How Strategic Collaboration Can Scale Your Real Estate Business | Chad T. Jenkins

Chad T. Jenkins (00:00)
Mmm. It is that we have all been trained to compete. It’s not me plus you, it’s me against you. It starts about the third grade. Whenever you need to make a hundred on the math test, and so do I.

Math I can do backwards with my eyes closed and you crush it in English. But if we work together, just because I can understand you better than I can somebody 20 or 30 years older than me, who’s trying to teach me math or English, depending on what it is, that’s cheating. Right? So it really it starts at a very early age into our culture. But as you get older, if you’ll look back in your journey of growth, whether it be your career, your entrepreneur, or growing your business, you will find that the biggest growth you ever had is when you actually combine something. That you already had with what somebody else had.

Michelle Kesil (02:19)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil Today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Chad Jenkins, who started SEEDSPARK CoLAB, an organization for entrepreneurs around the world to connect, combine, and create. So excited to have you here today, Chad.

Chad T. Jenkins (02:42)
Michelle, so excited to be with you.

Michelle Kesil (02:45)
Great, so let’s dive in. First off, for those new to your work, can you share what your main focus is?

Chad T. Jenkins (02:52)
Sure. It’s to show you how to activate what you already have to create more than you ever wanted. So I feel like and I was one of these, certainly as a very young kid, I felt like it was all out there and had to go get it.

And it took me a while. ⁓ but i I started when I was eight and I figured out real quick that I didn’t have anything, or at least it felt that way. And what I figured out was that when I went to look inside to the things that I already possessed, whether it be influence or insights, I mean at eight, nine years old, you don’t have a lot of that, or abilities. And there was one specific ability that I had at eight years old that was the catalyst for me figuring out how to make money. So that’s been many, many companies.

and many moons ago, but ⁓ that’s it.

Michelle Kesil (03:41)
Awesome. And what types of entrepreneurs are normally going through this process?

Chad T. Jenkins (03:49)
Mm, entrepreneurs of all sizes. So many entrepreneurs have started out themselves bootstrapping an organization.

And they feel like they’ve been running on a hamster wheel and they’re always one deal away from it getting a lot easier. And they’ve been riding that pony for quite a few years. So I get referred to many entrepreneurs around the planet from someone who has a couple businesses and they just have a new idea of a way to create new and expansive value in the world.

But they’re so busy running on the hamster wheel of running their other two companies that they end up getting referred to me just to try to look at a different way to grow. So a lot of times in what I do, it empowers an entrepreneur not to grow like their contemporaries. Whenever you combine what you already have, you truly do collapse time on your road to success. So it’s not like you’re gonna try to grow by 20% every year or 35% every year, which I understand at least from Gartner is considered.

high growth that doesn’t really compute in my world. I have some organizations that double in a year and it’s combining what they already have with what someone else already has. So the types of entrepreneurs that I see on a daily basis, they’re couple million up to many, many billions geographically, they’re all over the world and they’re here because they know that there’s a better way to do it and they didn’t learn it in school. So it’s kind of all shapes and sizes.

Michelle Kesil (05:24)
Awesome. And as your motto is like connect, combine and create, can you dive into what that means and looks like?

Chad T. Jenkins (06:22)
Yeah sure. ⁓ so connect, combine and create. Let’s see for real estate professionals, you want to inventory what you already have. So inside of the collab we have an assessment.

That starts the very first day that you become a collab partner and it never ends. And it is known as your I am assessment. So we use those words a lot, I am, and then you fill in the blank. The one thing I’ve noticed about all entrepreneurs is it’s pretty hard to see the label when you’re inside the jar. So the connect piece starts a little bit earlier. You’re connecting first with what you already have, and that builds a portfolio or a profile. If you would consider your LinkedIn profile.

I assume most people listening to this have one of those. If it was alive and updated with what makes you special in the real estate industry based upon the last clients that you served, the last house you showed, or the last closing you just left, it’s the way in which you do what you do. So in our world we call it your unique value contribution. You and I could have, let’s say we grew up in the same house, we went to the same school, we might have even started in the same business.

