Beyond Networking: Creating Partnerships That Actually Work with Danny Bermant, Captain JV

Welcome to the Grand Connection Podcast. I'm Susan, your host for today, and I'm super excited because today's guest is Danny Bermant, better known as Captain JV. Danny helps coaches, consultants, and experts attract ideal clients and grow their businesses through the power of joint venture partnerships. Over the past five years, he's worked with more than 500 JV partners and supported countless launches, summits, giveaways, webinars, and collaborative campaigns that have generated over 5 million in revenue. Oh, wow, he's built a network of more than 5000 professional relationships across a wide range of industries, and he has become known as someone who doesn't just teach partnerships, he actively creates them. What I love about Danny's approach is that he combines the human side of relationship building with practical systems that help entrepreneurs create sustainable collaboration opportunities. He even teaches business owners how to train their teams and VAs to support their partnership efforts. Something I'm excited to learn more about. If you've ever wondered how to move beyond networking and start creating strategic partnerships that grow your business, you're going to love today's conversation. Danny, welcome to the Grand Connection Podcast.

Thank you, Susan. It's a pleasure to be here.

Well, I'm super excited, and people know you as Captain JV. What exactly is a JV, and why should entrepreneurs care about them?

So, basically, a JV, a joint venture, is basically a mechanism where, when you are promoting your business, instead of having to go out and sell to people, instead of having to advertise, what you effectively have is a network of other businesses working as salespeople on your, on your behalf. You have other businesses, they don't compete with your business, they complement your business, and they are, they're enthusiastic about you, they like what you do, they want to tell their community about you. So, essentially, what you have is, you think of it as having a free sales team, sales team that you're hiring, you're not paying anything for them, and they are actively promoting what you do,

Not paying for them, that sounds very exciting, but you do pay something usually afterwards.

Well, you do, and you don't. I mean, some percent. So, there are different ways that you can partner with other businesses. So, some businesses will just agree to let's just give a random example. You might be an accountancy firm, and you might be, and you might be a financial advisor, so if you're a financial advisor, you might work with high net worth individuals, and they need a good accountant, they're not very happy accountant, they work with the moments at the same time as an accountant will work with business owner that's got valuable assets that need protecting, they all promote a financial advisor, and you might, the two sides may basically agree to promote each other without commission, because essentially it's commensurate, right? You're sending a roughly equivalent amount of clothes to each other, and it kind of, in

Some industries,

You're being compensated by the fact you're supporting each other.

Yeah, and some industries, there's there's, you can't do commissions and referrals, and correct, correct.

So, I mean, for example, legal, and certainly a lot of countries, there are restrictions on on things like that. Correct.

Yeah, you know, you people just do general networking, and they find sort of people that they, they meet. They sometimes find referral partners, so some of them can be with with an affiliate commission agreement, and some would be just trading, right?

Yeah, sometimes it's a fine of fee, and sometimes it's just without.. there's no.. there's no formal agreement at all. You know that your clients need.. you can help your clients with certain things, but there's certain things you can't help here. So, for example, it might be that you're. you're a. you know, you're a branding agency, but you don't do, you don't do implementation, you don't deal with tactics, so you don't deal with things like you don't build websites, or it may be that you don't run social media campaigns, so you would refer, you'd refer your clients to those businesses. Yeah,

A really powerful strategic alliance in that sense is when you both give each other clients back and forth,

Yeah, yeah. We call it, we use a language, joint venture, because it's intentional, right? You have both, you're both consciously agreeing, you're both intentionally agree, you know, there's an intent level of intentionality that you're both saying, I am going to be very mindful to look for clients that need your help, and vice versa. I think the attraction of joint ventures, in particular, is that no one likes selling themselves. You ask most business owners, they hate standing up in a room talking about their own business, right? But if I said to those same. People talk about, look at another business owner in the room, and I'd like you to stand up for a couple of minutes and talk about what they do. You'd be very happy to do that. I think the other, the other thing about that is that if people feel much, much more.. it's one thing if I, if I stand up and talk about what I do, great, but if someone else who's not part of my business talks about me, that's much more powerful.

Yeah, yeah, I've actually done that in a networking group where people have gotten the activity was to talk about the person to the left, then to try to figure out a few things to say and look at them up on LinkedIn, everything to get some good words,

Talk about yourself, you have to talk about the other business, but there's a really valuable lesson, because that's what joint ventures are all about. It's basically you're going into the whole agreement with the understanding that when I, when I put myself out to help you, you're going to want to do the same for me. So you have this beautiful ecosystem, right, where businesses are basically all going out of their way to support each other.

Well, this would lead to finding those right people, wouldn't it?

Yeah, correct.

How do you find somebody that is a perfect joint venture partner?

