Here’s an interview with a honest to goodness Joint Venture deal making master we’ll call Mr. JV. Mr. JV began his career in Joint Ventures 20 years ago in South Africa. He deals mainly with small to medium sized businesses all over the world.

If you’ve been studying business deal making or joint ventures, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by this interview. Mr. JV. presents Joint Venturing in a simple, down-to-earth fashion that you’ll understand and learn a great deal from. You’ll hear about real life deals with real people in the real world.

His international organization teaches people how to broker joint venture deals with no risk and unlimited opportunity. He teaches students how to link people together and to get paid for it by using existing resources.

In this interview, you’ll learn how to position your self as a “middle man” for setting up deals where you share the profits. If you’re a business owner, you’ll learn how to arrange a joint venture deal for yourself.

You learn how to think logically about removing cost and risk for each deal you make. Lean how to master strategic issues such as:


What is fair for each person involved
How is true profit calculated
How each person will be paid
When each person will be paid



You'll hear why joint ventures are more about psychology and human nature than mere contracts. Since human nature is so important in the creation and success of joint ventures, you’ll have to be realistic and not expect every deal to go smoothly. Each player in a deal must go into the venture with an optimistic idea that it will last for a long time.

If you want to learn a way to restore your financial dignity, joint ventures can be a great solution. If you’re a senior who wants to work but can’t get a job or a young people coming out of school or a person who has been laid off from your job or even just someone who wants to improve their lifestyle and not be locked in sitting behind a desk, keep reading.

Being an effective joint venture deal maker may be for you. You don’t have to be a salesperson. It’s really about understanding. If you can help someone to get what they want, you can get paid for it.

In addition to this interview, you’ll learn about ongoing education and support for people who want to create financial independence using Joint Ventures. Each of these resources holds a wealth of free information about Joint Ventures and about his programs and philosophies.

Michael: Give me your best, most simplest definition for a layperson on what a joint venture is?

Mr. JV: I think the ideal of a joint venture is to understand a very important thing and that is that we don’t have money problems, we’ve got thinking problems.

[MUSIC]

Michael: Hi, this is Michael Senoff with www.hardtofindseminars.com  . Here is a one-hour recording with one of the world’s most foremost experts on joint ventures. He’s been educating businesses on how to set up, establish, and make money on joint ventures for over 20 years. It’s a fascinating call where we cover a huge array of topics, situations, concerns, and most importantly, many success stories. Make sure you listen to the end of this recording because at the end of this recording I’m going to make you a special offer. I hope you find this helpful and get ready. Enjoy.

Now, a lot of people here joint venture. You’ve got Internet marketers all over the place talking about how great joint ventures are, and so a lot of people have never heard this term. How would you characterize or give a definition to it in the layman’s terms for someone who has no experience with business? What is a joint venture?

Mr. JV: Well, a joint venture essentially, Mike, is when people work together to achieve a common goal and share the resources that are currently available to them. We teach people to broker joint venture deals that might not be in their own business, in fact, they may not even have a business, but we show them how to link people up and get paid for that using the existing resources.

Michael: So, is your focus more on showing people how to become like a middleman for setting up joint ventures or actually doing the joint ventures themselves if they have a business or is there a difference?

Mr. JV: No, we actually do both because people in business often get stuck in terms of sales. They see how much money is coming into their business. What they don’t realize is that it’s not about sales, it’s about net profit after taxes. So, they can use joint ventures in their own business to increase their sales and they can also go back and increase extra revenues and profits into their lives from other businesses, which is often even more lucrative.

Michael: We’ve heard of a real estate broker, what is a joint venture broker?

Mr. JV: Well, I think probably the best thing is to let me give you an example of what happened yesterday. Collin called me up…he’s one of the people who’s involved with us…and he said I was talking to a guy who has a very successful online membership of entrepreneurs. He’s got 11,000 members, he’s got three business magazines, and he’s interested in talking with you. And that’s all Collin did. He basically picked up the phone and called me, put the phone down, it took him five minutes.

Michael: Now, is Collin one of the members of your joint venture inner circle club?

Mr. JV: Yes, he’s a member, but he doesn’t own anything. He’s just one of our members. He called me up and he said this is what is going to happen. So, I called this fellow back and in 25 minutes we agreed that we would advertise my products and services and business in all three of these glossy magazines, on these websites, and to these 11,000 members on a contingency basis, which means that I would pay him for any business that came out of there. No cost or risk to me. No cost or risk to him. And I then contacted Winston, who is a fellow that also works with us on websites. He’s putting all the technology together. He’s doing all the banners, the graphic art, everything else and we put together a deal whereby all four of us, Collin, myself, Winston, and the other guy, who owns all this resource, all these connections, all of us together are going to make money if something works. If it doesn’t work, nobody loses anything. Everybody is happy…

Michael: Let’s look at the four players. You’ve got you involved. You’re going to make money on the sales and the new customers for you dollar maker, all your joint venture products through his list, right.

Mr. JV: That’s right.

Michael: He’s going to make a piece of the action on those sales because it’s his names and his list and his magazines, right.

Mr. JV: Right.

Michael: And how’s the web guy going to make money? Does he get a piece of it?

Mr. JV: Yes, he’s going to get a piece. Winston, Collin, myself, and the other guy, all four of us, are going to make money if anything happens. The original guy, Collin, just picked up the phone and called me. It took him five minutes. All the other work is getting done by other people, and everything’s being leveraged, so he just has to sit back and wait for the money to come in.

Michael: So, you’ve got Collin who did nothing but bring people together. So, is the money split equal or how do you decide who makes what?

Mr. JV: Well, we decide that between the four of us. We essentially look at what’s fair in terms of input, how much work they put in, what do they own, how much do they deserve. So, it depends on what people put in. It depends on what you negotiate and everything is negotiable. I pay out up to 50% in commissions because it’s money I wouldn’t have had and on the backend, everybody can make money in a game.

Michael: So, in this deal, who would you characterize has the largest assets?

Mr. JV: I think I would have the largest assets because I own…but on the other hand, Collin is making money for a phone call, the other guy is leveraging his existing database and building a relationship with us. Everybody wins. And everybody is very happy with the deal.

Michael: A lot of people, I think have a hard time figuring out what’s fair and how much each person gets. So, if the guy with the 11,000 members…he’s got the names…you’ve got the products, Collin was a bird dog basically and made an introduction, which in my opinion probably would have not as much clout as the names and the products. And then you’ve got the website guy who’s going to trade some of his time and labor. So, how are you going to divide this deal up if it works? Can you give a specific example for anyone who maybe battling?

Mr. JV: On a $197 deal, the guy who owns the list gets $50. The guy that’s doing the website gets $35. Collin would get $15 and I would get $97.

Michael: That’s pretty good. Now, are you splitting up the gross sales or the net profits?

