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[Music]
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thank you
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hi this is WP product cook the place where every week we interview an experienced WordPress product person on
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strategies tips experiences failures and successes of running successful and
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thriving WordPress product businesses I'm Katie Keith CEO at Bantu plugins
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and I'm Matt Cromwell at uh give WB and now senior director of customer experience at Stellar WP today's topic
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is building strong Bridges the importance of Partnerships in the wp product business space
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I love this topic because it's something that is always relevant to Wordpress product companies however it's even more
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relevant this week for those of us who attended word Camp Europe which was last week we met loads of incredible people
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and now it's time to follow up and consolidate those Partnerships that we discussed there
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absolutely and to talk with us today about this we have a special guest from
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a brand that you probably have heard of called buddy boss uh Francisco up I'm going to say the last name wrong I'm
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gonna let him introduce himself thanks for being here hello hello okay
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thank you for having me today I'm really excited this is uh this is my world Partnerships relationships so I'm really
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happy to to share my take on this yes uh you I should share a bit of my
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background so people get to know me is that okay yeah well I'm originally from Chile Latin America I have been living
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almost seven years in the UK now uh I still trying to get there with my
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English but we can survive then in the kind of work side of things
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uh I have been in the WordPress ecosystem running first a digital agency
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Latin America so I have built myself probably 100 plus websites and then the
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last seven years are having more in the kind of side of like leadership you know
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side of things with the marketing teams helping companies with growth uh for
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instance uh a few big you know big achievements where my time as a marketing director at bodyboss
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no so I helped them to scale from 40 team members up to 150 when I left so
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the monthly recurring Revenue grew like almost 12x during my my leadership in
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the marketing team then I also contributed in not the same way but with
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increased the revenue for wishlist member before they get they got acquired like a year ago I think that something
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happened again with them recently but in that first one I was uh you know helping them also as marketing director with
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initiatives and that involves lots of building relationships um either technical Partnerships or
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commercial Partnerships so and then now these days I am morning
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like fractional consultancy side of things for growth you know offering
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other SAS companies and also workers companies help with the marketing strategy and then on my own side because
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I love so much WordPress I have became my own Creator so now I am running two
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plugins and you can see me liquid pull now very branded liquidfall.com and also
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I own a strike calendar.com that is a Content management looking for for
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WordPress so now let's talk perfect I love it well every week we and
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try to kick it off with just talking about why we think this subject is so important for WordPress product owners uh why are Partnerships in particular so
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important um Katie do you want to kick us off yep well at
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WMC EU where Camp Europe last week I watched a panel about people talking
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about Partnerships and they said several times actually that with Partnerships two plus two equals more than four
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that's the principle that people seem to follow and while being logically impossible this basically means that
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when you work with other WordPress companies you can both benefit and both grow your businesses in ways that
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wouldn't be possible if you're working separately in isolation but for me it's not always obvious where to find the
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right Partnerships and work out things like how can both parties benefit from a partnership so that it's worth their
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while and also one for me is what happens when one company is a lot bigger
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and more successful than the other how can you still work together and make it worth everybody's while yeah no
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absolutely those are good points I love that analogy in general I love it for teams but it makes sense for
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Partnerships too um so we're one another way we say it is we are more than the
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sum of our parts like I think that's a a really good analogy for this
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um Francisco what's your take why is this so important for WordPress product owners to uh to consider and do
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Partnerships uh I'll just like take a post here and go back on the beginnings on why no why
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companies these days are recurring to to run go to network strategies or Partnerships instead of going via
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regular channels no like for instance if we think about what what companies can
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do today even small companies let's say hey you need to run ads hey this is the way to grow this is the way to raise
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awareness about your product or what you are building but the paid acquisition like media buying is getting expensive
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more and more every day and the Big Challenge especially on the marketing side of things when you try to nail the
