The Secrets to Successful Joint Ventures: A Conversation with Charles Byrd. Episode 710 #podcast

I quickly found my new peer group of entrepreneurs already had my ideal clients in their communities. So started setting up presentations to other people's audiences.

I think showing up in an authentic, ethical way, word gets around so quick. And I won't say any names where I said, hey, yeah, we did a partnership with so-and-so or whatever. And they go, oh, you got burned too.

I was brand new. I had no list, no connections. And realizing that very quickly meant I had no one to offer the course to.

You know, you can't come in and say, yeah, we've got an 80, 90, 200,000 person list when only 6,000 of those are active? Like, people catch onto that. I do wanna follow up question though.

Simply asking that question and, and people are happy to answer it. So it, it works well.

And I was like, I said something stupid, Charles. I said something like—

Welcome to ClickFunnels Radio, the podcast that brings you the latest strategies, insights, and success stories from online marketers just like you who utilize funnels to grow their business. Our mission is simple, to help You unleash the true potential of your online business by harnessing the power of funnels. Join us every week as we bring you exclusive interviews and thought-provoking discussions that will revolutionize the way you approach online marketing. Here are your hosts, Chris Cameron and Ben Harris.

All right, everybody, welcome back to ClickFunnels Radio. We're here for episode 710 of these bad boys, been recorded for you, the people, and we're here with this super special guest who is somebody that is extremely well connected. And to be frank, the guy's a human lead magnet. But before we get into that, let's go ahead and introduce co-host Chris Cameron. Chris, what's up, man?

What's up guys? So excited to be here. I'm excited for this guest too. This is going to be a riot because it's something that like all 3 of us share and have done professionally, like for a long time. This is going to be fun to get into.

Heck yeah. And from getting the title, maybe we could have made that up actually. Never told him that to his face, maybe behind his back of being the human lead magnet, someone is an expert with affiliate marketing, joint venture partnerships, is a business owner, speaker, author, consultant, all of the above. The guy does it all. Let's welcome Charles Byrd. Charles, how are you, man?

Doing very well. Thanks for having me.

Of course. Of course. We're honored to frankly soak up some knowledge and selfishly maybe learn a few things here. It's kind of, you know, the world that we all play in of, you know, joint ventures and affiliate marketing, maybe joint ventures. I won't go into affiliates, but Partnerships and joint ventures. For those of, for those of us that, you know, the listeners that we have right now, would you mind kicking off and describing, well, how would you define joint ventures?

Yeah. So back in my corporate days, I thought it was 2 mammoth companies getting married and putting together some crazy new project or program. But in the context of the internet marketing world, we're really talking about promotional partnerships for the most part. And you can really think of this as a transference of trust and authority where someone's built an audience, a community, a client base, and they're transferring that to you inherently, bringing you in to share value and content and programs with, with their audience. So they're promotional in nature, although they can run deep as well. Some are just kind of one-off types of promotions, and it's the classic situation where someone has a big audience. I'll use an example I've used for a while. Brian Tracy, list of around 500,000, brings you in as an expert to provide value to his community on a topic that is highly aligned with why people follow him to begin with. And then like if they're mailing into a webinar, for example, everyone that registers for that is added to your email list, deliver a high-value training, and of the sales that come in, that's shared with the partner because it's their audience, your product or program, or obviously vice versa. But that's, uh, that would be a common type of example. You can also chat about different types of JVs. There's 4 main ones that Uh, we're typically helping folks put in place, but yeah, that's, that's—

I'd love to get into those 4 examples, but heck yeah. I feel like, you know, transactionally it's hard, right? Okay. Because when you do JVs, you are a relationship person. Okay. But a lot of times those relationships at some point have to become transactional. It's just like if you're dating somebody, it's, or you met somebody and you have interest, you're like, okay, I like you kind of, but I wanna see where this goes. Maybe we start with lunch. And I think a lot of times that's where entrepreneurs, if they don't have a big list, but they have maybe some authority, that might be one way that they can start building their list. Honestly, that's how Russell and, and we and the team like built up ClickFunnels was a lot of JV stuff at first. So, I mean, would you say that this is a good place to start to grow your businesses by having some JVs, or do you think that that's something that should come later?