Mr. JV: Well, everything that we do is gross because we’re selling online products and the membership is really not costing us. When it comes to boot camp, I get a little bit more because that’s a full day seminar. But having said that, to put an extra guy into a boot camp doesn’t cost me anything really, just an extra seat in the seminar.

Michael: If you’re a joint venture broker or if you’re setting up joint ventures and you have to decide what the other person is going to get paid, is it smart to do it on gross versus net and what are the advantages and disadvantages of each that you can think of?

Mr. JV: That’s a very good question. A lot of people fudge the numbers when it comes to gross and net.

Michael: How can they do that, tell me?

Mr. JV: I’ll give you another real life example. I have a guy who has a website business and he was giving me 20% of the gross of any business I brought him. So, if he got paid $15,000, I would get 20% of that or $3,000. And that was working really well and then one day he called me up and he said I’ve got all these increased costs, do you mind if I deduct my costs. And instead of taking the time to find out what he was talking about and what his costs were deemed to be, all of a sudden he said his costs were 50% and he cut me half.

Michael: So, he basically said do you mind if we change our agreement from gross to net. That’s what he basically asked you.

Mr. JV: That’s right. But up until then, everything had worked out. So, it’s very important because what net really is and what people deem it to be depends on whether it’s profits for new business or whether it’s incremental business. A good example is a restaurant. The restaurant has a food cost per customer percentage average in North America of about 32%. If he’s factoring in his overhead, his labor, his electricity, everything is factored in, then he’s not making a lot of money. But if his restaurant is already running and his overhead is already being paid and another guy walks into the restaurant during a meal and sits down and has a meal, his real true customer percentage is 32%. So, he’s making 68% on that meal because he’s not factoring in…it’s incremental profit. His overhead has already been covered. The difference between that incremental profit is where he’s looking at his real cost or whether he’s including his overhead or not. And that needs to be established up front. And you can be as sophisticated or as simple as you like. We had one person who wanted to start factoring her cost from Visa and Master Card. So, she’s getting a little bit cheap. It depends, too, to what extent you want to take it and what sort of relationship is in place when you’re going into it.

Michael: What do you teach in your boot camps? When a guy has two parties…he’s acting as a broker, he’s got someone who is got product and he has someone who’s got a list. He brings them together and they’re both willing partners. What do you train the broker…how to set this up so all three parties have an understanding of exactly what’s going to happen? Do you have agreements, contracts? Do you recommend not doing that because it can kill a deal? Do you recommend bringing an attorney in? Walk me through some of the best steps and strategies you’ve seen to make a deal go down rather than bust up.

Mr. JV: The most important part of all these relationships…that’s why we started the joint venture forum. We have a code of ethics. We’ve actually turned down 39 applicants and fired four members. So, it depends, first of all, on the relationship. If you know the person really well and you’ve been doing business for a while, it’s not that necessary. If it’s a new relationship, then you want to get it in writing, but we’re not lawyers, so we can’t give legal advice and we don’t get involved in contracts and non-disclosures and memorandums of understanding. What we say, think logically how you can remove the cost and risk and then think logically, what is a fair deal for everybody and how do we really understand what the profit is, how we will be paid, when we will be paid. And so, once everybody understands that and everybody sees what’s in it for them, it’s a lot more about psychology and human nature than it is about contracts because a lot of the time it’s relationship building. And if people understand the backend and they understand profit, it’s a lot easier to deal with them. So, the boot camp…in answer to your question Michael…is to teach people the mindset of joint venture. Teach them the understanding of business, which a lot of business people, unfortunately, don’t have. There’s a lot of business people that don’t know what their acquisition cost is, they don’t know what their margin net worth is; they’re really flying in the dark and they’re working so hard to stay riding that tiger and just hoping and putting out fires. They don’t stand back and as Michael _____ says, working on the business instead of in it.

Michael: You talk about human nature, but isn’t it human nature…and I’m just playing the devil’s advocate…partnerships, most of them end in divorce, whether it’s marriage or business partnerships. It’s just human nature; they don’t last. So, how long can we expect joint venture to last before human nature takes over and people are getting greedy? You gave an example of a guy who wanted to change your deal from gross to net. I mean this has got to be a reality. How would you prepare someone who is setting up joint ventures to prevent this or to protect themselves from, or would you just tell them to not expect every deal to go smoothly and they’re only going to last for a certain amount of time?

Mr. JV: And you’re right. Human nature…people get greedy. Not everybody does, but a lot of people do. I met with Paul-Jean Meier and he said to me, 65% of the things that I tried in business failed, but the 35% made me wealthy in the 35% that worked and given that there’s no money or no risk involved. When somebody cuts you out of a deal or doesn’t pay you, you’ve got an option. You can try and sue him and you can get bitter and twisted. You’re probably not going to get your money back. You’re probably just going to lose more money. Or you can shake the dust from your shoes, move on, and start making money somewhere else because essentially you haven’t lost anything and now you know you don’t want to deal with that guy anymore. So, we’re very realistic about business and, as you say, human nature, there are people that are going to rip you off. There’s another side to that that a lot of people miss and that’s called branding. But branding is very important. I said to a guy the other day, he said to me, well how do you know that people won’t download your software and send it free of charge to their friends or copy your CDs. I assume people do that and it’s great branding for me because it’s emphasizing me. My website is going out there. My name is going out there. Have a look at me on Google and you’ll see that it’s working. It’s how you look at it and it’s how you set it up. If you set it up so that you really have nothing to lose and everything to gain, and worst case scenario that you’re going to make something, I think that’s the mature way to look at business. Not every relationship is going to work and we know that, but if you go in realistic and thinking well if this works out it’s great, but if it doesn’t, I’ve learned something, I’ll move on. That’s a good attitude to have. And then you also know that you’ll never deal with that person again and you’re going to keep your friends from dealing with him, as well.

Michael: Do you set time limits on the joint venture relationship in gratuity or as long as we’re doing the deal or will you make it for five years or ten years or is it all different?

Mr. JV: I try to do them in gratuity because I think people that understand the longer we’re working together the more stuff we can do and it’s business I wouldn’t have had. And I’m building relationship with somebody that is getting a check from me every month. So, I’ve got _____ with them and with their database and I could always go back to them and build on that relationship instead of trying to start a new one. I think that’s very important. It again goes back to the mindset. Do you want long-term relationships that you can continually build on as a good foundation for future business and expansion because then you’ve got exponential growth and leverage? As my database grows, people that have been involved with me for a long time will continue to benefit from it because I trust them and like them more than somebody I just met two days ago.

