The Need for Funnel Vision with Guest Jay Abraham: MakingBank S1E54

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Summary

There is something to be said for having to grow up fast.

For being married at the age of 18, the father of two by the age of 20, and suddenly realizing what it’s like to have the same needs as the typical 40-year old adult before being able to legally buy a beer.

It forces you to either get tough, get savvy, or some combination thereof.

And as it pertains to today’s guest, it was definitely some combination thereof.

This is Jay Abraham, a man who used hunger, necessity, and—in some cases—flat-out desperation to become one of the world’s foremost business authors, entrepreneurial experts, and a trusted confidant to some of the most prominent brands (and executives) on the planet.

As the Founder and CEO of Abraham Group, Inc., Jay solves problems, fixes businesses, and increases bottom lines. To date, Jay has helped more than 10,000 clients, across 400 industries worldwide by studying their problems and offering paradigm-shifting solutions.

Jay’s “funnel vision versus tunnel vision” concept—which is about borrowing high-value ideas from one industry and applying them to another in a strategic way—is his pièce de résistance, and the single-most valuable practice he has applied to help his clients for more than 30 years.

Today, Jay is widely-recognized as one of the world’s Top 10 marketing minds, as well as a true innovator of revenue model and business model generation. That expertise is largely the reason he has been featured in countless publications including, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and USA Today.

So, with all of that said, join host Josh Felber, on this week’s episode of Making Bank, to hear Jay’s remarkable story of success first-hand, and better understand some of his critical business insights, including…

• Why “trust” is the most-valuable asset any business can have
• How to ride emotional peaks and valleys to invaluable truths
• The two distinct-types of client
• Why preeminence outweighs strategy
• The hidden value of helping employees grow
• How to have a higher love for your clients

…And much, MUCH more.

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Transcription

Josh Felber: Jay welcome to Making Bank. I’m excited to have you and glad to have you on the show today.

Jay Abraham: Well I’m excited to be on the show Josh. I’ve only heard wonderful things about the contribution you make to entrepreneurship and any time I can add value it’s my pleasure, so I hope I can today.

Josh Felber: I guess give us a little bit of your background. What really, I guess, got you started in your path of entrepreneurship and get where you ended up today.

Jay Abraham: Do you remember the movie The Accidental Tourist?

Josh Felber: I briefly do yes.

Jay Abraham: Yes you’re too young. My career was a fortuitous accident. I got married at 18, had two kids at 20, had the needs of somebody 40, the world didn’t care, had no formal education, the only jobs I could get were clerical and I’d see people next to me who’d been there 20 more years making $50 more a month. I made a choice to go and elect to be entrepreneurial, but most the things that I got as far as opportunities were pure performance. You either get so much of the profit or so much a deal, so much of this, and I worked three full jobs for two or three years so I could sit during parts of the days with really successful entrepreneurs in Indianapolis that I met who would let me just watch them do deals.

I started out not knowing what I wanted to do. Then I went through a succession of jobs that spanned a very transitory array of industries, everything from being a telephone collector from a charge card company, an accountant for heavy equipment that was being made to go to Vietnam for the war, selling electric shavers, radio advertising, the Indiana Meat Packers Association, a broad spectrum. All of a sudden, after all of these disparate jobs I landed in a situation where I realized if there are 10 industries all 10 think differently. Their strategies are different, their revenue generating models are different, their access vehicles, the way they go to market, their lead generating, conversion are different. I realized they’re not necessarily better … Excuse me one second.

They’re not necessarily better, it’s just sort of like they’ve all followed the herd. I started thinking about what I’d learned in each one of the different industries and applying elements together that could be adapted, adopted to the industry I was in and I created hybrids. That’s when I created the concept of funnel vision versus tunnel vision. Funnel vision is nothing more than taking a readily acknowledged approaches from other industries that your industry doesn’t even know about and combining them into powerful hybrids. I started doing that and the first company we did it for went from, it was a little one, $20,000 little struggling 20,000 to 500,000 clients a month. We got $25 million worth of free advertising and it’s a long story. We sold it, it was a patent medicine and we sold it for, I don’t know, something like $40 million. It’s the product Icy Hot today that Shaq does.

