Interview with Janet Switzer

Instant Income
Janet Switzer
McGraw-Hill (2007)
ISBN 0071487786
Reviewed by Vicki Landes for Reader Views (3/07)

Today, Juanita Watson, Assistant Editor of Reader Views, is talking with entrepreneur and best-selling author Janet Switzer, about her new book “Instant Income: Strategies That Bring In the Cash for Small Businesses, Innovative Employees and Occasional Entrepreneurs.”

Janet Switzer is a 20-year veteran of the marketing and advertising field, and has been responsible for the day-to-day marketing programs of Chicken Soup for the Soul co-author Jack Canfield, legendary motivational speaker Les Brown, legendary business guru Jay Abraham, Internet income expert Yanik Silver, and One Minute Millionaire author Mark Victor Hansen. She’s the New York Times and USA Today bestselling co-author of “The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be,” published in eight languages worldwide.

Juanita:  Welcome to Reader Views Janet, we are honored to have the opportunity to talk with you about your new book “Instant Income: Strategies That Bring In the Cash for Small Businesses, Innovative Employees and Occasional Entrepreneurs.”  What can readers expect from your new book?

Janet:  For the past 16 years, I’ve worked as the behind-the-scenes strategist for many of the best-known celebrity small business owners in the world – as you mentioned.  Over that time, working for these people helped me perfect some of the most successful strategies for generating cash-flow. 

I discovered that even though there are millions of ways to make money in a small business, there are just some strategies that are very quick to execute and which bring in the money very quickly, too.  Those are the strategies that I write about in Instant Income. 

These strategies also work if you are employed by someone else and want to boost your paycheck by helping to bring more revenue into your boss’s business.  Or – if you love your job and you love the steady paycheck, but you just want to make a few thousand dollars several times a year, you can use these strategies to become an “occasional entrepreneur.”

Juanita:  Janet, your history in the field of marketing/advertising is very impressive.  How did you begin your business career, and who have been your influences and inspiration along the way?

Janet:  I actually started out as a political campaigner for a Member of Congress, then worked as a journalist for a newswire. But a chance job offer right after college to become the marketing manager at a regional bank set me on the path to developing ad campaigns, direct-mail solicitations, in-store promotions and other programming. 

In 1994, I became a consultant developing marketing programming for individual client companies.  My first client was Chicken Soup for the Soul and I have done work for them ever since.  Of course, small business being the turbulent enterprise that it so often is,  I got really good at generating emergency cash and producing near-overnight marketing results for clients in lots of different categories – retail, professional services, manufacturing, you name it. 

One day, my longtime friend and mentor Mac Ross encouraged me to write about the actual strategies I use…and the concept for a book called Instant Income was born.  Throughout the process of building the Instant Income brand, I’ve been inspired by people like Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen of Chicken Soup, but also by all the behind-the-scenes players at my client companies who wanted to see me bring this book to the market.  The support since its release has been incredibly inspiring – with absolute strangers calling my office to ask how they can help spread the word about it.

Juanita:  Why did you write “Instant Income”?

Janet:  Most personal finance books today focus on helping you cut back on your expenses or how to better invest the money that’s already coming in.  In the same way, most books for small business focus on trends in the marketplace, everything BUT how to make money in a small business or how to boost your paycheck if you’re employed.  I wanted to write a book whose sole purpose is to help you bring in the cash within hours, days or weeks – which is what I do for my clients all day long. 

Juanita:  What type of business owner will benefit from reading this book?

Janet:  Virtually every type of business owner – retailers, manufacturers, service providers, professional practitioners, e-commerce businesses, consultants of course – but also solo entrepreneurs who make up about 15 million of the 25 million small businesses in America. 

Juanita:  What are the common pitfalls for small businesses/entrepreneurs that lead to lack of realization of income potential?

Janet:  The abundance of good ideas often bewilders small business owners.  Because it’s so difficult to determine which of the hundreds of ideas to pursue, entrepreneurs often end up becoming overwhelmed – doing so much less than they should in order to keep cash-flow stable.

