Nick Reed Smith
SUMMARY
Who normally participates in the creation of a partnership ecosystem?
It relies on a wide range of variables, including the size of the business and the people who are interested in joining the partnership.
Has there been any technological advancement that has aided in the facilitation of partnerships?
As partnering has gotten increasingly popular, especially for top firms on the S&P 500 as it is a significant portion of their revenue, there has been a major growth of partner tech meant to help empower relationships.
Where do partnerships often fit into an organisational structure of a company?
The VP of partnerships or alliances usually sits behind sales, and partnerships are frequently referred to as the "redheaded stepchild." To improve every single element in the sales velocity equation and provide a broader perspective to co-selling, co-marketing, and co-innovation, it is recommended that partnerships sit at the executive table with equal clout to a CMO or CRO.
TRANSCRIPT
Ricky Pearl: Today on a Couple of Pointers Podcast, we are lucky enough to have Nick Reed Smith with us from Work Span with not actually what I want to be talking about What I really wanna be talking about is your new book
Nick Reed Smith: Thank you. I'm really excited about it. That's right. Sales Fusion has officially launched and actually we've already hit best seller status on Amazon.
What does it mean to be best seller status?
Ricky Pearl: What does it mean to be best seller status?
Nick Reed Smith: Yeah, so there's multiple different categories on Amazon. What we, what you do is when you publish the book, you tell it which categories you're part of, and then it basically tracks the number of sales for each of those categories, and there's a ranking.
A multi-author book
Ricky Pearl: Incredible. Now, this is a multi-author book
Nick Reed Smith: That's correct. Yeah. More than a dozen authors got together from different different industries. All in sales though. And so yeah we're really excited about it
Ricky Pearl: And, what's the gist? What's the book about?
Nick Reed Smith: Yeah, basically it's an overview of sales. So you get some sales strategy, some sales tactics. The chapter that I wrote I can go into, but you get a nice mix because each author brings a different perspective. But the overarching theme is just how are you gonna go out and sell more?
Ricky Pearl: And who's it for? Who's the intended audience?
Nick Reed Smith: Yeah. Absolutely. I think anybody in sales can get some value from this. We're seeing most traction right now in small business and entrepreneurs.
Now what was your chapter about?
Ricky Pearl: Super interesting. Now what was your chapter about?
Nick Reed Smith: Absolutely. Yeah, so I, I wrote it more of the strategic level about something that I don't see enough people talking about, which is there's sales, marketing, and ecosystems. I think we're all familiar with sales and marketing, but not too many people talk about ecosystems or another way of phrasing that is strategic alliances or partnering with other companies.
Nick Reed Smith: And what I did was I made the case for when you should lean more towards any one of those three.
Ricky Pearl: That is really interesting because I've heard a lot about partnerships maybe Explain a little bit more what you mean by ecosystems, partnership, strategic alliances
Nick Reed Smith: Yeah. Thank you so much. So let me make an analogy. I think many of us are familiar with the concept of networking. Two people get together and you learn a little bit more about each other, and then you try to help each other out. Maybe I introduce you to somebody, you introduce me to somebody, and we both benefit from that.
Nick Reed Smith: It's a mutual win-win situation. But that's what happens at the micro level with two individuals. You take that same concept and apply it to a business, and then it happens at the macro level.
Now would that usually be two partnership managers coming together? Is it marketing departments? Is It CEOs and executives? Where do you normally see this these ecosystem starting?
Ricky Pearl: Now would that usually be two partnership managers coming together? Is it marketing departments? Is It CEOs and executives? Where do you normally see this these ecosystem starting?
Nick Reed Smith: Great question. I would say all of the above. It depends on a lot of factors, the size of the company. The, really who are the people who want to get involved in the partnership are just two of those factors. But there's many different variables at hand for how that all can come in and come to play.
Do you see this mostly being co-selling, co-marketing? What are some of the attributes that you would be looking for in a strategic alliance?
