Anyone who can connect with company decision-makers or funded entrepreneurs willing and able to hire our kind of talent. The primary challenge is getting to the right person(s) and making an introduction. The right person(s) are those that have decision-making AND budget authority to engage outside talent to help grow their business.

After you make the introduction, we are quite capable at further qualifying the prospect, developing the proposal and/or presentation and closing the business.

DECISION-MAKERS WITH BUDGET AUTHORITY

Often this type of prospect referral will have titles like Director, VP, President, CEO or similar. Within their established companies, they have both the ability to hire outside help and the budget to spend on such engagements. These mid-to-upper-tiers of managers hire our kind of talent regularly, so it is relatively commonplace for them to have the ability to engage us to help with their projects or (over)load. In fact, this type is often the EASIEST to move to contract Big Innovations talent. Unlike startup entrepreneurs, they are already accustomed to hiring outside talent AND PAYING FOR such talent.

Often entrepreneurs- especially startup entrepreneurs need our kind of talent even more than established businesses... but tend to be penny-pinching every dollar. They know they need the expertise but sometimes don't want to PAY for it. Only entrepreneurs who fully understand concepts like "it takes money to make money" and are savvy enough to know that using experts increases the chances of their success will work well as a referral. 15% of nothing that some want to spend doesn't help you or us at all.

3 TYPES OF STARTUP ENTREPRENEURS

1. Capitalized entrepreneurs with a good idea for a business but facing the "Now what?" moment of how to go about monetizing their concept can be excellent candidates for our services. We can be their (deep) team to lend expertise in getting their business assembled, launched and rapidly grown.

2. Modestly-capitalized entrepreneurs who are looking for funding sources- bankers, investors, partners, etc.- will have a much better chance by being able to present their business backed by such a capable TEAM rather than trying to sell the banker or investor on giving a lone individual the money. We can be entire virtual office departments for startups: marketing (department), sales, development and strategic team(s).

3. UN-capitalized entrepreneurs have no money to hire us. If they lack motivation to raise the money, take on investors and/or use the debt markets, there's probably nothing there for us... so nothing there for you either.

If you are doing this via in-person socializing and you detect an opportunity, it is important to get a sense of budget. If they have none or reference relatively tiny amounts of money, 15% of tiny is REALLY tiny. We're generally not interested in tiny gigs anyway, so if there little-to-nothing there, no need making that referral. At 15%, every $7K pays you a little over $1K. Aim for at least a 4-figure income from each referral.

IF YOU HAVE A LIST OF PROSPECTS

If you happen to have a list of customers or a network of relevant contacts with which you occasionally communicate- perhaps by blog, newsletter, email, etc- we can work with you to facilitate the introduction... and would be happy to do so. If you skipped over the section just before this FAQ, it talks to this approach pretty well.

Not hard at all. Most of our services revolve around helping companies grow or business problem solving. Pretty much all companies want to grow. And, sooner or later, all business crash into some kind of problem that they can't resolve well with internal staff. We have developed our skills and services to very high levels so that we could enter virtually any environment and make a positive difference in bottom-line results. The biggest driver of success is in the business matchmaking function- bringing the right people and us together when it is opportune for both parties.

The harder part is sorting those willing to SPEND money to hire professional help from those who are only dreamers. There are plenty of people who want our kind of help, but the real opportunity for both you and us is in the subset willing to PAY for such help.

Depending on your own connections, you may know people who manage big budgets who can easily spend some of it on our services. You probably also know plenty of dreamers who are basically business funding broke or too afraid to actually put money into backing their big ideas. Only one of those types has real potential for you (and us) in this program.

This website is a great place to start. We've attempted to paint our areas of core competencies in broad strokes. Work your way across the main menu navigation. Reading our web pages will give you a solid sense of much of what we can do very well.

If you decide to give this a go, we can meet or virtually meet with you and answer all of your questions to help you better understand our value proposition. You should also review a selection of our recent accomplishments to get a good feel for the quality we bring to everything we do.

Our objective is to give you all you need to very efficiently target the right companies and get deals closed. That's how you (and we) get paid.

We pay when the revenue is received and fully cleared at the bank. Typically, this is monthly. If the client wants to pay more or less frequently than monthly, we will pay you as their fee payments to us clear at our bank.

