Building Preeminence In Your Client Business with Jay Abraham (Part 2)

It is YOUR responsibility to help the market discover you. Preeminence will help you get there.

Once again we rejoin the interview with Jay Abraham right where we lift off, talking about the power of preeminence in your client business.

If you haven’t seen or read the first part of this interview on preeminence, go back and read it!

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Jay:

How to provide unique value to your clients

Well, there's a couple of very critical elements that you need to know. Let me give you the three or four that you have to have. Okay. 

• Use metaphors, similes and analogies as often as you can.

People can grasp, relate and understand things much easier when you make these kinds of examples.

Anybody who's religious, it doesn't matter your religious commitment, will understand these because they’re basically parables. 

• Ask yourself: “How much value can I contribute?”

Everyone's looking for: “how can I manipulate? What can I do to get people to buy?” And it's really not the right question. The right question is how much value can I contribute? 

That is defined as value on their side, not just mine. Another one is any time any two people come together for any reason, one side is always being asked either verbally or non-verbally implicitly or explicitly, knowingly or unknowingly to take on all, most or more than all of the risks. 

More than all the risks you get married, you have kids, it doesn't work out. Now, you'd give up your career, whatever it is, you got this burden. 

Preeminence stipulates that you don't want to wait for money to change hands, to start generously and richly investing in the other side.

I believe that there has to be an understanding with people of what and why you're doing what you’re doing.

I don't think giving things free without explanation is a very valuable thing to do. 

I think you're better off saying, “I want to buy you this workshop, this course because I want you to agree that first of all, if you sign up, you will show up. 

And when you show up, you'll show up fully attentive. If you show up fully attentive, you will pay absolute attention, take all the notes, not have your other devices on because your life is the reason we're doing this, not ours. 

Shift your value system

One of the most critical and, and defining elements of preeminence is that you have to shift your value system.

Most people fall in love either with business, making money with a product, service, industry or online marketing. But if you really want to be outrageously successful, multiplied many times over whatever you can possibly achieve by those previously acknowledged categories, then do this.

Fall in love with your client instead

And the reason is you want to be able to see your product or service deployed in their life, making a difference in life, even if you're selling ice cream. 

And if only for 15 minutes, you give an adult, who has a very stressful life, 15 minutes of joy and solace remembering when they were innocent and young, that's a very valuable contribution.

But if you don't really see them as anything but a credit card then you've lost the whole meaning of being preeminent. 

Preeminence is about seriously caring more deeply about the client. 

Now you have three clients, Oh, by the way, you have to refer to them at very least in your mind and preferably in your verbalization, as clients, not customers. 

Why you should never call your clients your “customers”

The reason why is threefold. 

1. It shows more respect for both them and for you. 
2. Client infers a greater relationship.

According to Webster's dictionary, his definition of customer is someone who buys a commodity or a service. When you call me your customer. What you're telling me is that you are nothing more than a commodity or a generality. You have no value above and beyond anyone else. 

So you're really succumbing to the very essence of what you're trying to get away from, when you call people customers.

However, if you look up the Webster's dictionary definition of a client, it's someone who is under the care, the protection, and the wellbeing of another. The relationship itself and the level and the dimension of the relationship is totally different. 

You want to see yourself as being, and doing that and having that kind of relationship. 

When you do all of this, there is a miraculous and almost elevating, liberating power that starts emanating from you and your company that is more magnetic and more authentic and starts precipitating enormous outcomes from things you normally would have just gotten decent returns from.

Another critical function in factor for preeminence is:

You must be on an absolute crusade or a mission. 

And everyone in your organization has to feel that they are a direct part of the creation, the achievement and fulfillment of that mission for others and for your clients. 

And speaking of clients, I'll give you a little more. There's a lot more dimension than this. Our clients are three categories, certainly. 

• The ones that pay you. 

Ironically, the other two categories are the ones you pay: your team members and your external resources and advisors. 

You want to do everything in your power to make them great. 