The ideal of a joint venture is to understand a very important thing and that is you don’t have money problems, you’ve got thinking problems. And the thinking problem that we have is industrial age conditioning that you’ve got to work hard, you’ve got to work long hours, you’ve got to risk a lot in order to make money. And the reality is that these days, everything that you need, every resource that you could possible want is already available through somebody else; other people’s money, other people’s time, access, databases, reputation…everything. And a good example of that is when we came to Canada eight years ago…I was trained primarily in the States and I’ve lived inside Africa my whole life. I got here at the age of 45…eight years ago…I’m 53 now. And we’ve never been in Canada before. And coming to the Canadian west coast is a bit of a shock from a business perspective because it’s very slow, very laid back compared to the east coast…even in the States. I think the west coast tends to be a little slower than the east coast. We couldn’t even rent an apartment. When I went to rent an apartment, the woman says to me, well, you’ve got no reputation, you’ve got no credit record, we can’t rent you an apartment. I said well I’ll pay the rent two years in advance and in cash. She said no, that’s illegal; you can’t do that. So, I had to get the head of the U.S. Peace Corps from Southern Africa who is a friend of mine in South Africa to fax the agent in Vancouver who then faxed the owner in Hong Kong to give me permission to rent her apartment.

Coming from having television in South Africa and writing books, coming here to absolutely no reputation, no connections, so all we did was we went to the Chamber of Commerce…had 1,800 members and we said I will go in every week, I will do one hour of free seminar for your members every week for three months at no cost to you. They advertised that to 1,800 members in the newspapers. They set up seminars for me to do with the Royal Bank, which is the biggest bank in Canada, with colleges, and all of that was paid for by the Chamber of Commerce, by the bank, and by the colleges. I did seminars. I had 250 people showing up. No cost or risk to me and borrowing the reputation and credibility of the banks, the Chamber of Commerce and everybody else, well within, I think four months of getting here, I was living off of my business and we didn’t work for the first two months. So, all we did was leverage existing resources, existing databases, existing distribution and the reputation. And within two months of working the business, we were living off of the business. My accountant couldn’t believe it. A lot of accountants don’t understand business very well. They’re selling time.

For a newbie coming in, everything you need is already available. You don’t need to go out and spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on some business or franchise. You can if you like, but there’s an easier and risk free way of doing that. And when you go along to a networking group where people are selling their product or service and they’re very limited in their scope or their potential, I go into a group of 20 people, I just want to know what they want. Who can I connect them with? And if a guy is looking to buy a house, I can connect him with a realtor and get up to 50% of their commission. So, I don’t need to be a realtor to sell a house.

Michael: What were you doing in South Africa with TVs and writing books? What were you writing books on?

Mr. JV: I was doing exactly the same thing. I was teaching businesses how to make money using joint ventures. And so, we did well there because we were known and I’d lived there all my life. I’ve done a lot of things. But when you come to a new country, you’re absolutely unknown and then it doesn’t count. What you did in another country, it’s not deemed important in the new country, often, and it’s understandable.

Michael: What brought you over here?

Mr. JV: First of all, South Africa is a very dangerous country now and a lot of people are leaving. Those that can are leaving. But more importantly, there’s massive potential in North America and living here. You have access worldwide. My goal is to reach millions of people with a message that you can use joint ventures to restore your dignity financially, your self-respect. The seniors that don’t know what to do anymore that are not living on their income. These kids coming out of school, employees that are getting laid off, business people that are in trouble, and then people that just want to improve their lifestyle and have a better lifestyle and not be locked in a shop all day or sitting behind a desk can use this. There’s an abundance mentality about joint ventures. There’s enough for everybody and we can all benefit.

Michael: Well, you’ve got a lot of skill and it sounds like you’re a pretty savvy business guy, but what about for the new guy saying, well, that’s all good for you and you’ve been doing this for 20 years. Is this really doable for an average Joe who’s been working a job his whole life? Can I do this? How much time is it going to take and can I do this?

Mr. JV: Now, that a good question, Michael, and that’s what most people ask us. We say, first of all, just so you know, your background, your education, your age, where you’re coming from, and where you are…that is unimportant. Joint ventures are not about selling. And that’s the good news. You don’t have to be a sales person. It’s really about understanding. You know when you get those _____ that you look at and they look like gobblely gook. You can’t really make…there’s a lot of squares and dots, but when you stare at it for a long time, that the 3D image emerges and you get to see the links and that’s what JVs is about. It’s about understanding. That if you can help somebody to get what they want, you can get paid for it. So, you’re really like a doctor. If a doctor called me up and said hey Mr. JV, I’ve got a special on hip replacements this week, that wouldn’t be smart. But what happens is I go in, I tell him I’ve got a sore knee, he examines me and then he says, look, you’re 53 years old, you’re getting flat feet, you need orthotics in your shoes, go and get some. I thank him profusely. I buy the orthotics, put them in my shoes, my knee’s fine, I’m happy. He solved my problem and he got paid for doing that.

And so, a good joint venture broker is really helping people to find the solution. He’s building a bridge between where they are and where they want to be and standing on that bridge like a tollgate collecting. What we tell people is that people don’t care where you’re coming from or what your education is if you’re solving their problem. If you’re bringing them new business that they wouldn’t have had, they’re happy to pay for that because that gives them an unlimited marketing budget. It’s actually easier in many cases for people that have never been in business to do joint ventures than it is for somebody that’s been so conditioned for years and years and years in a business that is really locked in and attached to what he’s going. His whole identity is tied up in being a financial planner or realtor or whatever it is that he’s doing right now.

Michael: Can we do a couple of stories? Can you give me some case studies of some of your students and just walk me through some case studies maybe that you’ve done that you want to share?

Mr. JV: What happened to me was I was training some hair salons. I could show them how to double their sales in two months using joint ventures, or double their income in two months using joint ventures; their profits. So, I had four salons, each one was paying me $1,000 a month and it took me probably nine months to get that business in that profit center. One day I was giving a talk to at _____, which is a big group of hairdressers and Maxim _____ walked up from the back. He said to me…he is the owner of the Redken products for that country, Redken hair products…and he said look, what you want Mr. JV is to train more salons and what we want is to get our product into more salons. You’re the best trainer around. This is the deal we want. If you agree to only train salons that use our products, we will promote you. That’s what the deal was. So, I thought what have I got to lose. I’ve got four salons. They’re all using Redken. It sounds good to me. So, in four days, Maxim got each sales team to go out to all their clients and all their prospects and they started selling me and in four days I went from $4,000 a month to $20,000 a month. Now, that would have taken me four years on my own. It took me four days as a joint venture. Maxim was happy because he got his product into a lot more salons. I was happy because I got more business and then I started training other businesses for him. Then I duplicated that with Wella and Goldwell. It’s also hair product companies. And we reduplicated that system…

Michael: Were you holding training in one location and the salon owners would come to it?

Mr. JV: I did that and I went into salons and trained their employees.

Michael: Can you give me a couple of tips or some of your best tips for salons on how to grow that business using a joint venture?

