisdom is you go out, you email everybody you know that does affiliate marketing and you just kind of blanket them all and say, hey, will you promote my stuff?

Right.

Well, Bob has a different strategy. He kind of flips that strategy and has a pretty sure fire way to get a lot of people promoting your products. It's a great conversation. Bob is an awesome guy and has some, some great stories to tell and a great philosophy on networking and building partnerships for your business. So I think you're really gonna enjoy this one. You're gonna get a lot from it. Bob Serling is amazing and I'm going to stop kissing his butt now. And let's just go ahead and jump right in.

All right, Bob, thanks for coming on the show here with us.

Hey, thanks a lot for having me.

Yeah. So we kind of want to. Let's just crack into your story. You're an interesting fellow. You're in San Diego, in a beautiful part of San Diego by the coast. But you've done a lot. It sounds like licensing, all sorts of things in the past, joint venture, some inventing, I guess, chat about that a little bit and what you've been up to.

Okay. Well, I think like most entrepreneurs, I have multiple interests and so I try to And I also get bored doing just one thing. So I try to keep busy in a couple of different areas, but they're all interrelated. So.

I mean, I'm a marketing consultant and I have training programs in marketing. And then separate from that, I have programs that specialize just in the area of joint ventures. And I broker joint ventures for a few clients and I separate them out because joint ventures are really their own form of marketing and they're really done wrong by most people. So I focus on helping people, getting them right. And then I've always licensed my intellectual property. Whether they're marketing campaigns or email campaigns and things, I've licensed them to other consultants and other industries. So I teach licensing of intellectual property. And then what goes along with that is that you can also create and license physical products, which I do. A lot of people refer to that as inventing. But in the business world, professional inventors are referred to as product developers. But regardless of what you call it, I both do that and I teach it. And so as you guys know, I. The, the thing I'm probably best known for in terms of licensing physical products is a skateboard toy I did that had Tony Hawk's logo and the logos of six other really high end popular skateboard brands and that sold all over the world. And then the company that, that manufactured that was bought for like $180 million, which I got maybe a few pennies. But you know, and so I'm, I'm active in all those different areas and you know, I kind of shift my focus from one to the other at different times.

But.

And you know, I think the area though where I can be of the most help to most entrepreneurs is in that area of joint ventures. Just right. Helping people understand how to broker or not broker, but set up joint ventures for their business in a way that's really going to get them results instead of a lot of the phony promises that are out there.

Awesome. Yeah, no, we're really looking forward to talking about the joint venture stuff in just a second. I actually, just for my own curiosity, I'm curious how you ended up getting hooked up with Tony Hawk. Without going on too much of a tangent here, I don't really want to, you know, shift the, the call in this direction, but I'm just, I'm just curious.

I can answer it in two words or three words. The forward through a joint venture. Perfect.

I love.

Was a joint venture and it was actually pretty easy. We're in San Diego, which is the skateboarding capital of the World, Right. And so I created this toy and I actually had created it for my son because he was a really into skating. And I just sent an email to everybody I knew, friends, family, business associates in San Diego only, and said, hey, do you know anybody in the skateboard industry who works professionally? I've got this skateboard toy and my next door neighbor within a half an hour got back to me and said, hey, my son goes to school with Chris Miller's son. Chris is Tony's business partner in Tony Hawk Shoes. Are you interested in talking to him also a world renowned skateboarder. And so anyway, of course I said yes. Got together with Chris for lunch, showed him the toy, he liked it, we went into a partnership together. So it was kind of a jv. We then licensed it to this toy company that was in San Diego at the time. And of course any licensing deal like that is essentially a form of the JV they manufactured was sold all over the world, was in Toys R Us, Walmart, Target, you know, all the drugstore chains, just everywhere online on Amazon, you can still see it. You can still find them on ebay. If you do a search on Tony Hawk, Firefoot, you'll see it. They're being sold on, you know, they sold for eight or nine bucks originally, this was six, eight years ago. And now they're going for 150 to 200 bucks on eBay.

So that's pretty good for your ego there.

