In this episode, David Riklan of SelfGrowth.com shares how he wrote his first book and made over $100,000 in 24 hours from his book launch! Plus, we discuss how to use JV’s,  collaborations, and partnerships the right way to grow your business.

Resources mentioned
Get this free report and you’ll be invited to the next JV Directory FREE networking session.
21 Ways to Catapult Your Business Using Joint Ventures, Collaborations and Partnerships
JV Directory

Key Points

Give value before asking for someone’s help and the longer you promote A big player the better chance you have of them promoting you.

Understand the law of reciprocity: when you help someone, they feel compelled to help you.

Find people with lists of your ideal client who can promote what you want to offer.

Transcript

Ellen: Hi, and welcome. I’m your host Ellen Violette and you’re listening to the Books Open Doors podcast, Episode 108. Today I’m joined by David Riklan of SelfGrowth, and we’re going to be talking about JVs, collaborations, and partnerships to sell books and market your business. So, let’s do this.

Music: Welcome to the Books Open Doors Podcast. Are you a mission-driven speaker, coach, consultant, thought leader, creative entrepreneur, or author who wants more credibility, financial abundance, and wants to make a bigger impact in the world and leave a lasting legacy, and who wants to have fun doing it? Then stay tuned for today’s inspiring podcast with your host, Ellen Violette.

[0:46] Ellen: Okay. We’re back. Before I tell you about David, today’s episode is brought to you by shipyourbooks.com. If your book is a lead magnet for higher end services such as coaching, you’ll want to get your buyers onto your email list, but KDP doesn’t give you their names. Ship Your Books does.

When you print your books through shipyourbooks.com, you get the name of every single buyer. Plus, it gives you the ability to include other sales literature inside the book, giving you another opportunity to sell to your buyers. So, check out shipyourbooks.com and be sure to tell them Ellen sent you from Books Open Doors podcast.

[1:29] Okay. Now about David. David is the founder of selfgrowth.com, one of the top self-improvement websites on the Internet, receiving over 100,000,000 unique visitors since it was created. He’s also the co-founder of the Joint Venture Directory, a top resource for finding joint ventures, affiliates, and partnerships in the self-improvement industry, and I am a member. So, we’re going to talk about that today.

But also, he’s an author, coach, and speaker, publishing over ten books on self-improvement, health, marketing, and sales. Two of his most recent books, Mastering the World of Selling, and Mastering the World of Marketing were published through one of the top publishing companies in the world, John Wiley & Sons. So, that is so cool. So, thank you for coming and welcome, David.

David: You’re welcome. I’m excited to be here, Ellen.

[2:22] Ellen: So, I’ve known you a long, long, long time. I don’t know. I don’t remember how we met. Do you? I don’t know, but a long time ago.

David: I don’t remember, but in Internet years it seems like 100 Internet years.

Ellen: Yeah. It was like 2004, 2005, like really in the beginning. Yeah. So, tell us a little bit, how did you get started?

[2:49] David: I’ll give you my quick background story. Years ago, and I’m not going to age myself. We’ll go back years. I was working for Hewlett Packard, and they sent me to a course done by Dale Carnegie called How to Speak. It’s basically effective speaking in human relations. I fell in love with the course, and I fell in love with this concept of self-improvement and personal growth as part of your everyday life.

And I committed back then that one way or another, I was going to have my own business. And it had to do with something to do with self-improvement. Fast forward, mid ’90s, the Internet started becoming popular. Everybody was on America Online. I bought my first domain name, selfgrowth.com.

Ellen: Wow.

David: I started posting information on it in 1995. And over a course of a number of years, I built it up as a hobby, then a side business, and I went full-time a little later, in 2003, and I was marketing on the Internet and that was my full-time gig. And I haven’t looked back and I’ve been doing that for the last nineteen years now.

Ellen: That is amazing, that that was your very first domain name.

David:Yep. Yep.

Ellen: That is a trip because I know a lot of times people have to kind of figure out what they’re doing, and I know even I had to. I bought like five, I think, five domain names before I figured out which one I was going use. Yeah.

