SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm just someone that just loves, eats, sleeps, breathes partnerships.

SPEAKER_01 0:03

So we help real estate agents partner with home service providers.

SPEAKER_00 0:06

What you were paying on Facebook today is not the same as you were paying, you know, 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

With everything that's happening on social media and AI, the level of trust that exists is near zero.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Quality is always better over quantity in my mind. Well, because perception is reality to most people. In my eyes, the partnerships that last are the ones where it's a two-way street.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Find the highest-rated, highest-reviewed service provider, and then go create content with them.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

That other party that you reach out to might have a different way of doing things.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the Partner in Profit Podcast. I am very excited for my next guest. I've got Mr. Clinton Senko that has jumped in and uh is going to talk to us today about partnerships. This guy is an absolute expert. It's all he does is focus on partnerships, and I'm excited to unpack that today. So, Clinton, man, thanks for uh thanks for spending some time with me.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

I appreciate it. Thanks for thanks for having me, Grant. I'm I'm uh super pumped to be here and uh you know bring value to uh to the to the listeners. So so I'm excited.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Love it. Well, for people that maybe don't know you, give us a little bit of the background. How how did you get to where you are today?

SPEAKER_00 1:08

So grew up playing high-level uh hockey my whole life, went to college on a hockey scholarship, got my business degree, um, and then just yeah, about uh just over a decade ago, I started to get into tech and have held several different roles um within tech and partnerships. I was a global account executive, started in sales for a software company, raised a couple uh about like$1.3 million, um, was one of the first sales hires there, and then I kind of went over to another software company. It was a director of partnerships there, and then a few years happened, got married, um, had another role as a VP of partnerships, um, started my own media company uh back in 2016 with a partner down in the States as well, um, as I'm based up here in Canada, and and um yeah, and then it was probably about uh seven, eight years ago now, which is crazy to think. But um, I started my own consulting company, I had a lot of different um opportunities and people coming to me. How do I do this? How do I grow that? Um, and I thought, hey, like, you know, I could probably you know start charging some packages, some services, and just kind of turned it into um training, consulting, whatever you want to call it. Um, and I've had the pleasure to work with uh you know hundreds of different companies over the years and um have worked uh in the Fiverr and Global uh community, a top startup accelerator incubator uh you know around the world. And um, yeah, I've uh been doing uh I'm just someone that just loves, eats, sleeps, breathes partnerships. So um when I had the opportunity to come join you on the show, I was uh you know pretty pumped and love the name and um excited to to dive in and talk partnerships with you today.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Yeah, I love it, man. That's awesome. So this is all you do every single day. So I'll ask just an easy question up front is like, what do you think makes a good partnership? As you've put a bunch of these types of things together, you know, how what makes these things work so well?

