"A Collection of Little-Known Smart Marketing Stories and Examples"
The stories I'm going to be sharing with you in this section are as follows. Firstly, I'm going to tell you about a conversation I had with a friend of mine just yesterday, that made me realize the small percentage of success coming from my first year contacts (I don't teach them by the way, they do their own thing). Out of the 5% that actually got anywhere, they all did two very important things to make sure they made it.
In the second story, I'll tell you a little about some of the joint venture offers I've had, and the absolute worst of them all, giving you a little bit of insight from the perspective of the people you're approaching, which should also show you how fragile a first contact situation of this type can be.
After that I'm going to talk to you a little bit about this product and the accompanying manuals, how they came about, how they were completed, and how much time it took to complete and why. It never ceases to amaze me how every product created is a learning process, and something new always comes about each time. Whether it's ideas, contacts, a technique, or just something that allows things to move forward more quickly. I'll show you what I learned and how they were put into action, and what effect they had on my business.
Next I'll be talking about money and the processes in which you have to prove yourself to the people in your market before they take you seriously. I'll show you how I almost lost a good contact, incidentally from one of the guys that I learned all my stuff from in the early days just by taking an attitude that seemed ok with me at the time, but it turns out it was pretty offensive and small minded due to the fact that successful marketers are bombarded by peoples offers and comments and have to be wary always of the next guy in line who thinks that they'll make them millionaires over night.
After that, I'll show you exactly how many of my contacts came to be. Anyone related to online marketing (aside from my programmer, who was hired from a freelancers site) was contacted, or contacted me in two main ways. One doesn't work without the other. And you know what? Every single contact that I've gone to or that’s come to me in this way is still on my list many years later. Not a single one has been lost.
Humble Beginnings
Let me take you back a few years now, back to May 1999. Now I'm not sure what you were doing in may of 99, but while you were doing it, I was sitting down at my computer for the first time, and thinking about online marketing in a serious light, all wide eyed and in awe of how much people were earning from creating their own products from scratch, going from a blank piece of paper, and by their own hand, and through their own ideas, persuading thousands of people to buy their products. Not only that, but by what I was reading, they were really liking the results too. What an amazing skill that would be to have, not just from the sales perspective, but from a creative standpoint too.
The pull of this was just too much, and I couldn't resist. Sounded like a challenge to me. It sounded like that to many other people by the looks of it, because seven months later, December in 99, when I was starting to learn about the high failure rates, and beginning to ask the all important why questions, I remember looking at my contact list packed with people that I'd met, that I'd talked to, and were after the same thing that I was. A do what you want when you want lifestyle. The list wasn't that huge, maybe twenty five or thirty in total. I found myself asking the question, how many of these people will actually succeed, and end up where they want to be? And how many will either quit before they make it, run out of money, get bored, or decide the whole thing is a scam?
Where’d Everyone Go?
Fast forward to the middle of 2006. Here I still am, so it's lucky that I was one of the people on that list that did make it. But what happened to the others? Well, let me tell you now that out of the thirty or so people that I'd met in the first nine months of my online marketing, only two of us have made it to the stage where we're happy with what we've done, and succeeded in doing what we set out to do. Only two out of the thirty people on that list went from totally green, knowing nothing at all, to exactly where we wanted to be. Note that I’m only counting the people I met within the first nine months that weren't already the successes they wanted to be when I met them.
So what happened? Where did the other twenty eight people go? Well, most of them quit unfortunately, some because they ran out of money, some because they decided it was all a scam, and some because they were frustrated with the continual contradictory information written in different guides and how to's. I think that's really unfortunate, because success is definitely possible. It doesn't involve luck, it doesn't involve working for eighteen hours a day on one site. All it depends on is the persons willingness to move forward, and the quality of the information they have showing them how to do so.
Miss-information Is Ripe.
Of course not everyone that hasn't succeeded yet quit or decided running their own business was a scam, some are still around, and if they haven't either quit or become successful, they seem to fall into three groups. Group one has allied themselves with the don't listen to the people making money crew. Now as nice and as lovely as these people might be, or might seem when giving away the earth for nothing, if they don't know how to do things, and aren't making money themselves, or don't have the lifestyle that they want, they shouldn't be teaching others what they know.
No matter how nice they are, how much free stuff they give away, or how many free tips or guides they create, they're actually doing more harm than good by spreading miss-information. It doesn't matter how much information you get, if you got five hundred thousand pages worth of stuff for free, if it's wrong, or un-tested, it's not going to work no matter how long it is. This is how I always justified pulling anywhere from $250 to $3000 out of my own pocket, my hard earned cash that was earned at some terrible hourly rate working for someone else selling computers and software, to buy other peoples insight and knowledge. It actually turns out that it was experience that gave me the final pieces of the puzzle, which was totally free, but we'll get to that in a moment.
The Non Doers.
Group two are the non-doers as I like to call them. They're going out, buying guides like this, skimming them, deciding that either yes they're good, or no they're not good, then going on and buying another. That's not so bad it may seem, I love learning new stuff, and for that reason my computer is packed full of how to's from all the top marketers out there, from which I learned and adapted my own style and technique, and refined theirs to the point that they were both relevant and worked for me. The difference here is I did something about it. I may have thirty or forty $250 - $3000 guides, several from the same people, but I sure as heck acted on them. Cocky as this may sound, it’s purely to demonstrate a point. Are you acting on the information you have? Forget about what I’m doing, that’s the real important question.
Group two, some of which are still going now, unfortunately won't be going anywhere very quickly. They tell me all the time that about their ideas, and what they're going to do, and most of the time these sound amazing, better than mine on most occasions, and if it weren't for the fact that every time I talk to them, they've either changed their mind, found a new idea or are still planning, still checking, still making sure they could pull it off, checking again, and so on, there would be some mighty fine products bouncing around. This is where I picked up my second lesson. The difference between the people that were moving forward were moving fast, and everyone else just wasn't moving at all really.
I used to be like that also to be honest. I used to meticulously plan, check, and recheck to make sure everything is going to go well. Next thing I know, it's a year later and I'm asking myself what happened to last year, and finding that despite all the planning and good intention, no matter how good the ideas were, none of them got done. Ever had an idea that you thought was really good, it doesn't have to be for online marketing specifically. But have you ever said that you wished something did something more than it does, you wished a computer game in a particular genre or with particular features was introduced, you wished your fishing reel had an extra feature that you've never seen to make things easier for you, or anything like this that helps you do your job more easily?
