Help! My Business is Growing
Help! My Business is Growing
Growing your business through collaborations, with Chad Jenkins
Comments? Suggestions? Text the show here!
Collaboration is an often overlooked driver of business growth.
It can spark innovation, expand your market reach, and turn challenges into opportunities in ways you might not expect.
Yet, many small businesses struggle to find the right partnerships.
So what do you need to do to start collaborating effectively to propel your business forward?
What are the strategies that can help you turn obstacles into opportunities?
And how can you spot and secure the right partnerships for lasting success?
In this episode, Chad Jenkins and I discuss the power of business collaborations and how they can significantly boost your company's growth. We also explore practical strategies for identifying and forming the right partnerships to drive success.
Chad is the President & CEO of SeedSpark and a lifelong entrepreneur who possesses a knack for uncovering unconventional opportunities within traditional businesses. His passion lies in understanding how businesses operate and reshaping them for remarkable
returns.
We discuss: (timestamps)
02:23 How do you grow a business through collaborations?
04:25 Making your product-based business stand out from competitors?
07:57 Practical steps to implementing collaborations in your business
15:31 Common collaboration mistakes
17:45 Challenges in entering the collaboration space
18:56 Key factors to consider when vetting potential partners
20:07 Case study: success through business collaborations
24:41 Developing a new revenue stream through collaboration
32:30 Documenting collaboration efforts for strategic decision-making
38:34 Actionable steps to take to start collaborations in your business
Resources:
Chad Jenkins, President & CEO, SeedSpark
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadtjenkins/
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/seedspark/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/SeedSpark/
Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaSD-HmywcGJP4VaDa828dQ
Author:
Kathy Svetina, Fractional CFO:
https://www.newcastlefinance.us/
Blog post | Growing Your Business Through Collaborations
https://www.newcastlefinance.us/listen/growing-your-business-through-collaborations/
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Kathy (host):
Kathy, Well, hello there, and welcome back to another episode of Help! My Business is Growing, a Podcast where we explore how to grow and build a business that is healthy and sustainable. I'm your host, Kathy Spatina, a fractional CFO and a founder of the company called NewCastle Finance, a company where we say that everything that you do in your business is eventually going to end up in your finances. And to get to healthy finances is to have a healthy business. Well, the question is, how in the world do you get there? Well, the answer to that is, at least a part of it is that you listen to this podcast where we give you some good tips and tools on how you can actually get there. As you grow in your business, you might struggle to form or even identify the right partnerships, and that is unfortunate, because if you are struggling with this, that means that you can miss some opportunities, you can fall behind your competition, or even fail to meet your customer needs. So how do you get started with collaborations to elevate your business, how will they help you turn challenges and opportunities, and how can you spot and seize those right partnerships for success? So this episode is all going to be about collaborations and the right type of partnerships for your business. As a reminder, all of the episodes on this podcast have blogs and detailed timestamps, and we linked all of those in our episode show notes. So if you're interested in that, please go ahead and look at it. It's there for you as a resource.
Kathy (host):
My guest today is Chad Jenkins. He's a lifelong entrepreneur and visionary known for reshaping businesses to deliver remarkable returns with three groundbreaking methods and boundless curiosity. He serves as a catalyst for business growth, collaborating with leaders across industries, he uncovers hidden opportunities, achieving exponential enterprise value growth. Chad's track record includes 40-plus high-growth companies and numerous successful growth partnerships. Now He empowers others through growth collaboration partnerships and the seed spar growth Academy. His new book just added zero is a guide to outperforming competitors and achieving exponential growth through collaboration. Join us.
Kathy (host):
Chad, welcome to the show.
