In this episode David and Gary talk about Partnership with the VP of Strategic Partnerships at LivTech, James Lezzer. What makes your relationships thrive? What creates a strong foundation for symbiosis and when is the right time to put a ring on it….in business of course.
Links:
https://livtech.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlezzer/
___________________________________
Submit Your Questions to:
hello@thebigpixel.net
OR comment on our YouTube videos! - Big Pixel, LLC - YouTube
Our Hosts
David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel
Gary Voigt - Creative Director at Big Pixel
The Podcast
David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.
In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.
Contact Us
hello@thebigpixel.net
919-275-0646
FB | IG | LI | TW | TT : @bigpixelNC
Big Pixel
1772 Heritage Center Dr
Suite 201
Wake Forest, NC 27587
Music by: BLXRR
In this episode David and Gary talk about Partnership with the VP of Strategic Partnerships at LivTech, James Lezzer. What makes your relationships thrive? What creates a strong foundation for symbiosis and when is the right time to put a ring on it….in business of course.
Links:
https://livtech.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlezzer/
___________________________________
Submit Your Questions to:
hello@thebigpixel.net
OR comment on our YouTube videos! - Big Pixel, LLC - YouTube
Our Hosts
David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel
Gary Voigt - Creative Director at Big Pixel
The Podcast
David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.
In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.
Contact Us
hello@thebigpixel.net
919-275-0646
FB | IG | LI | TW | TT : @bigpixelNC
Big Pixel
1772 Heritage Center Dr
Suite 201
Wake Forest, NC 27587
Music by: BLXRR
Jim: [00:00:00] The reality is, I've got to put something on the table, at least as a line in the sand to go, do you like that?
Yes. No. Okay. Now we can start to figure out what this needs to look like.
David: Hi everyone. Welcome to the biz dev podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter joined as usual by Gary Voigt. What is up Mr. Gary.
Gary: I'm doing good. How are you?
David: I'm doing great. It is wonderful weather out here today and I can't complain. Our guest, Jim Lesar, is enjoying it. He is outside today. Jim is the vice president of strategic partnerships for LivTech. How are you doing, Jim?
Jim: I'm doing well. Thank you.
David: Good deal. So the first question I have, we're diving right in here. What is a strategic partnership?
Jim: So what I would define a strategic partnership is when you're trying to create something that's brand new, right? So you're working with somebody else and the two of you are trying to come up with solutions that may not exist in the marketplace today. So you're trying to make [00:01:00] 1+1=3 It does equal two most days
David: Hopefully we don't need help with that one. Okay. A strategic partner in your world is someone who isn't going to just buy your tool, whatever your tool is, you're going to help them create a new tool to help them specifically and do something special.
Is that right?
Jim: Correct. So to, to give more context to that. So we're in the health tech SAS space primarily in post acute care, right? So that's a lot. What does that really mean? Everybody knows the hospital space in terms of acute care, right? You go to the regular hospital, ED, emergency department, et cetera. And then there's all kinds of services there.
We live in the world. After you're discharged from the hospital, and so there's a lot of solutions that tie into that. There's different settings. There's skilled nursing. There's home health. There's hospice. There's palliative care. And so what you have is you have a bunch of different providers that live in that space.
And so There are different tool sets that kind of [00:02:00] combine together. So the idea is you can take tool a and tool B and those two things make life easier for that provider organization. And that's what we talk about as a strategic partnership is integrating tool a and tool B to now make tool C that's worth more to the client at the end of the day.
David: And his tools, see something that you would then turn around and sell to somebody else, or is that exclusive to that partnership?
Jim: It could be either way. So you could be having resellers sell that or like a distributor model, or it could be just, we are joint partners that did this tight partnership. And now The, in our case, our brands are out there selling that product. And really they're pointing back to that and saying the beauty of our partnership is we created this integration and that makes your life easier.