Your Ideas Are Being Stolen As You Read This.
Now have you ever been discussing this with someone, and woken up six months later to find you and your friend or family member having the same conversation again, but this time, someone’s done it already and is making a lot of money from your idea? That's pretty annoying and used to happen to me all the time until I stopped checking, and you can avoid this by doing the same.
Stop checking, stop planning, stop trying to find out more, stop worrying if you're going to succeed, stop thinking about what everyone else is going to think of you, succeed or fail, but get out there, and get doing. Otherwise, and I know this is going to hurt to think about, but you're going to find yourself sitting in the same chair, in the same situation, having the same habits, the same thoughts, and not a step closer to what you really want. This was the second big difference between the successful and failed or as of yet un-successful.
Stop intending, and get doing. Forget what everyone else thinks, or any worries and reservations you have, stop changing your mind. Decide on something and then go ahead and do it. I'd be willing to bet that the moment you start doing this, you'll see immediate results in how quickly you're moving towards where you want to be. I'm talking within days here. Try it, consider it a challenge to try and prove me wrong.
The Doers & The (Almost) Winners.
Next up, is the third group of marketers. This group hasn't succeeded yet, but after a long while, they haven't quit either. They are doers. At one point in time, some time in the past, they decided that they wanted to get moving forward. With all their enthusiasm and hopes for the future they set out the create the best product they possibly could. All singing, all dancing, does everything for everyone who's in their target market type of product. This is great, like I said if half of the people out there with great ideas set out to do them, there would be an abundance of quality out there, and this whole misinformation thing that’s going on with the online marketing world, wouldn't happen anymore.
This is going to lead on to the first thing that me and my long time friend were talking about the other day as to the two things that everyone that's succeeded has done, so listen carefully. Everything was going well for these marketers, they hadn't failed, and they definitely haven't quit yet, and they've got a mighty good product and website out there, up and running, and ready to go. So what's next? Well unfortunately, there is no next. It was all going so well, until they ran into the slump that is the after first product knot. They've been tied up and pinned down, and as a result, pull out an endless supply of updates, and endless supply of redesigns and re-writes, a two year long (and sometimes upwards) pre-launch phase, new additions that don't really add anything to the original product, new website designs, new colors, new sales letters, and many new ideas for making their current product even better.
Now you may be thinking that sounds good right? Well it is, in moderation, but when you're re-designing the same site over and over, re-hashing the same product, or just trying to make it look more pretty or user friendly, whilst you're learning, you're not learning at nearly the pace you should be if you want to achieve anything anytime soon. As I mentioned earlier, the best thing about this business is the rate at which you can learn from your own experiences. Sticking to the same product, constantly upgrading, revamping and prettifying it is the slow way to do things, and the slow way to learn at the same time.
How many big marketers do you see, that have set up a site selling an info product, or a piece of software, or a pay scheme that do this? Maybe once, twice in a few months and that'll be it, it'll be left to sell and they will move on a bigger, brighter, and often a totally different next product. Now I'm not saying you shouldn't make the effort to improve your sites for the customers and for your learning experiences, far from it. Feel free, but don't get bogged down on the same project for years, especially when the jobs you're doing aren't doing much for your pocket. This is business remember, you're not there to re-design and look
pretty, and keep adding products to the same single site, and sticking bits onto the end of your sales letter trying to improve the same product over and over. Although this is no bad thing, too much of it can turn into a real show stopper, or show canceller should I say.
Improving & Learning.
Think about it this way. Every time you improve your product, you learn something. Every time you launch a new product you learn ten things. Learning at ten times the pace? It would take you ten years to learn what you've just learned by launching a new product, trying different tactics and keeping an open mind, something that should have just taken a year for several products, never mind just one. Sure launch product upgrades, different methods of presentation, different prices and so on, but don't get bogged down with the same project for so long that you can't move onto anything, for fear of the unknown. If you suddenly find yourself doing, great. Keep doing, but be careful not to stall your engines and find yourself at the point of just thinking, planning, swapping, changing and maintaining, or you're not going to do much better than the above examples of the people who never did anything at all.
I could give you examples of this wherever you look. Think of books, the writer writes the book, and may take some time making sure it's perfect before releasing, going through several drafts and proofreads, but once it's launched, the most you'll get is a re-released special edition or boxed set at a later date. Think of a computer game, after launch there may be a few patches to fix any problems or errors, but they don't try to re-design the whole game once it's gone out, instead, you get a new and improved sequel at a later date with better graphics and more fun experience, or better multiplayer or whatever. Think of a fishing reel. To keep up with the times, companies don't try to keep improving the product that they've created, although there may be a small number of additional pieces, they launch a whole new product, that’s seen and marketed as a brand new product, not as an expansion to the first.
Three piece suites, they don't come around to fit new pieces every time they come up with a new idea, they release a new product, heck even online software is marketed as a brand new product (think 2004, 2005, 2006 editions) and so on. Honestly I could go on about this forever with examples, but as you can see already, this model is tried, tested and proven with almost every single product you can think of, whether sold online or offline. This should be a reason in itself to take a leaf out of their book and copy, copy, copy, because it works, and it's going to make you more successful than the next person who launched one product and then got stuck in a rut. So rule of success number one, don't get stuck in a rut.
Watch & Listen
Moving on now, lets look at the second thing that we noticed when comparing those that have succeeded and those that haven't. They all did something extremely important. Instead of going for any of the other paths, they decided very smartly, that the way to succeed for them was to sit back, not do as much work as they could do, but instead, watch, listen, and read. What are they watching listening and reading? Simple, other marketers.
I can think of so many examples of this, and when I try to explain how this works, it often goes down the wrong way, and I'm told something along the lines of, I've tried to get involved with this marketer, he's real successful, and I think he or she is the final piece of the puzzle for me. Well, when I say get involved, watch listen, read, and learn, you don't necessarily have to be in direct contact with this marketer, or have made any deals with them, or even ever have to make any deals with them. This is something that it's totally within anyone’s grasp to do and control, there's no relying on anyone but yourself.
Here's an example for you from my personal experience. As I went along, starting from back in 1999, when I started to see marketing in a serious light, I went around and searched out those that were successful. I didn't contact them, I didn't try to strike any deals with them or anything like that. What I did do however, was subscribe to their lists. Read their sales letters, bought and looked at their products and the way they were doing things.
