How Global Partnerships Can Generate Billions In Revenue w/ Max Rivera

Reading Time: 23 minutes

Would your organization benefit from a global network of reseller partnerships?

In a time when marketing budgets are shrinking and global economies are in turmoil, having resellers on the ground in various regions and countries who have already established a trusted relationship with your target audience is a real asset.

But such a network isn’t tossed together overnight.

Where do we start, and how do we grow and scale reseller partnerships to levels like what Snap has accomplished?

That’s what we’re covering in today’s episode of Partnership Unpacked.

Welcome back to Partnership Unpacked, where I selfishly use this time to pick the brains of experts at strategic partnerships, channel programs, affiliates, influencer marketing, and relationship building… oh, and you get to learn too! Subscribe to learn how you can amplify your growth strategy – with a solid takeaway every episode from partnership experts in the industry.

We’ve talked in a previous episode about building agency partner programs and the idea of using resellers to grow our businesses is a topic I wanted to dig into more.

How do we structure these programs? How do we expand into new regions? How do we measure success? I have so many questions…

And what better way to learn than to talk to someone who has been there from the beginning with a tech company like Snap.

Max Rivera joined Snap at an early stage to launch the international expansion practice before the company’s IPO. He’s led high-performing global teams and launched the business across new markets in Latin America, Europe, Middle East and Africa. Today, he is leading some of the largest business partnerships, and he’s also an angel investor and board member for startups in emerging technology sectors.

Partnership Unpacked host Mike Allton talked to Max Rivera about:

♉️ How reseller partnerships work for tech startups

♉️ How to start a reseller program that can scale globally

♉️ How to measure and achieve success with reseller partnerships

Learn more about Max Rivera

• Connect with Max Rivera on LinkedIn
• Connect with Max Rivera on Twitter

Resources & Brands mentioned in this episode

• Snap
• Subscribe to the show calendar: agorapulse.com/calendar
• Learn more about Agorapulse with a free demo

Full Notes & Transcript:

(Lightly edited)

How Global Partnerships at Can Generate Billions In Revenue with Max Rivera

[00:00:00] Mike Allton: Would your organization benefit from a global network of reseller partnerships? In a time when marketing budgets are shrinking and global economies are in turmoil, having resellers on the ground in various regions and countries who have already established a trusted relationship with your target audience is a real asset.

But such a network isn’t tossed together overnight. Where do we start? And how do we grow and scale reseller partnerships to levels like what Snaps accomplished? That’s what we’re covering in today’s episode of Partnership. Unpacked.

This is Partnership Unpacked, your go to guide to growing your business through partnerships quickly. I’m your host, Mike Alton, and each episode unpacks the winning strategies and latest trends from influencer marketing to brand partnerships, and ideas that you can apply to your own business to grow exponentially.

And now

Welcome back to Partnership Unpacked, where I selfishly use this time to pick the brains of experts at strategic partnerships, channel programs, influencer marketing, affiliates, and relationship building. Oh, and you get to learn too. Subscribe to learn how you can amplify your growth strategy with a solid takeaway.

Every episode from partnership experts in the industry. Now we talked in a previous episode about building agency partner programs and the idea of using resellers to grow our businesses as a topic. I wanted to dig into more, how do we structure these programs? How do we expand it in new regions? How do we measure success?

I’ve got so many questions. And what better way to learn than to talk to someone who’s been there from the beginning with a tech company like Snap. Max Rivera joined Snap at an early stage to launch the international expansion practice before the company’s IPO. He’s led high performing global teams and launched the business across new markets in Latin America, Europe, Middle East, and Africa today.

He’s leading some of the largest business partnerships, and he’s also an angel investor and a board member for startups in emerging technology sectors. Hey, Max, welcome to the show. Max.

[00:02:10] Max Rivera: Thanks for thanks for having me.

[00:02:12] Mike Allton: Absolutely. So glad you can be here. And I always like to let my audience kind of understand how you got into this because they may not know you like I do.

So could you start by just explaining how you even got started with partnerships in the first place?

