Jay Abraham - Be The Victor, Not The Victim
16 Jul 2023 · 69 min
Jay Abraham on responding to economic disruption: stop thinking like a victim. He outlines concrete moves: acquire competitors' customers, form revenue-share partnerships, hire displaced talent cheap, and test fast. The core shift is mindset and probability thinking.
Chapters
This is going to challenge everybody to find the next act in their life, in their career, in their business. And if you wait until everything settles down to figure that out, you're going to be at a far more decisive disadvantage than just you think right now if you start today to figure it out. And again, I've given you, actually, in this interview, a hell of a lot of calibrating and foundation. If there is no tomorrow, it doesn't matter if there's going to be a tomorrow. You better figure out how you will be the victor, not the victim.
Boom, boom, boom, Boom, boom, boom.
What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear. Yo.
Hey, we're back.
Yeah, we got a good one today, dude.
This one. Yeah. Whenever our minds are, like, blown and we're given very specific tactics and strategies to implement, like now. Yeah, that's a good episode. And that's what exactly this episode turned out to be.
Yeah. And a little behind the scenes. I don't normally do this on podcasts, but I've been doing it lately. We're actually recording this on April 2nd so you can have some context around what's going on in the world when we're recording. But today we're talking to an absolute legend in the marketing world. He's got a couple of books that you and I have sort of gone through multiple times over the years, and they've had a huge impact on our life. And today we're talking.
He has countless amount of. He has, like, a ton of other books, too. Like, he was. He was naming them all to me on this phone call the other day. It sounded like 15, 20 books. And he, like, knew every title just like that. I'm like, dear God, we've written three.
And I can't even name them all.
I know. So we're chatting with the one and only Jay Abraham today on the podcast, and we have a doozy of a session. And it's really cool is we did this live, actually, with some other folks asking questions, too. So it's a little different. Yeah.
And so this is one of the things that we normally do on our episodes that we didn't do in this one is we didn't really get into Jay's backstory. We sort of assumed a lot of our audience already knows him and what he's all about and that sort of thing. But Joe does have a little bit of a bio that we're going to talk about here, and anybody who hasn't heard of Jay. This is who Jay is.
Yeah. So Jay and I will also direct you to the Jay Abraham story which we did not mention and I don't even think we're using video but that will definitely get into his backstory and I think it's free if you just google or figure it out@abraham.com JayAbraham story streams on there.
Shout out to Greg Roulette. He's one of the producers on it and a good buddy of ours.
Greg's a badass. Such a cool guy. So Jay Abraham, I mean just a quick little Overview. He's the 21.7 billion doll man and highest paid marketing consultant and basically solved any type of complex and simple problems out there for business owners, underperforming businesses, even employees transitioning to an entrepreneur type role and figuring out how to solve problems for people. And basically there's always ways to solve problems no matter the market conditions. And now and he's weathered four different recession type economies and basically this one here is like he said in this interview is unprecedented. Unprecedented as there's nothing like it. But with his background expertise in what thousand different industries, 7200 sub industries and 10,000 plus clients like he's seen it all.
Probably most than anybody else on the planet.
Yeah. So listening to this episode you're going to get some sort of actionable takeaways. In fact this is one of the most actionable, tactical sort of interviews I think I've heard from Jay. Jay puts out amazing stuff. He's more of a high level, sort of non linear thinker. He thinks of businesses in ways that most people don't like. How do I take this business over here and this other business over here and sort of mush them together and you know, make it more profitable for everybody involved and then I get a piece in the middle like that's kind of the types of things he thinks about. And I feel like with this interview we actually managed to get like pretty tactical with him and actually dive into like how to approach these conversations, you know, what to say, how to, how to get in contact with these people, things like that that I don't think he normally talks about. So really, really powerful stuff.
It was great man. So I think we just leave it there and just know that everything we're chatting about is extremely timely with what's happening in the world. But also you can definitely apply this for the future. But at the end of the day, I mean take action on something that he says out there. If not everything you Can. He's done it. He is literally giving you the gold right here.
And if you're listening to this, after all of this sort of virus madness passes and everybody's back out to normal, all of the stuff is still relevant. In fact, what we're finding out doing these interviews during this sort of quarantine time is that we're learning a lot of things that we should have been doing anyway is really what's going on, right? You're learning redundancies that should have been put in place. You're learning strategies that were always available to you. You're learning tactics and methods and ways of being in front of people and branding and all of that kind of stuff we've been talking about lately. All of that is relevant even when you're not in quarantine.
Oh, yeah, definitely. All right, so you're going to love this one. It's going to be great. So many nuggets. Get the notes, please. Get the notes. Because literally, Jay will talk about specific scripts you can use when you're approaching businesses to do some deals with them. And, like, I don't know how many lists that he listed out of ways to approach things or angles around mindset, deal structure, approaching businesses that need help but just don't know what to do. And you could be basically their savior and create a new revenue stream. So get the notes. You're going to need them. I want them already. I don't have them yet, but.
Hustleandflowchart.com hustleflowchart.com comp or text the word comp to 38470. We can hook you up with the notes that way as well. And also shout out to our favorite SEO tool, Ahrefs.
Bam. Ahrefs.
Yeah. I was actually in Ahrefs the other day, and I don't know why I never really clicked into this area, but I was actually doing a bunch of competitor PPC analysis. I was actually. I was setting up some new Google Ads for one of the products we promote, and I actually put in the URL of one of our competitors, and there's a little link over in the left sidebar that says like PPC analysis or something like that. I don't have it in front of me right now, but you click on that and it actually tells you all of the keywords that the competitors are bidding on in Google Ads. So I just went and took the list of all the keywords that they're bidding on, and I just copied and pasted them into our Google Ads for the product that we're promoting. And now we're competing with our competitors on those exact same keywords, but pointing to the product that we promote.
