Partner & Profit Podcast

Nicholas Raschella has spent years on both sides of affiliate marketing.

He started as an affiliate himself, making his first online sale by reaching out to a couple of friends. Over the next few years, he learned email marketing and copywriting, eventually becoming a top affiliate and earning the opportunity to meet Tony Robbins. That experience eventually led him into affiliate management, with Dean Graziosi becoming his first client and opening the door to working with some of the biggest names in the industry. 

Today, Nicholas helps businesses build and manage affiliate programs, and his approach is rooted in relationships. He believes the best affiliate partnerships are built on people knowing, liking and trusting the product, rather than simply chasing a commission.

In this episode of the Partner & Profit Podcast, Nicholas and I get into what it actually takes to build an affiliate program that works, why your existing customers may be the best place to start, and why having a great offer matters before you ever recruit an affiliate.

Nicholas also shares how he thinks about commissions and customer lifetime value, why money isn't always what motivates people to promote, what businesses need to have in place before launching an affiliate program, and why a simple thank you can go a surprisingly long way.

Here’s what we covered:

• How Nicholas got his start in affiliate marketing and made his first online sale - 01:07
• The 4F protocol he developed after dealing with imposter syndrome - 04:00
• How affiliate marketing helped Nicholas build relationships with his mentors - 05:40
• Why making money for your mentors can open doors - 06:18
• What Nicholas looks for in a strong affiliate partner - 08:43
• Why your current customers may be your best affiliates - 09:12
• The difference between relationship-based and traffic-based affiliates - 09:43
• Why Nicholas sees affiliate partnerships as a long game - 10:28
• What you need before starting an affiliate program - 11:46
• The tracking, assets and training an affiliate program needs - 12:15
• Why money isn't always enough to motivate affiliates - 14:51
• How customer lifetime value should influence affiliate commissions - 15:26
• Why thanking and recognizing your affiliates matters - 18:11
• Borrowed space vs. owned space in your marketing - 19:32
• Why you only need a handful of strong affiliate relationships to create momentum - 19:32

Follow Nicholas Raschella for more on affiliate marketing, partnerships and building affiliate programs.

IG: @nicholasraschella

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Gavin Ekstrom has been in the mortgage business since 1993.

He still originates today while also running a branch and a region, but the way he builds relationships with real estate agents looks a little different than the traditional loan officer model. Instead of relying entirely on one-on-one meetings, Gavin has built a one-to-many approach around educational events.

What started as lunch-and-learns with around 10 to 15 people has grown into about six events a month, where Gavin teaches real estate agents things they can actually use to grow their businesses, from buyer and seller presentations to overcoming objections and winning more listings. Last year, he says his team spoke to more than 1,500 agents through those events.

In this episode of the Partner & Profit Podcast, Gavin and I get into how he built that model, why he believes teaching agents beyond mortgage products creates stronger relationships, and how he thinks about the connection between adding value, marketing and profitability.

Gavin also shares the leadership lesson that changed how he thinks about running a business, how he uses sponsorships to help cover the cost of his events, how he filters agents into different rooms, why social media and email help build familiarity before the first conversation, and why the follow-up after the event is so important.

Here’s what we covered:

• Gavin’s journey in the mortgage business and why he still originates - 00:31
• The “conductor” lesson that changed how Gavin thinks about leadership - 03:09
• Why Gavin moved from one-on-one meetings to a one-to-many model - 05:09
• How he turned lunch-and-learns into larger events for real estate agents - 05:35
• What Gavin teaches agents beyond mortgage products and programs - 06:20
• How teaching agents to grow their businesses helps him build deeper relationships - 07:52
• The client conversations, scripts and strategies Gavin teaches agents - 08:14
• How the events increase profitability and how sponsors help cover the cost - 11:46
• Why Gavin prefers spending 90 minutes with 20-30 agents over a coffee meeting - 13:35
• How his events put him in front of more than 1,500 agents - 14:05
• Why marketing, social media and email help build familiarity with agents - 15:29
• How Gavin filters agents into different events - 15:53
• Why consistency creates credibility and confidence - 16:59
• Why the follow-up after an event matters so much - 17:53
• How to get Gavin’s event and marketing playbook - 18:26

Connect with Gavin Ekstrom:

Gavin shares his approach to mortgage, real estate relationships, marketing and business growth through his social media channels.