Chad (guest):
Kathy, so glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Kathy (host):
Thanks so much for being here. You know, when, before we started recording, we talked a lot about value creation. We talked a lot about collaborations, but our listeners obviously were not on this little chat that we had. I want to start with, first of all, you wrote a book called "Just Add Zero," and I want to dive into that. What do you actually mean by that? And the other thing that I want to dive into is the idea of collaboration and how do you grow a business through collaborations. So if a business or a business owner or a founder is not really familiar with those, how do I actually make this happen, like truly? How do I make this happen? I get the idea of collaborations. But how does that actually work to create that value in the business? I want us to dive into that as well. So let's first start here with the collaborations. What do you actually mean by that? Is a collaboration, collaboration with similar businesses? Is it with customers? Is it with competitors? Is it with all of the above? How does that work?
Chad (guest):
The answer is yes. So it's a great question. I define collaboration as the unique value that is created from two or more people, places and things because it is that authentic and it also is that easy. But for me, as you mentioned at the beginning and even before we started, it's all about value creation. So you are able to, in example, create value absolutely with your competitors, what you would perceive as your competitors. I don't really look at them that way, because we're all very unique, even if the sign on the door and the email signature say the title is the same, that's not 100% true. So you are able to leverage collaborations with your competitors, with your suppliers, absolutely, with your clients and with any other organization that you might come in contact with. And then my definition, I said, people, places, and things. So collaboration with your business or your product or service specific to an area could be a collaboration as well, and of course, with other specific people.
Kathy (host):
And you said that the competitors are not really competitors because everyone is so unique. And I do agree with that, especially in the services area, because in service, if you have a service-based business, the way how you do business, even though you might do it similar to your competitors, is you have a different experience than your competitors. You have different values than your competitors. It's very different. So let's talk about this. If you had, for example, a product-based business, how would you not be the same as your competitors? Even though you're producing basically the same widgets?
Chad (guest):
So I really appreciate you immediately distinguishing that we are all individuals. I've given naming to that. I'm a big Dan Sullivan Strategic Coach fan and also a member. Their concept is unique ability is extremely strong. I would suggest everyone on the planet go and find and find your unique ability. As we've talked about already, mine is all value creation. So for me, your unique ability applied is what I classify as your unique value contribution. So once you get to that particular purity of the way you create value, you're different—you're a different litigation attorney than the guy right beside you, potentially in the same office, or you're a different electrician than another electrician. So you picked up on it very quickly. When there's services, it's very easy to understand, at least, or to begin to get your arms around it. In the products, I would say the same thing is true. The product that you've created is a culmination of many things in collaboration, coming together to create that value. And a product with the same name, turn it over, has very similar ingredients, or it was made the same way, comes out of the same—potentially comes out the same factory. It still has some level of uniqueness to it. And in collaboration, if we—this is very, very important—it's all about the hero target. And when I say hero target, what I mean is, who do you want your business to be a hero to? In this example, with the product, it would be, who do you want that product to be a hero to? So focusing on the hero target, always and foremost, first, and the hero target can be a supplier, the hero list. Whoever supply in your organization, a logistics provider. Could be a marketing partner. You could just be a vendor. All of those are heroes that you want your business to be a hero to. I should say same thing with product. So being able to look horizontally, and I talk a lot about this in many other things that I communicate on, especially with my entrepreneurs that are my growth partner network, vertical vision versus horizontal vision. We all have vertical vision. We are focused on scaling our organizations based upon best practices. You may have just gotten back from your industry show whatever the association is, and you're vertical, and they told you about best practices, which I hope we all know that's just average, right? You have to pick, you have to have more than one to figure out what best practices are. So we can shoot just a little bit higher, but that's what I would classify as vertical vision. And I'm not saying you can't make a good living or grow a great business, but I would say you're leaving a lot left on the field. And one way that you can begin not to leave so much on the field is to consider horizontal vision. That is an example of considering your competitors as collaborators, to drive value to those that you want your business to be a hero to.