It can come at, at any point. So if, if we're, if I reflect back on my, own journey coming out of corporate and creating my first product, which was a low-ticket productivity course, I was brand new. I had no list, no connections, and realizing that very quickly meant I had no one to offer the course to, I 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 communities. So started setting up presentations to other people's audiences, delivering a high-value training and offering the Deeper Dive course and started growing the list quickly, making sales, making a positive impact. So that's when I was like, well, since this is working, what if I apply my IT and systems background from my corporate days to simplify and systematize the joint venture process, which I did, which ramped up to doing 2 to 6 joint ventures per week for my offers to other people's communities. So That, that was from day one, like the beginning. And, and I think, um, not that I was amazing at it day one, but point being, the strategy worked from day one. And so if someone has a new product or program, it's, it's the easiest, lowest risk way to get it up and going because the alternative is running traffic or doing content marketing. Content marketing's a long play, can take over a year to get like deep traction there. Paid ads, you either need to learn how to do them, which is not easy, or you need to pay an agency to do it. And that's— it's easy to run out of money pretty quick, where joint ventures are a risk-free lead source where you're only paying commission on actual sales made. So it is a wonderful place to get up and going. And you're diversifying leads across partners. If you've got 5, 10, 15 partners, you're not dependent on a single lead source to begin with, which, uh, puts you in a better position and lower risk.

Um, I mean, I know you have to trust people to do this, right? But a lot of times that's flying all over the country. And I know you do that because it seems like anywhere that, you know, Ben and I land, I'll say, oh, look, it's Charles, you know? Whether it was Salt Lake City, whether it was a Grant Cardone thing, whether it was a Vegas, like, you know, that's how we got a relationship. But does it always have to be that way? Or sometimes are you transacting just by, you know, getting on and having a meeting? Because I know from experience, sometimes these deals go bad. Like, is there one thing that gets your spidey sense going? You're like, oh wait, back up. Don't do that deal. Because that's always scary, right? I mean, sometimes it's low risk, sometimes it's not, but is there anything that's like, Gosh, you've got to meet them in person. And if it's this, don't do the deal. Do you have any insight on that?

Sure. So you can 100% do this remotely without getting on planes like all 3 of us do regularly. I mean, the truth is there is no better way to build relationships than in person, but I have kinds of friends and partners and clients I've never met in person. Uh, you can absolutely do this through Zoom. Um, you can build relationships through groups and communities, whether anything from Facebook to LinkedIn or any type of mastermind group or training community around a topic. And so on to the spidey sense side of things. For one, just getting on a call and getting a feel for the person. Do they seem aligned with you? Do they, do they, um, does their product or service Is there a complement between what you're doing? Because one of the fastest ways to have a JV fail is set it up because you are so excited, but there's not actual audience alignment. There has to be for it to be worth anybody's time. But in general, if you're interacting with someone and you feel like this would be someone I would enjoy hanging out with or going to dinner with or whatever, versus someone you—

Yeah.

kind of instantly feel a little repelled by because maybe they're a little too slick and shiny, trust your instinct because it's, it's right.

Yeah, it's a great point. And, you know, if you don't mind me asking, what got you interested into this world? You know, like, dive into your background a little bit. You said you had an extensive corporate background and then going into— you said your first product was productivity, you know, What led you to the internet?