David: So the, my, my point in this line of questioning is, most of our audience is. Businesses, new businesses, entrepreneurs, people who are [00:03:00] either about to take the jump or they're newly into the world of owning their own business. And I would imagine that in most of those. New ventures, strategic partnerships are critical.
And I'm thinking that your expertise is really handy in that. How would someone start that process? How do you get to the point where you are able to do strategic partnerships? Does that make sense? It's I'm getting that ball rolling.
Jim: it makes total sense. So strategic partnerships for entrepreneurs or new businesses are tricky waters to navigate. And it depends on the industry that you're in, but if you're in any type of service or Technology, it's usually an easier space to start for that standpoint. If you're in a a service where let's say you provide marketing support it might be harder to come up with a truly what I'd say strategic partnership.
You can create channel partnerships very easily and channel meaning I have clients, you have clients, we refer to each other, [00:04:00] and that makes it easier for both of us to gain new client bases without having to do ten times the work to go get them. Strategic is, I developed this technology, and this technology serves these people in this situation.
And industry and setting. And so now who else serves those people? Can I integrate with them? Can I develop something that's not a super high lift that allows me to get into their market base without and creating something that's a creative for both of us, right? So how you start that process is you've got to step back and do the same thing you did when you created your business.
You got to go all the way back to what was the why? And typically most entrepreneurs start with I was working in this space and this drove me crazy. So I created this. And so now you have to say, okay who else is working in this space dealing with the same problems or dealing with similar problems that I can solve or [00:05:00] that we could combine something together and then solve that.
And then what does that look like? And you have to define that whole, what we call an organizational partnering plan and then a strategic partnering plan based on the types of partnerships you want to develop. And it is not, it's not for the faint of heart. It takes a minute to get this stuff done.
And you've got to think through it because there's a lot of pitfalls along the way.
David: So do you recommend. How far along in the business journey do you think you have to be to start doing this strategic partnership concept?
Jim: So there are stories of people who have done it like out of the gate. They went and they figured out, okay and a great example would be Blackberry. If you look at the BlackBerry story, it's a pretty good one where they went to AT& T and Verizon and basically ended up saying, Hey, we'll partner with you.
We need a network. You need these phones and you need this emailed client. So that was brilliant. Apple did the same thing with AT& T. [00:06:00] Absolutely brilliant. They came out with the product, knew what they were going to do with it. They needed a network to carry it on. So they started that early in the process.
Now most entrepreneurs don't have those kinds of resources, but they do have the ability to say very quickly partnerships and an ecosystem of partnerships makes sense. So I could start. Pretty early on where I have a handful of clients that now I want to go partner with other people and see if I can tap into their client base.
I had one partnership recently that unfortunately we had to pause it. They only had about eight clients. They had several contracts in the mix. But it was just a, they were just a little early, but their effort is fantastic. Like they're right on time. In terms of bringing on clients and they've got they've proved the concept, right?
It's not that it doesn't have value or it's still an unknown. It's something that I figured it out. I've got people to buy in. Now I can go [00:07:00] build partnerships because other people see it and I love their tech. I wanted to do it. It just was simply me. In the face of a funnel full of different partnerships.
You now struggle with that. When I start prioritizing it, I can't get this prioritized for you.
David: So how did you and your story, how did you get into this world? That's a, it's very specific, right? And when I look at your history, you've been doing this specific role for a long time.
Jim: So I started out in a business. I started out in accounting and I realized very quickly after I had gotten into accounting and moved up to a controller role that I didn't like accounting. Now I, yeah, I know exactly. So went out and one of the last companies I was in as an accountant, they were, we had implemented a new software product and I fell in love with that idea, like this was really cool.
Hey, I could go implement these. products. And so I went and did that for a few years. And then that led to [00:08:00] sales because now you're doing pre sales, but you're not getting paid any of the commissions. So then I got into sales. And then once I was doing sales, I ended up getting into healthcare because I'd go do consulting work for my clients ahead of time to basically pre sell them what I was going to sell them.