Mr. JV: Well, one of the things is, is they don’t realize…first of all, obviously, they want to sell them more products, sell them more services, get them to come back more often; that’s a given and that’s what we taught them to do. But more importantly than that, we showed them that when a lady comes in to have her hair, what else does she need? She wants to have her nails done. She wants to go for a massage. She wants to go to the spa. She wants to buy clothes. She wants jewelry. And what we did is we set up joint ventures with 20 other businesses. They would give us gift certificates for samples, for free consultations, free saunas, free spas, free yoga class, free dog walking, and all these different gift certificates and samples. And we would gift our clients and the seller with these samples and any resulting business would bring us 20% off the top back into that salon. So, they would develop 20 streams of incoming business _____ dual passive income into their business in addition to what they’re already doing. And they differentiated themselves from their competition because they could literally say come and have your hair done here, we give you _____ and then they turned that into time. But they could also say we’ll give you coupons and brochures worth $500.

Michael: And you would teach the salon owners how to set this up and how to organize it, collect, and all that?

Mr. JV: Exactly.

Michael: Did it work pretty well?

Mr. JV: Exceptionally well. They were all doubling their income very quickly, their profits. But they were making money out of other people’s businesses. And once they started to understand that and they started to really take it to the next level, they started becoming real business people. And, of course, we trained the hairdressers how to sell, how to build relationships, how to ensure that that customer is going to love them and come back. All that normal training that you would do in terms of sales and relationship and personality style, and everything else. But here’s the key to that relationship, once that was understood, I had another fellow that I knew and he wanted to get into joint ventures. And I said to him, imagine if you’d known me and you’d known Redken. You could have come to me and said Mr. JV if I bring you new business, which you wouldn’t have had, would pay me 20% off the top every month and I would have said sure. Eighty percent of something is better than 100% of nothing. So, I would have done that. And then he could have gone to Redken and said if I could put a deal together to get more products into more salons, would you give me 5% of your gross every month ongoing. Redken probably would have agreed to that. Just on my side that would have made him $3,200 a month.

Michael: On your Redken deal with the distributor for Canada, did you do a contract on that?

Mr. JV: That was actually for South Africa. It wasn’t for Canada. We did that on a handshake. The man is a billionaire. Having a contract with a billionaire, frankly, in the real world, what am I going to do, sue him? As a result of that, I got a lot of business with these other companies. We did that with _____ down in Orange County close to where you are. We did a lot of stuff and it was always about joint ventures. It was always no money, no risk. So, this fellow…that I explained, you know, you could have made money from me on Redken…he went on to another company and duplicated that and made himself tens of thousands of dollars literally for putting a deal together. It’s wonderful to see that because all he was doing was just helping other people to get what they wanted. Redken gets their product into salons, Mr. JV gets more salons trained, salons do well. It’s win-win-win. Everybody makes…

Michael: Let’s do another story, either one of your members or yourself, another exciting joint venture that was put together.

Mr. JV: Well, in one of the seminars that I did here in Vancouver, we had a jewelry shop from New Westminster and they came along and said what can we do to increase sales. And I said listen, you’ve got to leverage existing resources. A lot of businesses advertise and sometimes too much and then they go out of business. But in the process of advertising, what they’ve done, they’ve put their name out there with their telephone number and people _____ calling their numbers. And in a nutshell, they went back four years in telephone books and had their secretaries start calling all the jewelry shops in their area that they could find in old telephone books.

Michael: That went out of business.

Mr. JV: That went out of business and then they found one of them that was not a jewelry shop anymore. They moved away and there was a Mrs. Sniff or whatever and she was living in a high-rise apartment getting calls for jewelry on a regular basis. So, they got that telephone number of they got calls relayed or whatever they did that they got those leads coming to them and they doubled the…

Michael: That is brilliant. I like that.

Mr. JV: And anybody can do that. And Michael, here’s the good thing. Now, you’re not going to do that with pizzas, but with jewelry, with…

Michael: Anything.

Mr. JV: …high margin profits. What you could do is you could go through the telephone book, find jewelry shops, send that to another jewelry shop…triangulate the deal if you like…and then get paid on all the resulting business. You don’t even have to have a jewelry shop to do that. You can do that in multiple businesses. That’s the mindset. That’s the linking. And that’s what we teach people to do.

Michael: Did they only find one number?

Mr. JV: They only found one and that was good enough to double his sales.

Michael: Did they take over the number or did they just have the lady refer them?

Mr. JV: I don’t know, Michael. I think they took over the number or they had it forwarded to them and then they took over another number.

Michael: You could probably do that online with domains that have gone out of business.

Mr. JV: There are people that are doing that right now. And you can book a domain, as well. Somebody else has got it, they don’t renew it, you get it. But with domains you can that, with telephone numbers; all sorts of businesses that are going out of business, people that are going bankrupt. Well, they’ve got unfilled orders, they’ve got trained employees, they’ve got a database, they’ve got all sorts of things. A good example…this guy was a very successful dentist and he was new. He’d been in business. He’d changed his business. He came back into dentistry. He was in Surry, BC, which is very close to the border, very close to Seattle. And he wanted to get into the American market for two reasons. Number one, Americans would save up to 40% on their dental costs and the insurance would pay for it. Americans have got more money to spend. They’ve got more disposable income than Canadians. He does implants and high-end dentistry and he wanted to get into the America market. So, he approached a local marketing consultant in Seattle who said to him, well I can get you into the Seattle market for $120,000, but there were no guarantees, obviously. And $120,000 might sound like a lot, but you do implants on one person, it could be $40,000. So, he approached me and said what can you do for us. So, this is what we did. We found a laser eye business. They were doing laser eye surgery in Canada for Americans. Offices here, offices there, they were over extended, they were going out of business because they were over extended and under capitalized and over extended. Cash flow was tight. So, we paid them $10,000 to direct mail their entire database with an offer for them introducing this dentist. And these were Americans that were spending money on eye surgery in Canada. So, we’re already…after the good psychographic/demographic model…they were already used to coming into Canada, they were already used to the concept and understood they would save a lot of money and get good service. That business did so well from that $10,000 that they were booked up six to seven months ahead. Then they found a talk show host in Seattle…I didn’t do this, they did this…they found a talk show host in Seattle that wanted dental work done. They did all his dental work and in response he promoted them like an avid-torial, telling the people on his radio show, these guys are just great. They save us money. They did this fantastic job. They _____ and that just boosted their business all over again. And this client, actually, they’ve become friends and now he’s going to study at Harvard now for three years. They’re moving to Boston, but wonderful people and they did very, very well leveraging existing resources. They read Paddy Lund’s book, you’re probably familiar with that, the dentist in Australia. I got that for them. They read that. And they just applied these simple joint venture principles and added massive value to share with themselves and the market. And they did very well.

