"Meeting
Someone by Helping them Make Money."
By Marlon Sanders
"That's a great ad, I said.
Who taught you copyrighting?"
Little did I know that sentence would make me over $100,000.
How could "doing the Jonathan" make
you more money this month?
This is a crazy business we're in.
Sometimes the things you think are going to be
great actually bomb on you.
And sometimes the things you don't think twice
about turn out to be your real winners.
A case in point for me was years ago when I first
met my friend Jonathan Mizel online.
That was before the World Wide Web existed.
It'll take me a minute to tell you the story.
But there's a payoff for you in reading it. So stick with me if
you will.
Back then, we sold our stuff on America Online
and Compuserve.
Anyway, the game in those days was to run a little
classified ad and people would respond for more information.
You'd send the info and hopefully they would
buy.
You didn't have sequential autoresponders in
those days like Aweber,
Getresponse,
Quicktell or PostMaster Online. So what you'd do is follow up
by hand emailing everyone.
One day I spotted an ad that grabbed my attention.
I still remember the email that came back to me. It led with a
free offer.
You could get a free copy of a Russ Von Hoelscher
book if you subscribed to the Online Marketing Letter.
I sent an email back saying that I admired the
copywriting and asked who he learned his copywriting skills from.
He wrote back and told me John Caples and Robert
Collier.
John Caples had several classic books on copywriting
including "Tested Advertising Methods." And "The
Robert Collier Letter Book" was likewise a staple for anyone
who cared about learning to write copy.
I almost freaked out! John Caples. I loved John
Caples. At the time I hadn't written "The Amazing Formula
That Sells Products Like Crazy."
There was NO step-by-step formula for writing
ad copy as I later created.
John Caples and Robert Collier were as good as
it got.
Anyway, I introduced Jonathan to the owner of
the company I was writing ad copy for. He sold some of Jonathan's
books.
I've always networked by helping the OTHER person
make money first.
That's how Jonathan and I became friends.
Is your first initiate with someone asking THEM
to do something for YOU? Or do you first help THEM make money?
You know, in all the time I've taught this method,
I've never received one email from someone who said, "Hey
Marlon, I'm doing this to help you make money."
It's always, "Hey Marlon, I have a product.
Can you sell it to your list for me?" And so forth.
To get to the point, that friendship with Jonathan
later landed me a position on his team travelling around the U.S.
and speaking at over 120, $3,000 one-day seminars.
Over the years, my friendship with Jonathan has
made me at least $100,000 and maybe more.
The lesson?
I call it "doing the Jonathan." Meeting
someone by helping them make money.
Who can you "Do the Jonathan for" today?
-
Meet someone new. Let them know you admire
their marketing if you truly do.
-
Help the other person make money before you
ask anything from them.
-
When you help someone else, don't do it with
strings attached.
Know that the universe often returns the favor
from a source other than the one in front of your face.
If I had initiated my friendship with Jonathan
by asking for something from him such as free help or whatever,
then how far do you think that friendship would have gone?
|
