Creating Joint Venture Opportunities for your Business with Jay Fiset

Episode 575 - Creating Joint Venture Opportunities for your Business with Jay Fiset

https://www.WeCloseNotes.com

Scott: I am honored to have a self-proclaimed smart-ass on as a special guest. I’ve met him in New Orleans. I said we would hit it off because I want to know what he was doing. It was a very powerful thing for our audience, our students and everybody that follow us. Before I bring him on, many people are getting into real estate and the note investing side of things. It often can be daunting when it comes to, “How do I start marketing? I have no network. What do I do?” If you’re one of those people that are running through those fears and scarcity, maybe a wallflower at networking events or even the introvert that you’re scared to say what you do, this is the episode you want to tune into.

We’re honored to have our guest here. He’s a bestselling author and a student of human nature. He’s an avid outdoorsman at five-star hotels and speaks fluent smart-ass. He can see and reflect your life mission in five minutes flat. He loves having his two sons, so he can play with his boys’ toys. He still fantasizes about his wife for many years. He loves ideas but loves results even more. He can simultaneously laugh and cry for different reasons at the same time. The thing that you have to realize is this guy is dedicated to instigating a global movement of conscious creators and supporting people to organize their life and resources around their passions and gift. That’s why we’re honored to have Jay Fiset join us from Alberta, Canada.

Jay: Thanks for having me, Scott. I appreciate being here.

Scott: We are honored to have you. You and I were talking before. We met through our buddy, Mark Wade. I had him on a couple of episodes at Virtual Summits. I love what you did at the first part of the event when you were talking about how many people fail at networking and masterminds. You see that with a variety of things. You and I both have been a part of many different masterminds and ventures like, “Come on, this sucks. What am I doing here? Why am I spending money to take away from my life and family when something is not working?” You’re passionate about that a little bit.

Jay: I have another brand, which is called Mastermind to Millions, where we teach experts and entrepreneurs to position, launch and lead their own mastermind groups. It came as a result of doing personal development work for many years and creating these support groups. Nothing pains me more than being in crappy mastermind groups. Why are we bothering? A couple of great questions, an environment, intention and some transparency and creating a container that works. It’s freaking magic. I see time and time again people on the one side of it, trying to do a money grab because it looks like it’s an easy thing to do if they’re sitting around talking. On the other side of it, coming to masterminds, waiting for the miracle thing to happen without showing up and doing what’s necessary. I can go on a little bit of a rant about that, but we shouldn’t probably start there.

Scott: You and I both agree to that. That’s the one of the biggest misconceptions. We both agree that everybody and his dog is having a mastermind. I’ve had a mastermind in my note business for several years, but we’ve always focused on what we can do. It’s not about my bottom line. What can we do about helping those that show up? How can I play full out with those that are there to help them overcome any obstacles, help them take their business to the next level and help them have those breakthroughs? I’m honest. We’re open. It’s a safe environment where people can share and grow as entrepreneurs. You don’t see that in every place.

Jay: It takes some skill. It takes honesty. I’m a big fan and I tell everybody that I fail more than anybody I know because I take more risks than anybody I know. For the people who work with me, a lot of what they’re paying for is my stupid mistakes that I will tell you the absolute truth about so you don’t make it. It’s like don’t fall in the hole and grab him by the hair. It’s like “I saved you $27,000 and this is why.” They’re like, “I thought I should have walked that way.” Those are the pieces that if you can create the environment of the mastermind where it is the good, the bad and the ugly, everyone is willing to come with that on the table, that’s where the magic happens. It’s created by sometimes what I’m going to call the money grab on the one hand, then people come in attached to their ego on the other end. That’s a recipe for disaster on wheels. I have a whole bunch of vetting questions that I ask people to ask in masterminds. If they can’t ask those questions and get meaningful answers, they should run like hell.

Scott: Any of those that you’d like to share?

