David Riklan is the president and founder of Self Improvement Online, Inc.and www.SelfGrowth.com, as well as the author of Self Improvement: the Top 101 Experts Who Help Us Improve Our Lives, which has been praised as the encyclopedia of self-improvement. Today he’s here to help you
He started his first business in 2005 when he was just 21 years old to help save his family from financial disaster. His career has taken off like wildfire since then. He has started 10 successful companies and has authored two books: The Hidden Millionaire: 12 Principles for Uncovering the Entrepreneur in You, and Advertising Profits From Home: Simple Money-Making Strategies You Can Use Right From Your Home. Today, the jet-setting Anthony Morrison takes some time off to sit with us and share some of the secrets of his success.
TAMMY LAWMAN: I’ll throw it out there. How do 97.5% of all self improvement companies grow their businesses?
DAVID RIKLAN: That’s the focus. I’ve been talking about a few tools and some of my background. What I want to do with the rest of the call is really focus on a technique that 97.5% of all self improvement companies use to grow their business. Just to give you a sense of who’s using this, it’s people like Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Bob Proctor, Rhonda Byrne from The Secret, Deepak Chopra, and Zig Ziglar. This is a technique that I use all the time. It’s really a powerful technique.
Tammy doesn’t know what it is yet, but we’ll get into it in a second. Everybody is going to be surprised. My company has made over $3.2 million by using this technique. For folks who are interested, this is an extremely powerful technique that anybody who has either a health or self improvement business uses to grow their business. It’s very simple, and it’s something many folks on the line might be familiar with. It’s a combination of using joint ventures and cross promotion. Tammy, does that sound familiar to you?
TAMMY LAWMAN: Yes.
DAVID RIKLAN: I’m going to really get into this. When I tell people that this is such a critical component of building a business, and particularly a health-related or self improvement-related business, or anything along those lines, I usually get a combination of responses from folks. Some people who hear that say, “We know about joint ventures and cross promotions. We’re already doing it.”
For folks who are listening to this call, one of the reasons you heard about this particular call and this series of calls is joint ventures and cross promotions. Folks who are familiar with this concept, I call you “joint venture champions.” Folks who are joint venture champions and are using this kind of stuff, I’m going to ask you to stick around for a while because I have some really good ideas for how to expand what you’re doing.
I know there are also some people on the line who have heard about joint ventures and cross promotions, which are powerful concepts that I’ll explain in a little bit, but they haven’t been able to use them effectively because they can’t find people to work with. I’ll explain how to do that in a little bit. I call you folks who fit into that category “aspiring joint venture leaders.” You’re really hungry.
These are folks who know what joint ventures and cross promotions are but haven’t figured it out yet. I’m sure there are a few folks on the line who aren’t familiar with these concepts of joint ventures and cross promotions at all. I call you guys the newbies. We all started there. Here’s just one of the interesting things I want to talk about. It ties in to self improvement and personal growth in general.
To improve your life, grow your business, do anything in life, and expand, you need to partner with people. This is really critical. Tammy, I’m going to ask you in a minute to share how valuable partnering and joint ventures have been for you and your company. In any area of your life, if you want to grow and improve your life, you’re going to need to partner with folks and figure out how to work and grow with people, whether it’s growing your business or growing yourself.
This is really critical. Tammy, before I jump into a lot of the details about the whys and hows of this, do you want to spend a minute sharing how valuable partnerships, cross promotions, and all these kind of things are in your life and in your business?
TAMMY LAWMAN: For the Intention Event alone it’s invaluable because we have 24 speakers, and essentially all 24 of those speakers are joint venture partners for us. They’re helping us cross promote the teleseminar series as a whole, so not only are we able to reach out to our existing list and promote the event, but all 24 of these people are reaching out to their lists.
They may vary in size, anywhere from 50 to 150,000 people or more. It’s about the numbers. The more people you can get the message out to, the better chance you have of getting people on the call or getting people interested in the series and having them share that information. It’s absolutely invaluable.
DAVID RIKLAN: What’s interesting about it is virtually everybody is using this technique or needs to use this technique, regardless of where they are in life and what they’re trying to do, whether it’s trying to grow their own business or not. I’m going to be focusing a little bit more on the business side today in terms of some of the information that I’m sharing, but these are really valuable techniques.
I want to very simply share what I consider the broad concept of joint ventures. It’s a very broad use of the term. For me, joint ventures means teaming with other people to help both of you grow your businesses. I’ll give you an example. I promote somebody’s business, and they agree to promote my business. Maybe I assist them in some area, and they assist me. It’s really the concept of working together to create something bigger or better than either of us could possibly create on our own.
That’s really the heart of where this concept fits in. In case anybody is thinking, “Does this stuff really work?” I just want to give you a sense of the power it’s had for me and some of the things I’ve been able to do. I’ll give you a few examples. Tammy just mentioned this one primary example. We’re sitting on it. We’re living it right now. Every single one of these calls ties into this.