Oh, great. So, uh, for a brief backstory straight into today, and I'll, I'll touch on that initial product too and, and where that's led. I worked in Silicon Valley for 15 years. I was a director at a billion-dollar software company. I left to get a taste of the entrepreneurial freedom I read about in books. Uh, started with that low-ticket productivity course, again, new to the online space. Started going to a lot of events, teeing up relationships. Like even from the very first event I went to, which was all a new world, you know, and the guy sitting across from me has an email list of 90,000 and this person puts these curated events together and it was just mind-blowing. And I'm like, well, why don't I go make friends with the guy who's got a list of 90,000? Like, and then as I started getting traction with joint ventures early on and then did apply my IT and systems background to simplify and systematize it. I started just ramping up a higher volume of them, 2 to 6 a week, to where other people were noticing that. And I was at a mastermind in Aspen and my phone's 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 I decided to put together my first high-ticket event called Pure JV, which coincidentally, those were, those were piggybacked on the front of T&C. So it, uh, it just brought everyone together and ended up having a lot of, uh, speakers at T&C coming through and, and just, uh, it was, it was, and we did one in front of Funnel Hacking Live, uh, in, in Orlando, which was awesome. Um, in any case, what, what we walk folks through in that, which these are principles that I think everyone here can benefit from understanding how they go together, but, um, for number one, creating a unique joint venture strategy, uh, identifying your most profitable partners, communities, stages, uh, learning how to connect to those partners through warm channels so you're not needing to do cold outreach. How to guide the conversations to land the deals frequently on the first call, operationally how to execute those deals, and then how to turn each one into 2 or 3 more. So you have a repeatable framework. A lot of people that are even doing JVs, they're— they can be a little haphazard where they're, they're duct taped together and they're getting swipe copy and affiliate links out like the day before a promo.

Yeah.

And all that does is create stress and failure points where if you have a systematic framework, you can be ahead of the curve, you can ensure quality because you're following a standardized process that's custom for your own company. And of course, you build this over time. You can get your first ones going without a lot of overhead, just a tool like Zoom and some basic mailings. And every time you do one, you just get a little more advanced and a little more advanced. So you can start very simply, and then you can keep iterating. And just in the process of doing this with my, my own friends and clients, I've had 10 clients in the first year add $1.25 to $6 million in additional revenue.

That's awesome.

4 clients— it's, it's wild— 4 clients on stage with Tony Robbins in the last 2 months, one that just got booked on Joe Rogan had the absolute pleasure to introduce Russell to my client, Dr. Cialdini, week before last. That was a, that was a freaking fun call to be part of.

That's awesome.

Um, and again, that this is now, and there's no up, there's no top end to what you can do with JVs. And it does work from day one as well. So it's, it's relevant to anyone listening.

Well, and what I've noticed too, and, and to build on that, as you said, hey, how do you turn these into more? I think showing up in an authentic, ethical way. Word gets around so quick of like, I've literally been on calls and I won't say any names where I said, hey, yeah, we did a partnership with so-and-so or whatever. And they go, oh, you got burned too.

And you're like, whoa.

Yeah.

How did you know? And they're like, well, we did it. So, you know, your reputation is everything. Like word gets around, but if you go And do one and show up the way that you promised with the audience. You know, you can't come in and say, yeah, we've got an 80, 90, 200,000 person list when only 6,000 of those are active. Like people catch onto that. But if you nail one, that oftentimes will bring 3, 5, 10 more deals just because they, they say, have you talked to Charles? Well, yeah, you should talk to Charles because this industry is pretty small. And so, I mean, it's very important to have a reputation. Like, do you have an example of a time where You went and did one and then just from not even asking, that turned into more?

Well, in my process there is asking, so it more, more often than not does turn into more. But, but you're right, like, um, just simple things. Like let's say you were promoting a bigger launch, like it could be a ClickFunnels product or, or Jeff Walker or whoever, um, even just showing up on a a leaderboard, uh, people start pinging you. Um, plus, if you're paying attention, you'd also be looking at who's showing up on a leaderboard because clearly they can, uh, make some things happen. So there's definitely that. And, and if people happen to be on your list or, or the partner list and they get mailed to one of your promos, I've, I've done I, I did a promo a while back with, uh, David Gonzalez, and someone saw that and they pinged me and wanted to do a promo. And then they also ended up becoming a client. So it does just spin up, like, as you get traction, as you get results, reputation, uh, goes with it. And then not to mention, when you add a system for Asking for connections to their best partners, rebooking with them, going deeper. Like, do an initial promo and see how it goes. And if it goes really well, have a chat about creating an embedded partnership where you're creating a single deal that represents ongoing lead flow. It's like the gift that keeps on giving, which I know you guys do with ClickFunnels where you've got an expert teaching how to create a program or a course. And within that training, they're like, and here's your link to ClickFunnels to host this and run the landing pages and opt-ins. So it's a tool that serves that student while it's feeding you new subscribers and people you can serve through ClickFunnels and the community.

