Ever wanted to grow your business even faster and find someone to do the things you didn't want to do? If you're an entrepreneur or business owner looking for collaboration without complicating things in your business, you absolutely wanna dive into this episode.

For this episode, we have with us Todd Westra, a team builder, vision strategist, keynote speaker, business coach, entrepreneur, and enthusiast. He's passionate about helping companies overcome the challenges keeping their growth stagnant. His company, Moku has been able to help leaders let go of the things that distract their teams and focus on the truly profitable parts of their offerings.

Tune in as Todd talks about the most common mistakes business owners make, and the two biggest pain points business owners make when starting a business.

Learn about his clean-up approach to refining and choosing the best people to work with and increasing opportunities for collaboration. Listen to his creative and simple strategies to collaboratively grow his business and how he helps his clients to do the same and grow big. 

Visit these websites mentioned in this episode…

https://toddwestra.com/

businessmadesimple.com/daily

Affiliate.withmoku.com

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Until next time, keep moving forward!

Chuck Anderson,

Affiliate Management Expert + Investor + Mentor

http://AffiliateManagementExpert.com/

I just did a cleanup of my business in the last two weeks. And what I mean by cleanup was, I looked at my last 30 clients, and I, someone on my team and I looked at our last 30 clients, we said, okay, top five people in that in those 30, who were our favorite five people? And why? And we do this exercise every quarter in my business, we really try to understand who was great, who was not, who do we want to avoid? And then who do we want to attract. And we just keep refining, refining, refining. And that's how I've come up with this model, which I think is so fun, is to help other businesses do the exact same thing that we do on a regular basis. It's, it's simple. Who is your favorite person, let's get more of them.

Hey, it's chuck here. And I'm so glad that you're listening to this episode. And I just want to take this quick moment right now to let you know about our free collaborators toolkit. And this episode is all about partnership and collaboration. And our guests share many resources, tools, and things that you can use to make collaboration and partnership easier in your business. So if you're looking for better ways to grow, and scale your business, through collaborations, and strategic partnerships, this free collaborators toolkit is going to contain the best resources from our workshops, as well as contributions from our guests. And these tools could be the missing link that you've been looking for. And they're going to help you to solve everyday business challenges, and access, highly effective ideas that can help and grow your business exponentially. I know they've helped me and I know they're going to help you as well. And the best part about these tools is that they're completely free. And our gift to you for being a valued member of our community, and a subscriber to the show. So you can get access to all of the resources contained inside the collaborators toolkit today by visiting the website at WWW.collaboratorsunite.com/toolkit. That address again is www.collaboratorsunite.com/toolkit. Go ahead and register today get access to all the resources and I'm gonna see you on the inside. Now. Here's the episode.

Hello, everybody. And welcome back to the show. Chuck Anderson here. This is the Creative Collaboration Show. And I have for you another amazing guest. In fact, we were just chatting here before the show. And you're going to learn so much more from this guy than I even imagined that you would. And so we're so grateful to have Todd Westra here today. And if you are a entrepreneur, a CEO, a founder, someone who's building a business, and you find yourself doing things that maybe you wish you weren't doing, or you want to grow even faster, this is the guy that you want to talk to. So Todd, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. I appreciate being on here.

Awesome. So you know, that was what I call introduction light. And I'm not going to even attempt to tell your story because I know you can tell it better than I can go in and tell the folks a little bit more about who you are and what you do. And we'll we'll go from there.

Sure, yeah, no, I, I am the father of eight children. And that's usually where I start. And I'm also the eighth of nine children. So that being said, I've lived my whole life as an entrepreneur, as a kid, I tell people, everything I learned about business I learned on my paper out because if I wanted to buy anything, as an eighth child, it pretty much meant that I had to go figure out how to earn money to get that thing I wanted. And so my paper out I did for five years, from the time I was eight to 13, I had to go out and sell my services, sell the paper to my neighbors at a supplier that brought me raw materials and to do the fulfillment did the delivery, I had to go out and collect money every month and I had to pay an invoice at the end of the month. And as an eight year old, nine year old 10 year old that whole stage of life. I just assumed everybody knew that stuff. And as it turns out, most people when they go out and try to launch our business they don't know those fundamentals of I gotta have a supplier for my raw goods. I gotta be able to dress it up and pretty ups I can fulfill it and I gotta go out and sell it and I've got you know, all those pieces are a part of every business I've ever started. And to be honest with you check I've never had a job and so I other than I worked at a golf course in high school so I get my free golf but other than that, I have always been an entrepreneur and and it's shocks me how many people want to go jump into entrepreneurship? And they don't understand those core principles of I need to solve a problem out there. The problem as a paperboy is people want to know the news, right? I had to solve that problem. You're solving a problem by helping people learn how to collaborate and learn how to start joint ventures and all the cool stuff that you talk about. And today, the two big pain points that I solve are easy. Most small businesses really struggle to build a funnel online that actually converts a lead to client. That's first problem. Second big problem is most people are so intimidated by the tech it takes to do that. They they get stuck learning the tech and forget to do the service or product that they're initially set out to do as a business owner. So they get distracted, they don't know how to manage that. And it just turns out to be a disaster. So we solve those two problems for people, we build funnels, we manage all the tech, and we make sure that they have a product flow, a client journey, so to speak, so that they know how to take someone from a lead to that perfect client that they know they want out in the market.

