Kerwin has taught over 20,000 people from 11 different countries through his seminars and workshops, making over a 100 million dollars for his clients, many of them were small to medium sized businesses and even home based.
On this episode Kerwin shares some of the secrets to his success, an interesting story about horse manure and how you can rapidly grow your business with a step by step process to gain new clients and joint venture partners. For more Kerwin loving, check out his site www.kerwinrae.com
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Christo: Welcome back to the Basic Bananas radio show. Today we have a very special guest with us in the Basic Bananas studio. His name is Kerwin Rae and now if you haven‘t heard of this guy, I‘d almost be a little bit surprised. He‘s done a lot of amazing things and definitely a thought leader and very successful businessman and mentor and coach. So Kerwin, I‘ll give you a bit of a spiel here and introduction before we dig in and introduce Kerwin. So, Kerwin is a businessman, a coach, a mentor, an entrepreneur, author and international speaker. He‘s studied and observed the psychology of influence for well over a decade now and is considered an expert on influencing human behavior and how it relates to sales, marketing, and personal transformation. He‘s addressed and worked with all levels of business from corporate entities to national and international franchise groups right through to the little guys in the small to medium business owners. He‘s also worked with high school and university students and the general public. A sales and marketing specialist for over a decade, Kerwin has coached thousands of consultants in 11 countries on business development, marketing, sales, human behavior, and entrepreneurial psychology. Kerwin has taught over 20,000 people all over the world through his seminars and workshops and in the process, has made over $100 million for his clients, many of them were small to medium sized businesses and even as small as home based businesses. He‘s the author of The Entrepreneurial Apprentice training system and co-author of one of the bestselling series Secrets of Marketing Experts Exposed. Kerwin has been featured heavily in the media both internationally and nationally including The Australian, Dynamic Business, The Financial Review, Marketing magazine, CEO magazine Ant Hill, Qantas business radio and also a regular on Talk Back Radio including 2UE and 4BC. Now I could go on and on and on about this guy for days, and on his intro. But let‘s hear it from the man himself. So welcome, Kerwin. Thanks for joining us today.
Kerwin: Thank you for having me. It‘s great to be here.
Christo: Yeah. Awesome. We‘re very excited about this interview.
Franziska: Yeah, it‘s been coming for a long time, I think.
Christo: Yeah, it‘s been a long time in the making.
Kerwin: Yeah. It‘s good to finally meet you guys under such spectacular conditions. You guys at home you probably can‘t see this. We‘re looking at an amazing ocean view right now.
Franziska: Yeah, and there might be dolphins jumping soon too. They‘ve been around a lot lately.
Kerwin: Nice.
Franziska: I saw them yesterday. So tell us a little more about you and your business journey because you‘ve had quite an interesting journey I believe.
Kerwin: Yeah. I suppose the question is how far back you want to really want.
Franziska: Let‘s go through the whole….
Kerwin: Settle down. Come on now.
Franziska: Just start, when you think it‘s appropriate.
Kerwin: Well, I think I wouldn‘t say I was born an entrepreneur. I don‘t think anyone is actually ever born an entrepreneur. But I started my first business when I was about 13. I started off by washing cars and the first car that we washed off my friend had a big watch on. He put a big scratch on the car. And so, long story short, our parents came down on us really hard. We weren‘t allowed to wash any more cars after that. And then we thought, we‘ll mow lawns. So we borrowed my best friend‘s lawn mower. With his dad‘s lawn mower we started mowing lawns. The first lawn that we mowed we went over a driveway, hit a rock and the rock went through like a 12 foot by 12 foot plate glass window. Literally, we started thinking one day because where I lived; I lived in towns all the time and every year we had the towns and show that would come… And you got your show bags and your rides and all I really wanted to do more than anything else was just for once, buy more than a show bag and go on more than one or two rides so I just wanted to make some money. And that was my motivation, right?
