SPEAKER_01 0:00

It wasn't a certain amount of money that changed for people. It was actually getting to feel that impact.

SPEAKER_00 0:04

What makes a good partnership or what makes it kind of go awry.

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Term that I've heard a lot from the business owners is that they feel like an ATM to the nonprofit sector.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

We need to like see it and feel it, right?

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Anyone that touched our transactions, they started donating. It's like a mental health thing, essentially.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

When you can attach giving to what you're doing, it does bring out a whole new meaning.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

93% of employees are happier with their employer if they volunteer as a team.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

What's up, everybody? Grant Wise here. Welcome back to the Partner and Profit Podcast. Pumped for my conversation today. I've got Randy Malland who's joining me, and we're going to dive into partnerships. So, Randy, man, thanks for being here today.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Dude, I'm excited. This is going to be a lot of fun. Partnerships and profit are two uh very important things in the world.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Yes, yes, yes. Well, well, for people that maybe don't know much about you, give us the backstory, man. How'd you get to where you are today?

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Yeah, absolutely. So the quick cliff notes uh broadcast that I'd like to share is that uh at 25, I lost one of my best friends and I was just working as a trades guy and um realized early on that I didn't want to just work for a paycheck to then unfortunately, you know, not be able to live life to the fullest. So I Googled how to make a ton of money and never work again. Uh I found real estate investing, and so I started building a real estate investment company. No background, no entrepreneurship, no experience, just a guy that was going through a lot of pain and was channeling it into something different. Um, that led me to down the path of becoming what I'll call a greedy capitalist, where all I cared about at a young age was just like, how do I get more money? How do I get on a yacht? And how do I fly in PJs? That was the only thing I cared about. And we had a lot of success early on uh with a trades background. It was really cool to do joint venture partnerships with people where they would put up the capital, I'd go in and do all the work, and then we'd split the profit, and it was a lot of fun at a young age making some money and having uh some success. And then it wasn't until one of my friends invited me down to Mexico to go serve at his orphanage down there, which recovers children from child sex trafficking. And being a pretty privileged white guy from Canada, um, I didn't really see much poverty. I didn't really know, you know, sex trafficking really existed, things like that. And so once I went down there, just experiencing that was a whole different world for me. And while we were there, I just saw these beautiful kids running around, but knowing how hurt they had been inside, it changed everything in me. I like, I was like, I haven't felt this before. So I asked my friend, like, how do I make them happy? Like, what would make them smile and laugh? And he's like, they love ice cream. So I spent $50 and about a bunch of kids ice cream, and that $50 did more for my soul and for me as a human than any amount of real estate that I ever did. And I said, That's how you buy happiness. That is it. If I go make so much more money, I could help feed so many more kids ice cream, and that would just make me the happiest person on the planet. So when we came back, we started donating $10 per door per month from our real estate portfolio. So our 10 plex donated $100, 20 plex donated 200. We got all of our friends and and colleagues to start donating. So, real estate agents, accountants, lawyers, mortgage brokers, anyone that touched our transactions, they started donating. And we realized that we could actually make a really big impact in the world by just doing the business that we already did today. And then it actually drove us to do more business because of the impact that we could do. That led me to create a movement called Go Big to Give Big, where we were inspired to go bigger with our goals so we could give bigger the causes we believe in. That led me down the journey to become uh a philanthropic consultant for a lot of companies. I started working with some large companies uh in the you know 20 to 80 million dollar range and helping them with their philanthropy. And what I started to realize is that a lot of people wanted to do good, wanted to give, but they got so caught up in the day-to-day of managing their business that they never got to experience what I did. And I realized that it wasn't a certain amount of money that changed for people, it was actually getting to feel that impact. So I would help them with their donations because they get tax deductions for it and things like that, but they're just sending it out so they don't have to pay tax. They were missing the human ROI of getting to experience the giving. So I would go and help them find a charity, partner, donate to it, and build relationships with that nonprofit. So then they got to experience it. And what I found was a lot of CEOs and high-level people, it was the thing that made them the happiest. It filled their soul. And and it was the thing they look forward to the most. That led me to building another company in the nonprofit sector, helping nonprofits partner with the businesses. Because I also saw in the nonprofit sector a lot of them didn't know how to manage somebody that wanted to partner of that status. And then now our newest mission is that we're um putting together private foundations for some of these larger corporations and exited founders and people like that, where we instead of just donating to a donor-vised fund where they get instant tax deductions, but they never touch the money. We're actually helping them create private foundations so that they can actually experience the giving. It's completely turnkey done for you private foundation work. So that you just dump money into a private foundation, we'll do all the giving, we'll manage the whole company, we'll find all the impact, we'll report it all back to you. But you can also include your friends and family and colleagues and everyone else in the journey. And then that becomes your legacy of what you're really proud of, as opposed to just building a business that does a lot of revenue. So that's kind of a little bit of my story.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Man, that's amazing. So partnerships is a big part of your world when it comes to this.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

