Two Incredibly Proactive, and therefore Productive, Partners w/ Gorgias and Electric Eye

[00:05:17] Nicole: [00:05:17] My name's Nicole. I am the senior partnerships manager of the East coast. So really managing everything. If you split the U S in with align, that's kind of how we decided Eastern West.

[00:05:27] You know, we, last year when we started, we were at 50 employees. Now we're at 140. We were at 2000 customers and now we're at 6,000. I would say about 90% of those are on Shopify. And the rest of the 10% are split between Magento and big commerce. Electric guy is one of our favorite agencies to work with because they fall right in that category of working with our ideal customer profile.

[00:05:46] And yeah, my job is really just keep agencies happy, activate them, you know, really look at the partnership as an actual partnership versus just getting leads from one side and making sure they're happy. And I'm also just constantly iterating on on our product to make sure that they're recommending something that works and is good for their clients.

[00:06:05] Awesome. 

[00:06:05] Alex: [00:06:05] And real quick, Nicole, can you give me the internal definition of what chase and electric eye are as a partner? What tier they're at or what you call them and how do you define that partner type? 

[00:06:16] Nicole: [00:06:16] Yeah, absolutely. I think you know, with us, we definitely want it to be relatively low lift on the partnership side.

[00:06:21] I think. You know, when there's a lot of requirements, oftentimes it can get, you know, it can, it can deter the partnership away. So there's two different tiers at gorgeous. We have a regular, regular partnership tier, which is really just the sign-up on partner stack. And then you're a partner Wila and then there's a premier partnership, which is what twists in electric.

[00:06:37] I are part of and that qualifies agency for a lot more because what we do there is just a few more requirements. We ask them to put up their web. Or our logo on their website and vice versa complete like quickly, like a 30 minute training or sales brief, just to review our product, to really make sure that they understand.

[00:06:53] And we actually pulled information from our agencies to ask, you know, what they would be willing to do or what they think is reasonable to have as this premier partnership tier. So we didn't actually come up with it just on the gorgeous side. We took input from our partners to make sure that we can create this.

[00:07:06] Second tier. And I think, you know, we require one lead and that's it to qualify. So, you know, three steps really, really straightforward. And then of course, including us in your tech stack where possible, and electric guy has done that. And I think it makes it for a really seamless conversation with their customer.

[00:07:21] I 

[00:07:21] Alex: [00:07:21] love it. And chase you're an early adopter of both gorgeous. And the partner program you've been in there for a while. I had to do the introduction, the Wikipedia version of electric guy, but then take us through who's in your stack, who you consider partners, and then let's talk a little bit about your favorite things about gorgeous as partner program.

[00:07:38] Chase: [00:07:38] Absolutely. So I am the co-founder of electric eye. We build beautiful websites on Shopify but not only are their websites, they are sales machines. So we. Run Adam, through the lens of kind of conversion rate optimization, UX, customer journey, and lifetime value, all sorts of buzz words that we just make people make more money with their online brands.

[00:07:59] Right. That's as simple as that, we're really good at what we do. So through that, we have a lot of partners in this ecosystem. You know, we, we play in the Shopify ecosystem and gorgeous has also in that space, but also in that ecosystem is just like all sorts of other cool stuff. So we're partners with like the big media.

[00:08:15] Companies like Facebook and Google. We are also partners with Shopify, themselves, or partnered with gorgeous. Klaviyo is another one that comes to mind, essentially the apps and solutions and services that our customers are repeatedly using. We're usually pretty good partners with those people. And then there's also, you know, the random, smaller company and maybe not smaller company per se, but like a smaller solutions that exist, that it makes sense to partner with them when you're doing the project, because you have someone that you can actually ask questions to.

[00:08:47] We find ourselves doing that quite often as 

[00:08:49] Alex: [00:08:49] well. Yeah. Yeah. And I heard from Nicole, some of the cool things that are coming out of this, obviously some of the things that you guys are doing together, some of the ideas that. Flow up from you. So again I think the best thing that we can get out of this is how you can be more productive with partnerships and how you can bake partnerships into your entire organization.

