Susan Friedmann [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books.
Today, my special guest is Danny Beaumont. Danny helps coaches and consultants attract clients through joint venture partnerships. Over the past 3 years, he's worked with over 500 joint venture partners, generating over $3,000,000 in revenue through launches, summits, webinars, and other ventures. Known as Captain JV for his networking prowess, Danny has built a network of more than 5,000 contacts across various industries. His passion lies in nurturing relationships and helping businesses and nonprofits form impactful partnerships, all the way from London, England, from a suburb I grew up in.
Danny, it's an absolute pleasure to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.
Danny Bermant [00:01:09]:
It's lovely to be here. What a small world.
Susan Friedmann [00:01:12]:
It is. And we didn't know each other when I was growing up, but, hey, we're making up for it now. So I'm thrilled. Denny, you specialize in a subject matter that I don't know that our authors know that much about. And I think it's going to be extremely beneficial to learn more about joint venture partnerships. And so, sort of, let's start at the very beginning, as they say, and get you to tell us what exactly a joint venture partnership is, and then, of course, how it can benefit our authors.
Danny Bermant [00:01:51]:
A joint venture is where 2 parties could be 2 individuals, 2 companies, or a number of companies or organizations basically decide to pool their resources for the sake of promoting each other. They basically agree to work together because it's going to be much, much easier to attract customers when they are collaborating with another business and doing it on their own. A really good example, imagine if you're a local gymnasium, you're a local gym, and you're looking to bring in a lot more customers. What you might be doing is you might team up with a local Pilates instructor, you might team up with dietitian, you might team up with a whole lot of other experts who what you might do is you might suggest that they team up with you where they can offer their classes in your gym. You might offer them a good rate. But what happens is that you are offering additional value by offering them in your gym and obviously helping to promote them. They in turn are promoting your gym by being based there, by also promoting any offers you have. And so, basically, by joining forces to collaborate with another business to promote each other, you're doing much, much better than you would do, and it's a lot less work than if you'd be trying to do all that by yourself.
Susan Friedmann [00:03:03]:
Yeah. And I like that example. And if I think about authors that have published through Aviva Publishing, who have talked about dietary concerns or maybe even exercise or overcoming addiction, if they could collaborate, let's say, with a local gym, maybe give nutrition classes or offer some kind of other resource. It's looking at who can service the kind of clients that you're looking for, and how can you sort of get involved with them. Excellent. Moving on from that, saying how can our non fiction authors find the right joint venture partners to reach their ideal audience?
Danny Bermant [00:03:52]:
There's a number of ways that you can do that. I think the wonderful thing that's happened over the last few years is that people don't think locally. People now think much more sort of globally. If people think about collaboration, you don't have to go and collaborate or work with local businesses. There are all sorts of people you can be collaborating with online, and and by way of example, I'm based over here in the UK, and I have people promoting me who are based in the US, based in Canada, based in Australia. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that there's synergy between what you both offer. And so it opens up incredible possibilities that there are people all over the place that you can work with.
Susan Friedmann [00:04:34]:
Let's talk about some common mistakes that you find that people make when they even start thinking about joint partnerships?
Danny Bermant [00:04:44]:
The mistake that people make with joint venture partnerships is that, actually, they're they're not ready. When people go into joint venture partnerships, they go, great. I wanna start collaborating with other people to promote my book. And they go and they maybe do meet other authors, other experts who complement what they do. You might be speaking about diet, but someone else you're collaborating with might be an expert on mental health. So there's some areas there that override. Now you may decide to go collaborate with them, but before you actually start, there's some things you have to have in place before you do a joint venture. For example, someone might say, great.
Danny Bermant [00:05:20]:
You know, I'd love to work together with you. Here you go. I'm gonna tell my audience about your book that's coming out, but I'm also actually running a rant about mental health. Can you promote it as well? And then I discover, actually, I don't have an audience to promote me to. So before you even start collaborating in a joint venture with another expert, you have to be ready. And there's some things you have to have in place to be ready to joint venture.
Susan Friedmann [00:05:42]:
That begs the question, what are the things that you do have to have in place to be ready?
