← Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Jay Abraham - Strategy & Performance Expert | The Marketing Genius Who Built $50 Billion in Client Revenue
01:33:08
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- [00:00]
Scott Clary
HubSpot is a success Story Partner now if you're an entrepreneur, listen up because HubSpot makes impossible growth impossibly easy for their customers. If you are building a business, you need to get HubSpot. Why? Here's the perfect example. Morehouse College needed to reach new students with fresh, engaging content, a problem that every single business in the world has. But with a 900 page website, even the tiniest update took 30 minutes to publish. Now Breeze, which is HubSpot's collection of AI tools, helped them write and optimize their content in a fraction of the time. And the results? 30% more page views and visitors now spend 27% more time on their site. If you are ready for impossible growth like this, visit HubSpot. Com. The HubSpot Podcast Network is a Success Story Partner now if you like Success Story, you're going to love other podcasts in the HubSpot podcast network. One of my personal favorites is I Digress, hosted by my boy Troy Sandich. With shows under 30 minutes, I digress helps eliminate complexity, complications and confusion in your business with frameworks and strategies to achieve true, scalable and sustainable success. If you are an entrepreneur building anything you need to listen to I Digress. This is one of the most useful business podcasts you're ever going to subscribe to. Listen to I Digress Wherever you get.
- [01:30]
Jay Abraham
Your podcasts, the most precious and limited asset you could get someone to invest in you is their attention first, their trust second, and their belief with their positive decision. I think it's a very changed world. One of the greatest things you can do for somebody is know how to listen, acknowledge and smile. And most people don't even know how to do that.
- [01:49]
Scott Clary
He's been called the Billion Dollar man.
- [01:51]
Jay Abraham
And not without reason. Jay Abraham isn't just a marketing expert.
- [01:54]
Scott Clary
He's the architect behind the exponential growth of over 10 businesses. When Fortune 500 CEOs hit a ceiling, they don't call a consultant, they call Jay.
- [02:03]
Jay Abraham
95 of all entrepreneurs never reach their goals. And the reason is they really don't have. They just have their goals. I want to make a million dollars or I want to be able to sell it for $20 million. Most entrepreneurs, they struggle non verbally with the wrong question. Question is am I worthy of this goal? When you realize how much more is possible from time to time time investment capital, the right question is this goal worthy of me? That's a profound conclusion.
- [02:31]
Scott Clary
He spent over four decades helping brands uncover profits they didn't even know existed. By shifting perspective Unlocking leverage and multiplying impact. If there's anyone who can turn your.
- [02:40]
Jay Abraham
$1 idea into a $100 million business, it's him. Everybody up. To have such favorable predisposition, win, lose or draw in whatever transaction you have now, you don't wait for money to change hands before you start. Interesting. In the other side.
- [03:07]
Scott Clary
Jay, if you had to describe what you do for a living, how would you describe your work?
- [03:15]
Jay Abraham
I'll answer you with a qualification. I teach people how to shift their positioning from a unique selling one which may or may not be compelling to an advantage which is more compelling to a. To a preemptive advantage which is even more compelling to a monopolistic. I can't talk monopolistic one which is very to then shooting for a exponential game changing one. And I always struggle myself. When I started it was easy because I was mostly marketing and, and advertising and just revenue generation. And we used to say that basically he is the ultimate expert at uncovering hidden assets, overlooked profit opportunities, underperforming revenue activities, underutilized relationships, undervalued resources and turning them into significant windfall profits and then converting them into to sustainable revenue streams that were perpetual all for almost no investment or risk today. I got to think about it. But that was a very compelling one. It wasn't exactly articulated that way, but when everyone heard that it was oh wow, I want to know more.
- [04:33]
Scott Clary
So if you look back at, I mean you've worked with thousands, probably tens of thousands of businesses, thousands of industries at this point. If you look at just paint a picture for how the business landscape in broad strokes has really changed from when you started building businesses and maybe even walk through this inflection point in your life that pushed you down the road to want to build, scale, drive revenue, sell. But what's changed since when you started?
- [05:06]
Jay Abraham
Well, I mean, let me clarify. Are you asking me to tell you a little bit of my origin story.
- [05:11]
Scott Clary
Or just a little bit of the origin story?
- [05:13]
Jay Abraham
Yeah, it's really fascinating. Initially sad, but then a positive way. So I got married the first time at 18. I had two kids at 20, no education, nobody really cared. And I had the needs of somebody about 40 when I was 20. And the only people that would give me any kind of an opportunity were very interesting entrepreneurs who would give me an eat what you kill opportunity meaning there's no salary if you perform kid you you can have a piece of the sale or the asset or the deal or the distribution channel if you don't, sorry. And so I. But nobody Cared about time. It was all result denominated, which was a wonderful, wonderful formula of attitudinal prejudice that I gained. But basically, since I didn't care about time, I would typically do five or six things concurrently. And as luck would have it, two different dynamics converged. The first were I was drawn to entrepreneurs that even though they were tough, they were either people who had found niches, gaps in their market that they were filling, or had realized that the product services that were being provided at the level they were being provided at were not optimal and they were really bringing it to a much higher strata of value to their audience. I did not understand it exactly then, but through osmosis I got that now because I did five or more things concurrently all the time. I was lucky as can be because I chose not to ever do them in the same industry. Where that became just unimaginably valuable was after about 10 different activities in 10 unrelated industries, I made a profound realization. This was long ago when I started my career, that people in one industry do not have a clue, Scott, how people in another industry think, act market, strategize, source. They don't have the same business model, they don't have the same access vehicles that are the same value creation, they have the same processes, systems. And yet you could borrow derivatives of each of them and apply it to industries where everyone is doing the same thing the same way, sort of follow the herd. And it was explosive. And when I made that realization and I started looking at the basic commonness dirt drivers to the different industries, and then overlaid it to the lack of even understanding or comprehending any of those in the industries I'd been in, I realized Eureka. And I created something called funnel vision versus tunnel vision. And I started applying basically basic stuff to industries I was in. And I was the one eyed, oh, I can't talk, and one eyed man in the land of the blind. And it was explosive. And that was how I started. And then when I realized it, I was on a tear. I wanted to learn everything I could about everything I could about every industry I could, so I could integrate it into the fabric of my methodological approach. So that I had this. My quiver had so damn many optional arrows that it was no contest. That's sort of. That's the origin story.
- [08:38]
Scott Clary
No, it's a good origin story. It's very insightful because I think even I had a double, A dual pronged question there where I was asking the origin story, but I was also asking how you've seen things change. Since your origin story when you work with businesses and there's been a lot to change. But I also think that that wisdom that you had when you were first starting out is not so common still. I think there's a lot that we can learn from other industries that we don't live in because we're so myopic and we have blinders onto our own problems and we don't look outside for all these different ideas and sort of like help us grow or help us scale. I think entrepreneurs still have that issue today.