Yeah, it's genius. We talk about that in the Linchpin a lot is this continuity. And people think, oh, I've gotta have, gosh, you know, my own product that's a software company or something. But what you're talking about now is you embed that or integrate it into your course, and now you have some continuity where you're not chasing the next promotion. So as a promoter, you know, maybe it's not just the next one. If you get in with ClickFunnels or somebody else who has a continuity, it becomes over and over. I do wanna follow up question though. You say that you do ask, what is that process? If you can just give us a little look at what that process looks like, like Hey, this worked good. I think that everything was good. Do you want to— do you have anybody else you think that could benefit from that? Is it as simple as that, or is it more?

Yeah, so, um, what I recommend that folks do is, as you're setting up the JV to begin with, um, let's say some type of webinar promo, just for an example— it wouldn't have to be— but, um, also schedule a debrief for after. And you want to schedule them Basically at the same time, meaning, uh, it's far easier to say, hey, hey Ben, let— would you like to line up a JV? And, and you're like, cool, how about this date, this time, blah blah blah. And hey, how about we do a— have a follow-up chat after cart close, talk about what worked well, what could be done better. And because you're in that booking phase to begin with, it's a very natural thing to do, thereby it gets booked. Whereas if you have a promo, cart closes, and then I ping you guys, hey, how about we jump on a debrief call?

Your mind's— If things went nasty, nobody wants to do it, right?

Well, or you're like 6 promos deep in your brain, like that, that was yesterday's news because that, that promo's over. So, so you want to schedule it first, and then when you're on that call You can talk about what worked well, what could be done better. And by the way, that's a valuable question because now you're getting free consulting from smart people on how to do what you do better. And they'll be happy to tell you because they of course have insights around their audience and community and what worked and what didn't. And as you get that feedback, you can iteratively improve what you're doing.

Right.

And provided it went well and people were happy with it, you can talk about rebooking. Hey, what if we do this again in 6 months? You can talk about who are some of your best partners who've moved the needle for you that you think would align with this. And then you just be quiet and let them think of those names right then. And then say, hey, would you be up for sharing an intro? I'd love to meet them and get to know them. So Simple best practice behaviors like that consistently bring you more deals. So that ability to turn each JV into 2 or 3 more is rebooking with them, creating embedded deeper partnerships with them, getting connections to their best partners, and doing that on every one of these.

That's fantastic. And it kind of creates that ripple effect, right, from when you start, have one satisfied partner and You know, you look up a decade later and you've done so much work and added millions of dollars to their bottom line. You know, you mentioned you've received just, you know, radically candid feedback, right, of asking, you know, what went right, what could have gone better, and you by in turn get free consulting. Can you tell us a story about something that sort of hit you in between the eyes of like, oh my gosh, I have to do that better, and then it's made a positive impact for Pure JV?

Yeah, absolutely. So this Happened a few years ago, but it was this exact process. So I did a JV with a partner, scheduled the debrief, and this gentleman was an expert at story. And so I'm like, well, what, what could have been better? And he was like, okay, you started this particular story and then didn't finish that one. And this other story, like, if you would have added this kind of outcome, it would have been so much more impactful. So he guided me to add a lot more stories to the talk and stories I had, make them better. So hung up off that call, made the updates, delivered the same talk a week later to a different audience. My close rate for that particular talk was 17%. I took that free feedback from a partner and friend, applied it, and the very next presentation closed at 32%. So imagine as you do this day in and day out, and not everyone's advice is going to be gold, but more often than not, it's meaningful. So as you're iteratively improving, so will— like, you're going to get better at handling objections, you'll get better at positioning, you'll get better at storytelling, presenting, all of that. So simply asking that question, And people are happy to answer it, so it works well. Yeah.