We have different insights. We have different abilities. And then the last piece for I ams, it talks about your multipliers. So your multipliers are trusted relationships that you have. These are the people that trust you. And I can tell you, even though I meet wildly successful entrepreneurs around the planet, most of us don’t feel like we have multipliers. And we’ve never remotely considered it as a monetizable asset to combine it.

So the connect portion, back to connect, combine, and create, is we first have to see ourselves. And we have many processes, including a very super technical way to do that, which is you are introduced to another entrepreneur on the planet that already has insights, abilities, or multipliers that you need. It’s not something you have to go and buy, it’s not a person they have to hire. They already have it. So that’s the connect piece. The combined piece.

is you jump on a call and you just be you. We’ve curated these calls with the right entrepreneur on the planet for you to have your next conversation with. That’s been driven by friction that’s holding you back from growing. So let’s say that you wanted more listings. We’re going to introduce you to someone who already has reach or a multiplier to different associations or let’s say they have a lot of trusted relationships in a local municipality.

They’re an entrepreneur that owns a business, has nothing to do with real estate, but they already have a lot of people’s trust, maybe even credit card numbers on file or an open PO, that you don’t have. But what you have could actually create more value for who already trusts them. That’s the combined part. So a lot of times we’re combining very abstract business services together, but it’s because you serve the same, what we call, hero target.

Hero Target is not any kind of definite or a name that I came up myself. It’s a gentleman by the name of Dan Sullivan as strategic coach. He’s trained, I don’t know, tens of thousands of top entrepreneurs on the planet. And the Hero Target, when I heard about it, made a lot of sense to me. Now, the way in which I see the world, which is a lot of times when I talk about this and I meet someone, I see them as an exploded parts view. Like most of the time when folks get referred to me, they say, I’m a I’m a CPA. I’m on a law.

Firm. I’m an investment banker. And the very first thing I ever say is, tell me more. Because I see them as the exploded parts view. So the hero target, whenever Dan mentioned it,

He said, who do you want your business to be a hero to? If you can define that on this call, I would encourage you to look around the room. When I say around the room, you may be in a room full of other businesses, you may be at your computer, you may be out in the streets. Look around your local environment and see who else serves that particular hero target. And then you ask one big question, you don’t need me. What happens when I combine what I have with that person? If I combine my product or service with Michelle yours,

Does it create more value for who we both serve? And if so, do I have some kind of little assessment for my product or service that I could combine with yours? And every time you got a new client, I did the assessment for free. Remember, we serve the same type of hero target, the same, I think a conventional term is ICP. If I’m providing an assessment which drives value and we serve the same hero target.

Then because you’re offering it at no cost to those that you serve. I got exposure to a client that might be a client one day, but you look different than anyone else who’s in your industry because you’re combining my product or service with it.

It changes the game. So you just began, whenever you begin to like really embrace this type of mindset and start utilizing it in a growth strategy for your business.

You’ll start seeing an immense amount of opportunities. And in that scenario, do you know how much money I spent to provide those you serve and to look to get an opportunity to talk with another prospect for my business? Zero. I already know because I do it whenever I talk to a prospect for my business. All I’ve done is give it a name, create this little assessment, and I’ve combined it.

with you and let’s say there’s many in my industry or my town or my city or my state or my country that are in the same business that you are Michelle. I can now begin to create this strategy with other people in other cities that are in a similar type business as you are Michelle. So that’s the create portion and it results in a lot of growth but quite unconventional than running some ads or hiring another salesperson or let’s lease some more office space and hope it works out.

Michelle Kesil (13:10)
Yeah, amazing. What do you think is the biggest challenge of this process?

Chad T. Jenkins (13:18)
Mmm. It is that we have all been trained to compete. It’s not me plus you, it’s me against you. It starts about the third grade. Whenever you need to make a hundred on the math test, and so do I.