I mean, why not? These are why these tools exist. So, yeah, Ahrefs. Ahrefs is absolutely amazing. That's just like one of I don't know how many things that are this tool, but it's cheap to get started. $7 for seven days as a trial, and you can literally try exactly what Matt just said there. So to go to Ahrefs, that's a hrefs dot com. Get in there, use that trial, learn a little bit from their free education. Start trying it yourself. You'll love it.
Go check it out. Let's go talk to Jay.
All right.
Thank you so much for your time.
Here and my pleasure.
I think you've been probably. I can't speak for you, but I know us, we're busier than ever now during this quote unquote lockdown, and it seems like you are as well.
I have a lot going on. I have a lot of clients that are in need of.
Leadership based guidance so they can lead their audience and their people. I have our own business that needs to be. To be reset quite a bit. And I have interviews like yours. So yeah, I mean, it's a great opportunity to contribute.
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And right now it just, it's really interesting with your background and your experience. I believe you said you've navigated through about four of these. Obviously there's nothing similar really to what we're experiencing now. And you just have such a breadth of knowledge and experience that you can kind of pull from these different niches. You've been in different industries.
Now, I guess what would be a good starting point? I feel like you talk about the mental game a lot and making sure that you're good between your ears before any other kind of strategy. How do you navigate that and how would you suggest others to, you know, bring that into their lives?
Well, I mean, let me ask just one clarification. Is there a profile of the people watching, listening so I can address it? Are they going to basically span the gamut?
Yeah, Matt.
Yeah, So, I mean, they'll pretty much span the gamut, but I would say the majority are like digital marketer info product businesses, e commerce businesses, coaches, consultants.
That's it. Okay. So let's assume, pardon me, that you are an entrepreneur. My voice from the peppermint. I just did peppermint everybody. And it makes my voice a little gravelly. Bear with it. Let's say you're an entrepreneur and let's assume that your entrepreneurial positioning has somewhat to do with a perceived by the market expertise. Okay? Okay. So the first thing you need to do, and there's a gradient to this, it's pretty pragmatic and logical, you need to fortify, solidify your relationship first and foremost with your current buyers, second with the secondary levels, whether it's expires, whether it's prospects, opt ins, whatever the category is, you need to be able to establish that even in uncertainty, there needs to be certainty that people are there to try to lead one another with the best reason.
The best access, the best distilled, the best.
I would say viability or success, probable.
Instruction, guidance, recommendations, advice. So you need to establish what I call your preeminent role in their lives so that they see that you're there for them. You are even doubling down on being their advocate. You are going to provide them with guidance on a continuous basis that will help them first of all navigate through no matter how it positions, whatever your expertise and the recipient benefit they're getting from it. And then next that you'll be there for them as it changes.
Good or bad, to give them the best possible.
Probability of emerging victorious as a victor, not a victim. And you want to do it with acknowledgement. You know that there's in normal times, there's no guarantee in life, less in business and this kind of crisis, it's unprecedented. But there will be paths of pursuit, there will be directions for you to follow. There will be, believe it or not.
Ethical opportunities and you need to understand them. But in the first position, you've got to be there for your audience, your market, your clients. And they have to see you as grounded, as confident, as certain. Not that you have the total answers, but certain you are going to be there to get them the best reason answers. That's the best first answer I would give you.
Yeah, no, it's amazing. And that's similar to what we've chatted about, you and I, is it's an interesting time to really connect with your audience and be there as their guide. And with a lot of folks, don't know what the directions are. You find a lot of folks on the sidelines and it seems like that would be probably the worst thing to do as a leader of your audience in this.
There's been an adage all along that I was very impacted by years ago when I learned it grow or die. And if you look at physics, quantum physics, you expand or you contract you really don't have the luxury of standing still, because that's not possible. So you're either going to go this way or that way. And you've already thrust yourself by whatever you have been doing in your role as an information marketer, a coach, an expert, you've taken the role, you assume the role of a trusted advisor. Now it's time to elevate and assume the role as the most trusted advisor, as in whatever you're doing, the very best source, you can be the only source, and that you're going to be there for them in ways that even transcend what you've been there for in the past. And I mean, it's liberating when you decide you're going to do it. And it's much more. I mean, forward progress is always more satisfying, stimulating, and comforting than paralysis.
You know, contemplating, procrastinating, equivocating, freezing. So you might as well give yourself permission to go forward and then just figure out how to best do that for them. And that requires you to stretch. But there will always be better paths than not. Your job is to find the very best. Pardon me, the very best paths for the market you address doesn't have to be perfect. But, for example, if we get into it, I have many strategies I've had to develop in the last few weeks for clients that are very different than normality, but they are designed to both help my clients and their business clients not just survive, but be poised to thrive when this all changes, but also in the process.
To help weaker people gain some benefit so they're not trounced financially and humanly in the process. So, I mean, I think it's a mindset that you have to decide, I'm going to be an even bigger, better, stronger, more comforting, more confident, more certain in my ability to discover the best reasoned answers. Not that I have the. The only answer, the absolute answer, but the best reason answers that apply most results, certain, most protective, certain, most ethically opportunistic, certain for my audience.
See, that's huge. I feel like that mindset that if you can establish that for yourself and none of us have the answers now, we've never experienced this. So the best thing you can do is move forward, almost stumble forward, fall forward, whatever you got to do, but be confident and certain that these are the right moves you're doing for yourself and for your audience.