And so I kept saying to my best friend, there‘s got to be something we can do. There‘s got to be something we can do and one day we‘re on the bus driving home and we lived in a kind of like a semi-rural kind of acreage area. And there‘s a lot of people that have like piles of horse shit in bags at the front of their houses with a little sign on an honor system, saying $2 a bag. And I just turned to my friend, I said, “Agh! I‘ve got the idea. I know what we should do.” I said, “We should sell horse poo.” And he goes, “Come on now… What are you smoking?” We were like 12 or 13 at the time. And I say, “No, no, no. What we should do is we should take it door to door.” And so long story short, we approached all the horse stables in the local area and we offered them $2 per stable to shovel them. And for $2 a stable, it was an absolute bargain for them. So we started shoveling the manure and putting it in bags. Putting it in a wheelbarrow and we‘d take those wheelbarrows door to door.
I don‘t know if you can picture this. But imagine you‘ve got two 12-year old kids that turn up on your doorstep with a wheelbarrow full of shit. How much would you pay just to get rid of them?
Christo: Get rid of them, yeah.
Kerwin: We had people giving us money just to go away. Like literally. In the first three weeks, we made $350.
Franziska: That‘s a lot.
Kerwin: As a 12-year old kid, that‘s a ton of money.
Christo: Yeah.
Kerwin: And we got really excited and the show came and we had lots of money and ate more sugar and ice cream and anything I‘ve ever had in my entire life. I‘m surprised I didn‘t develop diabetes just from that one event. But then, after that, it was maybe two weeks after the show. I was at the nursery with my mum, because my mum was a bit of a gardener. And I was watching a guy sprinkle some stuff on his plants. And I just walked up to him and said, “Sir, what are you putting on your plants?” He goes, “I‘m just putting manure on them.” I said, “Oh, is it horse manure?” He goes, “Yeah, it is.” I said, “Where do you get it from?” He goes, “Oh, we get it out west.” I said, “How much you paying?” He told me… “Why are you asking?” I said, “Well I happen to sell horse manure.” This little 12-year old kid, right? So he just looks at me with these and he goes, “Okay. How much have you got?” I said, “I‘m currently sitting on about 35 bags.” He goes, “How much do you sell it for?” “We sell it for about $2.50 a bag.” He says, “I‘ll take everything you‘ve got for $2 a bag.” And I was just like, “Oh, my god.” And so he just said, “As much as you can create, I‘ll take.” We actually got to the point where we actually, physically ran out of horse poo. And we coined the term, “No shit.” That‘s what we would like to think where it came from.
Franziska: Yeah, it definitely came from there.
Kerwin: What we used to do… I can remember like if we were just trying to fill that last back. Like my friend would sit there and he‘d sit at the front of the horse with the feedbag and I‘d literally sit at the back of the horse under its butt with a shovel waiting for something to come out just so we could have another bag. When we really started to dry up on manure, we got into the chocolate business. We actually started buying chocolate wholesale. Melting it down, adding like almond bits, mint bits. Just created a whole range of…
Franziska: Wow.
Christo: From shit…
Kerwin: To chocolate. It‘s kind of like, well I hope you‘re not doing the same thing on the same day. You know like packing bags and then going making…
Christo: Yeah that‘s right.
Kerwin: But it was really… It was interesting. And I learned some really key lessons. And I didn‘t realize I learned them. The first lesson I learned was the point about the importance of leveraging in distribution. You know, you can essentially go door-to-door or you can find one person you just…
Franziska: And sell 100 to…
Kerwin: Sells it for you. But the second thing I learned was the importance of focus. Because we went from doing just manure and then we started doing chocolate to manure. And I don‘t know about you, but if you gave two 12-13-year old kids three kilos of chocolate and you left them alone for a week. There‘s not going to be much left at the end of it.
Christo: That‘s right.
Kerwin: Literally, our profits just ran out because we ate our profits. We just literally would sit down. We‘d make all the chocolates. And then we‘d go, “Let‘s just sit down and watch a video and eat some chocolates.” And before we knew it, the batch we just made was gone.
Christo: You‘d get high on your own supply.
