- So let me define joint venture very very quickly.
Definition of joint venture is that a joint venture
is an agreement.
What is it?
- [Audience In Unison] An agreement.
- Agreement.
What is it?
- [Audience In Unison] An agreement.
Good. Of mutual benefit between two or more people
or business who have complimentary resources.
What are two key words?
Resources.
Now resources can range from product,
services, business assets, or customer list
that has relationship with the list owner
that can be leverage for minimum cost.
So that's my definition of joint venture.
Very, very simple.
The funny thing is this.
Joint venture is everywhere.
How many of you have watched Superman Versus Batman?
That's it?
Seriously?
My goodness.
What's going on here.
What do you guys watch?
- [Audience Member] Reviews.
- Reviews.
(audience laughs)
Are the reviews that good?
- [Audience Member] That bad.
- They're terrible?
Shit.
I thought the movie was pretty good.
I thought it was pretty good.
Okay, I'm kind of bias.
I'm a Batman fan.
In my home I got a full size Batman thing like this,
full size, life size like thing at home.
So, there's a Batman, I like it.
It's good.
So but you can see now when I was in the supermarket
I saw some of these co-branding.
You can see they have the chips,
the chocolate, the pop with the new movie,
Batman Versus Superman on the logo on it.
Now let me ask you a question.
Have they changed the ingredient of what they sell?
- [Audience Members In Unison] No.
- No.
So it's the same thing, right?
Same product but this is a form of joint venture
because they know that the public is paying attention
within that certain period of time to the movie.
People talking about it.
There's a lot of buzz around the movie so they say
you know what, let's put that on our product
so hopefully we'll sell more.
You see that a lot.
And after the movie is finished,
then they will change it back to the normal packaging
until something comes along.
You've seen that, yes?
So it's everywhere.
It's everywhere around you.
The question is this, why less than 5%
of all business owners use joint ventures properly?
Why less than 5%?
And most don't know how to use them at all.
Why don't more businesses, even though it's everywhere,
that we don't use it?
We don't think of using it more often, why?
Tell me.
- [Audience Member] Not resourceful.
- Not resourceful.
Okay, yes.
Yeah?
- [Audience Member] In school it was called cheating.
- In school it was called cheating.
That's very good.
Yes?
- [Audience Member] Bad experience.
- Bad experience.
They've done it before once
and then maybe got screwed by their joint venture partner
and don't want to do it again.
Fair enough.
Yes?
- [Audience Member] Don't know how to sign proposals?
- Don't know how to create or craft proposals.
Good.
Yes?
- [Audience Member] Don't enough about the joint venture.
- Don't know enough about the joint venture,
what to joint venture.
Yes?
- [Audience Member] (mumbles)
- Bam fucking right.
Because most entrepreneurs we get into business
because we want more freedom.
We want to be the own boss.
We want to call the shots.
I don't like to party with anybody else.
I am my own boss.
I can figure this out.
Let me grind it out.
Yes?
Yes.
What else?
Give me one more.
- [Audience Member] Poor communication skills.
- Poor communication skills.
Maybe you've tried to do it.
They don't quite understand what you're trying to do
and you never get a deal done.
Possible.
Yes?
- [Audience Member] Trust.
- Trust.
You don't trust them.
They don't trust you.
- [Audience Member] The don't trust themselves enough
to trust other people.
- Okay, don't trust themselves
and then they'd have to trust other people.
Allen?
- [Allen] It's hard to believe that you can
work with your competitor.
- It's tough to believe.
How many of you believe that it's tough
to work with competitors?
Damn.
You're the only one.
Okay.
How many have heard that you want to crush your competition?
Yeah, you wanna crush.
You wanna kill your competition, right?
I think a smart entrepreneur, instead of saying
how can I kill my competition, it's how could I profit
from my competition?
Isn't it a bit more intelligent question?
How can I profit from my competition?
Less than 5%.
What is the most valuable asset in the business?
Tell me.
- [Audience Member] Customer.
- Who's that?
- [Audience Member] The customers.
- The customers.
Amen to that.
The most valuable asset most of the time to a business
is your customer base.
How many of you right now have a customer base?
Can I see a show of hands?
A database of some sort?
How many of you have a database
and you communicate to your customers
at least once a month?
Okay.
How about once every two weeks?
Good, very good.
The relationship between a business owner and customer list
is the most valuable asset.
They can be leverage.
That's basically your golden goose.
Golden goose.
Unless you screw up the relationship
you can go back to them again, and again, and again.
Offer them different products and services.
And we're gonna get into that this evening.
But the relationship between a business owner
and a customer.
And think about how many business owners
don't keep track of the customers.
Or they have some kind of database
but they never contact them.
It's as if they have no customer base at all.
Does that make sense?
So think about it.
Now most people when they think of joint ventures
they might think in terms of well, is it very complex?
Is it like you have my lawyer talking to your lawyer
lock in a room and we have these 30 page documents,
a contract you have to go through, and then a lot of
back and forth somehow.