This instantly solved one big problem for me. The stuff that I was doing when I first started, didn't work. I knew something had to change, but with the flood of how to products, most of them contradictory, where the heck was I going to get this information from? And in the same circumstances, how are you going to find out what works and what doesn't work once you've finished this guide? Your own research, yes, to an extent, but look at what’s happening around you.
There's thousands of successful people out there, and no matter what happens, there’s always going to be someone in your target market that's already been and continues to be successful where many others fail. So why not copy them? I'm not talking about taking their products, and re-writing them and selling them on under a different name, not only would that be unethical and effect future relationships, but it would probably get you into a whole load of trouble.
However this doesn't stop you from watching and learning. What techniques are they using to make their sales letters super effective? How are they going about adding value and eliminating risks for their customers? What are they doing to score joint ventures? What type of products are they promoting to their lists, and when? There's an endless supply of information that you need to know to be successful as an online marketer, and it's forever changing. There's only two ways that you can keep up with the times, become successful and stay successful.
2 Ways To Almost Guarantee Your Success
Number one, is something we already talked about. It's through your tracking, research and testing, and number two, is by watching the people that are successful. The underlying concept to both of these methods which you should find yourself always using, all the time, are that you're asking yourself the why questions, not the how questions. How questions might get you to where you want to be in your online marketing career, however, it's a certainty that it's the why questions that will get you there even quicker, and most importantly, make sure you don't suddenly find yourself out of the loop, or going backwards. It's the why questions that are also going to keep you where you want to be.
Don't underestimate this, whatever you do. The only people that I've known to go from knowing nothing, to being successful have done these things. The ones that have yet to succeed, or have failed (i.e. quit totally) have not yet, and will probably never do these two things. You know what's also amazing? Whilst buying these marketers products, and watching what they do, something else happened on top of this. I actually found myself speaking to them. Half of the time I don't even remember what happened, or exactly how the situation came about, but rest assured, the more you try and associate yourself with the successful people, the more you'll find yourself in touch with them, talking to them, and learning their priceless knowledge.
Even if this doesn't happen immediately, you're still getting something very powerful and free at the same time. You're picking up on what is successful, why it's successful, how it's being used, and how you can adapt and use this for your own businesses sake, and like I said, every single person that I've come across so far that has been successful, has done this, so I can say with complete confidence that if you do this too, then you're going to make a success of your business.
Remember, stealth watching, stealth listening, you're almost a stalker in fact, because these people may never know that you're there, but if they do, great, there’s a new contact for your list. Don't however, try to force this, because you'll just end up with them trying to distance themselves from you. It will happen, but in the mean time, concentrate on the things that you have direct control of.
The act of observing them is the best example in this whole course. Do it, start today, and I assure you that you won't regret it. You should already be subscribed to a bunch of lists and have this free research coming into your inbox every day, so you don't have to worry if you don't feel you have the time to do this, because it's already done for you. Magic. Or maybe not magic, but massively powerful all the same.
In part two of this section, we're going to be moving on to some shorter stories. This one took up the whole section, because I'm sure you'll agree with me when I say information about the two top things that everyone I know that has succeeded has done, isn't something that you would have wanted me to skimp on, after all, you're here to make sure your business becomes a success right? Me too!
Summary
● It's always very profitable to learn from those in the position that you want to be in, and I spend a lot of my time just watching other people and the work that they do in order to pick up not necessarily their techniques, but hindsight solutions to problems and new ideas for my own products. And that's why I've included this section for your reading pleasure.
● There are five stories in total spread over two sections, some long, some short, but all relevant.
● In story One, I'm going to be talking to you about a conversation I had with a friend of mine just yesterday that made me realize that the five or so percent of people that we meet that go on to be a success without guidance from either of us, they all did two very important things, and we're now sure these two things play a significant role in being a success in online marketing. We're also going to look at how this applies to you and your business.
● In story number two, we'll be talking about some of the joint venture offers I've had, some of the thoughts that go through mine, and other marketers minds when they're approached for a joint venture, and how you, as someone on the look out for new opportunity can see this, see why it happens, and tailor your deals to prevent such problems
● In story three, I'll be talking to you about the experiences we gained from putting this very course together, from the writing, how much time it took to complete and why. You'll also gain an insight into the types of things and just how quickly you and your business can learn and grow simply by launching your own products, and not making any special effort to go out and learn. Your best learning tool is you and your actions.
● Next I'll be talking about money and the processes in which you have to prove yourself to the people in your market before they take you seriously. I'll show you how I almost lost a good contact, incidentally from one of the guys that I learned all my stuff from in the early days just by taking an attitude that seemed ok with me at the time, but it turns out it was pretty offensive and small minded due to the fact that successful marketers are bombarded by peoples offers and comments and have to be wary always of the next guy in line who thinks that they'll make them millionaires over night.
● In the final fifth story, I'll be showing you how most of my contacts came about. Most of these contacts and business relationships were formed in two main ways, and it happens over and over again, religiously, without fail. Many of them have been on my contact list for five years or more, and this is so profitable we need to get the same happening for you.
● Ok lets get started, and firstly I'm going to take you back to May 1999. What were you doing back then? Well, while you were doing that I was sitting down at my computer for the first time and thinking about online marketing in a serious light. How amazing would it be to take a blank piece of paper and in a few weeks turn it into a sales system, and a real valuable product that people pay thousands for. Mouthwateringly attractive, and that's where it all started.
● The first thing I decided I was going to do was annoy everyone I met. I'd ask them why they're doing everything, to me, it’s the most important question you can ever ask, even if it is slightly aggravating for prolonged periods. It turns out everyone I met was after the same as me. From the creatives that just get a buzz out of doing this, to those that wanted the lifestyle, the money, the free time and those that didn't know anything but business.
● Fast forward to 2005, the present day. Here I am, one of the lucky people that got to where I was going, so what happened to everyone else? I don't necessarily have more ability than them, I sure ain't as smart most of them, but out of the twenty five or thirty contacts two of us made it. So what happened to the other 28?
● I met up a with a friend of mine the other day, one of the guys that's made it. Anyway, we took some time out from the work and somehow landed on the conversation about the people who didn't make it, many had so much promise, why are we here, and they aren't? It sure isn't ability, why are we here and they quit? It sure isn't intelligence, why are we here while some are still on their first site?
● The first thing we did was talk about the groups of people that we'd shadowed. What type of people did we ally ourselves with, even if we'd never met them? It turns out that there were several groups.