And then that one of my clients was in healthcare and that led me into the healthcare. care services and then health tech space. And so I spent the majority of my career there. Back in 2019, I got recruited out by a company out of Seattle called Medbridge and they just had an amazing product culture, loved everything about them.
And they were like, we would like you to come in and run strategic partnerships. And I, and they were like, have you done that before? I'm like, yeah, I've done this much of it, but I understood healthcare. So that was. That was the part they felt was hard, was the healthcare part of it. The, this partnership side is equally hard.
But it is hard to understand all the pieces of how [00:09:00] healthcare works.
David: How did they know they needed Sorry, Gary I'm going to get you in there, but I, one last question, how did they know they needed strategic partnerships? Cause it's weird. Like I know as a business owner, I sell my product and I sell tool a and tool B, like you were saying before, and I'm really good at it.
I'm making, I'm just wheeling and dealing and I'm selling those. When do you go, you know what I need? I need someone who wants tool C. Why, why do you, why did that company think they needed that?
Jim: So they already were doing the scenario, the channel scenario, right? Where they had people that were that were affiliates. And that's what I mean when I'm talking about channel. So they were either promoting their product or they'd be out speaking about it and they had coupon codes and things like that.
What they were now getting into was a place where they had integrated with a couple of EMR products for for healthcare. And so now they were like, wait a minute, there's a lot of opportunity here. These are sizable [00:10:00] opportunities that we're getting into because now we're not talking one to one clinicians.
We're talking. I'm selling to this organization that has 50 clinicians on this EMR product. And there's dozens of EMRs that we could go integrate with. So that was what they saw was the opportunity to now go do more of those integrations and go pursue that. And the problem is that from a business standpoint, from biz dev, it's easy for them to get engaged and start talking and doing all the work.
The hard part comes down to then somebody has got to babysit this opportunity and shepherd it from ideation to opera is operationalization, and that's very tricky part.
Gary: Yeah. I was just going to ask first of all, what did you say the EMR?
Jim: Yeah. Electronic medical record or electronic health record. Yep.
Gary: Yeah, I was going to say it's one thing to scout for strategic partnerships, but if they're being presented just organically, I'm [00:11:00] assuming then your role takes on more of a, like a negotiator and organizer type role where you just got to figure out how they fit together and then make sure it stays on track.
Is that correct?
Jim: It's a lot, it's a little bit of all of it. It literally is everything from start to finish. Think of. What you normally see in the business sales cycle, or, for entrepreneurs, they're already living this role where they're going, I got to go find the prospects. Get them engaged, tell them the story, work through the process of doing a deal, get the, then make, take the deal and operationalize it.
And then measure results after the fact and figure out how do we pivot and adjust and make this
Gary: And keep babysitting it throughout the
Jim: and keep babysitting. Yep. And that's the exact same thing. I think the difference is that with partnerships, you probably don't, you're not as focused on the, like a salesperson would be focused on the clothes.
The clothes is [00:12:00] like almost. A non event. It just meant that we, Hey, we've determined we're so agreeable to each other that we decided to sign legal documents together. Now we still have to go do all this other work to actually make this thing work. And we know we're going to encounter 20 more headaches along the way.
So
David: So your sale. As it were the close, isn't the exciting. That they're going to need the tools. There's work coming out of this, right? Is it, isn't that a big deal?
Jim: it is. It's you still celebrate, you have to celebrate all your milestones. You celebrate successful, like just getting through the idea process, that initial where we sit down and go, Hey, I think we could do this. This is what I see as the value. Do you agree? That's the value? Yeah. How would that work?
Can you do this? Could you do this? Can you do it this year, or can you do it within a reasonable timeframe? And. Now let's, do we want to sign an NDA and start looking at opportunity size and [00:13:00] get through all that brain damage? And when, by the time you get to a legal agreement, it's like you're, you are definitely celebrating.