I love the crystal clarity that you describe all of that with because I mean, what business doesn't need to take a lead and convert it into a customer very systematically. And if once you have that system in place, you should just be able to rinse and repeat or not, but so many. Yes, exactly. And so many people overcomplicated or they over design it and I have seen, I've seen fall maps that take up entire whiteboards. And I'm like, Are you kidding me? 12345? Yeah, let's simplify it. And I love that. And, you know, so So what are you noticing out there in terms of the mistakes that let's say business owners are making that are contributing to this, whether it's over capitalization or confusion or whatever? Yeah,

I love this question. You know, the, I'd say the most common mistake that a business owner makes, is they don't know their ideal client avatar. They know his genre. They know his genre, they kind of know who they want to work with. But they haven't dialed in, who's their favorite part of that group to work with. And the more you get narrowed down, like if I said, I want to work with startup founders, which isn't my ideal client avatar, to be totally honest with you. I love founders, but not during startup phase. I love founders during scale phase, you know what I mean? I want people who have already found a way to generate revenue. And then I want the people who are say, doing three to three to $20 million a year is kind of my ideal target. Because they've already produced a lot of revenue, they've already produced a way to attract clients. But most of the time, they're leaving so much money on the table with their existing marketing campaign, because the strategy isn't really in place. And so for a startup or for, for most business owners, and even my clients, this is the this is what I do for a living is I help them identify who their perfect client is, who's the one that like working the best if you if you took your last 10 clients, Chuck, and said that my two favorite of the last 10 was Betsy and Bobby. Well, what was the two things? What were the things about Betsy and Bobby that you really liked the most about the way they came into your funnel? Well, they knew exactly what they wanted. It was really easy for me to solve the problem. And they paid me full price and didn't complain. Right? Like, that's your, okay, let's take Betsy and Bobby and figure out what are the common attributes between those two people? And let's go find people just like that. Well, guess

What I'm wondering what a great idea. Find people that you already, like working with, clone them and find more people just like them.

100% 100%. And that's, that's what most businesses fail to do. They try to solve too big of a problem. And then by solving too big of a problem, they forget, like they they don't even recognize that oh, my gosh, that's the body. Those guys were awesome. We already finished them. These other guys over here. We're still it's been three months that we're still trying to finish their project.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And what's great about what you said, as well, I mean, you're working with businesses that have already earned their first 3 million. So they figured out right, something around client acquisition, and they're able to do that part really well, but they're not doing everything really well. And so so there's, I love what you said those built in opportunities. Yeah, we're doing more If what you've already got, and I've had countless clients that I've worked with like that as well, in a lot of ways, it's easier than working with startups, because with startups, you're still trying to figure out, but the customer acquisition piece and the, the right offer and all of that thing, but with the businesses of that scale, it's more about being more efficient with what you've already doing more with what you've already got, and

100% 100%, and I just call it leaving money on the table. I mean, you know, I just did a cleanup of my business in the last two weeks. And what I mean by cleanup was, I looked at my last 30 clients, and I, someone on my team, and I looked at our last 30 clients, we said, okay, top five people in that in those 30, who were our favorite five people, and why. And we do this exercise every quarter in my business, we really try to understand who was great, who was not, who do we want to avoid? And then who do we want to attract. And we just keep refining, refining, refining. And that's how I've come up with this model, which I think is so fun, is to help other businesses do the exact same thing that we do on a regular basis. It's, it's simple. Who is your favorite person, let's get more of them. Most people don't take the time think about that.

