Jay Abraham Quotes

As soon as you open your mind to doing things differently, the doors of opportunity practically fly off their hinges.

there are only three ways to increase your business: 1. Increase the number of clients. 2. Increase the average size of the sale per client. 3. Increase the number of times clients return and buy again. Only

Innovation basically involves making obsolete that which you did before.

man who goes to a hardware store to buy a power drill doesn’t really need a drill—he needs holes. He

My definition of marketing is simple—it’s all about educating the marketplace that your business can solve problems, fill voids, or achieve opportunities and goals the way no other business can.

An amazing thing, the human brain. Capable of understanding incredibly complex and intricate concepts. Yet at times unable to recognize the obvious and simple

As Isabel Allende said, “You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend or not.” Step

People are silently begging to be led.

Next is what are you willing to give to the marketplace in order to get it, because there is compensation for everything. You don't get unless you give. Jay Abraham

To get your prospects and clients to see you or your business as offering them a superior benefit or advantage that no other competitor offers them is the essence of a unique selling proposition (USP). You

The real fast track path to getting everything, anything and more than everything you want is putting others ahead of what you want and focusing on their needs, their wants, their desires, and fulfilling them. Jay Abraham

The USP is the nucleus around which you build your success, fame, and wealth. So you’d better be able to state it. If you can’t state it, your prospects won’t see it. Whenever a client needs the type of product or service you sell, your USP should bring you or your company immediately to mind. Clearly conveying the USP through your marketing and business performance will make business success inevitable. But you must boil down your USP to its bare essence.

If you’re failing to strategize, you’re probably using your time in the wrong ways.

the key to rapid success as a preeminent business is to fall in love with your clients.

Writer and researcher of group dynamics Christina Baldwin once said, “Words are how we think, story is how we link.

Marketing is the greatest return-on-investment activity a business can ever do. Let

the most defining trait of great entrepreneurs in the twenty-first century will be the ability to creatively collaborate with other people,

Yet I had invested nothing up front. It was just a matter of recognizing that one person’s distress is another person’s opportunity.   When

A cross-sell is introducing to the client an additional product or service that will add or increase the result of their transaction with you or your company. Your

An endless number of these unmade connections exist to this day, especially in the business world. You are surrounded by simple, obvious solutions that can dramatically increase your income, power, influence, and success. The problem is, you just don’t see them. I

One final note from the world of fiction: You’ll be more believable if you’re not perfect. A useful flaw in your character makes you more interesting and gives you a hook so that you penetrate deeply into the minds of your marketplace. The marketplace then sees you as human and real. By

Create a worldwide personal network of quality business players (i.e., a mastermind group, a board of advisors, or a private group of mentors—call it whatever you want to) who will help you solve any problem your business encounters—and fast, because they’ve already faced and overcome such problems themselves. Let

One of the best preemptive methods is to work candidly with your prospect to compile a pros-and-cons list. Have your prospective client draw up a list with the name of your product or service placed alongside two alternative options that he or she is considering. The rest is easy: Show how you’re the optimal choice.

Most people in bad times cut corners in the most treacherous way imaginable—by downsizing human or intellectual capital, the real asset of most businesses today. That is a mistake. You can find no greater upside-leveraging tools than the energy, passion, intelligence, connections, and entrepreneurial spirit of the human beings you surround yourself with.

To drive the point home, here’s one more story. And, as a matter of fact, this person’s story is legendary. He wanted a job, and that job was to become president of the United States. His business failed in 1831. He was defeated in his run for the Illinois State Legislature in 1832. His second business failed in 1833. He suffered a nervous breakdown in 1836. He was defeated in his run for Illinois House Speaker in 1838, and for his run for Congress in 1843. He was elected to Congress in 1846, but lost renomination in 1848. He lost his bid to the U.S. Senate in 1854, for vice president in 1856, and again for the U.S. Senate in 1858. Finally, in 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States.

When you read the phrase “selling your product or service,” don’t just think in terms of the product or service your company sells, but also your individual and intangible personal product or service—you. And understand that you need to sell you and your ideas in order to advance your career, gain more respect, and increase your success, influence, and income. And

Before you can incorporate and communicate your chosen USP through various marketing avenues, focus and articulate it crisply and clearly—with impact. Don’t be cute or abstract. Think it through until you can articulate it in one crystal clear, compelling, alluring paragraph—or less. The USP is the nucleus around which you build your success, fame, and wealth. So you’d better be able to state it. If you can’t state it, your prospects won’t see it. Whenever a client needs the type of product or service you sell, your USP should bring you or your company immediately to mind. Clearly conveying the USP through your marketing and business performance will make business success inevitable. But you must boil down your USP to its bare essence.

