MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

In my last few posts, I’ve shared var­i­ous things I’ve learned, and the sev­eral insights that Brad Antin of Cen­ter­pointe shared with me.

You might be won­der­ing how Brad Antin and I ended up talk­ing busi­ness.

Did I walk up to him and say, “Hi, I’m Mike, I actu­ally plan to be your biggest com­peti­tor, could you please tell me your secret?” Not quite.

Because all of us have a very dif­fer­ent mind­set, and that’s the one cru­cial dif­fer­ence that dif­fer­en­ti­ates us from the rest.

I believe in a world of abun­dance. I think there’s enough for every­body, so I’m not com­pet­ing with them.

I approached them because we are in the same mar­ket and together we can help each other become vastly more suc­cess­ful. That’s the atti­tude I have, and that’s the atti­tude they share.

This mar­ket is enor­mous, the demand is almost insa­tiable and we’re only 2 tiny fish. If we can work together to help each other rise, that’s great.

So, I told them, we oper­ate in the same mar­ket as you –spir­i­tual and per­sonal growth, we have sim­i­lar busi­nesses and sim­i­lar sized lists, let’s fig­ure out how we can work together.

Brad Antin imme­di­ately said he’d love to pro­mote one of our prod­ucts to their list, which is great because they have one of the sin­gle most respon­sive lists on the Internet.

I approached him like that, and I flat­tered him. I told him, you know what? I’m your biggest fan. I’ve bought your prod­uct just to fig­ure out how you guys do busi­ness because I’m floored, what you have done is phe­nom­e­nal, and we’re not any­where close. I’d love to talk to you for 5-10mins and learn more about what you guys do.

That’s how I approached him –it was flat­tery and a mind­set of abun­dance. But I didn’t lie –he knows that we’re in the same mar­ket, and he also has the mind­set of doing cross pro­mo­tions and help­ing each other grow our businesses.

Part­ner­ships are some of the best ways to grow and improve your business.

My ques­tion to you is –is there some­one in your mar­ket whom you can work together with? Is there some­one doing bet­ter than you are? How are you going to approach them and work together towards a more suc­cess­ful future for both your businesses?

Last 5 posts by

• Do you think SEO in other lan­guages is eas­ier? — Sep­tem­ber 18th, 2008
• Google Slap — How to recover from a Google Slap? — Sep­tem­ber 8th, 2008
• What Does Your Order But­ton Say? — August 29th, 2008
• Will Knol Rule The Search Engines? First Analy­sis Indicates…It Just Might — July 23rd, 2008
• Are small busi­nesses drop­ping out of AdWords? — July 23rd, 2008

About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike Reining

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