[00:09:08] Everything you do, either, if you're a tech company, or if you are an agency, there are ways to make sure that you are. Using partnerships to benefit every department's KPIs. So back to you, Nicole, tell me this, tell me a few words to describe the state of the partner program. Things like growing things like mature.

[00:09:27] Talk to me about that. And then let's talk about some of the areas that partnerships touches. And then I want to go a little bit deeper 

[00:09:35] Nicole: [00:09:35] into that. Yeah, absolutely. I would say, you know, our partnership program is our one of our top performing channels that brings in revenue for us. So I would say it's very strong.

[00:09:45] It's a revenue generating. It's, you know, I would say fruitful a lot of, a lot of the partners we work with. I feel like it's very much aligned. With what their needs are on both ends. So those are kind of like the three words and sorry, what was the second 

[00:09:58] Alex: [00:09:58] question? Yeah. So I want to hear a little bit more about how partnerships is working its way into each department.

[00:10:06] So we can go one at a time. And then I want to talk to chase about how. Some of the things that he's doing is impacting the KPIs for gorgeous as well as his internal KPIs. But let's start with partnerships and marketing. You mentioned one of the things you do with premier partners is include them in blocks.

[00:10:24] Nicole: [00:10:24] Yeah. I think it's interesting. And you hit on a good point that you know, partners have become, you know, a part of all the different conversations that goes all the way from, you know, I'm part of the biz dev team, but then the sales team also treats, you know, our partner. Brands with a little bit more care in that white glove treatment.

[00:10:40]Then of course, when we pass it off to success, success asked me, you know, who is the partner? Can we get info on them? So it really is a collaboration across all of our teams. And then from a marketing standpoint, I think you know, when we're working with electric eye for example, on a, on a mutual client, we can really get input on both sides on how together.

[00:10:57] We've created a successful business and create a good case study around it because I think the best way to really acquire new customers and raise awareness of our partnership is through. Speaking on a mutual client and hearing from a brand first to actually see how it's been executed. So marketing is pretty open to it.

[00:11:13] We actually just hired our own marketing individual for our biz dev team, which is super exciting and are focusing a lot of our time on creating really good quality content, you know, hopefully improving SEO on both sides and driving it to electric eyes, a website as well as kind of our you know, pushing on our, on our own website as well.

[00:11:31]So it's definitely being adopted as. You know, those are kind of more roles we're hiring for, but we also do like a weekly newsletter, which I actually launched myself. Because I really wanted to give back to our partners who were sending us leads. And what we actually do now is we highlight all the features to let our partners know our leads.

[00:11:47]Our customers know. And then what else we do is. We feature an agency a week to let our customers decide, Hey, you can take advantage of this free feed audit on your website with this agency, you know, and basically to highlight them as well, to make sure that we're proactively raising our partners to potential customers and current customers.

[00:12:06] Wow. 

[00:12:06] Alex: [00:12:06] Congratulations. The newsletter is successful. It sounds like some of our newsletters are partner newsletters. Sorry, not ours. Some of them can be fluff really kind of just about the company and how great the company is. And it doesn't really. Corporate value for the partners. So that's great to hear that you kind of took that proactive approach of making sure that the newsletter from the gate was there to add value to the partners.

[00:12:30] So when chase opens it, hopefully he's still alive, but the partners that do open it, they see something that they can do immediately take action on whether that's a stuff to be included in blog posts, et cetera, events, to be included in just anything at all, that's relevant to them. So I want about marketing as KPI, as an endeavor.

[00:12:48]This is a perfect opportunity to chase. You've got a lot going on. On the marketing side, you've got a lot of demand, generation type content, a lot of blog stuff, but podcast stuff and core stuff going on. And I believe partnerships is included in all of that. So talk to me about some of your. Strategy that you like to incorporate partners into marketing.

[00:13:11] Some of the things that you look at, how you justify working partnerships into all that stuff. Just anything at all related to partner marketing. Yeah. I 

[00:13:20] Chase: [00:13:20] mean, partnerships at the end of the day are relationships. So one of the things that we've done is we have a bonus episode series of our podcast. So the podcast is honesty, commerce tips, and tricks about e-commerce stuff.