Jay: First and foremost is this, “How long has it been going on? Who can I talk to that has been in it? Both that has stayed and that has left. I want to know both versions of that entire process. I want to know what the financial scenario is as well. Is everyone in the room paying the same amount of money?” I once went to a Florida Mastermind and it’s like, “For crying out loud, I teach this process. I know what it is, but don’t bullcrap me about it.” We’re in this room and there’s a very heavy hitter from the real estate world. In fact, he created the first real estate infomercial way back in the ‘80s. I know you know but I won’t say.

We’re going through the process. I know he is their anchor member and he used to draw people in. I went there to meet him, for that purpose. I’m fine with it. I know he’s the anchor member. I know that he probably has a clip. I know that he did not pay. I know all those things. The first thing out of the mouths of the people leading it is like, “Everybody at this table has paid exactly as the same amount he makes.” You just started lying. I’m like, “No.” I want to know what the financial arrangement is. If you get a heavy hitter in the room that I have access to, I’m happy to pay for that but don’t BS me. I want to know what the financial arrangements are.

I’ve been in a premium mastermind with Jeff Walker, the Product Launch Formula. That’s a difficult mastermind to get into it. When I was there, it was $36,000 a year. There were people in that room who are only paying $10,000. They’ve been there since the beginning and that price was grandfathered. If I had chosen to stay, I’ve been grandfathered at $36,000. I assume in five years, it’ll be $50,000. The deal is known to everyone at the table. Those are one of the biggies.

The other part I want to know is, “What is your facilitation experience? Is this something where you were going to facilitate?” What I’m looking for is a group that shares network, wisdom, resources and experience. The keyword is a group not guru. If the guru is doing more of the talking than the group, then I’m not interested, “That is not why I came here. If I want to hire you as a coach, I’d hire you as a coach and we’ll talk one-on-one. I don’t need to do that with 32 people in the room.” Those are my biggies.

Scott: It’s important to know what the set-up is. How long is it? Why do people stay and why people have left? Not every mastermind is for everybody. I’ve had some great masterminds that I’ve left that I recommend still to others because they weren’t fitting on me. I’m a little bit of a niche aspect. I know you’ve done the same thing too. Let’s pivot a little bit here and talk about helping people. Masterminds are great and it’s a great way to expand your network. A lot of people may not have $10,000, $25,000, $36,000 to get rock and rolling. There are other ways for them to expand their network and build their joint venture relationships. You have a great thing that I’d love for you to share here, your 10 by 10 model.

Jay: What we’re going to talk about is a strategy. I’ll give you a couple of chapter titles to contextualize this and to make more sense of it. My brand, which is called JVology -The Perfect Mix of People, Fun & Profit. We teach a variety of joint venture processes to build relationships, to scale business and all those pieces. When we build this model well, it is a steady stream of free leads on the frontend and a recurring passive income on the backend by setting up what we call our upstream and downstream partners. We do that at live events. We finished JVology Live and JVology Summit in San Diego, which were awesome. We do that in digital programs so people can do it on their own. We do a one-on-one coaching. We do year-long consulting. In this space, we do it front to back from what a JV is and all the way through to introducing multimillion-dollar deals to one another in our community. That’s the broad strokes.

Where I always ask people to start is this idea of, “How do I begin to understand my upstream and my downstream?” I have this steady stream of leads and I have recurring income. The first step is this. There is a client journey. The people that you serve, the people that pay you money, the people that want your services, the people that buy your houses, the people that sell you a note, these are your clients. We want you to focus on the client’s journey. Here’s the honest to God truth about most entrepreneurs and where they go awry over and over again is that most entrepreneurs aren’t focused on the client. They’re focused on their magic trick. When I say magic trick, I mean the thing that they do like, “I can finance your house or I could sell you a house.” The truth is most of us are in love with our magic trick. We should be or we shouldn’t be doing it, but it is at the expense of understanding the big picture of their clients.

