To succeed… you need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you.
I had nothing to lose if I just went out and focused on the BIG deals to make the maximum amount of money in a short space of time. If it didn’t work out, I would still be in the same position that I was in already, right?
I sat down, took pen to paper and wrote my goal for the year, ‘To Make One Million Dollars In The Next 12 Months’!
Now all I had to do was find some BIG lucrative joint venture deals and I was on my way. Let me tell you, when you are adept at doing high-level joint ventures like me, you see opportunities everywhere, whether its underutilized assets in the form of advertising space on office buildings or first floor windows, to re-activating gym memberships for a chain of gym clubs by creating a ‘welcome back’ book of gift vouchers donated from complementary businesses.
If you have ever been to one of the many seminars that teach people how to develop a ‘millionaire mindset’, let me tell you that most people attending will never become millionaires.
Don’t get me wrong, I have met and followed the teachings of many success gurus like T Harv Eker and Tony Robbins very closely. However, knowledge without action is just that, its knowledge.
You see, people create barriers of self-belief that stop them from becoming millionaires. Now you may be saying, “Sure Sohail, you have actually been a multi-millionaire so it’s easy for you to become one again!” I would have to disagree with that because what has made me successful is not the money in the bank, it’s the persistence coupled with action to become successful.
How many of you have actually sat in your dream car or walked in to view a million dollar house just to be able to visualize and feel what success has waiting for you? You must eat, drink and sleep success because it will eventually come knocking on your door!
I’m a big believer in the Law of Attraction and putting out signals to the universe to bring me those opportunities or show me the direction. Now without action you will not get any results so please don’t sit there at home just visualizing, expecting success to come to you.
The best tool I can recommend is creating a ‘vision board’ with all the things you want to achieve. This has helped me tremendously.
Recessions are a godsend for joint venture experts like me! Remember I told you the story of my first joint venture deal and how I approached and closed one of the biggest recruitment companies for a joint venture because they were suffering in the economic downturn?
Well guess what, during a recession, companies begin looking for alternative revenue streams to replace their existing declining ones.
Look around you and see which companies that would never have originally entered into a partnership with you are now willing to look at proposals.
The biggest joint venture deal that I have ever done to date came by chance. I was reading a copy of a national newspaper on a Sunday (like I normally do, full of great direct-response ads!) and came across a one-page full ad for a book called, ‘How To Use Your PC In Just 2 Hours’. What really interested me was reading that they had sold over 400,000 copies of this small book which got my joint venture mind thinking.
My good friend and online marketing guru, Mike Filsaime at MikeFilsaime.com, calls this ‘hyper awareness’. When I was in New York visiting him, we had a conversation about how some people have 360 degree radar and can spot opportunities at every angle; most visionary entrepreneurs and JV experts have this amazing ability.
I ordered a copy of the book to have a look at it and also did some more research into the company which turned out to be a very large direct mail and catalogue company for the ‘silver surfer or baby boomer’ market.
Having received the book, I was excited to see the opportunities that this company was missing and contacted them with my proposal. I told them that I had purchased the book and asked whether they have a video training version of the book? They replied that they didn’t and I countered by saying that I had a video training course (which I actually didn’t at the time) that I thought they could sell to their existing customers who had purchased the original book.
Again, they asked me to submit a proposal to the Marketing Manager and I received an email from the Managing Director inviting me in to a meeting to discuss the proposal further. Without giving away too much this was a very savvy company with an 8-figure turnover and only three employees—the Managing Director, the Financial Director and the Marketing Manager. Everything else was outsourced.
At the meeting, after discussing the joint venture proposal, I was asked to produce a copy of the video training course for them to evaluate. I had to make an excuse to cover myself and was told to get a copy over to them in the next 7 days. I left the meeting knowing that they wanted to do a deal but needed to see the actual product first.
Having no actual product to show them, I began trying to source the product from local manufacturers. I contacted a few and mentioned that I had clients that could sell a few thousand units of their video based training course and we just needed to be able to negotiate on the buying and selling price. Nearly ALL the companies I contacted didn’t understand the power of joint ventures and were stuck in their ‘one-size-fits-all’ mindset of a standard reseller discount which is the norm in their industry.
Having just 5 days left to produce a viable product for evaluation, I decided to shift from the manufacturers to outsourcing using www.elance.com, a website where freelancers bid for the projects you post. Hopeful this was the way forward, I posted a 5-day project for a video training course to be developed, based on the contents of the original computer book and people started bidding on the project. By day 5, I had a high-quality, tailored product created which cost me just $500 and for which I owned the rights. The title of the computer book was ‘How To Master Your Computer In Just Two Hours’, the video version was titled, ‘How To Master Your Computer In Just One Hour’.
Armed with a copy of the video course on DVD, I went to see the direct mail company for them to evaluate it. They loved it! Little did they know that it was a basic Camtasia (screen recording software) video course that was very easy to create. Straight away they asked the question, “Sohail, what other titles have you got?”
I had to convince them that it was in their best interest to promote the video course to their existing 400,000 customers first before we even considered creating more titles. Once we were on the same page, I began probing the Managing Director for some solid statistics, asking him how many people who had previously purchased the computer book would possibly purchase the video version.
Now this company knew their statistics very well and the Managing Director mentioned that within the next 12-18 months at least 50% of the current customer base would upgrade to the video version of the computer book. OK, we now have a potential 200,000 units and just needed to lock down the percentage that I would put in my pocket. If you have ever heard of a company called QVC, then you would know that they operate on a royalty basis where they pay you a small percentage (normally 5-10%) of achieved sales; this is the standard in the direct mail/catalogue industry.
My normal commission (which sometimes involves an upfront retainer) on joint venture deals is between 20% and 50%. In order to accept a smaller commission/royalty, I proposed a licensing arrangement where the company would do ALL the duplication, packaging and fulfilment and I would grant them a license to duplicate the product for an agreed commission to me of just $7.50 per unit sold. So, let’s recap: 200,000 units at $7.50 per unit sold is $1,500,000 for this joint venture deal. It actually took us close to 17 months to complete this deal and we did just over 201,462 units.
The Million Dollar Joint Venture was not the icing on the cake. Having prepared the joint venture contract for signing, I presented it to the Managing Director who mentioned that if this product sold well, he would like to roll it out to the rest of his customer database. When I asked, “What do you mean, ‘the rest of?’”, he replied “Sohail, we have 4.2 million customers”!.
This is how I went ‘From Zero To 4 Million Customers In Just 30 Days.’ I now assist them as their official Joint Venture Broker to help find complementary products in the health and wellbeing market that can be promoted to their 4.2 million customers.
These past few years have literally been a rollercoaster ride for me. I still get invited to speak worldwide on the topic of ‘Joint Ventures and Strategic Partnering’, training and mentoring business owners and companies how to implement strategic partnering strategies while building some amazing relationships with some of the world’s top business experts AND recently became an advisory board member for a successful blockchain foundation even after selling my main consulting and training business in 2018 for 8-figures.
The biggest opportunity right now while you are reading this book is in the start-up sector (fintech, blockchain, e-commerce etc.) where companies looking to raise further investment need to bring on well-known strategic partners to not only gain momentum but also gain additional funding. To fill this huge gap in the market we now offer a ‘Joint Venture Introducer’ service at www.MillionDollarPartnering.com.