Kathy (host):
So I want to put this in a very practical perspective, because I like to talk about these concepts and exploring that with my guests, and have our listeners exposed to these different ways of thinking. But I also like to bring it back to the ground, so to speak, like, how—okay, we understand this, but how do we actually do this? So for example, if you're a business, let's say that you're a service provider. Let's say, for example, that you're a lawyer. And you came back from an industry event and now you have this horizontal—the vertical vision, best practices, which I would also argue here, the best practices, if everyone else is doing that you're already like you said, you're just being average, and sometimes best practices are outdated, like people have been doing this for 20-30 years, but you constantly getting the same results, don't you want better? So let's put that aside, but if you come back into how, as a lawyer, for example, would you come to this vertical—horizontal, horizontal. Yes, thank you—the horizontal thinking, how would you do that?
Chad (guest):
Yeah. So as I mentioned a little bit earlier, it all starts with the hero target. And most importantly, there's one word to remember: friction. So your hero target is experiencing friction, your organization, your practice. We'll talk about the lawyer, from a lawyer's perspective, is experiencing friction. It's running on what I classify as friction fuel. And there's three types, just like you pull up to a gas station—Premium Plus, or some places in the country call it mid-grade, and then regular. Premium friction fuel is whenever you're so in tune with your hero target that you're able to forecast the frictions that they're going to begin to really feel. They're already experiencing them, but they're not complaining about them. They're not looking for solutions for them yet. But you know this is coming. That's when you're just really dialed in. And based upon being really dialed in and in tune with that hero target, you begin today creating products and services that—guarantee you, they did not talk about this at the industry show or the association meeting at the annual—they just don't communicate about this stuff because they're too enamored with the industry that they're in. They're looking for benchmarking and best practices and all the types of things that try to help you scale. Not understand why, because it's about the industry. Whenever you signed up, that's what it was about. And I would tell you, that's not really what it's all about. In some contexts, if you have vertical vision, it's 100% applicable. But from a value creation and innovation standpoint, and being out in front of the competition and defying whatever the conventional margins are in your industry, it's about friction and being in tune with those that you serve. So we'll go back specifically to the lawyer—whenever they're really in tune with that hero target, and they can forecast those frictions they're likely not already suited to provide those products and services. So they may open their eyes up horizontally and begin to look at what is happening in this hero target's journey. Where do they come from, and when, whenever we do what we do best, and you have examples of that because you've got good feedback from your clients, slash your hero targets, where do they go? Because inevitably, there's commonality to after you deliver your product or service in the best way that you possibly can. You can, if you really inspect it, there are patterns or trends, not only where they go after you, but where they come from. Those are excellent collaboration partners, and what you're doing just at the most rudimentary level—there's a fundamental role that I do try to lead by—make it easy for clients to do business with you. Well, if you figure out where your clients are coming from by and large, and you find out where they're going after you deliver your product and service, and you would consider collaborating with what came before and what came after, you're affording those hero targets to do business with one, not sign two or three different agreements. You're allowing them to do business with you potentially, and being able to get those other products and services, you're making it truly easier for them to accomplish the goals that they are because you're studying them. It's not about you, it's about them. So even in legal, that is applicable.
Kathy (host):
So what this sounds like to me is you really, truly need to know your customer and their customer journey like before—before they start working with you and what happens after, and also being that connector of resources for your customer, so that you can help them achieve whatever they want to achieve, as you know, before they start working with you, and even after.