What happens is if you can imagine, there’s this gray arrow, which represents the client journey, then there’s you, which is a blue dot. That blue dot intersects the client’s journey at a particular point in time where they want and need the solution that you offer. Let’s make no mistake about it. Your clients come to you because they have a problem. If they didn’t have a problem that you solved, you would be functionally irrelevant to them. They wouldn’t give a rats about you. Most of us are focused on, “How do I find this one person at this one moment right in front of me so I can get a client and make some money?” Can you survive that way? Sure, but it’s incredibly narrow and it is a very transactional process. Generally speaking, you are seen as nothing more than a service provider.

Imagine the client’s journey and if you’re standing there, to your left is before. What I want you to understand is right this very second, depending upon your niche, your industry or what you do, there are 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, 1 million people who are engaging in something that causes the problem that you solve. They’re reading a book. They’re buying a real estate program. They’re getting divorced. They’re putting a house up for sale. They are empty nesting and the house is too big. They lost their job and they’re not able to make their mortgage payments. Something is happening that causes this problem that you solve.

Please understand this, the better we understand the client’s journey, the easier this is. Most of us are so focused on the magic trick that we never take 2 or 3 steps back to say, “The people that love my magic trick the most are all going through X or they are all going through Y.” We called this before or upstream. This is the people, the courses, the programs, the books, the experiences, the life stage that causes the problem we solve. That’s before or we call it upstream. There’s downstream, which is after. Let’s make no mistake about it. With every problem we solve, we create at least 7 to 15 additional problems for our clients.

Many people are going to say, “I don’t create any problems.” You do. It’s as simple as if you did a big transaction and you had an epic win, you now have caused a problem of a tax process. You’ve got to figure out how you’re going to mitigate those taxes. You now have liquid capital that needs to be invested at a rate that is comparable to the previous deal that you did. We are always causing problems with our solutions. The simple idea here is there’s this river upstream that is bringing the ideal client who has the problem that you solve. You pass your clients off to the people that solve the problems that you create. Giving your clients better service, giving them a more complete solution, solving more of their problems, when you do this well, you’re no longer a service provider. You are a trusted advisor.

Scott: In our world, especially in the note space, the after phase would be our servicing companies. Once we’ve taught people how to buy deals, they have a servicing company they use or it’s an attorney that they’re using to foreclose with or it’s a new group they’re attending to have them move their REOs. It’s a lot of vendor relationships for the best part. It’s like an inner circle, “Here’s who we love to use as our trusted advisors that we would recommend you use.”

Jay: We have vetted them. We like them. We know their program or product is great. We would send our mom there. We know that if something goes awry and it always does, it’s business, things happens, it’s a phone call away and it is fixed. That’s the big idea. Here’s what we’re after. What I want you to understand is there’s a big gray line. That is the client’s journey and that client’s journey is doing its thing.

We identify the people that creates the problem we solve most consistently, most powerfully and most directly for us. We simply go to them and we say, “You know that when you do your thing with this client, it now unfolds this particular problem.” “We know that.” “You don’t solve that problem on your own, do you?” “No, that’s another person’s business.” “To be clear about this, I am perhaps one of the world’s best at solving that problem and I would love to help make you more money by serving your clients better. What you’re going to do and what we’re going to cut is a deal that says, when this person comes to you and you know you have created this problem, you simply refer them to me. When you refer them to me, we will have a tracking system and there are one million different tools. It doesn’t matter. We will have a tracking system and when that person makes a purchase from me, I’m going to send you money.”

What happens is when we do those deals for the person that referred us, the money we send them is completely bottom-line money. It is dollars added to profit. There are no additional expenses. There are no delivery costs. There’s nothing else to do except add that to your profit line on your income statement. Lots of people are like, “I don’t know if I want to refer them to them because maybe they won’t have enough money to buy my next program or maybe they won’t participate in my next deal.” It’s like all of that stuff is nothing but scarcity BS. The truth is one great referral to somebody who truly solves the problem and you get paid for is the most profitable process in your business.

Scott: This would be like talking with people maybe like the local real estate club here who’s educating people before getting referred to us for a class, which we turn around and cut a check back for a split. “Thanks for coming in,” or they’ve invested with us, “We’ll throw you back a marketing bonus, but we want to refer them back to you,” or refer them on to somebody else who’s the next step. Basically, it’s before they get ready for us to solve that magical problem, then it’s a win-win back and forth.