Ricky Pearl: Do you see this mostly being co-selling, co-marketing? What are some of the attributes that you would be looking for in a strategic alliance?
Nick Reed Smith: Yeah, absolutely. So it can be many things. It can be absolutely be co-selling, co-marketing. There's also co-innovation, which is really important. So really the way I think about it is, you know What are the two things? What are, what's the thing that the two companies can come together to do that's going to add more value to their end customer while also producing more value for each of those companies by working together?
When at what stage when would you want to be more say sales focused as opposed to marketing ecosystem?
Ricky Pearl: When at what stage when would you want to be more say sales focused as opposed to marketing ecosystem?
Nick Reed Smith: Yeah, great question. The way I look at it is if you are in a situation where you have a high dollar value product, you have a very complex. Product you have longer lead cycles. That's a situation where sales would make a lot of sense.
When would you choose to work with a ecosystem, a partnership ecosystem as a lead revenue source as oppose a channel as opposed to sales and marketing?
Ricky Pearl: And when would you choose to work with a ecosystem, a partnership ecosystem as a lead revenue source as oppose a channel as opposed to sales and marketing?
Nick Reed Smith: Great question. So with ecosystems, very similar situation to I would say sales. But let's say you have a buyer persona that's difficult to get in front of that, is very conscientious, like a technical buyer, maybe a CTO, a CIO. And if you have a product that helps to fill in the gaps gaps of another commonly sold service or product.
Nick Reed Smith: So in that situation, you are able to leverage somebody else and partner up with them and that ecosystem play would make a lot of sense.
Ricky Pearl: We see this a lot services like Salesforce or Adobe Experience Manager platforms where they need integrators and partners to deliver the end impact to the customer. And it's interesting how it is becoming more mainstream with general businesses that aren't necessarily platform softwares
Nick Reed Smith: I would also add Ricky. Consulting. I think consulting works really well with partnerships because oftentimes that consultant there's that value add on top of a product that's maybe a little bit more broader audience. So you have you can have a situation where you have an off the shelf product and a big company that's really focused on that product development, but they don't necessarily wanna be the service arm of the product.
Nick Reed Smith: And so then what will happen is they'll build strategic alliances With consultants who will then be that service arm for the product.
Has there been a lot of innovation within partnerships lately?
Ricky Pearl: Has there been a lot of innovation within partnerships lately?
Nick Reed Smith: I don't know the to that question. I'm sure there has.
Has there been any innovation in technologies that helped to facilitate partnerships?
Ricky Pearl: No let me rephrase the question because you obviously do know the answer. That was a bad question has there been any innovation in technologies that helped to facilitate partnerships?
Nick Reed Smith: Oh, absolutely. In fact, it's a rapidly growing market. if you just look at the amount of partner tech that was available a few years ago, we're talking maybe a dozen to a hundred companies. And now there's been this massive proliferation. So we have thousands of different types of partner tech out there.
Nick Reed Smith: And really what that's all designed to do is help to empower. Those partnerships. This is the era of ecosystems. Partnering has become more mainstream and in fact if you look at the top 10 companies on the S and P 500, 9 of them, partnerships are a huge aspect of their revenue. So it's something that if you're gonna be a company that's gonna go out and scale and try and become massive, if you're not doing partnerships, you're really missing out.
Where does partnerships usually fall within a company's organizational structure?
Ricky Pearl: Where does partnerships usually fall within a company's organizational structure?
Nick Reed Smith: Great question. Yeah, I, and I think this is actually a problem because we typically see partnerships as treated almost as the redheaded stepchild. So most companies, you have a CRO, you might also have a CMO. So effectively you've got somebody at the executive level in charge of sales. Somebody at the sexecutive level in charge of marketing. but we don't usually see that at most companies where they have a chief partnerships officer. Usually what I'm seeing is you have a VP of partnerships or a VP of alliances who sits underneath sales. And so something that we've been advocating for is you really need to have those partnerships, people at the executive table, and they should have just as much say as a CMO or a CRO.