It's, gone through the entire relationship process and like a compressed cycle. Imagine getting married in three months. This is exactly what it's like. You're and not only that you negotiated where you're going to live, how you're going to raise the kids, where your wills are going to look like vacations, retirement, like you did everything all and have still have no details about each other.
Like at the end of the day, somehow you pull all that together.
Gary: I'm getting the feeling that this could be extremely beneficial, almost like if you were taking on VC money just to help infuse your company with cash to get you, up and running a little bit more, going a little bit further, but with the partnership, you don't really have all that.
I guess you're not giving away a whole lot in order to get that partnership and gain the benefits there. So
Jim: Yeah, you're exactly right. It's,
Gary: you can get a lot from it [00:14:00] without the risk of taking on VC money. As long as it's a. Smart partnership,
Jim: You're right. You're right, Gary. Excuse me. I didn't mean to interrupt, but absolutely. It's a case where in a VC world, you're probably giving up the vast majority of your company in order to get funding. In the partnerships world, you're really living in more of a world where you could be giving up some margin in order to gain access to their market and vice versa.
That's the normal case.
Gary: so for like entrepreneurs and small business or startups instead of going in with the concept that everybody in the space is your competition, hitting it more with the mindset of anybody in the space that can maybe benefit with us is a, an opportunity to grow faster instead of compete against.
So you can, you're almost, you're maybe not solving the exact same problem or close to it, but you're just approaching it from different ways with, like you said, with the tech or whatever. So if, yeah, if they have something built in that you can then, build [00:15:00] off of, that seems like a good way to go.
Jim: Yeah, absolutely. It's the way I like to think about it is, it's often a case of the partner you're going after has gravity, right? And you're orbiting around that partner. And so there's opportunity for you to add value to the clients that they're pulling in, but they're the one that they usually has the gravity that is drawing the bulk of the clients to them.
And you're happy to take those clients that are willing to engage with you.
David: It just clicked in my head. Tell me if I'm wrong, but a lot of times I will recommend a path to entrepreneurship, a path to get started. You have this big idea in such and such industry, and it's going to take you the capital or just a lot of time and resources. And one of the things I've recommended is you find a pilot client.
Meaning they need what you're going to
David: and they are willing [00:16:00] to pay for that creation, which is basically an investment in your company. Now, generally they're doing that to say, okay, we'll be, once you do this, then either I get exclusive or I get free, cheap, whatever pricing for the next five years or whatever.
But there's a reason they do this. You're solving their problem. Now it's hard to do this. Don't get me wrong. It's not like these kinds of partnerships just sit around waiting for. Entrepreneurs to come and solve things. But sometimes if you, especially if you're coming in with, history in a specific industry, you can really do some neat stuff.
And you don't have to lose any equity. You don't lose anything. You've just got this great, I've got a friend of mine, actually. Now I'm thinking about it. He somehow got involved early on. This was like a decade plus ago with a company called strat max, which is like a big company evaluation. They evaluate your clients and they check all this stuff, how you're doing from a business perspective and they rank everything.
It's very neat tool. And he got in as a beta user, like early on. And this [00:17:00] thing and he's he used it helped them and gave the feedback And he's he was one of the early adopters and he's paying like 50 bucks a month for this thing And new clients like paying a thousand plus dollars. Yeah, it's like crazy and he's just I'm, just i'm just was one of their early adopters.
Anyway,
Jim: No, there's definitely opportunities like that joint venture type opportunities but we also see that even with existing partnerships that we have right now, and we'll do this all the time that will say we've decided we're going to do. Yeah. Push forward with this new initiative and we'll go out to our mutual clients and basically go validate those initiatives with them and say, would you like to be an early adopter?
First of all, do you think this is a good idea? Would you pay for this idea? And then would you like to be an early adopter of using this when it comes to market? And for a time period, they're going to get, premium pricing, premium service they're not going to pay full price.
And that may be 2 3 years that they get to [00:18:00] run at that rate depending on how big they are and how much of a whale they are in the market and how much splash we're going to get out of it. But for, yeah, for entrepreneurs, especially in the tech space, there's so much going on around ecosystem led growth, partner led growth.