[00:02:26] Max Rivera: Yeah, I would say it was not necessarily by design or intentional. I didn’t necessarily kind of draw a master plan and had partnerships on my aim and my target. My background was in agencies, advertising agencies, specifically I started within an agency that’s part of the publicist group here in New York and essentially agencies are, as you very well know, client servicing first and foremost.

And so I had only two really large clients that I focused on and worked on and those relationships, more than just clients, are true partnerships. Although they’re sometimes called that or, or is not necessarily thought of as a partnership role per se, but they’re very much kind of partnership driven and it’s all about, you know, deepening that relationship and partnership with the, the specific clients.

And so I kind of had that client servicing kind of experience within the agency side. Uh, and eventually, you know, snap came on calling, uh, at the time, uh, again, it was an early stage as you mentioned in the intro, so I kind of took a leap, leap of faith. I, I wasn’t sure what I was signing myself up to. And I always joke that.

They really just try to find somebody that understood the Latin American market within the agency or advertising landscape. And that happened to be me. The truth is that beyond being originally from Latin America and from an international country, I didn’t really have a ton of experience working in Latin America, but they just kind of took a flyer as much as I was taking one.

And, and Snap was looking for somebody that could help expand the business. Didn’t want to take the risks of having to open up, you know, offices in every single corner of the world. It was early stages for the company. As I mentioned, they were just opening up their main offices in New York and in London, Paris, you know, bigger, larger hubs, but they really had opportunities on consumer side that they had a ton of users that were part of the platform of Snapchat in all parts of the world, right?

It’s a global product. And so they had a ton of audience in, in Latin America specifically, and they realized that through partnerships, they can start to learn about the region, expand in the region and start to understand what that opportunity really looks like in a much more risk free way. And so, you know, I was offered that role.

It happened to be in, in, in partnerships. And the rest is history. Happy to go in through into what we get there. But that’s kind of how I landed in a partnership role again. Wasn’t by design. Wasn’t like I was specifically looking for partnerships. It just happened to be that the strategy of international expansion was partnerships led and in seven years in into kind of a partnership role at snap.

I now have become a lover of partnerships and the power behind partnerships and how we can help organizations scale.

[00:05:06] Mike Allton: That

is so cool and fascinating. And one of the things that I want to give you the opportunity to share is that, I mean, many of our agency listeners, many of our regular listeners, they’re familiar with Snapchat as a social network, but I know a lot of agencies aren’t leveraging it from a revenue perspective.

They’re not necessarily managing it for clients and that sort of thing. How does snaps business then come from partnerships? How are you generating revenue?

[00:05:31] Max Rivera: Yeah. So 99 percent of the revenue that the company generates is advertising based like many social media or even, you know, messaging companies, that’s the primary source of revenue and, and you’re, you’re totally right.

I think. It is sometimes somewhat of a misunderstood platform, particularly because the age demographic of the user base of Snapchat and then the marketing and advertising industry, there’s a big gap there. And so, you know, there’s a typical omen in advertising that agencies or marketing teams would buy billboard spots close to or in the routes of the executives of the company so they could see the advertisements, right?

That’s kind of like something that we don’t have just because those CEO CMOs, you know, high level, you know executives Maybe aren’t the day to day users of snapchat. And so they don’t understand it as much They don’t see it in their everyday lives. But of course, they recognize that their target audience whether it’s Millennials young professionals or even, you know, Gen C and teenagers on the younger side They do realize through insights through consumer research That they’re pressing on the platform day in day out.

And so I mean, advertising is not really rocket science. You’re really looking for where the audience is and try to capture attention. And so as more and more marketers and advertisers realize that there’s a ton of attention and a massive opportunity to get in front of users, they start to engage with us and buy different sorts of campaigns and advertising within the platform.

[00:07:00] Mike Allton: Very cool. Okay. So they’re managing ad campaigns on behalf of their clients. That’s really good to know. At Agorapulse, we’ve got thousands, three, four, 5, 000 agencies that are using our platform for just general social media management. But we often have major, major events where we’re trying to show our agencies how they can diversify their revenue and add more revenue streams by Taking the clients they already have and saying, Hey, did you know we could also do this?

