Embark on a revealing expedition as I recount the exciting tale of fostering a strategic partnership that led to the creation of a unique digital product. Teaming up with a fellow podcaster, we ventured into the world of educational courses, meticulously carving out growth opportunities and innovative strategies to benefit our combined audiences. With the spotlight on crafting a compensation model that's fair and fruitful, we tackled complex topics like affiliate marketing, site optimization, and revenue sharing. The conversation gets granular about financial arrangements, providing invaluable insight into the nuances of affiliate commissions and revenue splits—and why nailing down these details is crucial for trust and transparency among partners.
Then, let's dive into the heartbeat of joint ventures, where mutual excitement and balanced reward systems are the secret sauce for collaborative success. Here, I open up about my personal blueprint for building partnerships that keep everyone from leaders to contributors equally invested and motivated. As we navigate the intricate dance of responsibilities and rewards, discover how establishing clear, detailed roles can maintain creative fervor and avoid future confusion as projects evolve. It's a masterclass in ensuring every voice is heard and every effort is valued, setting the stage for a dynamic where growth and fulfillment go hand in hand.
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Learn DIY Due Diligence Get training from an Acquisitions Attorney to become a DIY Due Diligence buyer!
Embark on a revealing expedition as I recount the exciting tale of fostering a strategic partnership that led to the creation of a unique digital product. Teaming up with a fellow podcaster, we ventured into the world of educational courses, meticulously carving out growth opportunities and innovative strategies to benefit our combined audiences. With the spotlight on crafting a compensation model that's fair and fruitful, we tackled complex topics like affiliate marketing, site optimization, and revenue sharing. The conversation gets granular about financial arrangements, providing invaluable insight into the nuances of affiliate commissions and revenue splits—and why nailing down these details is crucial for trust and transparency among partners.
Then, let's dive into the heartbeat of joint ventures, where mutual excitement and balanced reward systems are the secret sauce for collaborative success. Here, I open up about my personal blueprint for building partnerships that keep everyone from leaders to contributors equally invested and motivated. As we navigate the intricate dance of responsibilities and rewards, discover how establishing clear, detailed roles can maintain creative fervor and avoid future confusion as projects evolve. It's a masterclass in ensuring every voice is heard and every effort is valued, setting the stage for a dynamic where growth and fulfillment go hand in hand.
Business Buyers Club Enter 070499 at checkout.
Network and connect with other Acquisition Experts!
Learn DIY Due Diligence Get training from an Acquisitions Attorney to become a DIY Due Diligence buyer!
All right, good morning, all right. Well, one thing I really enjoyed about last night I went through, I'm working, I'm getting more into the weeds with a potential partnership of some sort. So this far in, I'm sure you've heard about the partnership by now, but since I won't know how well it did or did not go, I'll tell you what I did to lead up. So I was a guest on a podcast a couple of weeks ago. After the podcast, someone I really clicked and realized, hey, we could do something with, like an educational course, some digital products and tag teaming together. So they've started developing a course and they have some gaps in their content. I can fill some of those gaps in the content with my knowledge base and we both have different strengths and different areas of knowledge. That would make for a great e-course digital products, all that good stuff.
Speaker 1:
We talked a little bit and then we met afterwards to go over like what her business plan and her business structure is and I was very much assessing where are, where is the status of everything? And, in the back of my mind, where could it go? What would that look like and what would that? What are the hurdles to get to that destination? So almost like a business consultant I've been a consultant in my day job over half of my career, so I'm very much used to coming in with fresh eyes, seeing what is, assessing where it could go, and then what are the steps to get to that next level of growth. And so after we met for that first session it was like 45 minutes I said, all right, this is fantastic. I see a couple areas. Here's a quick snapshot. Here's four areas where I think some things should get implemented and then here's how I think the long-term growth could go. I don't fully know, but here's what I'm seeing. Can we do a part two in like two days? Let me gather some thoughts, put together some sketches, some mock-ups, and go from there. She said, yeah, that'd be great.
Speaker 1:
So we did a part two and we went through an hour-long session and I said, all right, here's the four bullet points. Here's what you should do to your website. Here's how we can start getting you affiliates. Here's how they can start monetizing your content and it costs them zero times zero dollars, but they start getting a monthly recurring revenue stream by referring your services. Here's how you build out your professional connections. Here's how you build your consumer base for future buyers. Here's how you'll start getting. Here's how you can start referring consumers and buyers to other CPAs, attorneys and all that stuff so you can start getting paid and start getting those referring out and getting your own referral fees coming in.
Speaker 1:
And then here, what's the other item. Here's how you would tag and automate and do your accounting on the backend. Here's how you would tag and automate and do your accounting on the back end. Here's how you would tag them in your CRM. Here's how you would label them. Here's how the revenue or the when someone pays a monthly membership versus billable hours to you as an attorney versus buying a digital product.