● The first, allied themselves with a bunch of people that seem to be growing in numbers that tell their customers not to listen to the people that are making the money, because they're only in it for themselves. Well, yeah they are, but this is the opposite of what we should all be doing. Shadowing those who are where we want learn from. Several of my old friends fell into this trap and unfortunately almost six years later are still there, or quit. The fact is, no matter how nice someone is, they're doing more harm than good by spreading frustration and miss-information. If you’ve not seen this before, chances are you will soon. I assure you, they’re out there.
● Group two we came to the conclusion are the non doers. Those who buy guides, read them, then ditch them, then look for the next biggest craze, or jump from op to op looking for that millionaire overnight program. I love learning new stuff, and I regularly spend around $200- $3000 per time buying other peoples info products to sponge up their knowledge. My computer is packed full of how to's, big marketers reports and information, thousands of dollars worth of info, which I took, used, tested, adapted, improved on and often completely changed. See the difference simply taking the plunge and acting on information can have compared to not doing so?
● There's a slight twist with some of group two also. Some of them have taken the information that they've learned into account and created a site, but that was it. They got bogged down and their forward movement that looked so promising to start with stopped.
● Stop checking, stop planning, stop trying to find the next best thing, stop worrying if you’re going to succeed, stop thinking about what others are going to say or think about you, stop maintaining, and get out there, get doing, and once you start, don't stop. Always moving forward every day.
● Stop intending, and get doing. Forget what everyone else thinks, or any worries and reservations you have, stop changing your mind. Decide on something and then go ahead and do it. I'd be willing to bet that the moment you start doing this, you'll see immediate results in how quickly you're moving towards where you want to be. I'm talking within days. Try it, consider it a challenge to try and prove me wrong.
● Next up is the third group of marketers. This group hasn't succeeded yet, but after a long while they haven't quit either and are moving forward at incredible paces. These people are the doers. They don't say 'I want'. They say 'I want, watch me go get it' and off they go. The pinnacle of enthusiasm and hopes for the future, they'll set out to make not just a good product, but the best product. My personal belief is if half of the people out there with great ideas went ahead and did them instead of letting doubts, worries, or anything else hold them back, the whole 'Tried online marketing, found it impossible, got broke and quit' attitude would be thing of the past.
● This brings me on to the first thing that me and my long time buddy had a talk about. The number one thing that we did compared to the 95% or so who didn't was make progress. Many launched sites six years ago that they're still maintaining, updating, changing, redesigning, re-launching, new colors, new sales letters, new additions and so on. They've been bogged down by this constant updating that seems all too obvious when looking from the outside in. The sad fact is, myself and many other marketers have fallen into that trap, and rarely have they pulled themselves out. If you're in that ever-lasting loop, it's time to break free.
● How many big name marketers do you see that set up a site and get stuck in this ever lasting maintenance loop? They don't. Their sites are low maintenance, and often no maintenance at all. They create, they sell, and two months later they release a bigger, better brighter all singing all dancing products. This is one of the keys to success, and a great way to measure that forward progress that if you don't have, will find it extremely hard to succeed.
● Think about it this way. Every time you improve your product, you learn something. Every time you launch a new product you learn ten things. Learning at ten times the pace, huh? It would take you ten years to learn what you've just learned by launching a new product, trying different tactics and keeping an open mind what should have just taken one year. Sure launch product upgrades, different methods of presentation, different prices and so on, but don't get bogged down with the same project for so long that you can't move onto anything, for fear of the unknown. If you suddenly find yourself doing, great. Keep doing, but be careful not to stall your engines and find yourself at the point of just thinking, planning, swapping, changing and so on, or you're not going to do much better than the above examples of the people who never did anything at all.
● Small as this may seem, we put this at the number one reason that people don't reach success. Through all the contacts we've made and all the people we've met over a five year period, we only looked at the ones we both knew, but agreed that it's the same for all our other contacts too. So many people having this in common was too much of coincidence, and was proof enough for us. Develop, evolve, progress and be a success. Get bogged down, maintain, re-do, pretty up non stop and fail. Totally your choice.
● Moving on now, to the second aspect we saw to be the number two reason why so few of us were successful. One thing that those of us were successful did was shadowed someone that was successful in our field. We didn't necessarily meet them right away, we didn't try and joint venture with them, we just subscribed to their lists, bought their products and silently listened, and watched.
● This isn't about using someone for your success, like we talked about earlier, trying to pull Jv’s with big names right away isn't the best way to go, but instead just watching and learning. And you know, something pretty incredible happened too. Half of the time, literally fifty percent of the people that we've watched or listened to in the past we're either in contact with today, or know someone who is in contact with them, just one conversation away. It wasn't forced, it wasn't instant and it definitely wasn't planned, but it's just something that seems to come about quite often. It's a pretty incredible experience when you suddenly find yourself talking to someone you've been watching and learning from for a long time, and sometimes even doing business with them.
● So there's number two for you. Pick two, three or four marketers, or people in your chosen field, and use them as silent mentors. Subscribe to their stuff, read their sales letters, read their material, watch their habits.
●The act of observing them is the best example in this whole course. Do it, start today, and I assure you that you won't regret it. You should already be subscribed to a bunch of lists and have this free research coming into your inbox every day, so you don't have to worry if you don't feel you have the time to do this, because it's already done for you. Magic. Or maybe not magic, but massively powerful all the same.
● Ok that's all for this section. As simple as those two reasons for success might seem, don't underestimate them. Remember these are from real life people, real life experiences that have applied to at least 95% of the hundreds of people we've met through our career online. It's not coincidence when things reach that level of assurance. Make progress, and watch and learn, whether it's me, whether it's someone you look up to, some other marketer, It doesn't matter. Start doing it today and reap the juicy rewards.
Goals Of This Section
● To conclude the passing on of positive outcomes and conclusions relating to previous experiences that you can work into your own business.
● To touch on a previous story relating to joint ventures and the lessons that were learned from the 'Do you want to be my marketing manager?' guy.
● To talk about moving your business forward and how simple methods that you can immediately make use of to monitor the use of your time will have you progressing where you may have stalled previously.
● To show you that making contacts in your field of expertise, and to form or be part of a group all working towards mutual success is a key factor for a profitable business venture.
● To talk about how to treat your joint venture contacts that you talk to directly, and to show you that there are many pitfalls and traps that you can fall into the moment business goes out of your mind and to assist you in the avoiding of such mistakes.