And I think there's a balance there too of actually being able and being willing and humble enough to listen and to adapt. I've spoken at a lot of places. I remember one, this is crazy. Like I remember one, I had said something like, and it was just in jest, like the reason that I was there versus like Russell, for example. And I was like, I said something stupid, Charles. I said something like, you know, Russell wishes he could be here, but he is got bigger fish to fry. And I just kept going. And okay, so that's the reaction. Like, I didn't think about it all from stage, but I had somebody come back and gimme that feedback. And I remember thinking like, did I even say that? She goes, you have to understand now that you just created this, this, you know, separation from where Russell is to where everybody else is. And it was some great feedback that I was like, oh my gosh, as I processed it. And I kept using that. And I said, you know what? He really wishes he could be here, but he can't. But he wanted me to send his love. You know, something like that. And so being able to listen, um, that's something that I've had to learn. And it's not easy for entrepreneurs because you have to have a pretty thick shell as an entrepreneur and not worry about what other people are thinking because you just have to keep just going and grinding through it. So how do you find that balance of, no, I've got this, but also being humble and listening to feedback?

Uh, that, that's a, a, a great question. I learned again early on, be super open to feedback to this. Nanosecond, I am always open to feedback. Because, I mean, you run it through your logic filter, but provided you can get over your own ego, and it doesn't have to tie to your confidence in delivery or anything. It's like, we deal with a lot of smart people who have a lot of experience. We were briefly talking before we hit record here, one of my clients who I've helped generate $4.5 million in JVs. He paid me a nice chunk of money and he's like, Charles, can I help you with a few things? And he wasn't trying to sell me anything. He just wanted to help because we're friends. And he sat down for like 2 hours and coached me through everything from this backdrop to clothes I wear to my presentation. And was it hard to hear some of it? Like, hey, Charles, maybe get some nicer clothes. Not a fun thing to hear, but was he right? Hell yeah, he was right. And upgrading those things, the more open you are to feedback and take action on it, provided you're getting it from someone who's got a track record of their own success—

That's a great point.

You'll never regret that. Don't get advice from people who haven't accomplished things. That would be—

yeah.

Broke people with all the opinions, right? The people who aren't even in the arena, we get that too. So that's a great point.

Yeah.

So provided someone's got more experience at something than you, like the more open you are to learn, the faster your business will grow.

Great point. Dang. Yeah. And it's, I'm fascinated with the idea that this is such a big stream of revenue that you don't necessarily need you know, experience, right? You don't need an audience, you don't need an email list. Sometimes you don't need a product, right? Really playing the role of the connector sometimes can pay dividends. Would you, by chance, open-ended question, suggest this type of career path for someone who is looking to get started that's not a product owner currently?

Yeah, so a couple thoughts around that. For one, learning the art of, of Listening to what people are great at, what they're interested in, what their needs are, and kind of becoming a connector. Like when I came into this space, I'd always had a fine social circle, but I certainly wasn't actively developing that. That was a decision. I'm like, hey, I want to start meeting more of these cool people. And so learning that as a skill set. Even at a single event, just chatting with someone here, chatting with someone there, you're gonna hear positive overlap where you can start connecting and facilitating. So you certainly can start leveraging that to not only grow your own network, but provide value more importantly to the people you're connecting with. The next element of that, because I went through years of connecting people where it was not monetized. A lot of actually connectors fall in this trap of—

Boy, we could talk about that forever.

