How To Use Flipped Joint Ventures For Higher Profits with Bob Serling

Joint ventures are one of the most powerful and leveraged business strategies available to every business owner. However, many people do them wrong, have inconsistent results, and get frustrated. That's why I invited Bob Serling, one of my marketing mentors to the show. He will discuss “flipped” joint ventures and why it works so well.

Bob is a 30-year marketing veteran and the Founder of Profit Alchemy, Inc. His innovative take on marketing has helped hundreds of clients get exceptional results with their marketing. He’s perhaps best known for having revolutionized the process of structuring joint ventures by shifting the focus from reciprocal agreements to a strategically flipped “one-sided” emphasis.

By making this shift to working only with your own list, you eliminate all the friction and problems that are the byproducts of conventional joint ventures, maintain complete control at all stages of the process, and can quickly put together an unlimited number of six-figure joint ventures. In this episode, Bob also refers to his new book on JVs that you can have for free.

Some Topics We Discussed Include:

• The problems with joint venture
• The two sides of a JV deal
• How to remove friction and close a deal
• Selling to your own list
• Flipped joint venture – what it is
• Bob's mechanics of doing JV or introducing JV to others
• The benefits of doing a JV

To download Bob Serling's New Rules of Joint Ventures Book for Free: http://profitalchemy.com/bacon.

About The Guest: Bob Serling

Bob Serling is a 30-year marketing veteran and the founder of Profit Alchemy, Inc.

His innovative take on marketing has helped hundreds of clients get exceptional results with their marketing.

• Bob has been the monthly marketing columnist for Success Magazine…
• invented a skateboard toy featuring Tony Hawk’s branding that was sold in toy stores and department stores all over the world…
• cocreated and marketed advanced assessment software currently being used by many Fortune 500 companies…
• created a one-and-a-half page prospecting letter for a client that landed an agreement for a $25 million project by being sent to just one prospect…
• and much more.

He’s perhaps best known for having revolutionized the process of structuring joint ventures by shifting the focus from reciprocal agreements to a strategically flipped “one-sided” emphasis.

How To Use Flipped Joint Ventures For Higher Profits with Bob Serling

I’m very excited to have you guys on the show. This is an interview that I’ve wanted to have since I started this show. I’ve invited Bob Serling to talk about some unique stuff that he’s doing.

For those of you who may or may not know Bob, my experience with him is that I remember seeing an email about a marketing program that he had released I want to say seven, eight, maybe even nine years ago. It was a very long time ago.

I liked the way Bob thought and the things that he talked about. If I remember correctly, it had a lot to do with joint ventures, licensing and creative but proven marketing concepts over the years.

He’s been somebody that I paid attention to everything he put out when I didn’t know him. When I moved to San Diego, I was lucky enough to come across Bob, work with him and become friends with him. I consider him a treasure trove of amazing ideas. He’s a lot of fun.

He did an amazing report that he sent out called The New Rules of Joint Ventures. I asked him to be on the show to share this not only just with me even more but with you.

I think we’re going to dive into some unique ways of doing joint ventures between companies that are very simple and yet they elude most of us. Bob, welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business. It is a big pleasure to have you on the show.

Brad, thank you. That was a wonderful introduction. I appreciate it.

As I said, I’ve always liked the way that you approach business models. I like how you try to keep things as simple as possible without overcomplicating them. I have a tendency to overcomplicate things and create a lot of moving parts even though I hate that and I like simple systems.

That’s one of the things I’ve always liked about your approach to joint ventures and licensing, all the different marketing strategies that you’ve brought to the table.

I want to talk about joint ventures. I want to talk about the way that most people think about using them and some of the problems because they’ve been great for me in the past, but they can also be an absolute headache.

Some of those things you’ve done to simplify the process but also make it way more effective. Let’s start off defining joint ventures for anybody who might not quite have a great grasp on them. Let’s talk about what those are.

The traditional definition of a joint venture usually means when you have a product and another company has a list and a complementary product.

You approach them and say, “Why don’t we sell my product to your list because your people would like what I have and we’ll sell your product to my list? We’ll split the profits on both deals.”

That’s the conventional and traditional approach to JVs. That’s also the problem with JVs. All the problems that occur with joint ventures occur because of that structure.

I want to touch on what you said. I’m always looking for the sweet spot, the simplest function of anything, whether it’s marketing, sales or even barbecuing chicken.

What’s the simplest thing you can do that’s going to get the best result? It’s like a super charged 80/20 look. For joint ventures, what happens is whenever one company approaches another and says, “Let’s both sell each other’s stuff,” there’s always a mismatch.

