"That's a great ad, I said.
Who taught you copyrighting?"

Little did I know that sentence would make me over $100,000.

How could "doing the Jonathan" make you more money this month?

This is a crazy business we're in.

Sometimes the things you think are going to be great actually bomb on you.

And sometimes the things you don't think twice about turn out to be your real winners.

A case in point for me was years ago when I first met my friend Jonathan Mizel online.

That was before the World Wide Web existed.

It'll take me a minute to tell you the story. But there's a payoff for you in reading it. So stick with me if you will.

Back then, we sold our stuff on America Online and Compuserve.

Anyway, the game in those days was to run a little classified ad and people would respond for more information.

You'd send the info and hopefully they would buy.

You didn't have sequential autoresponders in those days like Aweber, Getresponse, Quicktell or PostMaster Online. So what you'd do is follow up by hand emailing everyone.

One day I spotted an ad that grabbed my attention. I still remember the email that came back to me. It led with a free offer.

You could get a free copy of a Russ Von Hoelscher book if you subscribed to the Online Marketing Letter.

I sent an email back saying that I admired the copywriting and asked who he learned his copywriting skills from.

He wrote back and told me John Caples and Robert Collier.

John Caples had several classic books on copywriting including "Tested Advertising Methods." And "The Robert Collier Letter Book" was likewise a staple for anyone who cared about learning to write copy.

I almost freaked out! John Caples. I loved John Caples. At the time I hadn't written "The Amazing Formula That Sells Products Like Crazy."

There was NO step-by-step formula for writing ad copy as I later created.

John Caples and Robert Collier were as good as it got.

Anyway, I introduced Jonathan to the owner of the company I was writing ad copy for. He sold some of Jonathan's books.

I've always networked by helping the OTHER person make money first.

That's how Jonathan and I became friends.

Is your first initiate with someone asking THEM to do something for YOU? Or do you first help THEM make money?

You know, in all the time I've taught this method, I've never received one email from someone who said, "Hey Marlon, I'm doing this to help you make money."

It's always, "Hey Marlon, I have a product. Can you sell it to your list for me?" And so forth.

To get to the point, that friendship with Jonathan later landed me a position on his team travelling around the U.S. and speaking at over 120, $3,000 one-day seminars.

Over the years, my friendship with Jonathan has made me at least $100,000 and maybe more.

The lesson?

I call it "doing the Jonathan." Meeting someone by helping them make money.

Who can you "Do the Jonathan for" today?

• Meet someone new. Let them know you admire
  their marketing if you truly do.

• Help the other person make money before you
  ask anything from them.

• When you help someone else, don't do it with
  strings attached.

Know that the universe often returns the favor from a source other than the one in front of your face.

If I had initiated my friendship with Jonathan by asking for something from him such as free help or whatever, then how far do you think that friendship would have gone?