- [09:14]
Jay Abraham
Yeah. And I'm going to tell you the point of inflection, but I would tell you one more, and this is just for you to build on any way you want to take this interview. So arguably that alone was profound in my career development. But what became second level of, I guess I would call it sort of bi turbo profundity was that I got the privilege to help about 300 world class experts over the last 30 or 40 years. None of them came to me, Scott, for help with their methodology. They had that knocked. They came for help commanding higher and more concrete market value perception. They came to me to be able to correlate and concretize abstract things. They came to me with the challenge of how do you translate what I do to how it impacts in a measurable way, whether it's revenue or productivity or expense saving or competitive advantage. But I had to learn a distilled condensation or really just a short course primer on every one of their methodologies. So the knowledge base that I've been able to borrow from between all the experiences and now it's over a thousand industries and all the experts, you know, The Stephen Coveys, Mr. Coveys, the Tonys, all these people, Joey Robbins and I helped the number. And I'm not saying it's not arrogant, just clinical. I helped the number one expert in Six Sigma, the one number one expert in theory of constraint, the number one guy who came up with process improvement optimization over my career. So all that knowledge got compressed and packed into my brain to access for clients. So my worldview is very deep, broad and it's very enveloping. It's very cat scam. Like now as far as the changes, you know, everything changed, probably more so in the last two or three years. Obviously the Internet changed. Obviously people's prejudice with spending most of their life online or on, you know, social media changed tremendously. The fact that everything was public and you could create, you could create synthesized expertise and popularity at will changed. And I think that the consumer lost their ability to discriminate. And obviously you had worldwide competition. When I started, it was very interesting. I was the only person that had helped almost every major influencer in the entrepreneurial sector, not corporate, but entrepreneurial. And I'd made them all very significant amounts of money and enhance their success, growth and posture. So they were always very willing to promote, endorse and advocate my attributes. But then when the Internet came, everybody and their brother could just take anybody's proprietary ip, they could ascribe it to themselves, they could basically show a picture of themselves with their rented jet and their hot 18 year old girlfriends in their rented mansion. And there was a lot of people that were really moved by that. Sadly, there's another side that I think it's a positivity. It gave birth to a lot of, I'll call qualitative one trick ponies. There were never as many specialized experts when I started and I've been doing it for a very long time. And I'm in awe of the niche expertise that people have commanded, particularly now that technology allows them to do it. And I think also there's a positive in it that now, without having to raise a billion dollars and without needing a thousand people, you have the ability, using technology, whether it's AI or some other upside, leverageable tool or solution, to be very competitive without having to have huge facility, huge team. And I think that's wonderful. But I think the world has changed dramatically. The thing that frustrates me is probably the most precious and limited asset you could get someone to invest in you is their attention first, their trust second, and their belief in whatever you are advocating that you're really to be trusted and entrusted with their positive decision. I think it's a very changed world.
- [14:07]
Scott Clary
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- [17:41]
Jay Abraham
Well, and you've studied some of my work. I have so much that it would be improbable to think you've studied all of it. But one of the earliest things that I was fanatical about was something I called the strategy of preeminence. I'm telling you this not to go rogue on you, but to go right to the answer.
- [17:56]
Scott Clary
Actually, this was. This was. Actually, we haven't even gotten into. That was the first thing that I was going to go into. But then you started to get interesting. So then I pushed it back a little bit.
- [18:04]
Jay Abraham
I think it correlates here. So I studied. I studied. I'm. I'm like a closet student of the human condition. And so I studied for years as I was doing this, you know, the people who own pre emptive and preeminent. And I went from people that had. That had significant. What's the word I would use? They were prominent. And then I looked for pre emptive and then I looked at preeminent. And it was a very. Believe it or not, if you look at gradients and I'm into. I studied and I'm not a mathematician, but people don't realize this. Everybody. And by the way, I'm a poster boy for adult attention deficit. And I'm like a gnat that has had a lobotomy. So you'll have to tolerate me going rogue on you and me and myself. But I studied. Everyone talks about the 10x moonshot. I'm going to get to preeminence in just a minute. The 10x moonshot, exponential growth. And I studied it for a little bit. And people don't realize that in math. You study math, which I didn't. I just did some research on it. There are five or six gradients that are literally above and beyond exponentiation. It's called hyper operationalization. And it's tetration, hexation, heptation, pentation, octation, and. And you couldn't even correlate. It'd be like to infinity or beyond. And the point is you can really take performance so much higher for the same time. Effort, opportunity, capital, access to the market, human capital, et cetera. Now back to your answer for the consumer. I created after studying a lot of people that were operating in this literally preeminent world, what it was about them that was profoundly different. And I'll send you a deck that I did on it because just for Yourself, you'll love it and you're welcome to share with anybody. And it basically had many facets, but to give you the short takes about three hours to explain it. It's deep. But number one, they were seen as the most trusted advisor in the category. The only viable solution you could turn to. And the reason was they did not give information, they did not try to sell. They always tried to advise and tell their market what they felt was in the market's best interest, irrespective of whether that was in the company's best interest. And secondly, whether that, whether the. Whether the consumer purchased what they advised and the combination, the quality, the consistency that they advised, they always told what they believed was in the best interest. I used to tell a story if you came to Jay Abraham's bottled water shop and water bar and you asked me for one half of a cup of water and I took your money without first verifying that you knew that your body needed seven and a half more of these every day. SCOTT for your body to function, your cellular health to be at prime, your creativity to be optimal, your digestion, your excret to work for your stability, for your stress level. And I didn't go out of my way to make sure you knew that irrespective of whether you upped your purchase from me, I would be deserving you. I'm talking about being preeminent if you came every two days and bought eight glasses. But I didn't make sure that somewhere, not necessarily me, but somewhere, you were getting the other eight and didn't go out of my way to make sure you knew what I believe was in your best interest, I was stealing from you. So the first thing in being preeminent is being seen as the most trusted advisor, the only possible source or place you could turn to. And that is only possible by doing that. The next is understanding and putting into words what your target audience wants and doesn't want in ways and at dimensions that no one else has ever articulated. And you cannot do that if you don't really go to great depths to understand it. And I can tell you later on a way that anybody can do it. I call it the mind of the mark. And that's another methodology we've produced. Next is that you basically want to make sure that no matter what business industry you are in, you don't fall into the mistake of falling in love with your company. Fastest Growing Company Inc. Magazine Fortune 500 Russell 1000 or you love your industry or you love your product. You want to fall in love with the people you serve. And you have three kinds of clients and you want to call them clients. Because if I call you a customer, if you look it up, Scott, in Webster's dictionary, it's somebody who's buying a commodity or a service. If I call you a customer, but I want to be preeminent, what I'm really saying is implicitly, if not explicitly is I am a marginalized commodity. I'm lucky as heck you're dealing with me and not my competitor. Or an alternative form. If I call you a client, if you look it up, it's somebody who's under the care, the well being and the protection of another. It has a fiduciary connotation. And when I see myself being your most trusted advisor and I see my responsibility and I get that, everybody in the company sees that and we're on a mission and a crusade in behalf of that market, of the prospective client. And we see our role as being integral. No matter if we answer the phone, get the package to shipping faster, that it all helps achieve our purpose. That is very profound. The other thing is literally you've got to stop thinking transactionally. If I think that I sell water and I don't think about what happens when that water is acquired by you and it's starting to serve your, your body, then I've, I, I've, I've marginalized myself a good example. And you can, you can throw a monkey wrench and stop me because I can go, I can go, Roman.
- [24:39]
Scott Clary
No, no, no, I, I have, I, I'll, I'm going to, I'm going to. No, go, go ahead and tell me the other example and give you a great example.