Kerwin: Exactly. And our friends would come over and then we‘d share our friends and before we knew it, it was not good. But that was probably my first venture into business. And then through school. I was always… Like through high school I was typically earning more money than most of my teachers. I used to work. I managed a gym in the mornings before school from like 5 AM till literally quarter to nine. I‘d run to school from the gym. And then after school I‘d work at Sizzler and I‘d work at Sizzler from like 3:45 in the afternoon till one o‘clock in the morning. And then on the weekends I was working as laborer laying paves and you know, doing some other stuff on the side wherever I could. If I could find things, buy things and sell them to my friends as a bit of a barter or a trade I‘d do that. And then I think it was about the age of 23 that I actually got into my first serious business and opened a residential commercial security alarms business and that went really well. We built that into a million dollar operation in the first three months. The business partner I had at the time was a lot older, a lot wiser. He was actually one of the… Have you guys heard of the HIH collapse? It‘s a big insurance company that collapsed in Australia a number of years ago.
Christo: Yeah.
Kerwin: And there was guy who was like one of the key people responsible for the collapse. And anyway, that guy who was responsible, he was a bit of a shady kind of character, his old business partner was his business partner.
Christo: Yeah, right.
Kerwin: So you can see where this is going. Twelve months into the business we‘ve got this business sort of thriving and he convinced me to take… Take just a little bit of money out of the business… Keep everything in the business. A long story short; he basically siphoned everything out of the business and I ruck up the business one day. All the computers are gone. I‘m sitting there holding a bill for 150 grand for product and there‘s no money in the bank and I had to sell everything I own. I got evicted from where I was living. And then went and got a job working for Stephen Covey and that‘s when things started to turn around. I think it was maybe two years after that I started my actual consultancy which I was telling you; Just Juice Development. And then that became Business Mastery for about three or four years later. And so now, yeah… We‘re very blessed with what we do. We travel… Essentially now it‘s about 15 countries with clients. And yeah, we‘re now at the point where we‘re scaling back just to manage growth. But predominantly what our business is really around training and events around education. Around marketing, sales, persuasion… We‘re now moving more into the capital space like teaching businesses how to raise capital. How to acquire businesses. Acquire their competitors and exit. And we do some consultancy and some advisory around that as well. So that‘s it in a nutshell. I know that was a bit…
Christo: No, that was good. That was awesome. So from scratching cars to breaking windows, shoveling shit. And you mentioned leverage in there as an early lesson.
Kerwin: Yeah, I learned some great lessons. Even before I got into the security business, I was managing a chain of fitness stores and I remember I got sacked for turning up late for work every day for three months straight. I didn‘t realize they could track the report from when I opened and when I punched the alarm system. And all these little things. I‘ve made so many mistakes. I‘ve failed so many times. And every single failure that I‘ve had has contributed to success in some way and I think a lot of people say, “What‘s the difference between you and other people?” And it sounds like an arrogant question but when you‘re comparing a successful entrepreneur to someone who‘s not successful, the successful entrepreneur is just someone who‘s gone out and made more mistakes than average.
Franziska: I agree. And that‘s a really good lesson I think for our listeners. And the other thing that I‘ve also heard is that with the horse poop, for example, you saw an opportunity and I think maybe because you were too young to really know that, but what I say is that you probably understood the market. You know. That people like us, we don‘t really want to drive somewhere. We don‘t want to go and pick up poo. It would be nicer to get it delivered.
Kerwin: Absolutely.
Franziska: And you basically understood that need. Unconsciously I would say as a 23 year old boy didn‘t do the research but…
Kerwin: No, I think as a 12-year old kid you just want to make some money to buy some chocolate, and buy some lollies and go to the show. But now on reflection I now understand the lessons. Because one of the things as I started to get into business I constantly look for points of leverage. Like I was never the kind of businessman that was looking to just do what everyone else was doing and slog it out. I was like, “Oh, how can I make this better? How can I do this with less time, less effort?” And I‘ll be honest with you, I actually started off as quite a lazy person.
Franziska: Doesn‘t sound like it at all…
Kerwin: It doesn‘t sound like it, I suppose. I got a pretty sickening work ethic. But I still, on some level, I know when I was young I was quite lazy so I always used to look for the easy way to do things. But I learned along the way. At first you look for the easy way. You compromise on quality. But then after a while you make a few mistakes and you look for the easy way without compromising the quality. And yeah, it‘s been a great lesson.
Franziska: So, obviously there are a lot of lessons in what you‘ve just shared with the audience. But, what do you think is the number one thing that makes a business successful or not?