So I should be talking to all of them and saying, Hey, many of your clients should be talking to audiences that are on step. Cause to your point, there’s a demographic there that many of their clients are going to want to reach. If they don’t quite understand it, you’ve got programs in place to help them understand, you know, what are the differences or the nuances that are unique to that audience.

[00:07:46] Max Rivera: Yeah, and we, you know, the company had that benefit also to be started their social media kind of had already existed. So there’s a ton of things that they did on the consumer side from the very beginnings that were very different to what, you know, traditional social media was doing and I use the word different here very purposeful because I don’t want to bash or try to say that, you know, some of those things are negative per se, although there’s been a ton of that in the news lately, right, and some of the negative effects perhaps of social media.

But they’re simply just like took a different approach, things like not having public comments or follower counts and all that, for instance, that’s on the user side, but then on the brand and advertiser side of things, they also kind of took a different approach, one that perhaps is one of the reasons why maybe at Agora, too, if you do more social media management, snap Didn’t really offer an organic presence for, for brands until very, very recently.

And we’re talking, you know, company just turned 12 years old this year. And so for the longest time, you know, brands were used to the model. I think Facebook pretty much started where brands would have an organic page. And then eventually it would convince them, okay, why do you want to boost your page or boost your posts?

That wasn’t the case on snap. We actually took a very different approach where we said, you know, You’re welcome to engage with us from an advertising perspective. Like we only offered paid opportunities for brands We wanted to really figure out and not just provide another organic page for them to manage Right because now that you have so many if we really wanted to ask brands of that We wanted to be careful around the value add and the differentiator that we could have If we were going to ask them to manage a whole new community and build an audience and have a page, all the stuff that happens kind of on the organic side of social media.

And so that’s very recent for us today. And so, yeah, a lot of brands specifically if you’re focused on social media management, perhaps haven’t thought about Snapchat just because you couldn’t really build that audience until very recently. And so now we can really play in both the social media management, community management side, as well as the paid advertising side.

[00:09:39] Mike Allton: That’s so fascinating to me. Went to school for history and so I’ve kind of dubbed myself like this unofficial historian of social media I’ve been blogging about social media for over a decade and I’ve watched Platforms like snap really develop and come into their own in terms of hey, we’ve got this identity and we are to your point Different from everybody else.

And here’s why. I love the way that you articulated that. Now, I mentioned back at the beginning that I like to selfishly pick the brains of my experts. And that’s not just something I say. It’s quite true because he had a core pulse. We’re talking about spinning up our own agency program as a true partner and reseller program.

We don’t technically have that now. We’ve got agency clients. And like you said, you know, there’s some partnership relationships that can occur there, but It’s not really documented and laid out as a reseller program. So I know you started building reseller teams, Latin America. How did you structure that kind of partnership?

And was there any particular reason why they chose Latin America?

[00:10:38] Max Rivera: Yeah, for sure. So I’ll start maybe at the tail end of that question, right? So, so why Latin America for us? And I think why I’ll broaden the question to also say like why partnerships for international expansion, for instance, in Latin America is a really good example of it just because there is a lot of risk in operating in the region.

And I don’t mean, you know, I mean, risk from a financial, from an effort prioritization standpoint, the region, I don’t know the numbers exactly, but it’s multiple countries, right? Uh, even though the language is primarily Spanish, obviously Brazil, which is a huge market within the region is Portuguese. So that, you know.

So when you’re thinking about localization of materials or of your product, your platform, all of that becomes challenging, even within Spanish, there’s different variations of Spanish through the region that’s only on the language side. Then you’re talking about all countries having individual currencies.

It doesn’t have the benefit of Europe that mostly operates in euros, for instance. Each country has their own laws. Once you’re operating, each country has different policies, they’ll go through elections at different times, right? So you’re really talking about a diverse big region where the opportunity sometimes is not as large, especially at the early stages, or it might take longer for you to generate enough revenues to really justify a huge investment that would require to really be present throughout the region.

And so working with resellers that, as you mentioned at the very top of the podcast, already have a presence, already have a relationship with the clients there. That’s unlike the direct Client side, but they also understand the culture. They understand the laws, obviously speak the language and so they can more than resell.