David: Well, I probably have about 100 right now.

Ellen: Yeah, me too.

David: I lost count.

Ellen: Me too.

David: Every week I get my emails from GoDaddy saying, “We’ve renewed your domain names.”

[4:23] Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. And I’m afraid to get rid of any of them. I don’t know. It’s like first of all, because I have all these files in different ones, and then every once in a while something will happen and I’m looking for something and it’s in some obscure file or something on one of those sites. And then every once in a while I have actually sold one and then gone, “Oh, damn. Now I lost something that I was looking for.” So, just a FYI for people, you know?

David: Sure.

Ellen: But yeah, and so you went full-time in 2003. So, I met you really soon after that and you were already doing really well when I met you.

[5:03] David: Yeah. I jumped right in. I was very fortunate and it kind of ties into my joint venture story, but it also ties into the whole book story. So, back in 2003, I was launching this self-improvement website, and I had it in my head I needed to find a book on the whole self-improvement industry, so I’d know who to partner with and who to work with and who are the big people in the industry. I couldn’t find the book. So, I decided to write the book myself.

I started doing this research, and I was literally building a mini-encyclopedia on the self-improvement industry. It turned into my first book called Self Improvement: the Top 101 Experts Who Help Us Improve Our Lives, and got me right into the book publishing. I published it initially as an ebook, but what’s interesting, it also brought me into the partnership/joint venture realm.

Because back in the day in 2003, people were doing these promotions. They’d just started doing these Amazon promotions where people would try to sell a lot of books through amazon.com, and they’d get a whole bunch of partners. So, that literally started back then. So, that’s how all this is. It started back in 2003, but at the time, I didn’t have a print book. I wasn’t on Amazon. And I said, “You know what? I’m going to do this with an ebook that I’m going to sell through ClickBank.”

So, I had a ClickBank account at the time. It’s an affiliate marketing site. And I decided I was going to do a one-day campaign. I knew I couldn’t do it alone because I only had a small list myself. So, I went out and I partnered with a whole bunch of people. And in twenty-four hours, this goes back to 2003, we sold $100,000 worth of this ebook in 24 hours.

Ellen: That’s amazing.

David: And it was all through partnerships and joint ventures and it was amazing. I was in awe of the possibilities after that.

[6:58] Ellen: Well, let me ask you a question. So, if my memory is correct, KDP didn’t start until 2007, but in those days you could go to, I can’t think of the name of the site now, (Create Space) that did the publishing part and then you could still put it in Amazon and sell, right?

David: You could’ve… I don’t remember their ebook status, but I knew at the time I wanted the list of all the buyers and the email names and I wanted all the profit and I wanted everything from it. So, ClickBank seemed to be the easiest way because you can have affiliates for ClickBank. You can’t really do-

[7:33] Ellen: And did ClickBank tell you who the buyers are, or no?

David: Yeah, you’d get a list of every name and email address of everybody who bought.

Ellen: Oh, cool. Because you don’t get that on Amazon.

David: No.

Ellen: Yeah. Wow.

[7:44] David: Nope. Nope. So, it was pretty amazing, and actually, the one thing that really jumped out at me at the time is who I was able to get on board promoting it. So, I’m thinking back, I was a small player, and I’d just started my full-time business and I had a small email list and I was getting some traffic to the website, but I knew I couldn’t sell that many books on my own. So, I needed to find people who had big lists, who were willing to promote for me.

And one of the people on my list that I wanted to reach out to was Jim Rohn. And at the time, for folks who don’t know Jim Rohn, Jim Rohn was around forever in the personal-development arena. He’s typically credited with training Anthony Robbins. So, I think at one point, Anthony Robbins worked for Jim Rohn.

So, he had a very strong following, big list. And I was a big fan of Jim Rohn’s. And over a course of several years, up until my book launch, I had already been supporting them. I was in touch with the people, and I posted stuff on my website all the time. Whenever I could help them, I could help them.