Math I can do backwards with my eyes closed and you crush it in English. But if we work together, just because I can understand you better than I can somebody 20 or 30 years older than me, who’s trying to teach me math or English, depending on what it is, that’s cheating. Right? So it really it starts at a very early age into our culture. But as you get older, if you’ll look back in your journey of growth, whether it be your career, your entrepreneur, or growing your business, you will find that the biggest growth you ever had is when you actually combine something.

That you already had with what somebody else had. So it’s because it’s been trained into us. Now, if you want to look much, much further back, first it’s a great question. Thank you for that. you guys have heard of I deal with a lot of futurists. Peter Diamandis with Abundance 360 has a theme called Massive Lead Transformational Project. My personal one is to restore collaboration into the fabric of humanity.

If you think about it way bay back, how in the hell did we get out of the food chain?

you don’t run that fast and I’m not that strong. Like the lions and tigers will eat us. But if you’ll tell me when they’re coming, I can swing something and hit in the head and maybe we’ll eat tonight. Right? So collaboration has been around, even if you go back to tribes of Indians and civilizations, it’s all been collaboration. It is as of late when it got trained out of us. So we’re starting definitely around the industrial age. So now it’s time that we return back to it. If we want to go faster, not slower. And I find that to be the most largest

obstacle or an impediment, most people think about their competitors as truly competitors when really you’re in collaboration. If they do something better than you do and you focus on them, let’s say, and this happens all the time, you hire one of their guys and all of a sudden you’ve figured out their trade secret. What if we would just let them be really good at that? We would be really good at what we do. And we would combine our marketing dollars together and when a call came in for the product or service that you, Michelle, are best at,

you’re gonna get the call and you scale out your organization for that.

Likewise, if the call comes in and I’m really good after hours, my guys will run out there and take care of it because they’re the best at after hours. And everyone wins and everyone makes more money. And of course, think about your ratings. If you’re able to send your best guy to do that job or that printing job or I don’t know, maybe the landscape, if you had your best guy going out there all the time, what happens to the reviews? You see, so when you begin to evolve, I would say your thinking and your mindset to this, you begin to see the world is full of opportunities to

activate what you already have, but you have to retrain, you have to undo that competition mindset.

Michelle Kesil (17:01)
Yeah, thank you for sharing that perspective. I think a lot of people don’t see it that way.

Chad T. Jenkins (17:06)
No,

not at all. No. It’s they’re holding on to it like this. And like it does the tighter you hold on to something, the faster it seems to slip away. But the more open I am.

I learned so much more and I began to combine and create and you begin to grow like no one’s ever seen you like you go to industry shows and they they’ll give you all these best practices are to grow by 22%. I’m like, well I don’t want to do best practices. You do know that’s average, right? Like the only way you can have best practices of multiple people doing the same damn thing. I am not a B2 guy. So when you begin to see that, hold up, I can just combine with some I’ll give you a great example. We had one client, it’s funny, I’m

in California may not have very many mosquitoes. That’s different on the East Coast. This organization is called Mosquito Control. Fastest growing franchise quite a few years ago. And the reason being was in working with them we figured out that it was a lot easier to give away it cost less money to give away the service.

Michelle Kesil (17:51)
Mm-hmm.

Chad T. Jenkins (18:07)
Than it did to try to talk somebody into buying the service. Now, once they had it, nobody wants those mosquitoes to come back. If you’ve ever been bitten by a mosquito, and I hope that you haven’t, it’s a real pain in the ass. So, what we did was two things. If someone on your block got the service, they would get two or three golden tickets. And it basically would position as

You now have experienced no mosquitoes. But you might have to go to a barbecue at your brother-in-law’s house. You can give this golden ticket away, and if you’ll do it before, we will do it at free, no charge at all, and you can experience mosquito-free zones everywhere you go. Boy, that spread like wildfire. Spread faster than mosquitoes, actually. I’ll give you another example. There’s a gentleman who really wants to sell barbecue grills.

You know where those things are mostly located? Outside. So we went around to everyone who sells barbecue grills in the it was a two-state is the focus area.