Yeah, they're providing a ton of value, but they do not have frameworks for, for monetizing that, which I'm happy to share a basic one here that will help a lot. So you can put people together and broker deals. Typically, you're going to get around 10% of those deals. You need to bring up the fact that because of connection and to facilitate the connection that you'll build in that percentage, because if you connect people and don't talk about that first, you are not part of that deal. So there's that part of it. But the next thing I would say is there's exceptions, I'm sure, but it is hard to get rich lining up other people's deals. You need to have your own product, And line your own deals up. So is it a nice— could it be a nice stepping stone and pathway? Absolutely. And you can and should be developing your own product or service on ClickFunnels that you—

That's right.

That you can then make all the revenue on. So like, why, why would I want to make 10% of selling someone else's product when I can make 100% or 80% selling my own?

I love that. Um, gosh, Chris, you had everything. I just blanked out on what I wanted to say and it was so good.

Well, no, I, I, I think, I think so many people who are connectors do this. I fall into this all the time. I mean, I am, I can totally run into a room and I see 3 people that I know and I'm like, oh, this is who you need to talk to. And I go and I bring 'em together and I don't really expect anything out of it, like whatever, because my role's ClickFunnels, right? And, you know, a lot of time the reciprocity comes around through affiliates and through JV deals and stuff like that. So it's not as big a deal for me, but I know tons of people that go to these and are those real connectors because that's their personality. How are you, you mentioned that you have kind of some easy steps to share. What are those steps on how you could actually get that? I mean, asking for 10% is one, but do you have any others?

Yeah, so I'll use myself as an example for a minute, but then we'll just apply it to anyone listening. So I'm doing intros and connections constantly, like probably 20 to 50 a week, and that many are coming in per week. And so I'm certainly not trying to monetize every connection. That would get old and people would probably get annoyed.

Sure. But it becomes disingenuous. Like, hey, if I connect you, can I have 10%? There's gotta be a better way to do it, right?

Right. So here, here's a, a great example. Let's say, um, in fact, one of my clients, Nick Bradley, who is an exit expert, he's acquired, uh, 160 companies, exited 30 deals as big as $1.2 billion. Um, when he left private equity to come into our world, Um, I— he hired me to, to learn frameworks to operate and get in the right rooms, have JV and speaking conversations and referral, uh, systems put in place, which helped him 10x that business. Um, in fact, I'm on his website as like one of the fastest ways to grow business. Now, the clients I'm talking to, a lot of them are building companies that are in great positions to exit over time. So having a conversation with someone like, like Nick where I'm like, many of my clients could be great ideal clients for you. Would you like me to keep my ear to the ground? And if, if I inquire and they do have intention or desire to exit at some point, be happy to tee up intros your way. And here, here's an easy way to frame it. Do you happen to have a referral program?

Yes.

Because they will either say, yes, I do, and here it is, or they will say, no, but I'm open to one.

You, you know who's one of the best that I've ever seen do this? You're very good at it. And another name that comes to mind is Steve Howard. You know Steve?

Steve is a great friend.

And yeah, from Prime Corporate Services. And he is so genuine and connects with everybody. And then there's just this little thing too, like, oh yeah, we help people set up, you know, their corporate structures and tax stuff. And he has so many people throwing him referrals constantly. In the last 5 years, the guy's just blown up.

He is incredible as a human being. I made a comment on one of our conversations. I'm like, my daughter said I'm not old because I can still ride a halfpipe. And the next week, I have it right over here, the next week he sent me A Pure JV skateboard to my house. And I'm just like—

That sounds about right.

I'm like, oh my gosh, it's crazy. Yeah. So by, by basically having that, just saying that question, like teeing up, I'm talking to your ideal clients, or it could be ideal partners, same conversation. I'm talking to your ideal partners anyway. Would you be up for me scouting some opportunities for you? And I'm curious if you happen to have a second tier in your JV program.

There you go.

Um, and that way they'll, they'll say yes, they'll say no. Um, they'll say, I'll make one for you. I've had a lot of people say that. Um, so by framing the question, there's nothing weird about that question. There's nothing strange or greedy about that question. You're facilitating deals for them. That's worth something.