But they were way up here, much, much bigger player. And I was small potatoes,young entrepreneur, just starting out. And I remember contacting them “Thinking nah, I don’t think they’ll do anything. Who am I? I’m small potatoes.” And I contacted Kyle Wilson who was running Jim Rohn’s business at the time. And I emailed him, I said, “Look, I’m looking to do this big launch. I can pay you a percentage of it, it’s only a $27 ebook. Are you interested in helping me out?” And I got on the phone with him. He said, David, “I’ve known you for years. You’ve been supporting us for multiple years without ever asking for anything in return. You’ve been a good partner. You’ve been a good supporter. We’d love to promote you.”

[9:29] Ellen: See? And that’s how you do it. That’s exactly how you do it, is you give value and you support people. And people who think they’re just going to, “Okay, now I’m writing a book and I’m going to start asking people to help me.” It does not work that way.

David: Nope. Nope, absolutely not. You know, it’s nice to think that you can go to someone who knows nothing about you, that you’ve done nothing for, that’s in a much better position than you is going to happily do whatever it is you ask.

Ellen: Right.

David: But unfortunately in the real world, it doesn’t work that way.

Ellen: Right.

[10:02] David: At that point, I learned an extremely valuable lesson, a few lessons. One, you need to give first to get. And I also learned about this concept of the law of reciprocity, where it’s a very interesting concept. And there’s been a lot scientific studies that if you do something supporting people, they feel compelled to help you. It’s a very simple thing. It’s like if you’re walking down the street and say, “Hello”, people are going to say hello back. They just feel compelled to provide something back for you. And it’s a powerful law in social interaction and in business.

[10:42] Ellen: Absolutely. Yeah. So, I’m going to put you on the spot a little bit. Do you feel like that first book is still relevant today?

David: The first book is still relevant today, needs a major update. So, what we had done at the time is identified the top 101 people. And we went to each of them, and we wrote a chapter about each of them, including what their core information is and what they do. And what’s interesting is how many people I run into in the industry still have it by their bedside and use it as a tool to help identify who the top players. There’s a lot of new people that are-

Ellen: I was going to say, yeah.

David: There’s a ton of new people. I think of people like Eckhart Tolle who was nonexistent back then, Brendon Burchard, who was nonexistent back then. So, there’s a lot of people who, in 2003 weren’t anywhere on anybody’s radar that I would include now. So, there’s value in it, but it absolutely needs an update.

Ellen: Ah.Automated: Unknown caller.Yikes. Sorry about that.

David: No worries.

[11:55] Ellen: Try to think of everything. Okay. So, what gave you the idea? I was saying earlier that I’m a member in the JV Directory. So, what gave you the idea to create that?

David: What’s interesting about the JV directory, it’s based on all my experience with these partnerships and collaborations. For me, we define joint venture very simply as any time two people are partnering together to support each other in business. It’s a very core idea in how to work with people, and the goal is very simple. We want to connect people in the broad self-improvement industry to work together.

So, if you look at what we’re doing right now, this is a mini joint venture. So, what are we providing each other? It’s very simple. You’re providing me a platform to talk about what I’m doing and getting the word out, and in exchange for that, I’m doing a couple of things. One, I’m providing you good content. Ideally. I’m trying to provide good content.

Ellen: Yes. Yes.

[12:57] David: And second, once you get it out there, I’ll recommend it and I’ll tell people to listen to the podcast. So, it’s a mini joint venture. You know, it’s not a close joint venture where we’re creating a whole new business together.

Ellen: Right.

David: But it’s a mini joint venture, and people’s businesses are built on it. So, the reason we started the Joint Venture Directory is, we were looking for a place specifically for people in the self-improvement industry to find and partner with people for collaborations.

Now, we know you can do this through LinkedIn, and LinkedIn has hundreds of millions of members and you can find people. And sometimes it’s like finding a needle in a haystack to find the right people. You can also do it through Facebook. But we wanted to develop a more close-knit community of people who wanted to support each other in the same industry, were on the same page in terms of what they’re doing. And that’s really what we created with our Joint Venture Directory.