This is not trying to be arrogant, it’s stories. I used a derivative of the same thing and I worked with Entrepreneur magazine, I spun it and we took Entrepreneur from I think it was 800,000 to 7 million in a few months. Then we went to an investment brokerage firm, it was only doing about 300, it was startup and we got to 500 million. Then I sort of just took off because I realized that I had discovered something stunningly simple but profoundly powerful, does that make sense?

Josh Felber: Oh definitely, with what you created and you’ve applied it to multiple businesses to create multiple successes. That’s when that light bulb went off in your head.

Jay Abraham: Yes, and then since then we’ve been very privileged. We’ve done it around the world and we’ve done 465 industries, not companies. As I got older I am hopelessly curious and I think a lot of people aren’t. I’ve learned to ask very probative questions that uncover key elements that drive businesses that most people, even in those businesses, don’t think about. I’ve collected and amassed, and sort of like an artichoke, found the heart of the drivers, unlocked the different industries and being able to teach people how to integrate all these powerful concepts and then figure out which combinations will give them the most upward propellant. I’ve been very fortunate, it’s been a really interesting ride.

Josh Felber: That’s exciting, I know one of the things through your material that I’ve read and I’ve seen over the years, you spoke about with businesses having not just a strategy but also a preeminence as well. Being able to surpass other businesses. Can you tell us a little bit more detail, how you went about that, and how businesses can apply that?

Jay Abraham: I’ll do even something better because I’m probably more known for that than anything else. I’m giving you this as clinical, not arrogant. About 15 years ago I had a client, I wish I could say it was original but it doesn’t matter, nothing in the world is original. It’s just different synthesis. This client of mine was into financial publishing and they were two times bigger than their closest rival, but they were three times more profitable. They had enormously greater loyalty, whatever you want to call it, sustainability, profitability, and I did a trade with them. I traded them half a million dollars of my time for the privilege to spend time looking … Can you hear my dogs?

Josh Felber: Yes, it’s all good.

Jay Abraham: Looking at what they were doing and I interviewed every one of their executives, I interviewed every one of their key players. I had 1,000 pages and trying to figure out what they were doing different. I created this concept called the strategy preeminence. I’ll give you the key points in about three minutes, but if you like we’ve got five hours I’ll send you digital you can put it on your website because we explain it very well and it’s transformed companies all over the world and it’s become both their foundational operating thesis, it’s been their internal culture, it’s been the foundation of their advertising, marketing. It takes about an hour and a half but I’ll give you the high points.

First is you want to be seen as the most trusted advisor and you want to be the advisor for life, and you want to be seen as the only viable choice that the consumer wanting whatever the product or service you have is would choose. The way to do it is being able to put into words that which your client is been seeking to either accomplish or get away from in verbiage that has never been articulated before so it resonates to the heart of their emotions, even if you’re selling an ice cream cone.

Number two is you have a moral responsibility if you believe that your company, your product, your service, is not just superior but it provides a greater outcome no matter what the product, service, or whether it’s protection, whether it’s enhancement, entertainment, enrichment. To the client you have a moral responsibility to not let them either not buy or not let them buy from your competitors because not that you hate the competitor but you know that they’re going to get a lesser outcome.

I’ll give you an example because sometimes a case study is better. I travel a lot but when I’m in town I get my hair cut once every two weeks and I get it cut every two weeks, I don’t want it to look like it’s been cut. I pay the man three times what he charges because I want him to really take it seriously. I need a haircut now so it may not look as good as I want it to but I do it for a reason. I realize that most people get their hair cut erratically, episodically so they’re either going to look like they just got it cut or they’re going to look really shabby.

The way you look translates to the way you feel, and it translates to the way you’re seen, and it translates to the impact you have whether it’s in a business arena and you personal life and your love life, that seems tragic. One time I was talking to my hair stylist and I said, “Okay, so what’s the average time people come?” He goes, “It’s all over the place.” He goes, “Sometimes it’s every eight weeks, sometimes three.” I said, “Well let me ask you this honest question. Do you think that’s in their best interest? Do you think if they’re in the public arena, they’re a sales person, doesn’t matter lawyer, accountant, anybody that they’re going to be their most powerful, they’re going to be seen at optimal by either being shabby or looking like they just had a hair cut?” He said, “No.”