Typically, we sell our services with a prepaid monthly retainer which means we collect our fee for the month of services that follow. So, assuming your referral is typical, they would pay our first fee on engagement (when they sign the contract). We would deposit the check immediately. As soon as it fully clears our bank, we send you your first commission check.

Some clients will pay by bank wire. That's faster than pay-by-check options. A new client that wires a fee today may fully clear within as little as 1-3 business days.

Yes, we've had several good successes. For example, one guy just made a couple of phone calls to some decision makers he knew. Within days we met with one of his prospects. Just a few days later they signed with us at $15K per month. He is paid $2,250 each month for making a few phone calls and setting up one introduction.

Assuming the client honors their agreement through the balance of the year, he'll make a total of $27K for a few minutes effort on his part. Many people have to work a full-time job for an entire year to make $27K. His cumulative "work" probably totaled- at most- 60 minutes. How does a $27K-for-1-hour-"job" sound to you? We're happy to pay it.

Others have introduced us for project solutions like...

• develop or modernize a website,
• new product development,
• business plan development,
• etc

...and we happily sent them their 15% cuts of each project fee too. Success with this is mostly matching our capabilities to current needs. A successful match is win:win:win for everyone involved.

Slow-paying accounts will delay referral reward payments to you until the money is received and cleared. However, we only do retainers on a pre-pay basis, so that we don't have to be in the collections business.

When the retainer is not received for the next month's work by the due date, we cease services to the client until payment is made. Since most of our work is directly associated with growing results for companies, they don't want our work to stop... so slow payers is an atypical problem. However should it occur, we would alert you to the situation.

After one year, the account becomes a house account and is no longer commissionable. The best way to keep referral cash flowing is to bring us at least one new client EACH year. Of course, bring us 2+ new clients each year and you make even more money.

An individual with a good network of decision-makers could probably make a pretty nice living by leveraging those relationships with this arrangement. It mostly comes down to business matchmaking. Review the table up towards the top of this page to get a feel for the relationship between referred revenue and referral rewards. For example, if you wanted this program to reward you with $30K/yr, you would be aiming for one or more referrals that engage and pay BI a total of $200K over the course of that year. Want to make:

• $50K/yr? Refer us a client(s) that pays us about $333K each year
• $80K/yr? Refer us a client(s) that pays us about $533K each year
• $125K/yr? Refer us a client(s) that pays us about $833K each year

If you want to aim for some specific referral reward income amount not in the table, divide your income number goal by 0.15 to calculate the revenue target.For example, if you want to make $100K from this program, $100,000/0.15 = $666,667. A $200K target would be $200,000/0.15 = $1,333,334.

The relationship between you and Big Innovations would be a straight outsourced contract position: 1099. Structurally, you would be a completely independent contractor- NOT an employee of Big Innovations, LLC. Review a sample agreement (193K PDF file) to better understand the nature of the relationship. While not necessary, if you have a business identity already set up, we can issue the check(s) payable to your business if you prefer.

While we would consider ANY arrangement for the right opportunity, there are plenty of companies wanting high-caliber professional services on a pure commission basis. Similarly, there are many companies who want to use stock as if it is cash... which typically means they can't sell the stock for cash, so almost all of the potential value in owning that stock is- MAYBE- out in the future somewhere at best. Note also that if we did accept some kind of deferred cash or cash-equivalent payment, there would be no current revenue on which to base your commission as referrer.

In all cases, BI will consider creative compensation options, though we have NEVER accepted a scenario in which we share in ALL of the risk in exchange for only a portion of the upside gain. Our work often requires huge investments of time & energy. In some cases, a variety of tasks must be accomplished before they can be used to reap rewards for our clients. And our best-in-class consultant and subcontractor talent must be paid. They are rarely interested in being compensated solely in slices of a slice of "future potential."

As a result, our preferred arrangements are either pure fixed fee or (a smaller) fixed fee plus residual, paid on a monthly or biweekly basis. Learn more about our typical compensation arrangements. These preferred methods would get you rewarded sooner for making the referral as well.

That said, we are certainly interested in pay-for-performance arrangements in which commissions, stock, stock options or similar can function as variable upside incentive(s)... as long as such arrangements are genuinely win:win. Generally, those must be blended with some tangible cash retainer too.