First Hand Experience 2
Greetings, and welcome to part two of story time, where I’ll share with you, some of the most interesting experiences I've had over the years, and what lessons they taught me, and at the same time, what lessons they can teach you without having to spend years finding out about this stuff, or experimenting, or journeying into unknown territory without a plan of action, or at least an idea of what works, and what doesn't work, when, where how and of course, most importantly, why.
So without further ado, in this section you're going to hear about some interesting joint venture exploits, the first person that came to me, the time it took me to complete this very report and why, where most of my contacts have come from, and how one thing always leads to another, and a little joke I made about money to one of my first joint ventures, leading to one of those uncomfortable silences where neither person knows what to say.
When JV’s Go Horribly Wrong
The first thing that I want to talk to you about is the joint venture. We've talked extensively about this in previous sections, and I've explained how important it is for the base of your resource building, your promotion power, and how it's almost impossible to succeed if you try to do everything on your own. In this story, I'm going to show you how it looks from the other end, and the things that most of us have had to deal with at one time or another, mostly arising when success starts to happen, and unfortunately continuing on to this day.
The first thing I want to do is take you all the way back again, but this time to when I set up my very first website selling a product that I had created from scratch. It was based around business automation, and was at the beginning of the whole autoresponders and advert tracking craze that took place when new software was starting to be released to allow business owners to give customers access to this type of automation tool on a monthly basis.
When I first set up the site and started pulling in members, I began to notice something. Bear in mind, this was the very first site where I'd taken my very basic knowledge that I had back then, and ploughed head first in trying to make something that people would buy from me for a monthly fee. I also had very limited experiences, because it took me a while to figure out that all these money making systems, and books on how to promote affiliate programs and so on were useless unless I had the resources to do so, and the only way to do this without spending outrageous amounts of cash on stuff that doesn't work, was to create my own site, with my own products and resource building tools. Thankfully this is something I learned early on.
Anyway, here we are, me and my first site with a $10 per month price tag, (little low, we know that now, but that’s a whole separate story) sitting pretty with a hundred, hundred and twenty members that seemed real happy with the product. Soon though, about a month after getting this site up, I started to get all sorts of crazy offers, some for joint ventures, which was all well and good (even though at the time I had no idea how to handle such offers) and some people, who totally got the wrong idea about what a joint venture is.
Ever since this incident, many more have followed, and it's become increasingly clear to me that many people are out there trying to get someone else to make them rich. This is an important lesson that I learned that allowed me to start to see things from the other side. I was the one people were trying to joint venture with, I was the one who people were coming to, and indeed, when you get your websites up and running, you'll start to see this too, and when this starts to happen, even before you've released your first product you’ll understand exactly what’s going on here.
JV’s From The Other Side
You'll also see why we always ask ourselves one question about the person that we're talking to if it becomes obvious they're looking for a joint venture. Once you can see how this works, and understand why we're always asking, you should be able to eliminate all doubt from your joint venture prospects mind about what you're there for and score even more successes. Before I tell you what the question they're asking and you're answering is though, let me give you a run down of the first time I experienced something that I'm starting to see more and more regularly, the more sites I launch.
The Dreaded JV Approach
*Ping* Up comes a message from someone I haven't spoken to before on one my instant messengers. (Granted I don't give me instant messenger address out anymore unless I've spoken to the person directly, but the same is true when this happens via e-mail). Anyway, a conversation ensues. Hey, I'm a member of your site, and I'm launching my own product soon, I wondered if I could ask you some questions seeing as you've already done your own. Of course I agree, I've always got a couple of minutes to spare to answer some quick fire questions, as long as it doesn't progress into something that would turn into consultation length and impose on the services I'm charging for.
The conversation continues, and after spending a few minutes talking about both of our sites, the real motivation comes through. How big is your list he asks. Of course at this point it's obvious he's looking for some sort of joint venture. Not a problem I think, I've never been approached for one before, I've always been doing the approaching, so this might be a good chance to practice. We continue talking for a few minutes, until it becomes clear what he thinks I'm going to do for him with the most irrelevant things being given in return, he even tried to spruce it up by asking the phrase that he repeated so many times it's embedded in my head now. Do you want to be my marketing manager?
After a little bit of a conversation, it became clear to me that not only did this person want to joint venture, but he wanted me to make his site successful for him. He started talking about how much an ad to my list would earn him. So what was he going to give me in return for an ad to my list? Let me tell you, he wanted to grant me a whopping one dollar per sale commission, on a twenty five dollar product but only when I'd sold a hundred copies for him as the sole promoter of his product that wasn't actually his. It was an un-brandable resale product anyway. Anyone can see that this is worst deal ever, but it got even worse. He wouldn't let me have a look at the product. When I asked him to send me it, even before he told me what his offer was, I was pointed to the sales letter and told to buy it.
The Questions On Our Lips When You Approach Us
At this point, as you can imagine, I was a little fed up, and after five or six no sorry, I'm not interested comments along with the reasons, I had to log off because he just wouldn't stop. Now as much as you and I can see that this was probably the worst deal ever. It never ceases to amaze me how many people still try to do that without offering something good in return. So aside from the obvious question you should be asking yourself when someone approaches you, which is, is this product quality enough for me to be promoting, I can’t help but wonder exactly what I'm going to get in return with every joint venture approach. Is this another one of those that thinks I can make them rich by a single ad to my list, or is this a serious joint venture, with a good give and take, with a quality product, coming from someone that understands the nuances of this subject, and knows a single joint venture isn't going to make anyone rich overnight?
Even though the above example is extreme, you can see why it's sometimes hard to score joint ventures. It's because of this barrier that's gone up to protect against this kind of attempted deal, and let me assure you, as silly as it sounds it happens a heck of a lot. Put yourself in my position back then, and imagine you get a couple of these very offers every week or so every time you launch a new product. You should be able to see immediately the way you should be approaching this, and the way in which you should be answering these questions immediately taking any doubt out of your JV targets mind that you're one of these people. Once you can do that, you'll get noticed, and you're sure to score more joint ventures.
3 Important Tips
Remember three things here. One the equal give and take. Number two, make it your top priority to eliminate any doubt in your joint venture targets mind that you're one of these people. It's business. Get in, make your offer, get out. Don't beat around the bush, because they won't thank you for it. Number three, put yourself in this position, and understand what’s going on, because before long, people are going to be contacting you with these offers, just like they contact me, and hundreds of other marketers out there, and you'll be able to spot immediately who's the real deal, and who thinks you're going to make them rich with one ad. Be on your toes, it's not always as obvious as the above example.