Michael: That’s great. I’ll give a little example. On Ebay, if you have a search term for something entered on Ebay, whenever there’s an auction with that search term, it’ll come directly to your email address. One of my search terms is going out of business. And so, every time there’s an Ebay auction, it comes to me. I get to look at the Ebay auctions, the new listings of businesses that have this search term going out of business because, obviously, if you’ve got a business going out of business, you want potentially the names. Now, I just did this the last couple of months. I’m not getting a ton of stuff, but I did get in Nashville, Tennessee, a video rental store that was going out of business and I emailed her through Ebay and I said how many names do you have on your customer list. And she had about 5,000 names all in email, but never followed up with her. But the point is, she was going out of business and she had all those names. She had a good relationship with her customers, but that list was potentially there to be bought inexpensively. She wasn’t going to use it anymore. And these assets are all over the place. So, you just reminded me of that. So, anyone listening, they can go to Ebay, type in going out of business, and potentially find mailing lists that are basically going to die and you can take over that and borrow on the relationship and all the good will that that company had while they were in business. But that’s brilliant.

Mr. JV: That’s fantastic.

Michael: Let’s do another story. What else can you think of?

Mr. JV: Well, one of the things that happened was there’s a guy on the radio, Joe Saber, telling you how to get on the radio. Well, I had a guy in South Africa that got me onto radio and this was not syndicated, but I got a lot of leverage and a lot of mileage out of that. And he made money on every thing that came out of any radio show that I did. I was talking to one of our members in Edmonton, Alberta the other day and she said, well if get Joe Saber…and it’s a good program…$99 US…and I get you onto radio, would you do that. Would you pay me on all the resulting business that you got on any radio? I said sure. And she said she’s going to do it. Well, you know what, any number of people can do that for any number of speakers because if you get a speaker to speak anywhere and you get paid on all the resulting business, you can literally do that from the telephone. All you’re doing is offering speakers to give free talks at Chambers of Commerce or whatever it is, which could result in keynote addresses and all sorts of other business and get paid for that without having to do the speaking or meeting people or selling anything. You’re just saying; if you’re looking for a speaker, call me.

Another fellow that we’d met, he’s been downsized in his job. He wasn’t even a good musician, he was a relatively good musician, but he knew a lot of good musicians. And we said to him why don’t you become an agent. So, he signed up 20 group musicians and he would go to hotels and restaurants and he would give them his card and introduce himself as the agent for musicians. And he would take 30% of everything those musicians earned. He ended up with a stable of 100 musicians who were basically paying him 30% of all the work they got. And they were happy because he was honest and he was fair and he got them good gigs. And this was business they wouldn’t have had. All he did was he walked door-to-door, giving out his card, introducing himself. And then he got a website. He did very well doing that.

Michael: For people who aren’t organized, they may be thinking, well, keeping track of everything could be an organizational nightmare.

Mr. JV: Right.

Michael: How do you keep track of what you owe who and how much? Is there a system that you’ve put in place that you have found works best for you to make sure your joint ventures are paid on time?

Mr. JV: We do it on a very basic level, Michael. I’ve seen people get real sophisticated. A friend of mine has three laptops and two cell phones, the whole deal, and everything was on a Blackberry and everything was getting beamed everywhere else. The guy went bankrupt. I use a normal diary that I write in with a pen. I don’t use a Blackberry or a laptop. I don’t that. My business is run very, very simply. And the reason why I can do that is because most of my business is joint ventures. We have a large membership and we have the boot camps that we’re doing right across Canada, but the way we do that is all joint ventures. I basically get flown in. They check me into a nice four or five star hotel. Everything is paid for. The people in the room, I do my dog and pony act, and I get paid and they get paid. It’s a good, simple system. If you keep it really simple, you don’t need a very intricate system and you don’t need to get it involved. If you become a control freak and you want to control every cent that you’re getting from everybody, you could make it more intricate depending on your personality style. But what we’ve found is that…we look at our joint ventures and we see where the money is and we focus on the people that are bringing us good business and good money. Those are the people we work with. If you do a deal with somebody and we see there’s not a lot of money coming out of it or we’re not comfortable, we walk away.

Michael: Well, there are a lot of, I guess bean counters or people who worry about the small details. So, for instance, the thing that popped up in my head…let’s say you set up a joint venture with this, for example, you gave me the example of this contact who 11,000 members and let’s say he promotes some of your physical products that you sell and then you’re paying him a percentage of the gross. But let’s say there’s an issue with…you have a generous return policy and you have a certain percentage returning that. Do you get bogged down into figuring out what’s return or do you just pay on the gross even though there’s returned items?

Mr. JV: Most people have factored in a 10% return. They factor that in so they don’t have go back and get commissions back. We do everything on an affiliate program and we do not offer money back guarantees. I know that we could increase our sales doing that, but you also increase your admin.

Michael: Your administration?

Mr. JV: Exactly. Big time. And we’re not interested in that. So, we don’t offer a money back guarantee. We said to people, we don’t negotiate price and we kick members out that don’t abide by our code of ethics. We don’t beg for business. We don’t discount. So, we say, look, there’s no money by guarantee here. You want to do business with us; you do business. _____ guarantee, none of that because what that does is it causes a lot of _____. You get one or two people keeping you busy and we said if you want to do business with us, do business. That’s fine. But there’s no money back guarantee. We don’t use hard products if we can avoid it. We do everything in downloads. And when we do, do hard products, we that on trade so our cost is very low on that.

Michael: A lot of people would think not offering a money back guarantee would hurt business. There’s another very good marketer, a guy named Matt Furey. Have you heard of him?

Mr. JV: No.

Michael: If you go to www.mattfurey.com  , he sells information products on street fighting and things like that…exercise and health. But if you go to his order page, go take a look at his money back guarantee. Absolutely does not offer a money back guarantee, but the way he has worded it has turned it into a benefit and maybe something you want to look at. It’s really brilliant.

Mr. JV: Matt Fury…F-u-r-y?

Michael: I’m not exactly sure. If you do a Google search, you’ll find it, www.mattfurey.com  .

Mr. JV: Right.

Michael: Take a look at his return policy. It’s brilliant.

Mr. JV: Thank you very much.

Michael: Let’s do another story, either from one of your members or even another success story from yourself. What else can you think of?

Mr. JV: One of the things that has worked really well for us is selling other people’s products. I stopped doing consulting. I just refer somebody to another consultant and I get paid. I told you about the gift certificates that work really well. People respond to the gift certificates. There’s a code on the gift certificate. We get paid for any resulting business from that.

One thing that has worked really well for us is championing somebody that we really believe in and saying if you’re really looking for good business training, this is the person you should talk to. And that has worked very well for us because if you look at the return on investment and you look at your cash flow and you look at how fast you can turn that money around, we have one company that every now and again we’re getting $6,000/$7,000 checks from them because we championed that company. We really focused on promoting that person.

Michael: And you’re promoting it through your contacts?