Well, the first thing is you're making sure you're part of the right network, so for example, being part of the Grand Connection Group, that for example, you need to, you need to be discerning about, you know, when you're checking out a networking group, for example, it do the people in that networking group represent the kind of industry or the type of people who I like to work with, but also the, I think the other important thing is that if you, if you are part of a supportive networking group, that you need to, there's the support the group gives, there's the quality of the, there's the type of businesses, there's also the quality of the business owners, right? Are those business owners people who are really in their heart and soul committed to going out and helping you find business? There are there are a lot of networking groups that talk the talk, you know. We do lots of trends for our members, we provide support, we preach, give us gain, but the members of that group are not really committed to doing that. I have been to in-person networking groups where there was one group, for example, that wanted to bring a graphic designer into the group, and he told me afterwards, no one even wanted to see my portfolio. Well, that's strange, right? You're thinking, okay, you want to bring someone into that group who you can support his business employees, but, but what that's because the members, all the members were looking at is what they could get out of him, right? They weren't focusing on, like, well, we want to see what you do in your branding business, because we want to support, we want to refer clients to, we need to see the kind of, we see your output, so it's picking up cues when you're looking at different, you're looking, looking at people you can partner with, when you're looking at networking groups, you need to pay a particular attention, right? Those members, those people, what is their starting point? Is their first thing to

launch into a immediately launch into what they do, what they're looking for from you, or do they start, or they come more from a place on, "Oh, I'd love to hear more about your business. You know, what can I do to support you? So

When people try to pitch first, it just pushes other people away, and you don't, you don't want any relationship there, and they just right away sense that you might not be the right person to partner with, or perhaps don't have the same values as them in building

Correct, and even if you don't pitch first, I sometimes come across people who they'll meet, they want to talk to me, but their level of interest that they pay me is superficial. I mean, you know, if I'm going to meet with a business that I have that I see potentially what they do, and I want to think about what, how we might be able to collaborate, how I can support them, I will, you know, I'll go on, jump onto a meeting where I might spend half an hour just focused on asking them what they do, and say, okay, well, you know, we can do a follow-up meeting where I can tell you a bit more about what I do, and that's because over half an hour, there's a lot to find out, like, you know, why did you start your business, right? Who do you serve? What problem are you solving? How did you get into what you do, right? What's your mission, right? Where are they, you know, where are your clients when they come to you? Where are they when they finish working? It's all about stuff, because if you want to go and if you want to go and support that business and collaborate them with them, you gotta have a really good understanding of where they come in, and you have to have a really good understanding of what their passion is, what their mission is. Then you're in a much stronger position to refer people to them.

Yeah, so you, you actually do this. You were having clients who you are helping them find JV partners, so you must really have to know your clients well.

Correct, correct. I'm typically, when I'm looking at potential partners, there are up to 30 questions. I'll be asking them about everything, instead of everything in their business, like questions about, like, roughly, like, what sort of audience size you work with. How engages your audience in terms of, like, when you, you know, when you send emails out, you know, typically what percentage of people open your emails and click through on your emails, can you tell me a bit more about your audience avatar? You know what, what's what's the sort of profile is that there's that level of granularity, because these, those all those nuances, all that level of detail will determine whether who they're a fit for, and you don't know that without asking the right questions.

I know that when you talk to I first met you, and I talked about partnerships, like when I sometimes meet people, and I go to places where pitch people are pitching their JVs, they're saying, "Oh, I have this program and I give a 30% commission. I'm thinking, "I don't care what your commission is, I don't even know you program until I get to know you, and I've heard great reviews about you, and I know that what I'm selling, if I'm putting you in front of my people, it needs to be absolutely amazing. So these are these, like they're looking for these, I guess, either the one-sided one, which is, you know, I've got a, I've got a great commission, promote me, and then there's ones that say I'll do a commission with you, you do a commissioner, being it needs to be this even Stevens on both sides. And then when I met you, it was sort of like it was very organic. You, you wanted to understand, you know, what opportunities there are in the grand connection for your clients. And then also on the other side, how it could support both of us, and what didn't have to be even. I really like that, to

Be honest with you, very rarely is a partnership, even it's very often a situation where your audience might respond slightly better to what I do than my audience responds to you. It doesn't really necessarily matter, because you're the place you should be coming from is, is I want to work with this partner because actually they are genuinely offering something that I don't do, they're genuinely offering, they're solving a problem that my audience need to solve. I'm doing my audience a service by telling them about what you do, that that has to be your starting point, and obviously it's a bonus that that potentially you've got something that their audience wants as well.

Yeah, that's

That's what you have to cover if you're simply doing it because you want something back, that that can hurt you, because you can say, well, I'm going to promote you because I want you to promote me, but it may be actually that promoting them may not be as beneficial for you, because it's not exactly what need, and you can end up burning your email list by promoting too many people who are, you know, what their offer is really isn't necessarily the right thing for your audience, so you have to be really, really careful, especially as I've noticed an erosion in trust, right? When people, when people look at emails that promote other people's offers, people are a little bit more cautious before they decide to click through or sign up for someone else's stuff. That is something that is, that is a danger that you have to avoid. Don't necessarily go, 'You know what? Yeah, I really want you to promote me, so I'll promote you. I wonder if what you promote is just is just something that's this doesn't look relevant to your audience. And then your audience starts to get annoyed, they start to think, well, why do you keep telling me about stuff that's not related, like in my case, for example, my audience are very interested in stuff that's closely related to JVs, so if it's slightly too far removed, it needs to be something to do with joint ventures, it needs to be something to do with tactics that will grow your audience, that will bring more clients to you. Once we get a little bit more removed from that, the audience just doesn't respond as well.