[13:55] Ellen: Well, yeah, it’s really interesting too, because it’s pretty… I mean it’s simple to use, but it’s pretty involved. I mean it’s pretty complicated in terms of the information that you’ve got in there.

David: Yeah. Well, we’re trying to provide really three types of information for people, and three types of context. So, when we look at the world in terms of joint ventures, we separate into three potential areas of people to work with. So, the first is what I consider typical joint-venture partners. So, an example would be, I promote you, recommend you to my audience, you recommend me to your audience. So, I’m promoting you, you’re promoting me. And that’s kind of a basic level. And sometimes I’m promoting you by email, you promote me by email. I might do a Facebook Live, you do something in exchange for that. So, we’re supporting each other.

[14:47] But there’s also a lot of people who are looking to partner to get on different platforms. So, for anybody who has a book or a product or service you want to get on a platform, and a platform is just a place to get the word out on what you’re doing.

So, an example of a platform, and you know as much about this as I do, if not more. Anytime you want to get on a podcast, or a teleseminar, on a webinar, these are people’s platforms where you want to get in front of their audience. So, as part of our Joint Venture Directory, we have literally 500 podcasts that take guests, that are looking for guests for you to find. So, we also have telesummits and webinars and things like that. So, in addition to traditional joint-venture partners, we help you find platforms to be on.

[15:33] And the third area was interesting, is we realized there’s many cases where you can’t find someone who’s going to support you in exchange for you supporting them. You’re going to have to hire people. There are times when you have to hire or buy services. You’re not going to find someone who has an email marketing service, like iContact, Constant Contact or Aweber who’s going to give it to you in exchange for your money. So, you need to invest in things.

Sometimes, you need to pay a copywriter. Sometimes you need to pay someone to do social media. And we call these people service providers. So, in addition to a database of partners, we have a database of platforms, and finally a database of service providers. So, we have all three of these kind of connections together. And that’s the core of what we have. And it’s an annual membership that we have. I don’t know if you have a special link for it that you want to give out.

[16:28] Ellen: I do. I do have a special link. It’s booksopendoors.com/selfgrowthjv. Booksopendoors.com/selfgrowthjv. But I want to ask you another question just about JVs in general, which is, I actually built my business when I first started on JVs. That’s how I got started as well. And doing summits in those days, it was a teleseminar summit. I mean, we didn’t have video. But I have found that it’s a lot more difficult now than it was then. And I’m curious if that’s your take or if you see it differently.

[17:11] David: There are some things that are easier and some things that are more difficult.

Ellen: Okay.

David: So, in terms of putting on a telesummit, the very simple concept of a telesummit is, you have people that are speaking on different topics and you provide the umbrella of it, and then people come to listen to your wide range of experts, either over the course of a day, several days, several weeks. That’s the concept.

Ellen: Right.

David: And then people typically opt-in to get it or they pay to get access to it. So, that’s the broad, very simple concept for folks who haven’t done or been on telesummits. But I think a lot of people have. They’re very, very common. So, what I’m finding right now is, there’s so many people that want to speak that it’s easier to get speakers. So, if you want to put it on and you want to get content, there’s a lot of people who are focused on providing good content. So, I think it’s easier now to find people who can speak, but it’s harder to get people who can speak who can actually bring people in-

Ellen: Right. See, yeah.

David: … and get to your telesummit.

[18:14] Ellen: Yeah. See, when I did it, I had people like Jim Edwards and Armand Morin. I had all the top people. So, yeah. I mean, it would be way harder for me to do that now than it was then.

David: It’s much harder to get those people; it’s much more competitive…to get the
top players. Or to get people. So it’s easier to get the content together and there’s a lot of tools now to make it easier to put on a telesummit, there’s special tools and
software for it, but there so much competition for it to get eyeballs or ears…

Ellen: Yeah, just to get them to know who you are too. I mean, someone like Russell Brunson, for instance, I mean, it’s like his reach is so huge and everybody, I mean, a lot of people are trying to get to him. So, yeah, it’s really difficult to do that. And I will say, not everybody, but a lot of the players that I had were people that I had spent money with, by the way.