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attribution of you know those channels no okay but where people was Touch first oh we touched them first on Facebook but
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they converted after clicking a banner on Google display in the end you are not clear exactly which of those challenges
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is really generate in the conversion you only can track the last one likely no so that is a big Challenge on when you are
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kind of using money not to try to measure okay or people coming from Google has an LTV of this and that or
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people coming from Facebook and the LTV is this and that and then the cost per acquisition so lots of kind of math you
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know is involved in trying to figure out the best way on top of the resources itself just to run you know pay the
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acquisition you need someone who knows Google you need someone who who knows social and also the budget that let's
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say maybe you know like companies that well established like you know a stellar or Bantu and maybe have now you know a
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position where their budget is available but for even small startups even like my small plugin in this case liquid pull we
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are just we we have right now let's say 150 paying customers so it's not like a huge budget no the plugins I'll say a
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small amount so there are a lot of challenges related to the budget and investment required to run paid
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acquisition that's the first reason I feel companies should consider seriously go
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for Partnerships the second reason is uh no like SEO the SEO is amazing but it's
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a long-term game even though you know you can use the amazing tools that we have at hand today like charge gbt and
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any other Jasper and so many more tools available to write fast or to
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simplify the flow or to speed the flow that's still a challenge like because your content will be there but it will
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take some time to reach the first page if it's not on the first page it doesn't exist because people will not see it
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anyway you know so if you can invest also resources not allocating people to write content but even if you find the
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right gaps in the keyword game that will take time to reach the right people when
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do the search so those two things even though are strong no media channels or acquisition
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channels these days that are kind of grow slow in slowing grow channels
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that's how I feel those channels are instead when you when you aim you know
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to build relationships with other companies with other influencers and the results can come to you faster way
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faster let's say hey no let's try to create an educational webinar on how to
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optimize the checkout page as simple as that now let's say for just like alludina examples from Katie you know
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like Katie has amazing products for woocommerce and one of them let's say fast card now you can like simplify the
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flow and remove the friction 10x from the checkout flow let's now run out
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together a webinar where we can do this and that so yeah when you get that you know you have educational content people
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first will be interested in to learn that they will join for free you don't need to pay for the emails right because
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they want to learn how can I sell more how can I deliver better experience to my buyers when they are visiting my site
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so yeah when you have all that together and you can have value to offer no like
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audiences like your potential customers and also you know like the potential audience of of your partner let's say so
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there are many parts as part of the partnership but I would say that the results can come way faster the
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investment in the partnership itself is also way lower because most of them are writing a a an article on each company's
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blog or run an event together where we do overlap you know let's say one event for us this time maybe in the next
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quarter one event for you so I mean there are many combinations of Partnerships no in regards to the
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offering something to the end user let's say content or webinar or a live event
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on a workshop and then the other side no let's say you want to build Partnerships
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for technical Partnerships let's say for instance I experienced that I'm not sure
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if I need to post in some time but I just got so many ideas that I want to share but one one one more one more to
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try to wrap up this like this this uh step is for instance when we launch in
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2000 2017 the body was platform you know that no probably you are aware it was a
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fork of body press within 100 000 tweaks we refine and clean the applying Etc but
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in that time there were no other plugins in the market compatible with the valuables platform so yeah it was like a
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you know silent plug-in and no one could kind of inject anything but my my work
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was reach out to all and other workers companies in the ecosystem and we end up
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with 25 companies building native Integrations for the valuables platform member press wishes member we got a WP
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Fusion not with this amazing Jack and then for instance we got directory
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plugins and building the same and we got even a fewcomers no plugins also learn
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Dash uh Etc like the whole ecosystem worked was shaped up and they say oh
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body was is it has 60 000 users and they
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are willing to pay because their product is not cheap nobody was entry level was is still 228. so like the audience is
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already kind of in the premium level so developers and other companies notice that they say hey this audience has the
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money because they are successful building courses and stuff so they committed to help us and we built a