I've done a lot of partnerships from business partners to joint venture partners to RevShare partners to nonprofit partners, you name it. I've done a partnership in it.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Yeah. Well, walk us through that. How do you put those kinds of deals together? Because this is very intriguing. I mean, the idea of, you know, I think we all want to do good, like you said, but we're kind of we're so busy building our own thing that we sometimes kind of neglect this idea. Or I think we we we don't put aside the time to think about it. We don't put our money into those things because it's just like, okay, I just gotta keep going here. So, like, how do you how do you put these deals together? How do you structure it?

SPEAKER_01 5:49

I'm gonna go back one to my real estate journey because I think it's really cool to share that this was kind of what sparked the whole thing was I was a uh 25-year-old punk in the trade industry with no background, no experience, trying to go buy real estate. And I was like, nobody's gonna give me money to do this kind of thing. But then I started a meetup group, built a little bit of credibility, and in that group, I realized that I had a skill that was valuable to somebody of a high net worth that they didn't want to do. They didn't want to go find the deals, they didn't want to go put the effort into renovate it, they didn't want to talk to the tenant, but they just wanted to make profit from it. So I said, why don't I do all the dirty work for the deal? You put up the money and we'll split the profit 50-50. So that in the beginning is when I realized that partnerships are the key to getting capital and equity invested into you as fast as possible because I had a skill that they didn't. And so when we came together, we were able to go do some really fun stuff. So that's when I realized early on that I could provide a skill or a service, even if I didn't have the experience or the knowledge of somebody that had built a really successful company. I just had a service that solved their problem. So that's where partnerships started for me. And then as I started experiencing this work with the nonprofits, what I started to realize was that it was easy for me to go partner with them because I already had the concepts of what it was. And the problem we see with nonprofits is they feel they're not valuable, they have nothing to deliver to a business, all this kind of stuff. And I was like, those are the same challenges I struggled with in the real estate world. And so I was teaching some of these nonprofits to say, like, hey, I'm gonna donate $2,000 a month to you. All I want to know is how many kids do we help? What was the impact? Share a story with me, give me a photo because that's an asset that I don't have. I can't just go and turn that on tomorrow. I need you doing the physical work on the ground to provide that for me. And so that's when I started looking at nonprofits as my asset partner in that partnership, saying, like, you make me so happy. Just tell me. And that's also when I realized that nonprofits don't have very good marketing skills.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Because even then, they would still not send me anything. And I'm like, hey, I'm sending you money every month, but I'm not getting the return on the partnership, which they don't understand is like that's the human ROI. So as I started putting some of these deals together, when I approached some larger organizations about this, basically everybody had the exact same feeling that I did. They're like, we feel like an ATM to the nonprofit sector. They don't supply anything for us, and that's why they are turned off by wanting to spend the time to build the relationships. Because they're like, I got a business to run, I don't have time to sit here and pester this nonprofit that I just gave the money to of my hard-earned dollars to give me an ROI back. So why am I gonna put my money there? So that's what started the partnerships that I could do was because I saw that gap in the middle. I saw that if I could manage the nonprofit to get the information to give to the business owner, all of a sudden everyone works in unison. That business owner wants to give more money to the nonprofit, the nonprofit gets more money and can create more impact, and then they can feed more back to me that I can give back to that business owner. And now everybody works in unison happy. Same in my real estate world, where the more money we got, the more houses we could buy, the more money we could make people, which is the more money they could give us. So very similar type scenarios there. And that's how we started just putting some of these partnerships together.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