Instagram: @gavinekstrom

Gavin also offers his event and marketing playbook to anyone who wants to learn more. Just follow him and send him a DM saying you heard him on the Partner & Profit Podcast.

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Ricky Carruth has had quite a journey in real estate.

He made his first million, lost it all during the housing crash, and eventually rebuilt his business to become the number one agent in his market for eight years. He also became the number one RE/MAX agent in Alabama for three different years. Over his career, he closed 1,000 properties as a solo agent before retiring from sales in 2022 to focus on helping other agents build their businesses.

What's interesting is what happened next. Ricky took the skills he had developed through email marketing, phone calls and postcards and applied those same principles to social media, building a national and global personal brand through organic content.

In this episode of the Partner & Profit Podcast, Ricky and I get into his approach to building a personal brand, creating organic content people actually want to watch, and earning trust with an audience over time.

Ricky also shares why he believes so much social media content gets overlooked, how he develops ideas from his own experience, why he spends so much time thinking through an idea before creating it, and what business owners often misunderstand about turning an audience into revenue.

Here's what we covered:

• Ricky's journey from losing everything to becoming a top-producing real estate agent - 00:54
• How he used his real estate marketing experience to build a personal brand - 02:37
• Why consistency matters when building trust through social media - 05:36
• What separates content that gets attention from content people scroll past - 07:13
• Why your own experience matters when developing content ideas - 11:18
• How Ricky thinks through his short-form video scripts - 13:44
• The strategy behind his recognizable green-screen video openings - 15:04
• How he's built an audience through consistent organic content - 17:41
• Why he doesn't rely on a lot of direct calls to action in his organic content - 18:24
• The mistake business owners make when trying to monetize their audience - 19:22
• Why selling starts with understanding what people actually want - 20:39

Connect with Ricky Carruth:

Ricky shares real estate advice, market updates, and content for agents through his social media channels and email newsletter.

Instagram & YouTube: @rickycarruth

Sunday Agent Devotionals and newsletter: Sign up here!

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Dave Fanale has spent more than 40 years in real estate. He’s built properties, owned a brokerage for 21 years, invested and flipped homes, and today works as a growth manager with the Align team while helping agents grow their businesses.

Through all of it, one question has stayed pretty consistent: What can I do to help you?

In this episode of the Partner & Profit Podcast, Grant sits down with longtime friend Dave Fanale to talk about what decades in real estate have taught him about relationships, trust and doing business with people you actually like being around.

Dave shares why he thinks the invitation can be just as valuable as the event itself, how agents can create simple opportunities to stay connected with their sphere, why a script should never stop sounding like you, and why trust ultimately comes down to doing what you said you were going to do.

In this episode:

• Dave’s 40+ year career in real estate - 01:03
• The question he still uses to approach relationships - 02:18
• Why “the invite is just as important as the party” - 03:08
• A simple weekly event idea for staying connected with your sphere - 03:08
• How Dave thinks about identifying the people he wants to work with - 05:05
• Why your scripts still need to sound like you - 08:14
• How longtime friendship has led to business opportunities - 13:19
• What Dave believes actually creates trust - 16:37
• Why collaboration and helping people are still at the center of his work - 17:23

Dave hosts Real Estate Talk TGIF every Friday at 11:00 AM Eastern on his personal Facebook page. He also invites listeners interested in connecting or partnering with him to reach out at [email protected]. 

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You can have the right 10 people in a room and have a $5,000 to $50,000 day.

Matt Fagioli and I spent some time unpacking why events can be such a powerful way to build relationships and grow a business.

Matt has been in and around real estate for about 25 years. He started as an agent, built a top-10 team in his state, sold the team, and later moved into the technology and industry side of the business.

