Okay, we are talking about strategic alliances. These are a powerful tool for your business, a form of leverage that you can use in order to gain significant value, which we're going to talk a lot about this morning. So what are strategic alliances? They are partnerships between businesses that are going to allow you to increase your revenue, increase your reach, and provide a competitive advantage for you in the marketplace.

Why should you even care? You should care for a lot of reasons, because there's a lot of value sitting in strategic alliances that you can tap into. That value can provide you with access to resources, technology, and expertise that you either don't currently have or may not currently want to afford or incur the expense in order to obtain. So for example, you may be able to enter into a strategic alliance and access technology that would cost you significant time and investment to develop, to implement, where you can immediately access some of that by forming the right strategic alliance.

Some of what we're going to learn today is going to be exploring different types of strategic alliances. They come in different flavors. We'll be looking at how to select the right partners that are going to make for an effective strategic alliance, and then also the steps to forming one, because we want to allow you to walk away with the know-how to be able to put one together and to execute it if you come up with the right strategic alliance that is right for you at this time in your business.

So several reasons why strategic alliances matter. First, and very importantly, they can expand your customer base immediately. If you enter into an alliance with another company that has an established customer base, that gives you immediate access to those customers for your products and services, where in order to get in front of them on your own, you would, as you know, have to invest in marketing, so that's money you'd be spending, the time and the effort to build out your customer base to make it broader, well, we can immediately tap into that here by entering into an alliance with someone that has an established customer base that is complementary to ours.

So something that's going to be woven throughout the discussion today is to make sure that that alignment is right, that the businesses are very complementary to each other, that you're both adding value to the potential partnership to make sure that it's going to provide maximum impact for your business. You also may have opportunities to share costs and risk. So some of those may come in the form of, for example, production, distribution, research and development, and I'm going to walk through specific examples so we can see how successful strategic alliances have tapped into this, but I'm just thinking about here in terms of products, you might be able to tap into an existing distribution channel, or expense of research and development where you don't have to incur that expense, but we can leverage someone else's who's already been there and done that.

It can enhance your credibility, again, immediately. If you form an alliance with an established brand, they already have reputation in the marketplace, credibility with their consumers, and gives you the opportunity to align with them and tap into that so that you receive extended credibility and recognition for your brand in addition to already what you've built. That may be able to expand for you into new markets.

So while we are thinking about strategic alliances, they not only help us with credibility in our existing market, but they're also a way to cut into an entirely new market where we might not even have started to access yet with our products or services. And finally, they matter because they can really accelerate your growth. They can help you, for your business, grow, they can help you scale, and they can, again, help you tap into new markets, new customer bases.

There are so many opportunities here to unpack with strategic alliances that we're going to dig into these a little bit more, and like I said, I'll give you specific examples to really underscore the success of some of these and what you can think about when you're trying to determine whether it's the right fit for you and what it's going to look like. So let's start with different types, different types of strategic alliances, the first of which we all know pretty well, referral partnerships. That's aligning our business with another one that's going to allow for a nice exchange of leads and referrals.

A great example of this, since we have Gina here today, is an HR consultant, so someone like Gina who has expertise in that HR space, helping to work with your employees, making sure you have those right processes in place, policies in place. She could form an alliance with a labor and employment attorney. That's an excellent fit because a labor and employment attorney adds the experience of having the legal know-how to implement some of the processes, procedures, that Gina's putting in place, and make sure they're in compliance with the laws that apply to your business.

So for example, Gina may be helping to onboard new talent. She's putting policies in place. We want to make sure that those workers are properly classified.

Well, having that labor and employment attorney is going to add that additional expertise, and both of them will service those same clients. So that's a great opportunity where they can be exchanging work within the same types of clients in a partnership that they've come together and formed. So certainly looking for a business that's complimentary to yours, where you would have the same customers that you can expose each other to is going to really give you that maximum impact.

Product bundling is another type of strategic alliance that can be very effective. So packaging not just products together, but services together from two different businesses to create something that has greater value together than it would on its own. A great example that you probably are familiar with is the Apple Watch Nike+.

So Apple and Nike came together and decided, let's put our heads together and create a super watch, essentially, and we'll target runners with it. So within that partnership, Nike was able to really provide an additional service to the products that they offer to the market. That additional service is that digital fitness tracking.

Apple already had that in the watch itself. And on the other hand, for Apple, Apple was able to tap into the fitness market. Apple was not in the fitness market, but that gave them exposure to Nike's entire consumer base, folks who were already interested in this product and coming together and melding that expertise created this product that was going to help both of them access each other's customers, increase the brand awareness of doing something in a collaboration, and that all came about because of the strategic alliance that they formed.

So saw that opportunity in the marketplace and really tapped into it by forming that alliance. Another type of strategic alliance is a supplier or vendor agreement. So here we're thinking about, can we get exclusive pricing or terms by entering into a partnership that is really based on, at its core, an agreement that would focus on the supplier or vendor aspect? Common example, you've gone to the grocery store and you've seen bottled beverages from Starbucks.

You've seen the coffee drinks, you've seen their energy drinks. Now, Starbucks wasn't in the business of distribution, right, they're in the coffee business. They didn't have these existing distribution channels to put products on the shelves in grocery stores or markets where we pick them up, but Pepsi sure did.

So Starbucks and Pepsi formed a strategic alliance that allowed Starbucks to tap into all of those existing distribution channels. So really being able to help them with efficiency, utilizing existing channels they would have otherwise had to spend the capital and the time to build and allow them to achieve efficiencies in terms of those costs. They certainly would have spent a lot of money doing that.

And for Pepsi, the value add there was they got this premium coffee brand right along with their portfolio of products that they're delivering to the market. In every one of these examples, the common theme here is both partners have to benefit. So there's going to be added value to both sides and it's going to be significant for them to enter into these partnerships.