Kerwin: I think it‘s the owner and the mindset of the individual who‘s actually driving the whole operation. Because everything permeates from the person who‘s running the business. Their values permeate. The culture permeates. The standards really permeate. And it really comes down to the right individual with the right mindset. I don‘t think education has got anything to do with it from an academic perspective because I‘ve met plenty of multi, multi-millionaires who have an IQ under 100 points. And some of my most successful clients probably have the least academic ability. Because they don‘t question things. They just get told something and rather than sitting there thinking about how can I do this better, they just get on with it.
Christo: Yeah, right.
Kerwin: But I think one of the most important things about the entrepreneur and their mindset is just being able to manage perspective rather than being the subject of perspective. Because as an entrepreneur, one thing I can guarantee anyone who‘s listening if they haven‘t experienced it already, or if they‘ve been in business for at least six months, it‘s a pretty bumpy ride. It is a roller coaster and it doesn‘t matter what you do. If you want to be a business owner. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you‘re going to have great days and you‘re going to have bad days. You‘re going to have wins and you‘re going to have losses. And the most important thing as an entrepreneur is learning to maintain perspective in every situation. Not just in the wins. But also especially in the losses. And that‘s probably what I‘d say is one of the most important things.
Franziska: And I like that with our audience that you‘re just really honest and transparent. There are definitely a lot of online entrepreneurs that make it seem so easy and every day‘s a sunny day and I‘ve made a million in my undies and it‘s not like that.
Kerwin: It‘s not. It‘s not like that at all.
Franziska: No, it‘s not. And it‘s good to have people on the show like you that are really successful and you‘re honest about how what life is like as an entrepreneur. It‘s awesome.
Kerwin: It is awesome. There‘s good days and bad days. But it‘s a lot of hard work and this is the thing I think when you‘re looking at maintaining perspective, a lot of business owners have a short term perspective. They‘re constantly looking how can I make money now. We have a 30-year plan in our business. We have a goal that we went to achieve in the next 30 years. That‘s how far in advance we plan. So if we have a loss this week or next week or even next year, I don‘t really care because it‘s not so much about what‘s happening now, it‘s about where we‘re going. And I think that‘s important. Most people want to make money quickly but it is a long distance sport.
Franziska: I agree. I agree.
Christo: Awesome. So one thing that we know you‘re really good at is joint ventures and I know a lot of our listeners, a lot of our clients, or the listeners-in would love to learn a bit about show us maybe some insider secrets or some tips on just how you do it. So if you can give our listeners some sort of know-how on how you do the joint ventures. Maybe on how you select a great joint venture partner and how you approach them. I feel there‘s some sort of process that…
Kerwin: I‘ll try and give you the short version.
Christo: Yeah, no we love it.
Franziska: That‘s good. We love it.
Kerwin: Look. I think the joint ventures was born out of the horse poop story. Like if you look at what I did with the nursery. It was really just a joint venture. And the reasons joint ventures are so powerful. Word-of-mouth marketing is the most powerful marketing on earth. We all know that and we understand because there‘s a huge trust factor and there‘s a relationship there. So if you‘re going to refer someone to me and we‘ve got a good relationship, I‘m going to trust you. And when a joint venture is essentially structured word-of-mouth on steroids. Because if you‘re trying to market to the open market, through newspaper advertising, online, social media, whatever, depending on your modality, most of the modes it‘s a cold market. So I‘m exposing my message or my offer to you or to a 100,000 people in my market and these are people who haven‘t done business with me. They don‘t know who I am from a can of paint. Whereas if I was referred to these people by someone that they‘ve already done business with, then we‘re going to be more likely to be responsive to my message. Or more importantly, open to my message. So the beautiful thing about joint ventures instead of using a cold approach, it‘s actually fostering a warm approach.
Christo: Transfer that.