He also spent 10 years building the Xplode Conference, bringing 500 people together at a time in cities across the country and working with major partners like Realtor.com and Zillow.

We talked about live events, virtual events, partnerships, audience-building, offers, webinars and the work that happens behind the scenes long before you ever fill a room.

Here’s what we covered:

• The role events can play in building relationships and business - 02:52
• Why virtual events offer a level of scale that physical events can’t - 04:41
• Finding the right audience instead of simply chasing bigger numbers - 05:38
• Why human connection could become even more valuable as AI becomes more prevalent - 06:32
• How AI can give businesses more time for actual relationships - 07:29
• The combination of subject matter expertise, trust and a strong offer - 09:31
• What goes into consistently filling a 500-person event - 11:03
• How Matt used partnerships to build and fill his events - 11:50
• Why Matt sees webinars as a major opportunity in real estate - 14:11
• The time, money and patience required to make an event strategy work - 15:30

Connect with Matt: 

Instagram: @mattfagioli

Dirty Disciple on Amazon

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Ricardo Bueno has spent more than a decade in real estate tech building partnerships, communities and customer experiences for companies including Diverse Solutions and Follow Up Boss.

His approach goes beyond selling the product.

Ricardo believes customer adoption and retention deserve just as much attention as acquiring the customer in the first place. Educate people. Help them get more value from what they bought. Build an ecosystem around them. Do it well enough, and a customer can become the person recommending your product to everyone else.

In this episode of the Partner & Profit Podcast, here's what we got into:

• Why Ricardo leads with education instead of product features - 03:16
• Customer retention, adoption and creating superfans - 04:46
• Why your best customers can become your best advocates - 07:00
• How Ricardo went from small coffee meetups to a 510-person real estate event - 11:05
• How he used smaller events to create FOMO for the next one - 14:06
• Why every detail of an event contributes to the customer experience - 15:58
• How Follow Up Boss approached its events as more than a traditional user conference - 17:24
• Why superfans create referrals and an automatic transfer of trust - 20:47
• Building an event backwards from the feeling you want people to leave with - 22:15

Ricardo’s goal wasn't simply to put on events. It was to create experiences people remembered and a community customers wanted to champion. 

Connect with Ricardo Bueno:
Subscribe to his email list and follow his journey at ricardobueno.com

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Aaron Martinez has been making videos online since he was nine years old. By 15, he had received his first check from YouTube. Today, his work sits at the intersection of video content, organic marketing and paid advertising. 

In this episode of the Partner & Profit Podcast, Grant and Aaron dig into what actually gets someone from watching your content to becoming a customer.

Aaron explains why he sees YouTube as particularly effective for building trust, why short-form content needs to be created differently when growth is the goal, and how AI is changing what audiences need to see before they believe your marketing.

They also get into paid advertising, rising acquisition costs, tracking the numbers that actually matter, and why declaring that ads “don’t work” after spending $10 or $100 misses how much testing goes into finding a system that can scale.

In this episode:

•  Why Aaron believes YouTube is particularly effective for building trust - 03:51 
•  Long-form vs. short-form video content - 05:14 
•  Why repurposed podcast clips don't always perform as short-form content - 05:25 
•  Building trust with content in the age of AI - 07:10 
•  Why Aaron sees livestreaming as another way to establish trust - 09:20 
•  How content can make the eventual sales conversation easier - 13:19 
•  Why Aaron sees a role for both organic content and paid ads - 15:47 
•  Why $10 or $100 isn't enough to decide whether advertising works - 16:47 
•  Using numbers instead of feelings to diagnose marketing problems - 19:47 
•  The $140K testing story and what happened after the funnel finally worked - 21:31 

Connect with Aaron on YouTube (@AaronMakesVideo).

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Lisa Chinatti sold 8 homes in 2015. One year later, she sold 81.

The shift wasn’t one magic strategy. Lisa got serious about the business, learned how lead generation worked, figured out online lead conversion, and as she sold more, her confidence grew with it.

In this episode of the Partner & Profit Podcast, Grant and Lisa get into what happened next: building deeper relationships, earning trust, staying genuinely curious about people, and getting comfortable actually asking for the review, referral or business.  