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whole Integrations directory featuring all of them no and we are bringing sales for them because they contributed and
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help us build an ecosystem delivering more features for our own people nice so I would say that has no value like the
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value for everyone was huge like WP Fusion even later committed to deliver
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develop a deeper integration with the body was a product that came two years later
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and things keep keep going and keep going you know just to share a bit of this in in this in this section for sure
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yeah why is it important yeah now that's interesting though because you've by can
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by by linking it with other types of marketing paid acquisition is expensive and organic SEO takes time while being
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free if you do the work yourself and have the skills partnership you can do quickly and it's free apart from your
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time um ideally I'd say I'd like to do all three um for the best results but that's a
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really good way of looking at the value of partnership and you've covered a huge breadth of the different types of
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Partnerships that you can do as well absolutely right for me that's the the Crux of it is a little bit of what you
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touched on there Francesco that uh the bottom line is that it's a way to extend your natural audience like uh give WP
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has a specific audience that is attracted to give WV we can reach like if we do all the paid ads we want to do
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we do all the email we want to do we do all the blogging we want to do we're going to reach this one audience but as
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soon as we actually partner with yoast or anybody else we're going to get
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exposed into their natural audience and that's an audience that honestly from all of our own native uh efforts we're
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not going to really plug into that really easily of course there's tons of overlap between like somebody like yoast
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and and give but that gives us the ability to to extend our our reach uh
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much more further for sure um and honestly like when it comes to uh
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Partnerships I think the WordPress community and the WordPress ecosystem is so easy everyone loves to be able to
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collaborate and work together um so in many ways it's like it's one of those things where you're not really a
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WordPress business unless you're collaborating with somebody else in WordPress yeah um I have I have one thought in one idea
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that you know updated questions that Katie bring not to attention is what
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what we should do when our company is the small one or embarrassed when you know like a new player is coming and
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he's asking for some help now I I I have believed that myself in both sides
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working for become with big WordPress companies I was like kind of hey we are the coolest in the market and we can
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bring you like very premium people to your plugin if you will commit to develop an integration no so I I leave
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that and then now I am in the other side with my own stuff because I am the small one now no and then what happened is no
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when when you are the big company and you are you know maybe someone engaged
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with you trying to get your help no um I think that how the big companies
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should see this is like kind of in uh let's say non-profit way in a kind of
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mission driven mission-driven approach like you are kind of now contributing to
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the ecosystem yeah helping this small one of course you need to always double check or probably
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check that is legit that it's a quality product anyway because even new products
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are high quality anyway and also if that product will will not became a competitor for you someday yeah
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or they probably will evolve to become a competitor someday is that probably I always checked tried to figure out with
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the founders and hey what is this what do you want to do but I think that when you are the big one and a small one came
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to is coming to you you should try to like put yourselves that 10 years ago you were there first yeah no like I mean
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for sure like one one way I thought about it is like why does why would yoast be motivated to collaborate with
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kefwp at all well in many ways it's like I said it's not any different than what I was saying in terms of extending your
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reach yoast of course is applicable to any WordPress website everyone needs SEO
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in one way or another um but give targets a non-profit audience and the non-profit audience is
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a segment of yoast's audience uh so if they want to get deeper into the non-profit sphere in particular then
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collaborating with us is a great way to do that um so even with a larger org like that
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there's real incentives and real reasons why you would want to collaborate with a smaller one uh in terms of audience
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reach I think so yeah I have learned one I have um no worked with an inke from
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Jost like these are her Partnerships manager and she no she shared a few
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insights it's not it's not private information but for instance the repo probably probably just is the most
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active and downloaded plugin on the repo and the the repo itself has a cup
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no in how many installations is showing like it says 5 million plus but the real
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number is 15 million that is not that huge is the number no now the the mind inside that she shares
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is that the world that Jose is doing to be able to build strong Partnerships is
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they are segmenting all their customers so when someone knows iPhone x Niche come to them hey