Just to give you a sense, one of the things Tammy mentioned earlier is one of the books I published, which is Self Improvement: The Top 101 Experts Who Help Us Improve Our Lives. It was described as almost a mini-encyclopedia on self improvement. When we launched the book, we launched it as an electronic book, or an ebook, and I sold $108,000 worth of ebooks in 24 hours. Think about that.
I sold $108,000 worth of ebooks in 24 hours using this technique. We’ve also partnered with a gentleman named T. Harv Eker. With his help, I sold $69,000 worth of an ebook training program in 90 minutes. Think about those numbers. We’ve sent out emails where in some cases, just by sending out a single email to one of our lists, I’ve received a check for over $16,000. Using these techniques, I’ve received endorsements from John Gray, John Assaraf, Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Brian Tracy.
I’ve co-created books using these techniques with Zig Ziglar, Joe Vitale, Bob Proctor, Ken Blanchard, Les Brown, and Byron Katie. We’ve also worked with Hay House, Trump University, FranklinCovey, and Nightingale-Conant. For everybody on the line who has any doubt at all whether this partnership works in terms of growing yourself, improving your life, or growing a business, I just want to put all that aside.
These techniques absolutely work. We work with a whole bunch of folks in the self improvement industry. I did a survey, and the vast majority of them are using these joint venture techniques to use their business. Literally 97.5% of all people we work with are using these techniques to grow their business. It’s been really powerful. Tammy, I’ll get back to you in a little bit, but I just wanted to get a quick sense from you. You mentioned the core of the event we’re on right now, but for Healthy, Wealthy, nWise and all the stuff you do, isn’t this kind of an integral part of everything?
TAMMY LAWMAN: Definitely. We’re going to produce so much content for this. We can repurpose it, recreate it, and sell it for a year or two to come, depending on how timely the information is. We can also use it to grow our joint venture base because although we already have thousands of people who help us promote our products and we help promote theirs, if we want to continue to grow, then we always have to bring in new people. Bringing in new content like this teleseminar series is part of that.
DAVID RIKLAN: It’s very powerful. A question that usually comes up for folks is what do you really need to know to successfully use things like joint ventures and cross promotions to grow your business? To start with, I want to share a couple of primary things that you really need to know and understand. The first thing you need to know is where you need help in your business. You need to have an understanding of where you need help.
The area you need help in is going to vary depending on whether you already have a business or you’re looking to start a business. It’s going to depend a lot on where you are in the life cycle of your business and what you’re trying to accomplish. I want to take a minute just to give people a few key areas where they might need help, in terms of growing their self-improvement business. The first one ties into what I describe as product creation.
You might have a product or service. If you’re looking to get into your own business, you’re going to need some sort of product or service. We’ve been focusing mostly on the self improvement or health-related fields. If you’re in those fields, you’re going to want some sort of self improvement or health-related product or service. Where this stuff fits in is if you don’t have a product, you might need help creating a new product, getting feedback on a new product, or improving the product.
The same thing goes with services. Here’s a key piece of this that I just want to reemphasize for folks: you can’t be successful with who you are and what you do by living in a vacuum. You’re going to need assistance from multiple people, and these techniques are the best way to get that. The next big area you might need help with is promoting. The first one I mentioned was creating. If you’re new in your business, you want to create a product or service.
You might need help there. The next area is you might need help, once you have a product or service, with promoting it. You might be looking for help from someone who has a website or someone with an email newsletter list to promote you. For folks who are further along and actually have an internet business or something along those lines, you might have something called an affiliate program where you’re paying people a percentage.
It’s kind of like a commission-based system where if you have a product, you can pay people to promote your product. You might be looking to work with people who have a big presence on social media and websites like Facebook or LinkedIn. The first thing to look for is help creating a product if you’re looking to get into a business. The second area is help promoting your product or service.
You might need help with things like testimonials, endorsements, or recommendations. There’s really a wide range of ways, if you have a business, that you might need help. You might also be looking for people just to give you exposure for your business or people who can make introductions to other key people for you. Tammy, I’m sure that’s one of the ways that you use. You’re always looking at your contacts for people to help make new contacts for you.
TAMMY LAWMAN: Definitely. Several of the people who have been on this series in particular came in and said, “If you still have spots left open, I’d like to recommend so-and-so.” It definitely works.
DAVID RIKLAN: It’s very powerful. If you have a business or a business idea, you might be looking to get business coaching. If you’re creating a product or service, you might need someone to test it and give you feedback. These are some of the things that folks might be looking for. It depends on whether you’re just getting started or what you’re trying to do. It’s all very powerful. For folks listening, these are all key ways that people can help you grow your business or improve any area of your life.
Here’s where the challenge comes in with a lot of folks: these things I talked about are ways you could potentially need help improving your life, improving your business, and growing what you’re doing. In order for these things to work, you’re going to need to offer people something in return. Here’s such a critical component of how joint ventures, partnering, and all this works: you’re going to need to offer somebody something in return.
It ties into what’s called the Law of Reciprocity. I think the first time I heard about this was from Robert Cialdini. It’s a very powerful concept. If you’re not familiar with it, I’d suggest jotting it down. Here’s the concept…
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