Jay: This process, it’s harder to get upstream partners than it is to get downstream partners because you need a higher degree of trust. You need a higher degree of certainty of delivery. You need all those things. When you get it right, ten solid upstream partners are more leads and opportunity than any business can handle. Ten good upstream partners always mean you’ve got to change systems. You’ve got to add staff. You’ve got to put a new salesperson in place. You’ve got to do something because it’s that powerful. This is the other part of why it’s so profitable. You don’t pay a penny for those leads. You only pay for the result of a client. That’s where this gets dead sexy.

That’s the frontend. Let’s talk about the backend. We’re perfectly clear about it, “This is what I do and I cause a whole variety of problems.” Let’s be clear about this. The real estate world is rife with downstream opportunities. The second we change financing, we buy new property, we release property, everything from moving insurance, maintenance, contracting, utilities, cable, it’s ridiculous the amount of downstream opportunities there are.

Sometimes that’s difficult to manage. We want to be focused on the ones that are most aligned and the most profitable to us. We simply create a system where we have our downstream vetted suppliers, our downstream vetted partners, our downstream vetted vendors and we say this, “I know you spend some money on advertising. I saw you on Facebook.” We can see where they’re spending their marketing dollars. We can see that they’re sponsoring somebody’s event. We can see that those things are going on.

We say, “How about whenever I deliver a client to you, you pay me? I have this steady stream of clients and they all recognize that when I do my magic trick and solve this problem that they now have these other seven things. In fact, I’m going to build right into my system a way to point out the seven things that they should know about. If they don’t, I’ll highly recommend that they come to you. On that recommendation, there’s going to be a tracking link. There’s going to be a process for that. Every time they buy, you send me money. Here’s what’s going to transpire. You will save money on your marketing. You’ll have a steady stream of clients. The money they send us is pure profit for us. It goes directly to our bottom line and everybody wins. The clients are better taken care of. Our partners are happy because we’ve either sent them leads or sent them money. We’re happy because our business is more reliable, consistent and profitable.” That’s it in a nutshell.

Scott: The beautiful thing is it’s a win-win. People don’t care if you’re getting a kickback or you’re getting a commission because they’re like, “This guy is still going to take care of me.” Most businesses will have that figured into their pricing point. They can have a referral. I have affiliate relationships with a lot of people. I have a lot of JVs in place with a variety of our vendors because it’s a true win-win. I bring value by delivering clients. My clients like it because they’re taken care of. It’s a trusted source. As I always tell them, “If something’s going wrong, you’re not getting the service that you’d think you deserve, give me a phone call. I’m glad to jump on the phone or an email and solve the situation.” It’s that whole higher level of customer service that comes with it. It refers to being a walk in off the street client.

Jay: I’ve been at this for many years. What I know to be true is when people get there about this, it’s because number one, they’ve designed a closed system. Number two, they’re operating from scarcity. Number three, they’re probably not making enough money because of the first two. In that process, as soon as people begin to expand to this, I’ve sent clients sitting on my desk with credit card in hand. It’s like, “I want to buy your stuff.” I was like, “I’m not the best person for this. Could I help you?” Do I have experienced there? Yeah. Is it my wheelhouse? No. “You need to see Bob. He’s is going to charge you more and do a better job. You should see Bob.”

I wish I had kept better track of those circumstances. This is anecdotal because I haven’t kept it super tracked. I would wager that every single person that I’ve ever said no to buying something and sent them somewhere else has come back and spent more money than they were going to spend in that initial purchase. It’s the difference between service provider and trusted advisor. We can’t keep pursuing as the world changes, as we get more connected, as social media explodes and as paid ads get more expensive. We can’t keep playing for the short win. It will kill everyone. That’s the truth of the matter.