But I do, you know, I really believe in collaboration. Yeah. So on almost everything I do, whether it's a marketing project, a licensing project, I mean joint ventures are the ultimate collaboration. Even all the traffic I generate from my site is always in collaboration with other people.

So that's kind of the theme that ties everything I do together.

Got it.

Collaboration. Yeah.

So let's get into that then. Let's talk about. Because we've done. And I think a lot of folks listening to this have heard of joint venture partnerships. There's obviously millions of types out there. A typical one online for marketers selling digital products is, you know, an affiliate commission, 50% to you, 50 to me, something like that. But obviously you have a lot more creative. You have different types you're working with here. So I guess let's talk about the conventional or like the known method compared to kind of what you're doing and why that known method. Maybe people are doing it wrong a little bit.

Not as so the known method.

To put it very bluntly, the no method stinks. I mean it doesn't work for most People, you know. Yeah. If you've got a list of $250,000 and you. $250,000. 250,000 subscribers, and you've been doing for two years and you're really well known, you can go out and get JVs. But if you're the average entrepreneur or business person and you say, okay, I've got this little list of about 5,000 people and a really great product, you know, I know Matt and Joe have this great podcast, a big list. If I can get them to sell my stuff to their list, I'm going to get rich. I'm going to make as much money this month as I make all year.

Yeah.

So they approach you, you've never heard of them. Right. And you're getting approached by 20, 30 other people that month with the same offer. Why don't you sell my stuff to your list? I'll even pay you 60% because, you know, but number one, you don't have the time to check these people out. Nobody does. And number two, there's always a number of disparities in that method. And just to back up for a second, you know, entrepreneur says 70 to 90% of all joint ventures fail, and most of them fail before they even get out of the starting gate. For this reason, you're approaching people where there's always a mismatch. Number one, they don't know you. Number two, there's a huge disparity in list size. And number three, you know, there's no relationship. They have no way of verifying whether you're what you say you are. And then probably the biggest thing is if all those things are true, they have no way of knowing they're going to get paid. So most JVs just never happen because of those reasons.

That makes sense. Yeah. Because the best joint ventures we've done are usually people that we know and trust. It's our. They're our buddies in business. They're people that we know. We have some kind of mutual relationship. Even if their list size is larger, we can figure out out a way to kind of trust each other to.

Get even things out of it, at least.

Yeah.

I mean, right now you're speaking our language because we get that all the time. I mean, I don't know how often I tell our customer support lady to just delete emails from people who ask if we'll promote their next affiliate launch thing, you know, so, like, it's a daily thing for us.

Yeah, absolutely. And it is for just about anybody with a quality list. And for those reasons JVs just aren't going to work with that conventional approach.

Sure. So I guess let's flip into what you would suggest to do otherwise.

Okay. Well, I'm glad you use them because I call my approach a flip joint venture. I'll talk about exactly what that is and how it works in a second. But I think what's important to understand is that the benefits you get when you flip the relationship, first of all, you're going to immediately eliminate all the problems we just talked about. It's not magic. It's very practical, and it's a very strong marketing fundamental that does this for you. And I'll talk about it in a second.

Okay.

And then when you do it this way, Instead of getting 10 to 1% of your partners to agree to work with you, you can get 99% of them. I've had.

People. You guys know Brad Costanza.

Oh, yeah. He's a good friend of ours.

Yeah. And Brad said, you know, it's 99 of the partners he approaches accept the deal when he uses this method.

Wow.

At the same time, now you talked about it. You want to do JVs with people you have relationships with. Well, this gives people away to get paid to build a relationship with you. And so. And you'll see it all come together in just a minute. And then.

The other benefits are that it can create an immediate cash surge for your business. And 95% of that is profit. And when you do it my way, it's going to lock in a lot more customer loyalty as you do that.

These sounds like some pretty massive wins in my.

I feel like I'm being teased right now. I'm like, I need to know this now.

You're good at this, Bob.

Well, it's easier to kind of lay out those. Those advantages before you get into the method.

Oh, yeah, of course.

It's the why before the what.

So let's. Let's get into the method. And again, I call it a flip joint venture. And.

