MBA1502 Who to Partner with When Markets are Down + Free Ride Friday
2 Feb 2026 · 10 min
A 10-minute $100 MBA podcast episode (host Omar Zenhom) about who to partner with when markets are down (COVID-19 context). It explains that while many industries suffer, others (streaming, online course platforms, SaaS) are thriving and represent partnership/affiliate opportunities. Practical tactics include joining affiliate programs (examples: WebinarNinja, Podia, MasterClass), differentiating offers with bonus packages or partner webinars, verifying purchases via transaction IDs, and using resources like ProfitWell to identify winners. The episode includes sponsor ad reads (ADP, Dell, OnDeck) and a weekly giveaway (Free Ride Friday — lifetime access to Easy Course).
Questions this episode answers
A lifetime membership to Easy Course (retail value stated as $500).
ADP, Dell (Dell Tech Day sales event), and OnDeck.
WebinarNinja, Podia, ProfitWell, and MasterClass (all referenced as affiliate/partner opportunities).
Tyee Outdoors (announced as the winner; previously referred to as 't outdoor').
Chapters
ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll, ADP helps businesses take on the next anything. ADP always designing for people ready to.
Save on new tech it's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium support, and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster. And with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. Hey, today is Free Ride Friday, so make sure you hang on to the end of the episode to hear who won this week's Free ride. Every Friday we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. We're giving away Easy Course, our own online course on how to build your online course in 30 days over at EasyCourse Co. Retails for $500, but you can win it for free. Just leave us an iTunes rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. Just listen on a Friday to see if you won. It's our way to say thanks for showing us love on itunes. Don't all right, let's jump into today's episode. Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show Business Insights on the daily every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online. And in today's episode, you will learn who to partner with when markets are down. We are in a down market right now, to say the least. Okay. With COVID 19 tearing up the world, the economy has taken a dip. A major one. And many of us are trying to find ways to partner with companies, to grow our business, to grow our brand, to make extra revenue. But who to partner with when everybody is struggling? That's what we get into today's episode. But finding the right partners when markets are down. Here's something a lot of people do not talk about. When markets are down. When markets are down, there are industries that are doing incredibly well. Not everybody is in a tough time. Yes, the airlines and the travel industry is totally getting smashed right now. Right? But Netflix and YouTube and Masterclass they're having a field day, okay? They're having the best quarter of their life. So. So when markets are down, there's always opportunity out there and you can partner with that opportunity. We'll talk about how in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So markets are down. You're looking for ways to promote yourself, to boost your brand, to partner with somebody that can help you bring in new streams of income. And like I mentioned at the top of the episode, not everybody struggles during a crisis. There are certain players that were just ahead of the curve, that are doing well, that are growing, that are having really the best economic time of their life. And you can partner with them, you can help promote them, and you can ride the same wave they are as long as there is an intersection. So what you're looking for is you want to look at who is succeeding. Make a list of all the companies you think are doing well in this current situation or any situation in the future that happens. So, so say for example, I'm a business coach, okay? And I'm having a hard time securing clients in this climate. I'm trying to offer my coaching services, but no one's biting. But many coaches are scrambling to move their real life events to online events. So I might want to partner with a webinar platform like Webinar Ninja or partner with a course platform like Podia. Now a lot of these companies make it so simple. You don't need to know somebody or have an in or even have a meeting. You can just join their affiliate program. Okay, we have one@webinar ninja.com youm can check it out. It's on the footer of our website or you can go to webinar ninja.com affiliate hyphen program. I know Podia has an affiliate program that information's on the footer of their website or any other company that is doing well. Okay, so if there's a synergy, you're looking for two things. Number one, the company is doing well in this market. Number two, they have the potential to continue to do well. It's a good product and they have a great chance to do well past, you know, COVID 19. And number three, your audience would be interested and there's some synergy, there's some like mindedness with your brand, with your clients and the company you want to partner with. If that's the case, this is an opportunity of a lifetime. Why? Because if you wanted to partner with any of these companies, Say for example, you want to partner with one of these software companies that are offering great services for people in your industry. You, you get to be a part of the software industry without having to build a software. You don't need to support that software, right? All you have to do is promote it and market it with your affiliate link and you get reoccurring commission as if you are in the software game. So you could piggyback on the success or the wave of success that some companies are having right now so you can partner with the right people in a down market. The thing is that these companies that you want to partner with that are doing well right now, they get a tremendous boost because because of this climate that when this is all over, when COVID 19 is done and dusted, they have an incredible head start. They have so much momentum going for them, the success is almost easy. So your success as a partner with them can continue to grow. So even if your other streams of income start to kick back in because things get back to normal, you get all this extra gravy, you get all this growth from something that you established in a down market. Now if you're gonna partner with a business, you wanna differentiate yourself because hey, you're not the only one that's gonna get this idea, that's gonna say, I'm gonna partner with some of these companies that are doing well. You wanna