Brokering Deals (TFM 4)

So we talked about odd jobs. We kind of transitioned into brokering deals, which is not necessarily doing the odd jobs yourself, but being a broker. Let me give you a couple real-life examples here. Recently, I had somebody go all-in business with me, and this person said, hey, I'm limited on time. I have money, but I'm limited on time.

He said, is there someone I can pay to manage a paid advertising campaign for me? Is there someone I can pay to set up my autoresponders for me and set up my accounts for me and get my blog set up for me? Is there someone I can pay for this kind of stuff? And I said, absolutely, and I hooked him up with somebody that could set some of that stuff up. So just right off the top of my head, I'm thinking to myself, in life, there is a do-it-yourself, the DIY solution, the do-it-yourself solution, and then there's the done-for-you solution, the D4Y, done-for-you.

So it's either DIY, do-it-yourself, or D4Y, done-for-you. You've got two types of people. You've got the type of people that would love to learn. They'd love to learn how to do something themselves and go do it, and then you have the type of people that they enjoy learning it, but they'd rather pay someone to do it for them. They just pay someone else to do it.

So here's the thing. There's always an opportunity for you if you become the broker. You can become a broker of things that don't require a license. And let's just, Arthur, what I want you to do, I'm going to say a few things. I want you to start thinking of some things off the cuff.

Let's give some real-life examples that we can think of things that you can get in the middle of and broker. Okay, here's an example. People are moving all the time. People are moving in a new neighborhood. People are moving in a new state.

People are moving. And when they move, along with moving comes a lot of adaptation. They need additional expenses. They need to furnish a house. They need to fix things up.

They need to do things, right? So here's an example. I moved down to San Diego. And when I did, I wanted to fully furnish the house that I moved into. This was a year, I think a year and a half ago.

And so I asked my friend, I go, hey, where can I get some good furniture, whatever? And he introduced me to this store. I went down there and went and picked out all this furniture and bought it. And these guys delivered it, and it was all there. Okay, cool.

So there was something I wanted, and I got it done, which was, I wanted to furnish my house. And I wanted a little bit of creative control over it. I didn't just want any furniture. But I'll tell you, and I spent, I think, gosh, I don't know what the total amount was, and it was me and a partner, and so it wasn't really, I wasn't spending it all myself. But when it was all said and done, it was like $20,000 worth of furniture or something to furnish this house.

So here's the deal. I would have much rather not gone through that experience. If I had to do it again right now, I would just say no. That just was too much time and energy going back and forth. So the furniture store, figuring out what to do, spending hours and hours and hours there, going through and going through the process of where to go and what to do and what to get and how to do it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It just became frustrating for me. There's a perfect example right there of if there would have been somebody who said, hey, Chris, look, I know you got some taste, I know you want some decent furniture, and I know you don't want to spend hours and hours and hours doing it. Tell you what, why don't we do this? My fee is just 10%. I will be your furniture guy.

I will present to you. I will give you options. I will do whatever. I will help you get your house fully furnished the way you like it. I'll even manage the crew that's going to come.

Whatever the cost is, my fee is 10%. So in that case, I probably would have done that if I had somebody decent. And they wouldn't even have to be a perfect interior designer. But if furniture is not your thing, this is not what you should do. But I'm saying some of you on the phone probably have some decent design sense, and you probably love looking at furniture, and you probably love presenting options to somebody.

Just on that simple level, you don't have to start up a whole furniture business. And, you know, if we did, guess what? It would have cost $22,000. But if we had somebody facilitating it, they probably also would have negotiated and probably got us a better deal and probably took the time to shop around and find something better, probably would have got us $25,000 worth of furniture. For $22,000.

Or maybe $30,000 worth of furniture for $20,000. So not only are you making money, but we're saving time and probably getting a better deal too. It's a win-win situation. And that's just one of so many examples that we could rattle off right now all day long. Arthur, did anything come to your mind currently for little things to broker for deals like this?

You know, there's so many, Chris. You know, lessons. Like educational type programs that are out there. I know we're selling like educational programs within Power Network, but there's tons of people that teach music. They teach, you know, like very basic internet-based knowledge, you know, learning how to type, learning how to speak a language, learning how to play the piano.

You know, tons of people out there looking for services like that and being able to, you know, being able to broker even like services like that or even provide them yourself. That's a skill set that you have. So there's so many things that you can do. It's just overwhelming just thinking about how many possibilities there are when it comes to brokering services. You know, a good idea might be a good challenge or assignment for people right now listening to this might be to make a list.

You know, what you should do is you should write down on a piece of paper, or if you're taking notes on a news sheet, on the top, write ideas of things to broker. You know, broker ideas. And then just make a list. Just go through. Make a list.

And like Arthur said, you might be good at some things. Maybe you're good at a music, like I think, I don't know if he said it, but it came to my mind when he was talking, was some sort of like a musical instrument lesson, right? So maybe you're good at piano. So maybe you're like, oh, wow, I never thought about that. I could throw something out real quick, you know, to be able to do some extra lessons on the side and be able to raise some money to do what I want to do.

Or maybe you know somebody who's good. And maybe you know somebody who has a business. Think, write down everybody that you know that has a business that sells things. And, you know, that's a good idea. And contact them and say, hey, look, I'm looking to raise some extra cash.

Can I middleman, can I broker anything that you're selling? You know, maybe you know somebody that's selling, you know, stuff on Craigslist or selling maybe, how about this one? Here's another little money little ninja tip right here. This is a little money magnet tip. Here you go.