That's just the way you want to go. And a lot of people are driving in that. You'll see that. Partnerships become very topical, very quickly for these small companies. One of the companies that I actually partnered with, it's really funny. We signed our deal in 2022 and we just completed the integration with that partner.
And they didn't have a product that when they first came to us, they had an idea. And what I looked at with their idea was I knew for them to get where they wanted to go, they needed me. And for me to be able to enhance my solution and have more product to go basically sell, then this was an easy thing for me to go grab.
And so [00:19:00] basically we, it was very symbiotic in that regard. Like now we can go build this thing together and I can let them. Build their product and do what they were going to do. And we'll build the integration and get it up and running and off the ground. But they didn't have anything.
They had a great idea though. And so I was like no, absolutely. We can sign up this and work our way towards it.
AD: BigPixel builds world class custom software and amazing apps. Our team of pros puts passion into every one of our projects. Our design infused development leans heavily on delivering a great experience for our clients and their clients. From startups to enterprises, we can help craft your ideas into real world products that help your business do better business.
Gary: So just from a different perspective, this all sounds great. But if you're one of these younger businesses, or even in your role, when you're looking for partnerships or companies to partner [00:20:00] with, give me an idea of a couple of like red flags or attributes of someone that might talk like they want to, but you definitely don't want to partner with someone like that.
Is it something as simple as they're just asking too much of a buy in or what would be a red flag to not venture into a partnership conversation with someone?
Jim: so the biggest one for me is, it's factors of trust. This is a trusted relationship. You're getting into, like I said, you're getting, imagine getting married without knowing anything about each other than this on paper exploration in, 90 days, right? It's, you've If you feel that there are things that you don't trust about this person that you're going to be working with, or you don't get this sense of, Hey, do we have a, a spree decor that we both want to do this for the right reasons.
We're both trying to build this to be more valuable to our customers, or you're constantly gating information. That's that is such a huge red flag. The gating of the information more than [00:21:00] anything is huge. If you say, I can't answer like this is a common one. How many customers do you have?
Because I'm going to ask this in every partnership call. How many customers do you have? What's your average sales size? What's your average sales cycle time? Because what I want to do in my math is figure out if you've got this many customers and it takes, 60 days for you to sell one. And the average deal size is Y dollars.
Then I want to figure out how many, if I refer to you, can you absorb within a year? And vice versa. If I know my sales cycle time is, 50 days for a partner for referral, then how long before I'm out of your entire base? And are you referring at that clip that I expect? And if you can't give me those answers, man, it's we're done.
We're done. If that requires an NDA, we're done. There's no trust because those are such basic nonsense numbers. You could say anything. I have 300 [00:22:00] clients. Okay. And it's 5, 000 sale takes 45 days. Okay. That's all I need to know. It seems like it's not a hard thing to answer and it doesn't really tell anybody anything they couldn't go find with, a quick Google search.
David: but How open are you with a strategic partner? Do you, are you guys buddy, or is there still a level of, your stuff is your stuff and my stuff is my stuff. Or do you just here we go.
Jim: So, it's pretty ironic. The partnership discussions that I've had have been with, especially with my partners, once we're beyond the initial, the initial courtship is a little bit tense, right? As everybody's trying to figure out what can I, and can I say, right? How much are you sizing me up?
But once we get past that first call where we then go, okay, there's a here. Then it starts to really become more and more friendly. And it really tries to move away from sheltering information. [00:23:00] It's, yeah, I'm going to negotiate, but for the most part, I'm telling you up front, if there's a here, I'm going to say, I think this is this type of partnership.
This is how we structure them. Typically, this is what we would like to include in them. Are you okay with those as general terms? I'm going to email that to you as a follow up. And then we move to a formal term sheet and then it's, then we're moving to an agreement, but chances are we've negotiated rates and things like that openly, like in a casual, almost discussion of I'm thinking this rate, because this is what my margins are going to look like.
