Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hey Gorgeous. This is episode number 265 and the amazing Charles Byrd. Mr. JV is back on the show today.

Charles Byrd [0:12]
Hi, this is Charles Byrd and you’re listening to Heart Sells! Podcast with Christine Schlonski. Enjoy.

Christine Schlonski [0:19]
Well I can’t wait to dive in another time with Charles Byrd, he has been so amazing at The Heart-Centered Lead Generation Summit, and I hope you have gotten out your fastest way to grow your business with his last episode on Heart Sells! Podcast and today we are going to dive deep on how you can build your joint venture system and what you need in place. Charles is the Joint Venture Expert. He is an absolute pro when it comes to lead flow and he is a close engineer. He also is known as a productivity wizard because he is so amazing on setting up a joint venture partnership is in a way that is fast, productive, and has a big, big outcome, so you wanna definitely check out his wonderful work. And also you want to learn about the Power Tri-Factor he is using, which is tools, workflows, and habits to double your business. Have fun with this episode.

Christine Schlonski [1:21]
While I am so excited to have you back on the show. Charles, welcome.

Charles Byrd [1:25]
Well, thank you. Pleasure to be here.

Christine Schlonski [1:28]
Yeah, I loved our first conversation you gave so much value, especially I love checking out your gift, The Pure JV Mind Map where you actually show us the whole process of what to do how to partner up and it’s basically while you’re kind of brain dump on all the different points that somebody has to think about when they want to create long-lasting joint ventures, joint venture partnerships that deliver value to everybody involved. So, let me ask you because I know you guide people through the process. You work with people in different settings and group programs, you have your own event, all of it round JV partnerships, like what do you actually do when you guide someone, like how would it look like if I would be working with you?

Charles Byrd [2:21]
Sure. So I have a framework that works quite well. We start by showing the big picture of what’s possible and how connecting with people online and events is tracked within a very integrated system for managing information so that you can find whatever you need in five seconds. So details aren’t falling through the cracks related to your JV partners, your clients your leads, and the truth is it’s a skillset and toolset that serves you across your business. We just focus it pretty heavily on lead generation. And systematic follow up. So step one, I kind of show the big picture. In general, the responses. Mind blown. And then we break it down into fundamental elements and basically get one tool up and going get getting someone proficient with it. And that’s foundational to start integrating a few other things along with starting to reach out to partners and building those relationships. So it’s a combination of getting the tools in place, and then adapting it to where people are at within their businesses. So they get traction very quickly.

Christine Schlonski [3:45]
Yeah. So what my concern is like people are listening in they might be thinking, Well, you know, I have such a small list. I don’t even dare to go out to ask people that are further along to partner up with me because I feel like I can’t deliver enough value. I can’t do something for them because I’m such a newbie, or maybe just, you know, a year or a couple of years into my business journey, and I’m still trying to handle all the other challenges coming my way. What would you say to a person that feels this way? How can they have a good start?

Charles Byrd [4:23]
Sure. Well, for one, whether you’re directly trying to land a partner or a client, you can start connecting with people and providing them value on the way it doesn’t have to be like some big JV, but maybe you’ve got a product that’s ready to start JV with but it’s not deeply tested yet. There are a few things you can do one, let’s say you could approach a partner and say I’ve got this new product. Let’s say it’s brand new, and then have you haven’t even gone through a pilot, say I’m inviting some people to join this pilot, we’re going to do it free or at very low cost. Let’s if you’re open to it, maybe you could invite a section of your audience to get this free value, we can preface it, this is a pilot. So a great opportunity and start getting feedback from real students and clients and that you only have to do that a couple of times to start getting real testimonials and you start hearing what people want. You can even do that with Facebook posts and you don’t even have to go through partner generally you wouldn’t go through a partner off the bat, although I’ve like I have a new five-day challenge coming up. It’s called the 5 Day Human Magnet Challenge. And I was on a JV call a few weeks ago, and I mentioned it and the partner was like I want to promote them like, this isn’t tested yet. We were just building this out, you would the first one, I want you to be very aware of those points. He’s like, no, but it’s such an important thing and my audience would love it, I’m totally down to do it.

Charles Byrd [6:16]
So my advice is just be very candid with where you’re at. Set. Don’t set expectations higher than you know they’ll be. And that way you can start trying things out. And the more you deliver this, whatever it is you’re offering, the better you’re going to get at delivering it. You’re going to hear what people’s concerns are, so you can address them proactively. And you, you just slowly grow the snowball. I call my system, the system that makes success inevitable because you’re starting small and growing it and you’re getting better and better and better. So by the time you are approaching big partners, you’ve already proven everything out to the point, like, when I did my first kind of big Jeff Walker style launch, I had 47 partners supporting that, including Brian Tracy, which would have been impossible if I didn’t build those relationships one at a time on the way.