In that two-state area, and we went around to everyone who sells the nicest grills and we said, We want to make it easy for you. We’re going to give you a competitive advantage in your market area. Every time you sell this grill, here’s a free golden ticket. They get a mosquito control, and we guarantee that we’re going to be there within 48 hours to spray.

So if you bought the grill, you’re probably doing it because you have a barbecue coming. Somebody’s getting married or graduating or it’s a big pool party. Maybe it’s your daughter’s birthday. And so when you buy the grill, you can buy the grill from anywhere. There’s very there’s a lot of big retailers who sell grills. We both know this. So you went to the independent guys. Why? To help them have a competitive advantage. They’re doing what? Combining what two entrepreneurs already had.

So of course a mosquito control guide, and again it costs $7 to do an additional treatment. Now the specialized scheduling, you would have more expense if you had to drive across town. But if you’re already in the area, $7.

⁓ but looking at it that particular way, it’s like what do we already have that if we combine with somebody else who’s serving the person who wants to to cook outside, an example of the barbecue grill, if we just combine what we have with what they have, it makes them look like a hero. The client has a better experience, and then we have the probability of having a great relationship with that client who’s now mosquito-free. They don’t want to go back to the mosquitoes.

Couple simple examples.

Michelle Kesil (20:44)
Yeah, that’s great. I love how that works and how out-of-the-box ideas can support multiple parties.

Chad T. Jenkins (20:53)
Yes, indeed. So much fun. Mm-hmm. I’ll get you said real estate specifically. residential, I would assume. Yes?

Michelle Kesil (21:01)
⁓ as far as our listeners?

Chad T. Jenkins (21:03)
Yeah, all ki all types of residential, is that correct? Or real estate up and down. Yeah. Across the board for all types of real estate. Luckily, I have quite a bit of experience there. ⁓ you know, on the residential side, we have some realtors that own pretty much all the state of Florida for Keller Williams, an example. And that particular one for their open houses.

Michelle Kesil (21:06)
I yeah, investors that are across the board, yeah.

Sure, yeah.

Chad T. Jenkins (21:25)
They would give an example. ⁓ for this is a referral tactic actually. They would offer to anyone who had bought a home in the in the neighborhood where they had open house, they would offer one hour before the public open house for any private showings. Now it’s a and you’re calling somebody who’s already built bought a house from you. So in that particular scenario, you already have something in open house.

And you are going to do the open house on Saturday, you’re simply looking at anyone that you’ve sold a house to in that neighborhood and offering private showings the hour before the public gets it. Now did you call and ask for referrals? Not really. Did you get referrals? Yes. Because you just combine what you already had with what somebody else has and you created more value for everyone.

Michelle Kesil (22:18)
Yeah, amazing. Thank you so much for sharing all of that.

Chad T. Jenkins (22:22)
Yeah, sure. My pleasure.

Michelle Kesil (22:25)
So before we begin to wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect and learn more about everything that you are up to, where can people connect with you?

Chad T. Jenkins (22:35)
Sure. ⁓ Easy Way is on LinkedIn. I have a team that keeps that very active. ⁓ it has reference to quite a few books that we’ve written. You can also go to seedspark.com.

Which will give you access to more information on the CoLAB and then access to other material that can get your own journey started. Because we do offer a free account at seedspark.com. You’ll find access to join the CoLAB. There’s a free account where you can begin building your I am portfolio and seeing not the entrepreneur’s name, but you can immediately begin to get access to entrepreneurs that you would be introduced to if you decide that you want.

to proceed forward and and get active on building your own collaboration strategy.

Michelle Kesil (23:24)
Amazing. Well, appreciate your time and your story. Thank you for being here.

Chad T. Jenkins (23:28)
Absolutely, Michelle. Thanks so much. Hope you have a great day.

Michelle Kesil (23:31)
Likewise, and for the listeners tuning in, if you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Chad who are building real businesses. And we’ll see you on the next episode.