Danny Bermant [00:05:48]:
Five specific things that you need to have in place to be ready. The first thing most important of all is who is an ideal partner for you. It might be obvious, but it's not always. So you have to really think about not just what you help your audience with, but altogether, what are some of the challenges that your audience is struggling to overcome? Thinking beyond what you just do, what other people out there might also be able to help them solve their problems that you can also introduce them to. So for example, I help with joint ventures, but joint ventures is a particular tactic to grow your business. There are other things that you need to be thinking about, like are you only good at sales? What's your sales strategy? So number 1, you need to think about who is an ideal partner for you because we don't wanna be wasting time trying to collaborate with people who are not fit. The second thing you need to have is an audience because if someone is going to collaborate with you, they'll say, yes. Great.
Danny Bermant [00:06:45]:
I would love to promote you, but they're gonna want you to reciprocate. What I mean by reciprocating is, if I support you and tell my audience about you, I would really like you to do the same and but say, obviously, you need to build an audience. That's the second thing. The third thing you need to do is you need to really have a gift that you can give to people. Like, if I've got a whole program to help people lose weight, if someone recommends me to their audience, an audience that doesn't really know me is not gonna go straight into my weight loss program. I need to actually give them something that's free initially where they get a taster. Imagine think of it as a taster session. I need to give them something where they have a taste of who I am, how I help, where I come in.
Danny Bermant [00:07:27]:
You need to develop something that's free that you can give away. It could be a webinar that you develop with somebody. And then there's just a couple of other I I won't go into it, but there's just a couple of other things that you need to do. You need to be able to if someone wants to partner with you, you need to be able to articulate in fairly easily what you do so they have find it really easy to understand, who do I help? Where do I take them to? Why should you promote me? And then, also, the final thing that you need to do is you need to have some technology in place, right, if you're joint venture with people. So I will give you an example. I will sometimes run a webinar, so I'll run some live training. Well, I will have 3 different partners who promote me. You need to have to be able to track those people because let's say you promoted my webinar, I need to be able to tell you, Susan, thank you for promoting me, and I can tell you that 20 people in your audience signed up to my webinar, and of those 23 of them bought into my program.
Danny Bermant [00:08:20]:
Without tracking them, you're not able to basically give feedback to your partners how they did. Have no idea who's a good partner, who's not a good partner. Obviously, if you track partners and you can see one partner really, really their audience really resonates, then, obviously, you want to work more closely with those people. So there are some basic things that you need to have in place that will make it much easier to partner with other people.
Susan Friedmann [00:08:41]:
Yes. Definitely some things to think about to know whether or not you are actually ready for this. The audience is really important, obviously, that you have an audience who you can promote your partner to, and vice versa. I always thought, well, if somebody's got, you know, a 10,000 or more list, that I also had to have that size. But I found out that that's not the case. It's more quality rather than quantity. Because I worked with a gentleman in Australia and he's got, oh, 10, 15,000 people on his list and I've got 3 or 4000. But yet, he's very interested to work with me because of who my audience is.
Susan Friedmann [00:09:31]:
It's small, but it's sort of mighty and it's very targeted. So if anybody's interested in non fiction authors, published non fiction authors, then I've got a good list for them. So I like that. What type of joint ventures do you think work best for authors who are looking to, let's say, develop these long term relationships and, of course, the visibility that they're looking to get?
Danny Bermant [00:10:01]:
Before I answer your question, I think it's just worth following on adding to what you just said. The with partnering, you should not be it kind of goes into the answer to your question as well. The size of the audience is not the be all and end all, and that means that I just said you need to have an audience. You might have a small audience. You might only have a few hundred people on your email list. That doesn't matter. What matters is that you're a fit. I've had people promote me who've got very small audiences, but who are very, very aligned with me.