Mr. JV: That’s right. And so, it’s a good third party intervention. But one of the things that we found is focus…there’s a good focus and a bad focus. The bad focus is when--I’m a financial planner, that’s all I do, that’s all I see. So, I’ve got no backend. I don’t talk to anybody else. You buy my product or not. That’s a bad focus because you’re limiting yourself like a supermarket that says we’re only going to sell bread and milk. That’s not necessarily a good focus. But a good focus is to say of all the things I do, where is the highest return on investment. I’m going to keep on doing all the things because that’s going to build my follow, it’s going to build my database, it’s going to build my branding. But let me focus on the things where I’ve got a good, high return and a really comfortable good feeling about that. And that works very, very well. So, when we do that, we look for people that we really like and trust that are delivering massive unprecedented value and they’re unique in the way that they present that. And we really do a lot of work on promoting them and that has worked very well for us because we realize that you can’t be all things to all men. We only promote people we really believe in.

Michael: If you’re going to promote and really champion someone, what are you going to ask for in return?

Mr. JV: Well, in many cases…and this is what we tell newbies that haven’t been in joint ventures before…we’d say, if you were to approach me, Mr. JV, and you were to say we want to sell your product and services, what can you offer me. I would say, well we can give you brochures and flyers, we can give you a replicate of slides, free tele-classes, and free downloads, free seminars. We would give them marketing tools and marketing material in order to promote us and that they can use to bring us business. So, I would say to somebody, first of all, I want you to tell me what sort of amount can I expect to get, how much money could I reasonably make from you on a monthly basis given my resources and your marketing material and your track record. And if they can show me a good return, which I deem to be good, and if I can see a long-term residual income on this, I would consider doing that with them. But because we can’t promote everybody, we’ve got to be very, very selective about who we promote, how we promote them, and what we expect to make out of that. What I’ve learned Michael, is you can’t be all things to all men and you’ve got to be very selective.

Michael: That brings up a really important point and that is being selective on who you’re going to bring to another potential party because let’s talk about the nightmares that can occur if you put a bad deal together, as far as you could ruin somebody’s reputation. Can you give me some nightmare stories; one or two that you’ve thought of and we can learn from those examples of what not to do?

Mr. JV: One of our members is a very well known guy in Toronto. He’s a physician and he’s a very nice guy and he’s a friend of mine. He knows me and he said, Mr. JV, there’s a guy in _____, BC that he’s really very impressive to me and he’s interested in meeting with you and doing some business. So, the first I do is Google them. I Google this guy and found he’s got three fraud cases against him, which is very scary. And so, the nightmare story is when you promote somebody that is a shyster or a rip off artist, these guys that have been doing a lot of offshore stuff that is not kosher that people are losing their money, if you introduce somebody to somebody that they could lose their life savings, you could really land yourself into a lot of trouble. So, you want to be very selective of who you promote and under what circumstances you promote them. We used to sell businesses. For 18 years we sold businesses and we know that the percentage of people that fail is 87% of new businesses are going to fail in the first five years. We would never sell a business to somebody that felt could not recover from the loss of all their capital because we knew 13% of them are going to make it.

Michael: Were you selling businesses in South Africa or here?

Mr. JV: Yes and here.

Michael: Were you a business broker?

Mr. JV: We would consult. In South Africa we would create and sell, but we would be agents for franchises, distributorships, dealerships…that sort of thing.

Michael: So, you made sure before you sold it somebody that they were kosher, they had a good reputation, and that they weren’t a shyster.

Mr. JV: Exactly. If a man could not survive the loss of that capital investment, we would not sell him the business. And that’s a good place to come from because if you can walk away from that commission because of your integrity, I think then there’s no self-sabotage going on with you, you’ve got a good self-esteem, good image, you believe that you deserve, and you start making money. That the psychological side of it, but that was our rule of thumb because we knew no matter how good the business is, people fail. And so, the nightmare is when you get involved with the wrong people and there’s a lot of conmen out there. There’s a lot of businesses that are surviving because they’re using the money of the investors to pay their own salary, but they’re not making money. And they’re continually getting new investors in. And there’s a lot of that in the _____. So, you’ve got to be really careful who you get involved with. There’s one guy here that’s very well known that is on all the big courses, big talker, and he’s got people that have lost $450,000 with him. But he’s riding the tiger. He keeps on getting new investors. Keeps on promising them more stuff. When you know that, you don’t want to do business with them. So, I think the biggest risk is dealing with the wrong people. And so, do good due diligence on them. Even get a detective on them if necessary, but make sure that the people you are dealing with are not debt. Desperate people tend to do desperate things. So, we’re not dealing with desperate people. We do Google on them. We check them out. We do reference check as much as possible.

Michael: So, talking about all this just brings up a little red light. Let’s say I want to become a joint venture broker. Am I going to need some kind of insurance? Can I be liable if I bring two parties and something bad happens? I’m sure someone has had that run across their mind. How would you address that?

Mr. JV: Well, we live in a litigious society and so we suggest that people incorporate, number one, that they deal through an incorporated company and that they talk to their lawyers about their exposure and talk to their insurance agent about getting appropriate insurance. But again, we’re not lawyers, so we can’t give that kind of advice. But the best advice I’ve got for people is, number one, deal with the right people. Be very careful who you deal with and that’s why we started the forum with a code of ethics. It’s not guaranteed, but it’s a good place to start. When you’re sitting with 270 people, right away they’d want to do joint ventures, which is hard to find. Only 1% of small to medium business owners understand and uses joint ventures. Now, it’s hard for you to believe, but it’s real and true that the average guy has no idea about this stuff. You’re doing it automatically all of the time, Michael, but I think you realize that most people don’t understand this stuff. So, here, as they join the forum, they’ve got access immediately to 270 people and it’s growing daily.

Michael: Let’s talk about some of the services that you provide. What can someone find and what’s in it for them?

Mr. JV: Find out more about us and all about what we do. They’ll find out about the one day boot camps that we do. They’ll find out about the membership they can sign up for; a little six piece mini-course on joint ventures. The weekly pod cast that they can get. There’s free downloads that they can get and articles they can read. They can go to blogs. These are both linked to our blogs. But there’s a lot of free information. There’s a lot of information about who we are and what we do.

Just quickly to finish what I was saying, we would say, first of all, make sure that you deal with the right people, but secondly, if there is no money and no risk involved in the deal, you’re chances of getting sued are very low. If somebody’s not losing money, how are they going to sue you? So, that’s the two criteria.

But getting back to the websites, on those two websites, people will find free information that they can use and they can Contact Us if they have any questions.

Michael: How would I benefit by joining this forum? What is the forum and how is it used and what kind of people are on it?

Mr. JV: Well, you’re last question first…what kind of people. There’s all kinds of people. You’ve got multi-millionaires. We’ve got retailers. We’ve got professionals. We’ve got employees. We’ve got a kid that is in grade 12 who has access to 20,000 kids across Canada and wanted to learn about entrepreneurism. We’ve got a whole range of people…right across restaurant owners and spa owners and you name it…doctors, lawyers, financial planners. So, we’ve got a whole range of members and they’re from all over the world. We got a guy in England sign up this morning, in Liverpool. We got a guy yesterday in New York…in Queens…you name it.