Usually, the mismatch is in list size. One company is going to have a list that’s 3,000 and the other company is 80,000.

There’s immediately friction there, “Why should I sell yours? I’ve got this huge list. Also, I don’t know you. How do I know that selling something to my list of 80,000 isn’t going to cause a nightmare for me?”

There’s the issue of who mails first. How do I know I’m going to get paid? Two things happen. There’s that mismatch and friction occurs. Also, people don’t know each other.

People always like doing business with somebody they know. Because of that, most joint ventures never get off the ground. They’re very frustrating and time consuming. We’ve covered the problems in ten seconds, but it takes few weeks to play out.

You go, “I just invested a few weeks of my time and I have nothing to show for it.” After you do that two or three times, you go, “Joint ventures are horrible. I’m not doing them anymore.”

The issue becomes how do you remove all of that friction? How do you get rid of all the distrust that’s inherent in that conventional process? I thought about that for a long time and I tried different variations.

It took me two or three years. When you hear the solution, it’s simple. All good solutions are, but it took me years to figure out what that simple solution was.

Everything you’ve been saying on the problems has been spot on. My very first internet-based business was 100% built on joint venture affiliate traffic. Because nobody was searching for the product that I had, I created a unique niche product.

I had a cool hook and angle. I had to get creative about going out there and creating joint ventures where I promote other people and they promote me. Everybody wants tit for tat.

One of the biggest problems I had when I was first starting out is it’s a catch-22. I had a list of maybe 2,000 or 3,000 people and they weren’t even all buyers. A lot of them were just opt ins. I tried to get other people to promote me.

I didn’t have anything, “What can I do for you?” a lot of those fell apart. Exactly what you say was one of my very first hurdles as a digital marketing entrepreneur.

When you have that disparity in list size, it gets worse because if everybody’s approaching the whale in their industry, the whale is being approached a hundred times a month. They don’t even have the time to screen all the various JV offers they get.

You’re almost certainly not going to get a deal done. The solution though is simple because there are always two sides to a JV deal. There’s the list side and the product side. The list side is the company with the list that you’re going to sell the other company’s product to.

By virtue of the fact that you have a list, you’re always a list side if you want to be. The solution I came up with was forget about reciprocal deals. The real value in any business is making more sales to your own list. At the same time, your customers want a lot of things that you don’t necessarily offer.

It would be very expensive for you to develop all those things, but you can get a piece of all of those sales of things they’re going to buy anyway and increase customer loyalty by striking a number of joint venture deals to sell those things to your list of subscribers and customers.

A couple of things happen here. First of all, you’re eliminating all the friction. Now I’m coming to you and I’m saying, “My name is Bob and I have this list. It’s not huge but it’s pretty responsive. I know you don’t know me, but I’d like to sell your course to my list. You want to do that?”

I’m not asking you to do anything for me. I’m just asking you to take some free sales. It may not be the most sales you’ve ever made but it’s all free money to you. When that happens, all the friction is gone. You get the deal done.

What also happens though is that for your subscribers, your prospects and customers, you’re doing them a great service. You’re saving them the trouble of having to figure out what is good and what’s bad because there are so many different options in any category you can buy things from.

You’re creating added value for them in two ways. You’re bringing them a product or service that they want anyway and at the same time, you’re eliminating them having to search through literally 200,000 or 300,000 results on Google to know what the best whirligig is.

If they want to buy a whirligig and they’re not sure which one is the best, you’re giving them the value of finding that for them and making it easy for them to buy. You’re building more sales for your business, more value for them and a stronger relationship with them.

Yes, more trust with the people. You’ve got their back and that you’re somebody they should pay attention to. What you said about approaching people, “Let me just promote you first,” I guess I credit my amazing business instincts.

Back in the day, I remember exactly who I did it with. I don’t know if you know Dave Miz. He had a product and I absolutely realized that this was somebody I got introduced to and his business was multiple six figures, maybe even seven figures, but it was great.

I approached him and I said, “You got a great product. I got a very small list, but I’d love to promote it. Where do I find your affiliate link?”

The affiliate link was easy to find, but I made sure that I reached out to him early to let him know that I proactively just wanted to promote his product. It’s amazing how much that does for the relationship with somebody.

It went on to where he was like, “I like you. You’re cool. What is your product anyway?” I showed it to him. I’m like, “Here it is. It’s pretty cool. It costs this and it’s great. By the way, here’s a review copy.”