Scott: I’m glad you said that, Jay. You can be a flash in the pan. We’ve seen plenty of people come in that have something as a flash in the pan. They have a gift, but they don’t build that downstream relationship or their upstream relationships. They’re not there. They don’t build long-term. In six months or a year, they’re no longer visible because they don’t have that lifeblood of adding the value to the client journey and the client’s businesses in a variety of things.

Jay: This isn’t real estate, but I thought I should show some quick examples of our mastermind program of the types of relationships so that people can connect the dots. Sometimes people feel like, “Upstream, what, who, where, why?” Our Mastermind to Millions Program, this is the program we’re talking about. It teaches coaches, authors, and entrepreneurs to position, launch and lead their own masterminds. For us, our upstream is simple and straightforward. I pick coach training. I’m willing to bet you’ve got a bunch of people in your world who have gotten coach certification and coach training programs, which is a marvelous business card to be super hungry for most.

I had coach certification. They came to us and they said, “We know many of the coaches that are suffering and the one-on-one time is trading time for money. Could we take some of your content about masterminds, put it in our certification program, and then if people want to get out of the one-on-one and get to one-to-many where they have at least a little leverage, they can buy your program?” I was like, “That’s perfect.” That is an embedded content solution for a real problem that they have, which is their certified coaches who can’t make money.

Lisa Sasevich is another great one. She teaches people how to speak and sell from stage. Lots of people are speaking and selling from stage, and they’re selling a book. It’s like, “I have my book for $12.” It’s great and they hit the drive through at McDonald’s on the way home. That’s all that’s going to transpire. For us, if they do have a book and they have some intimacy, we can help them position a premium mastermind that is the experiential intimate version of that, and sell from stage like mad. That works out fantastic.

Jane Powers is another speak-to-sell trainer. It’s the same deal. Dr. Carrie Rose, she works with Thinkific and teaches people how to do online courses and programs. If you have an online course and an online program, the truth of the matter is people want more of you. If that has been effective and powerful, then you should be looking for a premium program to say, “We could come and we could talk about this and be able to share network wisdom, resources and experiences about this. Come do this.” Those are some examples. I’m not going to go through all of them, but if you think about it, each one of those people causes the problem that I solve, which is, “I want to serve as a coach or I want to serve as a speaker or I want to serve as an educator,” and then what?

I sold a $397 digital program. That doesn’t go very far. People want more intimacy. Give them a Mastermind. The downstream for us in the Mastermind To Millions program is pretty simple and straightforward. We help people get success with their first Mastermind group. It’s like, “This is awesome. How do I scale it?” You need a webinar. You need a CRM. You need some digital funnel to get you through that process. You need a community with which to farm and build more relationships. You need a hosting thing for your digital course and you need somebody to build all that crap. It’s like, “These are all of our trusted advisors who will take tremendous care.” To be clear, nothing on here in terms of the people I’m talking about are hypothetical. These are all real deals that we’ve had in place in some cases for decades.

Scott: We’ve got some similar after affiliates too like Infusionsoft and ClickFunnels. There’s a variety of different things because you’ve got to have the tools to go build something. You want to make sure you’re using the right tools. If you need a pickax, get the right pickaxe versus a pail and shovel.

Jay: The wrap up to this piece of 10 by 10, ten upstream and ten downstream, well-selected and taken care of in our experience, adds a zero to your bottom-line profits. If you’re making $10,000, you’re making $100,000. If you’re making $100,000, you’re making $1 million. I’m not talking top line sales. I’m talking bottom line sales. Let’s be clear about this. Many people are like, “That’s BS.” This isn’t hyperbole. These are conversations with real clients who have built the process. It’s not that hard. What it does mean, and this is the part that always makes me smile a little bit, is that it works so well that it causes a whole new set of problems, which is team, support, structure, automation, systems, sales. It’s one of those things where it’s like, “If you’re going to do this, you need to do this and be prepared to deal with the beauty of a business that’s working.”