[00:13:32] And I'm your host. Right? And then we have bonus episodes where I started to lean more into our partners be that app or technology partners like gorgeous or other agency owners, you know, referral partners in our network. Having subject matter experts onto those bonus episodes to speak about things that they are truly experts at, and I get to pick their brain.

[00:13:51] And instead of having, you know, a monthly call or what have you with these, with these partners instead, we're just, we're producing co-marketing material together and just catching up at the same time. You know, it's an amazing little. Trick that we kind of have implemented recently, but beyond that, I mean, we are all in on the concept of content marketing as a, an awareness builder for the agency.

[00:14:11] We write blogs, we accept guest blogs from our partners. We have podcasts. You know, we have, obviously I just said we have the guests. One of the great things about our relationship with gorgeous, gorgeous is actually one of the premier sponsors of our podcast. And they have been since day one. And then, you know, I've had some crazy ideas that I brought up to gorgeous before.

[00:14:28] And they're like, that doesn't sound too crazy. So like hosting events or even getting a little more deep in, like maybe we'll do a conference someday. It, things like that with producing content. It's all about just co-marketing and both sides of it need to be shown in a great light. And if you can be proactive in coming up with those ideas to pitch, you're just making your partner managers job 

[00:14:46] Alex: [00:14:46] easier.

[00:14:47] That's a great point. And one of the things from our side being in the middle of all these conversations that we see and hear on all these calls is just a lack of. Not creativity. That's not the real word, but we're all really close to our products. We're all really close to our partnerships and our programs and our internal KPIs.

[00:15:06] We're in sort of this siloed state. If we're on the partner team or even on the agent society, you've got to focus on client services and it's hard for you to just. Jump on a call and say, what can we do together? Right. So we see that a lot. I think chase, you're definitely one of those people that can ideate really well and come up with mutually beneficial arrangements and co-marketing and co-selling and all the stuff that you do so kudos to you.

[00:15:29] But Nicole, it's hard for us to do this. It's hard for us to continually come up with stuff. So what we have to do is productize that in a way, we have to make sure that it's a part of our system so that we don't. Even have to think about it. It just happens. So let's talk a little bit about the phasing of your partner enablement strategy.

[00:15:48] We want to dovetail this into co-selling and how you guys have productized your co-selling routine, which I think is super unique. Nicole productizing could be one of two things. It could be the operation where. If you use, let's say an assets exchange platform, chase signs, the partner agreement, or onboards into whatever that triggers a delay.

[00:16:09] And then there's some things that get. Set to chase that's productizing in a way, but then there's that level of productizing where you've actually built out surveys and intake forms that ask chase certain questions or ask, or that user in starting your case. Certain questions that relate back to prod partnerships.

[00:16:27] So that we're product and partnerships sort of are starting 

[00:16:29] Nicole: [00:16:29] to open. Okay. Totally. Yes. So something new we launched this year is we actually created a survey. To send out to all 6,000 of our customers and ask them, you know, what is their budget? What are they looking for? You know, right. When they get onboarded and if they want introductions.

[00:16:43] So that survey goes out then automatically it goes into type form. We get a notification and they say, Hey, you know, this. Brand is looking for these types of intros. We have our tech partner who then introduces them to different tech apps. And then of course, you know, we do a rotation between the agency agency, partner managers.

[00:16:59] So me for the East coast and then my West coast lead and see, you know, who we can actually introduce them to who fits the right budget. And then in order for us to match it, what we had to create was a survey that was sent out to our premier partners, which includes electric eye. And it's an intake form that actually asked them what their budget is.

[00:17:15] Who their perfect ICP is. And, and making sure that we're including that when we're sending intros, because of course, if we're sending intros and ends up being, not the right alignment, oftentimes it can just not be a waste of time. But I think, you know, we can make it more accurate and granular when we have that data to make sure that we're matching them accordingly.

[00:17:31] So that's something that we've been implementing so that, you know, not only is it the biz dev team, who's managing all these partnerships, but it's. It, it flows all the way down to success to our customers, to our sales team. Who's constantly asking, you know, who should we intro to? So we've created a database that they can actually review on notion to understand, okay, who's the partner manager, who should I ping about?

[00:17:52] And these other services they offer. So that they can get recommendations from us. Wow. 