You want to do everything in your power to make the relationship with them enriching.

You want to grow and develop the abilities and the capabilities of the success of everyone in your sector, because their growth will translate to your growth. And I can go on and on, but that's a start. 

Chris and Taylor:

So Jay, I'm remembering back to a couple of weeks ago. In our brand we don't have any facades or fronts. We'll just tell people like it is. And we were basically depressed a while back and you had to pull us out of the gutter and save us. 

We were running into mommy and daddy and you were like, you're going to be okay. 

And the reason that you told us, the wisdom you gave us is we had fallen out of love with the people that we were helping and you reset us. 

And would you say in your experience that most of the time, someone's just getting burned out and they're just getting fatigued and they're just not enjoying their life or their business anymore? Is most of the cause of that. 

Do you find it comes back down to falling out of love with the people you're serving and you've fallen in love with maybe the byproducts of the return you're giving to get rather than giving to give?

Jay: 

Giving to get or giving to give?

That's profoundly true. I have a very dear friend who is one of the most powerful people I've ever met. 

And I don't mean powerful in terms of his wealth or significance in the business world. He is one of the very few grandmasters of Chinese energy that exists alive today.

His abilities are profound. However, I had to work very deeply with him because he was so in love with the energy and what it could do, that he lost track of the human element. And he became attitudinally depressed and prejudiced because he saw all the imperfection in you.

I explained to him that I believe every human being wants to be better unless they have some mental illness or something that is not their fault that has adversely affected them. 

They just don't know how, and they deserve to be loved and appreciated and invested in because the leverage in that is profound. 

I think a lot of people get burned out because they see the consumers price shopping and not honoring their word and not paying on time and all these things. They take it as a personal front hurry and feel violated. 

I have money owed me all the time. I have people that always keep their word and I get disappointed. But I also realize that getting angry with human beings for being human is stupid. 

Your job is to set a higher role model so that they can see a totally different person that they ascribed more to honor and to commit to. And I think it's a beautiful, positive game that you're playing way above the ground level of frustrating, transactional business. 

It's much more fulfilling. You have a lot more passion and compassion. 

I had a very interesting discussion with one of the most famous transformative persons that ever lived before he stopped doing it. 

He told me that the way that he was most effective was looking at every human being as being magnificent, but not yet fulfilling that, and carrying so much crap and baggage. They needed help getting rid of it because they didn't even know how to extricate themselves. 

And he said that when he started working with any group, his goal was to have zero sympathy, but unbelievable yet ruthless empathy and compassion. 

What happened yesterday? I can't change, but I can help you make yourself better. 

I can help you see yourself realistically, I can help extricate yourself from flawed thinking or self-serving thinking or self destructive thinking. 

So good. Does that make sense? 

Chris and Taylor:

Jay, in a world where everyone's trying to monetize everything. Everyone's trying to make as much money for as little investment as possible. It’s the state we’re seeing in internet marketing today. People are fulfilling business while wearing underwear watching WWF.

There's an unheard of amount of experts who are masters at what they do. They're very good, but they're not making any money and they have a tough time building wealth. 

And they're just struggling. I think that when it comes to building wealth, you should be rewarded richly for your contribution. 

What would you say to the experts who they're very good at what they do, but they are having a difficult time actually building a solid business that produces wealth for them and their families? 

Jay:

It's a great question. I would say a couple of things. 

First of all, that old adage about if you build the greatest mousetrap, the world will come to you is not true.

Unless you have a very, very unique patent or trademark. For most people, they have a moral responsibility to educate the marketplace.

I was drawn to marketing and then strategy many years ago because I was privileged to meet talented people that understood that the only way the marketplace could appreciate not just their talent, but also the value of that talent was it, if they helped educate them.

And education wasn't a bunch of vacuous hyperbolic statements. It was, denominating what they did and what it was worth. 

It was comparing what they did to what others do. It was distinguishing why and how they could make a difference in what someone else does in life or business. 