All you have to remember is that most people think of a joint venture as, man, I've got this product, and if I can only get this expert with this 300,000 person list to sell my product, that's it. I'm set. I'll build a big list, I'll make a lot of sales, I'll become well known, and everything will be great from there. But it doesn't happen. So what I recommend that people do is they flip that relationship. And the way you do that is that you offer to sell the partner's product. So if I'm Bob, nobody knows me, and I want Matt and Joe to sell my product, what I'm going to do is I'm going to approach you guys, and I'm going to offer to sell your product first without any request for a reciprocal mailing. So I'm going to say, hey, you guys, I'm Bob. You don't know me. I've got this small mailing list, but it's really responsive. I'd like to sell your Evergreen Profits masterclass to my list. Is that all right with you?

Totally do it.

Totally. Exactly. So almost everybody's going to say yes. Now you're beginning to establish a relationship.

Yep.

And then I'll show you how you flip that relationship in just a minute. But what you're doing is you're providing value for that partner first before you ever ask them to promote anything for.

You, which is completely uncommon in the whole JV space right now.

Are you doing this as an affiliate, or are you just saying, I'm promoting your product. I don't want anything in return?

No, you want to do it as an affiliate, paid while you do it.

Sure, sure.

Just thought I'd clarify.

Yeah, well, but that's an interest. It's a great point, and thanks for that. But not only are you building a relationship with these experts who you'd like to eventually promote your product, but you're getting paid to build your relationship with them.

Right, Right.

So when you start by offering someone else's product to your list this way, it flips the equation entirely. Again, you're being of service to them first before you ever ask them to do anything for you.

So.

And because at this stage, all you're doing is offering to sell that company's product to your list, you can easily get a 90 to 100% acceptance rate from your partners. I mean, how many people turn down the offer of, hey, I want to make. Give you some free sales and give you some free money?

Yeah. Well, it's funny you say that, because it's almost like this podcast, in a way, it allows us. It almost opens the door to create a relationship with people that we sometimes don't even know or have no previous relationship with.

Exactly. But, you know, it didn't work. I tried to get you guys to pay me to do the podcast, but we got them for free. I just couldn't pull it off. But, no, you're right, it is. It's a way. You know, with the podcast, you're delivering value to your partner first as you get to know them, right? You're getting exposure for them, you're helping them get the word out about what they do. And this is the same thing. You're building this relationship by providing value to these partners first.

Got it?

Yep. Love it. All right, so after that stage, then let's say you have, you know, you start selling their product. Is there something, maybe a method you go about, a way to sell it, how long, maybe you have a target that you're shooting for for your next steps.

Yeah, yeah, there is. And so the next steps are, you know, how long you sell it, how often you sell it, and then how you begin to leverage that relationship to get those partners to potentially sell your product. So what I recommend is that you want to sell their product a couple times. So if I make an offer of Evergreen Profits Masterclass to my list today, I'm going to sell X amount. Let's say we sell 50 units. Two months from now, people's situations have changed. I've also added more people to my list. So if I sell it again, I'm probably going to sell another 40 to 50 units. Now, after I've done that twice, I can then circle back and approach you and say, hey, look, you know, I sold your master class to my list. They were really, you know, really responsive. They really liked it. And I think because there's a lot of similarities, that people on your list might like my email course, would you be willing to try selling it to them or even do a portion of your list? Now, here's what's going to happen. In all honesty, you're not going to get 100% yeses, but if you get 20% or 30% of the experts who you've approached and sold stuff for to agree now to sell your stuff.

You'Re miles ahead of the game because before you were getting zero, your email wasn't even getting open.

Because you guys were telling your assistants to dump those emails.

That's very good point.

So, but, but that's what happens. Those emails don't even get any attention. So you're getting zero. Now you're going to get 20 to 30% because now you're a known factor. And the reason you're known is that you've already made that person money, which is, you know, probably the best reason to get known. And so now when you approach them, some of those people will agree to sell your product. And it may not be to their entire list. They may just test a portion first or they may roll it to their entire list. It can happen either way. But the key thing is you've built a relationship by providing value and getting to know these people a little bit through that relationship. So now you've got a much better shot at getting a JV deal with them.