Scott: It’s the truth. It’s the bottom line. It’s always nice to have checks and wires show up unknown. I get a deposit and I’m like, “Where did that come from?” I got that for referring out what I already use, what I like to use. That’s one of the big things too, Jay, because it’s coming from a trusted source and not being, “Use this because they’re going to pay me the most spiff.” You want to make sure, “This is what I use and this is what I like.” It’s always that warm referral adds a lot of value for a variety of things.

Jay: I often refer things that I don’t get paid on as well. The truth of the matter is this doesn’t have the long tail that something else has. I’m talking about software in this case specifically. If you’re at this level, you shouldn’t be anything less. You shouldn’t be fiddling around with something smaller because that’s what has to happen. I get little happy talking about this. Here’s the other piece about this to be completely transparent about it. It’s like, “I could recommend you this and I’d get paid this, or I could recommend you this and I get paid this. This is the right thing for you. It means less for me, but it’s the right thing for you. What I want you to know as a trusted advisor, that my job is the right thing for you, not for me.” When people truly get that, there’s never any resistance about using the affiliate link. There’s never any resistance about what that transaction is because the recommendation is based on need of yours, not mine.

Scott: What’s a good exercise for our audience out there that are thinking about this, that need to implement this? What’s a thing that they can do to help them prime the pump?

Jay: I don’t know if this is possible, Scott. I have this little worksheet as well, which I can make available to people. I hadn’t thought of this until this question, but I’m happy to share this, and if it would work. The assignment is pretty simple. This is a little sketch of the upstream and downstream model with our before list of ten names, and our after list of ten names. It is the simplest thing in the universe. The assignment is to truly fill that form out, “Who are ten of my potentially best upstream partners? Those people that cause or reveal or diagnose the problem that I have. Who are they?” List them for starters. The same thing at the backend, “The problems that I create, who are the ten people or the ten organizations that could make a monumental difference?”

For goodness sakes, go and talk to them. Go and play with them. Go and see what’s going on there. That’s the starting point. Not writing it down, picking up the phone and saying, “You have these clients that have this problem that I solve and I would like for us to take better care of them. I’d like to make you more money. Do you want to have a chat?” That’s the upstream conversation. The downstream conversation is, “I have a whole whack of clients that are looking for the solution that you provide. I would be happy to endorse you and drive that traffic to you if we can negotiate a fair commission or a fair affiliate fee that works for you and works for me. In an ideal world, it saves a little money for my client.” That’s the conversation. Nothing more, nothing less.

Scott: It’s either yes or no. If it’s not a no, move on. If it’s a no, move on and find somebody else. It’s the same field.

Jay: Over and over again, I get texts, emails, questions and Facebook Messengers like, “I had the conversation and they don’t understand JVs. I’m trying to teach them. What do I do?” You do what Scott said, you move on. If they don’t get it, they don’t get it. If you want to be bold, you send them a ticket to the next JVology Live. We’ll whack them upside the head for three days to get them to think about what money they’re missing and how easy their life could be. To try to convince somebody who doesn’t get this is like pushing a rope uphill. Move on and send them to JVologyLive.com.

Scott: Let’s talk about that because one of the most powerful things that I’ve seen is your JVology events. Talk a little about that for our audience. One of the best things that people can go to help their businesses and do exactly what you talked about and you focus heavily on what we’ve talked about. Talk about JVology.

Jay: JVology has a variety of different events. I’m going to talk about our intro event that is aimed at beginners and intermediates primarily. For three and a half days, we teach how to structure your business model for this upstream downstream. We teach strategies and processes to have the conversation to create what we call a compelling JV invitation. I would invite you all to entertain that language as opposed to the JV pitch. I keep track of it and the JV invitation works way better. Do you want some random person pitching you on some crap you may, or may not want or do you want an invitation to a party is going to make it a bunch of money with people that you like? It works.

We craft the JV invitation. We structured the event where it is both education and some people call it networking, but it’s not. It’s relationship building. You will have an opportunity with 100 people in the room to make a JV invitation with every single one of them. The purpose of it isn’t even to get partners right there. It is to practice it and understand it like, “You’re my upstream, this is this conversation. “You’re my downstream, this is this conversation. If you’re neither, tell me what you are because there are another 98 people in this room that when I find somebody, I’m going to head your way.” We begin to understand how this problem solution, upstream, downstream process works.