And your favorite people, not just people who are willing to give you money, because there's lots of people who are willing to give you money that maybe you shouldn't work with, because they're not going to be the most fun to work with. And, and so there's, that was something I learned a long time ago, in my business, there's nothing more empowering than saying no to a potential client, because it's not a good fit. Because you know, there's another client out there, you don't have to take everyone who has money, you can take the ones you want to work with, because they're your favorite set.

100%. And then comes the collaboration opportunities, you know, because because to your whole point, the whole premise of your show, is getting creative with your collaborations, right? Well, who else is working with that perfect client? Let's go collab with them. Right? I mean, this podcast is a collaboration in a sense for me, because I know the types of people you work with and, and I said, my three to 20 million ideal client avatar target, and that is one of my avatars. My second favorite avatar, I think every business should have two or three favorite avatars. My second favorite avatar, our book authors, anyone know why

No, Let's go for it. Why? Why are book authors, your favorite?

I love book authors, because they have been forced to sit down. Think about what they're an expert in. They outline it in chapters, they talk in detail about each one of those facets of why they're an expert in this thing. They know what they're good at. And that's what I love about book authors. They may be a school teacher, or they may be a multi bazillionaire. They have taken the time to sit down and think out in their mind. What am I an expert in? And how can I help people with this experience or this knowledge that I have? And that's what I love about them clarity in their mission. And most small business owners fail to have that. And so I challenge other founders that I meet, I say, Have you written a book? And they say no. And I say, you don't have to write one. But will you outline one of why you're an expert in doing what you do. And I think if you do that, then you'll be a better entrepreneur, because you'll recognize where your strengths are, what you have specific experience in, and then more than likely, that's going to help you launch your business better.

I totally love what you said here about authors because and I never really thought about them this way. But now it makes so much sense why they have been easier to work with than perhaps other kinds of clients and and right and to your point, it's the clarity. And I love what you're doing with people who haven't written a book. It's like, okay, well, if you don't have a book, at least go outline one so that you become crystal clear on what you do and how you help others.

It's a big, it's a game changer. It's a game changer. You know, as well as that it because you work with so many founders and startup founders. They just get confused. They want to be like that guy over there who's just killing it. They want to be just like that guy. Well, do you have any experience doing what he does? No. Well, then, what makes you think you're gonna be that person? You know, what do you have experienced? And you know, I took I took a lady, one of my favorite women who have written a book, she wrote a book on being resilient. Okay, like resiliency, going through a really tough, traumatic experience, bouncing back and coming back stronger. That's kind of her message. And she wanted to serve us this really broad Audience, women, like, I want to help women be resilient. I said, Okay, what does that mean? And through the course of a few hours of like real in depth, like conversations and strategy sessions, we're able to identify two key targets for her that she was already familiar with. And they weren't just women. It was athletes, and it was Executive Women. Okay? Athletes and executive why athletes and as they get a boom, because she's intimately in the loop with professional athletes, think of how many athletes get an injury, think of how many, you know, they got traded, when they didn't want to they they really liked the team they were on. And they, you know, all those things. And she can now coach them how to be resilient. And it turned her revenue way up, because she was a specialist with athletes. And she's a specialist with women executives, who maybe got turned down for the promotion, or maybe, maybe went home for maternity and came back and their job was gone, you know, and she now is killing it. Because she was able to niche down and take the things she was best at and intimately familiar with, and turn that into her training, turn that into a program. And now she's killing it. Love it.

Wow, what a great way to kind of take something that was very broad, not very clear at all, and really get it down to that crystal clarity. It's no wonder it, it's working for it. Because that's that's really where so many business owners, especially new ones get it wrong. They think the wider the net, the more fish I'm going to catch. When we go through this time and time again, it's just not true. It's not true.

So collabs I mean, that's the most important thing, right? And collaborations, you know, a lot of people that are probably listening to this are thinking to themselves, well, I just don't know, many people in this group that I want to I want to target. Somebody else does, right? Somebody else does. And when you start talking to people who are already servicing your perfect client, all you got to do is help them and then they give you the shoe and into their whole network. And that's the power of collaborations.