David: Right.

Ellen: Yeah. I mean, I was in TeleSeminar Secrets. We went to the Big Seminar with Armand Morin. I ended up writing a book with Jim Edwards from the Big Seminar. So, I had relationships with all these people. Mari Smith was one of my presenters as well, and I did not have a relationship with her. So, I think I just met her at one of the events. So, yeah. I mean, showing up is important, but unfortunately spending money helps too.

David: Absolutely.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah.

[19:42] David: So, just to tie into what you’re saying, one of the biggest challenges right now is getting people with bigger lists or bigger reach to work with you. That’s probably, I think, one of the biggest challenges for people who are just getting started. Or, even if you’re getting started, you started, you have a list, to get people with bigger lists. And if you’d like, I’d be happy to spend a few minutes to kind of throw some ideas out-

Ellen: Oh, sure.

David: … for how folks can do that.

Ellen: Absolutely.

[20:12] David: The first thing is, you’re absolutely right, if you spend money with people, they’re much more receptive to supporting you.

Ellen: Yeah.

David: And the more you spend, the more receptive they are. So, for an example, some of the people get receptive at a fairly high price point. You need to go to their $10,000, $20,000 coaching program, and as part of that, they’ll support you. But that’s a relatively big-ticket item for most small businesses to invest. And that’s only to get one person to work with you. So, that still works. You want to become a customer or even a customer on a basic level. You don’t have to buy their high end, but you want to start consuming their stuff. So, that’s big one.

But another approach that I find very effective is, if you’re not willing to become a customer, if you don’t have the investment, if you can find or help them get other customers for their business, they’ll reciprocate. So, for example, you might not have a lot of money, but you might be in circles with other people who are willing to invest, let’s say, in Alex Mandossian or Armand Morin program, or Mari Smith program. So, if you can make an introduction and someone else spends a lot of money, they’re going to appreciate it.

Ellen: Oh, absolutely.

[21:30] David: They’re going to show support. So, you don’t necessarily need to have a big list. You just might need to know a handful of the right people to make the right connections. So, that’s a very powerful law because if you can generate income for them, either by spending money yourself or connecting them with people to generate income, they fully appreciate it and they will show benefits, they will help you in kind.

[21:57] Ellen: Well, isn’t that part of what happened with you with Jim Rohn? I mean, you were posting and talking about him all the time. Did you make sales for him?

David: Yes, absolutely helped him with generating income for him. Yup. Yup. Was definitely generating income. My guess, I’m pretty sure in that 24-hour period, he generated more income for me than I did the three years prior. But with that said, I also sent him a big check. So, he also made a lot of money and opened his eyes. He never really promoted many other people, so it opened his eyes to how much money he could make promoting other people-

Ellen: Oh, as an affiliate. Yeah.

David:… as an affiliate. He hadn’t done that before, so it kind of opened up eyes for a bunch of people because they weren’t doing it. So, those are kind of the two biggies. So, spend money with people or help them find someone.

[22:45]: But with that said, there’s a lot of smaller things you can do, especially today. And I’ll give you an example of some. One of the best ways that still works is, become very active in their community. So, you could buy a lower-level product and just participate in the community, be active in their social media. A lot of folks have a social media following now, whether it’s on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. If you become relatively active on it by supporting what they’re doing, retweeting, sending out their stuff, sharing their stuff on Facebook, and regularly endorsing or providing testimonials for the quality of their work, over time they’re going to take notice.

[23:34] And over time they’re going to be willing to reward you for the work that you’ve done. They get it. They might not be willing to send an email to their whole list, but they might be willing to make introductions to people that they know that aren’t quite at their level, but they’re a mid-size level or a little bit under them and they’ll make introductions for you. So, those little things really help.