[00:17:57] Alex: [00:17:57] Awesome. The overarching question is why, and I'll preface that with gorgeous is notorious for being data led growth hacking on every level you guys are notorious as a company for just making sure that all of your decisions are backed by data, that you do not do things just.

[00:18:14]Hoping or thinking that they're going to work, you know, they're, they're working. So I assume that this is all for good reason and this being. The decision to make sure that new users of gorgeous are at least vetted for whether they have an agency, if they do not, what types of clients that they're selling to, and then matching them with an agency in your premier program.

[00:18:38] So why does gorgeous. Actively try to match their users with agencies. What does it do? 

[00:18:45] Nicole: [00:18:45] I think for us, it creates value not only for our agencies, but also for our customers. You know, I think they're always looking for resources once we've signed them up as a client. I think we become trusted source and vice versa.

[00:18:56] I think for agencies as well. I think it's valuable for them to know that we're doing these initiatives, that we're not just trying to only get leads out of them or pay them rev share. I think there's so much more to a partnership because I always. Love to be reciprocal. And I think, you know, that we're constantly growing in a stage in our business to figure out what can we do more for our partners?

[00:19:15] And, you know, I've, I've barely even scratched the surface on what else would we do with our partners? You know, whether it's lunch and learns with their whole team, taking them out to virtual lunches that we've done this past year with Uber eats vouchers. My customer is of course gorgeous customers, but it really is our agencies.

[00:19:29] And without them. We wouldn't be, be such a top rated product because we've been able to grow so much with recommendations or sponsoring Chase's podcasts so that he mentioned us to drive awareness to our, to our website, into our business as well. And I think it just really creates for a good partnership when they feel like they're valued and we're giving back 

[00:19:47] Alex: [00:19:47] to them.

[00:19:48] Awesome. Let's do this. Let's let's. Let's go back to chase for a little bit on what he does that I want to hear and want to get out because it's relevant. But Nicole, I just want you to think about four minutes. Some of the downstream impacts internal conversations that relate to other departments KPIs, but chase back to you, man.

[00:20:06] I want to hear some of the things that you like to do for your new partners or all of your partners to make sure that your staying relevant to top of mind for Nicole and your other partners, to make sure that leads are coming your way, but also your. The one Nicole thinks about when she has an event coming up or she has something coming up to involve a partner.

[00:20:25] And what are some of the things that you do? 

[00:20:27] Chase: [00:20:27] So and that may be more like coming from the perspective, like a sales enablement material for like, honestly, like I sat down with my partner and co-founder, and we were like, all right, what do we do here? Right. And we boiled it down to like, we do these four things.

[00:20:40] Right. We build awesome websites. We maintain them, we do email marketing and we do Facebook ads. Right. Well, we do Google and stuff too, but like, you know, it was pretty much four buckets. Right? Those are the four things we do. This is the best client fit for us. This is where price points start. You know, here's all this information and we just share that with partners.

[00:20:58] So, you know, they can kind of, they get a shortcut and not having to like, understand the ins and outs of electric eyes, business operations, and what a good or bad fit might be or what kind of post services we offer. It's like, here's a piece of paper that like, Brass tacks. If you hear stuff like this, it's probably a good fit.

[00:21:12] I actually doubled down on that. And I also wrote, like, if you're stuff like this, it's a terrible fit and please don't introduce us. 

[00:21:18] Alex: [00:21:18] I love it. Yeah. That's exactly what I was getting at. Being proactive overarching theme, making sure that you have to be proactive on the agency side. I think too many agencies are.

[00:21:27] Seeing this as a one-sided my partner managers responsible for me and they're going to guide me and make sure it's successful, but that's not always the case. You have to be proactive. You have to let that partner team know who you are. What you like, what you don't like, but also keep that top of mind.

[00:21:41] You've got to. Present to their sales team. You've got to incorporate your value props into their marketing team conversation as well. You've gotta be proactive, getting the stuff done. I 

[00:21:51] Chase: [00:21:51] mean, kind of goes back to what Nicole was just saying about being reciprocal. If I'm over here, just making her job so easy to work with us.