Absolutely. Now here's a quick question. Let's, let's say I'm fairly new to whatever market or industry I'm in and I don't really have much of a list. Maybe it's, maybe I've only got 100 people on a list or something because I just started, I'm just, I'm fresh with this. How could somebody like that leverage this tactic if, you know, maybe, maybe they can't even make you one sale yet? Is it just a case of just timing it? Just, you know, keep sticking with it until you're ready.

You can't, you can't. It's kind of like saying, well, how do I get a car to move when it's in park and it won't move? I mean, you have to have something to offer.

Right.

And so that just means that you're at the stage where you need to start building your list first.

Right, right.

There's obviously other methods to do that.

Yeah, I was going to say, I guess if you have a skill set somewhere else, maybe you're really good at Google AdWords or you're really good at running Facebook ads and driving traffic that way. Well, first of all, if you know how to do that, you should be building a damn list. But that point aside, if you have those skill sets, I guess you could leverage those skill sets and accomplish the same thing.

Well, you could. I mean, I know of people who have done that, but the problem is that that takes a huge investment of time and money. So there's a guy, oh man, I forget his name, but he, he wanted to start a high end mastermind group. And this was at the time that Tim Ferriss had put out the four hour work week and was looking to sell a lot of them. And so he had this deal, I think it was if you bought $25,000 worth of the books, he would give you an hour consultation. So this guy approached him and said, okay, I'll buy the $25,000 worth, but instead of you giving me a consultation, I want you to come speak live at my event and I'll pay your hotel and first class travel. Will you do it? Tim Ferriss said yes. The guy put on the event. Now he's got Tim Ferriss as the anchor at his event. Yeah, sold out a Lot of tickets. But that took a lot of money and a lot of work and effort. So there are ways to do that. Another example is. You guys know Mike Filsaim, right?

Yep. Buddies.

Well, the way Mike got started.

Years and years ago, he paid to go to a. A bunch of different live events that people presented. And he'd go to those events and say, hey, I'm Mike. If you need any help at the event, I'm here. I'm, you know, I'm paid to attend, but I'm willing to help out. If you just need somebody to go get coffee or whatever, I'll do it. And people always need extra help. And not everyone said yes, but most people did. And he got to know people that way. So when he was ready to do a launch of his first product, a number of those people promoted for him. But again, so it can be done, but those things are time consuming and can be expensive.

And for folks listening here who don't know who Mike Filsaim is, he was one of the, I don't know if I call him a founder, but kind of the now online marketing, Internet marketing, a lot of the webinars that people are using the strategies and that's how he started. I didn't know that. That's really cool.

Yeah.

So.

And you know, I could tell you five or six other stories, but the common component there is they take considerable time and money to get them done.

Right.

So, you know, you have to weigh whether it's worth it you to do that or just to build a list the conventional way through various traffic methods. And then once your list gets to, I'd say 3,000 to 5,000, then you can start approaching about selling their products or services for them to begin to build those relationships.

Got it. Yeah. No, this is really cool because it's almost like the go giver the book. It's like you're just doing these without thinking of any reciprocation. You're just kind of putting it out there. You're creating this network now and you're getting talked about. I'm sure the word of mouth spreads pretty well too.

Well, you know, it's interesting because I think Joe and I actually have similar. I'm just kind of thinking back to when we first got started in this business, you know, roughly around 2007. Ish. We actually started in a similar manner, I think. Joe, weren't you going and basically you knew how to make videos. You went and you reached out to people and said, hey, can I make this video for you for free. No strings attached. Just want to help some people out because I'm trying to learn the industry. And I did the same thing with installing WordPress blogs for people. So just kind of thinking back, you know, it wasn't a methodical method. Back when we did it, we weren't, you know, that wasn't our end goal with it. We were just trying to help and learn the industry a little bit. But, you know, thinking back to how we got started in what we do now, that kind of is what we did.

Right.

Yeah. So you were being of service to somebody first. Right.

I think that's key. If you just keep that in mind. That's really, you know, the takeaway here for mine. And it's really cool because it's. Yeah. If you don't have your own products to sell, this is an opportunity to do that. Obviously, you can. You should create a product so they can then turn around and promote you eventually, Right, Absolutely.