I said, “Well then don’t you think that you have a moral responsibility to explain to them why that’s not in their best interest not yours, and give them some metaphors so they can see that they’re not going to be as powerful, as authoritative, as attractive, as credible, whatever and once you’ve given somebody the reality check then if they opt not to take advantage of it that’s fine, but you have this moral responsibility.” Bottom line is, I can’t remember the exactness, but he got approximately just close to two more visits per year, which fundamentally was the byproduct of what was best for his client, but it added about $75,000 in income to him as well. Does that give you an example?

Josh Felber: Yes.

Jay Abraham: Going back to preeminence. Preeminence is the ability to not think about your product or service in terms of wanting to be the fastest growing company or being really excited about your industry or your product. It’s having a love for what you do but a higher love for the people you do it for. I use the word clients as opposed to customers and it’s very, very purposeful. If you look at Webster’s Dictionary’s definition of a customer it’s somebody who buys a commodity and a service. If you’re in a world where both your competitors and your consumers are trying to marginalize you and commoditize you and you accept that by saying yes I’m nothing more than a commodity, you’ve lost a huge part of the battle before it even starts.

A client, going back to being the most trusted advisor, is somebody who’s under the care, the protection, there’s one more word, the … I can’t remember what the word is but it has a fiduciary context to it. The next thing is you want to-

Josh Felber: Hey Jay.

Jay Abraham: Yes.

Josh Felber: We just got to take a quick break, can you stick around with us?

Jay Abraham: Of course.

Josh Felber: Awesome. I am Josh Felber and you’re watching Making Bank and we’ll be right back.

Josh Felber: I am Josh Felber. Welcome back to Making Bank. We’ve been speaking with Jay Abraham on strategy and preeminence and how you can apply it to your business. Jay has been covering several of the points as we get back into how it’s going to help move your business forward and help separate you from the competition. Welcome back Jay.

Jay Abraham: Thank you.

Josh Felber: You left off a little bit, you started to tell us a story about your stylist and how it’s helped move his business forward and a little bit on what preeminence is. I’d love to hear the rest of the points that you were getting ready to do.

Jay Abraham: I’m giving you the high points but there are a number more. The next one, as I said, you want to put into words what your market feels. I want to give you a shortcut, a multi billion dollar shortcut that will make you a marketing genius, it will make you a relationship genius, and will give you insight into the mind and the motives of your consumer better than anything else. I’m going to take a little tangent.

When I’m working with a client I ask them two questions. First of all what does your client or your target audience want and what don’t they want? Most of them don’t know. We take the category of business they’re in and then we go to Amazon.com and we go to any other discussion group and we look up the most popular, in Amazon term, 50 books in each category. We look at the headline and the sub-headline because most books sell more for that purpose than they do for the content of the book. Then we look at the reviews. We look at the ones and the zeros and then the fives which are going to be the best and the worst because when people are at emotional peak they don’t think about anything. Their subconscious drives the … What’s the word I want to use? The conveyance of what they feel in their real terms.

We have somebody compile all that, same thing with discussion groups, etc., and that’s the language that will resonate to the people. Remember I said earlier you want to put into words what they feel but no one’s every said to them. One more story and it’s not an ADD moment but it’s very relevant. I used to do huge seminars and the beginning of each seminar for three hours we would go around the room and have everyone stand up and tell us who they were, what they did, where they were from, how they did it, what they were there to accomplish more than anything else, and most of them couldn’t even explain themselves. I had a colleague with me and we were able to very quickly rearticulating and saying oh what you’re saying Josh is you want to be able to establish greater trust, you want to be able to have people see you as someone that has only got their best interest.

When we put it in words what they were struggling with you could see their physicality change, you could see the eyes twinkle, smile on their face. This is very important, so I’m just giving you a secret because when you get all this data you can use it to talk and play it back to your prospect. You can say I know what you really want is such and such, and I know what you’re tired of either not being able to get or getting from most people is such and such, and they’ll give you the language that resonate truthfully and authentically to people. Very powerful.