Christine Schlonski [7:15]
Yeah. So is there like something that you would call JV ready? Like, what is questions that you might get asked when you reach out to those people?

Charles Byrd [7:27]
Sure. So some of the fundamentals when it comes to joint ventures, and there’s of course, different levels of these you can set up but in general, you would want to have a product or service that’s available, ideally, more than ideally already tested with a pilot group or two. And getting people results obviously, that’s a precursor. And then you’d want some type of affiliate system so that If I’m sending you leads, there’s a way to track that they came from me. And typically, people may want to know how your offer is converting. And again, I’m very candid, I’ll tell them like for one of my programs, you can expect a minimum of 10% conversion. I’ve had it as high as 50%. But that was an outlier. You know, expect 10 to 15 were one of my other products. I’m like, four, depending on the audience for certain audiences, I’ll know how it will convert. And other ones I’ll just tell them with the audience XYZ. I actually don’t know how it will convert we can find out together This is how it’s converted with these other markets. Again, transparency is key. I think where people get into trouble is if they oversell something to get a deal done, and then it falls very short. That leaves a poor taste in people’s mouths, but if you’re very candid upfront of what you know to be true and what you don’t know yet. If people still want to proceed with it, that’s a decision you’re making together.

Christine Schlonski [9:12]
Yeah. So basically the way you sell it, you need to know your numbers, so that you have that number for your JV partner, who obviously because it’s a joint venture, they are receiving a percentage of the sale. So they also want to know, like, what happens like how valuable is this whole deal if I promoted to my list?

Charles Byrd [9:35]
Yeah. So I’ll say it is good to know your numbers. The truth is, in the JV conversations I have people don’t actually tend to ask, I mean, it’s good to know them, because someone might and probably want to know him for your own sake. But the way I go about the whole JV process is people don’t tend to even ask.

Christine Schlonski [10:01]
Yeah. But I think my point is you kind of need to know how to sell. So that when you do have that partnership, right, you don’t go out with zero because you were not able to convert any of the people that were interested in whatever you offer as a webinar or conversations and then your joint venture partner doesn’t even know what has just happened because there are a zero and not much value at it.

Charles Byrd [10:31]
Right? Yeah, it’s, it’s certainly important to know how to sell and that, you know, when you’re connecting with core needs that they have and communicating those value, the value and benefits. That’s, that’s pretty important. One thing I kind of wish I’d done a little differently because I built a course started marketing with JV’s. It’s worked great. But I could have probably had double the revenue in my business. If I started with some consulting in there, I actually pushed away consulting for quite a while because I just come out of corporate doing like eight-month and three-year projects, I just wanted something simple and like, I sell this digital course and I move on with my day. But when you start with consulting for when you can make more upfront, and to you’re seeing exactly what the market actually wants, and you can start refining your process for how you deliver your consulting offerings to people, you’ll end up with this framework you walk people through. And that becomes a lovely framework to walk students through if you’re creating an online course or something like that. And the content you will put in there is shaped around what your actual clients are asking you for and the challenges you see, day to day as you work with them. So it’s very advantageous to do so. Some consulting on the way as you’re shaping it because, for one, you’ll bring in more money. And two, you’ll have a lot more understanding of what people need as you build out your programs.

Christine Schlonski [12:12]
Yeah, I love that you mentioned that I think it’s so true. Like, sell it first and then build it so you deliver exactly what they need. And that’s such great advice to do some consulting or coaching, mentoring, whatever you will, however, you want to call it so that you get to know exactly what your clients are, like suffering from or what challenges they have. And after a while, you will notice there’s a pattern. And then as soon as you have the pattern, you can set up the framework, and then you know, doing or recording a course or creating a course is so much easier than when you just think about it all by yourself.

Charles Byrd [12:54]
Yeah, another great way to do it, which is exactly how I did it initially is I created a presentation to sell my first program. And then I had a group going through and I had a list of things that I plan to deliver, although they weren’t fully fleshed out yet, it was more like an outline of talk about this, this and this. And when you do it that way, and you’re running it with a group, you can say, Here are these three topics I plan to go over today, is there anything else you’d like, covered, and then that way, you’re getting feedback on the ideas you had, and you’re getting feedback of what people actually want. And so you can pre-sell it like you just mentioned, and then you can deliver it live. So you’re not having to pre-record anything or deal with production and lights and cameras and editing. And do that a few times and then turn that into a digital course. I know people that just sell those recordings as their courses or you can take that feedback and then produce a nicer course out of it. So it’s a great way to go, you’re selling immediately. You’re getting immediate market feedback. And you’re you were pre-paid to make your content. In fact, it’s quite brilliant.