[23:59] David: And one of the things I recommend doing is creating a dream list.

Ellen: You know, I was just thinking about that. Yeah, go on.

David: It’s a very simple concept. The dream list, and I didn’t come up with the term dream list, a lot of people have had this idea. A dream list is your ideal list of partners and people you want to work with. This is your ideal list of people that you’d like to get support at, and then identify some of the people on the dream list and come up with a game plan. What do you need to do to start supporting them? And then you can evaluate. You start supporting, see if you’re getting any support back. And the support back might be something as simple as they do a shout out to their social media following about you.

Ellen: Right.

24;43 David: The big ask in this broad self-improvement industry is as follows: “Can you send a dedicated email to your whole list?” That’s kind of the top of the food (chain)… “Can you send a series of emails to your whole list recommending me?” That’s kind of the top of the food chain. So, basically, you’re asking people, “Can you promote me to every single customer and every single prospect you have, multiple times?” That’s the top of the food chain. That’s hard to get to, unless you can provide something similar value to them.

[25:16] But there’s a wide range of things under that, that you can do, and a wide range of people that might have smaller followings that can support you for any number of reasons.

Ellen: Yeah. Well, the reason I was thinking Dream 100 before you said that. And then I was thinking in this day and age, that’s a lot, right? It used to be the Dream 100. I would say like the Dream 10 or the Dream 5, right? Because it takes a lot of effort to do all the things that you said. And so, to be doing that for 100 people is not realistic.

David: No, no. You can’t do it for 100. You can come up with your initial list and then you need to-

Ellen: Right, and then you need to whittle it down to which ones are the most important.

David: Exactly. Yep. Best approach. Best way to go.

[26:02] Ellen: Yeah. Okay. So, what would you say, if people are going to do one thing to get started with JVs, what should they do? What’s the first thing they should do?

David: What do they do? The first thing they should do, I’m going to give you a couple of firsts.

Ellen: Okay.

David: I’m going to give you the first, first thing you need to do to be in the JV world. So, the first thing you need to do, and hopefully almost everybody listening that has a business has done this, is you need to identify who your target audience is and what product or service that you’re marketing to them. And my guess is, most people have that, but you really need to know who your target audience is and what you want to sell and market to them.

[26:50] And if you don’t have a product or service to market to them yet, at least some sort of freebie or giveaway, something of value in an idea. So, you want to at least have an idea and your target market. If you don’t have that, don’t even worry about joint ventures. Don’t worry about anything. Don’t worry about starting a business. First, you need to know what it is, your idea for your business, what value you’re bringing, what product or service you’re going to have, and then who your target market is. But that’s before you do anything. That’s kind of step one for anything. It’s before you write your book, it’s before you do a webinar-

Ellen: I was going to say, those are the first steps, yeah, in my challenge, those are the first steps to writing your book too. Yeah.

David: Yeah. It’s the first step for everything. So, let’s go under the assumption that you’ve done that. We’ll go under the assumption that you’ve done that.

[27:37] So, the next step that I tell folks is, you want to figure out what value you bring to the table. If you want to do partnerships with people, you want to have some value to bring to the table. And it could be something as simple as you have a really good message or good content that you want to share. If you don’t, go out and develop good content because that’s something that you can bring to the table.

David: You know, some of the big things to bring to the table is, if you have an audience, an email audience, a social-media audience, you have website traffic, you have a product that’s selling at a good price point that you could pay someone affiliate commission. These are all types of things you can bring to the table. But the first step is to really understand what value, and I mentioned some things earlier. The value you might be able to bring to the table is, you’re a connector and you can make some introductions. You don’t need this whole big business. You just need to know a handful of the right people.

[28:33] Ellen: Right. Or sometimes it’s that you have a certain perspective on a topic that they haven’t given to their clients or their subscribers yet. And guess what? people don’t want to create all the content. They’re happy usually to bring other people on, especially if they have some expertise that’s different than what the other person has, but it’s still of value to their audience.