They can also be great consultants for you to understand the region. And that’s kind of what we set out to do as much as we wanted to drive revenue and start to monetize the region. We also just wanted to gain learnings. So I would say that failure was almost part of what we had contemplated as a possibility and we being okay with it just because we were wanted to learn before really going in deeper.

And I think, you know, that that paid off for, for several reasons. You know, there’s a lot of volatility that happened, not just in the region, but with our platform during the time that we were launching. And so going to partnerships route allowed us to have the flexibility that we needed.

[00:12:54] Mike Allton: And so how did you actually structure those partnerships?

I’ll admit. I’m probably most familiar with meta and how they work with agencies, which for the most part that really isn’t a partnership at all. They know the agencies exist and the agencies will charge their clients to manage their ads and meta will typically charge the clients directly for ad placements.

And there’s not a lot of go between, between meta and the agency itself. How has things different for you?

[00:13:21] Max Rivera: Yeah, so in our case, we really, really took a true partnership approach where we just picked, you know, one player within the region. So we weren’t going to try to sign up a ton of different players or agencies, which is some of the challenge sometimes when you’re at the scale of bigger companies like Meta, as you mentioned.

You know, we picked one partner that we really thought we can get behind and go deep with them that could give us what we needed. And. One of the tenants that we had from the very beginning and then kind of became the formula is that we wanted to really make them feel like they were part of our company.

We did a ton of efforts to have the individuals within the partnerships and not just at an organizational level, but on an individual level on the team, those teams, you know, we sometimes would tell clients, this is your snap team. You might see that their email address is not at snap. com, but you can treat them as they were.

We said that internally as well with our stakeholders, different cross functionals, as we were maybe introducing them to the resellers or, you know, getting different levels of support. We would say they might not have access to all the tools or information that we have internally, but please consider them part of the team.

So we were very intentional about that. And really created that deep partnership together. So the way that we structure it, you know, although it wasn’t exclusive, like I said, we really just focus on on one partner from a resource standpoint. We just wanted to support one and go deep with them. And we tried to model like the team that we had internally at snap and tried to recreate that model.

Uh, with them, we help them with onboarding again. We really tried to mirror like everything that a snap employee would get when we would hire a salesperson on our direct sales team, we will look at, you know, what kind of onboarding and training plan do they get? Can we get that level, same level of onboarding training to our reseller teams?

So that approach, you know, really paid off and. I have to tell you, like the individuals that we hire, they really consider themselves snap employees. Like when, you know, when they maybe moved on to other projects or had to leave, they were like, you know, I will always bleed yellow. Like they would always say that.

And when we met with clients to clients would say it back to us, like, I really feel like I’m like dealing with like you guys directly and not a third party. Like they really started to take within the marketplace that were known as like the Snapchat person. So one of the things that we learned over time too, is to require our resellers to have.

People that worked exclusively on our product. We didn’t want resellers that would just kind of go and open a briefcase and sell them Snapchat today and then, you know, 30 minutes later, offer them something else. Like we had exclusive teams that were fully dedicated to us. They weren’t large. Sometimes it was only one or two people and that was enough, but we really prefer to have one or two that were fully immersed in our platform and really felt like part of snap as opposed to a big team that maybe it was just cross selling and selling multiple things at once.

[00:15:59] Mike Allton: And so many great takeaways. And I love that you unknowingly mirrored exactly what that, that other episode I mentioned at the top of the show, I had Franz Trump, who is with StreamYard and used to work with Hopin, and he was specifically talking about their agency program, and he said the same thing where he started with like five, six, seven agencies, and that’s it.

He wasn’t trying to, you know, reach a thousand agencies out of the gate. Got to prove some concept. Got to build up some workflows and build those relationships. And that takes time. So if we’re going into it from that perspective, we’re starting with a few agencies. We know it’s gonna take a little bit of time.

How do we measure success? For those initial partnerships,

[00:16:39] Max Rivera: yeah, you know, for for us, like I mentioned to like learning was kind of baked in into our plan. We were going into different regions. And, you know, first and foremost, we wanted to understand the region. And so as much as we did have, obviously, financial or like revenue KPIs, we also set out to learn.

