Jay Abraham - Be The Victor, Not The Victim - Revisited

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.

Hey, I'm Joe Fear and welcome to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. This is where we talk all about building businesses so they give you the freedom and fuel for your life. I'm not here to help you build a billion dollar business, but I am here to help you create a business with systems that work for you so you can make more money than you need just by working part time. You know, I was a chronic hustle mode kind of guy and I want to share my experiences and mentors I've met along the way to help you reframe things to be the most effective as an entrepreneur. I wish I had this guidance and insight when I was younger. So that's what I'm doing here for you. Please share and enjoy. Hey is Joe Fier. And I am back with another episode and this one is a refresher from a marketing legend. This guy is Jay Abraham and he is the 21.7 billion with a B dollar man and the highest paid marketing consultant. And this is a refresher episode from April 2020, which, as you probably remember, was a time of a lot of uncertainty. This was right when shutdowns were starting to happen around the world. The whole pandemic stuff was going kind of wild everywhere and people really didn't know what to do. There were a lot of questions in what could be done in business. Restrictions, all the gamut. And this episode, it felt very timely for a couple of reasons. So what we did is we refreshed this episode and made it more timely. Cut things out that weren't really with it, with the times right now. But my gosh, listening back to this, I was taking notes, a lot of notes, and got a bunch of ideas. And I can't wait to share this because what Jay is doing here is he's all about strategic thinking, nonlinear thinking. He's all about strategic alliances and partnerships and how to do these deal structures. And he lines out so many strategies in this episode that you can take and run with. He also knows how to face adversity. He's been through many, many, many cycles. And he knows how to find these golden opportunities within adversity when things are very risky feeling. And like I said, he's not linear. He thinks out of the box. So in this entire episode, he's talking about these unconventional approaches, new strategies, deal structures, business models and, and ways to reach out to individuals and companies who need your help. So the second thing and reason why I wanted to refresh this episode is because Jay has just partnered up with Roland Frazier, who is another podcast favorite. He's a friend of mine, a mentor. He's here in San Diego. We share a mastermind group together, a couple of them, actually. And Roland Frazier, he's been on this podcast like four or five times. And you'll see the links in the show notes to previous episodes. He's an investor. He's a business strategist. He has over 1,000 in acquisitions and exits under his belt. And the guy's brilliant and he's a great guy. So these two guys, Jay and Roland, have come together to do a book together, and it's called Business Wealth Without Risk. And the kickoff to this book, it's actually the foreword, was written by Tony Robbins. So that's pretty rad. And they are doing a live event if you catch this episode in time. It's Saturday, 23rd of September, September, and you can attend that live. And you get to chat with these guys, you get to interact. It's going to be a limited event, I think only a thousand people, they said, and you can go there. You can make sure to sign up and go opt in. And either way, even if you miss the event, pretty dang sure you'll be getting first access to this book and a lot of other cool things. But make sure to just go there no matter what. Over@hustleandflowchart.com J& Roland, again, that's hustleandflowchart.com Jandroland go get that event. Go attend it live if you can make it in time. If not, look out and go grab that book over at hustleandflowchart.com jandroland and strap on in, folks, because Jay Abraham is fascinating. He's entertaining. You're going to learn a lot of cool big words and really it's the nonlinear thinking. You're going to feel good in times of uncertainty, which I feel like we find ourselves in in a lot of different ways now with emerging tech, the economic space is, is not Great. It's, it's still uncertain. There's a lot of different pressures in the world. So that's why these principles, these strategies Jay talks about and Roland, in this business wealth Without Risk book that's coming up in this, in this virtual event, I think you're going to dig it. So hustleandflowchart.com J&Roland. All right, go enjoy this episode and I'll catch you in there.

Thank you so much for your time here. It's really interesting with your background and your experience. You talk about the mental game a lot and making sure that you're good between your ears before any other kind of strategy.

Yes.

How do you navigate that and how would you suggest others to bring that into their lives?

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 life 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, you know, 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, 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. It's an interesting time to really connect with your audience and be there as their guide. And you know, 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.

I mean, it's there, 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 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.

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. 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. Not. 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 to help weaker people gain some benefit. So they're not. 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.

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.

And. Well, I think also Joe and Matt, that one of the things you must do now that may or may not have been into world two, how and who you were, 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, see, 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.

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.

You know, 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 such 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.

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 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. 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, 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 his 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, they get to. I'm hearing a buzzing noise. I don't think it's you, but it might be. And, 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, you know, 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 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, 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 deferred 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 you know, affiliate marketers, we do a lot of that, 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 generation strategic alliances. I mean, 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 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. 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, you know, 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 a period of time. You can do deals where you bill apart now and 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, they're 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. Yeah, I mean I've done that for clients over other areas 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, you know, 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 there's they're doers and there are, 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. And 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 I was. 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. Like right now, Matt and I are doing a lot of live streams online.

Good for you.

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 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 at 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.

Yeah.

So I have a question. This might be more on the. 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 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.

Thank you. It's a great question, Matt. So, first of all, let me give you a strategy that I learned from somebody else. So it's not original. 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 that. 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? Are you trying to find somebody that's got complimentary. 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? 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 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, 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 50, 50 split, you gotta 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 who 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 up 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 complimentary 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's going to go. You're going to go to them, they're going to come to you. And. 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, you know, 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 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 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?

It's absolutely perfect.

I know, 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, 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. I mean, 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. 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 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. And 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 have no problem every, 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 charge, we give all the money above cost to them. We would use it to buy and bring a really 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 is 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 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 gonna 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 a.

There's so many opportunities to integrate and cross promote everybody, you know, 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, it's going to again, date me. But it's fascinating. So about eight years ago, real estate icon named Robert Allen and Mark Victor Hanson, 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. 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 a 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 was groomed in the, 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, 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 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.

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 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, on the defense side, what would you recommend? Obviously not put all the efforts into it, but. 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 contributing to this strategy. I said 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.

Hmm.

Which is going to sound a little laughable, but it's not. Pardon me. It's. 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 buy. Yeah.

When you got a little bit of money, you say, hey, you're going to 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 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 this, this, 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 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, the opportunity, the possibilities, the, the, you know, the, the, the, 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. But 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 could 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 you know is. 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 displaced and unemployed salespeople that have access to lots of buyers. You want me? 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 you got. 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 your problem is the solution to someone else's bigger problem.

Absolutely. Yeah, you're right.

Another question is, do you see any new industries or you know, 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 off 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 realize 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 can structure 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 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 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, 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 doesn't want to learn to fish. They want you to give them lox and bagels for breakfast, they want McDonald's 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.

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.

Anywhere else, Jay?

Specifically what 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. it's all pretty gratis.

Yeah, 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, 50 Shades of J.

Yeah, this one's a good one. I'm using it to prop my microphone up right now, but. Mr. X. Yeah, it's the, it's the one I got from Rich Jeffers.

His.

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 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.

I hope it add value.

Thank you very much. Have a good one.

You too, guys.

All right. All right. That's what I got for you today. And remember, it's not all about living to work. It's all about working to live if you need to do the work. But, you know, work can be fun and it should be fueling for your life. So if you enjoyed what you just heard, if you got some nuggets of wisdom that you want to share or you're just noodling on right now, please go tell others. The way that people find this show and how you can help others get their aha moments is through word of mouth. So if it is telling your friend, telling your family, send an email to your list writing a review or whatever it might be, everything helps. So thank you so much for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, and I will see you next time.