- [24:49]
Jay Abraham
I've had, and you know this because we've talked offline, I've had a thousand industries around the world. I've helped. So I have a lot of, of experience. In this one time I had the largest first time home builder in all of Mexico. They had 87 facilities, they had 3,000 salespeople. They were doing billions. They were traded on the New York and the Mexican Stock exchange and they wanted a breakthrough. And so I actually flew out there and I spent time with not just the sales management, with many, many, many of the salespeople. And I asked them what they did and they said, we sell first family homes. Now the first family home market there, I don't know if it's still the same because I've been back for three, four years. The government had a policy that if you work for a legitimate company that pay taxes, they would make your down payment and they would then structure your mortgage payments to conform with your income. So you could afford a beautiful home in a brand new development with security walls, with all kinds of wonderful facilities, pools, et cetera. It was in wonderful new areas where there were dedicated teachers. Now put that in the band. So these people said, we sell first time homes. I said, well, what happens when somebody buy a first time home? Nobody asked them. I said, let's look at it. First of all, a couple that normally had only two options, they would live in a terrible area in an apartment where it was very non conducive for a good environment for the wife. It was non conducive in a good environment for the kids. And the husband wouldn't have a lot of pride or they'd live with the parents who would micromanage the family. And it would be just terrible on the relationship between husband, wife, parenting, et cetera. Because the grandparents would try to parent, you know, both the husband or wife, whoever their child was, and the kid when they get into a new development. First of all, there's pride of ownership. It's a beautiful home. The husband feels like his work has produced something. He works harder, is more exciting, gets promotions, makes more. The wife hangs out with quality people, so do the kids. Their success probability is enhanced dramatically. The teachers are young and still want to teach. They're not jaded and calcified about the whole process. More importantly, they are building an asset that will give them security for the rest of their life. If they can't afford it, they can rent it and get somebody else to pay for it for them. If they get it paid off and their parents die and they inherit the house, now they've got an asset that will give them a higher quality of retirement or living, or it'll pay for their children to have the education of a lifetime anywhere they want. And I went through all these things, there's a lot more. And I said, no, you don't just sell first time homes. You transform entire family lives. And every morning we started our day saying, how many lives are we going to transform today? And it was game changing. Using the positive aspect, I'm just giving you a few examples of that.
- [27:57]
Scott Clary
I was gonna say, I was gonna say a lot of this strategy hinges on you challenging the customer's perception. You challenge their worldview to a degree, so that, that places you in a position of trust. Because if a company is just transactional, then they're just accepting what the customer wants and that's and they're going to sell it to them. But this preeminent strategy seems to challenge so that you are not only just understanding what your customer wants, you're also trying to get them to see the world through a different lens. And then that would be your, that would be your company. Is that fair?
- [28:36]
Jay Abraham
Yeah, it's, it's, it's a duality. It's trying to see your business through a different lens, but it's also trying to have people see you in contrast to everyone else. If you think about it's divide and conquer. There's everyone else and then there's you. And you know, we've got, I'm talking about something that's very sophisticated when you execute it, but it's only one of about 97 methodologies we've given. But what we try to do whenever there's a lot of competitive landscape and we're trying to get someone to be very preemptive when people challenge them about somebody else. We don't say, oh, Scott is wretched swine and he's this disgusting, he's, he's, his stuff is crap. Instead we always say, look, there are a lot of very quality people in our, in our industry and we know all the, the good guys and women and, and they work very hard and their products are very good and their people are very dedicated and they, they give a good value. And then we add that we, that we're the penny drops or the brick drops for what they do. But we don't even play in that world. We operate in our relationship with you and how we engineer our products or our services and what we're committed to deliver and how we go above and beyond the, you know, the expectations and how we basically design everything as if it was for ourselves in a much higher strata. So we don't see ourselves even being compared. And you do things that are very different than most people would if you're competing.
- [30:22]
Scott Clary
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- [33:44]
Jay Abraham
It's. And I wish I had my old deck because I have a list of, of 30 companies that go right to it. But if you think about it, well, I don't know if. Oh, crime. Who's. What's the shoe company that. And he died. But what's the shoe company that the gentleman that died, Tony Hsieh, started? You know, if they didn't have what you wanted, they would find it for you and tell you where to get it. The old I don't know if Ritz Carlton still does it this way because I very rarely stay there, but they would do anything you need way beyond the level. It's people willing to stand out in service to you in ways they know matter that nobody else is. It's not just willing to do, but perceptive, perceptity or whatever the word is. Enough to really see that that is a profound impact. I've got a list of them and I'm sorry, I got so many things I talk about that I build.
- [34:44]
Scott Clary
No, no, no, I, I'll, I'll find is looking up, I'm trying to find.
- [34:49]
Jay Abraham
If you look, we have something on preeminence and if you look at it, it's in two or three decks I gave you. And, and the one that's in. If I gave you a deck on the seven. On the seven steps to creating wealth, business wealth without risk. It's got about, it's got about 10 or 12 examples that are so screamingly evident that you just see it and you go, wow. And the only reason apologize to your.
- [35:15]
Scott Clary
Viewer list, it was, it was Zappos, by the way. It was Zappos.
- [35:18]
Jay Abraham
Yeah. But if you wanted something and they didn't have it, instead of saying, oh we don't sell that, thank you for calling, they would say let us find out who does for you and let us give you a link to their, to their site. I mean they would do. They, they were preeminent because they were committed to the betterment, the well being of the client. One of the things that I didn't say this is is I'll tell you what, I, I will not let you buy more than you should in more quality, quantity, consistent than you should. I won't let you buy less. I won't let you buy just so I can make a profit. And when you shift your mindset and your whole team is on this mission and crusade and they are not transactional, they are living by the way, you're living with the mindset of knowing what your product or service deployed in somebody's life or business is like. And you can take this very sophisticated, but you can take it down to an ice cream vendor in Central park who has gone out of his way to have the most delicious ice cream and cones. And he knows or she knows that for 20 minutes in somebody's very stressful adult life, they give an environment that's safe and it's reminiscent of a time that was joyous, stress free, easy, and they give that person a chance to have a great experience and they smile. One of the greatest things you can do for somebody is know how to listen, acknowledge and smile. And most people don't even know how to do that.
- [37:01]
Scott Clary
It's, it's very basic stuff, but I think we get so caught up in pursuing metrics and numbers and KPIs that we forget at the end of the day who we're really serving.
- [37:10]
Jay Abraham
So I've studied this. I mean I've studied too many things for my own good. But one of the things I look at is there's, there's KPIs and there's OPIs. KPIs are the five or six factors everybody looks at. OPIS are all the nuclear interrelated factors, impact points, leverage factors that exist and connect an activity. And if you understand them, each of those can be improved, increased, multiplied. And most people don't even look at it. You know, and it doesn't start at the beginning. It starts before the first mile. It continues after the first, the last mile. And it's the average company, if you just look at revenue system has something like between a low of 11 and a high of 51 interrelated impact factors. Nobody really measures, recognizes or tries to improve. And we were talking earlier that I understand a duality of, and I'm not saying this to be cool, I've just been exposed to so many broader thinkers that if I didn't retain a little of their, their, their profound knowledge, I'd be dumb. But, but most people don't even think about any of these things. But there's all kinds of, of ways that you could multiply the performance of a revenue system or a team or salespeople that nobody teaches. And, and it's almost a Tragic, because you asked me why I got into this after I stopped going back in time to my origin. I'm not trying to usurp you, I'm just giving you a deferred answer. So after a while, I hurt for entrepreneurs and CEOs who were working their heart out and accepting a fraction of, a fraction of the impact, the result, the contribution, the success that the effort, the opportunity, the resources, the capital, the team they were deploying could produce because they were living in what I'll call a very, very linear, wedded to tradition type of an incremental world. And I started trying to create what I now call an exponential entrepreneur who basically understands that you can work on the geometry of your business and you have an almost unimaginable spectrum of leverage points that you can improve safely, quickly, easily. And they, when they, when they work together, it's very explosive. Now, I'm sorry, I went on a tangent.
- [39:46]
Scott Clary
No, no, of course, no, no problem. Because I know you've spoken about like, geometric versus linear growth, and I know that this is some of the sort of the key pieces to your work where you found that entrepreneurs were basically unlocking less than 10% of their total opportunity in their business. Where do you think, where do you think the biggest blind spots are for entrepreneurs in their business?