Ricky Pearl: You've brought up that one of the factors or the benefits of partnership or strategic alliances is around collaborative innovation, and you would then see this partnership having impact on the product side. So I could understand how separating it out from being underneath sales or specifically underneath marketing into own vertical within a company would make a lot of sense.
Nick Reed Smith: Totally agree with you. Yeah, and I think it's just, it's a matter of exactly what you said when you put it underneath, sales. You're missing out on a lot of that innovation. Oftentimes marketing gets pulled into innovation sometimes even more than sales. And I haven't seen too many partnerships sitting underneath marketing.
Nick Reed Smith: But yeah, that's part of the reason why we think it makes sense to have them at that executive table because then they can bring that broader perspective of co-selling, co-marketing, co-innovation, all to bear.
Ricky Pearl: That's very interesting that they don't often fall under marketing because I think the biggest area of growth that I've seen within marketing, at least over the last few months, has been in co-marketing it being a real genuine partnership play where not just the event that they're putting on, but even the sales cycle thereafter is often collaborated all the way through to deals won or closed.
Nick Reed Smith: Totally agree. Yeah Something I'd like to say that I think is really interesting. So if you look at partnerships, they actually improve every single variable in the sales velocity equation. Now Ricky, I'm sure you are familiar with the sales velocity equation. Do you wanna tell the audience what the variables are or should I?
Ricky Pearl: Don't test me here. No, you go. ahead
Nick Reed Smith: All right, great. So you have. You have the number of opportunities in your pipeline, and you've got the value of each of those opportunities. Then you have the win rate, and all of that is divided by the length of the sales cycle. And so if you look at partnerships, what happens is, the number of opportunities in your pipeline increase as you add partnerships, the value of those opportunities increases. as you add partnerships. the win rate increases as you add partnerships. And these, the length of your sales cycle actually decreases as you add partnerships. So every single variable is improved by this one activity of having a partner.
Ricky Pearl: It makes a lot of sense Like I understand it even if we take the science out of it and how to calculate deal velocity, just looking at it logically if you are brought in by a partner you have a higher level of trust increased communication and more social proof. All of that does help to decrease risk for the buyer. Shorten sales cycles, allows them to make decisions quicker, particularly if they already have an intimate relationship with the partner that has brought you into that deal
Nick Reed Smith: I agree with everything. I didn't hear a question, so I'm just gonna nod
Is there anything else in this book that you think this book achieves that that maybe no other books had really answered this point?
Ricky Pearl: They'll those, that was just a good nodding shots. Is there anything else in this book that you think this book achieves that that maybe no other books had really answered this point?
Nick Reed Smith: That's a good question. I think there is I have, I probably need to revisit the chapter that was done by Mark Perone. Mark Perone was a mentor of mine who taught me a lot about social selling. But he's also really good at giving you some of the answers while also creating curiosity. So something Mark did in the book was he gave just enough information to wet the appetite on social selling, but held some back and really used his chapter as a mechanism to drive people to his YouTube channel and some other things that he's doing.
Ricky Pearl: That would be a masterclass then, right? Let's get onto social selling. I think this is something you do extremely well. I personally see your post from you at least daily. I feel like we have a relationship even though we are on ends of the world, and a lot of that is an asynchronous relationship through your social content.
Nick Reed Smith: Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Again, I owe a lot of credit to a lot of people, you included. I don't really, I never really studied this. I just figured it out on the fly, watching other people, engaging with other people's content and just ran a bunch of experiments until I figured out a system that works for me.
Ricky Pearl: Let's talk about some of those experiments. Tell me some of the things that you've tried that didn't work.
Nick Reed Smith: Ooh, some things that didn't work. I like that. I used to talk just. A lot about things that were going on in my life, but I didn't always necessarily have a point. And so I found some subcategories that perform well. Like anytime you have an announcement that's celebratory, people really like that.