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let's say I'm building something for Publishers they know exactly which segment of their customers are
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Publishers or which segments are this well which segments are that so they
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know exactly they don't need to spam their whole audience they simply need to do the right move to reach with that
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partner to that specific audience and instead of being spammy this is adding value to their own customers yeah so
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that is something that uh we should really like um think about it for for those that are
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just getting started on Partnerships try to learn the most that you can from your audience so whenever someone comes to
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you you know exactly oh yeah I have around 10 of my audience that will be will love to learn more about your
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product or will we benefit from this and that so you have something concrete to offer as well yeah that is something
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that I learned from her it's amazing it's very good nice yeah I think that's good to think about how the big
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companies can benefit from working with the small companies because of the niches or whatever so I know
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people should do things just for the good of the community but if you're approaching somebody proposing a
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partnership you're likely more likely to be successful if you think of a benefit for them aren't you so I think that's
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really good I think even if they're bigger than you you probably can still help them by
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um targeting one of their um Target audiences or something
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yeah I'm trying to see what happened okay but it's all right I'm glad you're
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still here though um a quick minute and folks if you are on uh YouTube right now watching us uh
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thanks for being here you can uh jump into the chat and give us your input and your feedback we love Jesus your your
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own experiences with Partnerships uh or if you have any questions for Francisco or Katie or I we'd love to answer them
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here live um we throw your name up on the screen and all that kind of fun stuff so uh don't be shy
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um let's jump into story time um we go around the circle and talk about experiences for first-hand
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experiences that we have well the Katie and I have yeah I I am here my video is
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still not loading I'm not sure now now the video's gone completely um yeah it look like it's gone
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yeah um I'm glad you're still here all right um we'll talk with ghost Francisco and
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he's he's here yeah it's like this embodied voice isn't it
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yeah um Francisco what is your what what is a a one really good example or one um
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specific experience that you've had uh that was either good or maybe really bad uh with Partnerships love to hear about
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it yes let me come here give me one second please okay we'll go to Katie then Katie what's
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uh your story um I well with Partnerships it's easy to
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be a bit negative about it by thinking who is that somebody's your competitor if there's a bit of overlap or something
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like that so I thought for story time I'll do working with somebody who most people would see as a very definite
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competitor but is actually the company that I work with the most as you well know Matt
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um so um at Barn to nearly all of our plugins are woocommerce plugins and
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iconic are a woocommerce plug-in company and we do have some direct competition
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between our plugins and iconics um such as we both have woocommerce quick view plugins check out plugins and
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also restaurant ordering plugins um and yet we put that aside and find
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where we don't compete and where we have common audiences so that we can help to
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make each other more successful so I thought uh because of that sort of potential conflict that's quite a good
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one to go through how you can work with people even when they could be viewed as your competitors nice so
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um one example is cross-promoting each other's plugins where they fill a gap
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which isn't met by our own so one example of that is my own restaurant
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ordering plug-in at Barn two does not have the ability for customers to choose
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a delivery slot and so we promote iconic delivery slots plug-in for people to use
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alongside our restaurant ordering plugin so the customer uses our plugin to
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create a food order form and then on the checkout page they use iconics plugin to allow the customer to choose when
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they're going to collect or receive their food order and we have that all through our knowledge base in tutorials
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and also even on our plug-in demo site we've actually included their plugin very clearly labeled that this is
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iconics plugin and we're Affiliates for each other so those use affiliate links
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which is another kind of type of partnership is a financial benefit a
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direct Financial benefit if you are using affiliate links to promote other people's products uh similarly we've
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worked with iconic to do direct Integrations between our plugins for example they did an integration with our
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woocommerce lead time plugin which on the product page it basically displays how long you'll be waiting for the
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product and so they did an integration with their delivery slots plug-in which automatically adds the lead time you add
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to our plugin to the next delivery slot time so that you get like a total
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waiting time and just being like low level Integrations like that where we're not competing we work together on