differentiate yourself, you wanna be able to add extra value to your customers. So people can choose to go with you and choose your affiliate deal or your affiliate or click on your affiliate link instead of somebody else's. So you may wanna create some sort of bonus package, some sort of quick start guide, some sort of course, some sort of coaching that will come with this program or this kind of software that you can offer when they buy with your affiliate link. A lot of affiliates do this. So they'll offer maybe like a 10 part course on how to get started with this software. And it's like them guiding you through it. It's a little extra thing or maybe a bonus that will allow them to implement the software a little bit better. Or maybe some advice that you want to give them. The point here is that you give them instructions, say, hey, click on my affiliate link, buy with my affiliate link. Once you buy and pay, let me know. You should get a transaction ID from the payment processor. Give me that id. Once you give me that id, you email me that id, I can give you these great bonuses because then you can verify through your affiliate system, whatever affiliate system that hey, that person actually did buy and that transaction ID matches. And this incentivizes people to go with your referral. It's the same price for them, but you get the commission because you refer them. If you can, you could do a partner webinar with that company to do a demo for your clients, especially for you. And. And that way you can get all the affiliate commission on that webinar. You can even do a partner automated webinar. It's recorded beforehand. It doesn't have to be live if schedules don't match. So there's a lot of options here. But the point here is that you can't sit on your hands right now. There's a lot of people, a lot of companies that are winning right now, and you can really partner with them and ride that success with them. You can help them become even more successful by marketing and supporting their products. If you're interested in learning a little bit more about which companies are thriving right now, I recommend you go to profitwell.com this is a great website about financials and metrics that are going on in the SaaS community software as a service community, as well as just reoccurring billing. You can take a look at some of the blog posts that are there. There's a lot of great videos as well that talks about who is doing well right now during this pandemic, what markets are suffering, what markets are doing quite well, as well as what companies are doing to pivot and to improve. So I highly recommend you check out privatewall.com all this information is absolutely free. I love what Patrick Campbell and his team has done at that site. So check it out. The thing about partnering is that it doesn't take much for you to set up. You don't have to build something huge and you don't have to spend weeks building something up to make this happen. You can literally partner, partner up and become an affiliate within hours. You know, you can set this all up and set up an email campaign and a webinar and everything in one day, really. So you can hit the ground running and partner with somebody that you know is a good match for your audience. That's growing, that is really winning right now.
ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like, what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll, adp helps businesses take on the next anything ADP always.
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To wrap up today's episode, not everybody struggles during a down market. Amazon is seeing record profits. Uber Eats is seeing numbers they've never seen before. Netflix is having the best month of their life. Okay? And you might say that these companies, you know, maybe they. They were ahead of the curve or maybe they knew where the future was going. But also, you could say they got lucky. And in every situation, somebody gets lucky, okay? And that's just the reality of business. Somebody says luck has no factor in business, they're lying to you, okay? There's sometimes there. There's factors out of your control, but you have a choice on how to react to a situation. You have a choice to partner with the lucky people. One of the companies that are having record sales right now is Masterclass. Masterclass.com, their online courses with famous people. Basically, people like Steph Curry to Serena Williams to Ron Howard, teaching all kinds of topics. They have an affiliate program. You can promote courses and do reviews on YouTube and blog about it and make money and piggyback on their success. Hope you found today's episode helpful. If you did, let me know in an iTunes rating and review. Today's episode's not over. Free ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's free ride. And the winner is t outdoor. Hi, I'm Stephanie. Me and my husband started an outdoor recreation business. I don't know a lot about business, so I was hesitant into jumping into this business. But I really got a boost when I heard your episodes. I also got a boost when I heard your episode about teaching beginners. That's me, and that's what I'm doing. I'm helping people get started. I know it's different, but I'm making it work. Keep up the great work. Thank you so much for that awesome review. T Outdoors. That's Tyee Outdoors. Your mission is to email me over at Omar00 MBA net so I can hook you up with the lifetime access to easy course, our 30 day course on how to build your own online course. If you want to win, just leave us an itunes rating and review and listen in on Friday to see if you won the random draw. It's that simple. It's our way to say thanks for showing us love on itunes. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. You've heard this a million times. A business is like a roller coaster. There's ups and downs and so is the market. You can guarantee this is not the last time the market is going to crash. It's going to climb back up and it's going to be fun times and everyone's going to love it and they're going to forget about the days of COVID Right? But you won't. You'll be prepared. You will know that this is coming. You'll have a backup plan. You will know the partner will with the winners when it happens. So understand that business and the market is cyclical. This is nothing new. We had the global financial crisis, you know, almost 12 years ago. Most of us can remember that, right? So understand that business is about how you adapt, react and anticipate. It's not about controlling the things you can't control. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take.
ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll. ADP helps businesses take on the next anything. ADP always designing for people.