Because again, big companies do joint ventures all the time
but for small business owners sometimes you have the image
of it's very intimidating.
They don't know how to go about it.
It's not like that at all.
Here's my experience.
My experience is the reality of joint ventures
actually pretty simple,
pretty straightforward, pretty much comes down to
asking your potential joint venture partner prospect,
"Hey man, wanna do a deal?"
"Wanna do a deal?"
That's about it.
"Wanna do a deal?"
No lawyers.
No long drawn out negotiations.
No time meetings
and no going into business with the other parties.
You're not going into business with the other party.
That's called partnership.
We're talking strictly to the joint venture.
In fact, say it with me.
Wanna do a deal?
- [Audience Members In Unison] Wanna do a deal?
- One more time.
- [Audience Members In Unison] Wanna do a deal?
- That's it.
Wanna do a deal?
It's very simple.
They either say yes or they say no.
It's very simple.
Most of the deals I've done,
sometimes of course I've lawyered,
craft a contract.
I won't even call it a contract.
It's a simple agreement.
Sometimes it's done through a simple email.
Hey, you know what?
I'll provide this.
You'll provide that.
Sometimes it's done through a handshake.
Jeffery you know.
You've done a lot of joint venture deals.
In fact, Jeffery, go to your mic and share.
'Cause you've done a lot of JV's right?
What's been your experience?
Go to the mic.
Give Jeffery a round of applause.
(audience applause)
- Hi guys.
It's just a matter of reaching out
and really is just like Dan says.
If you wanna deal, deal.
I'm here to help you.
You're giving to them.
We work with suppliers and distributors
of companies that suit to actually target our customers,
our clients.
So we leverage them and provide them with a percentage
of all the sales we make.
But in the meantime, we're giving a product
that helps their clients so it's a win-win
all the way around.
Real easy.
- Do you find that sometimes people who have not done
it before, not done a joint venture,
that with your first joint venture deal,
was it a lot of meetings?
A lot of lawyers?
A lot of back and forth?
What was it like?
- No, the first one was just real simple.
Do we do this or not?
- [Dan] That's it?
- Yeah, that was it.
It just seemed natural.
I don't know.
Maybe I'm lucky that way.
- It is like that.
Round of applause.
(audience applause)
It is like that.
It's simple.
And guess what, if the other party is giving you
all this shit, you know,
talk with my lawyer, give me a 30, 50, 100 page contract,
I'm telling you, don't do a deal with that guy.
It's gonna be a pain in the ass.
You haven't even done a deal and he's this difficult.
Who cares?
Find another guy to do a deal with.
So, those are not the people.
I find the most profitable deals I've done,
it's seriously so simple.
It's one meeting.
It could be one email.
You know what, you agree to do this,
yeah I will provide that.
That's that.
It's based on trust.
It's based on what?
- [Audience Members In Unison] Trust.
- Trust.
Okay.
Funny thing is, everyone in this room right now,
you're doing one joint venture in one form or another.
Right now.
Let me give you an example.
Last week my mentees, inner circle members,
we went to an escape room experience.
How many have heard of escape room?
You're locked in a room
and there are a whole bunch of locks and you try to
get out of the room.
Find the key before time's up.
Sounds very exciting, right?
And you pay to do that.
You could have done it at home.
But anyway, what we've done is one of the mentees
bought a Groupon deal.
She bought a Groupon for eight people.
Victoria, she paid for that first
because Groupon, a group of eight, we get a better deal.
We get a better deal so when we showed up
we simply pay the mentee back.
So we share the cost, share resources.
And that's joint venture, right there.
Everybody wins.
So the vendor, the business of this escape room,
they saw eight people in the slow time.
For us, we get a deal at a discount
because we pooled our resources together.
So we get instead of buying one ticket individually,
which we didn't get a discount, right?
We wouldn't have gotten a discount.
Does that make sense?
- [Audience Members In Unison] Yes.
- That's it.
That's a joint venture.
If you carpool with somebody to come to VG,
that's a joint venture.
I would drive you, you would pay for the gas.
Or you pay me $10 or whatever.
That's a form of joint venture.
You do it all the time.
But somehow in business, people are so afraid of
how do I approach this?
What should I do?
It's not like that at all
and once you've done the first couple of deals,
this I think like me in the same way,
become your favorite business strategy.
I have a saying.
When in doubt, joint ventures.
Say it with me,
when in doubt,
- [Audience Members in Unison] When in doubt
- Joint ventures.
- [Audience Members In Unison] Joint ventures.
- When it doubt
- [Audience Members In Unison] When in doubt
- Joint ventures.
It's like the jab in boxing.
You're like this guy's getting close,
let's jab the guy.
Oh I don't know what he's doing.
Let's jab the guy.
Let's test it.
Same thing.
When in doubt, jab the guy
pretty much.
When in doubt, joint ventures.
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