The Follow-Up System Behind Million-Dollar Partnerships ft. Charles Byrd

Charles Byrd, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm excited to get to connect with you and dive a little bit deeper into what you do. One of the things I've been thinking about since we first met is you have an enormous network of people that you have connected and served and brought to events and spoken to. And how the heck do you keep track of all that? I don't necessarily mean the platform. I'm sure you use a tool, but like in your own brain, what have you had to learn about remembering details about people because you do a good job of the personal connection with people. And I can't imagine how to do that at the scale you do it.

Well, it's, yes, it is a combination of things. Number one, just when you're meeting people and connecting, being really present and being curious about them as humans and entrepreneurs and so forth. And while you're doing that, having a framework to follow up and keep details straight on. I was just at a few events. I spoke at Genius Network and then at an event called DealCon in Miami, and I had 12 follow-up calls booked from the event in Miami. And even today, I was Going through some of the folks I'd had really great conversations with, and tracking them in in ways that are relevant. Like one of them lived in Austin, so I'm in some of the the tools and systems I use tracking that is from Austin, and he happens to have a a bunch of companies, but one that teaches people how to paraglide, which my youngest daughter is. Dying to learn how to do. So capturing it in a way that we can follow up on that and maybe fly out and learn to paraglide. But point being, it's from an interesting conversation hanging out at an event, then having a way to capture some of those details from basic tools like Evernote to— I have kind of dynamic mind map tools. And then there's all kinds of AI tools today, like note takers and so forth, that can capture a lot of these things easier than ever before, where you can easily reference back with an AI tool that was running in the event with you, where you're like, hey, who was the guy I was talking to about paragliding? Or whatever, pick your topic. But Then that way it's it's a lot easier to to keep tabs, and like coming off an event like that, teeing up conversations at the events because the there's something I call the half-life to the warm and fuzzy. So if you meet someone and you build some great rapport, and then you both fly home and your life starts flooding back in with. calls and emails and kids and feeding the dog and all of those things, the warm and fuzzy drops by at least half every day. So you really want to move on developing those relationships very quickly because otherwise they'll just fade into the rearview and you'll bump into someone at another event 6 months later and be like, Oh, well, we didn't do anything. Well, that's because you didn't ensure that you move the conversation and relationship forward. That's actually another key thing is taking 100% responsibility for moving things forward. Whether or not that develops into business opportunities or speaking gigs or referrals or any other predefined winning outcome, But taking ownership of the follow-up process and ensuring you have a way as you connect with people to always be providing value first and those kinds of things.

I mean, it's clearly a well-baked system. It works for you at a scale that most people don't, most people just don't bump into, right? The number of events you host and go and speak at, you mentioned a couple of the tools there. Could you like— that didn't all start from zero, right? There had to have been moments and catalysts that really propelled you to make certain tweaks or changes. What are some of the standout moments in your journey of getting good at this that people might relate to?