Oh and don't worry about contacting me either just to let me know how a product is, or about a joint venture. I don't want to put you off ever contacting anyone for a joint venture, so long as you follow the above unwritten rules, and understand why these questions are the first thing to hit marketers minds when a joint venture offer comes through, you'll do fine.
How This Manual Set Came To Be
Moving on from that, I'd like to tell you a quick story about exactly how this product came to be, along with a very important message. It all started back in late 2003, we met up and decided that we were going to do a site together. It started out in the way of us merging two sites together, one that he was working on prior to our meet, and the one that I was currently running. After a little bit of planning, we got going and started writing content for this new site, as it was not only going to include all the automation tools from our previous sites, but provide a whole load of content at the same time.
Before long, it became obvious that the scripts we wanted to use for the site, and the things that we needed to get started were going to take a little time to be built, meanwhile we were going to be working on the content. To cut a long story short, it was over a year later, coming up to mid 2005 before we had a final working membership script for the site to run on that did everything we wanted it to do. Breathing a sigh of relief that it was finally finished, we turned our attention back to the content. By this time we had about a quarter of the content that would go on to create this very report that you're reading now, and a whole lot more that wasn't relevant to the final version of this product.
I tell you, it really felt like we'd been writing forever, working hard, long nights trying to get things up and running. Then, I came across a great article written by a friend of mine, that discussed exactly how hard we work, what we do with the hours in our day, how the distractions can cut our work time, and so on. I decided to test this, and see what would happen if I turned off literally everything.
Time Is Money. How Much Are You Wasting?
I decided that whilst I was working, no one was coming around, no TV or music was on, no food was to be cooked, and sticking to this almost nine to five with an hour and a half break throughout the day, concentrating as hard as I could to try and get things done as best as I can in the shortest period of time. I know it sounds like punishment, and I'm not suggesting you work this like a nine to five job, but I wanted to see just how much time I'd been wasting, even though it felt like I'd been working non stop. The results were a big shock.
Looking solely and content written, we'd got 25% of it done, plus the completion of a script in about a year and a few months. Granted the script was a lot of work, but I won't use that as an excuse. It took longer than it should have done, and I knew it. So the results came back, about thirty days after taking this test, and you know what happened? It turns out that two hundred or so pages over that long period of time, even though it felt like I'd been working my socks off non stop, in a mere thirty days I'd got six times the amount of writing done, and just fifteen days after that, manuals were written, the graphics had been designed, the sales system was up and running, and all the resource gathering was in place ready to start promoting.
Adapt To Survive
So what happened? Well, two things happened that you should be able to draw from. The first was simply eliminating distractions. Everything that could have stopped me in some way from writing or working was removed from my work area. The TV’s were off, the music had gone, the cooking had a set time when I was finished working, the breaks were timetabled and strictly kept. Bear in mind six years before this I was still working a nine to five job, and when I made the switch, turns out I hadn't adapted as well as I thought.
Now I'm not calling anyone lazy or anything like that, if you're in this position now, you'll know it. You'll find that it feels like you've been working really hard, but not actually going anywhere. You'll wonder how you spend so much time at the computer, wake up, and keep having to do it all over again, but still, you're not moving forward. If this is the case, the first thing I suggest you do is eliminate your distractions, stop waiting for things to happen, sit down at your computer and be proactive instead of reactive. Even if you decide before you start that you're going to keep it going for seven days, then that's fine. Keep it going for seven days, and look at how much more you get done in a shorter period of time. In my example, it would have taken me almost ten years to do what I'm now doing in ten months. Imagine boosting your efficiency that much, by over 1000% just by carrying out a simple test to see what it's about.
Why Deadlines Are Bad
The second thing, and probably the less obvious one of the two that was obviously holding me back, and could well be holding you back too, is setting deadlines. I used to think these were a good thing, it gave me a reason to work harder and more efficiently. I was told however through an article that me setting my own deadlines was killing my ability to work efficiently. So if you've set any deadlines for yourself, say for example, have a new house in six months time, make a million dollars in five years, be able to afford a luxury vacation before the end of the year, stop. Relax and stop setting yourself stressful deadlines and giving yourself ultimatums, eliminate your distractions, be proactive instead of reactive and you'll find that you get where you want to go far faster than previously. Take it from me, it's amazing what these three steps do, and if I'd been told this sooner, especially about the deadline setting, you may have been reading this a year earlier. Try it, test it for a week, two weeks, or even a month and compare it to what you were getting done before. I assure you, you'll be pleasantly surprised.
JV Approaches, A Timescale
The next thing I want to talk to you about should squash any fears you have about creating joint ventures and how long exactly you'll have to do this for. I want to take you right back again, to my early days of online marketing. The first thing that I remember is joining a membership site. It was a standard online marketing training site.
Anyway, at the time I was creating my own site, my very first site in fact, and this allowed me to get in touch with the owners. In fact, as I explained to you before, people will come to you, and in this case, this is the first thing that happened once I'd created my own site. The owners came to me with a joint venture offer.
We carried out a small cross promotion joint venture, and then went on our way. Before long however, I found myself mixing with the other people that were involved in this site. Through me owning my own site, in all sorts of ways, I was starting to be introduced to people who wanted to have access and had some sort of deal to give my customers in return. How this happened really doesn't matter, but what does matter is how it all started. It was through me, and my own product that I was starting to get in touch with many other people that also had their own products, and in the end, after that single joint venture was over with one person, I ended up with ten to fifteen people on my IM list, all with their own products.
This wasn't the end of it though by far. After about three months in the business, from the point of my very first joint venture, I found I was being referred to many other people, and my list just kept growing. In fact, MarrketingRush.com is a result of a person who told someone about me, who I then met who then allowed me to meet someone else, who then in turn referred me to Chris.
Ok so I'm being vague, I'd rather not name names here so I don't have to chase them all up to ask their permission to mention them, but that's irrelevant. Do you see, how a single joint venture, from day one immediately stated a ball rolling, and that ball is still rolling now, five years later. All because I'd created my own product which allowed me to get in contact with other people, which I wouldn't have been able to do if I hadn't created my own product from the word go.
A meeting with one person spawned me thirty plus contacts, not contacts that I spoke to once and never again, but contacts that I’ve worked with, and will work with again in the future, and we're now all on each others instant messenger lists, and all the time between us, we're creating, joint venturing, sharing ideas, discussing online marketing techniques, looking over each others new products, testing new products and so on. The moral of the story?