- [40:12]
Jay Abraham
Well, I mean, I'll tell you what I have found. So everybody teaches you to go. We talked about this. Everyone wants a 10x exponential moonshot play. But what they don't really tell you is in order to do that, here's what you have to do. Usually it's got to be driven by sophisticated technology. If it's not something you're really aware of, you're going to have to find all the experts who understand the combined parts of that. You're going to have to pay them a very, very significant retainer. You are going to then have to allocate a lot of time and money to support teams to do it. You are going to have to choose the application and be lucky as heck if you are right. Concurrently, you're going to have to keep your regular business going. It's going to be like building your own custom home, Scott. It's going to take longer, costs more than you can possibly think, and it probably isn't going to work the way you want. And you're going to have to fund it one of three ways. Taking it out of cash flow, which will constrain your regular business, borrowing, which will constrain your cash flow, or diluting, which will constrain the Independence you want for your business because you don't want to dilute until you've got an asset that's blown up so that the multiple is going to be there. If you instead realize that within any business there are multiple leverage points that you can increase and impact and multiply, usually for zero additional investment or risk. And each one gives you performance enhancement, which translates to newfound cash flow and revenue that could be used down the pike to fund this revenue. Everyone wants a 10x revenue, whereas it's so much easier to get a 10x bottom line and it's more safe. And I don't know if I answered the question or not because I was on a roll, but I'm wondering if you want to re. Ask it if I didn't really address it correctly.
- [42:15]
Scott Clary
Well, I mean, you're so. You're so what I was looking for. Yeah, so you're highlighting.
- [42:20]
Jay Abraham
Okay.
- [42:21]
Scott Clary
Why it's hard. Go ahead.
- [42:23]
Jay Abraham
Yeah. So the first thing is, and again, I'm going back to my earliest stages, not profoundly new, but I first of all realized you could work on the geometry of a business. And if you did that, the results were that were outsized, you know, to, you know, to the 10th or 20th power. So the first thing is I created something called the three ways to grow a business. Most people think there must be a myriad of ways. So there's only really three major and three advanced. The three major are you increase the number of buyers, you increase ethically. It's got to be ethically the size of the transaction and thus the profit each transaction produces. And third, you increase the frequency or the utility. Frequency means if you have a highly recurring purchase, product or service, you make sure people buy it for the longest retention period possible. If you have many, you make sure that ethically, always ethically, you cross over and get them to buy as many products as often as practical. If you have only one product or service, you see what kind of ethical increased utility value you can gain from what I call sunk cost investments. Sunk cost investments are prospects that didn't buy your product. Sunk cost investments are people who bought one thing and could be buying that one thing frequently or many things. Sunk cost investment are people who bought everything. Sunk cost investments are variations that exist on in revenue generating like salespeople. And I have a story on that. If you want to go there, that'll blow your mind. But I mean there's just things like that. So the first thing is the three ways. Then if you get that far, you do the advanced three ways and that's really simple. The advanced three ways are you penetrate a new marketer niche every year. Next, you acquire a product or service every year. And why do you want to do that? Well, if you have a very expensive product or service, Scott, and you acquire a modest one, it's easier to start a relationship than to spend 10,000. If I could spend, you know, $25 or $100 or you acquire a product you can package with your normal product or service which may not double your average sale but might triple the profit that sale produces. Or if you acquire an expensive product or service, you put it on the end and that could double or redouble your ltv. And why do you want that? Because in the competitive world, you want to have the maximum competitive ethical advantage. If you don't have a patent advantage, if you don't have an exclusivity advantage, if you have double or triple the profit from a typical client or buyer, you have much more what is called allowable investment cost to invest, not spend to bring in the first sale, you could maybe invest twice what what I could. You can invest in bonuses, you can invest in more commission, you can invest in developing more distribution. So that's first thing. The second thing you do, it's very simple too. It's called a power parthenon of geometric growth. If I had all of your viewers in a room right now and I asked to people to stand when they basically heard a certain kind of a selling or revenue generating approach that they basically did almost exclusively, you get all over the place. Some would be salesforce, some would be webinars, some would be retail, some would be trade shows, so it doesn't matter. Some would be obviously social media and you'd ask them how much that generated of their business and it's normally 80 to 100%. But if you ask somebody where 80 to 100% comes from one thing and you've just identified 10 other ways that if they just added 10%, oh, I didn't do this. Pardon me, back to the three ways I have a. And I'll give you any of this you can put up freely on your site for people if you just increase those three categories. The main one, the number of buyers, the number, the size of the sale and the frequency or utility of purchase. 10% in three ways. It's not 10%. This is where geometry comes in. It's 33 and a third percent. If you double those three numbers, it's 800%. That's where geometry comes in. But you can apply geometry all the way through. The first is the three ways next and by the way, I have about 20 ways in each category that you can do it. And they're not that hard. But most people aren't taught to do that.
- [47:11]
Scott Clary
They're not thinking outside the box. Very basically they're not thinking outside the box. They're that right.
- [47:17]
Jay Abraham
Yeah. So then you do what I call a, a power Parthenon. If and I call it that because I start with what's called a diving board. Sounds very simplistic. Think about a diving board. In your mind the board is revenue. The support beam is the one primary source you're getting it from. If anything happens. Covid, you can't call on people. Apple changes their, their algorithm or, or, or, or, or Meta changes their algorithms. A platform gets saturated, a new one comes up. Anything happens, you're screwed. But if you have eight other pillars that are each adding 10, 15% more revenue than your main source, it's not 8 or 10, it's 10 times 10 times 10 times 10. And it gets off the chart. And then I take, I'll take it to sublime a bunch of smaller entrepreneurs and actually some larger ones get as much as 100%, 20 to 100% of their business from word of mouth or referrals. And when I used to do seminars, I don't do them anymore. When I used to do them, I'd have everybody stand up if they got at least 20 to 100% of their revenue from referrals and we'd go around the room and say tell me the percentage and tell me the numbers would be off the chart. 30%, 200,000, 50%, 5 million, 100%, 20 million. Then I'd say remain standing only if you, you have in place right now at least one. Formalize systematize continually adhered to referral generating strategy that you and your team always follow. 95% sit down. I'd say okay, remain stand. If you have 2, 95% of the 5% sit down. 3 they all sit down, we have 125. Because I've been able to look at so many industries that really think, think differently but I can go through but you change you. Then after you've done the power Parthenon, all this is working on geometry safely easily most of it can be done with very little investment, very little risk. And it can be the ROI can be unimaginable. Then you do what's called that I call them the nine drivers of exponential growth. Small shifts that have big outcomes change your Strategy, you change your results. A lot of of smaller SMB businesses, their strategy is to be tactical. Change your marketing. There's a bunch of ways to do. You change your results, change your business model, you change your results, change your distribution channels, you change your results, change how you use capital or the equivalent. There's all kinds of equivalents that could take a long time to explain it. You change your results, change how you use relationships, you change your results. Almost nobody realizes that literally you can double redouble and redouble a business not overnight, but almost overnight by setting up strategic alliances, partnerships, joint ventures, endorsement deals, recommended provider status, co branding and network networking referral networks. Excuse me. If you look at the data, it's very fascinating. 2000 of the top corporations in the United States right now get 20% of their revenue. But the real kicker here is 40% of their profit from partnerships. Microsoft gets $32 billion in their biggest division from partnerships. KPMG, one of the companies, spent 8 billion buying a company just because it had great partnerships. I mean, I get stories, go over.
- [50:58]
Scott Clary
It, but basically there's some companies that, that don't even sell direct to customer. Their entire business is partnerships.