Do you have some examples of some of the partnerships that you've put together recently?

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Oh man, um, I have so many now because we literally have an organization that literally runs we run nonprofits and help them put them together. Uh, we just helped put together a partnership with um uh it's called Day One Bags, and we helped put them together in a partnership with Stanley, like Stanley Muggs, where Stanley they have a bunch of leftover product that's uh overused or unsold and things like that. And so we helped put that partnership together where now they're giving the products to day one bags, which helps kids um that are going through foster care get their first bag because right now they actually give them in trash bags. That's how they help kids in foster care. It's unbelievable. And so they get backpacks, they put a bunch of stuff in and say, here's your day one bag of being fostered or going through the foster system. And so that was a cool partnership that came from supporting them in getting that relationship and doing that. So that's a very high-caliber scale, all the way down to uh my my friend, he runs a real estate uh agency, uh, not agency, but he's a real estate agent, and he wanted to do some good. So I went and found him this really cool organization called Kid Sport Victoria, where we live. And for every $350, you can put one kid through sports. And so every house that he sells now, he puts one kid through organized sport. So his tagline in his real estate is one home, one kid. And now he goes and talks a lot about how he is every house that he sells, he's putting kids through sport, and that's how he's relating to his client. And it's actually he sold again. I can't take all the credit because he gave, he's he's growing his business and he's marketing and stuff, but he sold like, I don't know, 15 or 20 houses last year and he sold 47 in this year when we started launching this initiative. And he said a lot of it is because he's actually more motivated and excited to talk about his house sales and what he was doing. And then now he's actually got a team, they all donate. It's actually a really cool thing, but he helped 47 kids get through sports last year that normally wouldn't have afforded it. So those are a large example to a huge corporation, but then also a local example of a real estate agent. Both of them are making massive impact. I don't believe in this. I make I donated a million dollars and you only did a hundred dollars. There's a there's a gap there. To me, it doesn't matter what you give, it matters that you give because that's what is the ROI that drives you.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

That's so awesome. How how do you go about connecting you know the business to the partner in that? Like, how do you know? Do you just have like a conversation with the company and like, okay, who do you who do you like supporting? Like, how do you know who who to put together?

SPEAKER_01 11:29

One of my favorite things is that so I would sit down with someone like you and I'd say, Grant, look, let's take two minutes, take some deep breaths, get centered, feel where you are. And I ask the simple question if there was one cause that you could solve in the world, anything, if it was sex trafficking, cancer, anything like that, like what is the nearest and dearest to your heart? And every time their head goes like, Oh, I should pick this and I should choose that, and I'm like, deep into your heart right now, what is the one thing on your heart that really drives you? And there's usually something there. Like everyone has something, and if they don't, I just ask if you're for me it's food.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Yeah. So then it's like amazing. Well, let's go and find something. If I could help you, Grant, solve the problem of food insecurity, and you got to feed thousands of kids every single day and feel that ROI and impact, and it came on the transaction of every one of the deals that you did. Would you be more motivated or less motivated to go do more deals? Probably more motivated. Amazing. Well, let me go find you a charity that we can attach to your deals. Let's put together a uh an easy impact item that goes on to every one of your transactions that you sell. And the more you sell, the more kids you get to help, or the more people you get to feed. That's what it is. And then I would go and find a nonprofit and I would ask you questions like, do you want to do it locally, uh, nationally, or globally? So do you care if it's in your hometown, in America, or in Africa? Like, what does that look like for you? So I find that out. And then I find out what they really want to like accomplish as a goal. So then we try and set something. So that also helps me determine what the nonprofit is. And then I just go cold call a few nonprofits. We have a database now of a ton that we search and and we have a whole system. But that's how we do that. And then I come in and I say, I'm gonna put us on a three-way call. And I'm just like, cool, Grant, here's the nonprofit, nonprofit, here's Grant. Every time Grant sells this thing, he's gonna donate to you here. And then what is I get the nonprofit to sell, what does a monthly transaction look like to you? If you were to get an extra thousand, two thousand, three thousand dollars a month, what would that do for you? And they cry every single time. And the business owner goes, Oh, this makes me feel so good. And that's in that moment, I've seen it literally hundreds of times, is where I know that I've converted that person to believe that giving is the best way forward for them in their life.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