One, get your own product, look at what it will do for you and how much easier it's going to make your life making the money you want to make. Second, if one joint venture turned into thirty plus contacts, do you remember how we set you a goal of ten initial successful joint ventures in the promotion plan section? How hard a time would you have being successful if each of those contacts just introduced you to three people, and then those three introduced you to another three?
Now I'm not saying this will happen all the time, as I said previously, joint ventures can sometimes be a one off, but more often than not, you'll find yourself amongst a bundle of new contacts, all with their own products, all with their own promotion power, and all with one single goal. To make sure that they're successful through making sure everyone else is successful. It's a win, win situation that you want to get yourself into as soon as possible, and all it takes is a few weeks of hard joint venturing for your first product to get you into this situation. My third point here is do you now see how the people that try to go it alone have a much harder time succeeding?
Let me ask you this. Think of any marketer you know a little bit about, maybe you're subscribed to their list and have been following or looking at their products for some time. Where did their list come from, did they get it alone? Highly unlikely, it's going to have been their affiliates or joint ventures sending people to their sites where their visitors signed up to their lists. Where did their affiliates come from? Was it just from the advertising that they paid for? Highly unlikely, it will have been a mixture of their previous affiliate promotion and joint ventures they'd carried out before.
Where did their customers come from? Was it just from e-zines and marketing pay sites they've visited? Unlikely, it came from their joint ventures, affiliates and previous resources that they've created beforehand. How about the joint ventures that they've scored, did they come from paying for their marketing? Nope, you guessed it, they came from their affiliates, list, customers and other joint ventures that they've carried out before. This my friends is how people can become so successful, so quickly without spending their life savings.
Finally, I'd like to talk to you about an experience I had way back early on in my joint venture days. I'd met a lot of people previously, but still had relatively little experience where joint ventures were concerned. I came up with this idea for a site that I thought would be really cool, and approached the person I thought best for the job. We were talking away about the idea, discussing questions and how to overcome problems. Understand at the time, this is one of the most successful people I'd made contact with, so when I made a joke about how much he was earning compared to me, things didn't go down well. He didn't get annoyed, but I could tell immediately it was a bad move.
Now from my end, the joke wasn't a dig, or anything in a negative light, it was just a friendly gimmick, which was actually poking a little fun at myself. It didn't turn out quite that way though when it came out, and the misunderstandings ensued. Remember also what I said previously about being wary of joint ventures from people who think that you and you alone are going to make them rich, and that’s the only reason they contact you? This is exactly what it made it sound like, even though this wasn't the case at all, I was just real excited about getting this new site up. Anyway, this story has a simple lesson for everyone, especially when you're going to be exposed to such things in the future. That lesson is keep it business like, keep it professional, and unless you've been friends for years (not just business partners) never, ever joke about the money.
Well, that’s all for this section. I hope you enjoyed experiencing some of the biggest turning points and lessons that I've learned entirely through making mistakes and doing things the wrong way. This should prepare you for the road ahead, and now you should be able to immediately understand and know how to react to the documented situations, as to not make the same mistakes I did back then, and unfortunately, many marketers that don't have access to this report are still making on a daily basis. You don't have this problem anymore.
Summary
● Let’s take some time out to look back at some of my past experiences, and do what I love doing best, and that's learning from other peoples real world experiences, which allows us to see problems before they arise and create a solution quickly, sometimes even before the problem has arisen. It also helps avoid costly mistakes, which is a pretty nice bonus.
● In this section you're going to hear four more short stories. The first deals with joint venture exploits, the very first person that ever approached me and how we both, on different sides dealt with the situation. Secondly, you’ll get to hear about the time it took me to complete this very course, how one thing always leads to another, and lastly a little joke I made about money to one of my first joint ventures with devastating circumstances and a major uncomfortable silence that I'll never forget.
● Ok the first subject is that excellent example that I've been taking to you about throughout this course, about the guy who wanted me to be his marketing manager. We've only talked to this point however, about how a joint venture looks from your point of view and what you want to achieve, I now want to flip the tables and show you how things look from your JV targets point of view, and when people begin to approach you, the type offers you're going to be receiving on a regular basis.
● Ok so the first thing that I want to talk to you about is the joint venture. We already know how important they are, but in this story I'm going to show you how things look from the other side of the fence, and the things that most of us will have to deal with when we're hit with our first successes, no matter how small.
● For this example, I want to take you back again to my very first site, a place where if you haven't noticed already, I learned a lot about online marketing whilst setting up and maintaining it over the years.
● When I first started pulling in members I began to notice something. Bear in mind this is my first site, my knowledge was really basic, and the site that I'd created was a bit ridiculous for a first site, in that it was packed full of scripts, ongoing marketing tools and maintenance. Not exactly the smallest first attempt in the world that's for sure.
● Anyway, my first site, $10 per month when it fist launched, and a few months down the line I was sitting pretty with a hundred and twenty members, not one complaint and a bunch of experience under my belt for the first time. Soon enough, about a month after this I started to receive offers of all sorts of strange proportions, some for Jv’s and some that totally got the wrong idea about what JV's are and how to utilize them.
● Ever since this incident, more and more of these have followed, and it's become increasingly clear to me that many people out there are trying to find someone to make them rich through a single joint venture.
● It was strange to see things from the other side for once. I was the one people were coming to, and soon, you'll be in that position too.
● You'll immediately see the reaction and how it feels to be on the end of one of these, and it may even totally change your approach to how you carry out your joint ventures, and through these experiences there's always one question on my mind when someone approaches for a joint venture, and from the people that I've spoken to on my instant messenger list, it's not just me either. Before I tell you what that question is, here's a little recap on the story and what happened with the 'I Want you to be my marketing manager guy'.
● Ping! Up comes a message from someone I've never spoken to before, and the conversation begins. Hey, I'm a member of your site and I'm launching my own product soon, I wondered if I could ask you some questions seeing as you've already done your own. Ok, sure why not. it's an opportunity after all, for what, who knows?
● After a couple of questions it finally becomes clear to me that he's looking for some sort of joint venture. Not a problem, I've never been approached before, lets see what this is all about.
● As the conversation continued, I was bombarded by all sorts of requests for joint ventures and offered the most pointless things in return. Not only did he want a joint venture, but he wanted me to make his site successful for him. How much an ad to my list would earn him seemed to be a hot topic of conversation. His offer was this, $1 per sale on a $25 product but only when I'd made 100 sales, and he didn't even want to give my his product to check out. I had to buy it (which of course I didn’t do).