So, if I wanted to get started partnering, let's say I have been doing JV, so I kind of, I, but like five years ago I was at no, I didn't even know what it meant. I remember when I first met you, Captain JV. What does that mean, anyways? Where does that name come from? Why did you call yourself Captain JV?

Just because the, because I've been doing, you know, I've been doing JV so intensely for such a long period of time. This is really, this is really my space.

Did someone start calling you that, and it just took off?

Correct, correct.

Well, it's a great name. I remember it all the time. People always remember it too, like it really stands out. Yeah, yeah.

Thank you very much. But yeah, to do joint ventures, there's, there's, there's, there's really a few things that you have to have in place. The first thing is you have to have a proven offer, so before you start asking people to promote you, you need to know that the service that you provide or the product you provide is something that you've sold before, people have bought, people like, so you know that you can roll it out more widely. Um, the second thing you need to do is you need to have something free that you can offer people, but people, before people buy from you, they need to have a taste of what you're like to work with. They also then you need to prove to them that you can help to solve the problem that they are suffering from, so they need to have enough of an experience of how you work to know that you're credible, to know that you are trustworthy, to know that that you have the capability to help them solve the issue that they're struggling with. Once they've gone through that process, then you can send them to something, so you might, for example, give a freebie away that they so you give them a tool that really helps them to solve their problem, or you want some large training that basically gets them to start thinking about what they're, why are they having the problem they have, what can they do about it, and then they can go and get in touch with you, so, so, so, so, he's talked so far about the first thing is having a proven offer, the second thing is having something free that you can give them, whether it's a tool that they can download or some training. The third thing you need to do is you need to have an audience. Okay, so there's a bit of a chicken neck situation, because sometimes people want to do JV partnerships, they don't have an audience, but you need to, you know, obviously, because if you want people to reciprocate, if you're just saying to people, can you promote me and I can promote you, but as a starting

point, you need to find a few people who will come on board to share with you with their audience what you do. So, I've got a freebie, you know, can I, you know, can I, for example, speak to some of the members in Grand Connection, and they're excited about my tool, that my program, my methodology, you know, can they promote my freebie, and as your audience grows, you'll find it easy to get more partners on board, obviously, but there will be people who believe in what you do, they'll be interested in what you do, they'll be prepared to support you, there are also some great promotions out there to help you to grow your, to grow your list. For example, Tom Matson runs a program called 1000 person drive to help you to grow your list. Catherine O'Leary, and so there's growing your list. You need to have a one sheet, which means you need to have, you know, if you want people to promote you, they need to know a little bit about what is my program, who am I serving, who's my target audience, what's the.. if I've got a webinar or a launch coming up, what are the dates going to be? What commission do I offer, so on. So, having a simple Google document that you can share with people about your program, and then finally you need to have tech, the right tech in place, which means that if you want people to promote you, you need to have a way to track people, because how are you going to know if that partner is actually a good partner? You're only going to know if they're a good partner or not, if you can track how many clicks they got, how many opt-ins they got, how many sales they got. So, imagine you've got five people promoting you at the same time, how do you know if it was mr. mr. A, mr. B, mr. C.

If you have an affiliate system in place, every time somebody opts into your webinar, everybody, every time somebody opts into your group training program, you know who was the person who sent that lead to you, who was the person who sent that sale to. So, you've got to have the right, you've got to have that tech set up. Okay, so let's just talk about those things again. You've got to have number one, you've got to have a proven offer that people will, that people will buy. The second thing is you need to have a freebie, you need to have something free that you can give people, so they join your email list. The third thing you need to have is you need to have an email list that you're growing, right? Yes, you might be starting from zero, but that is a really important thing that you grow your email list. Fourth thing you need to have is a one sheet, so if you're asking somebody to promote you, there's a sheet, simple sheet you can give them of information about what you do. Finally, you need to have tech in place, so you can track everybody.

Oh, and that one sheet, I guess that includes what your pro, that includes a little bit about your offer, what your affiliate

It's what the offer is, what the problem offer solves, what the freebie is, who your target audience is, and then just the dates of your promotion, and any commission, or if you can promote them back as well, let them know about that, and also, like, if they want to promote you, whether they get started, is there is there an affiliate page where they sign up that they can go to, for example.