That's amazing. What what do you think makes like have you seen this go south or like what makes a good partnership, or what makes it kind of go awry?

SPEAKER_01 13:50

What goes awry is typically when the nonprofit stops communicating the impact because that's the thing that they want. That's why they partnered.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

I've done that too. Like, I donated for a while to Feeding America, and I really loved that because I could say I it was like tangible. They're very good at like every dollar feeds 10 kids. So I knew okay, I feed I fed 7,000 kids this month or something like that. So, like that to me, it's like okay, perfect. You need I really like I appreciated that a ton. Like, yes, need that.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

And then at some point they lose that structure in there where they lose that connection point, they lose that thing because nonprofits just don't understand what it's like to be a business owner. And I I only speak to business owners because they don't help personal people do this, because there's a whole different world there. I speak to the business owner that is busy, stressed, managing their business, has some profit, wants to do some good, but then all of a sudden they just get hit with this like lack of support from the nonprofit sector. And so that's honestly where the partnership goes wry. Cause then they but all of a sudden they're writing you this check for two grand a month, three grand a month, but they're not getting anything in return. And all of a sudden you feel like you're just wasting money. And that's the biggest thing. Uh, the the term that I've heard a lot from the business owners is they feel like an ATM to the nonprofit sector. And so that's what we really try and beat, is that so that's where it goes aw. Or on the other side, where the business just is like all of a sudden changes their plan, like, we're not doing that product anymore. And they're like, So we're just gonna cut our whole plan. And you're like, wait, this this nonprofit is now not expecting $3,000 a month, but that's you know, part of where they are. They're expecting for transaction. And then all of a sudden it goes completely awry because now that nonprofit's upset because they were relying on that money and we go into panic mode trying to support them. But on the other side, the unison is if you align yourself to the nonprofit, you can grow a really beautiful relationship where you now get your customers bought into it, you get your employees bought into it, you get your C-level suite bought into it, and everybody's in this unison because it works so well together. You're going out and volunteering. And I don't know if you know the stats, but 93% of employees are happier with their employer if they volunteer as a team. 93% are happier if they volunteer with their team. 87% of consumers said they would rather buy from or work with a company if they made a positive impact in the world versus one that didn't. And there's a million stats out there. So there's also some really good business ROI that comes when we see these partnerships thrive.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

It's amazing. How do you find businesses? Is it all through relationships, you know, partnerships, people that are connecting with other people?

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Yeah. So the majority of what I do is referral-based work, primarily because how do you Google, hey, I want to find the most givingest person in the business? Well, like it just doesn't like I have nothing to Google, right? I can't search for people that are philanthropic because they've already got this set up. They're typically already organized. I look for the people that are running, you know, 10, 15, 20, 30 million dollar year companies that are burnt out, exhausted, stressed, hate their company, are like ready to give up on everything and try and bring the purpose. Well, those people aren't just like Googling, like, how do I make myself happier by giving and then search me?