And I'm saying that exactly so that they know Yeah, I might want to push for more, or I might want to push for more initially, or once I hit certain thresholds, I want to push like we've both done this dance a few times. You're now trying to figure out how do I make it so I don't kill you in the process?
Because if I make you miserable as a partner to where you're going broke, selling to my clients, [00:24:00] you're going to just be like, forget it. I'm just not going to do it.
David: So that brings up a question, how much of any strategic partnership. Is what you do and how well that matches versus culture.
Jim: So in a partnering leader your partnering leader is going to drive the partnering culture at the end of the day. They're going to be the person that, that figures out how to make sure that the organization wants to do this and how to make sure that the team can do it. And what I mean by that would be, you're constantly as, as much as I've said in the past I hate the idea of having to resell internally to my organization.
You do, you're constantly reselling to your organization. You're selling the leadership that this is a good idea. And then once you've done it, Now you're pre selling sales and marketing engineering, your client set success team, you're getting all of them on [00:25:00] board and you're enabling all of them to be able to talk about this wonderful new partner that you guys have just.
Brought on and how they can go sell that or present that to your clients. And it's all from different angles. So you're taking a marketing spin. That's literally, 180 degrees wide, right? Where you're saying everything from this is beneficial to clients, or this is beneficial to you as a salesperson, or, Hey, you're going to get a spiff over here and tech wise, Hey, this means we don't have to develop this thing.
And this is a better tool. So this is going to be great, so you really end up being the person who drives that culture of saying, this is why we partner and this is why we choose partners that we really like and trust and try to make sure that you protect them from bad partners.
David: But if you're the little guy, which probably most, there's always going to be a big size discrepancy, I'm guessing between these partners, not always, but often does the big guy by default set those kinds of terms [00:26:00] just because they're, are they going to be pushy about that? Or is the little guy, scrappy guy with a really great culture rather than a big bureaucratic thing, right?
Does he get to set any of those?
Jim: Well, you definitely do as the smaller person in the mix. Like in our case, we're, one of the brands that I work for, we're definitely the smaller person in the mix. We're working with EMR partners that are enormous, revenue size. They're many multiples of us. The interesting thing is as we've negotiated those partnerships, we've pretty much said, Hey, this is the terms we've figured this out.
This is how we can make this deal work for you. And this is what we see the economics as being. And I think a big piece of that is just being completely transparent and as helpful as possible. So the bigger ones, the harder problem that they have is being able to, there's a lot of opportunities, right? So you're now fighting this battle of how do I make my opportunity valuable to you?
[00:27:00] And in doing that, I'll give you an example. One of the things that I've done is actually built models for them where I said this is where we're running at right now. This is how much client base you have left that we're not in. These are the size of the deals that we typically sell. And here's your five year projection model that you can go play with.
And put whatever assumptions you want in it, but it's going to show you what the revenue growth will be, what your cumulative revenue will be, and any current revenue shares that are being altered or adjusted, how that's going to look so they can see exactly what the ROI of this is. And in some cases, not even have to do anything, it's really nothing more than You're changing our structure of a partnership from, standard to preferred, which offers some additional terms and maybe offer some discounts for their clients to license our technology in conjunction with them.
So you can dictate those terms if you are willing to, It's somewhat counterintuitive, right? In sales, they'll tell you [00:28:00] don't dictate terms or don't make the first offer because whoever makes the first offer loses. And then whoever says responds to the offer loses. And
the reality is, I've got to put something on the table, at least as a line in the sand to go, do you like that?
Yes. No. Okay. Now we can start to figure out what this needs to look like.
David: Okay. Okay.
Gary: All right. Usually we ask every guest one final question and I have a feeling you're going to have a different perspective on this. So I guess coming from a perspective of creating these partnerships and helping these partnerships grow, what would you give as your top three pieces of advice for any new entrepreneur, new business or startup, maybe when it comes to.