To help the reader quickly determine which of the Instant Income strategies to execute, the book includes the Instant Income Overnight Audit—a unique online tool that creates a custom, printed plan for generating cash in your business using details of your specific circumstances. 

It literally walks you through every single Instant Income strategy, asking you to jot down the exact products you’ll upsell, which customers you’ll convert into ongoing buyers, and so on…35 questions in all tied to the 35 strategies in the book.  Once you’ve input your information, the Audit calculates the actual dollars you could earn from executing each individual strategy.
It even ranks your final results—from the most profitable strategies to the ones you could leave until later.  Finally, it produces a nice, clean, easy-to-read report of all your plans and anticipated financial outcomes.

Another roadblock to fully realizing the true income potential of a small business is simple lack of implementation skills – how to write a sales letter, how to negotiate a joint venture, how to develop a sales script that closes prospects.  That’s why I include actual templates for letters, scripts, ads, and more.  For example, if a small business owner interviews their satisfied customers using a script that’s in the book, that interview would literally extract the ad copy they need.  Better yet, if they ask the interview questions in the order I provide, that interview will generate a testimonial-style ad where the customer literally helps sell your product or service for you.

There are many other examples where I step the reader through creating ads, letters, web copy, phone scripts and more.  This is easily one of the most popular aspects of the book with readers.

Juanita:  An important message of “Instant Income” is marketable assets.  Would you explain this term?

Janet:  Business owners spend a lot of time, effort and money to build their business. They probably put their own money into starting the business...they hire employees or establish outsource relationships. They spend time and money developing a product or service...and, every day of the year, they spend even more time and money advertising it, selling it and delivering it.

Along the way -- without even knowing it -- they create something else, too: Marketable assets. Assets that don't necessarily show up on your inventory print-out or balance sheet. Assets like your customer list, your relationships with suppliers, your advertising calendar, your Internet presence, the knowledge of your key employees, the sales pitch your salespeople use...and on and on.

Those uncommon assets can be turned into desperately needed income within hours, days or weeks.

The dozens of simple strategies in Instant Income can turn idle inventory, excess capacity, key relationships and planned expenditures into significantly more revenue -- with virtually no additional effort.

Juanita:  Janet, what are some of the typically untapped resources that you reveal in your book?

Janet:  There are seven areas of a small business where Instant Income can be made: (1) Customers...that is, getting them to spend more money with you. (2) Relationships with other businesses…such that you could create joint ventures that utilize other people’s resources to help you bring in the cash. (3) Advertising that you’re already paying for…a simple change in how you craft these ads can skyrocket your income.  (4) Your prospecting activities…that is, generating more leads that close into sales.  (5) Sales activity…between a simple change in scripting to creating systems for following up on leads, this is a huge untapped area for generating instant income.  (6) Internet activity…most businesses do not fully utilize the Internet to create cash because it’s so daunting.  (7) Overlooked assets…such as excess service capacity, obsolete inventory, even your industry knowledge which can be sold for top dollar.

Juanita:  Would you give us an idea of the type of strategies you outline in “Instant Income”? 

Janet:  There are 35 strategies in all.  For example, another business alerting their customers that you have the perfect complementary product to something their customers have already purchased.  New buyers for your product could literally visit your store or call your business the very same day.

If someone has a storefront or retail outlet, there are actually two strategies that work well.  The first is upselling – offering customers additional products or services to go along with the item that they’re already purchasing.  The second is bundling products or services together at a special price to boost the total sale to an individual customer.  You’d be surprised how many will choose the bundled package over just a single item.

My favorite strategy for solo entrepreneurs is to hold a teleseminar or large-group marketing-oriented teleconference call to teach people new information related to something of interest to them.  I did this for Jack Canfield and brought in $105,000 in six weeks.  That’s a lot of money for a solo entrepreneur to generate in just 45 days.

Another strategy I recommend is to make specific offers in your marketing materials. Instead of saying ‘We have great prices,’ say “We’ll sell you a top-of-the-line air conditioning unit for just $3,285 including a 5-year-written warranty and free replacement filters for as long as you own your home.”  That’s much more compelling.