SPEAKER_00 16:59

So so it's do you have some stories like that where people are just like burnt out, tired, and then they start working with you and it just totally re-energizes them?

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Almost every single one of them. It's it's really it's almost the exact same thing every single time. Is tell us a story, like a transformation that you you witnessed a company that was like, I don't know if I want to do this anymore, and then they start working with you, and they're like I have some confidentiality there because just because like a lot of it's personal to to the owners that they come in and they're like, dude, this is like it's like a mental health thing, essentially, because they come in and they're like, I'm I'm so disassociated to wanting to grow my business anymore. That's typically the people that I get connected to. And so an example, they didn't they didn't hire us, but I consulted them exactly like we didn't build a full partnership. But they were I think they were doing like $82 million a year, this organization, and they already did a bunch of giving with like giving bears away and doing all this kind of stuff, but the CEO didn't get to be a part of any of the giving anymore because he was so like they're trying to prepare for an exit and do all this work, and so all I did was get in and ask him, like, like what do you guys do for impact? And it was through an introduction through a friend, and he was like, Oh man, my company does all this really cool giving. And I was like, Amazing, and how does that make you feel? He's like, I don't really see it anymore. It's kind of just like through the team, and so I was just like, dude, you don't need me, but all you need is to get in there and start giving more. And so he actually uh went and volunteered and served and did this like CEO of this large organization, went and got out and served and saw the stories, and he sent me a message. I was like, dude, you just reignited in me why I started that whole giving campaign in the first place. So I have it's like things like that that just make me so excited about it because you can take someone at the highest level and make them human by literally donating $500 to a homeless person on the street or buying a burrito for somebody. Like it can completely change their entire physiology by doing a little act of service. It people think they need to write.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

But they need to like see it and feel it, right? They need to touch and see it, feel like they need to.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Is they're donating hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and helping a lot of people, but he was so far removed from it that going and just spending one day reignited it for him of why they did it in the first place. So we see a lot of that through through the work that we do.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

I think it's such a cool message too. Because I know I mean you you get into it like in real estate. Anybody in real estate the last three to five years has not had like a terribly fun time. So it's guilty, guilty. And so it's like I I think I did I did a Facebook Live about this the other day. Like, if you're in a place where everything feels bad, seems bad, looks bad, whatever, like just stop what you're doing and go do something good for somebody else, and it will instantly change the way that you feel. It's amazing how instant, like just dedicating your time, attention, and energy for a little bit, just like 10 minutes to go doing something for somebody else, how much that changes your energy.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

This is a story that I share quite often in my ketope presentations. But my wife and I went out for dinner and we spent $100 and 90 minutes together. I don't remember what dinner that was. We do it every week. It's all the same. We took that same hundred dollars and ninety minutes, and my wife and I bought um a bunch of donuts from one of our friends that was doing like a um like a sale for their hockey team or whatever for their kid. And we spent $100, we got a bunch of donuts, and we drove downtown and we're the one of the worst areas of our neighborhood, and we spent the same hundred dollars, same 90 minutes, but we just served these homeless people, and that was like almost seven years ago at this point. And my wife and I still talk about it to this day. So that's like how crazy that impact can actually support you. That 90 minutes and a hundred dollars. Do you grant you have 90 minutes and a hundred dollars to go create a memory with somebody, your friends, your wife, your kids, whatever it is, what would that do for them? And how would that change your life? That's what we start looking at. And then the cool thing is when you could include your kids in it. Imagine you bring your kids with you, and then now they're walking down the road and they're saying, Mommy, daddy, I want to go support this person over here. Can I have five or ten dollars to go do that? Like that is the type of society that I want to, you know, raise my kids in and have fun in. Is that's the way we see the world? Is cool, daddy's gonna go sell some more products so that we can afford to go healthy.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