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we have done a lot of mutual guest hosting so that's writing articles for
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each other's blogs always on areas where we don't compete so for example iconic
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don't do anything about Wholesale stores selling to be sales so there is no
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threat to them in publishing articles on their blog about our wholesale plugin and similarly we don't have any plugins
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available products image thumbnails all the sorts of things they do so we're happy to publish things promoting their
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products and uh the final example I came up with was in Black Friday 2021 the one
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before last where we arranged to email each other's customer list uh with a
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special deal so like we wrote say oh um extra 10 off for all um on all of
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iconics plugins in addition to their usual Black Friday deal and they did the
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same for us so because we are both targeting the same user base which is
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woocommerce store owners looking to optimize and improve their store we literally emailed each other's customers
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and did a reciprocal Arrangement so I think sorry yeah I did not know that and
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that's really clever it didn't actually generate that many sales um because we did track it which is why we didn't do
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it in 2022 but that's why I didn't know it either but it did generate sales just not
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necessarily enough to make it worth the time yeah so those are all things I've done with a company that would be viewed
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as a competitor that's awesome um we have a nice comment here a deal is
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watching uh Partnerships can offer many benefits for WordPress product businesses such as increasing brand
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awareness and credibility by associating with trusted and reputable Partners expanding customer base absolutely 100
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percent that's why we're all here to talk about it um one other real quick one other
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interesting one um when you have good Partnerships you can also kind of band together when like
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crappy things happen like where you also like wrapped up in this um yif uh dmca
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takedown uh situation did you did you get a known notice about that um yeah yeah we were only in the second
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round of um complaints yeah yeah context for everyone is like there
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was a big dmca takedown uh that happened to a lot of folks who offer woocommerce products uh and it seemed as if it was
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from yith uh it turns out yif didn't submit it ever and it's most likely some
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sort of like legal troll doing some things and there's some guesses of food that might be it seemed like it's
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probably some sort of GPL Club but it like it attacked a whole bunch of woocommerce folks and they all kind of
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banded together in the post status slack area and said yeah we got hit too we got hit two we got hit two and everybody
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kind of unified around uh a way to to respond to this uh particular kind of
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trollish attack I thought that was actually kind of fun like seeing everybody together being it wasn't fun
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that it happened it was just fun to see people collaborating and being like oh man this sucks I can't believe this is
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going to to all of us so um that's a big story yeah it was it was interesting so
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um real quick uh on my story time and then we'll get to you Francisco um on the give side
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um stripe and PayPal are a big kind of like official partners and of course a financial incentives are definitely a
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big partnership opportunity uh and we've been partners with stripe on PayPal for a really long time
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um those are a really big deal uh recently I themes uh uh solid WP I think
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um has partnered with patch stack and that's just a natural really easy partnership but what's great about it is
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that I themes is always I theme Security in particular has always been really focused on
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um the approach I would call it is hardening WordPress like they really focus really clearly on making WordPress
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even more secure um like user password type security and
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IP bands and things like that whereas firewall type functionality we've kind of left
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um outside of the scope of it but that's something that patch that they don't like to call it a fire firewall they
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call it virtual patching something the patch deck does really really well so we actually get to with this integration
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we're going to be launching it eventually we get to add a bunch of functionality to our product through a partnership
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um so that one is a really great one that I'm really excited about um and another one the longest standing
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partnership that I know of in the WordPress space is actually Nathan Ingram has been partnering with I themes
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for eight years ongoing now and he has produced a whole giant Trove of video
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content for eye themes over the years um and he's going to be coming along with us more and doing some more things
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with what we're calling solid Academy but Nathan has his own web agency and he
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does business coaching on the side and he's been helping us with leading and
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hosting and organizing and running I themes training for eight years now I
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think it's really amazing so I personally like in all the things that I find to be really extremely successful
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on the give side and even with other Stellar folks um so much of it is really dedicated to
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some sort of partnership in one way or another they just are really really fruitful in this way so
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um Francisco you are here you have video um yeah I'm not sure what happened are