- [51:05]
Jay Abraham
That's right. And most companies see, I mean, I do a lot of work in Israel and they're the most brilliant technological people but, and I say it to their face and there was an article in their Wall Street Journal that interviewed me on this. They're tactical as could be. They don't really understand strategy, understand partnering. They want to go alone, which is the hardest, slowest, most expensive. I was in the seminar business when I was about your age. I'm a lot older Now. We did $250 million, a quarter billion dollars of seminars on a worldwide basis. And my out of pocket initially was $300,000. I got every financial newsletter to promote me. I got every investment seminar company to promote me. I got Success magazine to promote me. I got entrepreneur to promote me. I got all the inflights to promote me on a revenue sharing basis. I had the number one event organizer in uk, promote me in Amsterdam, Promote me in Japan, Promote me before relationships strain in China, in Singapore, in Malaysia, in Italy. And I had no risk at all. I just shared revenue with them and they put the full force of their distribution, their assets, their clientele, their reach, their overhead at my disposal. I use an analogy if you want to think about partnerships, because it's pretty interesting. You understand what assets under management means, right? Anybody in investment would know that. Well, if you maximize your ability to really develop partnership relationships. You can control other people's assets under management. That could be literally as much as a billion dollars for no investment or risk. And the yield you get off of it is a lot more than 15 or 20% because they're paying, you know, millions of dollars in rent and payroll and research and technology. And they've spent millions or hundreds of millions on advertising. And you get to harness all of that for nothing but a share of the results that occur. And that's not even the bonus. The bonus is when they promote to their whole database. Even though you get direct business, you're getting highly credible brand building for nothing. I can go on, but I mean, I got lots of ways. Does that answer the question?
- [53:30]
Scott Clary
It does. I think that the bigger question is why do so many entrepreneurs get stuck in this linear thinking model? Because everything you're saying I agree with. It makes so much sense. But like you said, the majority of the people that you probably see do it the most expensive, the hardest, the most friction possible. I feel like that's the default twofold.
- [53:52]
Jay Abraham
Because I think that super logical thinking isn't that easy. But I'll give you a couple simple examples of it to show you how to motivate people. I think that they. Again, status quo, follow the herd, linear thinking. I'm going to do what you do. And I think trying things differently, if you have an infrastructure that is rigid is very hard. I'm attracted to. I am attractive to all kinds of people, but when they're left to their own devices and I don't really help them, they don't do much of anything with it because they get sucked into status quo. But I was going to give you a great example, so let me give you simplistic. So I've helped lots of highest performing companies in lots of industries. One of them is the number one Honda Acura dealer in the United States and maybe the country, I mean the world. And he basically came to a couple of my programs and he realized that the best place to access deals is in service. Because people are there with a car and it's got one of two things. It's either a great vintage and great shape way beyond their normal and they can offer them a great trade for it against something else. Or it turns out to cost so much that when they get the bill, they're freaked out and they can get them out of the bill without paying it. And just by something I shared with him in a Q and A section, he set up an entire sales department in service. And now he brings over a million dollars of gross profit to the bottom line, just in service itself. One of his colleagues I did something with, and he ran at the time the number one Mercedes dealership for profit in the United States. It was in San Jose, where all the technology companies are. They sold to AutoNation. But before that, he realized something. When he went home, he'd never analyzed performance of his finance and insurance department. F and I is where they make more profit than selling. You buy your car, Scott, you think everything's good. Then you go to F and I, and somehow now you walk away with 20 years of protection on your tires, and you'll never have to wax again. And if anything happens to your upholstery, they'll repair it free and all kinds of things. Well, that adds more profit than sales. But he never looked at performance. It turns out he had two people in finance, one during the day and one evenings and weekends. The daytime person was averaging $1,800 of gross profit contribution, and the evening was adding 2,500. But the evening person was only getting access to 35% of the deals just by changing the schedule. They made another $200,000 a year. I mean, it's. It's very. I mean, a month. Excuse me, a month. It's very interesting. And I'll tell you the greatest story, because I love this story. I've got many stories, and they're all real and from, you know, my very long experience. But. But years ago, I used to go to China. I don't anymore because there's. The relationships don't justify it. But there was a young man that came to one of my programs, and it was a Q and A after we did it. And he asked a very profound question. He said, what do you do if you're too small and the bank won't lend you money to grow? I said, well, tell me more. And he said, I'm a small local motorcycle manufacturer. Now, only in China, where you can have 100 million population city, would you be a local motorcycle manufacturer. But he said, if I had the money, I'd go all over Asia. I'd set up a factory. I'd open offices in all the countries. I'd recruit dealers, I would sell motorcycles everywhere. And then I said, okay, well, what's the problem? And he thought I was being flip and mean. He said, I told you, it won't give me money to grow. And I said, you don't need money. And this was very profound. I said, your problem is always going to be the solution. To someone else's biggest problem or undervalued opportunity. They just may not know it. You have to find them and show them. And I said, go all over Asia and find somebody in a not competitive, but a complimentary business that has huge factory they're not using, already has offices, has salespeople, has dealers, but isn't optimizing it to make a deal with him. And I gave him more context than that. And I came back about 15 or 18 months later and this guy comes back to the mic at another program and he's smiling like the Cheshire cat. And I said, what did you do? He said, I did what you said. I went all over Asia. When I got to Malaysia, to Kuala Lumpur, I found Asia's largest lawnmower manufacturer. They had a massive factory. They were underutilizing Second Shift. They had offices in 10 countries. They had 100 salespeople and thousands of dealers. We made a deal where all I had to do was bring the tool and dies that are the forms that make the parts and assemblies to create a product. I had to teach people in the factory how to do it. He had the factory, he provided everything. I had to teach the salespeople in all the countries how to recruit dealers and teach the dealers how to merchandise and sell motorcycles. And he said, in our first full year of operation, we both made $20 million net profit. I mean, there's so much, but it's. You've got to learn to think differently than everybody else you compete against.
- [59:12]
Scott Clary
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- [61:33]
Jay Abraham
Realize this is only one little tangential area of my body of work, but I'll be happy to answer it. You start by saying, okay, who else sells some? Okay, what else do people buy before, during, after and instead? Why instead? Because if you spent the money, let's say that you had Scott's weight loss supplement company okay, and you spent the money with advertising or trade shows to get a lot of prospects, but you only got a fraction that bought every one of those prospects is going to still be seeking some way to lose weight or to get healthier fit. If you partnered and you could do it two ways. A two way valve. You partner with other people that have alternative ways, whether it's equipment, whether it's online virtual training, whether it's portion control, food, then you're basically just optimizing the sunk cost investment. Or you bring those to your audience. Because most people in this hypothetical who would take a supplement do it for three or four months, they don't change their nutrition, they don't change their exercise, they're still fat, they're looking for a new drug and they go somewhere else and somewhere else. So you can optimize that. Who's already selling whatever people buy before, during, after. Instead the next is who is already selling or impacting or has the trust of the same decision maker. So if you just ask those questions, what else do they buy, what else, who do they else do they turn to? That answer will give you more deal possibilities. And then you give, you have to be a little more enlightened because you can go external, internal, or both. External means you take your company's product or service to all kinds of other collaborations that have access to the audience you want. Internal means you take all kinds of other products services to your audience because you have a sunk cost in that relationship. You perform due diligence, you make sure it's qualitatively up to the ethical and the qualitative criteria you want and you introduce that. And I've transformed people's business. A good example years and years ago, and I'm going back in time. I had the first company in Australia that sold CRM systems and it was very early and they were very expensive and they were spending a hundred thousand dollars literally on trade advertising and they were getting about a thousand leads and they were closing 3%. But it was a very expensive system. So it was profitable enough. They just kept on that kind of a treadmill. And I said, well look, you're wasting $97,000 of your hundred thousand dollar investment every month on people that don't buy buy. And I said it's not a sexy proposition. So most probably a lot of the people that don't buy really want the benefit. It's just yours is too expensive or too many bells and whistle or not good financing or too technical, whatever it is. Why don't we find a lesser entry level company that has a good product but can't market worth a darn, doesn't have the budget, get either the rights to it or a private label and give them a royalty and make that our downsell? We did and they started making many, many times more from the people they originally did not sell than from the ones they originally sold and the ones they originally sold became all profit. It's just thinking differently, Scott.