Danny Bermant [00:10:29]:
So I know you've got people in your audience who would like to be very interested in what I do, and they would like to buy from you. So I think that's the first thing I would say in terms of authors thinking about who's a fit. Don't necessarily judge someone who says, well, I've got a few hundred people in my audience. If they're people who are fit, that could work. On the other side of the coin, you might come across someone who's got a large audience, but it's all people who are bought. I think you need to make sure that when you do partner with someone, they have an audience that are people who've opted into their list, preferably an email list. I do come across people who say, I've got lots of followers on social media, and whilst people on social media will engage with you, if I promote something to my 5,000 LinkedIn followers, I might get a few people clicking. Whereas if you the other side of the coin is if you tell people if you've got email list of a 1,000 and you tell your audience, you're likely to get more than a few people actually opting in to what it is you're promoting.
Danny Bermant [00:11:26]:
I'd say that you need to make sure that people you're collaborating with have an email list, and it's also an email list of people who opted in. In terms of offers thinking about who's right for them, I think you need to do the exercise that I mentioned a bit earlier, which is just sit down and spend some time thinking about your audience in terms of not just who our audience would be interested in my book, but who are my audience in general? Who are they as people? What's their avatar? Not just what's their age and what's their profession, but also what are the things they struggle with in life? What are their goals? What are they looking to achieve? What keeps them awake at night? What problem language like, if I ask them what's bothering you about your expertise? You know? Can you think about what they would say? What are your audiences like? Who are they in terms of what their values? These are all things that really, really a matter because it starts to help you think about, okay. What other people are there out there who would also be serving these type of people? Then you can think about it. So I gave the example before. I might be giving advice on nutrition, but there might be some overlap with people who maybe also help on areas like mental health. It's just thinking really starting to think outside the box about what other people out there do I know who serve my audience, and how could they benefit? How could they be a benefit to my audience? Because with a joint venture, you need to think of your partner not just as someone who serves you, but, actually, they can serve your audience too in the by recommending them to your audience, you're helping to your audience to solve a problem that you don't necessarily help with. Everyone who's got their area, their unique niche, their area of expertise, your partner is there to help them solve a problem that you don't serve. So you're giving lots of extra value to your audience by having good partners.
Susan Friedmann [00:13:13]:
Yes. And I always look at if I'm going to partner with somebody, what they're offering. Like, for instance, recently, we did one. One of my partners records audiobooks. She did a webinar on that. And I felt that that would be very beneficial to my audience because many of my authors have been thinking about recording an audiobook. What do they need to know? And especially now in, you know, in light of AI, how does AI play a part in all of this? She did a webinar on that and I know that many of my audience were interested in that. Yeah, I'm always looking for that fit.
Susan Friedmann [00:13:57]:
What about specific platforms or tools that you feel authors can use to, let's say, both manage and then when they need to, track that joint venture partnership effectively?
Danny Bermant [00:14:12]:
There's a number of platforms that you can already start using. Firstly, if you're already using email, a very good email platform that you can use a lot of people already use, like Mailchimp. That's a fantastic platform for sending emails out, and Mailchimp also has the ability to set up let's say you're running a webinar. On Mailchimp, you can set up, like, a simple landing page to sign people up to your webinar. If you're already using Mailchimp, that's something that you can use straight away. If you want a slightly more sophisticated system where, let's say, you've got a book you're bringing out, you've got a number of partners promoting the launch, you might want to start thinking about using a system like GoHighlevel, which is a platform which enables you to sign up JV partners, joint venture partners who can promote you and so you can track them. It has a system for creating and sending emails to people, and it also has a system for you to set up web pages to promote your live events and any free biz that you're giving away or even any paid programs you want to set up.
Susan Friedmann [00:15:15]:
Can you say that name again? I didn't catch it.
Danny Bermant [00:15:17]:
It's called GoHighlevel. GoHighlevel. The domain name is highlevel.com. And it's not talking about a fortune. You know? It might be a couple of $100 a month. But the reason it's a great platform is whereas previously, you might have had to invest in a number of different systems, you know, a system for tracking people, a system for email, a system for setting up web pages. What it's doing is combining it all into 1, and it's also much better for people who are have a bit of a fear of all the different technology that's quite user friendly and has lots of support. For those reasons, it's a good place to go.
Danny Bermant [00:15:53]:
Excellent.
Susan Friedmann [00:15:55]:
What about if an author is hesitant about pursuing a partnership? They've never done it before and they've heard all sorts of stories. And whether they're true or false, the fact is that they're like, should I? Shouldn't I? What would you recommend? What advice would you give them?