Christine Schlonski [14:19]
Yeah, I agree. It’s very brilliant. Just a little thing that you should not be doing. Don’t interact too much with the audience that’s going through the course. Because then you will be in your way of repackaging or like putting it into a course when you mentioned names all the times and you have side conversations. That’s something I learned because I get so excited when my group coaching programs, I have so much interaction, that at the end of the day so far, I could never really turn something into a course because there’s all this interaction going on and names and stories and whatever they bring to the table so that I decided moving forward, I will just have a teaching moment and then afterward open for discussion so that I could actually have that piece to like the production and make it easier for myself. Which is right in learning.

Charles Byrd [15:16]
Yeah, because even my pure JV course it’s recordings from the event. So it’s presenting on stage and then editing that into different modules. And eventually I’ll, I’ll redo that on camera and in a set talking to the camera versus pulling it out of a stage talk like that. But yeah, it’s a very fast way to create content and get paid for it. And it’s, it’s a wonderful starting point and it gives you momentum as well. So when you are interacting with prospective partners, you can say I’ve run these group programs and you already you’re already up and doing it and you one key thing that I love leveraging is taking a win something that shows you have momentum in your world and relaying that in other conversations because otherwise, people wouldn’t even be aware. So, you know, if you have something like a group program up and going, you can jump on a call and be like, super excited. We’re on week three of my group program and the feedback. Great and I’m launching another one on this date. And anyway, it’s, I think, a very healthy thing to take the winds in your world and roll them into your conversations.

Christine Schlonski [16:40]
Yeah, totally agree. And it’s, you know, you’re kind of seeding and educating people about what’s possible to. So what does Heart Sells! mean to you?

Charles Byrd [16:51]
To me, it takes the selling out of selling, it’s more like I’ll give you an example. One of my clients is an attorney up in Seattle. And she’s, she’s just a wonderful person that you can tell is a little bit overloaded, but her intentions and she’s just a high-quality person. So you want to see her succeed. And if you know, well in my case, I know how much my solutions will benefit her. So when I sold her into my program, it was because I’m like, just dying to help her. I know how much it will help her. And she also saw the same opportunity and she’s been helped a massive amount. So, to me if you know, there’s just insane alignment, it removes the selling component because you’re doing it to just truly massively improve their lives. And so, to me, it’s you it’s very heart-centered if you’re doing it because you’re just dying to help him.

Christine Schlonski [18:06]
Yeah, I love that. And do you remember the very first thing that you ever sold in your life?

Charles Byrd [18:13]
Well, it’s probably like the equivalent of a lemonade stand. But I remember we made a, we had this blender and we made blueberry smoothies and walked around the neighborhood with a red wagon, attempting to sell these things. Turns out people don’t really want to buy stuff from little kids going down the street, but

Christine Schlonski [18:37]
Well, but you were not thinking that back then.

Charles Byrd [18:41]
No, no. So

Christine Schlonski [18:42]
You were too far ahead was because smoothies just you know, came

Charles Byrd [18:48]
Good points

Christine Schlonski [18:49]
Much later. So you know, if people were used to lemonade and you come with this blue smoothie creation, maybe they were just not ready.

Charles Byrd [18:57]
The market wasn’t ready ahead of the curve. I like it.

Christine Schlonski [19:01]
Did you sell a single smoothie or

Charles Byrd [19:04]
Not at all? Or maybe one to some kid down the street for a dime? It wasn’t a profit center.

Christine Schlonski [19:12]
Yeah. Well, I was interested in like, when did you start with your entrepreneurial endeavors? And yeah, how did it feel to receive money?

Charles Byrd [19:22]
Oh, it felt good when I launched my first digital course and so that I was asked to speak at a real estate conference. And that was actually the pilot I was just referring to for my initial course, and it felt so great to step off that stage and just have people run up to me to just see the palpable need and excitement around the topics and then just know unequivocally I could improve their lives. It’s very satisfying and the online sales themselves. I’ll tell you one of my favorite stories about online sales. It was very early in with me in the space and I recorded an interview with a friend of mine that went to an offer. It was like a $60 some dollar offer like not a lot of money. And that was airing later, meaning we recorded it. And I was on I took my wife to Santa Cruz for a little romantic getaway. And we’re at this nice restaurant and about to order drinks and my phone dings and I’m like, oh, just made 60 bucks. Someone just bought our drinks. And then we got about order appetizers and the phone goes ding ding like someone just bought our appetizers. This is frickin awesome and like, the whole meal money is just dumping in while we’re sitting on the beach. And I’m like, this is freaking amazing. I’m in love. Let’s do this.