- [65:05]
Scott Clary
Yeah, and it's also again, it's choosing the path of least resistance because I think that business owners, they always feel like they have to innovate and come up with new products, products that serve your audience are already out there. And I think that's probably one of the like again, just mindset shifts. If people can wrap their head around that, that to your point, it's, it's geometric growth, it's, it's, it's a hugely leverageable asset as opposed to this linear growth that everybody sort of pursues.
- [65:32]
Jay Abraham
Good. No, I'm just going to say that if you take the. One of the things that I try to get people to do is realize there's so many realities going on in your life. Anybody that's listening, unless they're living in a cave, have traveled somewhat, they've traveled outside their city, they've traveled outside their state, maybe they've traveled outside of their continent. And each time you do it, you see an enormous spectrum of things that are not, that are not similar Here you see different topography, geography, religion, food, climate, religious moors or lack. And it expands your worldview. You need to do that in business. You need to travel constantly outside of what you do. When we did seminars, this was fascinating. We would have a thousand people for five days. So I would go to the bookstores when we had bookstores and buy as many non fiction books and magazines as I could. And I would figure out after two or three days what rocked you. So I'll ask you a question. Do you have a hobby, Scott?
- [66:37]
Scott Clary
I like gymming. I like playing hockey. I've always enjoyed that.
- [66:41]
Jay Abraham
If you said that to me at this scenario, I would give you a book or magazine on either cake decorating or micro and I'd make you read two chapters or two articles and come back two hours later and find one insight that you'd never thought of that had adaptability to your business. And everybody did that. But most people, they are self contained and constrained by only wanting to live in the world they live in and disacknowledging that. That's only one little microcosm of the world world as it exists. And the more you learn at a level that your competitors don't, the more I mean, see, I believe that people accept if it's fascinating. People think they have no control on a lot of variables. We talked earlier, it's a longer story. I can show anybody how if they're going to sell their business, how to multiply the multiple it'll be sold for at the end of a period of time. But most people don't think they have control of anything. You have so much more control because most people accept business being an equal playing field. If you Refuse to do that and you say I want to have every ethical advantage I can. I'll give you one more perspective here. I'm going to have an ADD intervention on myself in a minute. But there is a fallacy, Scott, in the belief that best practices is something that is great. It's very good. But let me tell you what happens if you're one of the first people early in the game to gain a best practice advantage that lasts for a few weeks, months until everybody gets it, everyone does it. Then if everyone's doing it, it's not a best practice, it's a standard operating procedure and gives you no advantage, although it could give you greater cost or quality and that gets passed on or not. But everyone's doing it. So it gives you no advantage. If you understand things nobody else does and you had to harness capitalize on them, that's advantage. And you don't have to play the game of competitive business on an equal playing field. But I think most people, their idea of competing is more grit or more money thrown at it.
- [68:56]
Scott Clary
We talked about geometric growth, we've talked about sort of business optimization, preeminence. These are ideas that you've had for, for years and years now. These have been what interests you now with business. You spoke about increasing valuation multiples. There's a couple different things that are sort of newer.
- [69:14]
Jay Abraham
We have a brand new thesis that I've been working on for the last couple of months. I've done research on it a lot and I'm call, it's got, I haven't said, I mean I work on things for a long time before I figure it all out. But I'm calling it binary breakthrough exponential business growth. And the summary is it's the ultimate hyper growth business playbook and it's a dual track way to blow up any business safely. It starts with the first level and it basically says you identify all the leverage points in your business and I focus on revenue generation but it has total application operations and distribution and all the other things. And you basically commit to increase every one of them, improve every one of them a mere 10 to 15%. Because just by doing all of them, not a few of them, but all of them. And first of all, you can't do all of them if you don't recognize, as I said, the nuclear interrelated OPIs, which are the overlooked performance indicators, not just the KPIs, then that alone will give you exponential growth. And that exponential growth is so safe and so, so it's so result certain, not Possible or probable but certain. And now you've got the war chest that you don't have to divert from cash flow or borrowing to do what I call the big idea game. Changing shifts that either bring a new way of doing something to your market or an extended version of doing it. I mean, I'll give you. And by the way, I'll give you a very fascinating Jay Abraham is ism here. Everyone talks about innovation, but they tend to define it in terms of technological drivers. You need AI, you need that. And it's wonderful. I mean I use ChatGPT nowhere close to what I could because I'm not a very sophisticated technological person. But all innovation really needs to be is the ability to bring greater value, benefit, advantage, protection, enhancement or enrichment or entertainment to a market in a way that they perceive it. They see the decisive difference between what you're offering them and everyone else and they want to take advantage of it. I mean, we have a. Just an example, I have a immigration attorney in Florida that we doubled them from 10 million to 20 million in one year by just being more innovative in friction point sensitivity of their audience. Most of their audience, half of them don't have cars, half of them have big families. They can't come during the day because they're, you know, they're working like mad trying to make a living. Whether you like, you know, immigrants and neat green cards or not. It's a niche. And if you want to bring them an innovative advantage, we started picking them up and taking them home after hours. We started having classes for their kids. We did, we started teaching their kids English. We made weekends and Sundays available. We fed them and we did things that were very non technological but we doubled our value and our revenue. So I mean, it's just all kinds of ways you can take this up and down the arc of sophistication. It still works.
- [72:36]
Scott Clary
What do you think blinds business leaders to those opportunities for growth in their own business?
- [72:42]
Jay Abraham
Part of it is what we talked about in the beginning. There is a, there is a. I'm trying to think of the right word. I want to say dearth. That may not be the right word. There's such an overabundance of one trick pony experts who are almost screaming that their one tactical enhancement is going to transform a business that I think people buy into it. I tend to be more holistic and want to basically work on the whole system. Just like if you say I want to keep your body going, I mean they're a specialist and that's what they are. But if you wanted to really, you start by having, you know, your gp. Basically he or she studies every system that interrelates. Your respiratory system, your neurological system, your, your gastronomical system, your, you know, all the systems. And I don't think most people, I mean big corporations do it, but entrepreneurs which are really, I, I tend to concentrate on very low 5 or 10 million high 100, 150. I, I don't do big corporations because I'm not, I, I, I'm not good in, in a, in a boardroom or with, with a very structured type of a market. But when entrepreneurs who are the decision makers, first thing we try to do is let's say, look, all these things affect one another. It's not one thing, I mean there are great but, and also I'll give you one more thing that I realized and this is, you might not ask this, but it's another distinction that I worked on for a long time. I got started and everyone thought of me as a marketing, whatever you want to call it, wizard and advertising and promotion. And I was, but I came to a realization about 10 years ago that was very profound that as great as marketing, sales, all these things are to initiating business, they are diminishing resources. You know, advertising wears out, media changes, costs you have no control of the top salesperson could be hired away, retire, go to work for the competitor or start his or her own business. But if you have a superior strategy, if you have a much more superb business model, if you have better distribution channels, if you have a lot of very prominent iconic people advocating for you to their audiences, if you have a much more preemptive advantage or monopolistic advantage, or optimally a exponential advantage, and if you're masterful at reclaiming sunk cost and transforming them into revenue streams, now you've got the advantages to compete and run circles around people. And I tried teaching that, that, but shifts like that are hard for entrepreneurs if they don't have a lot of infrastructure. It's hard for people who are rigid to a belief system. A lot of times I am penalized. And this is fascinating. I've been exposed to some of the most sophisticated experts in the world. I've been exposed to some of the most interesting industries in the world and I've done it on five continents. But I'm able in a way that today I might be too add for you, but I'm able to take very sophisticated understandings things and torque them down and translate them into so elegant simple explanations that people discount them because they sound too obvious.