I gave him a free copy of my product. I said, “If you ever think it’s going to be a fit for your list, please let me know. I do have an affiliate program but it’s not necessary. I just really want to promote your stuff to my people.”

Using JVs For Profits: The real value in any business is making more sales to your own list.

To this day, years later, we’re still super close friends. We’ve made each other hundreds of thousands of dollars each.

That was going to be the phase 2. Here’s the other thing. What people don’t realize is when you offer something to your list, let’s stay it’s Dave Miz’ product. Only a certain fraction of your list is ready to buy at that time.

A month later, two months later, three months later, a different fraction is ready to buy. Their circumstances have changed. They may have just joined your list. They weren’t on it before. They may have the time to do it now, so now they’re going to buy.

If you offer Dave’s product a couple of times over six months and he sees the sales coming in, then if you’re ready to approach him and say, “Dave, your product is selling really well to my list.”

They obviously have a mutual interest. “I know my list isn’t as big, but I think that your folks would like my product a lot too. What do you think?”

The truth is not all those people are going to say yes to that. Let’s say 25% of them do. Before you were getting zero.

Now, not only are you making all the money that you’re making just by selling more to your own list, but you’ve brought in 25% of those partners who you couldn’t get before. It does have that snowball accumulative effect exactly the way you described it.

Are there any nuances that make this work better or worse than others? Is it really as simple as, “Can I promote your stuff?”

It is. There’s one more elephant in the room that we need to deal with. A lot of people who are new to joint venture say, “Why do I want to sell somebody else’s stuff to my list? Isn’t that going to hurt my sales?”

It’s going to do just the opposite of that. It’s going to increase your sales and it will grow your list. Here’s what happens, and I always use an example that I love which I call the $40,000 TV.

It’s a painfully real example of when I bought a new big screen TV years ago for a Super Bowl party I was having. I don’t know what the TV cost. Let’s say it’s about $4,000, whatever it was.

I get the TV, but immediately what happens is when you buy any product or service, you start to think, “There’s some other stuff I could use.”

I thought, “Now I need a better way to stream video and stuff to it because I’m using this little fire stick or whatever. It’s not good enough. I probably need an Apple TV.” Now, I need an Apple TV. “I better get some surround sound speakers.”

With that, “This TV is bigger so I need a bigger cabinet.” I buy a bigger television cabinet, television stand. My wife sees that and goes, “That cabinet is light brown, the other one was medium brown. Now we need new furniture and we need to paint a wall and we need this.”

All these things kept building up. It’s even, “People are coming over. I got to get a pizza stone so I can make pizza.” By the time we’re done with it, it literally cost $40,000 between all the furniture, equipment, the painting and all the various things that went with it.

That $3,000, $4,000 deal became $40,000. The point is that it doesn’t matter what product or service you sell. Your customers and subscribers want a lot of other things that are related to it both directly and indirectly.

You can get a share of all those sales by selling other companies’ products to your customers and helping your customers make that choice. It’s important to understand that because that thought of, “Why should I sell other people’s things to my customers?” causes a lot of people to hesitate.

Then they miss out on a lot of sales. The way it builds your list, too, just by doing that is indirect. When you start offering people a number of things that make their lives better or easier, solve a problem or provide a solution, they start to tell their friends and business associates and family more about you.

All of a sudden, your list starts to grow. I’m not saying you’ll go from 300,000 to 50,000 in two months, but you may double the size of your list in six months just by selling more things to your customer.

That’s before you get to the reciprocals. The reciprocals will build your list even more when you get to that phase 2. There are a tremendous number of advantages to this.

What I like about this is it definitely goes back to the fundamentals of give value first. It’s one of the most often quoted lines of success, entrepreneurship of business, etc., especially in building relationships which is give value before you ask for something.

Creating JVs and affiliates and these relationships is one of the most important and highly leveraged things you can do.

Some of the biggest errors in judgment happen right here where somebody just lost it because they come to you asking you, number one, to promote them first, “You’ll crush it with this offer. Promote my stuff.” Then they get mad that other people don’t promote them.

It creates a lot of animosity and a lot of people just don’t do it but it’s like anything where you go back to the fundamentals. This really does. It was refreshing when I read your report. I go, “Why do we all make it so complicated?”

Yes, everything we’re talking about comes from that report. The report’s free. I have a link for the Bacon Wrapped community. My website is ProfitAlchemy.com. If you go to ProfitAlchemy.com/bacon, you can get the free report.