Kerwin: Exactly. But again, it doesn‘t necessarily mean it‘s going to be any easier. It‘s a lot more work in the short term, but it‘s a lot less work in the long term. Because in the short term, from a know-how perspective or a how-to perspective, I teach the first thing you need to do is create what‘s called the Fortune 500 list. And that is the 500 businesses that you would love to joint venture with. And that list is born out of a profile. I suppose just to take a step back before the Fortune 500 list, before you build that Fortune 500 list, you‘ve got to be very clear on your ultimate buy profile. What is the ideal buyer of your product or your service? Now, if you‘ve already got an existing business, you should be able to identify, okay, who‘s my best clients and then there are essentially 10 to 12 questions that you can ask them to find out what it is about them that makes them your best buyers. I‘ll give you an example. One client I had was a therapist. Quite successful business but very high overheads… It was turning over about $2 million per year but it was a very high overhead business. So it sounds sexy but it wasn‘t. She came to me and said, “Look we don‘t have money for a marketing budget. We need more clients.” And I said, “Okay.” So we took a subset of her database, about 400 people and we rang them and we asked them 10 questions. One of those questions was, “What kind of car do you drive?” And 85% of the respondents responded with a European car. So it was either a BMW, Mercedes or an Audi. And so I immediately thought, well, okay that‘s where our market is. So when we created our Fortune list. We didn‘t create a Fortune 500 list, we basically created a Fortune 3 list, which is BMW, Mercedes and Audi. I rang the three companies. Said, “Listen. I‘m calling from this business. We just surveyed our clients and it turns out that we share the same clients. So what we‘d like to do is a cross-promotion. We‘d like to give you this $500 gift hamper for you to give to all of your clients for free as a way of saying thank you every time they buy a car from you.” Now if you approach any business, whether it be a car dealer or anyone and say I want to give you a $500 hamper full of products and services. Massages, fat wraps, the whole kit and caboodle and you can give this away to anyone who buys from you, who would say no to that?
Christo: Yeah.
Franziska: Absolutely.
Kerwin: I‘ve surveyed thousands of people all over the world through events and asking this question. I haven‘t met anyone who would say no to that. So the beautiful thing is there is we had a huge uptake. BMW, Mercedes and Audi all agreed immediately and the beautiful thing about that strategy was number one, yes, we identified the best buyers. Number two, we just went straight to the top. And one of the things about joint ventures and the potency that they have is who you align yourself with because if you align yourself with a business that nobody knows, and let‘s say most businesses out there nobody knows who you are anyway, and if you align yourself with another business that nobody knows all you‘re really going to get is the benefit of the exposure to that client base and their business. Right? And that could be good in itself and it is good in itself. But, when you start joint venturing with businesses that have a high profile, it‘s what I call buyer association branding. By associating your brand with a prestige brand, it actually pull you up. It creates a higher perception of a standard or a higher perceived value in the marketplace. What do you do? Because BMW and Mercedes now, they‘re not going to joint venture with a crappy business. They‘re not going to offer the services of a crappy business. And this is a great example. I‘ll keep it really short.
We did the deal. BMW and Mercedes now they‘re all within three minutes all said yes. We started sending out a baskets and in three months we generated $360,000 worth of business in three months.
Franziska: How nice.
Kerwin: But the beautiful thing was is we‘d only spent less than $500 on the whole promotion. We approached the company that provided all the products and services. Told them we‘re doing a deal with BMW, Mercedes and Audi. And as a result they wanted to kick in all the products.
Franziska: That‘s nice.
Kerwin: And after the first sixty baskets that we distributed, the beauty therapist pulled the basket out and just wrapped it in cellophane paper and put some wood chip or wood shavings in it. So the cost was virtually zero for the whole promotion. So in terms of how-to. Another one. You‘ve got to build a buy profile. Who‘s your ideal client? Second thing is then build a list of businesses that match that buy profile. Where are your customers already spending money? Build a list of 500… If you can‘t do 500, do 50. And then it‘s just a process of approach. The first thing you need to do is obviously get their details. So you ring them up. Do whatever you need to do to get the data over the telephone, but then you send them a letter and the letter is purely designed… Or actually, take a step back, I‘m sorry. Jumping over here. But one of the most important things that you do before you send the letter, or send the letter. Get very clear on what is it you‘re going to offer these people. Because when it comes down to anything, whether you‘re selling a joint venture… It‘s not even about joint ventures, it‘s about sales and persuasion. Whenever you‘re trying to persuade someone to a specific outcome, you‘ve got to be very clear on what that outcome is. And when you‘re clear about that outcome, then all you‘ve got to do is fill in the blanks to get them to that outcome. But if you don‘t know what your outcome is, there‘s no trajectory, there‘s no direction. So, you build your buy profile. You identify all the businesses. And then you create two offers.