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you refreshed I refresh the the screen and it works again so good good it wasn't a really good example a really
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good story time example for you for instance I would say uh during the
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time no uh that we were a buddy boss for instance platform the body was ecosystem
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lacks uh learning learning management system so from the very beginning what
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we did you know we built a strong relationship with the LMS companies the first one was learndash that still
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leading the market for like really by far so what we did we committed to
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develop a whole kind of unique UI ux front end for learn Dash so for instance
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if you compare kind of the default learner learn Dance Experience that even a few things are today offering that is
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just like a like light makeup what we did we built our own whole layout for
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that no and the LMS experience was amazing that was the even became one of
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the mind selling points of body boss so lots of learned as juicers are using
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body balls today mostly because the learning experience is amazing like we integrated dark mode like destruction
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free mode and a lot of like toys and whistles that now people love to deliver
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their content for the students and the and also the the relationship went
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really like deep because not everyone promoting the other so we were generating sales for learn Dash because
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we to all customers we say hey we work with learn Dash go for it it's solid and the same so even learn that became the
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number one affiliate that we have in our in our list no like like because of they
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were saying hey we have the LMS you want you want that treaty go for vadibles and so on no then we were that level of kind
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of partnership that the whole approduct the body was upload is you know full
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react native and it's integrated fully with learn Dash only as LMS yeah so
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because that relationship has been running for years so we know that it's a solid product it's a long-term thing so
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everyone committed and today people love how you know even The Learning Experience is running on Android iOS and
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all that nice now for example that I think that is amazing and we did similar commitment after a few years with
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um lifter LMS no Chris and the team so now we also created a whole you know new
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layout for lifter LMS and then now is they are close to release similar for
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tutor LMS but they're still they learned are still leading only available for the
32:07
app so I would say this the the lacking of a future can be transformed in a huge
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Advantage for your product if you find the right implementation in this case in
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this case but it was you know like did a magic kind of integrating that that that level of goodness if we say that no like
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the experience is smooth and and no even like the communication for future updates and all that is like really in
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sync so I would say this is one of the big wins in regards to the Partnerships that I have be able to kind of
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collaborate experience all that yeah the second one is one we we did with
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wishlist member that's why I think I end up working later for them because you know in that
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time Tracy shielders was leading the charge no as one of the co-founders so no there was no membership plugins
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natively integrated with the volleyball platform no and they were the first committing you know to develop that no
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like people wanted to a if people take level a I want to be I want them added to all these social groups or if people
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join the membership level B I want to upgrade their profile types to do this and that so they were like a really
33:24
neaty like people were asking for and they were the first ones to commit and deliver we run even webinars events
33:30
together and we generate also like lots of sales you know for them and vice versa because that integration
33:37
and so this is something that I would feel collaborating in this case these
33:42
were kind of a technical you know the kick started for for for this um partnership it was technical but after
33:49
the technical phase was completed it became more like a commercial educational partnership no they were
33:56
coming we run a webinar together as we still have all those listed bodybox.com webinars we we did one with Jack no WP
34:05
Fusion similar approach one with wishes member and the other one also with Adrian from groundhog
34:11
he was the first committee to develop a CRM an email marketing fully integrated with the valuables platform let's say
34:18
people join X group so it triggered this sequence and then you can do proper and
34:23
boarding to all members so I think that this uh these Partnerships when when it's on top of the the educational part
34:30
it brings cynical value no to your product and boost of course the value
34:36
that even groundhog can have for their customers is amazing because this opened
34:42
a whole new audience for groundhog for instance right now what it was users are like 70 000 paid customers no or a bit
34:49
more so now you can imagine that groundhog has all that universe of customers you know that are now
34:56
available for them to pitch to offer exactly so exactly I would say those
35:02
Partnerships were like clearly like win wins yeah you clearly that's a good
35:08
point I mean uh Katie I want to do a follow-up with you on this a deal again is pointing out a good one um here then
35:14
I wanna I wanna see what you have to say about this um finding and choosing the right Partners is not easy though it
35:19
requires research planning and Alignment I can't agree more and Katie we have brought this up a little bit before when
35:26
you are when you have a lot of woocommerce extensions it's not the only thing you do but it's it's a big one
35:33
um the obvious partnership is with woocommerce directly um and correct me if I'm wrong but to
35:40
date you all are not on the woocommerce marketplace right no um
35:47
yeah say it again if if we were is that a partnership
35:52
listing your product on a because I haven't really heard of them doing other
35:58
types of Partnerships like cross promotions and integration I think it's a partnership I mean it's essentially
36:04
like you're both mutually benefiting from the sale um to different degrees and whatnot
36:09