Whenever I start working with a new client, I always ask, “Do you have lots of customers already or do you need to find customers and develop other ways of bringing in the cash while you’re building your customer base?” If you have customers, you can use strategies like keeping track of their purchases, then calling to take re-orders of the same product or service.  If you’re just starting out in business or don’t have as many customers as you would like, you can arrange joint ventures with other local businesses who have customers who would be perfect prospects to buy your product or service.  These joint ventures are simple and they actually recruit other people to help you bring in the cash.

If you’re employed, you can actually boost your paycheck by identifying the income opportunities in your employer’s business, then go to your employer and negotiate a pay raise or negotiate a promotion or percentage of revenue for helping to bring in that cash.
The Instant Income book not only tells you how to identify the income opportunities, it even gives you a sample script for talking to your employer and making a deal. 
 
When I was 29, I worked for a small consulting firm that also published special reports and training tools.  In my 4th year working there, my employers offered me the opportunity to work exclusively on marketing all the published materials I had helped developed over the previous three years. And they offered to pay me a percentage on every dollar in revenue I brought in.  I ended up almost doubling my salary and even earning a nice $20,000 commission on one promotion that I did.  I used the Instant Income strategies to create that revenue for my employer.

If you love your job, you love that steady paycheck, but you just want to earn a few thousand dollars on the side several times a year, you can use the strategies to become what I call an Occasional Entrepreneur.  These are short-term, minimum-commitment, hassle-free projects – it’s not like having a part-time business year-round.  For example, there are many services on the Internet that will actually link you up with people who are looking to outsource various services.  If you do any kind of creative work – like writing or graphic design, putting together PowerPoint presentations, if you could use your expertise to advise a small business on a specific project they want to pursue – these services will help you bid for projects and even help you get paid by the party who is hiring you. 

These strategies are fully detailed in the book, whether for a small business owner, a motivated employee or an occasional entrepreneur.

Juanita: How much extra effort, time, and money will business owners require implementing the strategies you suggest?

Janet:  Many strategies require just a change in the way you articulate the benefits of your product or service -- which is free and which can be done in a few seconds.  Many other strategies cost very little to implement – $100 or less.  To write an advertisement or sales letter or three-page website using the formulas I provide takes a few days.  But the key is that I step readers through exactly how to execute these strategies so the time required to implement is truly reduced.

Juanita:  Do you feel that most business owners don’t use their imagination when it comes to sales?

Janet:  I don’t believe imagination is important.  I think business owners simply lack access to inside information about what works.  For instance, most business owners talk all day long about their product or service using normal, fairly unimaginative language.  They know the “sound bites” that are convincing people to buy from them.  The key is to use insider knowledge to transform those sound bites and offers into highly responsive income-generation campaigns.  That’s what Instant Income offers – the inside information.

Juanita:  Janet, why is your approach so successful? 

Janet:  My approach has always been based on direct marketing and direct-response advertising – that is, going straight to the consumer or decision maker with all the information they need in order to make an immediate buying decision. 

When business owners focus on marketing this way, it’s more likely the marketing campaigns will actually be implemented.  Also, I find that executing successfully, seeing immediate cash flow, then moving on to the next strategy keeps the excitement level high and keeps a business owner focused on bringing in the cash, rather than dwelling on so many other problems that arise in running a small business.  Knowing that you have the ability to send an email that will generate $35,000 by Friday suddenly makes buying toner for the copier pretty unimportant.

My approach also advocates doing all the thinking for others whom you recruit to help you.  For instance, if you write an email that your joint-venture partner can send to their list endorsing your product…if you give your customers actual tools for recommending you to their friends  – it not only reduces the tentativeness to them taking action on your behalf, it’s more likely the promotion will actually be implemented – and implemented faster.

Juanita:  What are the current trends in small business and entrepreneurship?  Why are more and more people going into business for themselves?

Janet:  Massive credit card debt, rising mortgage payments, under-funded retirements, an escalating cost of living—these are economic trends that most households are facing.  And these trends aren’t going away anytime soon. 

In the midst of this cash crunch, millions of people will start new businesses, and recent studies say two-thirds of them will be women.  They’ll join a competitive market already bursting with 15 million solo entrepreneurs, 20 million network marketers, and 10 million small companies with 112 million employees who want to earn more. 

