How would you want to spend 20 to 30 minutes a day developing one new relationship that will increase, if not quadruple, your income?
I’m going to introduce a fresh twist to the relationship-building game. I urge you to consider two words that could have a significant impact on your life and income.
Those are the phrases “on purpose.”
What do you think would happen if you started intentionally forming new relationships? What if you assigned an immediate monetary value to each of those new relationships?
That’s what I did a few years ago, and the results have been nothing short of spectacular. I realize it sounds cold and calculated to think this way, but stay with me.
It all began one evening when I was giving an Internet business talk to a local S.C.O.R.E. chapter. I was discussing ways to boost the value of email in your business. I looked down and, by coincidence, I had one of those thousand dollar bill bookmarks you can get at your local bookstore in my materials. When you hold one up, it looks just like a $1,000 bill.
I wanted to impress upon the audience the significance of building their email list, so I advised them to treat each email address as if it were a $1,000 note, while holding up that bookmark.
Then I said, “How about establishing One New Relationship Every Day? And how many of those partnerships would you like, each one putting an extra $1,000 in your pocket?”
The response was quick. Some people in the audience stood up. Some people smiled broadly. Many others who I thought were sleeping began to ask questions. What I observed was that the value label I assigned to their future relationships, which may start with an email conversation, made sense to them. They were no longer just seeing an arbitrary email address. They recognized potential earnings.
I knew I’d hit on something, so my “on purpose” relationship income experiment began. I began to wonder what would happen if I deliberately considered every email interaction I formed as a possible income stream worth at least $1,000 and worked toward that objective. Of course, I believed that each one had to be a win-win situation, with genuine benefit for both parties involved.
So, every time the phone rang, every time I met someone new, every time I received a reference or an email request, I began to feel as if I had just made another thousand dollars. Some days, I would make cold calls or go to random places with the purpose of meeting only one person.
From then on, I began each day knowing that I was going to meet someone fresh and intentionally form another friendship. Some days, the enthusiasm is so strong that I formed several new partnerships. It’s gotten quite remarkable. I began to attract more people who wanted to collaborate with me and give me money. Consider that.
I eventually started tracking the intentional formation of these new relationships on a regular basis. I had a brief talk with each of them to find out what they wanted and how I could assist them. Every time, I knew in the back of my mind that we’d each end up with a thousand bucks or more in our pockets.