Nick Reed Smith: Or anytime you have a challenge that you're working on people really like that. But if you just tell people Hey, here's how I do this. That can work. I think you have to be able to give a level of detail that really provides a lot of value to people. And I wasn't necessarily organized enough to always be able to do that.
Ricky Pearl: Here's how my wife and I go to IKEA without getting divorced. Like it's.
Nick Reed Smith: Exactly. That's a great one.
Ricky Pearl: Yeah. I don't have an answer for that, by the way. No we do. We're pretty good.
Nick Reed Smith: But great headline to see you. You got me with the hook right away.
Ricky Pearl: All right. So low con, low context or low relevance. Personal shares. Not really beneficial.
Nick Reed Smith: Yeah. I would say that's accurate. Which is earth-shattering news there, right?
Any tactical things that you had tried that you found doesn't work?
Ricky Pearl: Any tactical things that you had tried that you found doesn't work?
Nick Reed Smith: I, it's hard to say because when you say doesn't work I don't know that I found too much that doesn't work. But really what I'm looking for when I run an experiment is what works better than other things. so you can get away with almost anything on social media and get some sort of a reaction.
Nick Reed Smith: But what I'm looking for is the things that work exceptionally well. So I have a lot more answers of what works for me than what doesn't work. Probably because as soon as I find something that isn't working, I don't really spend time figuring out what doesn't work. I don't remember that. I just move on and keep trying to find the next thing that will work.
Ricky Pearl: And it is always evolving, so let's move on to some of the things that are working for you. What
Nick Reed Smith: Yeah, absolutely.
Ricky Pearl: Maybe just let loose. Give us some advice on your on some social selling tactics that are really working for you at the moment
Nick Reed Smith: I appreciate it. So two things I want to talk about here. One is emotion. I haven't always done the best job of this in the past, but I've been working a lot harder on trying to, before I make a post, figure out which emotion am I trying to evoke with this post. And if you can make an emotional connection with a post, I found that gets a lot more engagement.
Nick Reed Smith: It gets a lot more traction. People get they wanna comment on it. And so that there's a really big reward to the algorithm if
Nick Reed Smith: you can have some sort of an emotional reaction. And that could be anything, that could be happiness, joy. It could be love, it could be anger, it could be sadness, it could be melancholy.
Nick Reed Smith: So whatever the emotion is. But really try and turn that emotion up to 11. And that's been working out really well for me.
Ricky Pearl: That's really interesting. Because I've never. No, I'm sorry to interrupt. I've never thought of that. At the moment a lot of people's LinkedIn strategies is, how can I intellectually dominate. But there's there doesn't pull on a lot of emotional strings unless it is so dominant that you might get bewilderment or amazement.
Nick Reed Smith: I totally agree. And I'm also one of those people, I love it when I see people who write something really logical, or I think you do an exceptional job of this. You just drop so much knowledge that is so valuable, like some of the stuff you've written about email, which I know that's not even what you sell yourself as being the expert on, but you just know so much about that.
Nick Reed Smith: I would read those posts and I'd be like, floored. I have to implement this right now cuz I'm missing out. I'm not that smart. I'm not that big of an expert to write some, technical advice and give you all of those tips and secrets. But I am pretty good with people skills and so I figured.
Nick Reed Smith: out that if I can just focus on emotion that works for me and I don't have to necessarily be the smart guy.
So emotion works. What else is really working for you?
Ricky Pearl: Great. So emotion works. What else is really working for you?
Nick Reed Smith: Yeah. Video. And a again, that's probably not a big surprise, but it is amazing how there's some great copywriting out there, but if you can do a short, punchy video and still have good copywriting. It's it just, the level of relationship that you build is very different. So there's, it's a double edged sword.
Nick Reed Smith: Some of the downsides of video, you don't necessarily get as much reach with video on LinkedIn for example. but the people who do engage with the video, the impact of them watching that video is much higher. If you're willing to sacrifice some of the reach component of the video, what happens is that asynchronous relationship that you're talking about building, it becomes much, the magnitude of that is much higher.
