15 years ago, a friend and I had a clever business idea, a type of modern indentured servitude:
Say you go out and find a 9-year-old Novak Djokovic… or Leonardo DiCaprio… or just some cocky and overachieving little shit.
He’s clearly talented, odds are he will go far. But right now, he’s poor.
So you offer to lend him (or his parents), say, $30k. In exchange, you get a share of his future income.
15 years ago, both my friend and I were jobless, penniless, and spent our time inventing ways we would never have to work.
In other words, we were classic small thinkers.
And with our small-thinking mindsets, we were sure that our idea, brilliant though it was, would never fly in the real world.
Well, my friend wrote me a few days ago. “Remember that idea we had 15 years ago? It’s real now.”
It’s called an “income share agreement.” Right now, it’s mostly limited to certain universities.
Can’t afford to go to Purdue University? No worries. You don’t have to pay or even take out a loan. You go for free… but Purdue takes a cut of your income for 10 years after you graduate.
(If you’re ever unemployed and not paying any money to Purdue after graduation, I believe they get a pound of your flesh. Or maybe your liver.)
I spent the better part of tonight walking the dog around the neighborhood and thinking how this would look in a direct response business.
“Get our longevity-boosting telomere supplement for FREE for life… but we get a share of your social security check each year. Or a pound of your flesh.”
Mostly I concluded, like I did 15 years ago, that this “success share” system could never fly in direct response.
Small-thinking mindset still.
Because I realized it already is happening in one market that I know. Maybe it’s a sign of things to come. I’ll tell you about that in my email tomorrow.
What, you’re not on my email list? Dangerously small thinking. But it can be fixed. Here’s the optin.