Chad (guest):
They talk about the most—the least expensive client to get is the one that you already have as well. We all would probably understand that for someone to do business with you, they have to like you first, they have to know you. Second they have to like you. Then they have to trust you. So you're leveraging that trust with whom you already have a relationship with and providing them more value before and after, just an example, then you're deepening that trust relationship as well. In my example that I just shared with you, if you perhaps go into a collaboration with the product or service that they're engaged with before they show up at your mailbox—pretend like your hero target is walking down the street and at the end of your driveway is your mailbox. There's one before you and there's one after you. So as they're walking down the street, perhaps, if I collaborate with what comes before and what comes after, I've just tripled my sales team, because some clients don't stop at my mailbox. They stop at the next mailbox, and the ones that stop at the previous mailbox. And I'm already educating a lot of times, and I say that very specifically, you are educating who comes before you and who comes after you under this concept. This is—even though it's absolutely not rocket science, it's not really considered in the way you grow businesses today, and I feel like it's the lowest hanging fruit for exponential growth that exists. But by doing so, you, just as example, tripled your sales team overnight. You're also providing a lot higher trust in those that are engaged with hero targets. With that hero target, because they have multiple points of accountability, is what they perceive. Because if you're delivering your product or service, and it's truly a referral slash collaboration that came from before you, well, if they trust them, and something's not going right—guess who they're calling, depending on the relationship that they have with your business, they might not call you. They just might cancel. So by considering this strategy, not only do you make it easier for the business to do business with you, you can name this, which is very paramount. I have a tool that I created some time ago called "name the baby" on the reasoning that if you had a baby and I had one and we didn't name it, I'm not sure whose it would be, other than yours would probably have a little bit more hair than mine. So we don't do that at home. Why do we do it in our business every day? So you're creating intellectual property that's going to create competitive advantages for you. In this example, you're absolutely doing it and you can even take it as far as creating a landing page for your website with this newly named combined collaboration product or service. One landing page could go potentially on two other businesses' website, and what you've done for them and also for you, you just cleared the playing field for all the rest of the competition, because they can offer that product or service, all with a little intentionality of focusing on who it is that we're here to serve and leveraging the art of collaboration to result in exponential growth.
Kathy (host):
So when you walk businesses through how to do this and how to implement that in in their own businesses, yes, what are some of the pitfalls that or what are the most common mistakes that owners get into when they're trying to implement that in the business?
Chad (guest):
They're worried about who gets paid. Oftentimes, that's the first thing. "I've tried this before, and it didn't work out very well. The other party tried to take the business" or "they didn't get paid"—like, hold up, we're not doing exactly correct. In the example that I gave, for example, the product or service that we named, they can't do it without me. I can't do it without them. If we're really on top of our game, we would own this product or service naming as intellectual property. I'm going to trademark it and put it in a different LLC, and we're going to own it collectively. So truly, they can't do it without me, and I can't do it without them. As far as the delivery of product or service to that hero target, it's the exact same that you did yesterday. You were just doing it by yourself. So they get to be them. You get to be you. Now what will happen over a little bit of time because of the collaboration and you have this heightened awareness of how to create value for that hero target, your products and services will begin to be uplifted and increase value, but in no way shape, form or fashion do we have to worry about who's getting paid. You're getting paid the same thing that you did yesterday. And I am too, and so is Julie's next business that comes after both of ours, because the client is then paying one potential fee, but it's the sum of all three. Now the good thing is it lowered our cost of goods. We increased our margin because we leveraged your marketing dollars, and also Miss Julie's marketing dollars in the organization afterwards. But the misconception of, "Oh, we've got to split the money," or "somebody else is going to own this"—that's just not—they haven't really thought through the art of collaboration in the way that it actually can be. But it does happen from time to time. It takes a little bit to wrap your mind around it, but it's simple in nature, as with most simple things, they're the hardest for us to get our arms around.
Kathy (host):
Well, it's a different way of thinking of things, too, because now you have, you know, collaborator versus just you on your own. Is there anything else? So the fees, obviously, anything else that you have seen to be an issue when people go into collaborations?
Chad (guest):
There's no doubt. And one thing to be really cognizant of is the communication, which is not—this is not new in any form of business. It's probably not new in any entrepreneur that's listening to this. If we could just fix the communication, we solve a lot of these problems. So knowing that going in and making sure that you designate some liaison on both sides, on their side, on yours, and also, if you do a three-way collaboration with whomever else comes after just considering the hero's journey as they're walking down this proverbial street here in front of us, make sure that there's good communication as a point of contact with each organization, so that handoff is absolutely seamless. Without that, you can run into the situation of the client's not really sure, because nobody from business number one communicated to business number two that they're next up to bat. But if you take care of that, and if you consider the naming that I've spoken of earlier, these collaborations can be wildly successful.