- [76:13]
Scott Clary
So I think that the way that you create your work and the way that you structure your ideas, that's the way that more, for lack of a better term, thought leaders that have experience should structure their ideas because it's digestible, it's easy to understand and it's practical. And it also is holistic, which I think is the, it's the X factor that you bring to the table, which I see not a lot of people bringing to the table. In the world of social media where everybody says that my way is the only way that's going to work. It brainwashes people into almost this zealotry of how to build something or how to do something. And I think it's actually quite toxic and I think that it actually hurts more than helps when you put out content or teach or create an audience. And basically saying that the way that I've done this is the only way that it can ever be done. And it sort of further propagates that kind of thinking that you're, that you're discussing about these one trick ponies. And those one trick ponies teach other entrepreneurs to be one trick ponies and they miss out on so much opportunity and it's sad and I don't like that.
- [77:16]
Jay Abraham
The worst part is if it works because then it reinforces a self limiting and delusional belief. Belief and you'll never really grow to your fullest potential.
- [77:27]
Scott Clary
I don't believe that everyone on the Internet is malicious, but I, it's almost. And there definitely are some, but that's not the point. The point is the ones that aren't malicious who have only like, to your point, have only achieved success by doing one thing well, that's all they know because they've only been doing it for five years, 10 years max. And that's what they're teaching everybody who is, the majority of people who are, are thought leaders on, on the Internet, on social media. They're all very young because they've understand, they've, they've understood how to market.
- [78:00]
Jay Abraham
That is a great. Yeah and, and you've got to acknowledge that. But you know, I learned from people that were a very, very elevated. Their ethos and their, their, their, their compass and their, and their integrity was very, very lofty and they taught me that it's almost. If you go back to the medical axiom, I always say the wrong word. It's the hypocratic oath where you do thine patient no harm. I don't believe a lot of young people realize the harm they do. We have a couple of, of things we used to sell. And they were designed for entrepreneurs to help them grow their real businesses. But I accidentally created what I'll call business opportunity propositions. And when I realized that, we stopped. Literally when I realized that we had one that made $4 million profit the first year. And when I analyzed the people buying it, they weren't the market I want. And I didn't want it on my conscience that I was over inspiring people to believe they had this infinite ability to do things that really the vast majority couldn't, wouldn't unless they had a vehicle to do it in. And I think there are a lot of people out there that don't understand the consequences. I'll tell you one of the most horrible things that happened to me early in my career. And it had an indelible impression. One of the jobs I have was selling radio. Advertising. Advertising. And I was young, I was maybe 22, and I was selling it for a very successful radio station. But my list were all the people who were independent little businesses who'd never advertised and they didn't have an agency. And my job was to inspire and compel them to want to entrust us to grow their business. And I was a deluded optimist. And I really believed our business had that ability. Our radio station and I could persuade people who'd never been on radio to Entrust 2000, 3000, $5000. And this is 40 years ago. That was a lot of money for the little companies. And then we added our agency or we added our radio station. A man whose claim to fame was that he could write a 60 second commercial in 60 seconds. And it was a piece of crap. But I was too young to realize. Unconscionable. I want to call it like a terrible, terrible. What would I use as the right word? A terrible negative I had done to these people because people entrusted me to have the power to help transform their business. And when it didn't, they were forever turned off for radio because we didn't have somebody that understood the same things we're talking about. And this goes, we can go deep into how, you know, how to create copy that multiplies. Because you can change one of nine variables in an ad or a sales script or an email or a landing page or what you say at a trade show. And you can double redouble, redouble again. The result we tested one time, Scott, 33 ways of greeting somebody at the front door of a very large furniture store. And we Tripled. Not only conversions buyers, but we got the average sale up. But most people don't know that. And going back to my story, that man, through the vessel of J. Abraham, deluded Optimus, believing that I had the omnipotent power with my one trick pony radio station of transforming the revenue of these small entrepreneurs managed to destroy three to five thousand dollars of their very precious commodity. But we're still. They never would trust radio, which was tragic because the right copy on the right station with the right strategy could be very, very, very profitable. But I ruined them. And I think of a lot of these influencers the same way.
- [82:18]
Scott Clary
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of, that's what you're alluding to before. If it's not the fit or you can't deliver what the customer actually needs, then that's when you, that's when you, that's when you have to point them in the right direction.
- [82:31]
Jay Abraham
Right. That's being preeminent. And what happens when you are, you don't make every dollar, but you really like yourself because you're living in total integrity. And what happens is when you do that, even if you lose the maximum or even the entire sale, when you go back to somebody, you know, they're great. Even when somebody, when somebody. But I have clients, if somebody contacts them and it's evident that they're not going to purchase now, but the reason is not that they think my client's product or service isn't really superb. It's just that they can't come to alignment on the, on the. Either it's too much or too expensive or too whatever. I instruct all my clients, salespeople to first of all thank them profoundly or profusely, whatever the word would be, and then say, look, we hope that the choice you make is a great one, but always feel free to recommend anyone, you know, who would benefit from what we offer and the price and the sophistication. We always, we never, we never go like, screw you, hang up. You're terrible for not buying from us. We always play a long game. And many, many, many, maybe not big corporations, but a lot of entrepreneurs play as a trick tremendously. I guess I would call a brevity type of a short game. And it makes no sense because you're going to need business tomorrow as much, if not more than today and next year and next year. And if you basically, if you set everybody up to have such favorable predisposition, win, lose or draw in whatever transaction you have now. Oh, I'm sorry, one of the other things about preeminence and its profound about is you don't wait for money to change hands before you start investing in the other side. You don't wait till I buy from you before you start educating me, advising me, sharing not just superficial stuff but stuff that'll make me a believer. I think I told you we're getting ready to put up a 768 page research dossier on how to engineer big ideas. We're going to put up a 220 page page dossier on all the hundred or so things that I'm able to focus on that most people don't. Don't think I put out more. The stuff that we used to give away, we gave 800 resources away for 10 years and didn't even ask for an opt in because I wanted to be a better, I wanted to be a benefactor. I didn't want on my conscience that I was teasing people and, and I think a lot of people don't understand that you can operate here and it's very congested world of very formidable but commodity type competition or you can choose to operate here and rarefied and it's exhilarating and it's positively intoxicating and, and you're in control. You can, you're at command and control instead of being control.
- [85:43]
Scott Clary
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- [86:20]
Jay Abraham
With the price of just about everything.
- [86:22]
Scott Clary
Going up, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us we brought in a reverse auctioneer which is apparently a.
- [86:28]
Jay Abraham
Thing Mint Mobile unlock unlimited premium wireless everybody get 30, 30 better get 30, better to get 20, 2020 better get 20, 20 everybody get 15, 15, 15 15.
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Scott Clary
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- [87:57]
Jay Abraham
It's very interesting. I kind of remember because I had something I was thinking about today that I thought if they just did this one more action after they interacted with me, I would be so much more inclined in, in a few months. And I can't remember what it was, but it's fascinating. And you see it, you see it a lot all over. We do. We have a pretty big house and I have a beach house also. So we use trade people and it's fascinating because they rarely call you back on time, they rarely make their proposals on time. They don't follow up. And you think if you only did those things in a systematic, strategic way, all things being equal and assuming you have had the discipline and the capacity and the ability to do all the jobs you get, you'd probably double or redouble your business just by doing that. See, I struggle and hurt. I think if you're going to invest a day, a minute, a time, a dollar, an opportunity, why would you want to get the least out of it? If the same effort or less time or less can give you so much more now, but even more compounding strategically later if you play a different game.