Different things around demand about product market fit. And we were comfortable with also learning that potentially there wasn’t a fit and there might be, like I said, maybe just failure, right? Like we were okay for, for, you know, certain opportunities or markets to, to walk back if we learned that there weren’t ready for our platform or we weren’t ready for those markets.

And so. I remember a lot of the conversations that we have with our partners at the very beginnings were, you know, being honest and transparent about that. Right. And I think honesty is, you know, so important when you’re starting a partnership to build that trust and being able to have, you know, those hard conversations when they come and sending the right expectations from the beginning and just being transparent and honest, uh, really helps.

And so, and we will tell our partners, you know, if you miss on our, you know, revenue targets or objectives, that’s okay. Right. Like eventually, like, Yeah. You know, we’ll, we’ll try to optimize things or kind of address those things, but as long as we’re getting learnings in return, right, like if we are not hitting some of those KPIs or goals that are more numerical or quantitative and financial, as long as we get the learnings, right, if we’re not hitting those, and then we’re also not knowing why, and we’re also not understanding like why that’s the case, or perhaps how we’re going to solve it, or what we can try differently, right.

Then it’s really, really a true failure that we would think like there might not be the right partner fit. But if they’re maybe missing on some of the goals, but we’re getting great learnings around like why we’re getting great customer feedback, product feedback, and we’re implementing solutions to try to address those problems, then we would consider that partnership a success, especially in those early stages.

And so we said that on the, on the onset on some of those partnerships. And I want to clarify too, you know, when we’re talking about these agencies or resellers that we use to expand internationally. We would hire them. So they were not just like a traditional agency where they’re clients to you. Like we were literally hire them, have a contract with them, you know, have revenue share agreements.

And so we could really demand a lot of those partners. But even with that, you know, setup, we actually were very flexible and understanding that, you know, we’re going in uncharted waters, opening up new countries and new regions, you know, It’s not easy, right? And so again, having those learning KPIs built in from the very beginning were important and making sure that the partners knew that because they’re making investments too, right?

And so for them, it’s also important to get something in return. And so we tried to set KPIs that would meet both of our goals, not, not just ours as the client, as the ones that were paying and hiring them, but wanted to make sure that they were successful. And if they thought our partnership was successful, they would invest more in it as well.

And so we said, And a mutual KPIs that would be mutually beneficial and not just selfish for, you know, for our goals as, uh, as the client or as the, the entity that was hiring them.

[00:19:39] Mike Allton: That is so insightful. Friends, we’re talking with Max Rivera from Snap about how to set up agency resellers to be a successful channel for your business here to kind of share with us another channel you might not be paying enough attention to is our CMO to GorePulse, Daryl Prail.

It’s the Arc de Triomphe. Can you imagine if you’re in charge, if you’re the CMO of Marketing Paris, what are your main channels? The Arc de Triomphe. There’s the Eiffel Tower. There’s the Louvre. Those are your channels you’re going to use to drive tourism dollars in. Okay, now, but you’re not the CMO of Paris.

In fact, you’re the CMO of your company, product, service. So what are your main channels? So I’m going to guess they’re things like pay per click, maybe trade shows events, maybe content. Those are all pretty predictable, right? Let me ask you this question. Are you treating social media as a main channel? By the way, only 1.

8 percent of you today measure social media and can prove an ROI in that investment. HubSpot and Gartner say social media is the number one channel to invest in this year. Are you doing it? If not, I can tell you why. You’re not doing it because you don’t have the tools. You don’t have the mentality and that’s okay.

We’ve got you covered. You change the mentality. We’ll give you the tool. GorePulse tracks all the ROI for you. One place to manage all your social media activity. Your number one channel. Change your success. Treat social media as a channel. One CMO to another. My name is Daryl. I’m with the GorePulse. I’ll talk to you soon.

All right, Max, this is so cool. I’m just so fascinated by this, this journey that you guys were on. And I want to know you had started with a few agencies that you were doing. You know, doing deep dives with writing and building them and building the processes. How did you scale and expand partnerships from those early resellers?

And how long did that actually take you?