[00:22:00] Who do you think she's going to recommend when she hears about something that's a good fit? Exactly, 

[00:22:04] Alex: [00:22:04] exactly. Very cool. I've got one agency that actually sets LinkedIn sales navigator alerts. When a new sales person is hired at one of his partners one of his partners to onto their sales team, you know?

[00:22:17] So when that happens, he gets that alert. He reaches out to that sales person introduces himself, sends him the one sheeter that he has and gets them acquainted with him as a partner so that they remember him when they're on sales calls. Super cool. So you can talk to you about that. Yeah. Alex, 

[00:22:33] Chase: [00:22:33] we gotta, we gotta work that out.

[00:22:35] Meaning you gotta make that happen. 

[00:22:36] Alex: [00:22:36] It's it's cool. It's a, it's a great system. And honestly, I think he gets at least one referral from each one of those salespeople that he introduces him to like on average. So back to you, Nicole, I want to find out a little bit about what we just left off on and it's.

[00:22:51] Let's talk about sales specifically. Let's talk about what pushback, if any you have from sales or used to have around when and how and where to involve partners in the funnel. And then let's dovetail that into co-selling and let's end on co-selling so again, the question is. What sort of sales and partnership alignment friction was, and now not is, and where's it at today.

[00:23:17] And what is the agenda between you and sales? 

[00:23:20] Nicole: [00:23:20] Yeah, I mean, I think it's always really nice getting introductions from our partners. Or, you know, electric guy, for example, because they already have a relationship and there's that initial trust. So actually our sales team is really stoked to work on those deals because they feel like they're going to be easier to close or easier to deal with.

[00:23:36] If we need help, I can go to chase, for example, ask for any insights. Because again, to your point, it does allow us to Cosell a little bit better. You know, let's say if. You know, they need some sort of integration or they need something like X, Y, and Z. We could potentially even create more work for electric eye and, and work together to actually drive more additional sales to get them across the line.

[00:23:58] So from us, I think we, as far as like getting pushback from our sales team, it's not too much. I think usually they're always looking for the best offer because they came from chase or electric, I, for example, and we usually give them a really nice discount in general, but that's, that's really the only pushback we ever get.

[00:24:14] Is if they want like an exclusive, exclusive discount and they feel like they are a little bit more entitled, but and then the sales team is like, you know, my hands are tied. I can't really offer you more than we were, what we're already offering you. But besides that, I'd say it's pretty seamless. And also for us knowing exactly where the customer has come from.

[00:24:29] Helps us figure out where to put our resources. Right? So, you know, we, we talk about sponsoring the podcast and if we're getting a ton of brands from, from chase, for example, it allows us to be able to, to know, okay, this is working for us. We can actually allocate resources there. So with finance and overall budgets, I think it, it impacts that downstream as well, to understand, you know, how that partnership is really playing in.

[00:24:51] To our overall business goals and, and where we're allocating costs, et cetera. 

[00:24:55] Alex: [00:24:55] I love it. Okay. So let's define and sort of boil down the co-selling strategy and then we'll get Chase's interpretation from his angle on that. But you mentioned a couple of things earlier on in the podcast. You send out a survey, I believe, to partners, and then you intake customers with an additional question about.

[00:25:16] Their agency relationships and target audiences and all that kind of stuff. So talk me through those two things. One more time in case the listeners didn't catch that. And then let's talk about how that becomes your co-selling strategy. And then talk about how you go about co-selling. 

[00:25:31] Nicole: [00:25:31] The survey I was talking about earlier is actually something, you know, I sent out to all.

[00:25:36] My premier partners to get intake on, you know, what is their budget, what are their services that they offer? And then use that to match to the survey we send out to our customers and what their needs are to really accurately match, make between the partner and our customer, and exactly what they're looking for, whether it's email marketing, SMS, marketing, maybe they want something, you know, redesigned on their website.

[00:25:56]And we have different agencies that specialize in different parts. So, you know, if electric eyes sending me. All their requirements. It's great because what I can do is I can actually match them to electric eyes specifically. That's what 

[00:26:09] Alex: [00:26:09] I was referring to. That certainly that you send out and you send a survey out to partners, finding out more about them.