Back at the ranch. I talk about clients, you have four kinds of clients. You have the ones that pay you, but you also have the ones you pay. First category are your team. If you’re not committed to being their most trusted advisor and growing and developing them continuously it is a tragedy for both sides. Why? Because you want them to be part of the mission. You want everyone to be on a crusade. It transcends just making money. You want each one to see that their role is not just answering phones or processing orders, but they’re part of this whole transformative process.

Even if you’re an ice cream vendor, you got to live with a vision in your mind. By the way, you got a future pace, which is take people into the future and you got to see that for 10 minutes in the life of a stressful man or woman. If they come at lunchtime and get an ice cream cone you’re able to take them back to their childhood when they were innocent, when they had no stress. You have to driven by a higher purpose.

Back to your team. Most people don’t realize it, but the average entrepreneur gets about this much of the productivity and the capability of their talent because they basically don’t try to help the talent grow. I got a whole other process on greatness and everybody wants to be great, nobody wants to be mediocre. If they’re not it’s because they don’t know how, and if you’re committed to keep growing and developing your team three things will happen. You can get as much as I think it’s 10 times more output, qualitative output, if you grow them number one. Number two, they will have more loyalty because they will see you have their best interest. Number three, they will be on the same plane of ideology, philosophy that you’re in, it’s very powerful.

I can go on and on on this because it’s very powerful, but it is a … The other two, by the way, clients are your vendors and your advisors. Everything is an ecosystem and you want that whole thing integrated on the same mission, on the same crusade. It’s far more elevated and far more transcendent than just making money. I can go very deep but I’ll take three hours. As I said I’ll give you stuff that you can give to your people that explains it, but it’s transform companies around the world.

Josh Felber: That’s awesome, and you were mentioning on the whole mediocre and greatness and everything. I know a lot of our audience strives to that next level of higher performance, that greatness. What are some strategies, part of your process that you had talked about?

Jay Abraham: I’m going to give you a metaphor of a very dear friend of mine who’s brighter than I. He says most entrepreneurs, when they’re either excited or stressed dig holes, and they dig holes faster and faster the more excited and the more stressed they are. He said, “The first question you have to ask yourself is should I be digging a hole? Second question is if yes, should I be digging it there? Third is if yes, should I be digging it with a spoon or with a power drill? Forth is, no matter what the answer is should I be the one digging it since most entrepreneurs are tactical and need to be strategic?”

I’ll tell you what because I know you have limited time, I’ll go on a descending order. We’re known for a couple of things. We’re known for the three ways to grow business. All my life work has been understanding how to focus on the geometry of a business, how to make things not just perform higher for the same cost, time, effort, opportunity cost, capital, human capital, but also how to get it to go longer. We created the three way to grow business model and it’s very simple.

You want to grow your business geometrically there’s three ways. One is you increase the number of prospects and buyers, we have prospect, conversions, buyers. Number two is you increase ethically the size of the transaction. Number three you increase the frequency or the utility of the transaction in their model that shows that it goes from … It’s asymmetric. The first thing is how to do that, are you doing it? There’s about 30 ways in each category to do it and I can’t, but that’s the first thing. The second thing is what I have done for more of my clients than anything else, because if you think about marketing, marketing to the outside market, no matter what the vehicle whether it’s Facebook, whether it’s a magazine ad, whether it’s radio, TV, your show. The advertiser, the marketer is trying to establish first level. First level peripheral veneer trust, by the way we’ve got a lot of work we’ve done on trust.

The best thing I can tell anyone to read is Stephen M.R. Covey’s books Speed of Trust and Smart Trust because he’s the world authority on business trust building and he’s found ways clinically that if you master the arts and the science of trust and your team does you’ll produce 300% more yield and you’ll get your team working 300% harder. I don’t mean to be tangentile, but back at the ranch.

The most important thing I can tell you that will shortcut anyone’s journey to success and higher prosperity is strategic alliances, power partnering, and relationship. Figure out who already has the trust, the credibility, the direct access, the distribution challenges in the same market you want. It’s very different than the superficial affiliate concepts that people do. Make very strong relationships. When I told you about how we grew this investment firm, we went to every investment newsletter … Pardon me one second. We became part of their welcome kit, we created a whole educational collection, four times a year we paid for them to put out a special edition of the newsletter on our category of investment. We commissioned three times a year we would pay to do seminars all over the country on their behalf and gave them the money for the seminar because we wanted the audience. When their marketing pieces stopped making money we would take them over and fund them for them and get joint tenancy of the names. Much more deeper than affiliate.