[00:21:35] Max Rivera: Yeah, so we actually continue with that model. We’re not just the nature of the partnerships that we have. It doesn’t really lend itself to, I think, scale, you know, too, too large. We basically scaled by adding new countries, essentially. So as we talked about in the beginning, you know, we started with Latin America.

We, you know, started with certain countries in Latin America. We expanded that to more countries within the region to really have full coverage. And then after we kind of proved out that formula and that that was a successful model for expansion, we actually just went and picked another region. You know, we did a lot of analysis to, to make that decision, right.

And understand where to go next and go and replicate that model with another set of partners in a new region. And so that I think happened in the second year or so. I think the endeavor that we did was very large because it was basically getting to global coverage eventually that was like the goal and it only took us, I would say, like, probably.

Up until last year or a couple years ago, so about call it five years to really have nearly global coverage essentially through our partners and and each big region. We have 1 or 2 partners that we’ve really dug in deep and stick with them for the long term. And so we really established our partnerships to be long term partnerships.

Yeah, again, like I mentioned, the nature of the partnership doesn’t lend itself to have, you know, a ton of resellers necessarily covering that same market. We tried that at some points, like, you know, adding a second or third reseller that was going to go after that market and then trying to do kind of market or channel design and splits.

And that didn’t really work out so well for us, like picking one and going deep with them. Proved to be the best model. And so we kind of applied that globally. And like I mentioned today, now, you know, seven years, that’s how long I’ve been at the company. So how long, you know, we’ve had that practice of international expansion.

We pretty much have nearly global coverage, except one or two countries here and there where there’s maybe not enough opportunity or for regulatory reasons, we’re not operating, but primarily, you know, have. major coverage and most of the main markets around the world. And that’s a combination of some of our direct sales teams and offices that we have around the world, as well as these, you know, a network of, uh, reseller agencies that we partner.

[00:23:43] Mike Allton: See, this is why I love having these conversations. It’s so inspiring to me. To listen to you and the journey that you’re on. It allows me to create a vision for where I may be able to go. And hopefully those of you listening, you’re getting that same idea. We talked with Ty Redigan in a previous episode who did something very similar.

He’s with partnership leaders now, but he was with Optimizely before that. And he specifically talked about going into Korea and tapping into the Korean market. I’ve had people approaching me. Talking about having Gore pulse go into South Africa and what would that look like? And can I get on a plane and go to South Africa and figure out that market?

That sounds fun to me. So thank you for sharing all that, right? What I’m really curious and you can go into as much detail or not totally up to you, but I’d love for you to share what. Your most successful partnership to date has been why was it successful? You know, maybe who it was if you want to share that, that detail and how were you measuring success for that individual partnership?

[00:24:41] Max Rivera: Yeah, I think one in particular comes to mind and stands out and it’s actually One of our most kind of longstanding partnerships, but the reason why I think it’s the most successful to me, at least that, uh, there’s kind of like a personal answer. Yeah, it’s because of the human connection that we were able to make.

So, you know, people from this partnership I started, you know, many years ago, we’ve now our personal friends and they’re people from all over the world or across the pond and many miles miles away. But we are close friends. I don’t work on that partnership now anymore, for instance, and we remain in close.

And, you know, we talk about our families and we’re connected. So to me, that has been one of the most successful partnerships because of that human connection. And I think the reason why I was also successful on the business side was for the very same reason, because I do think that oftentimes you forget that, you know, behind any partnership.

There are these individuals, right? These like people and they have their own goals, you know, personal and professional goals as individuals as much as there are like organizational goals. And so I think to me, it’s been really successful just across partnerships and you don’t have to become best friends to all of your partnerships that have to be success, but at least to understand what are the personal agendas and what are the personal goals that that individual that you might be dealing with for that specific partnership?

What are they looking for? As much as you know, what is their organization going to look for? And how can they look good? And how can they accomplish those personal goals, right? So I’d like to either try to, you know, get to the root of that or try to understand that or just have that conversation openly to understand, you know, how do we make ourselves successful as individuals, as well as our organizations that we’re working with.

And so, yeah, this particular partnership that I have in mind and They were to listen, they know exactly who I’m talking about, but it’s one of our longest standing partnerships. And again, part of it sometimes was having tough conversations about failures and things that didn’t work out. So I don’t necessarily mean that it was the most successful business or financial partnership per se.