Kathy (host):
And when you're vetting people that you want to collaborate with, what are some of the things that you should be looking at to make sure that they're going to be good partners? I mean, one of the things that comes to mind for me would obviously be culture, because I want them to have a similar culture to myself. Also, like the philosophy around serving clients, those are the two things that I would really look into if I were to collaborate with someone. What are your suggestions?
Chad (guest):
Yeah, so a giver is important. We just call it for what it is. A giver, a growth mindset is required. I personally only deal with growth mindset entrepreneurs all over the planet, and there's a bunch of them. There are tons and tons more business owners who are more considered trying to save something than they are to leverage what they've been blessed with to grow bigger than they are today. So normally, you can spot it really quickly, because in the conversation, it'll be all "I, I" or "we, we," not "they, they, they." So if they're not talking about the hero target and how they're advancing, the way that they clearly create value in whatever they're doing today is probably not the best fit.
Kathy (host):
Yeah, that makes sense. And I also like to do some, like, mini case studies on this podcast for people to really grasp the idea of how this actually works. Have you had, like, for example, a favorite business that you work with that when they came to you, they wanted to do collaborations and through the work that you did together—what did you actually do to get them to grow through the collaborations?
Chad (guest):
Yeah, so I'll give you an example of an organization that I own, or a type that I own, and a concept that I created in collaboration that is now used in many different ones across the country. This particular organization is in cybersecurity and managed IT—so nice, recurring business, high-level team members. A lot at stake, of course, when you're dealing with people's data. And one commonality that we recognize, a friction that I spoke of earlier—your organization is running on one of these three types of frictions—a premium friction that was recognized is the need for cybersecurity a long time ago, the commonality between even some of that organization's clients. So they have clients that are in the insurance business. Remember, know you, like you, trust you. So these insurance organizations obviously trust us. We're managing their IT, and we're responsible for their cybersecurity. But when we take one big step back and look at our client base as a whole, or client base in that category as a whole, we notice that there's many of them that need cybersecurity insurance. We have clients that would love to provide cybersecurity insurance, and what's the way that you could create more value, not only receive but maintain the least possible premium, including maintaining a high level security. So I talked about naming earlier, and the name that we brought together for that particular new product or service was called Cyber Sense. Of course, you would assume S-E-N-C-E—no, C-E-N-T-S, Cyber Sense, and what that was, and we empowered both organizations, and we've done this quite a few times across the country, for other growth partners that are also in that same industry. It's a Cyber Sense program. So if someone is in a managed service provider's client base, and they need cybersecurity insurance, we're of course going to make sure that they are already protected, that we will engage and understand what the prerequisite requirements are for the potential organizations they're considering getting a premium or insurance from, and do that work on the front. By the same token, people called insurance companies every day needing cybersecurity insurance. Well, at that time, my firm and many other firms across the country now provide this initial assessment for them completely free. We do a walkthrough on the findings, and if they do not have a cybersecurity partner already engaged with, of course, they can engage with our firm or another firm that provides this service to go ahead and button up those holes, which is the right thing to do in the first place, right? You know, what—the bad guys getting in? And the result is a better premium. The result is more trust with those insurance providers who now offer the Cyber Sense program, because if you don't have that on your website, or you're not offering it, whoever is has a competitive advantage, right? And because no one is there to sell anything, we're literally doing these assessments proactively and helping them chisel down and get the best possible premium. Everybody in the collaboration, including the hero target, wins. Have many others, but if you need more, but that one's pretty easy to get your arms around and of course, it's replica table. You could go to every major city in the United States if you're a managed service provider, and consider something like I just shared with you, because everyone wins. And there's many other products and services just around that individual category or vertical to increase the value. Then I didn't—it wasn't technology-based. This was business-based, right? They have to pay this not one time—every year, and you want them to be safe and secure again, in alignment with the hero target, right? The insurance broker wants a recurring engagement. Sure they're going to make a commission on the first time, unless the second, the third and the 10th year, but they're going to make way more money over time if they continue to provide value. The managed service provider wants to provide value and keep their data safe, all you're doing is combining two products or service, get a unique name, provide some competitive advantage and increase the value to the hero target, everybody wins.