Sure. So I'll start from how any of this kind of came to be, and then I'll highlight a couple moments in between. But for a brief backstory straight into today, Worked in Silicon Valley for 15 years, was a director at a billion-dollar software company, left to get a taste of the entrepreneurial freedom I read about in books. Started with a low-ticket productivity course as my first product, and being new to the online space, didn't yet have a list or connections. So started going to a lot of events and connecting with people online and quickly found my new peer group of entrepreneurs already had my ideal clients in their community. So started setting up presentations to other people people's audiences, delivering a high-value training and offering the deeper dive course. Started growing the list, making sales, making a positive impact. So I thought, since this is working, what if I take my IT and systems background to simplify and systematize the entire joint venture deal flow and referral process, which I did. And eventually people wondered how I book 2 to 6 joint venture promotions per week. For my offers to other people's communities. And I was at a mastermind in Aspen and my phone was blowing up with texts and Messenger messages, people knocking on the room door going, how do you line up so many of these deals? So decided to put together my first high-ticket event called Pure JV. And that's the market I've been serving ever since. That warm traffic system has evolved into a comprehensive deal flow system. That really leans into those warm traffic sources, like speaking to other people's audiences, referrals, embedded partnerships. It, it looks at the core offer and dials that to become an irresistible offer. So it converts better. It looks at your most profitable partners, communities, stages, referral partners, how to connect to those folks through warm channels. So there's no cold outreach. My favorite part, how to guide the conversations to land the deals frequently on the first call. Operationally, how to execute the deals along with turning each one into 2 or 3 more. It also dials in the high-ticket sales process as well with pitch decks, sales scripts, indoctrination sequences. Had 19 clients who've added $1.25 to $32 million in additional revenue. 4 clients on stage with Tony Robbins, including week before last, one that just got booked on Joe Rogan. So that evolved over, I mean, it's been 11 years since I started the company. And so if you look at that genesis, it was me showing up at an event with a product, but no clue how to market it. Certainly not paid ads. I didn't know content marketing. But what I did know was the guy sitting across the room had a list of 90,000 people, which to me at that time sounded like a made-up number. I'm like, how's that even possible? Of course, that's kind of normal in this realm. But I was like, why not just go make friends with the people who already have that audience? And so that was the second event I ever attended. That's how fast I realized relationship building. would be a key mechanism. And before that, I'd always had good relationships, but I wasn't trying to grow a network. So my point in saying that is that it's a learnable skill. It's not like something you have to wake up and be this crazy extrovert. In fact, one of the clients I bumped into at DealCon I worked with 3 years ago, And we were out on the town. He's like, Charles, I 100x'd my investment with you. And the next morning I was like, was that a figure of speech? Are you just saying you did well? He's like, no, I've made $4 million from what you taught me. In his case, he also launched a podcast. He's an introvert, and so he doesn't naturally run out and want to connect, but he's like, hey, if I have a podcast, Then I can interview people and it gives them a framework and format to relationship build. To reflect on another touchpoint, I was at an event many years ago and talking with a friend for a few hours. And he said something that kind of struck me in an interesting way. He said, hey, as this event winds down, if I ever come to mind, just ping me. And it seems so strange. I'm like, what if you are presenting on stage? Or what if you're at dinner with your kids? I'm just going to ping you whenever you pop into my head. And then I was like, screw it. Let's do that with anyone. If someone comes to mind, whatever reminded you of them is a good enough reason to reach out and ping them. Because you don't want to ping people when you need a favor. You want to build a relationship over time. And a very easy way to do that is literally if someone comes to mind, just send them a voice note or a little video. And I'll give you an example. One of my clients, Kane Minkus, who him and his wife, Alessia, took from $2 million a year to $22 million a year through partnerships and helped him and his wife get on Tony Robbins' stage. He's super into tech. So he's got like This Zoomzilla wall, like Tony Robbins, like screens and controllers and monitors everywhere. So being into cameras, I bought a new camera myself and I just sent him a video. I'm like, check out this new full-frame cool camera. And he replies back, cool camera. Hey, I'm doing a big promotion and joint venture with Kevin Harrington of Shark Tank and John Assaraf and these folks. Would you like to be part of it? Which of course I was thrilled to be invited, but I wasn't pinging him about that. I didn't know he was doing that. I was staying in touch as a friend. And then by doing that, you're just top of mind. So opportunities will just land in your lap. So triggers for that could be maybe you booked a flight to a city they live in, or you just talked to one of their clients or friends, or—

Yeah.

Maybe they like wine and you just found a great one and you want to share what it was. It doesn't matter what reminded you of them. That's enough of a reason to reach out and ping them to build and maintain that relationship.

That's such a great point. And it actually, one of the questions I was going to ask you earlier was around, you know, we're at a point in technology now where you can systematize a whole bunch of things. To your point, you can automate note-taking, reminders, you can ask your AI agent who the paragliding guy was. You can do all of those things, which to some people can make the connections you're making feel inauthentic because it feels like maybe you're over-systematizing human-to-human relationships. And yet at the same time, there really is, you could ping, like set up reminders to ping you about things. But what you're adding is, you know, if you actually are listening to these people and you're developing a real relationship, stuff's gonna remind you of them. It's just kind of inherent that, This guy was into photography, so I'm going to send him this cool camera. And this one likes skiing. And I'm like, here's my ski boots, you know? And it's just like small human touches don't even necessarily have to be engineered. The systems help, but the authentic nature of the connection is something you really can't automate. Am I hearing that right? There seems to be a balance point there.