Yeah, well, I think also Joe and Matt, that one of the things you must do now that may or may not have been integral to how and how you Operate who you were. You got to stretch yourself. My skill set in my work has resulted from the fact that I've traveled into thousands of industries, not businesses, but industries. And it's given me a context, a perspective, a scope, a depth of understanding of possibilities, of combinations of opportunities. And I think everybody today must not force themselves, but fuel themselves to reach out past their comfort zone and assess perspectives from lots of different vantage points and then learn how to process and distill. See where there's commonality, see where there's variation, and try to do it in terms of the most realistic and objective mindset. I mean, there is a, you know, there are certain people who think, you know, the world is coming to an end. Maybe, but if it does, it doesn't matter. If it doesn't, you better have a strategy, don't you think?
Ain't that the truth? It's like, don't just sit and wait for it to happen. At least do something about where we're at right now.
And who knows, you know, I did an interview earlier today and one of the things we talked about is I believe, and some estimates there's going to be 15 to 25 million people out of work. Now, you can sit there paralyzed, you can get your 1500 or $1200, which for most people will not last very long. You can decide that you're going to wait and see if your employer calls you back, which is not high probability, unless you're a very, very high skilled, highly prized employee. Or you can start right now saying, okay, three things. What can I add to my knowledge, skill, proficiency right now when I'm stuck at home, that'll make me more valuable? If my past employer is contemplating bringing certain people back, how can I elevate my value above everybody else? Number two, how can I get myself, if I have to, above the maddening crowd in that employment line of applicants? Excuse my voice one second. Pardon me.
That's what happens when you use peppermint.
I should try that next time.
It's good. Except for this part. Number three is if I can't get a job, can I isolate my skill sets and maybe make myself available fractionally to five people that would normally not have the budget now, when we resume to buy one full time? Number three or four is I can't do that. How am I going to transition into entrepreneurship when I have no capital or limited capital, no product or service, no understanding? So you have to prepare for all that, and you have to prepare for logical, predictable, high probability contingencies. If you have what I call not just critical thinking, but consequential thinking. And you understand probability and outcome. I've had to do that for clients and myself all my life. Then it's not as daunting as you might think. There's only a finite number of scenarios that will probably happen. Don't you think?
Oh yeah, I like that. Consequential thinking, I mean that really, that can frame things in a simple way, if you understand it.
One of my colleagues does very sophisticated.
Simulations for people that have to deal with a lot of supply and demand chain issues right now. It's crazy, but he's got four gradients. Best case, worst, case best, worst, worst, best. And that may sound a little confusing, but you start by being intimidated by oh my God. And if you do that, you're going to be in a funk and you're going to be depressed and you're going to be rudderless and you're going to be at the end of the line in viability, in opportunity, in income. Or you can say, okay, let's look at probable outcomes and let's look at ways I can enhance my maybe not certainty, but viability quotient. And then you start thinking pragmatically.
I mean that can open up so many doors. And that's just a thing. I know. Matt and I have actually done similar practices. Just journaling, you know, and almost just asking yourself these questions and looking at the opportunities. Almost like a recipe. What can I pick from? What can I do here with an outcome that I'm looking to achieve?
Yeah, it's great. And so I mean that's the first thing I would say to do, right? Yeah. If you want me to get into.
Really inventive and non traditional but very, very powerful strategies, I can do that as well.
That would be interesting. Matt, did you have anything that you wanted to.
Yeah, so I'm kind of keeping an eye on the live stream and there's actually some questions popping in. All right, so this sort of relates to what you just asked. Austin Sams is asking. Can you share an example from one of your companies with specifics on what you're doing now to shift with the current business environment?
Sure.
That was actually he's impression. That was the next category I was going to talk about. So here's some of the really nonlinear things we're doing. First thing we're doing is we're looking at every product service that people buy before, during, after, instead of what we sell. And we're making arrangements to access those products or services. If it's viable right now, if it's something that people are still actively buying at any degree so that we can offer them to our audience, including competition. And the thing I say, and I've always said this, but I'll give you an example and you have to take it to today's terms. But in normal times, if somebody, let's say you were selling a supplement for weight loss, just as a hypothetical, well, you would think your competition is other weight loss products, right? But it's not just that. It's portion control, food, it's personal training, it's group training, it's gym memberships, it's equipment, it's books, it's all these things. And so if you say the statistical probability that people just buy one weight loss regimen is very low, the average one keeps buying over again until they get to. I'm hearing a buzzing noise. I don't think it's you, but it might be. And so if you say if I have people that stop buying, I could sell them other versions of the same outcome or the same solution or opportunity producing product, service. If they're buying things before, during, after, but you've never seen yourself as that role, you can do that now. That's the first thing. Second is literally looking at weaker.
I would call them colleagues, you can call them competitors who aren't going to be able to go the course contacting them if they have integrity, acquiring their buyers, not buying their business, you don't want the liability, but buying their acquiring their buyers on an earn out where you consolidate them into your business. If you have the economies of scale, enough infrastructure or system to be able to serve them for very little additional cost. And giving.
The people or the company you acquired it for that was in dire need of cash because they were going to go broke. A regular percentage of the acquisition you made. So you could do great things. The next thing is go online and look on LinkedIn at people that worked for competitive companies or.
Complementary companies who might have gotten either furloughed or fired. And salespeople have access to all kinds of past buyers or current buyers they could feed to you, customer service people.
Delivery people, depends on the business you're in. But all those people who need money could be sources of funneling new business to you. And they could get a share or they could get a transactional fee or they could get, I mean there's all opportunities like that, if that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah. I feel like right now too, especially with the audience of this show, right. A lot of them are digital marketers. They understand copywriting, they understand how to buy traffic, they understand how to build e commerce pages. I mean, how many businesses are out there right now that, you know, they were brick and mortar, they don't know anything about digital marketing. You know, are there ways that we can go and support those businesses?