Michael: So, these are lists of people from all over the world who are basically listing their assets that they have, not financial assets, but maybe personal assets of people they know, access to lists, access to distribution, access to products all across the board?

Mr. JV: Many of them are not listing anything. Many of them are just becoming members because they want to start getting involved. So, a lot of them do not list what they’ve got. They just want to build relationships and that’s the difference.

The forum is about building relationships and getting access to good people. It’s not about spamming or advertising. What we’ve done is we’ve said let’s find like-minded people that want to do joint ventures, that want to build relationships with other good people, that want to abide by a code of ethics. We give them a free convention every year…at least one convention, sometimes more every year…free of charge. The next one is April 8th in Edmonton, Alberta at the _____ Edmonton Mall. It’s the largest mall in North America. It’s a fantasyland. We’ve got four great speakers, awards dinner. It costs us $86 for the food for the whole day…breakfast, lunch, supper, the awards dinner…everything. So, they get a lapel pin, they get access to the database, they get a listing on the database with a username and a password. Every two weeks we have a conference call for members. They get a great commission structure. They get $50 on every member they bring in at $197. We’re starting replicator sites in two weeks. They’ll be able to get a replicated site and they can use our logo and slogans…well, our logos basically. And they get access to local meetings. We’ve got meeting running right now in Vancouver, _____, Edmonton, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto. And that’s just in Canada. Because we started a year ago, we started the four of them in Canada. Now, it’s starting to take off. Now, our goal is to move strongly into the U.S. so that they can have local member meetings every month in the U.S., as well.

Michael: People have been on the Internet. They’ve seen pitches for joint ventures. They’ve seen Jay Abraham’s joint venture product. It seems like everyone has a joint venture product. What separates your joint venture product and forum apart from all these others or is it the same rehashed stuff that you hear from everybody?

Mr. JV: Well, that’s a very good question. And what we do is really unique and the reason why I say that is because we look for people who are doing what we’re doing so we can joint venture. We love competition. We found that…and I’m not going to mention and names…but some people that are doing joint ventures are working on a very high level. They’re very verbose, they use a lot of big words, and they talk over the heads of most of the people that they’re talking to. People that have never been in business or that are small business owners that don’t understand what the hell they’re talking about. That’s the first problem. That they really are so used to big numbers and big business…

Michael: They’re missing the market.

Mr. JV: Can’t talk to the small guy…

Michael: That’s right.

Mr. JV: He’s got a dog wash and he doesn’t understand that stuff. You know what I’m talking about.

Michael: Yes, I do.

Mr. JV: The other guy that is all about the Internet…make millions on the Internet with affiliate programs and they’re usually people that you can’t call. You can’t find these guys. They’re sort of hiding away somewhere inside the space and there’s no way of checking who they really are. And they’re also promising the world on the Internet and they’re selling all sorts of products. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. One of our members is a very well known guy, Chuck Anderson, and he does a good job. But he looks after his people and they all don’t do that. So, you’ve got the Internet, you’ve got the big guys that are talking big, and then you’ve got the MLM people, the network marketing guys, and there’s nothing wrong with it, but that’s one form of income.

Michael: Is there a networking opportunity selling a joint venture program, the multi-level?

Mr. JV: Not that I know of and I wouldn’t be involved in that. We realize that network marketing works for a few people and it works as one income source from one company. We’re looking at multiple streams of income and it’s really spreading the risk and leveraging that. So, we’re not that focused on one thing. Nobody seems to be doing what we’re doing. We’re reaching real people in the real world where people can actually call me up and talk to me on the phone and they know what my physical address is and they know where I live and they can actually get to see me. So, we’re not hiding somewhere inside this space. We’re not charging $5,000 an hour. We’re real people. That’s why it’s working for us. We had a meeting last night. We had 45 members meet in a downtown restaurant in Vancouver to sponsor [inaudible]. We had a great meeting. And some of the people in that room are very wealthy. Some of them have no money. And that doesn’t matter. They know who we are. We meet them. They know my wife’s name and it’s a real world. So, we deal with small to medium businesses and employees that want to get into business. That’s what I think differentiates ourselves. It’s real money, real time, real world.

Michael: I like this idea. I liked it because you don’t necessarily have to own a product and you don’t necessarily have to have access to millions of people, but you have to be able to understand it and put two and two together. So, if I said, okay Mr. JV, I want give this a go, what would be a realistic expectation or a realistic goal you would recommend that I set for myself and how would I first start once I claimed that I want to do and be a joint venture broker?

Mr. JV: Well, first of all, you have to understand how to do it, so we would suggest that you get the training. That you get in a boot camp and you learn how to do it.

Michael: Can I get that training all on CD and stuff if I ordered it?

Mr. JV: Yes, we could do that, as well. And if you attended physical, real boot camps, all the future boot camps are free of charge after that. We’re not getting people running to the back of the room to buy products. We’re not up selling them at the end of the seminar because we make our money on joint ventures. The reason for the forum and for the training is to create joint venture process for ourselves. That’s where the real money is.

Michael: I’m not going to come to Canada for training, so I can get the training all ordered online and get it sent to me?

Mr. JV: You could get a download. You could get a physical product. You get a whole boot camp on CD. You get the workbook. You can buy products online. We’ve got JVs for seniors, JVs for teenagers, JVs for immigrants, you name it. We’ve got lots of products and services.

Michael: So, get educated first on the philosophies.

Mr. JV: Exactly.

Michael: Then what?

Mr. JV: Once you’re educated, then the next step would be to realize that somebody’s been earning…and I’m not being factious now…but somebody’s been earning $3,000 a month or $4,000 a month. He’s not going to all of a sudden jump to $20,000 a month. Not because it’s not possible, but because they can’t believe and come see that that’s possible. And so, realistically, people that are earning $3,000 are going to start moving up more slowly. Somebody that’s used to earning $20,000 a month, they’re going to be frantic because their expectations are higher, they’re belief is higher, their confidence level is higher, so they’re going to work at a higher level. They can expect more. So, we have to be realistic about this. We have people that say if I can make an extra $1,000 a month, my whole life will change.

Michael: And it would.

Mr. JV: And there’s a lot of people in that situation. So, realistically, what amount of money would make a significant difference in your life and that’s different for everybody. Then we need to say, well, what is the quickest, easiest, most effective, risk free, cost free way of doing that through joint ventures? We’ve got 24 different systems that we share with them in the boot camps. We teach them the mindset and show them this is how you approach people, this is what you do, now let’s look very realistically. If you’re bringing business to a realtor, there’s a long process before you get paid. There’s a sales cycle involved there. Deal might fall through. It takes time. If you send somebody to the dog wash, you’re going to get paid half, but it’s a very small amount.