Kathy (host):
Yeah, that's a great example. And you know, I'll ask you this—obviously, you know, someone needed to come up with this idea. And if I could be a fly on the wall, how were those conversations? Was it that someone came up with an idea of, maybe, let's survey our customers, see what they need, or that some salesperson or maybe an owner figured out, you know, the light bulb went off? Why don't we combine those two together? How—from, obviously, from not having this idea in the first place, but then coming up with this and with a new revenue stream, how do you come up with this? Is it through the conversations? Is it because you have intentionally set up, you know, a meeting with your salespeople? How does that work?
Chad (guest):
I don't want this to come across as pompous, but I'm fortunate that I didn't have a traditional education growing up. From around the age of eight, it was all about value creation. I just look at things differently, and I'm naturally curious, and I'm never a "me too" guy. Therefore, I don't have preconceived notions about industry best practices that we've spoken about earlier. It's all about creating value for those we're serving and understanding the resources at my fingertips. My friend Dean Jackson coined a formula: vision, capability times reach. If you unpack all growth, you'll find someone has vision, someone has capabilities, and someone has reach. I had been operating under this formula long before I heard about it. When I heard about it, I thought, "Oh my goodness, I need to meet that gentleman." Now we've become close friends. I'm very fortunate that this is how my brain works. This approach has manifested in my Seed Spark Growth Partners. We create tools that help people grasp this mindset, shepherd them through the process, begin to think this way, and view the world in a particular way so they can leverage the art of collaboration. Now, let's dive in from a systematic standpoint. I mentioned earlier to watch for friction. That's all I did. I ran around delivering phones to every type of organization you could remotely imagine - small, big, large enterprises, from the largest banks to the smallest body shop. I was naturally curious to see their cyclical patterns that were creating value for someone, where they would send an invoice, and those people would return money to them. That was the fundamental exchange. After that, they took wildly different ways to get from point A to point B, but there were similarities in nature. So I constantly asked questions: Why does this work? Why does it not work? Why does this work in this industry and not in that industry? Why can you have a particular posture that isn't very nice, and still look successful from the outside? What I recognized is that those who stay out front were constantly evaluating and responding to frictions. I'll make friction more reachable to understand. Consider something you received this morning - perhaps the first phone call, text message, or more likely, the first email. Whenever you read the first two or three words of that communication and do a miniature shoulder shrug, that's a good litmus test. If you cringe just a little bit when reading those first three to five words, that's friction. What I've noticed over years of awareness is that even as an entrepreneur, I was most responsible for identifying trends in these frictions. I wanted to make it easier to understand complaints - whether from a team member, HR, a vendor, or a client. As entrepreneurs, we're responsible for the entire organization, and the buck stops with us. If we aren't recognizing these friction trends, we end up running on "regular friction fuel" with our hair on fire: renewals are down, pipelines are drying up, and attrition is through the roof. People are just leaving. I've been able to track these issues after extensive research and review. What are now classified as regular frictions were mid-grade frictions six months ago. If you dig into it - and I've validated this theory through many investigations - organizations were experiencing premium friction fuel two or three years ago, but we didn't catch it or respond when complaints started ramping up. Now we're just reacting: scrambling to hire or spend more on marketing because our pipeline is drying up. All of these are frictions. The key is to systematically capture them. It's surprisingly simple - and inexpensive. Take a shared mailbox, which is essentially zero cost. Most businesses are already using Google Apps or Office 365, so setting up a shared mailbox is straightforward. Many of us already use these for PO ads, vacation notifications, or receipt collection. I implemented a friction capture method years ago: creating an email like friction@yourcompanyname.com, which you could set up in about 24 hours. Empower your organization to forward any communication that causes that miniature shoulder shrug - that slight cringe. Instead of leaving it to the entrepreneur, manager, operations manager, or HR to monitor and identify friction trends, create a systematic approach. You can leverage tools like ChatGPT or your preferred AI. Once a week, have an administrative person export the shared mailbox as a CSV, upload it to the AI, and ask for the top 10 trends. You can track these trends weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. This could reveal insights about your hero target: internal logistics issues, supplier problems, pricing concerns, or operational challenges. For those familiar with Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) - my friend Gino Wickman's methodology - these friction insights can become part of your weekly Level 10 Meeting. Instead of having an emotional reaction to a problem that arose Tuesday morning, you'll have a systematic way to embrace the voice of your client. This approach provides the information you need to create collaborations and ultimately generate more value for those you serve.