Yeah, and I guess, and then it's up to you to decide if that's the right fit. There's lots of events that happen, and you run, you run an event too, where you bring potential JV partners together, and then people share their what's on their one sheet, their what their offer is, and what they are, what they offer their JV partners, and what they're selling, and who your audience is, because you do need to see that match of audience, is the audience matching, right?

Correct, correct. I run a, so I run a, I run a meet up on the last Wednesday of the month, it's quite a unique meetup in that the people who come are different every month, because I'm, I had. Pick people to invite, and that's because I want my clients to get to meet new JV partners each month, and people are meeting more, say, you know, I've got a launch coming up, I've got a webinar coming up, these are the people I'd like to collaborate with.

So, let's jump back to the poor person that doesn't have a list. Okay, what are we going to do? So we can, we can be in the grand giveaway. That's a great thing to do to start making your list. Once you have something like a lead magnet, you can come to Grand Connection events and start sharing that, and other networking events. And we also, as part of the Grand Connection, we are a partner with Go Connection. See, there's over 100 events a month, yeah, all over the world that you can attend as a Grand Connection member. So that's very easy way to start building your list. Participate in the Grand Giveaway members, if you're listening right now, make sure you get your gift at the giveaway. There's two a year, we're always open for contributions, and that you know some members get 100 people in the giveaway. It's great, yeah,

yeah, exactly, exactly. So, so good starting point is, is coming to the Grand Connections events, come to their giveaways, but also you've got leverage, right? So, if you ask a plot, the joint venture does not have to be, you know, give me an apple, I'll give you an apple, it could be you give me an apple, I'll give you an orange, so it could be someone you say to somebody, listen, I have a really good freebie that that you might want to promote to your audience, so I've got a JD checklist that you'd be, that'd be really relevant to your audience. I don't have, I'm just building up my audience from scratch, but I can support you by number one, I can commit to supporting you in six months to a year from now, once my sister's grown, that's that's the first thing you can do. The second thing you can do is, is to say to them, I've got some fantastic connections. Is there anyone I can introduce you to? I could say I'd be happy to offer you a complimentary place on my program in return for you promoting me. So just think about it's not so much like you promote me, I'll promote you, but it's think of, think of it in terms of you've helped me. How can I, what can I do to support you? So, so not everyone will promote you, is always going to be thinking straight away. Ah, okay. Well, I'm only going to promote you if you promote me. It might be there's something else really valuable you can do to support them, which, which will, which will, which will be more than bring them on board,

And another thing I've seen is people can be very active, like you can, you can promote somebody, let's say my list is small, but I want to partner with somebody who's got a bigger list, and we're going to just do a reciprocal type of a, I'll promote you, you promote me, well, maybe I promote you five times, and you've got a couple of different programs going on, or you got your lead magnet, and it's being tracked, so I know, and you can see that I'm doing some more frequency versus, you know, one one or two emails, which might be what they, they share back, so even out

The other thing you can do is with some partners, they may be open to a financial reward, so you could also say to partners that you know, I give a, you know, I offer a flat fee for every x number of opt-ins that you give me, right? You know, if you can, you can get, if you can generate x number of opt, you know, instead of paying them commission for any sales they make, you say to them, I'd be very happy to offer you, you know, this amount for any options I get, which I believe you, me, it will be much cheaper than anything you get from Facebook.

Yeah, Google ads,

Right? And much better quality, because you know with Facebook, you don't even always know where these leads are coming from, right? You don't have the quality of them, whereas with a partner, you've actually taken the time to find out who is their audience, right? What, who is your tribe? What kind of people are they? What problem are they suffering from? You know, you know who you are, you know who's coming onto your list.

Some Grand Connection members, that there's one, Mark Mahinny. Have you met Mark? He's absolutely

Yes.

Coaching Jungle, it's Coaching Coaching Desert. No, it's a jungle coaching jungle, but he offers an opportunity where you pay a fee to do a joint venture with him, and he doesn't take a commission, so you know it's a way that's

A fixed fee, there's a fixed fee, but you know that they're going to be sending multiple emails out for you, they're going to be featuring you on the podcast, and so on. The thing to do is just to, before you commit to that, is just get some background information on who else have they promoted and what kind of results do they get, so you know what you're, you know what you're buying into.

Yeah, but yeah, and that's easy to get, because you're, you know, we're part of a community, and you can ask around and learn,

Get references, you can speak to other people that work to it.