I bet there's a lot of people like me out there, okay? I have a garage filled with stuff. I mean, filled with a lot of stuff. Stuff that is, you know. Either some of it's like slightly broken, just needs a little bit of repair.

Some of it is just stuff I've had and I need to, you know, every time I move, I just end up putting it in the garage instead of moving into the house. And I'll bet everybody's got stuff like that. Every once in a while, it crosses through my mind that I should like go on Craigslist and sell all this stuff and make some extra money. But, you know, time is money and I just find myself busy and I never get around to it. So stuff just accumulates.

Well, what if somebody came to me and said, hey, Chris, how about this? You need to sell this stuff. I'm looking to raise some money. What if I help sell all this stuff for you? And you can go to a friend to do this.

What if you just go help your friend? Hey, look, I'll sell all this stuff for you. I'll take the time to post it on Craigslist or eBay or do the garage sale or yard sale or whatever. I'll take the time. Why don't we just do this?

Why don't we just do a 50-50 split or whatever if that's too much, you know, 80-20 split or whatever. You know, you keep 80%. I'll keep 20%. You do some sort of a split and just go, hey, look, I'm looking to raise some cash for a business I'm looking to start. Or I'm looking to raise some cash.

I'm looking to raise some cash for a project, an advertising project I'm looking to do. And I would be willing to take the time. You have money but not time. I have time but not money. Let's work together.

See, if somebody came to me, if one of my friends came to me that I trusted with my stuff and said, Chris, for example, I see here in your garage you've got a projector. Why aren't you using this? And I would tell you, well, the bulb went out on it, so I just never bothered. And you would look at it and go, well, guess what? You know, this has a value of probably a couple hundred bucks still, even without.

Or get a new bulb in it. Maybe it has a value of 500 bucks in it. Or maybe you just get creative and go, okay, boom, there's one thing. And then maybe there's another thing. Maybe there's some other.

I mean, I could go on and on and on. I don't want to take the whole call doing it. But the point is there's just ideas. There's ideas to broker. You could become a money magnet and you start brokering small things.

Maybe something to make 500 bucks here, 100 bucks there, 200 bucks there. Sell things for your friends on Craigslist. Tell them, hey, I'll come. I'll take pictures of it all. I'll take pictures of it all.

I'll post the ads. I'll optimize the ads so they're seen by a lot of people. I'll facilitate the transaction to get the cash. And you don't even have to meet with a single person. Boom, I'm just going to put cash in your pocket for each one of these items.

Hands off. We disagree on the percentage and win-win. And I'll get started on it right away. Okay? Ideas, ideas, ideas.

If you want to become a money magnet, you've got to start knowing that there's ideas all around you. Okay? So make a list. Make a list of, you know, make a big list. You should come up with like 100 things you could broker.

Things like how many entrepreneurs do you have? How many small business owners do you have? Do they need graphics? Do they need somebody? Go check out their Twitter background or their Facebook page.

I'll bet they don't even have a good timeline cover on their Facebook page. You know, you could simply go to them and say, hey, you know, I could get you a killer timeline graphic for $200 if you're interested. $200, I'll get you something killer. I'll give you a few revisions and everything. They'd probably say, yeah, I mean, $200, it's a fair deal.

And then you go to a friend that designs. And go, hey, you know, I'll give you $100 or $50 or whatever. Or go get an outsourcer overseas and have them do it. Okay? And maybe you're paying $10.

You know what I mean? Just the point is that there's so many things, Twitter backgrounds, Facebook backgrounds, website design, services that you can offer anybody for money. And, again, you don't have to start your own business. You don't have to write up a whole business plan. You don't have to do that.

You know what you have to do? Two things. One is contact an entrepreneur. And see if there's anything you can assist with. And, two, contact the person to fulfill it.

The graphic designer or the web designer or whoever it is. And see what margin you can create. That's it. Just do it one time. Before you get all crazy and start writing out a whole business plan and starting up your own company and building your own website and thinking that this is your new destiny and calling, you know what?

Just do one deal. Just go do it once. And go do it this week. Take massive action. Go do it this week.

Raise some money. See if you can go raise $100 or $500 or whatever it is. Okay? So broker. Something.

Arthur, should we move on or do you have anything else you wanted to say on that? No. It's just, you know, not only do these contacts become, you know, like if you're doing odd jobs and you're doing it with complete, total strangers, you know, things like labor and things like brokering services with, you know, people in the community that you might not know before. But these are all people that become also prospects for, you know, the friends and family, you know, items when it comes to funding. You know, they also become, you know, prospects for.

They become prospects for, you know, being involved in a business with you or helping you become or being the financier of a business that you're starting. So, you know, there's different angles. There's different angles that you can take. And, you know, when you're dealing with complete strangers, let's say you're shoveling somebody's snow or you're doing something like that or you're doing some kind of labor job and you're really good at just you have a good personality about it and you strike up a conversation. You kind of tell them what you're up to.

You know, if the person is a business person or they're an entrepreneur or somebody that's busy. But they're OK with paying for a service like that. Those types of people, successful people are more open to opportunities than people who are, you know, quote unquote broke or that have that broke mindset. And so you just never know where it's going to take you when you go out there and you start doing some of these odd jobs. So that's the last thing I want to add.

Yeah, I love it. So that's a great transition right there because that's brilliant. What Arthur was saying there was not only is that a way to be able to create some income, but now you're building a relationship with somebody that, in essence, they have money. You know what I mean? And so it's also a great relationship to be forming, a great way to build up, you know, if you have an existing friend or a family member that you're working with, this is a great way to build up some credibility and grow your relationship with them or even with strangers, a great way to meet new people.

So let's, Arthur, let's transition.