Yeah, exactly. Because if you had zero system around it, a lot of relationships would just kind of get very quiet and wouldn't be there anymore. So I think leveraging technology and systems in a positive way to maintain very close connections is— it's way better. And in fact, I've taught people frameworks around business, but they also apply it to their family and end up with way better relationships with their kids and spouse by doing the same kinds of things. And that's proactively reaching out. In fact, I have a client that honestly doesn't love hanging out with people. He keeps to himself. And I taught him that simple thing about if someone comes to mind, ping them. And I jumped on a call with him and he's like, I pinged my sister and she was shocked. She hasn't heard. I haven't reached out to her in years, and then she gets this text from me and was like overwhelmed with joy to to hear from him. And so I'm sure they've had interactions; he's just not usually the one leading them. So it's it's just a different way of of thinking where you're prioritizing. other people. Now, in this framework, especially in a business context, you still have specific winning outcomes that are predefined that you are aligning toward, but it doesn't mean you can't be connecting and providing value to a whole range of people on the way, whether they align directly with one of your winning outcomes or not. It's It's around building strong relationships, providing value first, while guiding toward outcomes that are going to be a lot more fruitful for everyone involved.

That makes a lot of sense. One of the things we do as entrepreneurs, and I can tell, right, you've been running this business for 11 years, and you're able to speak very cleanly about the value that really matters, right? And even terminology like predefined winning outcomes, which is just a different way of thinking About the structure you're trying to create and the intention of a relationship with somebody. And it's a different way to verbalize it. And along the way, we learn how to tell the story in a condensed way, right? Which you're very good at doing. But along the way, in those 11 years, I've got to think that some of the ideas didn't make it, or they evolved, or they went from V1 to V7. I wonder if any fun ones to share of stuff that you've, through trial and error, learned are more error and really not the way to do this stuff?

Oh, of course, there's a mountain of those. But to— here's like an obvious one. Like when I started booking different speaking gigs and was new to how that worked. And so here's one key takeaway, handing out your contact info is pointless because you have zero control over when and if someone will use it. So getting their contact info is key. Like even one of those first speaking gigs, I printed out all these color things with my contact info, gave them out to 150 people. Zero phone calls versus getting other people's contact info. And again, this was 11 years ago, very different situation now. But basically, as you meet people that align well and you'd love to continue the conversation, I have a framework for meeting people where, for one, you would Determine there's alignment. Want to share contact info? You can just do the name drop where you touch the phones together. I've renamed that to be the Byrd bump. You do the Byrd bump with people, then you take a screenshot of that because just because your contact is added to my phone, I would have to remember your name to even look it up. Where if you're meeting a handful of people at an event, so By taking the screenshot, you've got that right in your phone record for in your photos, and then you text them immediately. And I would text something like, great meeting you at Genius Network. Would love to continue the conversation. Up for jumping on a call? If so, feel free to share your booking link, or here is mine, which is a little bit to type out. So I use an app called Boards. B-O-A-R-D-S. You can download it from either of the app stores and have that as a pre-made shortcut that you just launch from a keyboard. So you meet someone, you do that. I touch a button, type your name in the top with, and that message is filled out and text you. And then best hack of all, book a call. So It's not always easy because if you're like in a break at an event and there's, you know, 10 people around you having conversations, doing what I just said about the Byrd bump and then like, hey, Eric, how is next Tuesday at 9:00 AM? And literally booking it right then because the magic of that is now no follow-ups even needed. You're not pinging them the next day or when you guys fly home and trying to nudge those forward because they are already booked. I just had a sales call yesterday from someone I was sitting next to at DealCon, and on a break, we had a great conversation, determined there was good alignment, and yesterday walked him through my deal flow framework.

Yeah.

Versus me sitting here texting them, hey, would you like to jump on a call? Now, typically I wouldn't be booking straight into a sales call. That just was appropriate for the conversation we already had. Typically it would just be a get-to-know-you and continue the conversation kind of call. But point being, without a system, most people might have these good or interesting conversations that literally lead to nothing. Because they don't have a framework to ensure they're moving forward with people where there's true alignment around it. So that took a lot of years to learn, like from, of course, getting their contact info and then refining everything that I've just laid out. Each of those things were refinements. How you would go about that exchange, as simple as it is, how you would follow up in a way to actually get the call, sitting there typing all of those out versus touching one button and it all spits out. So it's continuous improvement, constant iteration, whole Kaizen approach to improving. And that continues, that will never end. It's optimizing Like from when I came into the space with a systems and IT background, I saw so many inefficiencies, how people go about these things. And so I've systematized them and iterated and iterated. And so you just end up with a very tight process that you can shortcut years off of how people would go about it and get them way better results a lot faster.