David: Absolutely. Yep. Yep. So, you need to really understand as part of doing joint ventures, what you’re bringing to the table. Because I generally recommend whenever you’re looking to partner is, first foot forward, how you can help them.

I’ll give you a very simple example, a very basic joint venture. So, if you want to get on podcasts, we talked about one of the things you can offer is good content. But people with podcasts, especially if you have a following, they’re inundated with people who, “Oh, put me on, put me on. I’m a great guest. I got great content. Love me. This is great. I’m going to be the best speaker. I’ll be the best podcast guest you’ve ever had.” They’re inundated with stuff like that.

[29:47] So, I recommend stepping forward by providing some value upfront. So, how do you do that? Very simple. You’re interested in getting on someone’s podcast, check out their podcast on iTunes, listen to it, go in there, give it a five-star rating, review it, give a glowing review of it. And then, before I try to get interviewed, my opening email to this person would be, “I just listened to your podcast on book promotion that you did with Ellen Violette. I loved the interview and love what you’re doing. I loved it so much, I just gave you five-star rating and I just gave you a great review. Love what you’re doing.” And then after that, you can say, “I listened and saw some other ones, and I see you haven’t had anybody on the topic of copywriting for your book.”

Ellen: Oh, you just nailed it because that’s what’s often missing. Yeah.

David: “I’m an expert on writing copy, and I see that you haven’t had anybody on that topic yet. I think I’d be a great guest for your podcast and can provide a lot of value to your listeners. Are you interested in having me as a guest? You can find more details about what I do by going here or look, read below.”

Ellen: Yeah.

[31:13] David: So, what have you done? You established rapport. You’ve given first, before you’re asking back, and you’re demonstrating the value you’re bringing to the table.

Ellen: Right. And what I would say about that is, unfortunately people, a lot of times, they just do the first part, that’s not enough because I’m not going to have someone on who wants to talk about the same things that we’ve already talked about, or in the same way that we’ve already talked about. I have to make sure that they’re bringing something new to the table, regardless of how nice they are to me.

And sometimes people don’t understand that, and they’ll say, “Oh, I want to come on and talk about book marketing or book promotion.” And chances are, they’re not going to get on the show. I’m looking for people who are thinking outside the box, who are doing something a little different or something interesting that can help authorpreneurs, and coaches, and people who are interested in writing a book, but not always about just writing a book or marketing a book.

[32:13] Ellen: Yeah, so that is really, really important. On the other hand, I have brought on people where I just thought what they did was really interesting and they hadn’t done all the things that you just said to do in the first place, but it is really nice that people do that, number one. And number two, you do like people to go and look first because of what I just said, which is then they get kind of a bird’s eye view of what you’ve covered and what you haven’t covered and where they fit in.

David: Yeah. So, for example, typically if Jack Canfield sends an email out to you saying, “I’m interested in being a guest on your podcast-”

Ellen: You’re going to say yes.

David: … it’s like, “You had me at hello.”

Ellen: Yeah, right, exactly.

David: He doesn’t need to do the whole pitch. He could talk about his exercise regime and what he’s doing at the gym. You don’t care. But for folks that you don’t know, you need to figure out everything else that we’re talking about.

[33:10] Ellen: Yeah. So, one thing we did talk about earlier, and some people might be confused, is what is the difference between a JV and an affiliate?

David: So, very simple concept, joint venture I use as kind of an umbrella term where you’re partnering with people. It’s a very big umbrella and it includes a wide range of ways to partner together. Affiliate marketing would be a subset of that for me, and the concept is very simple with affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is a concept where you’re rewarding people by paying them a percentage of sale. Obviously, we both know about this. If someone’s promoting you, you can give them a special tracking link where if they use that tracking link, or if anybody who purchases your product or services, or signs up, whoever promoted it, you can reward them. So, you can track sales and reward them. So, in essence, it’s a joint venture in that, in exchange for them promoting you, you’re paying them a commission and the commission’s just a percentage of the sale. So-

Ellen: Right, but it’s also more passive. It’s more passive. Don’t you think? An affiliate.