It was advocating for yourself, but not in a egotistical or arrogant or brash or audacious or discusting way, but with a sense of humility. 

The market could appreciate the differences you offered. It's arrogant and ignorant to think that the market should just find you knowing how obligated the world is. Don’t you think really?

Chris and Taylor:

Oh my gosh, yes. I'm writing that down. It's arrogant to think that the market should just find you. 

Jay Abraham:

Yeah. I mean, that's the most outrageous and ludicrous reality. 

It can find you after you gain awareness, but it still needs some vehicle to get to you, whether it's magazines, articles online, or podcasts.

One of my colleagues did a podcast on Dave Asprey and he was discovered by 20 other people in the same genre. And then all of a sudden he was discovered as the same person he'd always been, but he was discovered. 

I think whether it's marketing, whether it's media, whether it's gaining collaborative involvement with other people either in business, having them promote you, having them be a sidekick in what they do or whatever, there's an infinite number of ways to do it.

But if you don't respect yourself enough to help the market appreciate you, and the value that you represent to them above and beyond the alternatives, they won’t.

And if you don't see that you represent value, then you've got to figure out what in fact is your distinct value proposition. What is your differentiation? 

You can be one of a million talented experts, and that's actually a disadvantage.

You have to be a distinctive expert.

I tend to be the very high end of omni-knowledgeable, understanding the holistic totality of the revenue side.

Although I'm not that strong on technology, some people can be specialists. They can be the lower, the higher, the revenue sharing, guaranteeing performance outcomes. 

But you better find another dimension besides just expertise, because I think today it's become just the standard for everybody.

I mean, that doesn't mean that a bunch of very ill-informed and very limited knowledge people are purporting themselves to be far more expert than they are. 

But if you just take the category of all the people who really are experts, but are struggling, there's three alternatives. 

• Advocate for yourself. 
• Use your skill for something you own. 

And it doesn't have to be selling information. You can apply it to any of a million different products or service categories. 

• Start partnering with other people and don't ask for fees. Get pieces of the business, pieces of the revenue and pieces of the profit.
  

You have a lot of optionality if you really want to. But sitting around frustrated, waiting for the throngs in the maddening crowds to beat down your online door is a little bit presumptuous.

Chris and Taylor:

We have a lot of people who are absolute experts, but they live in a place of obscurity and they're unknown. What would you say is the best way to accelerate themselves, in regards to preeminence into becoming the most trusted advisor in their marketplace, to where they are the only option in their marketplace? 

Jay:

Well, I think if they're struggling, it means that their time is not being fully utilized, or if it's being fully utilized, they're not commanding very much for it. 

So what I'll tell you is what I did and what I've gotten many non-traditional wellness-healthcare professionals to do. And it's pretty predictable. 

When I started, I had a track record of managing and marketing and strategy for a couple of companies that grew very rapidly.

I wanted to get into this more elevated field of performance-based consulting, where I got paid unlimited on the impact I could make in somebody's business, but I didn't have the reputation. 

So the first thing I did is I went to a company that at that time was the leading producer of audio information on business, management, marketing and sales skill sets. It was Nightingale Conant today. 

There was a time they were, I don't know, a hundred, $150 million, and they were big and they published everyone who was a bestseller. 

I went to them and I offered to help them with their business. And if I made a big difference, I wanted them to loudly endorse and introduce me to all their published business, sales, personal development, or author professionals. 

And I worked very hard and I made them an enormous amount of money because I was very skilled at identifying un-utilized assets that they had sitting under their nose.

They introduced me to a hundred of the top experts. I offered each of those experts to buy them two hours of my time. And I also sent them a book that I had created, which we ultimately sold 72,000 copies of for $377 a copy in a year and a half. 

But the deal I made was, I will consult with you. And, my ask in return is that you give me an endorsement.

If what I convey is viable as an impact and is profoundly different than the maddening crap. And I got 82 people to give me endorsements and I was on my way.

If people aren't paying you, you could pay them. 