That's a great example. You know, and as you're talking through each one of those steps, what was flashing through my mind were all of the events I've gone to where those points of friction are what led to nothing happening. And the number of people that go to a conference or a speaking event or a networking event or even a coffee meeting, and one of those points of friction, you know, handing out your contact information instead of procuring theirs, Waiting for them to take ownership of it, having too many text messages to type out, or heck, the one you mentioned that got me the most is the taking a screenshot of who the heck they are. Because I've gone to events lately and tried to be a lot more intentional about contact information capture. And then at the end of the night, I can't even remember that individual, what letter it started with, and I have too many contacts in my phone.

Right? Yeah, I'll add one more piece too. So As you connect with people, they could have a whole range of contexts. And so maybe you meet with a realtor woman and then you meet with a guy with this business and that, and a guy who you would have a great intro to one of your clients. And so let's say you do get their contact info. But now you've got this basically random mishmash of people, and it's very easy to forget the context. By the way, when you do get their contact info, also get a selfie with them so you can remember what they look like, and that helps a ton. But I've also learned that you want to group the types of follow-ups. So whether that's a piece of paper or Apple Notes or Evernote or Asana or something like that. I group the follow-up types, intros for other people, potential client prospects, joint venture prospects, referral partners, speaking opportunities, and other, like maybe they've got some cool AI tool you want to check out or Whatever the other thing would be. But point being, then when you are going back through what are these follow-ups, you're like, hey, let's jump in with the client leads first. Let's knock out 5 intros for our friends or peers that would be helpful to either party. And so now it is no longer a random mishmash, but very organized and sequential. So you can put your time on the sequencing, the follow-ups based on their value and have a framework for it.

So these are a lot of things somebody can do to be better at building relationships. But then the point of building the relationships that you're most interested in connecting have to do with this joint venture concept. The idea that there's an audience I might have that really needs what you have or vice versa, or maybe not even between the two of us. Maybe we're just excellent at connecting somebody where we can see that that person's audience would be perfect for Charles or something along those lines. And this way of doing business is not new. It's just something that you've really put into a process that's repeatable to find those opportunities for joint ventures, the mutually beneficial outcomes. What are some of the lessons you've learned about human psychology that underlie this possibility that I don't have to necessarily go direct sell? I could be more interested in finding mutually beneficial partnerships instead. What does that say about us as people, as business owners, entrepreneurs, that maybe is not obvious?

Yeah. So people have, in most cases, heard of this, but there's different things that hold them back from doing it. They may not understand how deals are structured. They may feel that If you promote or refer me, I'm morally obligated to prefer or promote you. I call that the reciprocation trap. Or maybe you're way bigger on the scene than I am. And I'm like, well, I need to get a lot more traction before I'd ever talk to you about things we could do together. A lot of these are just stories we tell ourselves that that aren't true or thinking that you need to reach out to a bunch of people you don't know when really it's the opposite. We want to work from warm. We want to work from our warm network and relationships. And so simply having frameworks like that makes this a very repeatable thing to do. And the benefits of it are—

Yeah.

Manyfold. But number one, if your primary lead source today is paid traffic, it can be an Achilles heel. Well, it's when and if it's working well, that's great. But any algorithm change can topple that instantly. And so this gives us a way to diversify leads. In fact, the sales call I had yesterday, million company highly dependent on ads, and it freaks them out because that could— one ad that goes wrong or an ad account or a hack or whatever could completely derail all the traffic. Diversifying leads is a key benefit of this. Also, warm traffic Converts 2 to 3 times better than paid to begin with. And if you have high-ticket products or services or things in the financial realm, it's upwards of a 20x conversion. It's like the difference between scrolling through and seeing something about a financial advisor, an ad in Facebook versus one of your top clients making millions a year going, this is my guy. You've got to talk to him. He can save you a ton of money. That's an enormous difference in transference of trust and authority that inherently happens with this process. And we can ramp that up even further in how people position you during those intros to further get them down that trust path and enable the opportunity to serve and support them with your core offer.

Well, I heard a couple different things there. One is One piece of underlying psychology is we'd always rather work with somebody who's my friend's guy. If my buddy says, this is the guy, and I've heard tale of this individual for years, obviously, when I have that need, that's the person I would prefer to work with. And I think that's never not going to be true. To your point about a change in algorithm or legal, what you can do with your newsletters or variables you can't control is a real risk to a business. But what will never change is the underlying psychology of I'd prefer to work with somebody that somebody I know already trusts. And that's really what you're trying to drive towards most with these mutually beneficial outcomes, it sounds like.