There's two ways. One is if they don't have a digital marketing platform and they have enough viability, meaning what they offer can and should be reasonably meaningfully marketed online and you have the capital, you could do it for them and keep a permanent profit on it. If you don't have the capital, you can go to them and offer to do it for them for hard cost, defer or convert the difference to revenue share or deferred billing, you can do that. Number three, you could go to them. If you think about this, your market, no matter what you're identified for, to that market, they are men and women, husbands, wives, lovers, parents, children, and they are buying lots of other things. The truth of the matter is if they trust you and they're buying certain things and they are somewhat indiscriminate, meaning they don't have a loyal relationship with those other thing providers, you can probably actually go a lot broader and you can test it pretty fast and easy whether you're selling toilet paper, which I don't think has enough margin. But the point is if they trust you, they don't really just trust you for that one thing. That's the only thing you've elected to monetize from. But it isn't the only thing they would be willing to trust you on, if that makes sense.
That does, yeah. And I feel like all of this is the relationship you're bonding with your customer or with your audience. And affiliate marketers, we do a lot of that kind of stuff. And a lot of people are hesitant to send folks away from their own core products or services. But it's really the opposite. It's the person that brings people together who establishes the trust more so also.
We'Ve done tons of work on referral generations, strategic alliances. Today more than ever before.
You have the ability to advocate the case that if you care deeply about anyone else in your life, your family, your business, your neighbors, your church, you owe them the chance to at least explore, examine, understand, experience, whatever I'm offering. So it's a great reason to get people to introduce lots more people to you. Now the other thing is you can, you can also, if you have deep enough pockets and a belief system that's strong enough and you understand sort of mental actuarial projection. You can create products or services if you have enough margin in them that you can defer getting paid on and you can defer many different ways. You know this. I'm doing a program with Roland Frazier and it's being done to help people now. It's a $995 a month program. We have asked no payment from people initially. We don't even want their credit card. We're getting very significant response and our goal is to over deliver and help them through the morass and hopefully we will do enough good that when it comes time for them to decide to stay or not, we've added enough value. We've helped them preserve or expand their cash or their positioning to where they want to. If they don't, we still added value. If they do, we're going to end up with an enormous new source of business from it. I'm getting ready to do some virtual masterminds where if they're quality, I'll buy them the first three months because I can help them. If they're strong enough and I help them and it works, they'll want to stay. If I don't have value, they won't. You can do deals where you defer billing their credit card for period of time. You can do deals where you bill part now and more later. You can do all kinds of things and the more. And we're actually getting ready to try a pay whatever you can afford because it doesn't really matter to me if I can add value to a mass amount of people that are fundamentally qualified. They'll either be able to afford more or they'll be out. And either way it's mood. If you understand probability, outcome, the numbers statistical and you have value that is not just entertainment based but actionable, catalytic, meaning people will do something with it. If it's just entertainment, then you're not going to get much out of it. If you're dealing with people who have a prejudice towards action implementation.
They'Re doers, they're implementers, their executors. Not bang bang with a gun type executors, then you really have, you have a lot going. If you want to create very bold, daring, audacious experiments. If they don't work, you're still going to have goodwill. If they do work, geez, you're going to be in a great position.
Oh my gosh, yes. And I love that you're doing the whole pay what you want or pay what you can afford. We've done that for the last week or two now, and it's amazing. I feel like it's. You get.
I was asking my daughter. Excuse me for interrupting you. Do you already have the technology? Because I said it must not be that hard to do. We were setting it up. But if you already have it, send me a little note so we don't have to have somebody build it.
Yeah, no, I can give you the whole process there. It's pretty good.
But I mean, yeah, I mean, I've done that for clients over other eras like this. We. Not like this. It's unprecedented, but very, very, you know, very significant economic and financial crises. And the people that you extended it to, if you did it right and you targeted quality individuals or companies, surprising. A lot of them stay with you and they're very grateful. And if you help them through the worst times and you're more of a contributor than a taker, it comes back. If you're dealing with quality people, if you're dealing with people who are, again, I don't mean this negative, but they're. They're doers. And.
There are spectators. If you're just dealing with spectators, unless it's very modestly priced, you probably won't get much conversion because they're not going to do a lot with it. But if you're dealing with people who grasp this concept we talked about in the beginning, which is.
You either. There's a great quote from. It was Gary Halbert, but it was based on Einstein. Nothing happens until something moves.
Gary said, there's a lot more accomplished through movement than meditation. Nothing wrong with meditation. I'm just giving you some really, no nonsense perspectives to reflect on.
Yeah, no, it's true. And it's funny because I had that Einstein kind of quote not perfectly in my head earlier when you were talking, but yeah, it's all about movement. And you learn so much through movement. Right now, Matt and I are doing a lot of live streams.
Oh, my gosh. And it's amazing how much we learn. Not from the guests we bring on, but just the feedback and perspectives that everyone has and also from the guests we bring on. Of course it's okay.
It doesn't matter. You're not going to offend me. But the key is people need someone to. I mean, hope is one thing. Help is something much, much better. I mean, there's nothing wrong with optimism and motivation and positive thinking, but strategies and tactics to implement that will get you to a better place no matter what happens, and will prepare you not just for One scenario, but any of a number of probable scenarios. Because, I mean, I have probably as much, if not more experience with crisis economies and business jobs.
Everything, than anybody that you know. But that stated, I can't tell you with certainty what's going to happen, but I can tell you with certainty there's a finite number of probable scenarios that will happen. And if you. If you identify and acknowledge all of those, not every gradient, but, you know, here's this one, there's this one, there's this one. And you have a strategy in place, and you're not just idling in it, but you're making nominal progress until you need to know which direction to put your full force into, you're going to be a lot better off than the people that are.