It's so good. Man, I love this. It's such a fascinating concept, and it's something I've obviously I've personally experienced because I you know was doing well in business and attached giving to it. And it is an accelerate, it's fun. I was a little disconnected from the impact because sometimes when you donate to somebody like Feeding America, you you're just donating and you get to say, Yeah, I fed 10 kids, but you don't get to like you don't get to see it, right? You don't get to feel it. And so it's like I I could totally agree with what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

One of my testimonials that I'm like when you actually get to see the impact and feel it, it can have a lot more than saying you fed 10,000 kids. Going and actually feeding 10 kids can have a way bigger impact than saying that.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

So cool. Okay, so how can we, as listeners of the Partner Profit Podcast, how can we partner with you? How how can we walk alongside you, support you, and help you grow? What's important to you right now?

SPEAKER_01 22:05

There's two things. One on my heart is always just like I encourage everyone today to skip your date night where you're gonna go spend $200 on a steak dinner with your partner and do whatever, and just go serve. That would make me the happiest. And then find me on LinkedIn, it's where I hang out the most at Randy Molland and just send me the story. It's like when I do a lot of my keynotes and I get these messages coming like for months after of people that share the stories. It honestly serves me so much. It makes me the happiest person on the planet. I want to hear somebody say, Man, I took that $200 you told, and we went and served, and this is the story, and this is what it means, and and now I just want to do that every week. That is the easiest way to serve me and share it with me because that makes me feel really good. The second thing is that I just truly believe in bridging this gap between capitalism and philanthropy. I believe that we as business owners can start changing the way that philanthropy works and nonprofits operate and get away from government funding and into more consumer funding. And I believe that's where we're going. And if, you know, I don't I don't care which side of politics you are on, nonprofits are struggling right now because the administration and the world has pulled back a lot of their funding. And so we as business owners need to stand up and say, I want to help. I want to do something, and I want to be the guy that can help them do that. So if they know or if they are a business or they know of a business, that's sitting there feeling a little bit of void in their heart, maybe feeling that they want to give, but just don't have the time, effort, or energy to execute on it. I would love an introduction to partner, and I'll happily give you a referral so that you can take that money and go and do some good with it. Which, by the way, cool story sidebar here, because I love to share stories. My friend and I, I introduced somebody to him for a $20,000 mastermind. He wrote me a check for two grand. Um, I was like, dude, I don't care about two grand. I don't want the money. I just made the intro because it was really nice. I said, let's go sponsor kids in Haiti. So we went and sponsored two kids in Haiti for two years with that $2,000 as a referral. So that's another different way that you can give. Cost me and him nothing because he was going to give me the money anyways. I wasn't expecting it. And we just went and sponsored two kids in Haiti for two years. So cool. And so I'm happy to write you a referral check for anybody you send my way. But the reason why I want that is because I just want to help more giving. I want to help more nonprofits. I have a list. If you saw my DMs of the nonprofits saying, Can you help? Can you help? Can you help? Can you help? And me on the business side trying to like source contacts to help put them together. That is a big part of it.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Love it. We'll make sure that we can link up all the ways that people can connect with you in our show notes. And if you guys are listening to this, I highly encourage you to reach out to Randy. Obviously, very passionate about this, very good at this. I have just a personal testimony there. Like when you can attach giving to what you're doing, it does bring out a whole new meaning. One of my favorite quotes of all time is from Tony Robbins, The Secret to Living is giving. And so couldn't agree more with what you're doing, man. Really appreciative for all that you do and grateful that I got to spend some time with you today.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Me too, my friend. And anything that I can do for you, your network, your community. I love partnerships. They've been a big part of my life, clearly. And I think it's the best way to scale and do business. And we could do a whole nother episode on business partnerships that I've struggled with and grown with and done that stuff. But this is really what's on my heart today that I wanted to share with the world.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

Love it. Appreciate it, man. Appreciate you all for continuing to listen to the Partner Profit Podcast. This was a good one today, and I'll see you on the next one. Peace.