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Let's just kind of address the elephant in the room. One of the things that I think that uh is is is just very common, and if you're in business right now, you should know this, is the cost of acquiring a customer through paid ads has continued to skyrocket, has continued to, you know, it continues to expand. What you were paying on Facebook today is not the same as you were paying, you know, 10 years ago. I've always been a proponent of hey, if there's a warm way that you could get someone to introduce you to their client list, to their to their product, to the customers, to their followers, to their communities, to whoever, wherever they hang out. Um, usually that's the amount of conversion that can come from that is a lot higher than hoping, wishing that I'm just gonna throw this money at this ad or this um whatever it may be, hoping that the right customer comes to me. And where I find the most success between a partnership is is really when both parties know what they want out of the partnership and they both get something out of the partnership. I've I've I've organized these partnerships where you know one party is super excited, the other party is super excited a little bit as well. One puts in more time and more energy, the other one just kind of goes away busy, kind of puts it on the side of their desk, doesn't really put much time or effort into it, and then it just kind of fizzles out you know, after a few months. So successful partnerships in my end, the best partnerships are two-way partnerships, are the ones that people are communicating effectively. There's you know that weekly cadence, daily cadence, whatever it is, where you're constantly trying to iterate, you're constantly trying to find that secret sauce, find that formula that is going to work for both of your companies. And the other area where I would say is making sure that whoever you're partnering with is complementary to whatever it is your customer is. Um, and one of the you know, kind of things I'll share with with everyone listening here is the way that I like to instill in a client or anyone, just any business owner, that um where can I find right fit partners or where can I start kind of brainstorming is think about where your customer is or where your customer goes or your user before they come to you and or after they are done with you. And now what I mean by that is there's complementary products and services that are not competitors of yours, that if you're a chiropractor, for example, for example, um, you have and you focus just on athletes, um, and you you are you're an athlete yourself and you help rehabilitate, and and that's just really what you love is you're you're you're an athlete. Um chiropractor is focused on athletes. There's vitamins, there's supplements, there's workout products that you could be partnering with that say, hey, like I'm dealing with the same customer as you, you're dealing with the same customer, we're not competing with each other, but hey, we're going after the same ICP, we're going after similar audiences, simo demos. Let's, you know, find ways that we can collaborate, that we can co-market, we can co-sell, um, we can co-brand something to give warm introductions to each other's audience. So, so a couple tidbits there that I that I um you know kind of shelled out, but hopefully, you know, one of those or a couple of those kind of stick with you guys and and and people listening that, hey, where I can find partnerships is really where is your customer going before they come to you, or what do they have, or what's that experience, and or after they're done with you, your product or service that gives you some really great ideas as to like businesses, industries, companies, people that you could start, you know, um collaborating with.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Well, it obviously makes so much sense, you know, to me. This is what we do every day, you know, all of the same is the biggest the biggest use case for what we do with co-marketing.com is we help real estate agents partner with home service providers because every home service provider I've ever met obviously needs to get connected to homeowners. Real estate agents, real estate investors, property managers, all those people are developing trust with the homeowner throughout the real estate life cycle, whether it's buying a house, selling a house, renting one, etc. And when they need a mover, a roofer, a painter, an electrician, a you know, a plumber, a cleaning company, a law on a landscape, you know, that that partnership just makes absolutely so much sense to what you're saying is like I'm gonna buy a house, and then afterwards I'm gonna need all of these things. And um we have an ethos within our company, it's um pay people, not platforms. And so I could not agree more with what you were saying about the rising cost of acquisition through platforms like Google and Facebook. I was literally on the phone yesterday with a moving company, and they told me that their average cost per lead is much higher on Google and their conversion rate is only 30%. Whereas they've been paying, you know, X dollars of you know per lead on commarketing.com and their conversion rate is sitting at over 75%. And it's goes right to what you're saying. It's like it's like that that trust transference takes place, like somebody's referring you to somebody else, and that the quality of the interaction is just so much greater when you can partner with people in that way. And so, yeah, uh man, I I couldn't couldn't agree more with uh pretty much everything that you were saying. Obviously, that's that's what we're we're just speaking the same language, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

And so it is it is, it's it's it's just how my mind thinks, it's just how how how I really feel, and and from I don't know when it was, when it had that epiphany moment or whatever, but it was just like, hey, like I just feel when two businesses, two organizations, or even you know, more than that, sometimes there's partnerships that involve three different parties, right? When you can kind of pull your resources, pull your assets together and both market together, both sell together, and both, you know, they win, you win, everybody gets a little piece of the pie. Yeah, I think it's just such a fruitful way to grow. And um, the best way to think about it for any listeners here is if you're a business owner and you're like, oh, I'm hesitant with partnerships. It's like like think of it this way: if you could get someone who is going after the exact same customers as you, the exact same people that you want to get access to, and they were to give you a warm introduction to their entire community, their entire list, to their users, community, give you a shout-out on stage, whatever it may be, and say, hey, you know, we've partnered with XYZ Company, and they go off and mention your company, your whatever. What a great way for your company to get exposed. What a great way for someone else to that's already built trust with their community, already built trust with their users, already won them over, and then for them to give you a warm introduction, what a great way. Versus if you don't do that and don't pursue that path, you have to resort on organic marketing, which is okay and fine and you should be doing, where you have to put time and effort into content and building, and hopefully someone comes across you, and or you're shelling out a ton of money with all these platforms, hoping that the right person comes to your door. So just think about how that warm intro can really transform your business.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Yeah. It it it changes everything. I remember I was spending a fortune on Facebook ads. You know, that's kind of like how I blew up, and then the game got a little more crowded, the cost of acquisition got a lot higher, and I went from paying, you know, sub$150 an appointment to almost$350 to$450 an appointment, which takes out all of your margin. Like you can't make any money doing stuff like that. And I was so frustrated, I was like, there's gotta be another way.