Nick Reed Smith: So I now meet with people who who I haven't talked to in six months, but they've been watching me on TikTok or LinkedIn and they've seen my videos. And so we come into a conversation. And they feel like they absolutely know me, or sometimes I've even had people, and it's a little embarrassing. I've had people say, Oh man, I feel like I'm talking to a celebrity.
Nick Reed Smith: Which is of silly cuz hey, I'm, I've only got 10,000 followers on LinkedIn. I'm not that big of a deal, but it's because they watch me on a daily basis. And they've just got this image built up in their minds. So the impact of video is just tremendous.
Ricky Pearl: I've noticed it's much stickier in people's memories too. I can't remember a lot of things about, I read so much on LinkedIn every day, but the videos do seem to stick out. And when I bump into someone in the streets, a friend. They've not in my industry, but they see me around on LinkedIn.
Ricky Pearl: The one thing they'll always mention is, I saw your video. Even if I'd done one video, nine text posts, somehow they'll always mention the video.
Nick Reed Smith: I, yeah, totally agree. And I think some of that too is it's a bit of, if you look at the statistics of how many people actually post versus how many people actually post video on a consistent basis. Very few people actually regularly post on LinkedIn, but then even of that group of people who regularly posts and they're trying to create that perception of thought leadership, very few of them post video regularly.
Nick Reed Smith: So you really are that 1% of the 1%, and that really sticks out in people's minds.
One pointer on your comment game for LinkedIn
Ricky Pearl: Now give me one pointer on your comment game for LinkedIn
Nick Reed Smith: Oh yeah, absolutely. Something I've been experimenting with right now that has been working really well is including a gif or a meme or some, any type of picture at all in a comment. It gives that comment more juice for the algorithm. What I'm doing is when I'm trying to leave a comment I wanna make sure that it's gonna get seen.
Nick Reed Smith: But I also want my audience, who I'm commenting, I want them to over time realize, Hey, when Nick comments on my post gets more views for some reason. And you're giving them something when you include that picture or that image. And what I'm trying to do is create a back and forth conversation.
Nick Reed Smith: Yeah, I wanna comment on their post, but I'm really maybe having a question or some invitation to engage further in the conversation. And then I wanna go back and forth and include multiple memes or multiple pictures and really have kind of our own little chain going
Nick Reed Smith: in
Nick Reed Smith: that comment section in.
Your comment strategy, you try to do deep or wide, are you, do you do a few of those, like just on a friend's post and go nice post? Or are you always trying to add value?
Ricky Pearl: Now be honest. Your comment strategy, you try to do deep or wide, are you, do you do a few of those, like just on a friend's post and go nice post? Or are you always trying to add value?
Nick Reed Smith: That's a great question. I would say I usually default more towards deep and I'm not wide enough at all. I need to focus more on the width because it's great to go deep. You build a strong relationship with the person you're going deep with. The challenge is you're hurting yourself in terms of not being able to maintain as many relationships, because going deep requires a lot more time and attention and effort versus if you go wide, you can maintain you can be front of mind with multiple people all at once, and that's something I've kind let fall to the wayside a little bit, unfortunately.
Ricky Pearl: People might say Por que no los dos but we all know there's always sacrifices compromises to be made. The challenge with going wide is you don't build those deep relationships and the challenge with going deep is you build strong relationships your LinkedIn feeds slowly narrows to the people who you engage with on a daily basis and you don't get exposed to as much. Now
Nick Reed Smith: That's correct.
How's your experience on TikTok been as a B2B sales professional?
Ricky Pearl: You do a lot on TikTok as well and this is something I'm extremely interested in. How's your experience on TikTok been as a B2B sales professional?