Speaker 1:
Here's how the accounting structure would go, and I laid it out so that all the accountants or the the internal team would have to do is just follow what I wrote out for them. So okay, this is great. You know how does Nathan get paid? How could Nathan? What's Nathan's incentive for doing all this and giving me the game plan? I said well, here's what I'm proposing. Here's an affiliate breakout. I want to contribute to that content. So I think there needs to be an affiliate commission as well, as after that, there needs to be like a content creator split and, based on certain criteria of what people buy, here's what revenues and splits would be. And so I just mapped it out real quick and it said hey, give me a couple of days, I'll send over the bullet points on the four action items to help get your brand, your product, your everything out into the marketplace, product, your everything out into the marketplace. And then I'll send over some more details on, like the splits and affiliates and all the nitty gritties for you to review and either tweak or to approve and validate. We can rock and roll from there, just so that we're talking the same number.
Speaker 1:
So, lastly, I put together like a two page breakout on the splits, affiliates and referrals, and it was thorough. All this to say, I know that's a lot of details. The reason I wanted to do that is I've learned in the past whenever there's vagueness or uncertainty, folks are less confident to proceed because people assume in general, as a population, people assume the vagueness is not going to be in their favor, and usually when there's something vague or uncertain and they think, oh, of course it's going to be in my favor, they're either naive or they're a little narcissistic, or they're most likely naive though, and so someone this person I'm working with very intelligent, very confident, very interactive. She's an attorney and so I had a hunch that she would appreciate the details, the clarity, the getting granular so that there's less confusion down the road, and so put together all last night forward over her way and we'll see how it ends up going. So, since it's all a draft, right now it's nothing is like mutually agreed upon or signed or whatever. I'll share the, the other stuff later.
Speaker 1:
But all I have to say, while putting together the, the commissions and the rates and everything, there has to be an incentive for the other person to put the blood, sweat and tears into the product. So a typical affiliate rate for, like, a digital product is somewhere between like 20 to 50%, and I said like upfront, for getting other professionals to promote your affiliate product, it's got to be a higher rate. They got to know like they're getting a juicy deal, referring your e-course to their friends, family, coworkers, clients so that they're promoting you left and right their friends, family, coworkers, clients so that they're promoting you left and right. And then for the backend stuff, there needs to be an incentive for content creators or contributors to the digital products to continue getting plugged in, adding value, clarifying what they mean in prior content to promote it themselves. So both be an affiliate and a content creator as well.
Speaker 1:
And, at the end of the day, this is this is not my maximum revenue creating outlet For me. Mine's going to be something different, but this is an input component and so there needs to be something so that this profitably makes sense to take up my time, my energy, my resources, so that it's enough for me not to make it my full-time focus by no means. I'm still getting my day job, but there needs to be enough of this that, all right, this is enough to gain my attention, gain my, to grab my attention, to incentive my, advise me to both be an affiliate and a contributor and a content creator, but also, at the end of the day, so that this gal that I'm looking to partner up with, that she still feels like she's getting the lion's share, she's getting the bulk of the revenue, that she's not giving away all of her revenue to other people because they're supporting and referring and all that. So there's a lot of components to think of making a compensation structure that is in line with industry standards, but it's also juicy enough that it's more compelling than others and ultimately that it breaks out so that it'd be done. So the way we're doing it. Part of it is going to be affiliates get a juicy referral for the life of that membership and then when people like buy upsells or digital products or whatever, there's going to be a content creator pool, so folks that contribute content or add to the upsells, they get a cut of that as well.
Speaker 1:
However, anything that generates like billable hours or like day job type work or like consulting work like that goes exclusively to the consultant or the billable hours person. So if someone is an affiliate and I contribute content and it generates billable hours for this attorney gal, yeah, she gets 100% of those billable hours. I don't think I should get a portion of her billable hours. If she generated a new client for me and I get billable hours, I don't know why they would get a cut of that. That seems a little bit odd. So trying to figure out how to do this, it's a first pass.
Speaker 1:
Whatever we end up doing here, there's always a replied reciprocity that if this is a solid split across the board, then if we were to turn the tables and I do my own gym due diligence course, and she contributes to my platform and my content, and I copy and paste this exact structure that it's just as exciting to be on the small time contributor side as it is the captain at the ship, and that it's worth your while one way or the other.
Speaker 1:
And so that's my goal. If the tables were flipped, would I be equally as excited to have the additional responsibility and the additional income, or is it just as exciting to be a partial contributor, a partial income side of things? So that's how I'm mapping it out, that's how I'm structuring it, and I want to be as granular as I possibly can be so that there's less confusion later on and that this is compelling, exciting and engaging all around. So more to come from there. That's how we're initially mapping it out now, but that's how I think this thing can grow. That's where we're at, that's where we're going. Let's rock and roll with partnerships and working with other people's audiences.