In this episode, you'll learn:

•  How Lisa went from 8 homes sold to 81 in one year - 03:07 
•  Why trying to be liked by everybody can lead to less genuine relationships - 06:52 
•  Why she prefers deeper one-on-one connections over mass outreach - 07:54 
•  The $10M referral lesson she learned from Tom Ferry - 09:57 
•  How curiosity can change a 3–5 minute conversation - 11:04 
•  Where trust is made or broken with a client - 13:45 
•  Why the best salespeople ask more questions and talk less - 16:01 
•  The mistake Lisa sees people make after building the relationship - 17:26 
•  Why fear of rejection and sounding “salesy” keeps people from making the ask - 18:10 

Connect with Lisa on Instagram: @lisachinatti

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Justin Nelson has spent nearly 15 years in real estate and business, and over the last six years has grown his virtual assistant company to nearly 12,000 placements across roughly 5,000 business owners. 

But some of the most interesting ways he uses virtual assistants have nothing to do with cold calling or checking tasks off a list.

In this episode of the Partner & Profit Podcast, Grant and Justin get into how he uses VAs to help manage the follow-up that usually gets lost after a meeting or networking event, from researching the person he just met to coordinating handwritten notes and thoughtful gifts. They also get into the harder part: actually learning how to manage people once you start delegating. 

Here’s what we got into:

•  How Justin grew his business through 100–150 events a year before he had the budget or risk tolerance for paid advertising - 02:52 
•  Using virtual assistants for personalized follow-up instead of only cold calling and transaction work - 04:12 
•  Why managing a VA requires the same leadership skills as managing someone in your office - 07:34 
•  Hiring someone you’ll need to train vs. hiring someone with “batteries included” - 08:29 
•  Where Justin draws the line between leverage, AI and maintaining trust - 10:57 
•  Why he puts more weight on delivering on the big commitments than personally handling every small touchpoint - 11:39 
•  How his team uses thoughtful microgifting with clients and employees - 14:50 
•  How he thinks about creating a win-win when someone doesn’t need what he sells right now - 16:58 
•  Why Justin tries to “outgive” the people in his network without keeping score - 19:47  

Connect with Justin Nelson:

Justin is the Founder and CEO of Sphere Rocket VA, which helps businesses hire and work with virtual assistants. In the episode, he also talks about opportunities for people with networks or audiences to refer businesses that need VAs and earn revenue through those referrals. 

Sphere Rocket VA
Justin Nelson on Instagram 

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Josh Orzech is the Regional Operations Director at Enercare, managing businesses in Calgary and Winnipeg under A1 Chesney and Winnipeg Supply. He’s spent 23 years with Enercare and its predecessor companies and has built some incredibly productive partnerships along the way including one with a Calgary real estate office of 80 agents where he gives partners his personal cell number and makes it a priority to respond to their homeowners within 10 minutes.  

In this episode of the Partner & Profit Podcast, Grant and Josh get into what it actually takes to build business relationships that last, how you get in front of people who don’t know you yet, and the things that can ruin a good partnership once you have one.

Here’s what we got into:

• Why every partnership has to be a win-win-win to work long term - 04:21 
• How Josh built a partnership with a Calgary real estate office of 80 agents - 05:05 
• Why he gives partners his personal cell number and prioritizes responding within 10 minutes - 05:05 
• Why trusted introductions carry more weight than cold outreach - 13:05 
• The 7 AM donut strategy that landed him a partnership without an introduction - 14:38 
• Why overselling and underdelivering can destroy a relationship - 15:55 
• What Josh does when his team gets something wrong - 15:55 
• Why communication and continuing to show value matter after the partnership is already there - 16:34 
• How to connect with Josh and explore partnerships across Canada and the US - 18:23 

Connect with Josh Orzech:

A1 Chesney serves Calgary. Winnipeg Supply serves Winnipeg. Enercare operates across Canada, and Josh also discusses its partnership with Service Experts in the US. He’s open to facilitating introductions for people interested in working together. 

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