Nick Reed Smith: I love it. I think it's actually interesting because originally video really scared me. And then this was probably about a year ago when I started really getting into video. But my video editing skills, Sucked. Just terrible and I didn't wanna learn anything like Adobe or I just didn't have the time or interest in really learning video editing.
Nick Reed Smith: And actually I have to give credit here to Chris Bogue. Chris Bogue cold prospected me, sent me a hilarious video. Then I got sucked into this whole void of watching his TikTok content And once I got on there, I was like I'm gonna create a video. And I didn't even realize this.
Nick Reed Smith: TikTok has phenomenal video editing tools built right into the app. And so for me, I think it was just the barrier to entry Was so low on TikTok and it was like, Oh wow. I can just click this button and record a snippet and then click the button again and record another snippet and so I can stitch videos together.
Nick Reed Smith: Oh, I've got all these editing features right here on my phone. I don't have to upload something in my computer. So it made it just, really easy and frankly, quite addictive . So yeah, that, that part has been great because it's just been an easy way for me to even just record the videos. And then a lot of times I don't even care about the traction I'm getting on TikTok because I'm just really using it to record the video, and then I'm gonna take that video and upload it to LinkedIn. I'm rambling here, but something else that's cool about TikTok is it's a small creator community within sales is on TikTok. So you can do a search for sales or tech sales or B2B sales, and you can find all of these influencers Who are on TikTok. and similar to what you were saying in terms of building that asynchronous relationship, I went and I followed all these people in sales who were posting content regularly on TikTok, and there's really only a, there's a handful of them out there.
Nick Reed Smith: And so I'd see their content on a regular basis and you comment on their content and they start. to get get familiar with you. And then if you can find that same person on LinkedIn, now you're engaging with them on multiple different social media channels.
Nick Reed Smith: quite powerful. And I've even had this happen now where I've met people in real life who I initially met on TikTok, and it's really cool because people are like, Oh my God I know you from TikTok.
Nick Reed Smith: And it's a whole different dynamic.
How many hours a day or how much time per day are you spending creating your video?
Ricky Pearl: How many hours a day or how much time per day are you spending creating your video?
Nick Reed Smith: Yeah, so I've fallen off. I'm not doing nearly as much as I was at my peak. I would say at my peak I was probably doing 10 to 15 hours a week just dedicated to creating videos. Now during that time period, I built up quite a backlog. And then I spent some time really just publishing all the stuff that I had made over a period of time.
Nick Reed Smith: Recently I've had to scale back because I was focusing on the book, focusing on some things here at work, so looking to get back into it and make more videos.
How much time do you spend per day on LinkedIn?
Ricky Pearl: And how much time do you spend per day on LinkedIn?
Nick Reed Smith: Yeah, again, it's a little different than it was in the past. I've had times in my life where I was spending maybe 20 hours a week on LinkedIn, which sounds outrageous for people, but if you know how to social sell effectively, you can get way more leads using a platform like LinkedIn versus, in my opinion, cold email, cold call, et cetera.
Nick Reed Smith: There's been times where I was spending a crazy amount of time on LinkedIn. I'd say right now I'm probably five to 10 hours a week.
Ricky Pearl: That's pretty efficient for what you're achieving on the platform. I'd Thanks five like five 10 to 15 really isn't a lot these days you can almost do 10 hours just incidental whilst drinking a cup of coffee. Maybe I drink too much coffee
Nick Reed Smith: I'm more of a tea guy myself,
How much of that would you attribute to the effort that you've put into LinkedIn?
Ricky Pearl: And in general if you look at the the business that you've brought in the revenue that you've brought in to your business how much of that would you attribute to the effort that you've put into LinkedIn?
Nick Reed Smith: Oh man, that's so hard. That's the whole de that's the whole dark social debate, right? Attribution is really difficult, I would say I have been one of the top performers here, and I would definitely say social media has contributed to that greatly. I don't know that I could put a number on it though.
Ricky Pearl: Fair enough. So just to end off I I like to ask two quick questions The first is you could employ any fictional character from any genre to do your job better than you could who would it be?