Yeah,

Let's go back a few years, right. You had the pandemic, and you had a lot of people stuck at home, and people with a lot of time in their hands, and willing to kind of look at all sorts of coaching offers and programs that they're willing to buy into people. Have obviously in the five years now since the pandemic, that's probably maybe four and a half years, more and more people are going back to, you know, people, there's more and more hybrid kind of working and networking where people are both online and and meeting people face to face, but what I would say, what has happened is that in the five years since the pandemic, people have become more discerning. So, I think during, during the pandemic, and in the time immediately after, there were an awful lot of coaches and experts who jumped on the bandwagon, and those are coaches and experts who are of varying quality, quality, shall we say, right? Some are very good, some are genius, and as a result, I think there's a.. there's been something of a trust erosion that when people.. and it goes back to I said before, where a lot of people who do JD partnerships go, 'Well, if you promote me, I'll promote you, right? And so they get. they get a high volume of emails where people are promoting all sorts of people, and they start, they start feeling, well, why am I being promoted? All these things, they're not relevant to me. So, I think there are two things at play. I think that, you know, that people are seeing what's coming through, and they're little, being a little bit more cynical, all these people actually any good, right? Is this just you promoting somebody because you know you've got an incentive to promote this person, or do you actually believe in them? So, so there is a little bit of a.. there's definitely an erosion of trust, but there's also an erosion of attention, right? There's an attention deficit because people are so overwhelmed with so many people trying to push offers at

them, they're just zoning out, not paying attention to them. Now, what that means is that a couple of things. It means that before you rush into promoting someone just because that you want them to promote you, promote you, you've got to be discerning, you've got to actually look at their offer and say, hold on a second, is this relevant to my audience? Right? When I promoted offers are like this in the past, how is it done right? How my audience react to it, like for example, it might be a topic you've that actually promoted before quite a few times, and your audience have just heard about it again and again and again, they've had enough. So I think the first thing is you've got to be, you've got to be a little bit more picky about who you agree to support or not support. I think you have to do a little bit more due diligence about who you're promoting to make sure they are credible, but then having made a decision to promote somebody, don't just half-heartedly, you know, half-heartedly say, 'Well, I'll quickly knock out a really quick email to promote you, and that's what people do often. They get in the world of joint ventures, you have something called swipe copy, and swipe copy is when a someone says, okay, I really, really want you to promote some training that I'm doing, I'm going to give you a pre-written email to promote, and what happens is the partner just takes it and copies it word for word, and the problem is when you're promoting somebody else, you can see if it's your tone of voice a lot, and if you people feel, oh my god, it just promoted somebody else that they don't pay any attention.

Well, sometimes it says insert name here still left in it because they've delegated it to somebody, they just caught the pas copied it over, right?

Exactly, the swipe copy is white copy, the more swipe copy is it, it's basically it's a foundation, right? It's a little bit like the suggestion of how to put the email, but you should never be using the swipe copy verbatim as it is. You should be putting your own tone of voice, like if someone is talking about solving a particular problem. Well, how about write about how you've experienced that problem yourself, or how your clients experience that problem. Talk about what they struggled with, what they're trying to solve. Go and talk about the person you're promoting and say, why, why are they right? What are they doing that's different to other people, right? How can they help your audience solve that problem? Now, when you're coming from a place where you're really talking from your heart about what people struggle with and how this person can make a difference, then you keep your audience start paying attention, because they don't feel it's just another email, you're speaking in language that that they feel resonates with them, and as a result, they're paying attention to you, and they'll, they'll be paying attention to the person you're promoting, because they'll feel no, I'm not just, you're not just talking about somebody because there's something in it for you, you're talking about that somebody, because this is a problem you guys have, and I'm telling you, you need to follow what they do, because it's going to help you. Then it, then you're coming from a place where people pay attention, because that you've written in a, you've written in language that is resonates with them, so they pay attention, but also because you have personalized what you've written, they also feel they trust you more, right? So it's both, it's both attention, it's grabbing their attention using your own tone of voice, but it's also injecting sincerity and intentionality into this, so they actually. Feel that you're that you'll be trustworthy and you're not

just basically trying to earn some commission from somebody,

Yeah. And I guess you can't do too many, right? That's why you said the discerning part, because you're gonna, your list,

Yeah. And that's where I help clients. My one of my, one of the things my clients worry about is they don't want to burn their list, and what I say to them is, you, there are lots of ways you can help your, your firstly, firstly, if you were to promote 50 partners, right, what you'll find is the 50 partners you collaborate with, out of those 50, there'll be probably be about 10 that bring in the large share of your leads and sales, so what you need to do is, when you are running your marketing plan, you need to focus on how can I market my those 10 people, and then with the remaining 40 people, how can I still do something to help those people without burning my list, because you can't, you can't give equal attention to 50 people, your email list, your email list will not like you for that.

Well, with my emails, like I have, I have 25 events a month of our own,

So there's ways they're ways to, they're ways to support your partners, you know, like for example, my clients, some of my clients will have, in a typical month, they'll have a couple of, have a couple of partners, maybe, where they do a what's known as a solo email, where they give those, those really top partners lots of attention, and then some of the lists, some of the smaller partners that don't do as well. What they might have is a weekly newsletter, or a fortnightly newsletter, and say, here are some really interesting people who are doing some cool things that you might want to know about. And

I see that a lot at the bottom. I actually, that's one of the great places I go. I always, most people say, oh, it's just the top that reads, Susan reads the bottom, because I'm looking for all the people that are JV partners in at the bottom of people's emails,