The first offer is what is the offer for the joint venture partner. What are they going to get out of it? And there‘s a range of benefits for them. You could offer them mutual promotion. You could offer them profit share. You could offer them, if they‘re big enough, a percentage of equity in your business. Because if you‘re a small business and you have a product, and you‘ve got 20 clients and then there‘s a guy over here that can give you access to 10,000 clients, why wouldn‘t you at least put on the table the prospect of giving him equity in your business if there are certain milestones that are reached if they promote you. So equity can be thrown in the mix. Or you can do a hybrid deal. Which is you can do mutual promotion, you could do profit share and you could do some kind of an equity structure. The best thing when you‘re starting out is to keep it really simple and just look at either mutual promotion or profit share just to keep it really simple.
What‘s the offer for the joint venture partner? What‘s in it for them outside of that? And what‘s in it for their clients? What are you going to offer their client, the joint venture partner client that they can‘t get anywhere else? And this is where a lot of people miss of the joint venture. I don‘t know, I think last year I did 280 presentations on joint ventures in like seven countries around the world. And without fail, almost every single time I got a message on Facebook from someone who goes, “Kerwin, I loved the presentation. That was really awesome. I think we should do a joint venture together. I think you can make me rich. I think you can make me famous. Hey, you could probably could even make me better looking. And I‘d be willing to give you 2% of the pie.” And it‘s like…
Franziska: He didn‘t listen.
Kerwin: No, no. What a joint venture is really all about at its core is about finding a mutually beneficial proposition and part of that proposition is what are you… Like if you want to joint venture with me, what are you going to give me that I‘m going to offer to my clients that my clients can‘t get anywhere else? Because if you give me something and offer it to them and I can just get it from you just by going and asking from you, there‘s no buy association value. There‘s no exclusivity there. So, you want to create the buy profile. You want to create the list of the joint venture partners. You want to create the two offers. What‘s in it for the joint venture partner? What‘s in it for their client? And once you‘ve that very well clear. You‘ve got a plan. You‘ve got direction. You‘ve got a trajectory.
The next thing you‘ve got to do then is start actually doing something. You send a letter. And the letter should be very vague. You should never try and sell a joint venture off a letter. It should be a full page with maybe, if that 300 to 400 words or not that says something to the effect of, “Dear John. I‘m a local business owner just like yours. And I think I found a way where I could refer you to 800 of my existing clients. At the same time, creating an additional stream of income for your business. It‘s not going to cost you a cent. I should point out I‘m speaking to three other people in your industry in the local area and I only want to work with one. If you would like to give me a call, here‘s my number. If I don‘t hear from you in the next 48 hours, I‘ll drop you a line anyway. Just to have a chat and see if there‘s anything we can talk about. Speak to you soon.”
Christo: Very good.
Kerwin: And again. Not trying to sell anything. All I‘m offering is 800 clients. I want to refer them to you. Or however many clients. It could be four clients. I don‘t know about you, but if someone sent our business an email saying I‘ve got four clients that we could refer to you, we would respond to that.
Franziska: You listen, yeah. Exactly.
Kerwin: So, yeah. The goal of the letter. And I always say that marketing is about… Marketing is a sales process of selling steps. This whole process… Well marketing as a process is about constantly thinking, okay, what‘s the next step? Let‘s just sell that. I think the biggest mistake that people make is they try and sell the end result and they forget that there‘s 27 steps between that you‘ve got to sell in order to get to that end result. So the first step is… The goal of the letter is to get them to call you or to get them to take your call when you ring. So follow-up is key. And the letter will increase the probably hit right to actually speak to a business owner about 80%. The goal of the letter is purely to get them to have a conversation with you. We then follow-up with a phone call. The goal of the phone call is to do nothing more than to get them to sit down with you. And then the goal of sitting down with them is to sell the joint venture.
Christo: Yeah. Nice.