But it's also a great way to test out the kind of products to create and sell.

Exactly. Yeah.

You're selling the products of, say, six, eight different people, and you find that one or two of those really resonates with your list. Well, guess what? You create a product in that category.

Yeah, absolutely. Now, before we were chatting, before we actually hit record on this, you were mentioning that your methods can actually create a higher level of customer loyalty. Can you explain what you mean by that when you say this stuff creates a higher level of customer loyalty?

Customers who buy an item always have interest in other items. So when you start recommending things and other companies things to your list that they would be buying anyway, you're then being of service to your customers because you're saying, you know, I did the research on this, and this is the best program for creating your own videos. There's probably, you know, 40,000, literally 40,000 pieces of software for creating videos. The one we found is the best and the easiest, whether you're a beginner or you're much more advanced and we've gotten you a discount for it. Your customers really appreciate you for that because that type of research takes them a lot of time and there's a lot of hit and miss. They buy a lot of products that are being promoted as being the next great thing. And, you know, they're barely out of beta test and they don't work really well. And so if you're doing a good job of carefully choosing what you offer to your list, each time you sell them something that adds more value to Them by making their life better, easier, you're locking in more loyalty with them over and over and over again.

I guess that's the key. Yeah. Is making that person, the partner's life, and the customers too, better and easier. And that's really what you're trying to achieve. Once you do that, you're gaining their trust and then all doors open from there.

Yeah. You know, I feel like we've had a lot of resistance in the past teaching people that they should promote products as an affiliate on top of what they're already doing because it's a great additional revenue stream. But for whatever reason, there's been a lot of resistance. I think there's sort of, you know, people think there's shady elements of affiliate marketing or they're. They're a little worried about it, probably because of what you're saying. A lot of people just go out there and say, hey, this is the next great product. This is the next great product. This is the next great product. And somebody's like, well, you just promoted three separate video products that all do the same thing. Which one's the best? Great product. But if you're doing affiliate marketing, the.

Key is that you have to be very selective about what you offer your list and you have to do the diligence of checking it out.

Right.

The worst thing you can do is start selling junk to your list because nobody likes to be taken advantage of.

Right.

So if you always keep in mind. Hang on just one quick second.

Sure.

And Matt, it kind of sounds so.

Sorry because I'm the consummate professional. I had to interrupt this to let open the door or let the dog out.

You know, hey, that's fine.

Big time expert stuff here. So.

What, you know, if you keep in mind the whole concept again of being of service to your customers and only sell them things that you would buy or that you have water tested, then you can't go wrong. If you sell them junk, you're just gonna flop. That's right. And you deserve to.

Yeah. And then that's exactly how we promote things now. And we only do promote maybe three things at one time. We kind of like do it for a long period of time too. But it's all usually software or very select products or trainings that we've all used or both of us have here used in our business all the time. So we can totally get behind them. And that's how we've made the biggest impacts, most money. So. Yeah. So I'm just thinking. Okay. I mean, there's so many industries and ways you can do this. So not only just selling products online.

Like you said, you did this with Tony Hawk. This is how you. You approach that. And that seems like kind of a different scenario. You had a product of your own. I'm kind of curious. How did you gain the trust of more than, hey, I got a really cool product. I want to leverage your brand.

I didn't. I didn't. I never could have gotten. First of all, I never could have gotten to Tony Hawk.

Sure.

In fact, I've never met Tony Hawk.

So, remember, my relationship was through Tony's business partner, Chris Miller. And so Chris had that leverage. And Chris was the one who vouched for the toy.

Yeah.

I got to. Chris was through a neighbor who knew him. His son went to school with his son, so he had.

A common bond there.

Yeah.

So I guess what I'm getting at is even if someone's starting out or maybe if they're not totally in the niche that they want to, you know, do a joint venture with, maybe they want to break into something, it's really growing that network or asking the right people for their connections and kind of having, you know, that group of people around them to open up the doors.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if, you know, that's another way in. Talked about buying your way in by attending events or buying $25,000 worth of books. But if you, you know, if you want to get into an industry and, you know people who are in that industry who can make introductions, that can be really helpful, too, because, again, people want to do business with other people they know and trust. But if. If you're referred to them by somebody who they know and trust, that's almost as good as knowing them directly.

