Second Time's a Charm

by Jay Abraham

This is the second opportunity I've had to make a meaningful impact on your business life - and I want to get right down to work.

You have a business - new or old, large or small, successful or struggling. I have the methods for making it grow, prosper, and thrive. More importantly, I can teach you how to do all that easier, faster, safer, and with far less stress than the way you've been trying to do it.

And I'm going to prove that to you right now.

His name is Doug. (No last name needed.) Doug is frustrated and feeling beleaguered. (Perhaps you are, too.) He's struggling and up against a mental wall. (Sound familiar?) Doug hasn't enjoyed the success or results he's been expecting since he started his business. So he asked me this question:

"What advice/resources would you give to an over-40 entrepreneur who has not had a lot of financial success in his life? The problem seems to me to be psychological."

Psychological? Apparently, Doug feels that his problem is something "inside" him - low self-image, perhaps... or low expectations. And he desperately wants to know how he (you?) can step out of this mental "miasma." (See "Word to the Wise," below.)

* First, recognize that success is a combination of ability and possibility... all mixed with the healthy understanding that failure is not a permanent state - only a temporary response to a test or experiment that didn't work out.

Stated differently, most of you are needlessly limiting, restricting, and unintentionally impeding the level of success, income, certainty, and control you can have in business - all because you're not seeing how much more you can really do.

* Stop doing that!

First of all, in business, being a good marketer is the key difference between mediocrity and making millions, tens of millions... even billions.

So the first thing you have to do to change your negative mindset is become a more masterful marketer. That can increase your long-term business success rate by more than 10 times - if you know how to do it right.

Next, you need to develop what I call "funnel vision" instead of "tunnel vision." When you have funnel vision, you see with absolute certainty not only what is possible - but also exactly how to engineer and successfully achieve any and all realistic (or even audacious) goals you set for yourself.

My way of developing funnel vision is to study different approaches that have been "borrowed" from one industry and successfully adapted for use in another industry. What you learn is that if you are the first one to use such a concept in your industry, it could skyrocket your success. Stated differently - a business-building approach that's as common as dirt in one industry can have the profit-making impact of an atom bomb... if you are the first/only one in your industry to try it.

There's one more factor involved in greatly improving your success in business. You need to become an expert in three techniques that I'll be elaborating on in the weeks to come:

(1) masterminding

(2) testing various assumptions

(3) building on multiple income streams, revenue sources, and profit centers.

So, Doug (and everyone else who feels the same way), as you can see, success in business has nothing to do with your psychological makeup. It's all about developing a certainty about what works and what doesn't... and what works better and best... to build a recurring business income model.

Unfortunately, they don't teach this at business school. But that's what I'm going to do - in easy-to-master installments - in the weeks and months to come.

What's Better Than Money When You Don't Have Any?

by Jay Abraham

If you're thinking of starting a new business, or if your existing business wants to grow, it's easy to get frustrated if you don't have the capital to fund what you're dreaming about.

But you don't have to be frustrated. You can use your creative alternatives - and they are extensive.

First, ask yourself the two big questions: "If I had the money, how would I use it?" And "What would I spend it on?"

For example, do you want to run ads, hire a sales force, or build an Internet website or e-commerce division? Do you want to expand your inventory? Your product offerings? Or do you need more technology, software, computers, and so forth? What is the purpose of your capital requirements. That is, where would that money go?

Once you're clear on the answers to those questions, realize that you can persuade plenty of businesses and people to provide you with the equivalent of what your money would be used for. But instead of paying them upfront cash, they'll probably accept a more creative payment alternative.

Here's a good example to stimulate your mind ...

A past client of mine had zero marketing money. So we got 1,000 magazines, newspapers, TV and radio stations to run ads for us, selling a starter-sized unit of our product for a $3 purchase. The advertising media put up over $20 million in advertising for free, so we let them keep all the money from the first purchase (the $3 sell). We got enormous exposure - and a million people who purchased for the first time. But we also got 100% of the back-end (repurchases) too! And 500,000 out of the million people kept repurchasing over and over again. (They averaged 10 times with an average of $3 per purchase - or $30 each on the back end.)

This promotion did so well that we made an 80% gross profit. In fact, a NYSE-listed company asked us to sell the company for tens of millions of dollars.

Does this give YOU any ideas?

Here's another example ...

A friend of mine needed a sales force, but he had no money to pay for salaries, travel, and so forth. So he did two brilliant things.

First, he found three people locally who sold non-competitive products to the same market he was targeting and offered them twice the normal commission to take on his product. They did - and sold millions of dollars worth.

But he didn't stop there. He found a large, well-capitalized telemarketing company whose main activity was calling homeowners at night. Since they hardly used their daytime hours, they were delighted to sell my friend's "business to business" product for him during that normally light time - and receive half the profit (which was four times their normal compensation). My friend didn't care, because every sale that they generated was pure windfall profit (see "Word to the Wise," below) for him - and, of course, he also got 100%, of the back end.

Another friend found a business that had over 100,000 square feet of unused storage warehouse capacity. My friend needed 75,000 square feet, but was low on capital. He persuaded that company to furnish him with their unused space ... in exchange for a small share of the sales he generated with the new products that he was able to inventory.

Still another exciting story is about a friend who wanted to be in the business of selling cassettes at grocery stores and mini-marts. But he had no capital.

He learned my theory: that there's always someone out there who needs what you want or need even worse than you need or want it ... and who will be eager to make it happen for you. So he went out and found a huge music distributor that had just lost a major account and wanted to replace the business. He easily persuaded them to furnish hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of tapes for him to distribute in a way that allowed him to offer the grocers better payout terms than their current suppliers. Both sides prospered mightily.

Or how about barter?

You can trade whatever product or service you sell or make for whatever you need. I've traded my consulting and seminar-type products for expensive trips, cars, jewelry, furnishings, and services for my office.

When they didn't have capital, I've seen people make deals to get needed products or services (such as giving the provider a share of future sales in exchange for the needed items) for a period of time or up to a multiple over the market value of the product or service furnished.

For example, once a friend got a software company to give him $200,000 of needed software in exchange for giving them 3% of his future sales for 18 months or $400,000, whichever came first.