When I did seminars I did $250 million, not a hundred thousand, $250 million, half a billion dollars and I think my total spend for the whole duration was $300,000 over two years because I went to Tony Robbins, I went to Success Magazine, I went to all the financial investment newsletters that had the entrepreneurs, I went to people that sold seminars, I went to people that sold investment books or business books or career changing books, and I made them my partners. I went to everybody that sold expensive training and got them to recommend my programs to their non-conversion. I used the goodwill, the credibility, and all the hundreds of millions of dollars that other people had spent to my advantage.

There’s a concept that I developed called leverage marketing. It looks at every element of the selling system and there’s probably 25 or 30 impact points that most people don’t even think about that can be leveraged up. I’m just giving you a few answers, I don’t know if this helps.

Josh Felber: Good stuff, great content.

Jay Abraham: Most people don’t realize is I’ve been very blessed, you talk about my background. I worked with the Deming Organization, who was the father of process improvement and optimization. Optimization is a really simple concept and most people don’t follow it. It’s getting the highest and best use of your time, your effort, your people, your opportunity, your access to a market, your prospects, your buyers, and you can’t optimize unless you have a broader context of what’s possible. Because the truth of the matter is if you study what most people do in most industries, their marketing, their strategy, their business model, their approaches are not the highest and best.

They’re often times the poorest and least but they’re just following the herd. I’ve been blessed. We did a study one time, it was scary, I think it’s 7,125 different sub-industries we work with but when you get that kind of a broad context, you look at what someone’s doing and you don’t look at it with contempt or disdain but you say, “Well for the same effort … I’m going to give you a better example. Same effort, I’ll finish and give you an example.

Same effort, same time, same people you could get three times as much front end and maybe 10 times the back end wouldn’t you rather do that? I’ll give you a very simple example. I had a very large furniture store one time, they were doing about $40 million. They were running about $100,000 a month in ads and they were getting about 1,000 people to come to their store and they were closing X, I don’t remember what X was. We tested 33 different ways of greeting people at the front door, 33 and one tripled closures. One tripled closures and I’ll tell you what it was rather than being secretive. It’s not what you would think so I’m not going to go through what you would imagine.

The winning one was, “And what ad brought you into the store today?” We found was just an experiment, we didn’t think about the psychology but by them answering that … If you say, “Okay, can I help you?” They say, “No, I’m just looking.” If you say, “And what ad brought you in the store today?” It evokes a knee jerk reaction, oh the Italian bedroom suite that’s on sale with the TV cabinet. It gives the sales person ethical control of the situation and the right to start a meaningful dialog of inquisition or at least discovery, inquisition sounds like Spanish. A discovery where they’re able to go deep and say, “Oh, is the rest of your house Italian? Is it a new home?” By having that dialog it changed the whole context of the relationship.

I’ve gotten to look at, I also did QualPro which is the largest multi-variable testing organization in the country and I got to look at basically a billion dollars worth of experiments they’ve done. In everything from increasing the effectiveness of customer service to retail positioning and the impact of placing things in different places and different facings. I’m not saying this arrogantly but it gives you a context. I’ve done a company called Decisionquest which is the largest strategic litigation consulting firm in the world. They have 150 PhD’s, psychologist, and sociologists, and they look at everything from the psychology of a jury, the psychology of the venue, the different ways depending on whether the client is on the receiving or the plaintiff’s side. They also look at how to depict pain and suffering either as massive or minor. When you get that kind of exposure, not counting all the real operating businesses I’ve been on the front lines of, you look at most entrepreneurs and you realize that they unintentionally limit, restrict, impeded, constrain the amount of buyers they could be generating, the amount of sales they could be ethically doing, the amount of repurchases.

We have 93 different ways to generate referrals that I have uncovered and most people don’t even have one. People are spending all this money on claim advertising to try to start the first external level of trust building which has to be sequential unless you’re selling something very cheap. Yet you got all these satisfied clients, hopefully, that have the capacity to generate for you instant credibility and people who are going to trust you. A referral generated buyer, number one, buys quicker, buys more things, buys more often, negotiates less, and refers more people, and almost nobody even … It costs nothing. I go on, and on, and on, but does this help?