We meet 100 people and in that process, people always leave with real JV deals. It’s part of the magic of how we designed the process and the activity that there’s no like, “I’m going to get you.” It’s like, “Let’s explore this and see what transpires.” People always leave with deals. That is its prime aim, but we go through what we call The Joint Venture Success Wheel. We teach people core strategies about launch campaigns for both webinars, for Facebook challenges, for the full-on product launch formula process. We teach them what those models are and how they can adapt them to their particular needs. It is one of the most comprehensive programs under the sun on this topic.

I had a gentleman fly to San Diego from Calgary to attend. He’s a digital marketer. He runs a digital marketing agency. Day two he’s like, “My brain is exploding. I thought I was an expert at this. I’ve been charging premium dollars for this. I discovered I don’t know crap.” What we deliver is, first and foremost, this is what you should do, so you have the contextual understanding. We then show you how to do it. This is the process. This is the conversation. This is how you structure your partner page. This is how you structure your resources page. We show all of those things. The most important part that nobody else does, we give you the people to partner with. You don’t have to go find them for crying out loud. You’re sitting at the table and their job is to do an invitation with you. There’s an all Canadian humility. It’s the best thing you will ever see in that domain.

Scott: That’s one of the most powerful things is that you can go a lot further working with people to support you versus trying to go out and reinvent the wheel on their own. You feel the pain. We’ve all started there. When we all get started, we don’t know what to do, “I’m going to do an email blast. I’m going to have 100% of people sign up for something.” They’re not always the right people. That’s the most powerful thing, if you can bring on 5 or 10 people that are referring you the right type of clients you’re looking for. The power of a BNI group is that you’ve got people every week sitting around to send you referrals that may fall into it. Not everybody has that aspect or is going to show up to that. Your JVology does that. You’ve got people split up and you’d have to go around and meet with people, “Tell me what you do, what’s your pain, what’s your problem that you solve and let’s figure out how to work together.” More often than not, you will be able to find something that either solve an issue or solve a problem for people.

Jay: I often have people who say to me, “I’m still not clear about this upstream, downstream.” If that happens, here’s another assignment. If you’re like, “I’m not sure what he’s talking about,” number one is this. If you cannot articulate the problem you solve in a sentence, you’re not clear about what you do. Getting a JV partner is near impossible. I’ll share an example. The problem I solve is inexpensive leads for entrepreneurs and recurring passive income that helped their businesses succeed. If you can’t say it that clearly, you’re not clear enough. That’s step number one. You have to be able to say it in that sentence or in one sentence.

The next piece is if you’re still a little bit confused, I’m going to suggest that you don’t know your ideal client well enough. You haven’t lived in their shoes enough. You haven’t done enough research about what it is that makes them need you now. That’s where you’ve got to go do some homework and a lot of it. I would call past clients that you thought were fantastic. It’s like, “What happened before you got to me? What were you dealing with? What was the challenge? How did you find me?” All of those pieces, those are the two most important things. If you get stuck on a problem, talk to your previous clients about their journey so that you know their worry point, you know their trigger point, you know what they completed, you know what caused them to get googling you or whatever it happens to be.

Scott: Talking with the people that you’re working with or your past clients and what their issues are. There are many things these days in such a digital society to make this a very simple thing like, “Here’s a link to use.” If you’re dealing with this, if you guys go to our website, you’ll see that we have some of our software and other best referral clients on there because we get referred someone. Some are paying us. Some others aren’t because we’re fine though. Some of them aren’t paying us because we use them on regularly. The attorneys have a little hard thing in paying referrals. They can’t always do that. It still works this because they’re willing to take care of us, our products and our clients in a premiere and concierge fashion.