Kerwin: But again, if you send the letter. Someone responds… “Yeah, I‘m really interested. Tell me more about it.” “Well I want to do a joint…” And you try and explain the joint venture in three minutes, no one can. I can‘t. And the person on the phone goes, “Never heard of these people.” They‘re thinking. I‘ve never heard of this before. I don‘t know who you are. This sounds a bit fucking dodgy. I‘m out of here.
Franziska: Sorry I‘m not…
Kerwin: Sorry for the swearing. I apologize. We can bleep that out. Whereas if you get on the telephone and… The talk track for the telephone is essentially the same as the letter. “Listen. I think I found a way that I could refer you my clients and possibly create an additional stream of income.” “Could you tell me more?” “I‘d love to tell you more. But it‘s really something I‘ve got to show you. I‘m going to be in your area next week on Thursday and Friday. What day is better for you?” “Well Friday‘s probably better.” “Cool, it‘s good for me, too.” “Morning or afternoon?” “Afternoon.” “Two or four?” “Four o‘clock.” “Fantastic. See you then. I‘ll send you an email to confirm.”
Christo: Very good.
Kerwin: And it‘s important through the process… What I‘m teaching you here is not just a process to get a meeting with someone, but it‘s a sales process whether you‘re selling an appointment or selling a product. You never give people a choice of yes or no. You always give them alternative choices both choices being compliance. Monday or Tuesday? Morning or afternoon? Rather than saying, “What day is good for you?” “No days. No day is good for me. I‘m a busy guy.”
Christo: And I love the fact that you said it‘s just getting them to the meeting and then leaving it up in the air. Look, I can‘t explain it right now over the phone.
Kerwin: You can‘t. And if you try, you will fail especially in the early days. I‘m very careful about saying. I‘m only at the point now after setting up maybe 300, 400 joint ventures where I will set up a joint venture on a telephone call. But the process is, send a letter or an email. Follow-up with a phone call. Then talk about the deal. Because we‘re talking about three touches here. The more touches we have, the more familiarity we have. The more familiarity we have, it just breeds trust. If we try and sell it in the letter, they don‘t know you. They don‘t trust you. You try and sell it in the phone call. I‘ve only got a letter from you. But if we‘ve touched them three times, they‘re going to be a lot more receptive especially when you sit down in the meeting. And you just explain what the value proposition is. And again, when you explain the value proposition, this is not the value proposition. I think I found a way where I can make money for you. And that may sound right but I cannot tell you how many times people have said that to me.
Franziska: They did, yeah, absolutely.
Kerwin: And I‘ve just taught them what I‘m telling you right now.
Franziska: You might get a couple of emails now saying the same thing. We get approached a lot too as to a joint venture. Well, what‘s the deal? Most people don‘t even have something not a doubt because they think we can work it out.
Christo: Trying to get lucky on the first state.
Franziska: But also the other things just quickly for our listeners. I hope you guys have taken a lot of notes because this was amazing. You‘ve not only given them the whole strategy of how to set up a joint venture but also sales strategies. It just thrown in like that. I think nothing. So thank you.
Kerwin: My pleasure.
Franziska: Thanks for sharing. I think it‘s so generous. So guys, maybe you have to re-listen to that segment again. I think there is so much in there that can make you a lot of money. So, awesome… I‘m almost speechless with how much you‘ve shared with our audience. But really I want to also ask you another question which is: Maybe a few businesses listening to the show that are new. And so what would you say to them… What would be a good strategy or a couple of good strategies for them to kick off?
Kerwin: When it comes to marketing and generating leads? Or joint ventures? It is hands down… I‘ve built numerous multi-million dollar businesses just off the back of joint ventures. But what‘s really amazing in most cases. It‘s never been more than two or three joint ventures. I have one business that took them from $400,000 to $8 million in 18 months. Three joint ventures. Another business that took from $400,000 to $6.9 million in nine months. Four joint ventures. It‘s just a very high leverage activity. And the thing is for most new businesses they don‘t have money, but they‘ve got plenty of time. If you‘ve got plenty of money, you typically don‘t have a lot of time. But if you‘ve got plenty of time, you don‘t have money. You need to think, okay, well I don‘t have the money to pay PPC or direct mail or newspaper advertising, but I‘ve got plenty of time. So, what I can do is I can create a profile. I can create a list of businesses. I can send out 500 letters or 500 emails. I can follow-up with 500 phone calls. I can sit down with five to 50 businesses and make a proposition. But all you need is two to three joint ventures that really kick and you‘re set. You really are set.