they're promoting your product on on their website um I think it would classify as a
36:14
partnership but I I want to say the question I want to follow up on is like you've made the choice so far not to be
36:21
there um and so in your mind right now uh they're not an ideal partner for barn
36:28
two um is that fair to say they have many hats so one of them would
36:35
be the marketplace another would just be their products and blog for example and
36:41
I have not succeeded in partnering with them even though they'd be very natural so for example they are a multiple
36:48
official extensions on woocommerce.com which we have done one-sided Integrations of for example our
36:55
woocommerce product table plugin we integrate with their product add-ons plug-in even though we've got our own as
37:01
well we always integrate with theirs because it's so popular we integrate with their bookings plugins so people
37:07
can book a time slot within their product table and we've never we've told them about these but we never get
37:13
anything back they don't promote our plugins as a result of doing that integration
37:19
um so it feels kind of not really like a partnership we integrate because our customers are demanding it but it would
37:26
be nice to see more of a mutual partnership where they might be adding it to their documentation for example
37:32
sample of it's of interest to their users like for woocommerce bookings how do I list my bookable products in a
37:39
quick order form oh you can use product table for that by Barn too you know that kind of thing and I have not had success
37:46
doing that so I'd be interested in whether anybody else has yeah I will say back in the day we had a product called
37:53
quick checkout and um our biggest Revenue stream for quick checkout was
37:59
that we were listed with an affiliate link on woocommerce.com I'm fairly
38:04
certain that they don't do that at all anymore um but way back oh on the marketplace where it the sale would take place in
38:12
your website on our website yeah so yeah I've tried to convince them to do that and it's a definite no you have to do
38:18
their whole licensing and it takes place on there exactly that and I wish that
38:23
was still a possibility because I feel like that does make a lot of sense um when especially yeah I would do that in
38:28
a second because you're like no problem Partners no problem yeah yeah nice
38:34
um yeah I think that like the goal for them is like just keep piling up products on the marketplace that's why
38:41
probably is not for part of the Korean protocol to push even though for good
38:46
products outside of the marketplace because even products in the marketplace are not all high top quality it's like
38:52
okay good no so these days yeah I think it is there's also that element in which
39:00
um they obviously are like the giant elephant in the room and they it they
39:05
get to set the terms you know and so for example like you might not like their terms for the marketplace at all and
39:11
then it's like they're just not a good partner for me because is why would I do that when I can sell just as good or
39:17
better on my own site and also when you're on their Marketplace they are handling the technical support and maybe
39:23
you don't want that at all uh or or they're passing it off to you with with zero kind of like onboarding like that
39:30
that also might not be ideal so there's definitely a sense in which sometimes a
39:36
partnership might be one-sided or overly overbearing in one way or another
39:42
um so yeah I would say I would say that like probably the spirit of Partnerships
39:48
it's more towards kind of plus plus and money is not yet involved yeah no but
39:54
but it's of course like by sharing affiliate links and whatever traffic each side generates and that is money
40:00
for know both companies that is fair but usually in Partnerships you you don't try to to oh there is no money involved
40:08
like hey no unless you are doing like a different like pay by buying a link you know trying to do SEO for a site or
40:15
something like that but usually in Partnership it's like let's find a way for you to win no for instance we have a
40:21
question later how what can do people to run successful partnership at the end but yeah I think that that is probably
40:26
the spirit of Partnerships that's like it's like win to win hey I have this gap on my audience that you can feel no
40:33
let's find a way no so you can get in and then let me I I I can see that you
40:39
have this Gap I want to fill that Gap you know and then both can exchange something yeah I didn't update my
40:46
captions in time I gotta update them live it's embarrassing but uh that's where we're going next for sure is the
40:53
best advice so yeah I think that I'm sure that folks listening in right now they um they want to know like how do I
41:00
get into doing Partnerships how do I approach folks um Partnerships sound great they're like
41:05
yes I'm all in but like how do you get a partnership um I I'd love to hear from you all your
41:11
best advice for how um uh somebody might start getting into Partnerships
41:17
ladies first my mom my mom teach me that I know today today
41:27
yeah in terms of finding people to partner with there are all sorts of ways
41:32
you're probably coming across other companies and their work in your day-to-day work anyway at word camps
41:38
that's the most um effective place because it just seems more real in person but that's not the
41:45
only way you can reach out to people on Twitter the post status slack
41:51
um just by their contact forms I have made Partnerships via all those methods
41:56
many times so um it's not difficult to get hold of people in the bigger companies it may be
42:02
hard to get hold of the right person and so that's may fall flat and you may need
42:08
to find out who that individual is and Target them with smaller ones generally it's not so hard and once you have
42:15
identified who you think you would be able to achieve that Mutual benefit with
42:20
um just keep thinking creatively how you can benefit one another and make sure it's not one-sided it's not just about
42:26
about you they're not a charity they are a business as well and while you want to
42:32
do the right thing and that genuinely benefit everybody you also want to grow the other person's sales because that's
42:39
ultimately the motivator that's likely to make them say yes even if they're a much bigger company than you absolutely
42:45
yeah good stuff Francisco what's your best advice what's a elevator yeah
42:52
I have like 100 000 ideas but I'll try for instance I think that uh I will try
43:00
to to know to go in both ways when you are the small one or when you are the big one because it's important not
43:07
everyone is already established most of most no I was checking and waiting for one of my plugins to get into the repo
43:13
now and I am 627 on the list so someday that will happen no so there are my
43:21
point is there are 600 new just getting started so all of them needs
43:26
Partnerships to grow now when you are the big one that's the easy when you are
43:32
the big one you are is the easy because everyone kind of wants to be tied to your brand so I would say in that way
43:40
you just need to try to do your checks that is the best way now let's say if
43:45
you notice that no certain company a certain product for the Hassan Market a potential Market
43:51
that can fill or fits you know your your needs or your your Revenue goals you
43:57
should try to right away study start building relationships and analyze exactly what how much you can really offer to
44:04
that company and then you need to put that written together and then you need to also go through your own media assets
44:11
let's say the blog social media accounts maybe your email list so and you also
44:18
need to put numbers stats to your assets so when you are doing Outreach you you
44:23
can say clearly how solid you are how much audience and exposure you are offering let's say hey my news my or