But it’s definitely been the, the most true partnership where you can have those conversations where you can build together, where you can scale back the partnerships at times, right. Or when you can say no to things and then still maintain that trust and still help each other. So I consider that one specifically, you know, uh, our most successful.

And it’s one that did also cover as many countries as possible. So from a coverage perspective, in terms of like the partnerships that we’ve been talking about here today, it was one, like a larger scale from a geographic perspective.

[00:27:06] Mike Allton: I love that answer.

We’ve. I had over 50 episodes of this show and long time listeners know relationships are something that I bring into every single episode because I truly believe they’re one of the most important aspects to partnerships, certainly also to our personal professional careers.

We have to be mindful of the relationships that we’re building, the network of people. It’s our net worth has been said in many different times. So that’s, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that max. What final advice would you share for other partnership leaders or maybe some pitfalls you suggest that they avoid?

[00:27:39] Max Rivera: I think, I mean, I want to double down on what I just said here before, right? I think getting to that individual that’s behind whatever partnership you’re doing, I would say is so important, really like kind of recognizing them as an individual. But also yourself, right? So I think just being really transparent and Mike, I believe I was remembering our first conversation just a couple of months ago.

I think we got to that, right? I think I asked you, why are you doing this podcast? Right. And I think you expressed it here, right. In terms of building your own relationships and kind of wanting to take people’s brains as you’ve done here today. And then you do so well in your other podcasts. Right. So I think just being very, Transparent about that about, you know, wanting to learn about people’s goals and like what they’re trying to accomplish sharing your own and just getting that as quick as possible.

I think it’s such a bedrock to to starting to build that trust and have those partnerships together. I think pitfalls personally that I’ve had that I would tell people to avoid. I try to remind myself to avoid as much times. It’s sometimes just to say no. I think it’s sometimes it’s one of the toughest things, especially if you’re very relationship driven or if you have these strong relationships already, like It becomes harder sometimes, right, to say no or to disappoint or to, uh, not go forward with a project.

And sometimes that’s really the best for everyone. And we all know, I think in our gut sometimes where something doesn’t feel right or you’re pushing too hard or you have so much or the rest of the organization can’t get behind something. And so just being able to say no at times and having those tough conversations, I think it’s just something that I try to remind myself a lot sometimes, just because I am very motivated, can get very excited, can, you know, want to do many things.

It’s such an exciting time in the industry and there’s always so many opportunities, but having that ability to say no, and then focus on the things that you’ve said yes to, it’s just so important. And I think overall will help you have. Better relationships as opposed to committing to something, obviously, and then not being able to deliver or not doing with the full full effort for it.

And so I think that that’s the advice and pitfall to watch for

[00:29:32] Mike Allton: terrific advice. Definitely be mindful of your time and that sort of thing and be ready to say no when it’s just not a good fit. But I also love that you mentioned how important it is to be. thinking about who you’re talking to and your partner’s goals, which means one has to ask, what are your goals?

What are you hoping to accomplish? Right? Don’t go into a partnership meeting. Just solely thinking about what do I need to accomplish? Cause we all have our own goals and that’s great. We need those as, as guiding metrics, but we can’t go into partnerships and relationships focused on ourselves and our own goals.

So thanks for reading that max. You have been amazing. Thank you so much. Such a great interview. I know folks have gotten a ton out of it. Where can they reach out to you if they want to know more about you or how to work with you?

[00:30:20] Max Rivera: I think probably LinkedIn is the best. I think it’s my most personal social media.

I always joke. The rest of my social media, it’s all just like kind of random pictures. You won’t find anything, you know, interesting or personal there. So. LinkedIn, you can, you know, keep up to, you know, some of the work I’m doing and, uh, all that stuff. And it’s the best place to just reach out if anybody wants to get in touch.

[00:30:39] Mike Allton: Fantastic. Thanks. We will have Max’s link in the show notes and snap and everything. All the other references in today’s episode, we’ll have all those in the show notes. That’s all we’ve got for today, friends. So please do me a favor, find the podcast on Apple and drop us a review. Love to know what you think.

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