Exactly. And it's that, that same approach not only works way better when attracting clients, but it leads to partnerships, it leads to stages or other opportunities as a Example, a friend of mine at an industry event kind of drug me and another gentleman across the room to meet each other. We did the whole process I described, sharing contact info. And all I knew is he ran a big company and he had something to do with booking the speakers at Roland Frasier and Ryan Deiss's War Room Mastermind that was around for for a long time. And so in that follow-up process, I was eager to get to know him and also to tee up speaking at War Room. And I have a process for guiding conversations to lead directly to winning outcomes. So coming off of that call, he was like, you should speak at the final War Room. And since he's tight with Roland and Ryan, One intro there and I had a follow-up call with their team and I was booked to speak at the final war room. If I would've pinged Roland or Ryan or Deanna to be like, I would like to speak at your final war room, there's zero chance I would've gotten booked for that. So that transference of trust and authority not only works for client acquisition and getting a warm connection to build a new relationship. The same is true around joint venture partnerships, speaking opportunities, adding referral partners. And that one connection, Steve turned into a client. He's built a $100 million company all through joint ventures and relationship building. He has a new book coming out about that. And then their network becomes your network and vice versa. That's how I met Russell Brunson, was invited to a private party with Steve. And then Russell and I became connected. So when Dr. Cialdini, who wrote the book Influence, became a client and wanted to meet Russell through my warm network and the fact I'd met him before, got a call with the 3 of us going a couple of times. And Steve's flying to my upcoming Flow event in Cancun. to be a featured guest where we talk about building a 9-figure company all through relationships and partnerships. So it's these little things, someone taking a moment, like at events, I call that having wingmen and wingwomen that we're looking out for them and they're looking out for you, where my friend Kat Merritt took a minute to introduce me to Steve and That 60 seconds she took by connecting the dots for both of us has built an amazing friendship. And we've done huge deals together. And now he's coming to my event. And it's just led to a very long, fruitful relationship for both of us because of her kindness and connecting. So we can do that consciously for and with others as well.

Well, and it's such a powerful type of story, but an underlying piece that might be missed is the word mutual is in there, right? You're articulating right now the connection Kat made for you. Obviously, there's an underlying backstory of things you've done to help Kat, right? Then you may, like, without leaning into the reciprocity trap, there's an element of we're doing this mutually and we're seeking opportunities to serve others. out of a bigger picture belief that that's going to come back to us, not necessarily tit for tat from that person. But in general, if I do this, and I provide all of this value for people, good doors will be opened up for me and connections will be made and businesses will be grown. How does somebody maintain that mentality? Because it's easy to think that, right? And in a vacuum, someone can sit there and tell themselves, you know, I want to give and I want to do all these things. But when rubber meets the road, And you got to put food on the table and like daily stress. Like, how do you help somebody maintain the give attitude that's required for truly mutually beneficial outcomes?

Yeah, excellent question. So basically, and you're right, I had helped Kat with different things before that. And she had helped me like, we were at an event and she was coaching me on my sales process. She sat there like, well over an hour. And she was just happy to support someone who would actually listen and implement. And so, like, from kind of a mentor perspective, that's very satisfying when you give someone advice, they take it, and then you watch them flourish with it. That brings you a lot closer together. And that mentality, there's a lot of givers out there, people that are well-intentioned with wanting to connect, but without a framework for how to do that well, they're in a position where they're like, I tee up all these intros, I do these things, and for some reason it's really quiet coming the other way. It's how, it's how that interaction's guided to be mutually beneficial. And you're right, it's not Tip for tat is no game I want to be part of, but you also do pay attention. Who are you investing time in where it is coming back? And then put more time and effort into those relationships and the ones where it feels like a one-way street. It's either reframing how that process is done so it is mutually beneficial, or you stop putting your time and effort into people that aren't wired the way you are. And it's actually pretty easy when you have a framework to look out for others because it's a simple way to provide value first in an interaction. So as an example, I was chatting with someone today who was a referral, and that person has a membership model. And so I recommended someone who's best in class at membership strategy and this and that. I'm really doing both of them a favor by guiding someone to someone who can help them specifically solve or improve something they're doing. And in doing so, by providing value first, by default in an interaction, good things come on the other end of that, especially when you know what your winning outcomes are and you have a framework to guide a call straight into one or more of them. I call it the triple win conversation flow, and it's a specific framework to always provide value first while feeling out where there could be benefit to both parties based on your predefined winning outcomes, such as maybe, and we're not assuming anything, we feel it out. Maybe they're a client prospect. Maybe their clients could be perfect for what you do. Maybe they have a group or community Or podcasts that could be a good fit. And so by having predefined winning outcomes like that in the interaction, you are able to list out which of those exist in this interaction, what are things that would be most valuable for them to provide upfront, and then guide the call into one or more winning outcomes right in the first conversation.