Partnerships.
Jim: I think first and foremost would be. really understanding what it is that you want from a partnership. And that is going to be multifaceted. It's not just simply, Oh, I just want revenue. Oh, I just want more client base, right? It's no, what are you trying [00:29:00] to do with that partner? And then what are your requirements from that partner?
Like I said, think of it as a marriage, if you want somebody that likes to go to vacation at the beach versus somebody vacations in the mountains, then okay great. Then that's what we're going to go do, so what do you want from a marketing perspective? What are you really hoping for?
In terms of, are you looking for webinars with thought leadership, blog posts, social posts? Do you want to be in their booth at marketing event at trade shows or marketing events? Do you want to do joint dinners? Do you want to do client introductions? What specifically do you really want out of them and then what are you willing to offer in exchange for that?
What's the value you're giving them to get that and be super clear and it and that's not going to be single threaded Because if you're thinking something where I'm going to create something brand new one plus one equals three, right then That's going to look like one thing, but if I'm thinking I just want to have affiliates, that's going to look different.
And so you've [00:30:00] got to work through that and really have a clear picture of it and then do the gut check and go, do I have the capacity to do this in terms of Bandwidth, time, interest, energy, all of those things. Cause it's, it is very consuming. This is what I do all day. This, I only do this one job.
But it's first 16 different companies that I'm doing it for under the, our portfolio. It's very busy activity level. I think the second thing after that would then be once you've looked at, yeah, I want to go do this. Great. Then you want to get training. And there's great institutions that do this right now.
PARTNERNOMICS who You know, full disclosure, I'm what's known as an orchestrator for PARTNERNOMICS. I'm certified with them so I can basically help people do this. They are a fantastic foundation. It's a systematic approach to partnering. There's great books out there on the channel. And [00:31:00] channel management and what that looks like, and I'd go read all the stuff that you possibly can, and then what I would do thirdly would be if you've decided that I want to go down this rabbit hole, then at that point, what I'd say is your third thing is talk to other people who've done it.
and find out what they ran into with people that you're thinking that you want to partner with. Chances are you're going to find that it's going to be easier than you thought it was in terms of most people are going to be like, yeah, you know what? This worked out really well and this wasn't a problem.
Everybody's going to have one or two horror stories, but for the most part, the horror stories are going to be a smaller percentage of the stories they're going to hear. Most of them are going to be, yeah, this worked out pretty well. We're doing this, we're doing that and we like it.
Gary: Now, this is a perspective that we have not really shared on the podcast, like the partnership idea. So this is going to be interesting and new for some of our listeners.
Jim: Oh, that's great.
Gary: Now, if anybody wants to learn more about you or your [00:32:00] business, how can they reach out and get ahold of you?
Jim: You can always reach out to me through LinkedIn. That's probably the best and fastest place to connect with me. I tell everybody to connect with me. I will, I'll give you the secret sauce is if you just send a connection request saying, I'd like to chat. I'm going to come back with a LinkedIn message that says, thanks for reaching out.
How can I help you? So if you can answer the, how can I help you? You'll get a faster connection and I'll be happy to schedule time. If you're looking to learn more about LivTech, you can go to LivTech. com. That's the easiest place to learn more about our brands and our company.
Gary: And we'll make sure we put those links into the show notes and descriptions as well.
Jim: Perfect.
David: Thank you so much, Jim, for joining us. I appreciate your time.
Jim: Gary, David, thank you for having me. Love being on.
Gary: Yeah, it was nice to meet you.
David: Alrighty, everybody. We will be back next week. Thank you so much. Have a good one.
OUTRO: Hi, I'm Christy Pronto, Content Marketing Director here at BigPixel. Thank you for listening to this [00:33:00] episode of the BizDev Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email, hello at thebigpixel. net. The BizDev Podcast is produced and presented by BigPixel. See you next week. Until then, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Threads, YouTube, and LinkedIn.