So I have a question. This might be more on the. A little more on the tactical side, but how do you actually approach some of these companies to make offers for new deal structures with them? Are you emailing them? Are you calling them? And then. And also, how do you approach the conversation? Because I feel like a lot of people probably have their guard up right now. They're probably a little nervous to.
It's a great question, Matt. So first of all, let me give you a strategy that I learned from somebody else. It's not original, and I wish I could remember who, because I would like to acknowledge him. I'm relatively sure it was a man. It's called the Aikido school of marketing. And the big problem with most people is they worry about the negative on something instead of using it. Do you understand what Aikido is?
Explain that really quick.
Aikido is a martial arts methodology that uses the power of the enemy against the enemy. Gotcha. So if you say whatever the problem is, you use to your advantage. So the first thing is you decide what you're trying to accomplish. Are you trying to find a generic competitor? You're trying to find somebody that's got complementary. Are you trying to do a deal where you take your product to them? Are you trying to do a deal where you take their product to you? Are you trying to do a deal where you acquire their assets? Are you trying to. You got to know what you're trying to accomplish now. You got to figure out what is the advantage to them and why would they be motivated to do that? The motivations are a number of things. I'm just thinking out loud. One, Number one is their business is not monetizing and they need cash right now. Number two is not only is their business not monetizing, but they're in likelihood of dropping down immensely because they're not doing enough and they're probably going to lose the whole business. Number three is they have a relationship with a buyer that only buys one thing and that's all they are selling and they're not. And they have a linear mindset not to see themselves selling anything else. Number four is they have something that would be perfect for.
Distribution and offer to your audience. But it will only work if you can change the normal for your purpose. If you change the normality of a 5050 split, you got to show them that if you get them in aggregation, 1000 new orders and maybe it's a $400 item and normally you'd get 50, 50, but if you got them $100 on that and they got $40,000, that would help them. And they're going to get the back end and you'll take a smaller share on the back end, but you need to get the front end. You have to be able to realize what's the goal. And I'm giving you just a few. Matt, does that give you a couple of context then when you figure out what the goal is and the why, then you identify the whole and then you contact them and you start with smaller. The larger are they going to be, the more arrogant, the more rigid, the more difficult. So you start with smaller ones because anyone can feed you and you can feed anyone else and there's going to be a lot of smaller ones. If you're a 300,000 list expert with 25,000 clients and there's somebody that's got a thousand, that thousand can, you can put your stuff through them. They might have a different expertise or complementary you could put through yours. But you have to then contact them and say, look, in normal times we're all pretty much independent. There are people that do affiliates I would like to propose. And then you figure out which way or both ways the valve is going to go. You're going to go to them, they're going to come to you and you say, I believe this will help both of us.
Maintain and sustain cash flow right now. And then depending on what you're trying to do, if it's a larger company, you might do the opposite. You might look at your allowable cost, your lifetime value and front end, load the deal so it's irresistible to the other side. They're going to make so much more over normality because you want the back end. And a lot of times if you get access to enough audiences no matter what you pay for the business that comes normally from them.
Offering it to their list, the entire list is getting positively exposed to you. So everything else you do thereafter, you've already got very strong predisposition if you do marketing, if you access in any other route. Does this all make sense?
Totally.
Oh yeah.
This is the kind of stuff I do and it's a little more sophisticated when I get into it. But then you, you contact the person. There are different ways to do it. If you're going to do an email, the email would say, look, we got a lot of compatibility. I have a very, very.
Strong immediate way that I think we can both put tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of blessedly desired capital or cash flow into each other's pockets. I can lay it out and three or four minutes, you don't have to do it, but I think you'll want to. I think it'll help both of us. And if it works. And then also this is another thing. If you get it working, the normal linear thinker does it for themselves one way or the other and then stops. The strategic thinker says, okay, if that works, it can work lots of other places. So I want to tie up the rights to control it everywhere else and just make that an option on the deal. Before you start, I'm just giving you some sophisticated, sophisticated ways that. Is this okay or is it too esoteric?
Absolutely perfect.
I'm loving this.
A lot of swipe files people can really take and try right now.
Yeah. And the point is you can try something. I mean, maybe a perfect test is 25,000 emails, but you try it, you know, 2,000 and it shows indication life or not, you got a little indicator. But then the key to this is you don't do it as. I mean no disrespect. I came from a world where when we did strategic alliances, they were outrageously encompassing. Let me give you a couple of examples. But it's going to date me because I am pre and post. I am pre Internet. Okay? So when we would do very intense, integrated, full on, not static, but very strategic and extended collaborations, it would look totally different. Right now somebody will give you three or four emails and maybe a video and maybe you'll drive them to a webinar and that's the totality of it. And then you got a launch with a time clock or whatever it is, and that's fine. But when we used to do it in the newsletter business, for example, I'll tell you how I would do it with a gold client because we took a gold client from, from 300,000 to 500 million in a year doing this. So it's a good reference, but you have to extrapolate online. We would go to the newsletter, we would negotiate a percentage of all deals with them. We would become the recommended vendor broker. When anybody would start with the newsletter, they would always get a package from us that explained us, explained the case for hard assets, gold, silver, rare coins, and would give them a broad based spectrum of perspectives from famous economists, including ones that didn't like gold and silver. So it was well balanced. Then every quarter we would fund creating a quarterly special issue of the newsletter that was all about rare coins and gold and silver and other hard assets. And we would have it edited and authored by a prominent person. We would give editorial control to the partner whose list we were going to. But it was normally such a qualitative thing. They'd have no problem.