- [89:15]
Scott Clary
But, but a lot of people, that's the issue. A lot of people don't play those games. That's, that is the, and, and more people have to, if you're listening to this, I mean this is, this is the strategy to stand out. This is the strategy to be different. And I think that people, humans are inherently lazy. They want to do the bare minimum. But it's fabulous what happens when you don't just do the bare minimum. I think that at the onset it seems daunting. It seems like, oh, my goodness, you know, business is hard enough. How can I always go the extra mile? Which is really what this is. But, you know, think about the biggest companies in the world. Think about true enterprise value created, not just a hobby business. True enterprise value created. The ones that stick around always have to go the extra mile. That's how they stand out. Because there really isn't any companies that I can think could of that don't go above and beyond as much as humanly possible that are still around and are still pleasures to deal with. Forget about. I mean, yeah, maybe you don't love your cell phone company or something like that, but the companies that are growing at like sort of the speed of light, the trillion dollar valuations, they're doing things that no other companies do.
- [90:29]
Jay Abraham
Yeah, no, they. Absolutely. And, and when you play that game, once you transition to that level, I mean, it's, it's just, it's so much I don't know about you. I think you're this way because we've had some really wonderful conversations. I can't imagine. I mean, I know a lot of people. I'll go to events and I'll see a lot of my, I'll call them a contemporary. And I'm not, pardon me, demeaning anybody, but it's literally somebody who, who, they're very good in marketing. They'll spend a lot of time on their, on their, on their digital marketing. So I give them credit for that, but they don't really spend a lot of time trying to grow and develop their, their, you know, their capacity to.
- [91:16]
Scott Clary
Contribute before we wrap up. You know, we've gone through a lot of sort of the old ideas, some of the new as well. What would be some last words of wisdom, some last insight that you want to leave the audience with?
- [91:29]
Jay Abraham
Well, it's, it's. It. I, I wish I could say I'm an original thinker. I will say I'm an original synthesizer that have been able to take filaments from lots of very, very much brighter people and weave them into the fabric of what I stand for. But I think what I stand for is not being content to be average or even above average, but to go for being preeminent. I think it's. You should always work on the geometry of your business. I think it is that if you're Going to invest your life in an entity that you're depending on for fulfillment, income satisfaction, wealth creation, quality of life that you better think through whether you're getting it. I always say, if you can't, tell me, Scott, what do you and your business stand for? Why do you stand for it? Who do you stand for? What does standing for it mean in all senses, not just external, but internally. What you're getting at it, what you're giving and how you validate and verify that you are really manifesting that and getting positive validation. If you don't know that, you'll never get it. And a lot of people don't really. I mean there's a very tragic, and this might be interesting, and I'll give you a really wonderful quote that somebody else gave me that I love to end with. There's a piece of research, it's not the quote. 95% of all entrepreneurs never reach their goals. And the reason is they really don't have reverse engineered, very high correlated goals. They don't know exactly what has to happen by category, by advertising vehicle, by product line, by salespeople at certain intervals to get to a certain compound growth. They just have their goals. I want to make a million dollars or I want to be able to sell it for $20 million or I want to be able to, you know, to have it keep growing at 10%. And the demands they put on themselves, while it seems stressful today, are really very modest. The quote is most entrepreneurs, maybe not CEOs if it's a large corporation, but they struggle non verbally with the wrong question. Question. This is a tormenting, haunting question. But they don't really say it. It's just always bouncing around. And the question is, am I worthy of this goal? Do I really have the capability of keeping this business going for the next 20 years? Do I really have the ability to compete against the larger or the more technologically sophisticated? Do I really have the ability to keep this business going to where I can exit for a huge payday? When you realize how much more is possible from time, effort, access, investment capital, human capital, intellectual capital, relational capital. The right question is not am I worthy of the goal? It's the opposite. Is this goal worthy of me? And I think that's a profound conclusion. Vision.
- [94:46]
Scott Clary
Amazing. I want people to go explore your work. I want people to just consume. I, I have decks from you that I'm going to link in the show notes. If there's others you can give them.
- [94:57]
Jay Abraham
It's. I'm, I'm Very generous. You can give them.
- [94:59]
Scott Clary
I was going to say where, where else should people go?
- [95:00]
Jay Abraham
Yeah, well, I mean if we, we. We're in the pro. I have a. I have a website and it's been around for too long and we're redoing it. But you can go there and it's got stuff. But if they want to go to you, I'll give you stuff you can put on your site. They can go to my site if they're large enough. I'm always interested in understanding and exploring with them. They can go to my name, J ayaabraham.com but there's stuff on our. And really and truly everybody and their brother has knocked off my work. You could probably put my name in and find 100 people who are unlawful, you know, using my work. I mean there's a lot of stuff on YouTube. I've got some really cool. I mean I've done lots of things like this and usually they're eclectic because they ask me interesting question and I go a little bit rogue on them. But yeah, and you know, if they, if they, you know, we've got a lot of things that I think are readily available. I haven't looked because I was going to say this and I didn't. When I was giving away 800 resources, some of them were programs that we had sold for $5,000. And all I asked was, I don't care if you don't give me your email or opt in, all I ask is share it with at least 10 people. Which I thought was a very simple request and nobody did. They were selfish. So I took them off because they didn't get what I was all about, if that makes sense. And I'd stopped doing this. Well, you still have some good ones up there. And we have a secret, secret file I think that's nestled and it's got 50, or we call it 50 shades of J and it's still up somewhere. I will find where what the link is and give it to you because it's got some really cool stuff from the past and then. And I'll give you some stuff you can put on your site. I got books, I got, I mean any of my keynotes. I never do the same keynote twice. So they're very interesting.
- [96:54]
Scott Clary
So that's okay. So that's the call to action. That's the gentleman's agreement. So if you download this stuff, stuff, share it with at least 10 people, that's all you got to do. That's it.
- [97:03]
Jay Abraham
Easy. Yeah, that's it, it'll make me happy. I mean, I'm at a legacy at my age. I mean, I like deals that are lucrative and I love counseling and being somebody's masterful thinking, you know, partner and their strategist and their, you know, and their profit multiplier. But I also am very benevolent and a lot of people are selfish. One of the things that people are too busy and self consumed to want really to contribute to others the way. And that's really sad to me.
- [97:31]
Scott Clary
Yeah, I think that. Listen, there's some good ones out there. Hopefully there's some good ones that are listening to this podcast that, that take this information and pass it on.
- [97:39]
Jay Abraham
You tolerated my wildly eclectic style, so thank you.
- [97:43]
Scott Clary
I like your style. It's good. It's very good. That's the best kind of style. I don't like the scripted stuff. You get the real, you get the real information when you dive into stuff that the person actually cares about. And that's what I wanted to do. So I'm happy. I'm very, very happy. Thank you.
- [97:58]
Jay Abraham
Thank you so much.
- [97:59]
Scott Clary
No, it's my pleasure. It's my absolute pleasure. So I'll link everything below. We have a ton of links for, for everyone listening, if you like, if you like Jay, then obviously go check him out. Go to his website. That'll be in the show notes as well. Last, last question I always like to ask because it's different, a little bit of a different take. You've had an incredible career. Career, worked with some of the most incredible people on earth. If you had to pass only one lesson onto your kids, what would that lesson be?
- [98:29]
Jay Abraham
That's really a great question. I always wanted my children. And I have a lot of them. I have seven. I always want them to be. I didn't care if they loved me or hated me. I wanted them to be. Be great human beings and add value to society and, and have great respect for everyone and realize that there's nobody, that there are a few exceptions, some very bad players in the world, but the vast majority, it doesn't matter Their, their socioeconomic sophistication or, or, or, or lack. Everybody, with little exception, deserves to be treated with, with dignity. Relevancy. Significant. And there's one other word, and that is respect. And I always tried to do that to my children and they turned out quality children. Some are very successful. Some are just, you know, they're happy doing what they're doing, but they're good human beings. And I always want to know that when I leave this earth I've left the world better off because I was in it. Because if I haven't, that I've sucked oxygen out of it. And that's not what I wanted my life to be. And it's not what I want. The children that I brought into the world and all future children, they do.