So many of the times when we're talking about winning outcomes as business owners, or revenue generators, we think of it in terms of dollars, which is obviously a desirable winning outcome, but it's also not the only category of winning outcomes that can be created, right? And maybe a speaking engagement is another example, whether there's dollars attached to it or not. Maybe a podcast or something along the lines that allows you to get broadcast out to a larger audience or something. What are some other types of winning outcomes that people could diversify their thinking with away from closing a deal and into something Yeah, great question.

So, at the event I was at in Miami last week, there was a very high-level entrepreneur, owns multiple businesses that I've had deep conversations with like a year and a half ago. And we met up at the event and enjoyed talking 2 nights in a row. And then we jumped on a call yesterday. And the winning outcome there, which he's been in my sales process before, but for what he's doing right now, that's not necessary in the short term. And the winning outcome was, hey, we're both high-level peers who have complementary skill sets and perspectives where Basically, I'm teeing up some opportunities for him and helping him strategically think through a few things, and he's doing the same for me. Like he has more of an M&A background and has has been in that world a while, where I have a partnership and relationship background, and I am expanding into. Acquisitions and so forth. So basically, we're just 2 friends who are supporting and advising each other. And so no money's changing hands, but a ton of value is because we are friends and we're peers and we're looking out for each other. In fact, we're going to set up a separate call with him, me, and my business partner for him to provide perspectives on ways we can start leaning into acquisitions as a growth strategy. We're not paying him, but I'm helping him with some other things and he's not paying me. So that's yet another winning outcome is just a great industry friend or peer that becomes a sounding board and resource. And inevitably down the line, we're going to do business together where there's money exchange, but there's no hurry in that and no need at this particular time. So why not have a great friendship and conversation and support each other? And that can carry forward for decades.

You know, as I've experienced some things like that in my career, where there is this mutual friend conversation, right? It's like the This isn't a specific example, but it's the buddy who's a lawyer who you can call and ask a question. And in 5 minutes, you can get all the things you would have had to pay 3 hours for your lawyer to tell you through just because they're your friend. You're not taking advantage of it. They're your homie.

Exactly.

Relationships like that. And the ones that seem to work, I've thought of through this lens of like, that's another person with an abundance mentality. That's like one of the, I think, underlying things a person, a characteristic of an individual who would lean into this type of attitude is that they They believe the world is a big abundant place where we can go win together and no one's trying to take advantage here. Are there other maybe psychological characteristics or identifiers that make for a better partner? Again, it's not tit for tat. We're not keeping score, but you made the comment, we're only going to invest in the ones where there is some fruit growing on the tree that we're watering. What are some of the other— Abundance mentality, other characteristics that might help someone identify whether or not That's a person they want to play in the sandbox with in this mutually beneficial game.

Yeah, it's several lenses to view this through, but alignment between markets or products or services where there can be natural handoffs, and then kind of just judging behavior. Can you tell that they have your best interest at heart, especially when you've demonstrated upfront that You have their best interest at heart, and just kind of feel into that. In fact, even from a partnership standpoint or promotional partnership, I'm a fan of creating embedded partners where your product, service, or messaging is inside of other people's offers. But before you would, you know, run out and get married or book a hotel, you would go on some dates. So you could set up a one-off kind of promotion situation where you get to see how they work and think and alignment in just even energetically, do you like working with them? And just kind of gauging the people in sort of a partnership context that are very transactional or numbers-driven, which certainly does happen. But just kind of gauging, is this someone I would like to interact with and do business with? Are they like, I'll send you this many clicks for your email thing if you send me that many? And I have zero interest in that kind of thing. It's more about alignment in service of a a client and to make sure they're better taken care of. And the money follows. The money's not the driver. So ensuring these things actually fit like a hand in glove or there's seamless warm handoff between products or services, that's where the magic happens and businesses flourish with that. Without being, again, numbers or greed-driven, as it were?