David: It’s more passive. It could be. It could be. But I see a lot of people who do joint ventures where they’re using affiliate marketing. So, two people will…

Ellen: Right. They’re using an affiliate link within the joint venture.

David: Right.

Ellen: The joint venture is the partnering, working together in some way. The affiliate is more either passive or they’re using what’s called an affiliate link.

David: Yes.

Ellen: Within the JV.

David: For tracking purposes. So, it’s technology that enables you to reward someone for promoting you by giving them a percentage of the sale.

[34:49] Ellen: Okay. So, that is good for people to understand if they didn’t understand the difference. So, do you have any final thoughts before we go?

David: My final thoughts, very simple, joint ventures, collaborations, and partnerships are a critical part of the success of many, many businesses, particularly in this broad self-improvement space that I’m in. So, if you have products and services for health, finances, relationships, spirituality, business tools, marketing, anything like that, collaborations and joint ventures are one of the single most cost-effective and powerful approaches to go. I highly recommend taking a look at what we’re doing. We love to work with folks and support you. And there’s plenty of room regardless of what level you jump in.

[35:40] Ellen: Yeah. And I will say, on one of the episodes that will be coming up is with Robert Butwin, and he’s also somebody I met very early on in my career, and I hadn’t talked to him in years. And then I saw him on one of the JV networking calls. These calls are free, so you can come and hang out with us. And Robert was saying he tries to never miss one. And the quality of them is just really great. So, I’ve been recommending it to my clients, and I recommend it to anybody who’s on the call. And to sign up, you can go to booksopendoors.com/selfgrowthjv. Booksopendoors.com/selfgrowthjv.

[36:24] And let me tell you, I get offered to go on a lot of networking calls and it’s like you really have to decide what’s the best place for me to go, because I only want to spend so much time networking, or you end up spending all your time networking and nothing’s getting done. You know? So, this is definitely one of my top go-to’s. So, that’s all I have to say about that. So, thank you for putting it together. It’s really awesome. And I do try to make it whenever I can. So, yeah.

[36:53] So, that’s it for today To get the transcript, if you’re not on the website, go to www.booksopendoors.com/podcast/jvpowerand if you’re new to the show or you haven’t gotten a chance be sure to grab your copy of The Rockstar Author’s Toolkit, we’ve got checklists in there for writing your book in three days or less, writing a bestseller title, simple strategies to jumpstart your book marketing online, and the Kindle Planner. So, if you don’t know how to get started or you would just like to make your (book) plan go a lot faster and a lot easier, this is the place to start. https://booksopendoors.com

Also, I’m so excited to share that we’ve updated the website so you can now check out the 3 Day Bestseller Program for writing, publishing, and launching your book to #1 bestseller. It’s at booksopendoors.com/coaching And if you’d like to know more, you can tap on the CLICK HERE button on the page and that will take you to the next step, and we can set up a time to chat to see if it’s a fit for you as well as for us.

Also be sure to join us next week, when my guest will be Jeanette Cates who has been on line since the mid 90’s and we’ll be talking about the realities of digital marketing and what
you really need to know to stay in the game and succeed!

So, thank you so much David for coming on today. It’s been a pleasure And I look forward to seeing you in the JV Directory.

David: You’re welcome. Talk to you soon!

Ellen: Til next time, Bye, bye.

Music: You’ve been listening to the Books Open Doors podcast, with your host, Ellen Violette. If you’d like to connect with other mission-driven speakers, coaches, consultants, thought leaders, founders, creative entrepreneurs, and authors who are changing the world one book at a time, join us in the Books Open Doors community at facebook.com/groups/booksopendoors. Let’s rock your business with books.

THANKS FOR LISTENING!

To share your thoughts, please comment below.

If you got value from it, we’d appreciate it if you share this show on social media!

Also, leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one.

Subscribe on iTunes.

Leave Comments or Questions Here!

Comments or Questions!