[00:26:15] So you can be a better matchmaking engine for them. We're still not talking about quote unquote co-selling yet, but this sort of dovetails into co-selling. So the user onboarding, remind me again, what you ask users that relates to matchmaking as well. You have a field in the onboarding process of.

[00:26:31] Gorgeous users. 

[00:26:32] Nicole: [00:26:32] Yes, absolutely. So the survey that we ask customers, when they're onboarded, you know, what's your name? What's your budget, what's your GMV, what are services you're looking for? And then they really boil down to a couple of tiers, which is creative and design. Sometimes it's web development, sometimes it's both.

[00:26:47] And then of course we have. Categories within that, which has something I mentioned, which is SMS, marketing, email, marketing, those types of fields. And then those are directly correlated with what we ask our agency at electric eye, for example, to figure out what are they strong in and then a strong with, and then we get those results.

[00:27:04] And then what we can do is, you know, next to each other, see, okay, they've clicked on these, these different categories. And it looks like that they're interested. In this type of budget so that we do a great matchmaking. And then I would go ahead and send that lead over to chase and give them a little context and be like, Hey chase, they're looking for this, this and this.

[00:27:22] And oftentimes it doesn't always happen at the end of the sales cycle. Sometimes they ask for introductions as we're kind of talking to them, which really helps because it, you know, if they, if they sign on Chase's team, for example, it really helps us close the deal because we know chase is going to see nothing but good things about us.

[00:27:37] So that's kind of how we can Cosell together. 

[00:27:39] Alex: [00:27:39] I love it. I love it. So chase sounds like you've been involved in at least some collaborative co-selling maybe it's not defined as that, but some collaborative sales opportunities with gorgeous, maybe talk through any of the recent examples that's most relevant.

[00:27:54] How does that work? What do you like about it to mean. Any experience? 

[00:27:57] Chase: [00:27:57] Well, I think this is the power of working with an agency is oftentimes we say, we're going to use this tool to solve this problem. And it's already sold. They like, they just have to like install it and put their credit card in and they don't have to do anything on their side.

[00:28:11] As far as co-selling goes. That's the power of working with them. Trusted advisors like our agency or any other consultancy out there, but sometimes there are questions and, you know, the average Shopify store has probably 10 to 20 applications in their tech stack at all times. And while we are experts in all of those things, we're not in the minutia of them all.

[00:28:29] So we often get curve balls. And it's fantastic when you, when we have partners that are so close, like gorgeous to where we can just be like, Hey, here's a very specific use case. How would this be solved with your 

[00:28:40] Alex: [00:28:40] product and the value is there. So let's talk about account mapping real quick and anything relevant.

[00:28:45] We should end on this. So there's co-selling which could be non software supported but then there's account mapping that leads to a co-selling agenda. Everybody does it differently. As an example, I just got off a recording with share work.co sponsored the podcast, FYI plug for share work, great tool for co-selling first, you have to map accounts.

[00:29:04] You have to see the Venn diagram of. Who's in Chase's book of business, who's in Chase's non book of business, but as a lead for chase, gorgeous has the same thing. And you look at those lists and see, okay, well, what's, where's the opportunity, but then you have to present your brands to each side of that Venn diagram of accounts.

[00:29:24] This is where everybody's strategy is different. But Nicole, what do you like to do to make sure that a you're running account mapping routines to make sure you're getting all the value out of partnerships, but what are some of the things that you guys really like to do after you do map the accounts and see that there maybe is a little bit of sliver of overlap that you didn't know, but there's a lot going on on either side that's opportunity.

[00:29:47] What do you guys like to do? Oh, absolutely. 

[00:29:49] Nicole: [00:29:49] I think for us, when we do the client mapping, we see, you know, who's on this type of e-commerce platform. We have our own systematic way of figuring out who are our top targets. And then, you know, again, we look at our sales pipe to figure out, Oh, this is in progress.

[00:30:03] Maybe I can ask chase if he has any insight on why they're taking so long as something happening. But then also we can identify new leads and be like, Hey, do you think they would be a good fit? Let's like write up something. Or that's kind of when we start thinking about K let's write a mutual case study, or send out a video from one of our brands to your clients and see if they would be interested in it.