If they had a big enough list. We would create regional live programs where we would have that. We would do all the marketing, create all the communication, pay for everything. They would basically lend their name to sponsoring a live event. Sometimes we would charge, sometimes we wouldn't. If we charged, we'd give all the money above cost to them. We would use it to buy and bring a real great iconic person they would get to be there. And it would give them a chance to not only converge with their subscribers, but we would give them and create as our service to them upgrades that they could monetize. We would basically get millions of dollars of clients if they had mailing pieces that they stopped mailing. Because a lot of the newsletters had a model that if they didn't recoup full mailing costs and fulfillment. And this was before it was digital, so fulfillment was whatever, $10 a year, $12. They would stop mailing. When they stopped mailing, we would underwrite it. I would basically make the headline better, the offer better, the bonus better, the risk reversal better, the exclusivity better. And we would fund it because we would get joint tenancy of the name and we would get all the profit above break even because they'd abandoned it when it stopped working. For that we would. Because most newsletter offers are based on really great focus on the bonus. You know that and you probably still are. I haven't been in that business for a while. So we would change the marketing so that it was a lead generating with the bonus for our brokerage. And then we would do things like that. But we would take it to Sublime and most People today will say, okay, we're going to knock out three emails and maybe do a couple videos and maybe a webinar and that's it. It's totally different, if that makes sense.
That's true. No, it makes perfect sense. And I feel like at least the way that there's so many opportunities to integrate and cross promote everybody. And there's online, I mean, you have unlimited options to integrate with each other and other competitors or other service providers that are needed with your audience.
I'll tell you a fun story, and it's true, but it's going to again, date me. But it's fascinating. So about eight years ago, a real estate icon named Robert Allen and Mark Victor Hansen, who's one of the guys that did Soup for the Soul, got together and decided to create a concept called Cracking the Millionaire Code. Very fascinating. Their premise, which was really wild, was they're going to teach anybody who had no business, no business, they didn't own a business, no product, no service, no money, no skill, how to make a million dollars in a year from a standing start for no investment or risk. And they decided very, they were very smart people. They decided they were going to sell a book on that and they pre sold it for a half million dollars to I think Random House. But they didn't have the thesis. So they decided to organize a $5,000 a person, 200 person event that was going to teach it. They called me and told me I got to be the keynote with the big idea and I'm going, shit. But I thought about it and I came there and the concept I gave them, which still is applicable today, was take the big categories, don't go to the first page because that's going to be the big, the big guns. Go to pages 2, 3, 4 and find what I call marketing arbitrage, where there's disconnect. You might have a great book, but you don't have.
Training program. You might have a training program, not have a book. You might have a book and a training, but you don't have coaching. You might have coaching and training, but you don't have a mastermind. Find the disconnects, put them together, put yourself in the middle and you'll make a ton of money. And I taught that to 300 people and 299 thought I was crazy and full of beans and they didn't do it. And one woman thought it made sense and she made a million two in six months. So there's lots of stuff you can do. I mean, I, I was groomed.
In the. How could I use this on the front lines of economic adversity? So I have. This is. Other than the fact that the health implications and the wealth implications are so dire, somebody like myself comes alive in this kind of environment because.
I've navigated so much. Not this particular horrific and really just tragic set of implications, But I have had to figure out what's probably going to happen. How many different ways could it happen? How can we be proactively ready to capitalize no matter what happens? And how can we not sit around waiting to pull the trigger? Think about.
Think about a relay race where that when you're passing the baton, the second and the third, they're not running at full speed, but they have to run at a level to catch up with you. If you can sort of think metaphorically that knowing what to do but not starting to do it is probably a Pyrrhic victory, it's not going to help you.
Mm. So basically, yeah, just kind of get moving. Kind of.
Yeah. Have yourself poised and in readiness mode. I said, I think there's two different windows of thinking right now, guys. One is crisis emergency, sort of reactive defensive readiness, and the other is what I would call crisis strategic opportunity readiness. And I think if you take the former.
You'Re going to come out at the end of the line, not in the front. Right. Pure defensive ladder. And you start moving forward, not at brake speed, because you don't know which way it's going to go. But you start readying yourself and having not massive momentum, but enough continuous progress that then you can shift accordingly, because the repercussions are starting to be seen, and they're really horrific on the one side. But there are opportunities, and there are paths of.
Keeping yourself going and growing and surviving and even positioning to thrive. But I think if you start moving slowly but progressively in those three or four directions, you can shift the moment clarity comes in.
Yeah. Now. And on the defense side, what would you recommend? Obviously not put all the efforts into it, but are there certain things you identify and recommend your clients to do?
Yeah, sure. You want to cut all your extraneous costs. You want to make sure that if you're going to keep people on.
You direct them into activities, either the current or a different one, that's going to be the most productive, the most strategic, the most.
Most contributing to this strategy I set about. You want to basically.
Use the opportunity to see what opportunities exist for you. If you're in product acquisition, my son has found out that there's all these gym supply companies that are going out of business and they're selling all their stuff for a small amount. I've come up. Pardon me one second again, forgive me. I have a really cool new concept.
Which is going to sound a little laughable, but it's not. Pardon me. I call it.
The new form of options trading. And what it is is tying up the rights to all kinds of things for a period of time and then finding the markets that will buy it from you. And playing arbitrage, you're kind of buying.
Yourself some time to go find a.
Buyer, a little bit of money. You say, hey, you're gonna want to sell this. I will give me three days or a week. I'll give you, you know, I'll give you 1 25th of it. Win, lose or draw, you keep it. If I, if I execute you apply it. And then you've tied it up. Now you can say who. Who doesn't think about that and could make a lot of money. Back in the gold days, when gold was volatile, we had people that would just find discrepancy between pricing. One gold broker would charge over another and they would basically play the arbitrage. There's always going to be qualitative opportunity and adversity. And if you understand.