● By this point you should already be able to see how inadequate these offers were, and I got bored and logged off after six or seven goodbyes that were ignored.
● Here's the thing. It never ceases to amaze me how many people still try to JV without offering anything valuable in return, so aside from the obvious question you should be asking yourself when someone approaches you, which is 'Is this product quality enough for me to be promoting' you should also be watching out to see if they want you to make them rich, or are they serious business people?
● When you're constantly bombarded by stuff like this, week after week, can you see why it's sometimes hard to pull Jv’s with the biggest marketers? I consider myself low profile and these are the first questions that come to my head, imagine if you were real high profile marketer, getting this every day even.
● This is why when approaching you have to keep this in mind. First remember the equal give and take. Second, make it your top priority to eliminate this mindset that you're one of these people.
● Always remember this is business, get in, offer, counter offer, get out. Don't mess about, and don't take it for anything other than that, especially not personally. When you've experienced this over a long period, it can start to become obvious why some marketers aren't particularly polite when turning people down. It gets hard after a while. Make sure they know you're the real deal, and not just there to get rich off them, that's not what Jv’s are about, or they'll spot and deny you before you even send the mail.
● Ok moving on. A quick story about how these manuals came to be. it all started back in 2003 after me and a fellow marketer met up and decided we were going to do a site together. It started out in the way of merging our two sites together to create a high ticket membership. After some planning, we started writing the content which was going to be in addition to all the scripts we were going to include.
● After writing for ages, having scripts designed, planning, creating, when we finally got there it was 2005. Over a year later. It felt like we'd been writing and prepping for years, in fact, we had. Hard work and long nights, then one day, I came across an article written by a friend of mine.
● It was about time wasting, what we do during the day, distractions and so on. I decided to take the advice and cut out everything but the business for a particular number of hours every day.
● Looking solely and content written, we'd got 25% of the whole manual set done, plus the completion of a script in about a year and a few months. Granted the script was a lot of work, but I won't use that as an excuse. It took longer than it should have done, and I knew it. So the results came back, about thirty days after taking this test, and you know what happened? It turns out that two hundred or so pages over that long period of time, even though it felt like I'd been working my socks off non stop, in a mere thirty days I'd got six times the amount of writing done, and just fifteen days after that, the text was complete, the graphics had been designed, the sales system was up and running, and all the resource gathering was in place ready to start promoting.
● What happened? Well two things, both you should be able to draw from. The first was about eliminating distractions. Smoke here, smoke there, little food, workout, watch TV, flick through the music tracks, who's that walking by the window? It just didn't work, and I didn't even realize it until I removed everything that distracted me the previous day the day after it happened. 1000% my personal productivity went up. Most amusing seeing as it felt like I was working non stop. Try it, become an undistracted and super focused hermit for a few hours a day and see what happens to your productivity.
● The second and less obvious thing that was going on here is something that many see as productive, when in fact it's just stressful, distracting and hurts confidence and performance. Deadlines. The moment I stopped saying 'I need to do this by' I found myself working twice as fast and actually enjoying it for once. Try it. Forget deadlines and be comfortable and see how much more you get done.
● Moving on again, I want to talk a little about how most of my contacts came about. This should squash any fears you have about creating joint ventures and how long you'll need to be approaching prospects for.
● Lets go all the way back again, even before that first site I created. I joined someone else’s membership site, a stand alone marketing training site. Anyway, I learned, took the info and created my own site. Before long, the owners of this site caught wind of what I was doing and approached me for a joint venture. No idea even how they found out. Anyway, we carried out a small cross promotion and went on our way. It wasn't particularly profitable for either of us, but before long I found myself mixing with other people involved in this site. Through owning my own site I was starting to meet and be introduced to people in my field of expertise, just by mixing with the market.
● The whole process was unintentional. Immediately you can see how powerful simply mixing with your market is. It doesn't need to be forced, just mix, mingle, create and progress and you'll get noticed. After a single non profitable joint venture, we each ended up with an additional 15+ people on our contact lists, all with their own products. This snowballed, on and on over and over and kept growing. This manual set spawned from that first joint venture and followed a path down to my present business partner seven or eight down the line.
● So you see, meeting with just one person can spawn you tens, scores even hundreds of contacts pretty quickly, many of whom will become long term. Moral of the story? You won't have to approach people forever. Just like the resource building, once you build, they build themselves, but this is much easier when you have your own product. That's a big part of our success in drawing long term contact with joint venture prospects.
● Let me ask you this. Think of any marketer you know a little bit about, maybe you're subscribed to their list and have been following or looking at their products for some time. Where did their list come from, did they get it alone? Highly unlikely, it's going to have been their affiliates or joint ventures sending people to their sites where their visitors signed up to their lists. Where did their affiliates come from? Was it just from the advertising that they paid for? Highly unlikely, it will have been a mixture of their previous affiliate promotion and joint ventures they'd carried out before.
● Where did their customers come from? Was it just from e-zines and marketing pay sites they've visited? Unlikely, it came from their joint ventures, affiliates and previous resources that they've created beforehand. How about the joint ventures that they've scored, did they come from paying for their marketing? Nope, you guessed it, they came from their affiliates, list, customers and other joint ventures that they've carried out before. This my friends is how people can become so successful, so quickly without spending their life savings.
● Ok, moving on to the last section, here's a little mistake I made way back in the day with a big marketer that brought about one of those embarrassing amazing silences where either no one knows what to say, or you find yourself saying 'Can't believe I just said that, or ‘didn't quite mean it to come out like that'. In this case it was me, and a respected marketer that I'd approached for a joint venture. Anyway, we were talking and I came out with the classic line 'Hehe well, not when you earn as much as you earn it isn't'. Instant idiot over here. I could immediately tell it was a bad move.
● Consequently, we never pulled off that joint venture that we planned, and we're just about still in contact. Now from my end, the joke wasn't a dig, or anything negative, it was just a friendly gimmick. More poking fun at myself than anything. Hey I didn't know about all these people going around trying to get others to make them rich back then, I sounded almost like the marketing manager guy earlier.
● Anyway, this story has a simple lesson for everyone, especially when you're going to be exposed to such things in the future. That lesson is keep it business like, keep it professional, and unless you've been friends for years (not just business partners) never, ever joke about the money.
● I hope you found this an interesting read and find some valuable stuff in here to draw from. Sure wish someone would have told me this earlier.
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