Absolutely. In fact, think about this, someone listening to this podcast episode right now may be holding the missing link, that missing puzzle piece to what you've been trying to do in your business, and maybe trying to do unsuccessfully. And maybe it's because you're trying to be skilled at something that you really aren't skilled at. And but they are skilled at it, and one of you bring the best of you, and they bring the best of them. And together, business takes off. And that's what collaborations are all about. And so I love I love how you bring that up and question that I would follow that up with is how have has collaborating and partnering with others made a difference in in your business and your you know, the growth of what you do as a reformed to do it yourselfer. But yeah, and this is one of the it's my therapy to talk about collaborations but but but a natural born entrepreneur like yourself, who has been doing it out of necessity since you were a kid? Did it come naturally to you? Or did you did you have to overcome some stuff? And how has it made a difference in your bill,

You know, I'm a naturally social person, and not everybody is that way and I get that. But what I find is even the most introverted introverts, when someone talks to them about the thing they're passionate about, they come right out of their shell, right? And so you know, what I do, a lot of book authors are introverted. They like to just, I'm going to type what I want to say instead of get on a podcast and do all these other things, right. And so they do this exercise. And what I love about collaborations, my most recent collaboration was, I met a professional speaking coach who helps who helps book authors write TEDx talks, from their story or their experience in the book. And then I met another person who is a publisher who helps people publish their books more efficiently and get better distribution, like many publishers do, but this one, I actually really, really trust is really great guy. And so the three of us decided, okay, I help people create keynotes to make money. This guy helps people publish their books to make money. I help authors put together their digital profile their digital presence, so that they can be booked for speaking engagements. They can sell a course or some type of probe rambase up their book, and they can start collecting leads so that they can let them know every time they're gonna go speak at something or let them know when they released another book, or let them know when they have some other product they want to sell them. And without doing those three things, like we found that our collaboration, even though it's fairly new, we just love the the constant promoting of each other to everyone we talked to and it's called to amplify fluence, we amplify the influence of an author. And so it's such a fun, fun thing. And we've already done little tour stops and, and four cities this year, and we're gonna go to more cities over the next couple months. And we meet with book authors, we help them learn how to promote their book better. And it's just, it's a great give back. And it's turning into monetization. Because those that learn people that know like and trust you will hire you to help them with the problem they have. So it's kind of fun.

I love that and you know, really looking at that way of how together how can you accomplish more and, and all of that. So a natural question that comes because we're from our audience is obviously they're getting inspired for from what we're talking about here. But they're like, Okay, Todd, Chuck, you're talking about collaborations? You're speaking my language, I want to do this. Where do I start? Where do I look? So what's your what's your go to? Method or place or whatever, when you recognize you need something in your business and you want to collaborate with somebody where where do you start?

I start by recognizing who I want to attract. And then find somebody already servicing them. And that's it. Like, those two things. If I wanted to attract a car mechanic, where would I go? Well, I would probably Google car mechanics work with suppliers, they work with auto parts stores, they work with, you know, all these other people. Maybe if I go network with some auto parts stores, they can get me in with all the mechanics they work with, you know what I mean? It's like, all of a sudden, you've got authority, because you were referred by the auto parts store. And so so the, that's the way you have to start thinking, if I want to talk to those guys, who's already working with them. Oh, okay. Now I can contact the people that are already working with them and not sell them anything. But say, Hey, if you can help me get in the door with some of the people that you're already helping I solve this problem, I'm happy to give you an affiliate fee for introducing me to your existing client base. That's it. You don't have to sell me, I just want to intros from you, because they already trust you.

And in so many ways easier than going direct to your target audience and trying to sell them. And that's what we see, all day long. On LinkedIn, I get every day bombarded with messages trying to sell me directly. Whereas the ones that get my attention are the ones that come through my friends and say, hey, you know, I just met this person. Let me introduce you. And I usually will follow up on 100% of those conversations where I ignore the percent of the other ones that are trying to sell me directly. You just want to connect, right? And then they spew everything that they can sell you. So that's the wrong way thing.

Yeah, it's embarrassing some people's methodology.

Exactly. So I love your takeaway is, you know, go find someone who already knows whether it's an individual, if somebody already knows them, or that type of people that you're trying to get into contact with and do a relationship with them. You're not trying to sell them anything. In fact, you're giving them something by offering to

And they look like zero, right? The auto parts store in that example is the hero because they just introduced someone else that can help them like it validates that they care about this client of theirs, right?