Even though it's about honesty from you. I would say to the people who deserve to be the people who really deserve your attention, put your heart and soul into that soda email, and for the people who don't need as much attention, right? What you're doing is you're saying, look, here's some really interesting people who are doing some cool stuff, check them out. Yeah, but, but it's just making sure that you reserve your solo emails for those top partners, and when you do them, do them properly, put your heart and soul into the people who really deserve. Put heart and soul in,

Well, what we do is with our top partners of it is they get to come on our stage and share

With all business. There is the Pareto's principle applies to applies to everything in that there's that rule that about 20% of the people bring in, you know, in any given situation, 20% the top 20% produce 80% of results. Your top 20% sell to top. If you have 10 salespeople, often it's two or three people in that sales team who bring in 80% of the sales, right? If you're running a store with 10,000 products, like a supermarket, right, to about a couple of 1000 of those products will bring in 80% for sales, and as I say, with partners, so it's just always be mindful who are the top 20% who are really, who are really rocking, and make sure you give those people your maximum attention.

So to be successful in JVs, it's starting to sound like it's two sides of the skill set you need, you need to be having the side where you have a great product and service and a JV program that that is well tracked and works well for people, and it's, it's, it's a good program,

Particularly with erosion of trust, right? People need to know the right is it, are you good at what you do, right? So you need to have something that's proven that's really important,

And then the other side is reciprocating in a way that you are building that trust and doing a good job reciprocating, because yeah, I know that you know I get reminders from I'll be doing JVs, and I really am grateful for the reminders that say, 'Hey, have you sent out your email? Like, my God, and I forward it on to somebody, and I say, 'This is gotta, we forgot about this. So it's important that you, as a JV partner with someone else, you have a system on your side that you manage your JV partners, that you know when you're promoting them, and you can be of service to them on that. Yeah, yeah.

And if I can add to that, don't rely on your partners to be on top of things, because they often won't be. Your longer, a lot of your partners will be solopreneurs that fly by seat of their pants, and you have to make sure you remind them right. Firstly, you firstly, you need to be very clear with partners. You need to signpost and ask them, like, you know, when are you like, oh great, you're supporting my launch on the I've got a, I've got a two week launch event in July, can you remind me what dates you're supporting me? Because if people actually commit to dates, that they're always more likely to show up for you. The second thing is, don't think they've remembered that, you know, remind them like a month before, remind them a week before, you know, just to remind you, you've got you down to support our launch on the second or fourth of July. Do you have everything you. Need, yeah, you're promoting us tomorrow. Do you have everything you need? Right, people forget, right? There people's that you're there. The VA goes on a vacation. Oh my god, I don't realize our VA is going on vacation. That person's got access to all that stuff. Sorry, we can't promote you because our VA is not here. That's happened

To me lots of times. I've had somebody say, oh, it was in my VA wasn't here, we couldn't get it out, and then I counted on those ones, yeah,

Yeah, and that's an important question, that's the sort of thing that I do, I, you know, I ask questions like, do you have a VA, who's doing, who's doing stuff, who's doing the logistics, are you doing logistics, do you have someone else doing the logistics, do I, do I have their contact details,

Yeah, so you, as a JV manager, you really help make sure that when something's running, it's all organized and tracked, and everybody knows what they're doing, right?

Yeah, yeah, a lot of cat herding, basically.

Well, I feel this way, that way what I'm doing too, especially like my summits. Oh my gosh,

You have to give people so many reminders, because people don't remember anything, you know. And, but, but people like you for the reminders. People remember that, right? When you think on top of people, they remember that you're on top of people, and they value and respect that.

No, I don't mind the reminders. I'm very happy to get, you know, you put the there's the link to the swipe again, which I can't remember where it was given to me before.

Plus, people are busy, people, unfortunately, stuff goes into spam.

Yeah,

Emails go into spam. I find with WhatsApp, I get WhatsApp messages that get buried at the top of my WhatsApp, you know. I've got, like, any given day, I've got like hundreds of WhatsApp messages that come through, so very often someone sends me a WhatsApp message, and it gets buried in the pile. Just bear in mind that your audience are your audience, they're juggling so much, they're suffering from information overload. They have, they have tons of emails that come into their inbox every day, they are relying on you to remind them. Yeah,

And in your, in your, you have a training program too to help people learn how to be JVs go through in that

Correct, so I have, so I've got a joint venture collaboration community is designed for people, for busy business owners who they've got a VA managing their JVs, and the VA basically needs the proven system to do everything, so I've got the joint venture collaboration community. There is there's 10 training modules on how to manage daily partnerships. There's office hours where you can ask many questions, and then there's a monthly meetup where you get to meet new JV partners every month.