Sure.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree.

I mean, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, just thinking through our business, the interesting thing is we haven't been super methodical about a lot of this stuff, but thinking through a lot of. Like, this is how a lot of it has actually played out. Because I think the times that we have promoted other affiliate offers without actually knowing the person we're promoting very well has come from a reference or borrowed credibility from other people. So, you know, you're speaking our language once again. Is there anything else that people should know about setting up joint ventures for their business that we haven't really touched on yet?

Well, we could go into it in a lot more detail. There's some nuances to it, but at the end of this talk, I'll tell people about A free ebook that covers that. So rather than do that too much, I think just the main thing is, I would repeat, is that they aren't really hard to do. And actually no aspect of business is that hard to do if you're always thinking about being of service to the other people, whether it's your partners or your customers. And so if you flip the equation and offer to sell a potential partner's product or service to your list first without any other consideration, not requesting a reciprocal or anything, first of all, to me, it's fantastic because you're actually getting paid to build a relationship with your potential partners. Partners. The other thing is everything you're getting paid is profit because you're not taking any orders, you're not shipping stuff, you're not doing customer service, you're not dealing with returns. You're just getting your share of the profits once the sales are done. So there's zero overhead to you.

And with your own list, what you'll start to see is when you make these types of offers, offers that there's kind of this, a core group of people who buy a lot of them, and those are eager repeat customers who you can start marketing more of your own products and services to or survey and find out what else they want so you can more effectively pick things to sell them. And now you've got people you're building that loyalty with, people who will buy from you again and again. So to me, the benefits of doing it this way, in what I call a flip joint venture, there's so many benefits that I don't see why anybody would even consider using the conventional approach anymore.

You're right. I mean, it's kind of funny. I mean, going back to almost a buyer is a buyer, but you have these select groups, everyone does every. Every business owner on their list. They'll see some trends of some common names that just buy pretty much everything you ever put out.

Well, we've literally had people email us and say, hey, I bought this product. I haven't read the sales letter yet, but I bought it because you guys told me to.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think. Go ahead.

And again, that comes back to the fact that you've never sold people junk, Right. They know that when you make a recommendation, it's something that's really good. So if I'm looking for software to do video production and you guys recommend it to me, and I trust you, I don't need the sales letter. Sure, browse the sales letters to see what the features of the software are. But I don't need the convincing because it's my relationship with you and my bond of trust with you that's driving that sale. Not. Not the material in the sales letter.

Yeah, you describe pretty much most of the stuff I buy. Either Matt or some other trusted friend of mine or affiliate will be. I just skim it for like. All right, yeah, I could do xx. All right, cool. Yeah, I'll buy it.

No, I'm laughing right now because I can't remember the last time I actually read a sales letter.

Yeah, that's true too. So I guess I'm kind of curious of what has been your most difficult, difficult joint venture experience and how did you overcome that to make it a success for you?

Well, the most difficult was when I used to broker conventional style joint ventures for clients. So I had a client who was in the financial services industry and another client who was in the business insurance industry. So one guy did business loans, the other guy did business insurance. Sounded like a match made in heaven.

We sold.

We promoted the business loans to or no, we did it the other direction. We promoted the business insurance to the business loan brokers list and it sold really well and they both made some good money. Then the guy who, with the insurance who was supposed to promote the business loans, missed his mailing schedule, didn't mail on time.

Then he stopped answering emails. Finally I got through to him on the phone using a different cell phone where he didn't have block number, and he agreed to do the mailing. And I said, look, you got to do it. That, that was the agreement. Mails his list on time like he said he would. And there were literally zero orders. And it turned out.

While he had this list, I don't, I think it was like 60,000. He hadn't mailed it in years. He never kept up. He was the kind of guy who was always looking for the new piece of business. He never cultivated his relationships with his list. So not only did it make zero sales, but he got so many spam complaints that his ISP shut him down.

That would do it.