That's a good couple pointers there. You gotta like the person. There's just no skipping past that part. You probably won't do business for long with somebody who you genuinely just for whatever reason rub against the wrong way over time. You probably should date before you get married. I've always thought of that as like staying in orbit with certain people. Like, I don't exactly know how and when this is going to happen, but let's keep bumping into each other periodically on purpose. And I suspect we'll hone in on one if there's one to be honed in on. But that last one's really, really interesting. It can't just be valuable for you two. True economic value is created when the end user, the person paying for your program or their program or whomever your customers are, true economic value is created when they get more and are paying some value, something less than the overall value they're getting. The end user has to experience a 10x gain to pay 5x more or whatever the right math is in there somewhere. And if you can't create that together, if there isn't a certain synergy to serve the end user better, there's then there's really not a lot of value you're going to end up being able to create together. Like that's where it all comes down to. You have to serve that audience more.

Yeah, exactly. So an example just from today, I onboarded a new client who does bookkeeping and fractional CFO and accounts receivable, all of that. And I'm pairing him up with the other gentleman I referred to who also has a bookkeeping company, but they also have a lot higher-end advisory and projections and They go deeper. So I'm pairing those 2 up for my new client to ascend his best clients into this higher tier of service where he's helping those folks go a lot further because he's a conduit to connect them to the next level of what they, they need while further monetizing his own client base because he'll get a commission on any of those Ascended Sales. So it's, it's fully engineered in service of his own client. Yet, he will benefit more from it as well, just by nature of now getting 10 or 20% of some other high-ticket offer that he would have not had at all. So when they're engineered like that, everyone, truly everyone wins.

And is that the third party in the triple win? Is you, me, and our customers, is that the third win?

That is absolutely one of the lenses to view it through. The other way to think about the triple win is from any particular conversation, you can line up more than one winning outcome. Like I met with like the JV manager for ClickFunnels and the first winning outcome was we set up a separate call just to share high-level connections. Could have hung up and felt great and moved on with my day, but I continued and got booked on the ClickFunnels podcast to talk all about partnerships. Could have hung up and felt great, but I also proceeded to book a sales call all in the same call. So it is you win, they win, and so does the client or audience. But it's also when you have a framework. You can tee up one or more deals or winning outcomes in the same conversation. So it's a far more condensed way to move the needle.

I love all of this. With our last couple minutes, I want to shift gears a little bit because you've been doing this for a while now and you've built a team along the way and you've really built something that's truly scalable and impactful in a bunch of different dimensions, digitally, in-person events, speaking, like across multiple areas. You don't do that alone. And we live in this really cool time where we can supercharge the people that work with us and for us with AI. And so I wonder if you'd share, what are some of the current and/or near horizon applications of emerging technologies that you're excited about or implementing or arming your team with?

Yeah, so I'm a big fan of technology coming out of the Silicon Valley and So we've been leveraging AI in a whole range of ways. In fact, all the workflow as we work with one-on-one clients, we're incorporating AI through the process to deliver even more to them at even higher quality, yet even easier for our team. So We used to do 8 one-on-one calls with clients, which we actually still do, but the format of it's a little different where it's a lot of deep intake upfront and then we're actively building assets for them, like strengthening their offer, giving them a complete solid pitch deck for their high-ticket offer and the sales script to go with it. They're, they're getting tangible assets from the work that then we're helping them put in production to where they're actually using them and getting the result from them versus like, you know, here's how you should go about doing this. Now they're just handed those assets.

Different.

And even down to ultra basic stuff like looking people up in perplexity before a call. So you always have context, which my team is putting in my notes as I go meeting to meeting to meeting. They're like, you met them here, here's the overview of all they do. So you're not trying to figure that out when you're chatting with someone or trying to go look everyone up on LinkedIn or something. So simple things like that all the way to very advanced deeper buildouts, not to mention building like intro trackers and frameworks with some level of automation in the follow-up, but maintaining that human touch. So that's a whole deep rabbit hole in and of itself, but also just encouraging the team to play with new things and tools. And so that everyone is working to almost replace their daily function with automations and then go find the next ones. And so we're always iterating and refining.