Well, that's that's powerful for people just getting started, right? Yeah, and if you're too busy, you can send someone on your team to go to

That's our part I design is basically it's the, it's the, it's the networking group that you don't need to go and go to because you send a VA to it

So I was at it once, the mixer part, where you bring people together, and I noticed there were a lot of people that were the VA from so and so, yeah, yeah, right, and they were, they were introducing themselves very well, so you've trained them well, and they're in it's great, because then that person can focus on, you know, their client work and still be creating momentum in their business, so yeah, very good service that you've, you've put together for your, for your clients. Now, I just want to talk about some of your most successful JVs, because I want people to know that this is super powerful. So, you've worked with more than 500 JV partners, and you've helped facilitate over 5 million in partnership-driven revenue. So, thinking back, you know, what are the most successful JV partners have in common? Like, what makes it very successful for them,

I think. The most successful journey partners, what they would have in common is number one, that they've got a responsive email list, not necessarily a big - it's not about having the biggest email list, it's having the most responsive email list. I've worked with partners who've got a few 1000 people on their list, but the people on that list are that are active and engaged, so firstly, do you have a healthy email list? Do you have a good relationship with your email list? Do your email list listen to you? If you, when you say to your email list, you need to go and this person is doing live training next week, you need to go to that training. Will your email list listen to you and go and sign up for that? So that's that's the first thing. The best GVA, the best JV partners I work with have all got a very good, they've all got a proven offer, and they've got really, really also they've got free biz or events that people again proven, they've run these events before, they know that people sign up for them, they know that people, I mean, SD, SD Star is a very good example, right? SD has a proven webinar that she's again and again. We know that people will show up for it. We know that people will buy from it. It's something that you can.. she's got a formula, she's got a proven formula, and she just runs it again and again and again. There's a saying, if it's not. Broken, don't fix it right. If you've got an event that you're running and it right goes well, just keep doing it. But above all, I think the thing is, is that the successful JV partners are ones that all have a, they have a process in place for their partners that they follow, as in have a process for following up with partners, they have a process for meeting partners and making agreement with them, as in, you know, they're systematic in terms of reaching out, reaching out to the right partners, they know they know who the good partners are, they're systematic in terms of

asking the right questions to make sure those partners are a fit, and then they have a very rigid follow-up process, so those partners are very clear on what they're doing for what they're doing when they're doing it, and they have everything they need, and they don't forget that they're what they need to do, right? So it's let's just go through that again. The most successful partners have a proven offer and a proven, like, training events, I gave S is an example that does well, they've got a responsive list that listens to them, they've got a, and then, and then they've got a basically a, they've got a proven process in terms of how they follow up with partners, how they, how they meet with partners, and then the what I call the follow-up process after a partner said yes, we'll promote you, right? They have a follow-up process where they agree with the partner what dates the promotions are going to be, they make sure they send everything that they need weeks ahead, they don't get sent to, they don't get sent a swipe copy a few days before, they get it weeks ahead, and then they'll be reminded or get lots of reminders and lots of signposting, so nothing gets forgotten, right?

Yeah. No, so the whole thing about a system and process is really powerful, and yeah, I guess at the beginning you're kind of figuring out what that perfect well, as far as the follow-up, I mean, that's what you train, right? So, but how they like SD. I know that Estes, Es funnel is very solid. I've actually said to people, sign up for her funnel, so you can just see how well she does it,

Right? She's got, she got, she's got a, she's got a file that she's used again and again and again, but people sign up for something, they get a whole series of follow-up emails, and I've got a whole series of reminders and reminders and reminders, reminders

It's great value throughout the way. She has good stories in there. It's very well done.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't, you don't forget anyone who signed up, they don't forget about it, they know they remember to show up for it. And then, but then also externally, there's also very, there's also a very strong process in place to make sure that all the partners remember what they're supposed to be doing and when they're supposed to be doing it.

Yeah, so keeping everybody organized and having that framework around it, super powerful. Now, you, you talked about a successful collaboration, just to give us a story. You mentioned Grant, you want to tell us a little bit about that, that happened. You started a joint webinar,

We going back more than 10 years ago, and this is a really good example of a joint venture, right? Grant, Grant Leaveoff is a marketing expert, he's he's an expert on marketing strategy. What we would, so he would be, we run that, we ran a joint webinar where he focused on talking about what you need to do in terms of your marketing fundamentals, about he talked about your kind of your messaging, and what we talked about is what happens when people make that, what happens when your audience make contact with you, what do you need to capture their details, and what's the nurturing process you need to use, you've got them onto your email list. What do you then need to do to make them build a relationship with you? Right, obviously, to get them to go onto your email list, you've got to have the right messaging, right. So that's so one, so one one half of the partnership was the person focusing on the messaging. We focused on actual tech tactics and mechanism you need to use to build that relationship with your audience, and what we did is we were both because we were cross-promoting. There are people from his audience who signed up to the event, people, our audience who signed up to the event, and we both benefited. And you know, there were a couple of people from his audience who signed up and became clients who are still clients to this day, and that was 2015 So, talking about, you know, over 10 years later.