But where Lincoln’s absent hand was felt most keenly was in race relations. Black codes were passed in state after state across the South—as restrictive as the antebellum laws governing free blacks (Richmond’s old laws had even regulated the carrying of canes). These codes propounded segregation, banned intermarriage, provided for special punishments for blacks, and, in one state, Mississippi, also prevented the ownership of land. Not even a congressional civil rights bill, passed over Johnson’s veto, could undo them. For their part, the Northern states were little better. During Reconstruction, employing a deadly brew of poll taxes, literacy requirements, and property qualifications, they abridged the right to vote more extensively than did their Southern counterparts.

Since these business owners are not constantly working to obsolesce themselves, they can rest assured that their competitors are.

One black man, overcome by emotion, dropped to his knees, prompting the president to conduct a curbside colloquium on the meaning of emancipation. “Don’t kneel to me,” said the president. “That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank Him for the liberty you will enjoy hereafter.

He set up a store, which failed, then set up as a postmaster, but was unable to make a living at that. When a circuit court issued a judgment against him for overdue notes, the sheriff attached his personal possessions, even his horse. Then his store partner died. Forced to shoulder the hefty $1,100 burden of remaining debt, Lincoln spent fifteen years paying it off. His first lady friend, Ann Rutledge, died suddenly, of an attack of “brain fever.” His first love, Mary Owens, turned him down. Later, like many an ambitious politician, he eventually did marry well, joining with Mary Todd,

Lincoln dumped his bland second-in-command, Hannibal Hamlin, for Johnson,

Instead, whatever we need, we just find someone who’s eager to be a performance-based, profit-based sharing partner, and we joint-venture. If the first one turns us down, we ask, “Why?” Sometimes they give us an answer that I had never thought about. So, I figure out a preemptive way to overcome that, and the second or third person I go to will be on board. If

We take out our frustrations on unsuspecting strangers every day, never stopping to acknowledge that these people have hopes and dreams just like we do.

The only way to ensure that your actual success will equal your current potential for success is to eliminate the constraints that are holding you back. The

If you’re living in constant fear of screwing up, don’t be. As long as you move fast but safely, you’re taking action, and action creates forward momentum and direction in your business—even if your progress isn’t perfect 100 percent of the time. One

The secret is yet another set of three P’s: Be preeminent, be preemptive, and be proprietary.

In his book Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership, Harvard professor Howard Gardner

better idea would be to keep the same number of staff you have now and invest in high upside-leverage “performance enhancement” training, which would result in those same employees becoming as much as 50 to 100 percent more effective.

Whether you’re going to approach your competitors directly about taking over their buyers on a permanent profit-sharing basis or you’re going to focus on hiring away their top salespeople, you need to carefully plan your proposition, your presentation, and even the sensitivity/ empathy of your delivery.

One of the keys to collaboration success is first recognizing exactly what those on the other side want or need most that is not being provided or achieved and showing them that your prospects, your plan, your strategy will—not can—deliver it to and for them in better ways, and more quickly and easily than any other option they have.

Customer: A person who purchases a commodity or service. Client: A person who is under the protection of another.

famous peak performance coach, used a version of it to propel the Los Angeles Kings hockey team to a stunning

Customer: A person who purchases a commodity or service. Client: A person who is under the protection of another.   The

You have also become a trusted adviser and a friend. And you should think of your clients as dear, valued friends.

If you can define the problem better than your target customer, they will automatically assume you have the solution.” —Jay Abraham

Jay Abraham is one of Daymond John’s (page 323) mentors and the author of Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got, which is one of Ramit’s most-gifted books. I often recommend Jay’s work to people who ask about how to structure “JVs,” or joint ventures.

At Lincoln’s second inaugural, a drunken Johnson, who had had one too many whiskeys that morning, plunged into a long, rambling, incoherent discourse, shouting about his humble origins and lecturing the assembled dignitaries from the Supreme Court and the diplomatic corps (“With all your fine feathers and gew-gaws”) that they were merely “creatures of the people.” Then, as he took his oath, Johnson visibly and audibly slobbered upon the Bible.

An Investment thesis is a written analysis laying out the case for why an investment opportunity would generate a compelling return.

as long as their salespeople maintain sales from existing clients at past levels or above, give them 100 percent of the profit on the first sale for every new client they bring in. They’ll be ten times more motivated to sell new clients.

Determine who in your marketing area is already selling to the clients you want to be reaching, and who has their trust, respect, and goodwill. They would be selling something that either goes before, goes along with, or follows the product or service that you sell to people. Your product or service does not compete with their product or service, but it complements it. The

You might be thinking, “My business responsibilities don’t include clients and selling. I’m in the accounting/human resources/quality-control/MIS/production department.” Think again. The fact is, everyone is in sales.