That last one is what I want to pick up on. All the ones you said are incredible value-add, right? The ability to not only help someone architect the sales process and offer and everything there, but to hand them The pitch deck or whatever, which is a traditional friction point for those of us who don't want to go build those things, but know we need them down to the scripting and all of that automation for your people. Sure, but somewhere along the way, there's a leadership element required to help your team members recognize that what we're handing you, what we're trying to hand, what we're trying to arm you with is not your replacement, but your your keys to a kingdom, your ability to go and apply yourself in even more unique and interesting ways. How have you navigated that? How, and you and maybe other clients you've worked with this on as we're trying to paint this rosy picture of what AI can do. And yet the vast majority of people also look at it and go, yeah, but is it going to take my job? Like, how do you make sure you maintain that internally?

Yeah. So I hired a few new people recently and we're about to hire a chief operating officer. Like, as just an example from last week, I had several speaking gigs and wanted to rebrand my slide deck to fit the new brand. And one of my team was like, oh cool, I'll jump in and do this. And I had a flight to catch and there was some hard deadlines around it. I ended up rebranding it because I couldn't do it while I'm on a plane and move huge files around and stuff. But when I got back, I was showing her that we could use Claude Cowork, upload the branded template, and then upload the core deck, and it would have done that for her. And so she hadn't played with that. I mean, you'll find a lot of people, including my kids, they'll, oh, we use ChatGPT, we use ChatGPT. Well, guess what? ChatGPT is the last tool I use because there's better ones. And if people aren't playing with them and rolling up their sleeves and using them, we're doing the same thing in 2 tools. I go, which one actually did this better. So knowing the right tool to use, not being afraid of playing with the tools and pushing the limit of them. Like, you probably wouldn't think you could upload several different decks and images and brands and have it spit something out that would be usable. So I guess just having the playroom and confidence to do it. And I wouldn't say we've formally implemented this, but the idea of here's a budget to go play with random stuff and just tell us how it goes. In fact, one of my— I actually sort of learned this from the client I met last week in Miami that 100x'd with my process. He literally gives his team budget to go experiment with things and the ones that keep coming back with innovations that make their workflow better, he gives them more and more money to keep doing that. So they're rewarded for experimenting and being playful. I mean, you could kind of think of it like R&D at a big company where that— so you could add in like, you should Take XYZ training every quarter or every month or whatever the timing and cover it for them and show them this empowers them to do more things, creative things, to make their own job easier. Ultimately, we just want an outcome. We don't care how fast they figured it out. We just want the output that we need. So, um, I'd say that's a journey, not, it's not a duck to water to everybody. Some of us love tech, other people don't, but just creating a nurturing environment that encourages that.

I had a guest on, it was maybe a month or so ago now, and he's a C-suite leader of a SaaS payment platform company out of Gujarat, India. And we were having a number of different conversations, but primarily oriented around leadership and AI. And his primary comment was, if we don't align the incentives for the people who work for us to lean into these tools, then you get a lot of compliance without commitment. And what you're talking about is, hey, look, here's a budget for it. And if you knock it out of the park, I would love to give you more money to figure out more cool things that you could do to make your life easier, our customers happier, whatever it might be. That's a really smart way to think about aligning incentives and helping somebody feel safe while kind of gamifying the participation in this, what could we do with this cool magic wand that none of us quite know how to use yet? And it sure seems like the best solutions, best applications of AI right now are coming out of from the ground up. There's a lot of us that are trying to build companies to insert enterprise-level tools or something on the top down, but Handing the people who live in it every single day the keys to a bounded kingdom that says, go play with something for $300 this month and see what you come back with, and best one we're going to double down on. That's a cool, fun way to keep your team engaged on it. That's a really neat idea.

Yeah. So worth experimenting with and see how it goes. But yeah, these are things we're either actively doing or starting to do. And it's a brave new world. We'll have to figure it out.

Well, we'll have to have you come back on another time and tell us how that goes for you and your team and what tools you've unlocked. I know we're running out here. If somebody wants to connect with you, Charles, what's the best way for them to do that? We'll put it in the show notes too, but what's the best way for someone to make a connection with you?

Sure. So if you head to charlesbyrd.com, B-Y-R-D, you can read a little more about what we're up to. There's a contact form there. You're welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn at, again, Charles Byrd, B-Y-R-D. And we also run mastermind and events, and that site is flow.charlesbyrd.com. We do 3 high-end mastermind events per year in different parts of the world and bring together amazing group of givers who have incredible networks and help put deals like we're talking about together.

We'll make sure and put all those links in the show notes. Charles, thanks for taking some time with us, and see you next week, everybody.