There'S no shame and there's no negativity in, in you, in you.
Realizing it, hitting on it.
Monetizing it. Because by you doing it, you're going to help someone else, you know, be more stable, have more money, be able to pay their bills. So you've been capitalizing, somebody is going to capitalize on it. And normally it's not going to be the most strategic thinker. Does that make sense?
Yeah, 100%. I mean, you got to think. Not everyone has the mindset. Most people are not thinking nonlinear. And if you, you can be their quote, unquote savior in a way, in this time of crisis where they have. They seem. They don't really have any options that they do, but you are an option to them. You're presenting yourself.
Yeah. And so, I mean, it's, I mean, you can't change what's happening. You can change your ability to ethically.
And nobly capitalize to the extent there are opportunities and there are positive outcomes that this situation will produce. And they are going to be outcomes that will be determined by what you do right now.
And this, you said something in. I think it was some training you had or maybe it was one of our conversations, but all these constraints that we all have right now you can make the most of it. And this is a great formulation of who you can become in the future as this new, better version of you, but also how you show up in the world. And no better time than right now. Is this like. It's like this pressure. It's almost like how things are just formed in nature. You know, these constraints. Now you have these constraints and all these tools, and you've given so many that in the future. I mean, with all of these things that you're equipped with and the new relationships and branding, I mean, you're setting yourself up for this future of prosperity, ideally for yourself, but also others that you do business with.
Yeah. I mean, the truth of the matter is.
Your goal is to find the opportunity, the possibilities, the.
You know, the next. This is going to challenge everybody to find the next. The next, what I call it, the next page, the next act in their life, in their career, in their business. And if you wait until everything settles down to figure that out, you're going to be at a far more decisive disadvantage than just you think right now if you start today to figure it out. And again, I've given you actually, in this very quick interview, a hell of a lot of calibrating and foundations. I haven't given you a way of thinking, but, you know, we've done lots of stuff on thinking differently. I have a video I can give you called Bedtime Stories for Business Owners, and it's all about nonlinear thinkers that used adversity to create incredible accomplishments. This adversity is probably more horrific than ever. But again, if there is no tomorrow, it doesn't matter if there's going to be a tomorrow. You better figure out how you will be the victor, not the victim.
Yeah. So I have a couple questions here that have been popping in on the live stream. So Anthony was asking, how would you suggest we find arbitrage, rescue opportunities?
Well, I mean, that's so abstract. Depends on. You can look at them anywhere where there's. I mean, arbitrage can be described in many ways. It can be somebody who's got buyers, they have nothing else to sell to. It can be somebody who's got a business that is not going to be around later. It can be somebody that's got products or services that they want to almost give away because they desperately need cash. It can be.
It can be displaced and unemployed salespeople that have access to lots of buyers you want. It could be any of those things. I think the first is not to try to get. You can get overwhelmed by too many choices. And I can drive people crazy because I can spectrum almost an infinite number of choices. Pick a category that most.
Logically relates to your knowledge base, your familiarity, your understanding, and start there and just take those scenarios I just gave you. There's four different areas you can start thinking about and there's more certainly. But those alone will give. And then you can go from industry to industry, from scenario to scenario, and you can go anywhere you want in the world. And then if it works for you, you can do it for other people. Find people that have access to a ton of people of the same generic, I mean, and go to them, have them do it. Figure out how to use this as sourcing, as referral, as finding. Geez. I mean.
If your regular model isn't working, it doesn't mean that you can't implement and what's the word I want to use? You can't invoke a whole new model right now or many models, and you don't even have to do them all yourself. You want to find people, there's going to be so many salespeople right now who can sell, who are out of work, who would love to get finder's fees, who'd love to get pieces of new revenue streams they could create. They're sitting at home, can't sell cars, they can't sell client meetings, they can't do this, they can't do that, and they can't pay the rent. So that's great opportunity for you.
Well, there's a quote that you say, and it's probably not perfectly said by me, but you know, your problem is the solution to someone else's bigger problem.
Absolutely. Yeah, you're right. Cool.
I know we said the top of the hour. Do you have a few more minutes to answer some?
Yeah, I have to leave in no more than 10, but if you have questions, I'll be happy to.
Cool, thank you very much.
Another question is, do you see any new industries or types of businesses that are going to pop out of this that weren't viable a couple months ago?
Yeah, you're going to see, I think you're going to see a lot of fractionalized.
Whatever you want to call it, staffing, more so than ever. You're going to see people start basically enjoying the fact that they figured cost effective ways to operate their business with less overhead and do it virtual. And I think it's going to put enormous pressure on offices and lots of things. I think a lot of brick and mortar type companies out of hopefully Economic and transactional necessity have and are having to figure out how to both render their offerings virtual and deliver virtual. And I think that's going to move a lot of people to more things.
Outside their business. So you made a point. I think a lot of people are going to be forced to go online that have been kicking and screaming and it'll give birth to that. I think there'll be a lot of consolidation and there'll be some very strong victors emerge. I think people are going to expand dramatically their product service offering initially out of necessity and then secondary when they realized that their market trusted them all along. They just didn't want to get that extra revenue because they didn't see themselves in that role. I think you're going to see people who construct your strategic alliances. We're probably going to start. I've always done this privately, but I'm probably going to start a business that just helps people, you know, structure their strategic alliances, endorsements, partnerships, figure out who to partner with, guides them, and then provides them with someone to try to do it for them for a fee and a piece of the deal. That's a start.
Yeah, that would be an amazing service, especially right now.