Now, my client on the other side who sold the business loans was really mad and he was mad at me. And I don't blame him. But the guy who. And this is my fault, but the purse, both of them came highly recommended to me by people I respected. And I tried to check them out thoroughly, but you can go wrong sometimes. And in this case, the guy fooled me, right? And so it's funny because the guy with the business loans, I mean, I don't know what? He made maybe a hundred and twenty five, $150,000 off selling the business insurance. So he made a lot of money. But he was mad, rightfully, because the other guy's promotion just didn't do anything at all.

So were you able to turn that one around or. Probably not.

Not. The only way I could turn it around would be to find somebody else to promote for him.

Yeah.

But at that point I had, you know, blown my credibility or trust with him.

Yeah, no, it's tough and that's, I mean, you can't be perfect with stuff like that.

But now do you have any advice that you learned from that that would, that you would do differently next time you were to go into a deal like that?

You know, it's really difficult because.

I mean, you know, I'm perfect. No, I tried, I, I, you know, I did my diligence, I tried to check, but, you know, there isn't like a yelp for business loans or something like that.

He came to me from a very A person who I've had a long term relationship I really respect.

And he just fooled a lot of people. You know, there, occasionally there's a crook out there who's gonna fool a lot of people.

Yeah.

But I can say in all the years I've been doing JVs, I've done hundreds of them and only two have gone bad. And that was one of them.

And I guess that's the thing is that shouldn't scare, and I didn't want to ask that question to scare people away, but just to look out and keep their radars open for that, on a lookout for any issues that could bubble up.

And really that's kind of a different scenario. That was a scenario you were acting sort of in a broker role where you were trying to connect one person with somebody else. And a lot of what we talked about on this episode was how you can just purely be of service to somebody else so that in the future you could, you know, capitalize on that relationship?

Yeah, exactly.

Absolutely.

Cool. Really? And this is kind of a side topic because I think we covered quite a bit on the JV side. I've seen you in Success magazine often and I was just curious, and this is a selfish question. How did you get to that role or how did you get that opportunity to write for publication like that?

Through a collaboration. Everything I do is collaborative.

So basically I used to have a series called 10 Minute Business Success where I would interview different marketing experts. And saying what in 10 minutes? What's the single best thing an entrepreneur or business owner can do to grow their business today. And even asking the same question of all these different experts, you get amazing answers that were totally different. So I've interviewed all kinds of people, from Frank Kern to Tony Hsieh of Zappos to Robert C. H. Cialdini to one of the founders of Open Table, one of the founders of 1-800-got-JUNK. And then 1 of the people I had interviewed was Darren Hardy, who at the time was the publisher of Success.

Yep.

And so.

I said to Darren after the interview, I said, you know, one of the things I see Success doing in every magazine doing is they write all these articles from the standpoint of what they think their, their readers want to know. But what if we flipped it? What if I wrote a column called Ask Success where people send in the questions they want to know and then I get another expert to join me in answering that question. So what I did was I took my 10 minute business success concept and flipped it over to that. And Darren said, hey, that's a great idea, let's do it. So that's what happened. And that became a regular column. And I wrote that column for, I don't know, 18 months to two years, something like that. And then Success changed. They actually changed their target market.

To.

More kind of like the freelance market. Before they were small business owners and entrepreneurs. Now they were more kind of the part time freelancers, which really isn't the market I serve. So I stopped writing the column. And then maybe six months to a year later, Darren sold off his.

His publishing rights to another publishing company and he was no longer the publisher because again, because Darren didn't own Success. He was the publisher. And again, that market kind of skewed very differently than the market he works with, which is high level executive CEOs. But that's, you know, just about everything I've done. I mean, my interview series was a collaboration with other experts that built, drove a lot of traffic and helped build my list. Then one of the people I interviewed was Darren. We then collaborated on that to create a column for Success. And so, you know, as I said that, I think the one thread that is the common denominator that connects everything I do is collaboration with people.

Right, right.

That's, that's awesome. Now it's just we, we have a few sort of wrap up questions that we ask everybody. Joe and I, we're both big, big readers. We read a ton of books. I'm curious if you have any books that you find yourself recommending to people.

Often yeah, they're the, the one book. The one book I've literally read three times and I'll probably start reading it again after the first of the year, is the 8020 Manager by Richard Koch. Koch.