Absolutely. Well, I love all of that. And, and Todd, I think we could probably do a full day workshop just on unpacking all of these different strategies, but hopefully at a high level that those of you listening in have really found this to be helpful and inspirational. If you need to take the next steps. Of course you can, you can reach out to us, you can reach out to Todd and we're gonna Todd we're gonna get you to share your information here in a moment. But before we do that, I want to ask a couple of things that just more on the personal growth side of things. Yeah, you know, business is a growth exercise. I definitely we grow the business but I get to grow as a person as well. And I couldn't do that with a lot of the out the a lot of the experts that I look up to, and the books that I've read and all of that. So So two questions I want to ask you Todd one is, who is the expert or leader or inspur rational person that that you would recommend that other people follow? Or maybe the you learned the most from that inspired you? And then also, what's the must read book that you feel like our audience should really go out and get a copy in? Yeah, that book right away?

Yeah. You know, being a marketer and being a business owner. I would say the most inspirational person to me, who I hope to meet someday is Donald Miller, Donald Miller, if you don't know who that is one of my favorite humans on the earth, and I've never met him, but I say that because he's just a solid, Christian, God fearing man who just is so legitimately human. He, he is a marketing genius, and and what he does, he has a company called Story brand. And he has a book called Story brand, but he's since modified to just business made simple. And the thing that I love about him is he just dumbs everything down. Everything, everything needs to be dumbed down. And my entire marketing agency that I that I own, is not entirely based off of his model. But I would say heavily heavily influenced by the method that he uses, which is make your business a story, you are solving a problem, you never watch a movie that doesn't have something traumatic the beginning, or a problem that's exposed, that they're trying to fix throughout the movie, you didn't lose, you lose interest. And when you as a business, never talk about the pain that you solve, then nobody's going to be interested in what you're even talking about. And you and I are coming into this interview. At the very beginning, we talked about the pain that we solve the problem that we solve as a business owner, and the issues that we see in the marketplace with startups and things like that. That's the hook. People are attracted to pain, because they love to hear a happy ending. And so you as a small business founder you as a as a business owner, never forget why you started this business, because it was more than likely, you were trying to solve a problem. And so Donald Miller and his program has influenced my ability to simplify and dumbed down what I do so that when I talk to people, it's instantly obvious what I do. And when you confuse you lose. And so his book business made simple as his most current book, highly, highly, highly recommend every small business owner read this book, he's got a website with daily nuggets that he delivers to your inbox. It's the newsletter that I actually read, you know, it's just awesome content. So Donald Miller, business Made Simple, go check it out. I love the guy.

I love that how your recommendations were the expert, and that experts book all all in one. And that doesn't always happen. But Donald Miller is amazing. And I have seen him speak live at a number of conferences. I too have not met him personally. But story brand changed so much for me in my business and how I look at it and and I've not read business made simple, but I plan to now recommend it. So it sounds like it's the next evolution to story brand. So definitely, that's a that's a must read on my list. I'm gonna put a link to Donald and his books down below this video and in the show notes of this episode, as we will talk to your stuff. So go ahead. And you know, you've shared so many awesome things with us today, tell the folks where they can find out more about you and what, what you can do to help.

Of course, you know, the simplest way, you probably been wondering what this was in a screen the whole time. If you scan that, and just hit send, you'll get all the information you need about what I do and how I help you. But truly, if you go to Toddwestra.com That's the easiest way to do it is you just go to Toddwestra.com I've got links to everything I'm doing and all the products I'm working on. And, and this this funnel, this QR code will lead you into a path where I'll send the information. It's not a long harassing funnel, you're not going to be bothered for the rest of your life. But it's a very simple way that I can text you the information, get you what you need. And and you can see if it's for you or not. And if it's not, we're not high pressure. The people that need us know that they need us and we work with them.

Fantastic. Well, so go ahead and scan Todd's QR code. I love that and I I was asking you right at the beginning, what is that QR code for now we know what it's for. So go ahead and scan that. We'll also put Todd's details beneath this video and in the show notes of this episode, so that and we highly encourage you to reach out to Todd, and amazing, amazing, amazing stuff, I hope we can get a chance to do more together. And so this is just scratching the surface, Todd, I know. But as we sign off this episode, if you could leave our audience with just one last piece of advice, what would you tell them?

Know your ideal client and know the problem that you like to solve. Don't do stuff you don't like to do. So many problems can be solved doing things you like to do. That makes having a business the most perfect experience of your life. So know who you like to serve and know how you like to serve them. That's it.

Well said, and I think a great way to sum up this episode. Todd, thank you so much for being my special guest today. And thank you to all the listeners who have tuned in watch this video or listen to this podcast episode. And so I do highly encourage you to reach out to Todd and to do tune in for our next episode where we're having another amazing guest, where we'll be talking about their collaboration stories. And until then go out there and be awesome

See you guys.