Kathy (host):
I really like this, because in so many ways, we forget about these things, and it's so important to actually document them. One of the things that I always do when I go into a business, especially if they're a project-based business, is to say you've got to do a post-mortem. You've got to do a post-mortem. Basically, what you're doing here is documenting in a similar fashion, but as things are happening. You have that list, and you can actually make an educated decision: What are we going to focus on? What should be our priority? What are our pain points? And for someone who, you know, I'm in numbers, and I love seeing trends and spotting trends, this is such a valuable exercise, and I really like this approach.
Chad (guest):
And simple in nature, right? Oh, yeah, I've engaged with folks that have been referred to me one day, and in 48 hours after that, they're sending me screenshots of the amount of friction that their organization is now sending in just their internal team. These are, as I mentioned, as you and I are talking, this is happening. And of course, it's happening. There are many - many businesses on the planet. How can we systematically capture them? And it's not the managers or the entrepreneur in some organization size who are responsible to kind of keep up with this. It's not we're not capable of doing it. We're really capable of coming up with creative solutions as a response to the trending awareness that the friction fuel system implemented inside of your organization can provide you that like, use your brain for what God made it for, not to process data, right? We have too many tools at our fingertips now to be able to do this. I - this is you asked that question earlier, and I often reference it, I do my very best to ask this question somewhat frequently, because I do come up with things like, "just add a zero" and "just add a zero." Everyone wants to add it to their revenue or their profit. Of course, in that, that works, I'm totally fine with that, but it can be so much more powerful as a catalyst to good thinking if you put it on the front of the number. So there's another one that I use all the time as a filter: How are we in our business doing the sit-ups? And our clients are getting the six-pack? If we're not doing that, somebody will come along and eat your lunch, and they can leverage collaboration, the art of collaboration, to do that if you're asleep at the wheel. So capturing these frictions is paramount. You're doing it in your own little fashion, depending on if you have a fully developed system like I just shared with you. Remember that very expensive shared mailbox? Just elevating yourself to have a true system to do it can be very empowering. And whenever you are able to capture those frictions and figure out exactly what our clients - internal, and external - are really wanting and asking, what they are feeling, what sit-ups they are having to do, you begin to empower yourself to win. But you're not going to have those resources, and that's wonderful; then you can leverage the collaborative opportunities, because there are those out there who, when they combine with your product or service, can do those sit-ups for your clients. You don't have to expand or go higher or write SOPs. You can just hit the ground running within a matter of a couple of weeks, sometimes a matter of a couple of days.
Kathy (host):
I love that. That's a great coming back 360 of how we can handle those moments where problems are popping up, but you don't have to solve them yourself. You don't have to solve them as a business. There are people out there who solve that specific, exact problem. You just have to find them and partner with them. That is such a great thing.