It’s called The New Rules of Joint Ventures. It’s a fourteen-point checklist for doing exactly what we’re talking about. There’s more nuance and detail.

Bob, this has been very enlightening. I’m happy that you shared this in more detail not only with me but my readers.

What else are you working on that we can help crack a nut in your business whether it’s a resource you’re looking for, a person you’re trying to hire or meet, a skill you’re trying to learn, anything that maybe myself or my audience could jog their ability to add value to you?

I’m focused entirely on these joint ventures. I call this technique a flipped joint venture where you flip it away from reciprocals to these one-sided deals that make them easy to do. Tell people where they can get the free report. Tell your friends.

If you read it and you like it, I'd appreciate it if you’d tell two or three other people so they can learn about it. Most of what I do with joint ventures, I work with just a few clients. They’re pretty high-end clients. I’m not looking for clients.

Most of what I do is a lot of free training. If you tell people to grab the report, they’ll get that and more free training. That will help me and help others at the same time.

One last question on these JVs. When you are either doing this yourself or working with a client and you’re promoting somebody’s offer, do you ever do this or suggest people do this? If I’m promoting somebody else’s product at a discount and I’ve set up a special deal where I’m collecting the money.

Then sending the order on to that person or do you just send them traffic and let them set up the sales page and let them convert it, track it, etc.? Do you ever have them say, “I’ll do it on my site?”

Personally, I never run the orders through my site.

Then you get deal support.

Yes, the whole idea is that both sides are making money but yours is 100% profit because you don’t do any order taking, credit card processing and customer service. The company whose product or service you’re selling does all of that.

When they write you your check, you had no overhead. Your check is 100% profit. What you can do though and what I do is every order cart has affiliate tracking links and a dashboard. Your partner can always give you access to the dashboard just for your sales.

The big cart manufacturers don’t allow you to get in there and manipulate statistics or they’d be out of business soon, you can always get a completely accurate, not only a snapshot but a completely detailed list of all the sales that have been made through your list. You always know what you’re owed.

There are never any discrepancies. There’s never any argument of “We sold 120 units. No, we only sold 118.” It’s all there. It’s on that dashboard. Every major shopping cart has that facility.

For that reason, you just don’t want to create the complication of you running the orders through your company. The other thing, a few people I know have done that. Where you get into problems is if there are returns, especially if it’s a physical product. They’re returning the product to you.

If you’re taking the orders, they’re going to return the product to you. Then you have to pay to ship it back to your partner. You have the time and the headache of doing that. I always run the sales through the partner. It makes life easy for everybody.

This has been fantastic and very valuable. I hope that every single person out there who is reading this takes advantage of Bob’s offer to just get the free report. There is nothing to buy at the end of it.

Using JVs For Profits: When you start offering people a number of things that really make their lives better, they tell everyone about you.

Joint ventures are one of those things that is one of the most highly leveraged activities you can do. There are people out there with the customers that you need, but there’s also people out there with products that your customers need.

Each one of those can create a windfall of cash in your pocket. You can make a lot of money brokering joint ventures like you and I have. It’s just a tremendous strategy, one of my absolute favorites.

Bob, you’ve been a great guest. I’d love to have you back on here some other time. I’m sure you and I could talk for days about all types of stuff.

Brad thanks for having me. I always enjoy talking with you. You and I could easily talk for hours. It always helps both of us. It helps us see different ways of looking at things that we haven’t thought of. I appreciate you having me on.

To everybody else, if you have any questions for me, any ideas, any nuts you’re trying to crack in your business, send an email to AskBrad@baconwrappedbusiness.com. Share this episode on social media if you like it. Don’t hesitate to reach out and tell me what you think.

Important Links:

• Bob Serling
• The New Rules of Joint Ventures

About The Guest: Bob Serling

Bob Serling is a 30-year marketing veteran and the founder of Profit Alchemy, Inc.

His innovative take on marketing has helped hundreds of clients get exceptional results with their marketing.

• Bob has been the monthly marketing columnist for Success Magazine…
• invented a skateboard toy featuring Tony Hawk’s branding that was sold in toy stores and department stores all over the world…
• cocreated and marketed advanced assessment software currently being used by many Fortune 500 companies…
• created a one-and-a-half page prospecting letter for a client that landed an agreement for a $25 million project by being sent to just one prospect…
• and much more.

He’s perhaps best known for having revolutionized the process of structuring joint ventures by shifting the focus from reciprocal agreements to a strategically flipped “one-sided” emphasis.

• Here’s How »

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