unknown 10:09

Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

And I was like, what if what if I could just pay my friends instead of paying Facebook? And so I called a couple of my my buddies that were, you know, people that I networked with, and I was like, hey, could you I've got this webinar coming up. It's a challenge. Could you send an email for me? And I'll pay you$10 for every single person that registers, name, email, phone number. I don't even care if they show up or not. I've already written the email, will you just send it? And three of them did it. We generated over 800 leads. I got a 360% return on what I paid my friends, and I had lots of money on what I had paid Facebook. And it was like, that's kind of where I was like, oh, I'm just gonna start paying my friends. This is way better because they care. Facebook never called me unless I, you know, wasn't spending enough money or you know, to sell me another product. And it's not to bash on them. I mean, I you know, I made a lot of money on Facebook. I'm very grateful for my time with that. It's just today, with everything that's happening on social media and AI, the level of trust that exists is near zero. And so advertising, advertising that way is just it is it's really hard. But I wanted to go to have a couple of points here. Everything that you described when I was asking you like what makes a great partnership, I was like, yeah, that sounds like work. And then I was sitting there thinking about like, but it's work to manage Facebook ads, it's work to knock doors, it's work to code call, it's work to do X, it's work to do I. I've never seen a business growth strategy that didn't require work. Partnerships, you know, putting relationships, partnerships together is really no different. But you can kind of talk to us about like what is quote unquote the work when it comes to partnerships. It's a lot of talking, a lot of follow-through on execution, but you know, y'all's vantage point, what it what is what is the work when it comes to managing partnership relationships?

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Yeah, I think there's there's obviously, you know, there's a there's a whole different type of life cycle, and one thing that I will, you know, kind of touch on is um one thing that I like if you're a business right now and you're like, I have a partner program um or I have an affiliate program, I have something, right? And you're looking to grow it. Where do you go right now to grow it? There isn't really in every industry there's something, you know, there's certain certain marketplaces you can go to, but for the majority of people that are in a lot of these partnership roles or partnership managers or director or whatever, you're spending a lot of time researching. You're spending a lot of time on Google, G2 reviews, on LinkedIn, you're going to all these different places saying, hey, like I'm looking for this type of company in this sector, this is what I'm looking for. And that's actually one of the things that I'm addressing right now. Currently, is I was in a role working with a company on a on a project last year where I was building the reseller of their program. And we had a piece of software, and they would use our software and they would sell different things from our software. And I spent so much time searching for the right type of partners. Like, who, yes, you can just get AI to spit some list out for you, sure, but there's a lot more criteria that goes into like what are the right fit partners, who's actually going to move the needle, who actually aligns with my organization. Um, so that's actually something that I've been addressing over the last few months. I've been building my own tool called Partners, that actually is a partnership discovery and intelligence platform where we'll basically help you to go from zero to one with a list of five high-quality right fit partners in a matter of minutes once they get the data on your business, versus you spending tens of hours or a week figuring out who I should reach out to or connect with. So when we're talking about like the life cycle of a partner, there's that discovery phase of like who do I reach out to, who is on my list of potential partners I should connect with or partner with. Then it's like, okay, then I reach out to those partners. Okay, here's my you know, DM, here's my meeting, here's my whatever, you know, let's start having those conversations. Then with those conversations, it moves into, hey, we start kind of negotiating like what does this partnership look like? Are we doing co-marketing? Are we doing co-selling? Are we doing some sort of affiliate arrangement? Like, what does this look like? And then from that point, then it's okay, we know what we both want, we've identified what both sides need or what we're hoping to get out of this partnership. Then, hey, we start acting on that partnership, plan it out, that partnership happens, and then at the end of that partnership, a lot of times people just kind of let it die. A lot of time there's not a lot of people are like, okay, it worked once, or what it was okay, I got a few leaves, I got some new business, whatever. But that's actually where you really got to do that little bit more of a deep dive into understanding like what worked well, what could we change, how do we maintain this partnership, and how do we maintain this relationship? Because one of the biggest things that I like to instill in people as well is it's great to have, say, a hundred different partners or two or thousand or whatever you want to call it, but quality is always better over quantity in my mind. And one of the right partnerships for your business could bring you multi-six, seven, eight figures to your business over the lifetime of your business. That's what's so powerful about partnerships, is because it's relationships. It's if you if you do it once and you learn from it, and everybody's getting every every party's winning something or getting some value from it, you keep that warm, everybody's happy, you can keep doing that every quarter or every year, or you just keep spinning that over and over and just think about the value that that brings your business over the lifetime of your business. Um, so just think about one how the right fit partners are way more important than just partnering with anyone and everyone under the sun.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Love it.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Absolutely love it.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