Yeah.

Great point.

Totally agree.

With, well, go ahead.

Do you want to add on that, Chris? I was going to ask a question that kind of switches gears.

No, go ahead. I think that was great.

So throughout the entirety of Pure JV, what's, I guess, or if you want to give names, you can, but what's your most memorable deal that you've orchestrated? The first one that comes to mind.

Well, it was memorable just because of the context, but I brought the number one partner, number one opt-in partner to Grant Cardone's launch, number 5 in sales. Um, not that that was my, you know, most amazing deal ever, but that one had a lot of, uh, buzz and attention on it. Um, so that was a fun one. In fact, Chris, didn't— isn't that where we—

Yeah, that's where we met. We had dinner with Rudy and everybody else at the, the ball or whatever.

Yeah, exactly. So, um, you know, I've put— had clients put together deals that, that I helped them shape with Kevin Harrington, John Assaraf, myself, um, that did a million dollars from, from idea inception that I shared with them to them launching it 30 days later, doing a million dollars in 3 days. That's pretty cool. Like, talk— I love working with people who just implement. So you give an idea, a framework, here's how you do it. And then the next conversation they're like, okay, let's go. We did it. Like, damn.

All right.

Yeah, that's so good. It's sometimes hard, you know, when you do these JVs or gosh, Ben knows his affiliates and it's different. They can be combined, but sometimes you have to provide everything. If I'm— if you're going to go do a JV, Yeah. I, I love it when they say, hand me, send me some talking points for the copy versus send me all the swipe, you know, where they need everything from you. And I get it. If you're gonna go do a JV, you need to have that stuff like on deck ready to go.

Right.

Because people don't know your, uh, you know, your offer as well and the hooks and everything else or the open loops. But sometimes people just get it and they're like, no, you know what? I'll just go do this. Tell me a little bit about your audience and some talking points. Then they're gonna go do it in their voice. If you find somebody that does that, just like you said, that's a slam dunk. These people that just operate, I love that. You're exactly right. I think it's so cool. Well, one other thing too, you mentioned too, I know you've got a lot of really cool stuff going on. Tell us what you're most excited about right now. Are there deals that you're doing right now? Is it pure JV? What is the most— what are you most excited about in business like today and moving forward in the next quarter?

Well, let's see. Most excited about, Continuing to scale our team. Uh, currently in the business, I'm a little too much of a linchpin, so I've been trying to offload some of that. Would you guys see this in, in, in your own business and the, and all the people you work with? But, uh, like transitioning some of the high-ticket sales calls, which that's a big step when you're, you know, good at that and you're handing it to someone else. But those are the necessary steps. So for one, just growing the business. We don't offer it as a service, but I guess we made an exception for Cialdini booking their JVs. So I was on with Eben Pagan yesterday and—

Oh yeah.

So teeing up some big deals around that. And Basically just, uh, doing more speaking. I spoke last week in Cabo for a mastermind and Book Genius Network again. So I'd say more of the same, but, uh, transitioning all, uh, as much reliance on, on me so I can become more of a— over time, more of a business owner than, than the, the guy doing a lot.

Yeah, you don't want to have to like be coming home from SFO In your Tesla and turn on the autopilot to close deals.

All right.

I gotta tell, you gotta tell that story now that I brought it up. That's the thing you're trying to get away from. Like, if you're good at it, sometimes you gotta remove yourself and, and make yourself the autopilot. But what happened? Tell us that.

Okay. Well, we'll start with don't try this at home, kids.

And don't call the cops.

So, uh, yesterday I was driving back from SFO and I had a sales call scheduled at 9 AM, and I'm like, um, I knew I wouldn't make it in time because there was some traffic. So I had choices. I can pull off the freeway like an intelligent person, um, and I had back-to-back meetings and didn't want to be stuck in the car all day. So I'm like, I will try running this call from my car. So I set up my laptop, um, put it in autopilot, jumped on the call, and, uh, Did the call through Zoom, um, in autopilot. And, uh, the wire came through this morning cuz I, I, I landed that plane.