Have you done another webinar like that with him again? Like, did you have done

We've done, we've done more than one webinar together, and we have.. we.. that.. that was really my first foray into kind of joint ventures. Go, go back kind of 11 years ago the days when people used to use Go To Meeting rather than Zoom, or Go To Meeting,

yeah,

And that's what we did. Joint Venture does not have to be signing up. I talked about the Pareto's principle. It's not necessarily about quantity, it's not about Sam necessarily signing up a big massive partner. Sometimes it's just collaborating with one other person. Right, who's got a very engaged audience and doing something together.

Well, and I think of it as a ladder too, like you're working your way up, you know, you're not gonna, I'm not gonna, you know, collaborate with a great big multinational company on day one, right? You may never, and it's sometimes it's the small people where you, you can really work together, because get someone who's at the same level as you, and work and work your way out. In six months or a year, you're going to look back and go, "Whoa, I'm now up, I'm here. Like, I definitely.. the grand connection we have. I don't.. we've.. we've moved up the ladder on the size of the collaboration partners, because you know, we've gotten more organized by learning from people like yourself and other members of the community, and our list is growing, and our offers become more clear, and it just, you know, we're hitting those things that you say we need to have in place to make better.

Actually, it's worth saying something else. Also, you'll be surprised, you'll often, what you'll often be able to work with people who got a much larger email list than you do, so you'll sometimes be in a situation where you've got 5000 people on your list, and then you might come across someone who's got 30,000 people on your list. Now, why would they work with you? They'll work with you because you'll say to them, "Listen, my list is 5000 but the people on my list are engaged, and they like to buy, you know, and you know, if I tell them to buy your into your offer, they'll buy into your offer. So, obviously, that's very attractive to somebody. So, I would say, never be, don't, don't, don't, don't get imposter syndrome. Don't think well, because someone's much bigger than me, they won't work with me. Often, that's how your growth comes. It's, it's, it's stepping up and saying, you know what, I've got a really, really good offer, and I've got a really engaged audience, I think. I think they're going to be much bigger partners who enjoy working with me, and that's really where your growth starts to take off.

Oh, exciting. So, everybody listening here, this is really exciting. What's one action, so for our listeners, that they can take away this week to create more collaboration opportunities in their business right now.

First thing is, it, whatever network you're part of, right, seek out people in your network who've got an email list, right. Look around, look around your network. If you're part of, like, a networking group, like Brand Connection, look at, look at the people in your group and say, who are the people in my group who are, who got an offer that was complimentary to me, right? They don't compete with me, they're doing something that I don't do, but is relevant to my audience. That's a really, really good starting, starting point to look at, right,

Reaching that same audience as you. Yeah,

Exactly, exactly, which in that same audience would do. You don't, you don't have to start, you don't have to start spending lots of time searching in other places. Start off with your own network. Yeah,

Yeah, no, there's lots of people in the network, and once you're very clear who the person you're looking to collaborate with is, you start asking in your grand ask, who you want to meet, and people in the network know people, so exponential in size,

Right? It starts to grow organically. Also, once you start collaborating with somebody, you can then say to them, "Well, who else do you collaborate with that would be a good fit for me?

Yeah, and then you also can see when you're involved in something, maybe it's a summit or a book, a group bookmark, collaboration book, you'll see. Well, those are all they've all come together. They could also be collaborative partners for you, because you're already involved in something with the same audience, so it just grows. And I can tell that's how you got to your 5000 relationships. It did just grow, didn't

Exactly

Well, where can people learn more about you, Danny? And I know you have a gift.

Absolutely. So, go just go straight to www.captainjv.co and when you go to that page, you will get my free gift. I have something called a JV readiness checklist, and what that does is that checklist takes you through the all the elements you need to have in place before you start partnering, because you don't, before you, as I've said throughout this podcast, you can't start partnering straight away. There's certain things that need to need to be that you need to have as a foundation, and what that checklist will do is it will take you through the basic foundation that you need to have before you can start operating.

Oh, that's a great gift for everyone getting started. Is I'm going to download it. So, Danny, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your insights, experience, and wisdom around collaboration and partnerships. You are definitely Captain JV, and one of the things we talk about often at the Grand connection is that opportunities rarely happen in isolation. They happen through people, relationships, trust, and the willingness to create value together. I think today's conversation is a powerful reminder that successful partnerships aren't about having the biggest audience or the most connection, they're about building genuine. Relationships creating value and following through to our listeners. I encourage you to take one idea from today's conversation and put it into action this week. Reach out to someone, nurture a relationship, and explore a collaboration that will take the next step on a partnership opportunity you've been thinking about. If you'd like to learn more about Danny and Captain JV. Be sure to check out all the links in the show notes, especially his JV readiness gift. And don't forget to grab your Grand Growth bundle and your free guest passes at Grand connection.ca forward slash gifts. And if you're looking for a community where entrepreneurs come together to connect, create, and collaborate. We'd love to welcome you to the Grand Connection. Until next time, keep connecting, creating and collaborating. Thanks for listening, and we'll see at the next episode.

Thank you.