Christine Schlonski [20:58]
Yeah, yeah. I really want to encourage people to go for their dreams and to create businesses that serve tons of people, but also serve them to make their own dreams come true. Because that’s actually where the beauty is. Right? That’s, that’s why we do what we do because we want to have the impact. And we also should have that impact in our own lives, with our relationships and with our dreams coming true. At the end of the day,

Charles Byrd [21:29]
Yeah, I remember coming out of corporate, you read all these books about entrepreneurs, and I never saw that as possible. For me, it just seems like that’s for other people. They can do that I would have wouldn’t have any idea how to do that. And then one of my friends and his wife started a business and after a few years, it started taking off. Then they started another business that completely took off bought their third building in San Francisco and I’m like, wow, my peer group can do this, no one told me like, and that that’s kind of when I realized we can design whatever life we want and people don’t think they can when they completely can, like all I’ve been doing is traveling, going to amazing places hanging out with brilliant people, helping them make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, that one of my clients from last year that I worked with for three months, implemented everything I told him like it was that was awesome in itself. His revenue went up from 200,000 to 600,000 in a year. Like that is satisfying.

Christine Schlonski [22:41]
That is. Yeah. So do you have any parting piece of guidance that you want to leave us with?

Charles Byrd [22:47]
Yeah, so we all have networks, big or small. Let’s say you’re on Facebook or LinkedIn. Right when this show is done, set aside five minutes and just reach out to two people say, hey, maybe been a while since we chatted. I’d love to hear what you’re up to simply reach out. And when you systematically start doing this, it’s one of the reasons I’m launching this five-day challenge. It’s to start connecting with people in your network, get conversations going, get introduced to new people to figure out ways to help them. When you do this systematically, which isn’t hard, it’s five or 10 minutes a day. magical things come of it because the world revolves around relationships. So when you’re in touch with people and looking to find ways to help them wonderful things come out of it, you have more opportunities than you can handle.

Christine Schlonski [23:47]
Awesome. Well, thank you so so much, Charles, for sharing your wisdom with us. And I just feel so inspired to really get a system in place to reach out to people on a regular basis and to have fun more of these conversations, they’re so easy to have, once you follow up like on a regular basis and you can create magic not just for your business but also for the business of the other person. right because it’s taking and giving at the same time.

Charles Byrd [24:18]
Yeah, absolutely. It ends up being very satisfying to it’s, it’s, it’s fun. It’s you learn stuff, referrals and JV partnerships come out of the woodwork. Yeah, I’m a big fan and, and it’s easy to do again, right when the show’s over, pick two people and follow up with them. Like just ping them and start a conversation.

Christine Schlonski [24:42]
And make sure you download your Pure JV Mind Map where you actually have the foundation right of what we were talking about and really mapped out of all the steps you need to know when you start the adventure of JV partnership.

Charles Byrd [25:01]
Yes, absolutely you can get that at mindmap.purejv.com that’s mindmap.purejv.com and yeah, there’s a lot of good stuff in there.

Christine Schlonski [25:11]
Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Have a wonderful day. And yeah, I will reach out to two people now.

Charles Byrd [25:17]
Perfect. Thanks for having me on the show. I really appreciate it.

Christine Schlonski [25:21]
I just love talking to Charles, I think every time he gives these golden nuggets of wisdom that helps every entrepreneur in their business to become not just more productive, but to really create a lead flow to create that impact you are striving for in your business by partnering up in the right way, by knowing the people you need to know that can help you to grow your business, and that you can be an asset for as well. So I hope you had a wonderful episode, and you have listened to the previous one. “The Fastest Way to Grow Your Business” hop on over to christineschlonski.com find the podcast tab, and the show notes with Charles’ episodes. And there you will find the resources we talked about, make sure you get your mind map with the components of a successful joint venture creation. And also, once you’re over there, all the links to Charles are just one click away, so you can connect with him and his wonderful work. And also, once you’re over at christineschlonski.com check out the experiences. These are the masterclasses, the online summits, and they are in there as an experience for you to go through all of the teachings especially Charles’ teaching at The Heart-Centered Lead Generation Summit and you can check that out right over there under experiences, have fun, and I am looking forward to having you back for the next episode. Have a wonderful day, wherever you are in this beautiful world. And I’m saying bye for now.