Christo: It‘s like the original one with the manure.
Kerwin: I used to tell that story a lot. But then I remember telling that story one day because my mum doesn‘t know what I do. My mum still to this day when… She says, “So what do you do again? My friends ask me what you do. I thought I know what to say.” And she says to me one day, she goes, “You know what? It‘s kind of funny. You went from selling horse shit as a child and now it sounds like you‘re selling bullshit because I don‘t know what you do.”
Franziska: I totally love that.
Christo: What‘s next on the radar? Where to from here for you guys? What‘s the future plans for Kerwin Rae?
Kerwin: Look at this point I‘m considering retirement from speaking at the end of 2013, 2014.
Christo: You do a lot of…
Kerwin: In the last, what is it, 18 months. I‘ve spent like 488 days out of Australia for speaking and that‘s not including what I do around Australia. So it‘s kind of got to the point now I‘m getting married in January. I want to have kids next year. I‘m now working on a lot more higher level stuff because our business attracts a lot of attention not just from investors but from start-up technology businesses and so as a part of our model now, we‘re doing a lot more in the start-up community. We‘re doing a lot more in technology and spending a lot more time Silicon Valley. The next step for us is really doing more in that space. Helping businesses that need capital raised. Capital acquired. But help people that want to acquire businesses acquire them. Help the people that want to sell their business, sell their business. We‘re really at a much higher level because that‘s where the real leverage is.
Franziska: That‘s very exciting. Now, one question that we always ask everyone on the show is what‘s the weirdest or funniest thing… I know you have a lot of funny… The horse story‘s already funny, you‘re not really on the spot anymore, but I‘m sure you have another story. Just the one story. Something funny.
Kerwin: This is gold. I used to train a lot of consultants. I probably trained a couple thousand consultants for marketing and business development and sales. And I used to do this training where I‘d do live appointment setting. Because one of the biggest objections of sales… Oh, there‘s no appointments. So I‘d basically pull out a Yellow Pages and a phone on speaker and I‘d sit there and make 50 phone calls and get like… If I can speak to… If I‘d make 50 phone calls, I‘d generally speak to at least 15 people and I would make my 12 appointments. So I‘d do this a lot, just to show people that it‘s not as hard as what you think. And this one time I was doing this dial and…
Franziska: Can‘t wait to hear this.
Kerwin: And the lady answered. And I was targeting beauty… I thought I was targeting beauty therapist because it was under beauty therapy and massage in the Yellow Pages. And I have this very short script for getting appointments. Just freaking killer. I said, “Hi. I want to speak with the business owner. I haven‘t got a lot of time because I‘ve got to make this really quick. I‘m just curious to know, do you consider yourself a business owner with an open mind?” And she said, “Considering I spend all my days giving blow jobs and hand jobs… I consider myself someone with an open mind.” Now picture this. I‘ve got 50 guys in suits sitting in front of me over the speaker phone. And everyone‘s just like. Where the hell‘s he going to go from here?
Franziska: And everyone is asking, “So what‘s the number Kerwin?”
Kerwin: Yeah, everyone was like… Because I got the meeting. I got the appointment. And everyone was like, “Yeah, I‘ll take that one.” So that was probably the weirdest thing that‘s ever happened to me.
Franziska: That is pretty awesome.
Christo: Very good.
Kerwin: It was not long after that I stopped doing live calls.
Franziska: Where can people find out more about you and your business?
Kerwin: Probably the easiest place would be kerwinrae.com. Which is K-E-R-W-I-N-R-A-E.com.
Franziska: Awesome. Thank you so much. You‘re also on Facebook maybe?
Kerwin: Yeah. Facebook. Kerwin Rae. Same spelling. Oh, yeah. I try to keep it consistent.
Franziska: We‘ll put a link below the show as well. Thank you so much for coming.
Kerwin: Absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me guys.
Christo: Yeah. Thank you so much. High five for you.