And in services, particularly if you're great and get their endorsement. And with that endorsement, you could stipulate introduction to their sphere of influence.

If they sell business to business, you get an introduction to all their clients in some form as a value add. I can go on and on.

We have chiropractors and people like that. When they want to really grow, they'll go to the influencers in their community and they'll cite all the things. 

They can really have a positive impact on everything from obviously back, neck, to depression and all these things. And they'll say, you certainly have someone in your life or yourself that has probably been struggling with these. I will treat them unlimited until we produce either profound improvement or no improvement. 

And the only stipulation is if we produce profound improvement, you agree that whenever you have the opportunity to just recommend us. Because, you know, we deliver.

When they were not being fully utilized anyhow, and we had them go to maybe 10, 20, 30 influencers, two things happened after the first period.

The influencers more often than not got a positive outcome, because they wouldn't really take on things that were outside their competencies zone. 

Number two, those people would become their actual pay clients. 

There’s a great quote that Gary Halbert said.

“More is accomplished in life through movement than has ever been achieved through meditation.”

If you're not getting the growth, the success, the expert marketplace acknowledgment you want, and that your skillset and your ability to produce and perform deserves, then whatever you're doing, if it's sitting still, if it's doing nothing, if it's not marketing and it's not submitting articles, if it's not starting a podcast, if it's not trying to get interviewed, if it's not distinguishing your advantage, if it's not trying to partner, then you pretty much deserve what you're getting. 

And that may sound brutal. But the only reason that I have the stature that I have is that I have truly adhered to the kinds of things I'm talking about.

If I asked, I had enormously unique ability at a young age, but I had no marketplace recognition. 

It is your own responsibility to help the market discover you.

So if I had not proactively taken on the self-responsibility for helping the market discover me and appreciate me and see me highly distinctively quality, then I would still be unknown. 

And I would deserve that.

Chris and Taylor:

Real fast. I just want to interject to make sure people are catching this.

I think what is a subtle distinction, but a very significant distinction is you keep saying:

“Helping the market discover me.”

You're not saying “getting what is owed.” You're not saying getting them to pay attention to me. 

Are you catching that? You're constantly focused about helping and serving.

Jay Abraham:

It's not their fault that they don't know about you. It's not their fault that they don't see you differently. 

If they saw what you could do and they got it, they'd be on the phone calling you.

Do you remember the movie Field of Dreams? They got to just knock on your door and, and, and the sky is going to open and nirvana and wealth and success, and industry acknowledgment and prosperity is going to fall. 

Proaction vs. Reaction

There's proaction, there's reaction. In most people’s lives, there's three things that happen.

• There are people for whom they sit and they watch things happen.
• There are people that make things happen.
• There are people for whom things keep happening to.

And if you look at it, I believe this is a very profound realization that I got from someone else. 

It's not original. It's very powerful. If you wish to embrace it, I believe about 2% of what happens in someone's life are acts of God, meaning they're things you can't control.

98% of how our life and our business, our career, our health, our whatever plays out are the result of actions we take or don't.

Decisions we make, or don't. Factors, forces, immutable laws of physics or nature that we either harness or we allow to whipsaw us. 

And when you realize how much more control you really have and how controlled you have allowed yourself to be by non-existent chains, it’s powerful. 

It really reminds me how they do the elephant. The elephant keepers put a stake in the ground to keep it chained when it is little.

They can’t pull it out. After a while, the keepers remove it. Then when the elephant grows up to be 2000 pounds and can push a car, the fact that they're tethered by a pin that deep in the dirt isn't what holds them really there. 

It's the mental perception. 

I want to make sure that you guys got just the answer and to set that up in establishing yourself with preeminence in your marketplace.

Getting that trust, getting that authority is to identify the people who already have that in your marketplace, go in and buy them your time. Give them your service in exchange for their trust and authority.

This is such an amazing way to accelerate your path to preeminence. 

Learn more about Jay Abraham at www.Abraham.com