Danny Bermant [00:16:17]:
People are hesitant to partner because they may have encountered a partnership where the results weren't great because it wasn't fit, or they might have encountered partnerships where it didn't go very well because someone promised that they would promote you online event. And then when the event actually took place, they didn't show up. They didn't promote you. I think for both of those problems occurring there, there's a reason. I think the reason sometimes partnerships don't work is that we don't always do enough due diligence at the beginning. When you decide whether to partner with somebody, you need to really get to know them, not just get to know them in terms of, like, asking superficially, who do you serve, how big is your audience, what event have you got running. You actually need to dig a bit deeper to find out, number 1, not just superficially, is your audience the right fit in terms of the age and the profession and their hobbies, etcetera, but I think you need to dig a bit deeper in terms of asking them, like, what problem is the audience struggling to solve? What keeps them awake at night? How do you help? You know? Asking all those questions that dig deeper into who the audience is and, why they're struggling, what they're struggling with, and how you help them. You need to do that.
Danny Bermant [00:17:28]:
The other thing is if you're deciding whether to partner with somebody, you actually need to do some due diligence looking at what they do. Like, what is your you're running a webinar. Is this the webinar you've run before? Can I see a replay? Can I see the web page you're using to promote it? Can I see a bit about what you promote? I've had people who say they agreed to collaborate with somebody, and when they actually saw a promotion, they thought like, this is horrible. They're not really my style of person. They're not serving my yeah, I can see by the the terminology they're using. I'm looking at their graphics. They're not my type at all. So I think you need to basically just spend a bit more time getting to know the partners to see, are these people a fit for me? Is their audience a fit? Is their marketing? Is their program really a fit? I think it's that I mean, it's taking the time to actually get to know a partner.
Danny Bermant [00:18:14]:
In terms of people not showing up for you, very often, people don't show up for you because you haven't been very clear about how you're working together. If you've agreed something, let's just say I'm running a webinar on October 19th, and you say, great. I'm gonna promote it. You need to give them some, like, signposting on, great. Thank you for promoting me. Can you tell me a bit about, like, what dates you need me to promote you? Can you send me some promotional material, like an email or something that you've written for me to use to promote you? Can you give me an update a bit closer to the time to just confirm that everything is still on? There's often a lack of communication. People agree to collaborate months ahead. They shake hands.
Danny Bermant [00:18:56]:
They walk away, and you're often working with people who are solopreneurs, who don't have any team, who don't have any processes. They don't have a proper calendar, and, you know, they agree something with you and they've forgotten about it 5 minutes later. You need to basically for that reason, if you're deciding to collaborate with somebody, you need to really give them lots of guidance, lots of signposting to make sure that they deliver as promised. If you do that, 95%, if not 99% of the time, it works out.
Susan Friedmann [00:19:26]:
And I know I've made some mistakes in that area that I've over committed. I'm going to promote for this person and that person, and then all of a sudden, I realize, oh my goodness. They're all happening at the same time. Now I've made this commitment to help them. And I really don't like to deluge my mail list with different promotions. But once in a while, I do because I've made these commitments. And I don't want to renege on them because people are relying on me to do those promotions. I've made that mistake.
Danny Bermant [00:20:02]:
But but it does happen. You know, it does happen where there can be a number of reasons why you agree to promote someone on a particular date, and it does no longer works. Like, for example, it may be that you remember you're running some internal launch that week, so all your promotional material is gonna be about promoting your own internal stuff. You don't have the bandwidth to promote somebody else. Again, that's why if you agree to work with somebody, you check-in with each other regularly because that's life. Things do change. By communicating regularly, you can find out in plenty of time about these things happening and and then feedback. And I think it's also understanding sometimes stuff does happen and people will drop the ball, but it's understanding that that doesn't necessarily happen because people are being unreliable.