So, realistically, who are you dealing with? And when you talk, for example, with financial planners and realtors, they say well we’ve got a code of ethics and we’ve got a governing body and _____. We can’t pay commissions. And that’s true. But they can pay consulting fees. They can pay advertising fees. So, the semantics…people understanding when people say I can’t pay you or I don’t want to pay you or why should I pay you. And they have to put an action plan together to say well let me focus on three income sources. Let me find three people that I know and trust, probably in the forum…I only deal with those in the forum, but they can deal with anybody. Let me find three people, see what they can pay me, get their marketing material, and then focus on that and let me see how I could simply link them up. If I meet Bob and Bob is looking for excess or he wants a lot of customers and Michael has a big database, let me put that deal together. The potential is much larger than me going out knocking on doors. There should be no cold call or selling or anything. It’s really just linking resources. That’s all it is.

I think the important thing is level of motivation, Michael. We talked to a lot of people that talk the talk and they say I really want to make money. I want to do this. You’ve got to ask yourself maybe this question; on a scale of 1 to 10, one being I don’t care, ten being whatever it takes, how badly do you want to succeed and how badly do you want what you say you want? And you’ve got two options. You can go out and get a job or you can go out and go and buy a business and it’s probably going to cost you all your savings and you’ve got a 13% chance of succeeding. Or you can become a joint venture brokers for $1,000 for two people or get the products and use that and learn from that or join the forum for $197. It’s a far better business opportunity in my information, in my experience than going out and buying a conventional business because this way you can do it _____, no risk. You’ve got unlimited opportunity. You can spend a little bit of time making calls. I’ll just give you one good free last example. There’s a fellow that has a good return on his investment, 17% annualized return, ROSP eligible, a 401K eligible, and here in Vancouver. Good solid real business local. Most people are making 1% to 2% on their ROSP pension money. They can shift their money into that investment and go from 1% to 17%. We have a member that calls me up and she says my uncle is interested in moving his money. I talked to the Uncle and introduce him to this business and the guy that owns the business, Craig, does all the work. He does all the introduction, all the due diligence, shows him the books; does all the work. So, the member made one call to me. I made one call to the Uncle and one call to Craig. If he moves $100,000, I get 10% of that money up front and I split that with the member, so we each make $5,000. And this is happening on a regular basis. All they’re doing is moving money and we’re getting paid. We’ve got somebody that does bridge financing. I get 10%. I split that with a member. All that is, is an introduction to a solution.

Michael: What about all the people here in America? You’re in Canada and they think all your members are probably Canadian, is it going to be realistic for me to do deals with Canadians even though I’m in America?

Mr. JV: Well, that’s the good part about it. Joint ventures don’t know any boundaries. You can do business anywhere in the world with joint ventures. We’ve got members literally…our member in Australia that introduced you to me, Andrew Cavanaugh. We’ve done a lot of business with Andrew and I’ve never met him. With the U.S. being so close to Canada, frankly, I find it very easy to do business with Americans compared to Canadians. They’re less risk adverse. There’s a huge amount of people in the U.S. Once we break into the States with our membership, we’re going to be unstoppable because Americans are faster moving, generally speaking, than Canadians, and that’s a known fact. Canadians are more risk adverse and they don’t move as fast. But there’s a lot of business everywhere in the world. It doesn’t matter whether it’s American or Canadian. That’s unimportant. We’ve got a lot of Canadians that are doing a lot of business with Americans and vice versa. It’s an imaginary line and that’s all it is.

Michael: Have you considered doing some of the real higher dollar, higher level deals in the hundreds of thousands or million dollar ranges? And if not, why not? Have you thought about doing that or are you pretty much doing the lower end stuff?

Mr. JV: We’ve got a client right now…one of our members went on a program. He’s doing hundreds of thousands of dollars. They want us to get involved and all we will do is promote them. If the deal happens, I will make $50,000 to $100,000. It’s not about the amount of money. It’s the principle. So, we’re not adverse to that. What I’ve found in my experience is, is that the big million dollar deals, they have been rarely, so it’s good to have a good mix of deals. My last partner that I had…I think was an East Indian guy, who was just a brilliant businessman. He sold that recently for millions and millions of dollars. And we were in a partnership, a 50/50 deal in a certain business that I was running. And he said to me you’ve got to understand, the big, big deals are great and they happen, but they happen rarely, and they often take a lot of time. So, you can do a lot of small deals or you can do big deals and small deals. So, we prefer to do 80% smaller deals…small is relative…and 20% we work on the big deals.

Michael: What would you say…when you’re looking for a joint venture to put together…what one of the most important assets other than the integrity of the business owner that you’re dealing with is to look for? Would you say it’s the customer base, the reputation, the product that they have, or all of the above?

Mr. JV: I think all of the above, but also the potential. Can this deal make me millions of amount of X per month.

Michael: For the least amount of effort?

Mr. JV: Yes. And if that can work for me and I feel comfortable with that, I’m going to test it. And if it starts working properly and it starts working soon, then I might pursue that. Again, you’ve got to be really careful about who you introduce because we have found that some people that have got big names out there…I’ve always said big database, big ego…that has been disappointing to me. Some of these big speakers out there that are out there on the stage all the time, they’re making a lot of money, but they’re not the kind of people I want to do business with necessarily. When it comes to their egos, it’s hard to do business with a guy who thinks he’s a self-important kind of guy.

Michael: Yes, I understand. What can we see and expect from you guys in the future? You’re working on some affiliate stuff with your website? Tell me what are your plans for the next couple of years here.

Mr. JV: Our replicator sites will be ready in two weeks. Our screen savers will be ready in a week. We’re growing all the time and what we’ve done is we decided to grow slowly and conscientiously. We’re doing boot camps continually across Canada. We started off with 20 people in a boot camp. Our boot camp in Toronto in April, we’re expecting 100 people in that boot camp. So, we are growing and we’re growing consistently. The only reason why we’re not in the States yet is because we’ve been waiting to build a solid system and the system is now in place. We’re ready to move into the U.S. We will be moving in this year. We expect a minimum of 1,000 members by the end of the year.

Michael: What are the replicator sites for?

Mr. JV: The replicator site is basically a cloned website where a person can buy this website and pay a small monthly fee for it and we will teach them and they _____ the difference. With a lot of network marketing companies, people have got replicator sites, but they don’t know how to market that. We will teach them and continually teach them how to market so they get a good chunk of the money and they build our business. Once that starts happening, we’ll have exponential growth. And we can then bring other people into the loop, but they’ve got to be members. If they’re not members, we will not deal with them because we feel that there’s got to be some sort of guidelines in terms of ethics and that’s worked well for us in the past. But what you can expect to see is our goal is to reach millions of people worldwide, establish ourselves in the U.K. and the U.S. very strongly. That’s our target market right now, the U.S. and the U.K.

Well, thank you very much Michael.