And we're talking about you know the value of getting in front of somebody else's audience and how your business can grow so much as a byproduct of doing that. And a lot of times when I'm talking to the people that I work with, I you know, I think I heard this described one time as the brand halo effect. Is when you partner with somebody else and they put you in front of their audience, you kind of get encapsulated in the brand's halo. Like they trust you now because the person that put you there uh trusts you to deliver on whatever it is that you're doing, whether it's making a recall or recommendation or you're adding value, you know, in some way, shape, or form. You know, what have you seen in that regard? Just that trust transference, the brand halo effect, whatever you guys might call it. Yeah, how that how that helps ramp up the performance, you know, in such a crazy way, especially like what you just said. It's not one time, it's doing this over and over and over again to you to you really get adopted into somebody's audience.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

The biggest, like easiest way to, or I would say the easiest way to honestly really explain this is when you partner with a company, and say it's you're a smallish company and you partner with a big company, for example, okay, and you're like, hey, this is a leader in our space or someone that's two, three times the size of me, and you partner with them. It could be an influencer, it could be a big business, whatever it is, it's a household name in your industry. If you share, hey, I've just partnered with McDonald's, Home Deep, or whatever it is, and I've done this deal or whatever, what that does for your current client base, customer base, but then also prospective customer base, is it creates curiosity. In my eyes, curiosity is so, so important and one of the greatest things that comes from partnerships. And now I've seen this where companies fail, where they partner with companies and they have it and they do all these great things, but they actually don't tell anybody about it. They don't, you know, issue a press release, they don't do any content, they don't do anything. Like they partner with some great companies, but they're not even nobody even knows. They're not even letting anybody know. But one of the things that they could and should always be doing is yeah, announcing it, you know, showing content, showing value to them, them showing value to you, and so on and so forth, because this creates curiosity. There's been so many times where I've helped connect different businesses and/or in partnerships that I've secured myself, where someone reaches out to me, sends me a DM, sends me an email, sends me a LinkedIn, responds back to my Instagram story, and it's like, oh, you're connected to so-and-so, or wow, you're doing something with them, right? It just gets that brain going as to like this person or this business is connected to them. So then if I get connected to them, they get connected, like it just gets them going. And that is honestly, I feel what you're talking about is with this halo effect, is I think when you really build that partnership and you announce it, when you share it, when people see it, it really creates that curiosity, which I think is so powerful.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Well, because perception is reality to most people, and when you associate yourself to brands that maybe are larger than you or have more trust than you, it changes the game. I I can't tell you how many events and masterminds and things like that that I've been to, and sometimes I'm there for the picture. Like it's like you know, I'm you know, I've been to Philadelphia and somebody took us somebody took us to uh you know of a Sixers game and we got courtside seats like the picture courtside is sometimes worth because it's just the association. It's like, man, that's awesome. He looks big, he looks bigger, he looks bigger, he looks bigger. Or, you know, I was part of uh the Edge Mastermind with Dean Graziosi and uh got to go out there and speak. Uh I was part of it for a year, spoke uh at one of the masterminds for Dean and Tony, and like that picture with Dean, just the association, like it makes me look bigger than I than I actually am. And I teach everybody that talk to you about this. It's like go create content with these people on a hyper-local level, which is primarily where I spend a ton of time with real estate professionals and home service providers. It's like, man, go do an interview with CertiPro Painter because it makes you look bigger than you are. Go do an interview with the moving company, find the highest-rated, highest reviewed service provider, and then go create content with them. And then what do you think is gonna happen? They're gonna share that content with their audience too, and you're gonna get exposure to that entire network, and it's gonna help you crush. So, yeah, I I I love it, I know it works. I've obviously experienced it, it sounds like you have too. Um it's an amazing thing that can take place in your business when you start to put those associations together and tap into that that affect.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