Danny Bermant [00:20:45]:
It's just that there are gonna be circumstances which are unknown that mean that you thought you could support them that week and then you can't. I'd say the other thing is don't be disheartened by situations where people don't show up for you. There's normally a reason for that, and normally, you could agree to do something else together another time. That will work. And it's also why when you are collaborating in partnerships, you wouldn't necessarily work with just one person. You'd be working with a number of people. I just completed a launch where my client had about 37 partners supporting her. Out of the 37, there probably were about 3 that didn't show up, but that didn't really hurt us because there were 34 that did.
Danny Bermant [00:21:23]:
And there always will be people who don't show up because that's just things happen.
Susan Friedmann [00:21:27]:
So that's a great segue, Danny, into telling our audience what you do and how you might be able to help them.
Danny Bermant [00:21:35]:
I help businesses to basically structure their joint venture partnerships. I work with businesses in 2 ways. I have businesses who don't have the bandwidth to manage joint ventures themselves, so they ask me to come on board and to handle their partnerships. So what I do is I assess what their business is, which partners would be a fit for them, and then from my network, I assemble together about, typically, 40 to 50 partners that you'll be working with who will both promote you and would be a good fit so you could collaborate with them again. And so I will, over the course of, say, a year, be basically coordinating a whole range of partnerships where they're promoting you, you're promoting them, where it's a win win situation. And the clients I work with, partnerships is largely the main way that they get clients. They really like partnerships because unlike, say, a lead that comes from advertising, you've got people who are recommended to you. Someone has actually said, I know Danny Bermant's program.
Susan Friedmann [00:22:32]:
I like it. I value it. I think you should go and visit his website. So people who have come to me are presold, unlike people who come from ads who are cold. So that's the big, big plus of partnerships. They're much warmer. They're much easier to sell to. And the other way that I work with clients is I have people who already they might have a member of staff who is managing partnerships already, and what I do is I give their team the coaching on the systems and processes they need to have in place to have successful partnerships.
Danny Bermant [00:23:00]:
Also, some clients I have who don't have any contacts, and I have a large role of that. So, I also help clients by basically putting them in front of lots of partners they wouldn't otherwise have any contact with or even know about.
Go to Danny's website to sign up for his live training: A 3-step process to build six successful JV partnerships that can generate seven figures of revenue for your business (without advertising or sleazy selling).
Susan Friedmann [00:23:12]:
And I love that. And thank you. I mean, you've sent people my way and thought that they were good people to be introduced to, and vice versa. I do that for many of my partners. And, you know, I feel as if I'm a resource because there's a lot coming in, but there's also a lot going out. So there's that give and take. Wonderful. Danny, as you know, we always leave our listeners with a golden nugget.
Susan Friedmann [00:23:41]:
What would you like to leave our listeners with?
Danny Bermant [00:23:43]:
If you want to have great partners, always be the first to offer your services. Right? And with partnerships, it's about giver's game. Right? The people who go out of their way to promote you, they do it because you've also got out of your way to help them. The way to think of it, if you're meeting with somebody you could collaborate with, don't wait for them to put their hand out to help you. Right? Start off by, basically, in the spirit of collaboration, saying to them, listen. I love what you do. I think it's something that my audience would really, really benefit from. What can I do to support you? And when you enter a partnership with that mindset, you'll be surprised at the fact that nearly always, those people will then come back to you and say, thank you so much.
Danny Bermant [00:24:27]:
What can I do to support you? If you are thinking of partnering with someone, try and get away from the kind of transactional mindset of what will you do for me, what will I do for you. But start off just offering to help them, and you are on a much, much surer footing thinking that way.
Susan Friedmann [00:24:43]:
Yes. It really is about being open to giving. As you say, that givers gain is such a beautiful way of doing business. And I think more and more people are getting into that mindset rather than take, What can I get from you? What will you buy from me? Etcetera. So fabulous. Thank you. Danny, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom on this. This is a topic, as I said, we really haven't spent time talking about.
And yet I feel that it's got so much value for our listeners.
By the way, listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected to, let's you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales because you've invested a whole lot of time, money and energy, and it's time you got the return that you were hoping for. Go to BookMarketingBrainstorm.comto schedule your free call. And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparked some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.
Go to Danny's website to sign up for his live training: A 3-step process to build six successful JV partnerships that can generate seven figures of revenue for your business (without advertising or sleazy selling).