Additionally, trend-watchers are now calling the 20-something age group the “Entrepreneurial Generation.”  Perhaps these young people have seen too many of their parents downsized, laid-off and re-engineered out of “safe” corporate jobs.  But I think it’s simply that we have so many role models of 20-somethings who went on to found major companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars.  These kids know they don’t have to wait for that bigger income and the freedom to decide their own future.

I’m excited that Instant Income includes so many strategies that can help these young start-up entrepreneurs make money almost from the very first day in business. 

Juanita:  How soon can business owners expect to see results in their bottom line?

Janet:  The book includes simple strategies that could produce new income in just hours, days or weeks – or even sooner.  For example, I’ve sent promotional emails to my customer list and gotten my first order within 10 minutes of pushing the send button.  So I guess, in that case, you could say that Instant Income could be made in just minutes. 
If another business alerts their customers that you have the perfect complementary product to something their customers have already purchased, new buyers for your product could literally visit your store or call your business the very same day.

Too many business owners approach money-making with the idea that it takes time to land big contracts or it takes multiple sales calls to make a sale – but the reality is that many strategies can be executed in a fraction of that time.

Other strategies will produce results in just days or weeks.  It depends on the delivery method of your campaign, how long it takes you to prepare the campaign…but most importantly how fast you can get ready to receive the orders.  You’d be surprised how many businesses are truly unprepared to see a flood of new business.

Juanita:  Janet, I understand that you offer numerous additional tools with the purchase of your book.  Would you elaborate?

Janet:  The Instant Income Overnight Audit is available online and is accessible using the passcode in Chapter 8.  The Overnight Audit helps you create a written plan of the actual strategies you should be executing—and it’s customized to your business, since you input data taken from your own business activity.

For employees who can identify income opportunities in their employer’s business and get paid more to help bring in that cash, I include scripts and action plans in the book, but also a free intrapreneurship deal-point memo at my website.

I include a free e-training program at my website. 

For readers who want a very structured program for quickly executing a strategy or who need emergency cash to pay their bills, I have a companion guide that’s free to readers called the Instant Income 10-Day Turnaround Program.  It tells readers exactly what to do – every day for 10 days – to bring in emergency cash.  It’s available free at my website www.instantincome.com.

Juanita:  Janet, you’ve been in the marketing/advertising business for over 20 years.  What keeps you motivated and enjoying the process?

Janet:  I’m fascinated by the process of determining what to do, then creating the actual marketing devices required, then seeing the pay-off for my efforts.  Luckily, with the Instant Income strategies, I get to go through that process constantly.  There is something new and different happening every day. 

But more than just the excitement, I have a vision for my life that I am living and actualizing every day.  My first book, The Success Principles™ which I co-authored with Jack Canfield, was such a good fit for me as an author because I truly live those principles.  When you set life goals, career goals and financial goals, when you have a financial plan—and I talk about this in the last section of Instant Income—you can begin to focus on making Instant Income in order to funnel cash into those plans.  You can begin to accelerate the rate at which you achieve those goals.

It would be easy to say that Instant Income is just about making more money—but it’s really about so much more.  It’s about creating the cash to fulfill your dreams.  For most families, just $1,000 or $2,000 extra a month means a huge lifestyle change.  Suddenly, your kids get to go to private school, you get to take some very nice vacations, you get to help others you couldn’t help before…maybe even provide special care for your elderly parents or help total strangers in need halfway around the world. 

Not only that, but I also enjoy helping people who take action in their lives.  And small business owners are certainly in that category.  That keeps me motivated, too.

Juanita:  How can readers find out more about you and your endeavors?

Janet:  The Instant Income excitement unfolds at www.instantincome.com.

Juanita:  Janet, thanks for the very interesting interview. You have revealed a wealth of information, and we certainly encourage readers to go to your website and jump at the opportunity to increase their income, “instantly.”  Before we depart, do you have any last thoughts?

Janet:  As a hard-working business owner or employee, you deserve to be paid well for your efforts, and the Instant Income book helps you realize this well deserved pay-off.  It truly helps you work smarter, not harder.

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