Isn't technology great? But you know what, I bring that up and it's just a fun story too, is like sometimes that's the hardest thing as a business owner is to try to remove yourself. Like you're the linchpin. How do you remove yourself? And sometimes people are the bottleneck, honestly, right?

Sure.

How to remove yourself too and, and, and let the people that are around you, this seems to be a common theme, right, Ben, that comes up on the podcast. Like, oh yeah, everybody reaches that certain level in their business where they're like, okay, I gotta step back and do my superpowers, but then maybe train some people on some of these other superpowers. Uh, how are you going about doing that to free yourself up for speaking events and stuff and let other people do it?

Yeah, so, uh, just working from that warm circle around you that as you get good at developing relationships, you find people stay in your world for a while. Um, one of my good friends, Joe Stolte, He's always—

love Joe.

He's such a lovely guy. Um, he's always, uh, scouting talent and expertise, maybe not for now, just for whenever. And so he, he knows who he's going to go to. And like, there, one of our coaches on our team has been with us over 4 years. He started doing, uh, some of the, uh, coaching program sales, and now we're bumping him up to do high-ticket sales. And then a friend of mine who I met at a JV event years ago, he's like, he did, uh, a lot of sales for, for people you'd know, including Grant. And, um, so I'm training him up to take certain types of calls that we run. So just as you meet people, um, you know, learn what their expertise are and then also what their needs are, because by knowing that You can either match them up with opportunities that fit, or sometimes that opportunity will be working with you. So that's been a good thing. And honestly, I've gotten kind of lucky in hiring that a lot of companies have rigorous, great processes. I've just kind of went with how do I feel when I'm hanging out with this person and what How do we complement each other? And thus far that's worked well to attract strong people on the team. Again, that wouldn't be a scientific way to do it. You may want more rigorous, but—

The gut feel. Yeah.

I mean, not that that will always work, but it's worked really well. I mean, my business partner and I, same thing. We didn't even have a written contract for years because we're just You know, we, we knew, we're like, cool, this person's great. Um, and yeah, one topic I'd love to bring up for a second is, um, what skill sets do you have that you can apply to another market that would be worth way more? Um, so I'd always be thinking about that in relation to your product and your own skill sets and to just tell a brief story on that from a sale I closed last week. This gentleman hired me to help scale a company through partnerships, but he's also spinning up several other AI companies with the intention to partner with a leader in different verticals. And so I've been brought in as a full equity partner to put those deals together, spin up subcompanies with the goal of Exiting those in 2 to 3 years. And it's, it's that same example of, I'm just using the same skill set I use every single day, but how can that be applied in a new way that's worth way more money down, down the line or even now? But I think it's a good thing to bring up for, for any of us because your product or service that you're great at today, likely in a different market or niche, could be worth Way more. So think about what those may be.

So true. Well, Charles, you have been a wealth of information. I think this is great. And honestly, if you know somebody that could benefit from hearing this, like if you're listening today, pass it on, share it to 2 or 3 people, show them what Charles is doing. Like if somebody does want to share what you're doing or come see, do you have a link or anything that we could pass them to you to get more information?

Oh, definitely. If you head over to my.purejav.com/cf for ClickFunnels, my.purejav.com/cf, that will lead you to a talk I gave recently on joint ventures. It covers 4 primary joint venture types, how to connect with folks, how to communicate leveraging tools like video and other things. And it's got, it's got a download with 10-step JV strategy blueprint. So hop over there and check it out. You can also go to charlesbyrd.com, B-Y-R-D. So those would be a couple of places people can check out.

Fantastic. Go check it out. Once again, that's my.purejv.com/cf. Go check it out. Thanks again so much, Charles, for joining us. We'll have to have you on another time. Love it.

Thank you both for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Thanks.