Josh Felber: No definitely, and that’s a really interesting subject is the referral. Like you said most people don’t even have one and I know even with my wife’s business it’s always bringing in new people, bringing in new people. I think if we kind of take a step back from it and focus on bringing in those referrals you can exponentially increase your overall contacts of who to work with.

Jay Abraham: It’s funny as can be, whenever I do seminars and I’ve done these all over the world. We’re talking about growing a business. The first thing I focus on when you talk about the three ways is I’ll say, “Stand up if your business is” and these are going to be prejudice towards offline type businesses. They will have an online presence but these are real. Not that online aren’t real but these are people operating in their. I’ll say, “Stand up if your business is 20% to 100% either referral or word of mouth.” You’ll get half the audience standing up. I’m talking about China even you’re going to have 500 people stand up because we do big programs there. When we used to do them here you’d have 400, 500 people stand up.

Then I’d say, “Remain standing if you have at least one formalized strategic systemized ongoing referral generating process that you and all your team follows all the time” and 95% would sit down. Then I’d say, “Remain standing if you have two”, 95% of the remaining 5% would sit down. Three, everyone would sit down. I’d say, “If I were in a business where I was creating goodwill”, if you’re not creating goodwill you got some reality checks to do because that’s a problem. Means you’re not giving enough value to people give a you know what about giving you a referral. If you’re in a business where you’re episodically and you’re organically getting referrals and that’s driving most the business anyhow … Before I start I’d go around the room and have everybody tell me what the percentage is and the dollars and it’s mind blowing, 30%, $2 million, 80%, $5 million. Little ones, 90%, $400,000 and I’d go, “Do you hear yourselves, what’s wrong with this picture?” You’re spending money on advertising that are bringing three people. You’re going to trade shows trying to say, “Hey, notice me.”

When all you have to do is formalize this first across zero unless you misexecute, all you need are three or four strategies and you can double and re-double, even re-double your business and it’s the most profitable business. I can go on, and on, and on, but that’s just an insight.

Josh Felber: That’s definitely a great insight. I think people, like you said, don’t even think about. What is two of the biggest referral solutions people could implement?

Jay Abraham: I’ll give you the most ballsy first. You know what chutzpah is?

Josh Felber: Yes.

Jay Abraham: Takes chutzpah to do this. You make referrals a condition of doing business and here’s how you do it. You sit down with a prospect or you do it vicariously if it’s online, and you say, “Before we start, before I will allow you to even do business with me I want to go through what you should expect.” You denominate, and you say, “You should expect”, I’ll give you a professional example but it could be translated to anything, but it’s easier if I do this. Let’s say you’re a dentist. You should, first of all, expect when you have an appointment with me you will get in to see me within five minutes. Number two, you should expect that when you see me I will dedicate myself to you the same way I would my son, my daughter, my wife, my loved one, and that I will treat you the same way.

Three you should expect me never to recommend anything I don’t think is in your best interest and if I don’t think you should do something and it’s a waste tell you, and if I think you should do something tell you that. Number four and this guy’s a painless that I’m using as a model, you should never, ever experience pain. If you do then I’ve failed you, and if I’ve failed you I don’t deserve to keep you as a patient. He goes on and on.

I said, “Now let me tell you what I expect from you in exchange. I expect you if you make an appointment to show up on time, if you can’t I expect you to either apprise us or pay for it because all I have is time and ability to sell. Number two I expect you to pay for the service when it’s rendered because I don’t want to be your banker, it’s not what I do. If you want me to do that I’ll have to charge you a lot more. Number three is once if and after I’ve delivered everything I promise and you’ve seen me be congruent I want you to refer to me two equal quality prospective clients in at least the first six months. If you’re uncomfortable doing that that is fine but I’ll have to charge you a premium because our practice is based on this kind of a mutual agreement. If I don’t get the referral then I have to take the equivalent of time, effort, and money we put right now into research, into extra support teams to make the experience better, and I have to put it in advertising and that costs me more and it demeans my ability.”

