“A Gift Opens The Way”

Last week, I started a new Saturday series where I post about a Proverb I read during the week. I read Proverbs nearly every day because there is a deep well of awesome advice for life and business in it.

This weeks proverb is:

The reason why I picked this verse is because it’s something that I have found true in establishing a lot of business relationships.

You’re probably wondering how this applies. Let me give you an example.

When I first was starting to build my email list, I spent a TON of money paying people up front to email out my free affiliate marketing guide. Like… over $5,000 in total marketing expenses.

The interesting thing is that many of the people that I paid eventually started promoting my future releases like the Facebook Advertising Guide and my Facebook Ads Coaching Forum without me even asking.

I believe that initial payment or investment is what opened the doors to a great business relationship between us. I in turn promote stuff for them when it’s a good solid quality product and they do for me.

Now… compare that with the exact opposite.

Personally, I get asked to do joint ventures just about every day from people of all walks of life. Most of the time, it’s something like, “I have have no money, a new product, no email list, just… an idea…”

Unfortunately, these are the ones that get filed into the “pass” folder the most.

I’ve found that just about every good business relationship has come from people who are willing to pay a “gift” to show they mean business up front and that eventually turns into what becomes a mutually beneficial relationship later.

Although I could go on and on about how I have seen this work, here is one final example:
In early 2009, I went to AdTech San Fran to do an interview with Wes from T202. Before the interview, I met Justin from Affbuzz. This was before Affbuzz was really huge like it is now. In fact, before then, I had never heard of it. During the interview, Justin offered to get me something to drink. Besides being a cool guy to hang out with, the fact that he was willing to get me a drink really impressed me. I know it’s silly… but for whatever reason I have not forgotten that.

So when I got home, I made sure to post about affbuzz… and still do to this day (much like I am now… ).

What do you think?