Jay: That’s the other thing that we gloss over. This is the other place where people get stuck in JVs. Number one, they think that it has to be an equal reciprocation. If I’m going to send 10,000 emails, you should send 10,000 emails. Nothing could be further from the truth. What you need to do is find out what your partners need and want and how you can serve and support them with that. That could be anything from a booth. That could be some one-on-one coaching and consulting. That could be, “I’ve had a partner give me their condo in the mountains because they are like, “That would work.” It could be anything once you get to the part where you understand.

That’s number one is that first and foremost, it is not one action for another. It is finding a mutually beneficial solution based upon each of the parties at the table. The next piece of that, that is so important, is there are a ton of industries that don’t allow the transaction or the reward to be money. Insurance is one of them, which is funny because it’s biggest Ponzi scheme in the universe, but they can’t pay for a referral. My dad sold insurance for many years. I’m not making that up. I am the most insured human being you’ll ever meet because every time my dad needed money, I bought a policy.

Back to the point of negotiating something that works. Scott, you gave a great example. The lawyers can’t pay me, but they can provide a whole different level of service to the clients that I deliver. In insurance, they can’t pay me, but what they can do is invite me to speak. What they can do is put me up at one of their events in their processes. What they can do is give me a table at one of the programs I send one of my staff members to. There are many ways for this to work. If we are sitting around going, “How do we serve the client better and how do we get the right person in front of the right client at the right time and have it work for everyone?” There are twelve billion ways to do this. I could give you 1,000 examples, but the narrow view of what I’m going to call the digital marketing JVs doesn’t cover 1% of what’s possible in the things we’ve done.

Scott: That’s the thing, you don’t realize it’s not always cash. Sometimes it’s doing something to add that extra value. Sometimes some of our best downstream referrals or downstream clients come from our upstream or the people that we’ve worked with on a regular basis.

Jay: If you’re going to do the assignment I asked you to do about the ten upstream, the ten downstream, here’s what’s going to naturally happen when we’re truly serving a client’s problem. There’s going to be organizations and people that are on both sides and it’s going to be a little bit of a circular process. Here’s my request for people when they’re first starting. My request is to make sure that the ten top and the ten down are different. There’s going to be that circle thing and it’s going to happen, but if you want adding the zero at the bottom line, you’ve got to go beyond the circular piece because what happens is that you end up with sometimes a little bit of incestuous overexposure. You want different referral trees. You want different referral families. That cycle will happen naturally. You couldn’t stop it if you tried. When you’re building it out, look for different ones on each end.

Scott: What’s the best way for people to connect with you more to find when is your next JVology is?

Jay: The best link is JVologyLive.com. All the dates are always there or if you want the broader view of what we do in terms of our monthly communities, our digital lives, all sorts of things. You can go to JVology.com. Everything is there. We’re doing an online five-day challenge Called Five Partners in Five Days and if you want to check that out, search JVology – The Perfect Mix of People, Fun & Profit on Facebook and you’ll get posted about that.

Scott: Thanks for bringing so much value here to Note Nation. That’s great stuff and so many people fail to realize there is money sitting out there waiting for you. A lot of times people referring stuff without an affiliate and most people would rather be like, “You use my affiliate, I’d rather pay you. I’d be glad to pay you.” It takes the relationship and that bottom-line to a whole different level.

Jay: When you start thinking this way, here’s the biggest problem that you’re heading into is an opportunity overwhelm. Those ten that you started with on each side, that’s going to be a moving process to continue to talk grade what those opportunities are. That’s a good problem to have.

Scott: Thanks for coming on and playing full out and sharing this amazing strategy that can change the bottom line for many people out there. We look forward to seeing you around some more, Jay.

Jay: Thank you, Scott. I appreciate being here.

Scott: Take the time. Build that list. Take the ten downstream, ten upstream. Take the time to sit down. Think about that because there are partners around us everywhere in our business, our entrepreneur lives that can be great referrals, not only for business to you, but for you to refer to others out there as well. Why not make a little bit extra in your checkbook or your bottom-line profit strategy there for you? Go out and take some action. We’ll see you all at the top.

Listen to the full episode here.

Watch the full episode here.