I've heard of that. If you want to get more done and work a lot less, there's no better book for that. A lot of people are selling formulas, you know, magic bullets for doing less. His isn't a magic bullet. His is all hard earned experience and it's just really great.

Yeah, I've read the Star Principle by the same author, which is a great, great book as well.

Yeah, the star. You know, I've read the parts of the Star principle and he's got variations of the 80, 20 managers. He's got one for your personal life and one for something else. But I would rate all of his other books from three to four stars out of five. But the 8020 manager, at least to me, I'd rate six stars out of five. It's just, it's really changed how I operate my business and in my life and it's been really valuable.

That means I will be purchasing that book after we get off this call.

That's the one expense of this podcast that we have is we always ask for books and then we always end up ordering them on Amazon immediately after the call.

Right.

I'm the same way. It's like you said, you don't need the sales letter. Somebody who you, you know, who you respect recommends something. I mean, the other day I got an email from a good friend of mine, said, hey, I'm reading this book. It's amazing. I think you'd love it.

And so he sent me a link to get the free Kindle version, But it's like 460 pages and I can't do 400. 460 pages on Kindle. So I just jumped over and for 20 bucks or whatever, bought the hard copy. Yeah.

And flip through and kind of go through it faster. I hear you. I'm the same way.

Well, yeah, I mean, I like to mark it up and make notes and stuff and you know, a small ebook, I'm great with a kindle, but a 460 page book, I want a physical copy.

I hear you.

Same way.

Well, let's. I guess the very last question, we want to point people to that probably that ebook that you mentioned and wherever else to find more information about you.

Sure. So if people go to the homepage of my website, which is profit alchemy.com right there, the Whole homepage is dedicated to my free ebook called the New Rules of Joint Ventures. And it's a 14 point checklist for setting up JVs for your business the way we just talked about, about today. And so it lays it out, it makes it real easy because the checklist just steps it out so you don't have to go, oh, did he say this? Did he say that? It's just laid out there. It's right on the homepage. You can't miss it. Just enter your email address and download the ebook and you're ready to go.

You're the real deal, Bob. Yeah, so everybody definitely go there. I mean, you're, you're giving so much value away, and this is such a simple concept that anyone can try this out now.

So, yeah, you know.

I mean, I don't, I don't want to bend over too far to pat myself on the back, but I look at the way that people are teaching people to do conventional joint ventures, you know.

You know, just call up Elon Musk and tell him you've got a new spark plug, and for sure he'll want to sell it to all the Tesla buyers.

It's a perfect fit.

You know that. And I don't, I don't understand why people are still promoting that method. That just doesn't work. Because everybody I talk to, you know, if you, if I talk to entrepreneurs and business owners, they're saying, hey, I, I don't make any headway with that. I talk to guys. Like you said, we don't even listen to people who approach us that way. So why it's still being touted as, as a method to use, I don't, I don't quite understand.

It's the me, me, me. You know, it's, it's me first before them. But you have to flip back to the flip. Do that, you know, think of the other person first.

Well, everybody's just looking for the quick wins without putting the work in. That's, that's what it comes down to.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point.

Well, we'll, we'll preach your message first, further. And keep preaching and doing your thing, Bob, because it's, it's the right way to go and it kind of pays out nicely, too, so.

All right, you guys. Well, thanks so much. I really appreciate it.

Thank you, thank you. And we'll talk soon.

Sure.

Hey, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast. Now, if you want to learn more and hear from us every single month, which a lot of people do. It's pretty fun. We actually write this thing called the Evergreen Profits Letter, and that is a printed newsletter that we actually send to hundreds of people every single month to your doorstep. So you actually get it in the mail. You can read this sucker. You can highlight it, you can dog ear, you can scratch some stuff out. If you don't like that one, you say, no. Joe and Matt, that's not cool for me. But you can take a lot of different strategies, about 15 or so from every single issue, and it's really cool. So basically, these are actionable strategies that you can use in your business right away to test out and pretty much build on what you already have going on. So check it out. It's at www.egpletter.com. it's pretty amazing. And go check it out. See what it's all about.

Boom.