[00:30:21] Because of course, cold intros are always a little bit hard, I think on both sides. I mean, unless like the customer has straight up, asked for it in that sales cycle, for example. Yeah. And then what we do there is see if we can come up with a creative way. To actually grab their attention. That's kind of how we are able to target the clients.

[00:30:39] And then we also have partnered with amazing tool. We're just scratching the surface with where we can actually figure out overlaps of who are in your pipe, who you haven't sold yet. And then as well as who our current customers to kind of map in and map those overlaps as well, so that we can actually understand who they were both talking to.

[00:30:55] And if we can somehow help each other in the deal cycle, Very 

[00:30:58] Alex: [00:30:58] helpful. Very helpful. And chase, have you experienced any active account mapping yet inside of a solution, like share worker CrossFit? 

[00:31:06] Chase: [00:31:06] We've done similar kind of exercises with a few partners now. And when you. Realize you're both working on the same person.

[00:31:14] It just, it it's a lot better for both of you and by same person or like the, in the same company it's usually for us, it's usually when companies are kind of in this growth stage and they're about to make a lot of big changes and they're usually are talking to solutions like gorgeous you know, or any of the other kind of like a larger.

[00:31:32] Mainstay apps in our ecosystem that we use. When you find out you're talking to the same people, it's like, all right, cool. Well, let's just close this deal when they realize that we know each other, and then we're all talking the same language. It makes things a lot easier. 

[00:31:43] Alex: [00:31:43] Awesome guys. And let's just end with goals.

[00:31:45] So, Nicole, what is your goal with the partner program? And then what is the goal for chase in the near term? In general? Anything you guys have? 

[00:31:53] Nicole: [00:31:53] I think for us, it's really just making sure that electric, I kind of keeps seeing us as a top product, which you guys already do. And making sure you guys are happy and fulfilled by the partnership.

[00:32:04] That's always, my goal is really, you know, if you're, even if we have a great product and you're not feeling fulfilled by the partnership, that means I'm not doing my job, right. So I always want to make my partners smile. Even if they're having a bad day last week, I actually sent cookies. So chase, if you're having a bad day, I'll send you cookies.

[00:32:18]And, and the goal is just to keep growing partnerships. I think right now I actively manage around 200 partnerships, which is crazy, but that is the East coast. And I really make sure to have active touches with them, make sure that I can constantly. Be doing something for them, a value in staying top of mind.

[00:32:32] Cause I think that's the best way to really keep each other top of mind. I 

[00:32:36] Alex: [00:32:36] love it. And chase, we've spoken about this recently and we're doing some active stuff, but what is your near term longterm goal with partnerships as a practice? And then anything specific 

[00:32:46] Chase: [00:32:46] to gorgeous. Yeah. I mean, just with getting more systemized around the process of it making sure is that top of mind thing, like that's definitely a system and it needs to be someone as like a founder myself.

[00:32:58] I I've come to realize that it's more than just I can handle. And, you know, I think if you've got more members on your team than just yourself, you eventually partnerships and perhaps sales are going to be some hires that you need to think about or kind of fine tune. People to help you with so that's kinda like top of mind for us as we've been rapidly growing with kind of the e-commerce explosion in the last year.

[00:33:19] So that's super top of mind for me, but just with gorgeous, it's just keeping on keeping on, I mean, they're an amazing partner. They're helping us, they're sponsoring the podcast, but in sponsoring the podcast, I like told them why. What we want to do with that. And, and they are on board to see the growth and kind of, they understand the vision of what we're trying to do.

[00:33:35]And they're super trusting and it's super fun. I 

[00:33:37] Alex: [00:33:37] love it. This is a, an example of a proactive and very productive partnership. I think you guys are about as proactive and productive as I've witnessed between two partners. So that's huge. We speak to hundreds of partner teams and hundreds of agencies.

[00:33:54] So kudos to both of you guys, congrats on all the success. Thank you for joining us. We are out of time. So I gotta let you go. But we'll catch up online. Nicole. Hope to see you in the collective chase. We've got calls already scheduled, so let's let's continue. This. Let's keep growing. 

[00:34:09] Nicole: [00:34:09] Let's do it.

[00:34:09] Thank you so much for your time.