I can go on, but you see it’s a very high level. It works but you have to have the chutzpah to do it. It’s one, a couple other ones I got to look. I’ve got so many different distinctions. I look at my list, it’s been so long. Number one is you have special events that are where you invite your existing clients to bring colleagues. It can be if you’re in a business that has any kind of technological breakthrough or the new products or the new this, they get the first look. If you have a good relationship with your vendors they get representatives from the manufacturer or the provider to come. You can get an icon, I used to do a service where we would get people who charge $50 to $80,000 to speak and this is 10, 15 years ago and we’d give them $5,000 if they would just do it from their home on a conference call.

You can buy books or anything else of value and offer people to come and discuss it. You can have a social event. One of our chiropractic groups, we used to help a lot of vertical groups, we would negotiate for them the world premier rights to B movies in their community and we would make deals with, not Paramount, but decent movies but movies that were probably more artsy and they would be able to invite their clients and their clients to bring people. Is this okay, I’ve got 93. We would do seasonal parties whether it was Christmas or summertime. I mean I can go on and on. We would have everybody who had any, you would call it because you’re younger, you would call it touch, I would say impact or interaction with the buying influence, with the buyer, be able to talk about all the different scenarios and all the different kinds of people, companies that work.

I’ll tell one final story because I know you probably have a time limit and I do too.

Josh Felber: Yes.

Jay Abraham: This is pretty cool. Most people wait for referrals instead of pro-acting. Fabulous story, so many years ago I mean I’ve been through lots of businesses. We were very large in the financial republishing. We would get the rights to things and republish them and I was the largest client at my bank back then because we were doing millions and millions of dollars. The banker would take me out every week for lunch and it was a really hot divorce looking woman, so I enjoyed it because she was fun to talk to and was nice to look at.

It was weird because she was looking to have meaningful relationships and she had no dates. She was hot, she was not real conservative, everything about her would say okay, you should have all the dates in the world but she wasn’t. She says, “I tell everybody, see if you can find somebody nice.” I’d say, “No, you’re doing it wrong.

Try this experiment when you go back to the bank. Instead of just being macro and abstract and amorphous be very specific and directive. Say I was talking to one of my clients and he gave me a suggestion and I thought about it and I’m going to do it. When you go back to the bank start doing this thing. You know I’ve probably never drawn a really clear picture of what I would love for you to introduce me to so let me give you … It would be a man that’s approximately 40 to 50, he would be a professional preferably, he may have been married before but you know enough about him to know that if he’s divorced it wasn’t because he beat his wife or was an alcoholic or a sexual pervert. There was just incompatibility. Might be a brother-in-law, might be a church member, might be at your club, might be in your professional organization. He won’t smoke, he might drink a little bit, but he’s somebody that you admire because he has demonstrated consistency. We gave a whole list of where he was, who he was, why he was, where they might know him.

The next week she called me and said, “I had seven dates.” That’s the kind of power. Does that make sense?

Josh Felber: Right, no definitely. You get your framing what you’re looking for, what you want and it definitely helps set things up in your favor.

Jay Abraham: More than helped, I mean you’re talking about zero to I mean … My press sounds unbelievable, but it’s not that I’m that bright, it’s that most people don’t realize how much more performance, capability, result, enhancement exists in everything they do, everyone they do it with, everyone they do it for, every way they do it through. When they realize that it’s very exciting.

Josh Felber: Well awesome, you’ve shared so much content with us today. I know hopefully if you guys are out there listening you’re taking notes. If not rewind, go back and take the notes on everything from strategizing, and creating preeminence for your business, to the referrals, to the marketing tips that Jay offered today, and start implementing them.  Start taking action in your business and in your life. Jay, I really appreciate you coming on the show today.

Jay Abraham: I’m honored to have the chance to influence all the trusting people that you’ve built. Same thing I talked about, you’ve built a relationship. I’m at a part in my life where I want very badly to contribute to entrepreneurship on a worldwide basis and you’ve given me a very good vehicle here so thank you.

Josh Felber: Thanks for your time again and it was a honor to have you on Making Bank today.

Jay Abraham: The honor was mine but thank you.

Josh Felber: I am Josh Felber and you are watching Making Bank. Get out and be extraordinary.