Chad (guest):
Yeah, we might not have time today, but small to medium-sized business owners often run their organizations based on bank balance. And the first thing they would say is, "Oh, we can't do that." Yes, you're right, maybe, but you might consider the art of future money and collaboration to create this additional value. Because if you're being the visionary - and this is absolutely your responsibility and duty to see a bigger future for those you're serving, both externally and internally - if you can quantify leveraging your finance department to understand potential collaboration that could create a bigger outcome, it's going to grow our business by x. Whenever it grows your business by x, you know your margin will likely improve. How much of that new future money would you share with the best person on the planet to help create that outcome? This is a budget we all have at our fingertips, but it's often not considered. Through the art of collaboration, you can begin to leverage and receive a big impact on your business and start working off future money budgets. There's a lot more to unpack, but at a very high level, I'm hoping entrepreneurs can easily see they're able to envision the future. They know that getting the right marketing partner could be low-hanging fruit. If you could get a partner to create x amount of leads, you know you could close them with your current staff by leveraging collaboration and future money. If I owned a digital marketing firm and someone said, "If you can create these leads, I'd be happy to split the new profit 50/50," I would almost guarantee that's a much better margin than any other digital marketing firm on the planet - because you're splitting the outcome and participating in the deal. Of course, that business owner probably didn't have the budget for the campaign or the acumen to hire the right digital marketing partner. Often, you're setting yourself up for failure. But by leveraging the art of future money and collaboration, you can put yourself in a place for success and make a lot more money.
Kathy (host):
Yep, Chad, this has been an absolutely fabulous conversation that we had. We there's a lot of stuff here to unpack to so we probably have to even have you on another episode later in the future. But if someone is listening to this and says, Okay, I understand the collaboration. I understand you know what should be done in in practicality, but what is the one next step that they can do in the next week or so to get them closer to that collaboration? What is something actionable that they can do capture those frictions for sure?
Chad (guest):
That would be the that'd be the very first thing that I would say, because it's so low-hanging fruit. And then I would have a conversation with those that I serve, and say in our engagement, or in what you do, whether it comes before me or after me, you'll be working together 10 years, or fill in the blank, whatever that's applicable to who you're talking to. Is there anywhere that you feel like you're having to to the sit-ups before you get the six-pack? It's an awesome little question of, whoa. Will they load you up with ideas? Those ideas you're not going to have the products or services available. Look to the left and to the right. Figure out who in your industry or your market is the best at providing those and pick up the phone and call them and say, have a crazy off-the-wall idea that you can do what you do, and I do what I do. We're gonna make some more money. And when they say, We don't know what the hell you're talking about, you're welcome to go to seedspark.com, and so. Mid-contact us, and I'll jump on a call and have a conversation with both of you, and just map out the collaboration opportunity for you that'll get you off and running. And perhaps that's something that you like to do. We obviously love to partner on outcomes as well, with growth-minded entrepreneurs only.
Kathy (host):
And that's another thing that I wanted to ask you, but you kind of alluded into this. Where can people find you? On the interwebs?
Chad (guest):
Oh, on the interwebs, on the World Wide Web. I like to say that because it shows that we're a little bit older. It's very funny the World Wide Web. So LinkedIn is very easy. We are quite active there, and a lot of the concepts that I create, you are able just to read back through those posts and begin to get your arms around it. But that's a good little place for resource material as well. Seedspark.com is where our growth partners are - the organization where I do my growth partnerships with, in collaboration, 100% based upon future money. That's another place you can go to and reference. You mentioned the book earlier, the current one, which is "Just Add Zero" - it's awesome. You can go to justadd zero.com to find it there. It talks a lot about collaboration. I mentioned, I think earlier, that I've been doing this since I was eight years old. It just took a lot of different forms across over 50 different organizations. Now I do it for other people, talking about and giving examples in that particular book. Then, upcoming in the first of October, I'll be launching "Friction Fuel" as a book, which will have a complete, systematic process and many examples. So there's a little bit on the horizon as well.
Kathy (host):
That's great. Thanks for letting us in on that little secret about the new book. We're going to have all of these in the episode show notes. So if you're interested, please go ahead and connect with Chad and buy his book. It's a really good book. Thanks so much, Chad.
Chad (guest):
Oh, it's been a pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.