I think so. I think it will be. Because I think people need that. You know, you can tell them and I mean, the problem, you know this. The reason that people who teach training programs can bring people into coaching programs and the reason people are in coaching programs become consulting clients. And the reason the consulting clients become partners is they really people. There's an adage that I don't know is always correct. The adage is you give them a fish, you feed them for a day, you teach them to fish, you feed them for life. The truth of the matter is the majority of humanity.
Want to learn to fish. They want you to give them lox and bagels for breakfast. They want McDonald fish sandwich for lunch, and they want sushi for dinner, I believe. And that's going to not change. Probably. Probably more evident in the emerging world that we're going to be thrust into than right now.
I think you're right. That should be the quote of. Or the title of this episode is exactly that line. He just said that.
Matt, did you have any other questions there?
I'm not seeing them coming in right now.
Cool.
Those were ones that came in earlier, so.
No, it's fine. It's. My wife told you I'd be here for you and for your people.
Thank you. Yeah, we appreciate it. And Jay, what are you. A couple things. So what Are you most excited for right now and in the future? Like personally yourself? Where are you focusing and where are you just really.
This is going to sound funny. I'm excited about. About the fact that my family right now in this freeze frame moment are healthy and I know where they all are and they're relatively stable. Number two, I'm excited because it's my wife and I haven't started. We have a pretty big house but I'm a slob and I go from room to room and take over and I don't bathe until the middle of the day now and I'm. I'm driving her crazy. But we haven't had any big fight and we're still maybe not passionately like having wild sex, but we're relatively. We have great affection. I'm looking greatly forward to losing weight because I tend to eat a lot and drink when I'm homebody. So I'm looking forward to.
You said your wife's a great cook too.
Yeah. And she also has one of the greatest wine collections which is. We normally wouldn't drink them if I was out all day, but now we drink at night. Not heavily, but it's delicious.
But living life, it's all good.
I'm looking forward to.
I'm in a very unique position where I can afford to buy people access to my services if I believe they're good investments and with the hope that it will come through. And we're probably going to do, as we talked earlier, some really wild things that most people wouldn't have the.
Willingness or the capacity to do. I think I'm going to get very deeply involved when this is all over, helping a lot of people and we're getting ready to do, which I think I told you, maybe I didn't. We're going to do a four day probably conference where it'll be maybe two or three hours a day. We agreed to do it. I just don't have it formalized where I go through this whole spectrum of scenarios from somebody that is still working but scared they won't be to somebody that you know is out of a job to somebody that's at a startup that didn't start up but somebody that's actually got a good business and doesn't know where it'll take them when this changes. And we're going to do some methodology where.
I've got lists of. I'm a very prolific thinker but I don't have the pipeline myself to do half of the things that I think would be Great, because I've come up with a lot, I mean just clinically, not arrogantly, a lot of great business ideas for clients that worked. But I'm going to probably go to the marketplace looking for partners, not to pay me, but to go and run with a bunch of my ideas that I've never had time to implement because I think people are going to need really cool breakthrough ancillary or supplemental or full on compensating activities. So I mean, yeah, we're pretty, you know and I'm, you know, I've got a ton of clients and I've been very blessed. People have asked me to, you know, to do sessions for them and we don't do them. I'm not trying to get business from them. I'm not trying to get anything. But it's a great opportunity to not only contribute but to. This is important to, to sink the seed and the roots of a different belief system that people, I think need. And again, I come back, I like phrases that are memorable. Victor victim. I mean it's terrible, but it'll be a lot more terrible if you decide to be defensive and reactive than if you decide now to recognize probability, outcome, consequences, optionality and figure how to capitalize on whichever of those scenarios you identify, play out and start slowly moving forward. Not staying up 18 hours a day on it, but making progress so that at such time you have to pull the plug. You already have three momentum so you've got plenty of allocated forward movement that can be then channeled into the right one.
I love that. Let's end it on that note before.
We open it up. If you guys send me the video from this, I'll put it out to my people too with your.
Thank you so much.
I hope it helped.
Thank you. Yeah. And ultimate entrepreneur, your podcast, absolutely amazing. Everyone should check that out too. Anywhere else Jay, specifically want we want to send folks to right now?
Yeah, well, I mean there's two if you want. We have a, we have a site that gives away an enormous amount of stuff. We didn't even used to ask for an opt in but right now, because I've been so busy with clients, we haven't sold much of anything. So it's got, you know, tons of stuff. It's called abraham.com. we have another one that is. It wasn't going to launch now but it's launched with that program you saw and it's called jabraham.com and it's got that little course on it. It's going to offer a very modest Daily mentoring, but it doesn't right this moment. But that's gratis. It's all pretty gratis.
Yeah, I mean, that Mind Shift Challenge ebook that you put out was super impactful for me and Joe. I refer back to that so often. And I think that's in one of.
Those free resources, the 50 Shades of.
J. Yeah, this one's a good one. I'm using it to prop my microphone up right now.
But is that Mr. X?
Yeah, it's the one I got from Rich Jefferson.
Yeah, it's Money Making secrets, also called Mr. X. We sold 72,000 copies of that for $377 a copy many years ago. It's a great book.
It is a great book. It's one that you can flip around, bounce around, and swipe something.
There's four. I think we have four. Not that one. Excuse my voice. I think we have four full books on the website that are gratis. And none of them, they're not. They're not superficial and none of them sell anything. They're just regular books that I decided just to give away. So there's a lot of good stuff.
Awesome, Jay. Well, we'll let you go, man. And I appreciate your time so very much.
Thanks so much.
It's my pleasure. I hope it add value and again, I'll put it out for you. Send us the link.
Thank you very much. Have a good one.
You too, guys. Good meeting you, Matt.
Yeah, you too.
Thank you, Joe.
All right, bye. Bye.
Thanks everybody for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliff's Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com, find this episode that you just listened to to, and give us your email address and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.
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