Nick Reed Smith: That's tough. I'd have to say Sherlock Holmes.
Ricky Pearl: Why?
Nick Reed Smith: Yeah, so I think something that has been really instrumental in my sales career is learning the value of research. and discovery. And so Sherlock Holmes is, renowned for being really good at, he's that detective, right? So he's really good at piecing multiple things together and making a deduction that ends up being highly accurate.
Nick Reed Smith: But I also think he's just a very curious person. And I think if you can have a salesperson who's really good at researching that means that they're gonna have a much better call to action, a much better opener when they finally get in contact with their prospect. And then also, if they're highly curious.
Nick Reed Smith: They're gonna do a much better job with the discovery process. And I think discovery is really where the rubber meets the road in terms of that bonding, the rapport and then ex having your customer experience your empathy and listening to them and peeling back the onion, asking 'em those deep questions, really understanding their challenge.
Nick Reed Smith: So those are two of the most important things in sales if you ask me.
What challenge are you currently having that if you had a magic wand, would like someone to wave and solve for you?
Ricky Pearl: I would agree and fantastic books, fantastic mini series with Benedict Cumberbach Sherlock Holmes would be a great hire. The last question is, what challenge are you currently having that if you had a magic wand, would like someone to wave and solve for you?
Nick Reed Smith: Yeah, that's a great question. I've got a couple different answers. Maybe I'll go one at a time here. So one challenge that I'm facing right now personally is just time management. I have my fingers in too many pies and, if I'm being totally honest, I'm not the best at saying no. I've gotten a lot better at it over time.
Nick Reed Smith: But as your influence grows, as your audience grows, all these different opportunities open up to you. And I'm a curious person. I wanna explore all these opportunities. I wanna figure out what's going on. And so what ends up happening is I get pulled in many different directions and then I realize, I look back at my day or at my week and I'm like, Oh, I wasn't spending the majority of my time on the thing that's gonna produce the most results.
Nick Reed Smith: And so really it's a challenge of prioritization and discipline.
Ricky Pearl: You wouldn't be alone in that but maybe someone listening to this able to give you some great recommendations some good books I particularly enjoy Single Tasking. It's a great book. I believe there's another one along the same lines that someone recently recommended I'll send you the link
Nick Reed Smith: I appreciate it. Actually, I've got a friend who's been who mentioned a book called The Pumpkin Principle. And I guess they talk about how if you want to grow an award-winning pumpkin, you have to prune away all of the the loser pumpkins that aren't gonna grow that big so that this one pumpkin can get all the nutrients. So I need to probably read that book keeps telling me about it.
Ricky Pearl: It sounds like an interesting one coming up to Halloween It might be appropriate.
Ricky Pearl: It's I have learned much talking to you. Incredibly insightful. I've absolutely been inspired. One, to read your book, to have a pumpkin latte. Never had one, but it like, just came to my head straight away. Maybe I mentioned coffee, You mentioned pumpkin, then we spoke about incidental definitely come away with that. No but really it's, I've learned a lot. It's been pretty inspirational. I'm motivated to get back into videos. I'm definitely gonna try your your tactic that you mentioned with LinkedIn. Most importantly, very interested in reading your book. Interested in reading the other chapters from the other 12 authors and giving you some feedback on how that has potentially changed my business we build out our partner ecosystem.
Nick Reed Smith: I really appreciate it, Ricky. This has been an absolute pleasure. I can't thank you enough. And truly, it, you're one of the people I follow regularly. I need to spend more time. Probably commenting and liking. I'm a little bit of a lurker right now, unfortunately. But, the stuff that you put out on a regular basis, you're absolutely a thought leader in the space.
Nick Reed Smith: I always learn something whenever I read or watch one of your videos. So please keep doing what you're doing.
Ricky Pearl: Great, man I look forward to chatting to you again soon.
Nick Reed Smith: Absolutely.
Ricky Pearl: Cheers.