Yeah, and when we think about it, right? When you think back on some of those examples that you even just thought about, is like, you know, just think about it. It was one of those masterminds you went to, or this photo you shared, or this video, or when you're speaking on stage, like think about if you can go back, like who sent me that message again, or who replied to that, or you know, what new deal came into my business because of that, or someone associated that with where they wanted to go in their business. Yeah, and then, or that post whatever really made them be like, okay, like this person or this business is for real, so I want to do business with them. And then they decided to do business with you, and then you know, they went from A to Z or whatever it was, or they accomplished something that they wanted to accomplish. But that's where I think it's just so important whenever, yeah, whenever you're in a partnership, you're doing something with somebody that you should really share it and let other people know what you're doing and how you're doing it and how you're collaborating. Because if you're doing it with them, it also puts the thought into their head, like, oh, if they're doing this with them, maybe there's a way that I can do something with them. Or maybe there's a way that we can collaborate or we can partner, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:13

100%. 100%. I I want to respect your time. We've got a few minutes left. I just want to ask a couple more questions. And one of those are just what are some don'ts? You know, you we've talked a little bit a lot about like putting partnerships together and and and how to how to get the most out of them. But what are things that you shouldn't do in a partnership? How how do you kill deals real fast? You know, what are what are some of the mistakes you've seen people make?

SPEAKER_00 21:32

In in my eyes, one of the biggest deal killers is you going into any conversation, anything, always just looking out for yourself and thinking of what is only good for me and my business. In my eyes, the partnerships that last are the ones where it's a two way street. Just think about it as a you know, a successful marriage, successful relationship. It's when both parties are putting in effort, it's when both love each other just the same as much. I'm not saying when it when you have to love each other's business when um you know when it comes to partnerships and you're building a partnership, but you you have to be getting value out of it and they have to be getting value out of that relationship. So whenever you go into it with that mindset as to like, you know, what are their goals? How can I help them achieve their goals and how can they help me achieve my goals? That's where really great magic things in my eyes and my experience um can really happen. So don't go into a deal just thinking about what I need out of this or what my goal is this quarter, or whatever it may be, because then you just go in on the wrong footing. Um, and in my eyes, that's a that's a huge deal killer. Um, and another one I would say is I would go into any partnership with a little bit of an open mind. Um you have an idea as to like I want to do XYZ or these two or three things, or let's do an integration or let's co-market, but you also need to have some flexibility, you need to have that open mind as to that other party that you reach out to might have a different way of doing things or might have a different idea to build off of that. And you gotta be able to, you know, be a little bit scrappy, you gotta be open-minded, you gotta be able to be flexible and and massage that a little bit. So if you go into a partnership with a two-way street mindset, you go in with a little bit of an open mind, but you have ideas, in my eyes, that helps set up that relationship a lot better than the other reality of you going in just thinking of it by yourself and what's good for your business and your yourself, and then you just say, Hey, we're only doing this, or these are the only thing that we can do. This is it. It's you you're going into a partnership completely wrong.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Man, I couldn't agree more. This has been uh an amazing conversation, man. It was uh it was really good to sit and connect with you today. I always like to ask this question for everybody that's listening. How can we partner with you? What can we do to support you? How can we help you grow?

SPEAKER_00 23:56

Yeah, I um I'm on all uh social channels. So if anyone, anyone listening here wants to connect, um wants to talk partnerships, um, I'm you know, I'm an open book. I I love to connect um and uh you know and and help and whether it's in your business, whatever it may be. And then also when it comes to uh my software that I'm building, you can reach us at partners.co. So partnerswithanxtra s dot co um is uh is our tool. And um, yeah, I would love to uh for you to try it out, let me know what you think. But um yeah, connect with me on on any on any channel and um would love to uh you know dive deeper with some of you guys if uh if some of these uh you know um insights, thoughts um you know stuck with some of you.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

That's awesome. All right, guys. Make sure that you check out Clinton, connect with him on social, check out his company, partners.co. We'll make sure that we link that up in all of our show notes. Clint, man, thanks again for being here. We really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Thank you so much, Grant. It was awesome.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

Yeah, yeah. And thank you all for continuing to listen to the Partner and Profit podcast. We'll see you on the next episode. Peace.