44:30
monthly newsletter goes out and we have 100 000 subscribers no we have
44:35
currently 10K plus subscribers on YouTube in case that we want to run an event together or in case that no so the
44:42
idea for the big one is easy because you just put your start together and you share with them we feel that this
44:48
product that we are currently offering or we are close to launch could be a good fit for no this segment of your
44:54
people the big one is always the easy side no what I I what I have done what I
45:00
have done especially when you are working on a product that is going to Market like a new product that is going
45:06
to Market what I did is put together kind of a partner package that you are
45:13
where you are committing to do this and that after the product has gone live
45:19
because for instance if you're launching a product what you want is for people to join kind of the Venture so you want
45:26
them to make noise with you the day that you're launching your product right do you want kind of proof generate certain
45:32
bus so but but that will not happen if they don't have guarantees that hey I
45:38
can help you in a month when you are launching but what are you going to do afterwards for me yeah absolutely I
45:44
learned I learned this part no like sometimes you think that the emails and
45:50
the zoom calls are enough kind of guarantee uh but I was wrong
45:55
I I was wrong I mean I did that many years and worked well but in the one of
46:01
the recent because I did a small work not for our Partnerships recently and I learned from a publish press founder no
46:08
for instance he was very kind of serious about the partnership like he paid like 100 000 requirements but he committed
46:15
right I got it he committed but he asked me for to do something kind of a
46:21
document proper document with my commitment for them afterwards yeah but that was for me Avid like wow like new
46:29
but I would say don't don't fear don't fear to do that like the more the more
46:34
formal and serious the agreement looks like the more easy to sell it I learned that I learned that trick this time just
46:41
just recently that part before was only some calls and emails yeah and of course good faith because you don't want to
46:47
damage the brand of course that was required so so I would say try to put together your assets and so
46:55
analyze how much you can offer not for each partner and then what I did I have like a partner package hey if you come
47:02
in to help us with this launch at least sending to your subscriber or sharing with your no social channels we are
47:08
going to do the same for your product we can also run a webinar together we can offer you a podcast together and we can
47:14
offer you two articles in your Vlog during on your Vlog during this year featuring your products that are not
47:19
competing with us so they can have a clear roadmap of how much value they're
47:25
going to get from you yeah absolutely I think that that is like even more than
47:30
your own pitch because now of course in currency you try to pitch you know we are good we are doing well Etc but the
47:36
concrete value that you're offering is what matters at the end absolutely that's good I feel that I mean in my
47:42
case that has worked try to analyze exactly how much you can give away and then put that together as part of the
47:49
offer that's a great one uh for me personally I think Partnerships are all about relationships and you really have
47:56
to be invested in the the other person as much the other business as much as you can just for who they are and what
48:03
they do not for what you're going to gain out of it you will gain something out of it but you have to be invested in
48:10
them first and I personally have found over the years that like like for example these small little
48:16
um uh intros that we do at the beginning or I've asked other podcast hosts if they would do an intro for me uh
48:23
honestly that happens because I've built up relationships with those people and so when I come and say hey I have this
48:29
crazy idea would you do a quick little video intro for me they're like sure of course I will it's not even an Ask
48:35
anymore because it's just part of who we are um and if you build up those kinds of relationships over time uh making those
48:43
kinds of asks aren't even they don't even think of them as Partnerships anymore it's just like I want to do this
48:48
thing for Matt because I know that Matt does stuff for me all the time um
48:53
will yeah it's not the only reason why I do those things I like to do those things I like to be helpful
48:59
um but the relationship building is just so incredibly valuable so that at the
49:04
drop of a hat whenever I need a quick thing uh folks are there and available so I would say invest invest invest
49:12
invest in your network as much as you can all the time without thinking about
49:17
what you will get back because at one day you're gonna ask to get something back and they're going to be there for
49:22
you yeah so funny yeah nice well this was a great conversation Francisco thanks so
49:29
much for being here and bringing your expertise to the table yes I know we are close to to to to to finish but I would
49:35
love to share some tips for the small ones yeah we got we got one minute for
49:40
sure oh sorry okay I would say no for the
49:45
small ones and they they also need to take advantage of their network but a
49:51
good thing that has worked well now for the small ones no last couple of years is not only like partner with other
49:58
WordPress companies no because even if a small one is trying to get help from a big one not always they will get uh
50:05
success no it's not always like easy to achieve but uh what has worked for these
50:11
days is build Partnerships with other communities for instance there are big Facebook group Facebook groups where
50:18
people speak about WordPress where you know people is learning about WordPress where a few people even YouTubers that
50:25
that create content for WordPress and all they run communities where help others these communities has become a
50:32
really good source of potential customers for the small ones so Partnerships is not only about
50:38
WordPress company versus WordPress company is also think about where your
50:43
people is hanging out you just say about the importance of the relevance of building relationships but you also need
50:50
to build relationships with the communities where your people are hanging out are learning about your products so when the time comes you can
50:57
pop there speak with the admin and say hey I have these I have that do you feel that this can bring value to your
51:02
community and they would say I do yeah but that that these days is working way
51:08
better for instance there are many Bangladeshi WordPress companies that are making tons of you know tons in Revenue
51:15
just by running a special uh or doing Special launches with a few communities
51:20
that run WordPress or learning for WordPress so I would say consider
51:25
consider totally there is a strategy in the marketing name community-led growth
51:30
so I would say the go-to market the go-to network or community-led growth goes together are the way for the small
51:38
ones these days excellent good stuff great well thanks everybody for being
51:43
here uh I want a quick shout out to post status for being kind of our green room where we organize all these things
51:49
thanks to the wp minute who continues to support us and help us hit the like button if you can hit the Subscribe
51:56
button if you can tell a friend about us if you can and next week uh we're gonna see it's a little
52:03
tentative right now but if uh if the term again folks are listening I'm gonna be coming I'm hoping that I can get them
52:09
for next week uh if not it's gonna be somebody else we'll see um but thanks everybody have a great
52:16
week we'll see you next week okay thank you thank you for having me this was amazing bye-bye