And another example that is pretty common here too is marketing collaborations. This can be anything from branding your products or services together to social media. You're just, you're marketing the products there, or your services there, or advertising together.

Very well-known example is the collaboration between Red Bull and GoPro. We've seen some of this on TV, I'm sure. Like the extreme sports events, guys are jumping out of planes, mountain biking, surfing, cliff diving, you name it.

These two have come together to create those events. It's really Red Bull that puts together the underlying events, gets all the athletes that are participate. And then what do they do? Strap GoPros to them and let them have at it.

And that way we give the consumer that immersive experience of watching the event, like from the vantage point of the athlete. It was brilliant. Allowed both of these brands to get even more recognition.

So customer base, both of them broadened their customer base, the exposure of all of that advertising and marketing, and allowed them to both increase their market share because of a wonderful collaboration that they realized that they could leverage by doing this together and doing it better. Using expertise they didn't have, right? Red Bull didn't have the expertise to develop cameras, but GoPro sure did, and vice versa. So putting that together really allows them to basically supercharge both of their brands.

So why do strategic alliances matter? Well, they matter for a lot of reasons, and here's where your significant value add is in so many different ways. Critical importance is finding that right partner. So making sure that we identify who's going to be the partner that's going to provide us with that expertise that we don't have or is going to provide us with something that is going to be valuable to us.

This one, for me, is non-negotiable, having shared values and goals. So the businesses are going to have to have that same mission, same goals that they're trying to achieve that makes them align well. So I think about ESL, and I think about who is a good strategic partner for us.

We often look at different advisors, we look at banks, we look at others in the marketplace where we may be able to put together events with them, and in doing so, they have to share our mission. If, for example, they are thinking short-term, they're not thinking about preparing a business owner for the eventual exit, they're looking at, you know, what can we do in the short-term, that's not going to be a good fit for us. Or if it's an advisor just thinking about what do they need for retirement, that's not going to be a good fit for us either.

So we really have to vet even our own partnerships in the marketplace to make sure they're going to be the right fit for us and they align well with our business. They ought to have complementary strengths. We want to really think about a partner that's going to provide some sort of expertise that we don't have so that we don't have to invest the time, the effort, the marketing to be able to create what they've already created.

So the best ones will offer something that we don't have. You know, that could be technology, it could be their know-how, or a different product line. So be thinking about something there that we don't have in our business that's going to be a complementary strength that they will bring to our partnership.

They have a proven track record. This is important. We want to make sure that that partner has already established themselves in a marketplace.

Ideally, they have a nice, strong brand presence, credibility with their customers, and we can basically tap into that already. We don't have to worry about any reputational risk. That's really kind of the potential downside here is if we choose the wrong partner, we run the risk of harming our own reputation, our own credibility, and then, of course, there's the financial loss component of it.

But having the right partner, making sure we are vetting those partners well is going to ensure our own success. So if we don't already know about their brand reputation in the market, maybe it's a lesser-known brand. They're kind of up and coming, but it seems like a great opportunity.

I'd really vet the brand. I would look at, definitely speak to people from that organization to get a feel for them. Speak to clients who are working with them.

Look at their reviews. But definitely do your homework. Vet these people well before entering into a partnership with them because you're putting so much into this, and there's a lot of risk involved as well.

And finally, clear benefit for both partners. I've mentioned this a few times now. There has to be a mutual benefit in entering into any type of strategic alliance.

So if we can't come to that partner and say this is the value that I'm going to provide to you, they're not going to entertain that discussion with us. It's got to work both ways, and that's going to make it the most successful. They have value to bring to the partnership, and you have value to bring to the partnership, so it has to be a two-way street.

So how can we form an effective strategic alliance? Well, this is going to begin with clearly defining our goals. From the outset, I would write these down. I would identify exactly what it is that we're trying to accomplish.

Now for you, that's all going to be different. Your goal may be increase our brand awareness in the marketplace. On the other hand, it might be expand into a new market.

So looking at our own business and saying what could we really benefit from? What's the direction that we want to go next? And using those goals to then lead us to identify the right partners. So identifying those goals clearly helps really for us define who's going to be the best partner for us when we move forward. And then of course, identifying our potential partners, and we do that by the things I've mentioned.

So again, making sure that our mission and brand aligns, we have the same goals, they have a proven track record in the marketplace, that's going to help us select the right partner for the strategic alliance. The next step is reaching out and pitching that value. So again, if we've already identified what the value is to them, I would lead with that.

We want to be able to describe to that potential strategic partner, listen, we have something that is going to be incredibly valuable to you, let me tell you what it is. And then of course, you let them know that there's value to us too, that's why we think that this could be a great potential partnership. So let's discuss the details of it.

Your next step is negotiating the agreement details. I can't emphasize this enough, as putting an agreement in place on the front end. The relationship's always great in the beginning, right? You have this great idea, you know there's a good opportunity there, put it in paper, it protects both parties is what it does.

And what it also does is give you a guide. You define what your expectations are going to be, you define what the roles are going to be. So we eliminate the confusion, we know what each other is doing, it's all spelled out in the agreement.

What do we think we're going to accomplish? That's there. Revenue share should be there. Any other expectations that we clearly want to set so there's just no question later on.

And finally, and critically, there has to be an out. If something unfortunately happens and one party needs to step away from that agreement or both parties mutually decide to step away from that agreement, we need a way to get out of it. And the way to get out of it can be worked out mutually.

Let's just agree that if something goes sideways, here's how we will agree that this will be the procedure which we follow to get out of it. Because when we don't have an agreement in place, that's where you're going to end up in a big dispute. And there's going to be a lot of things flying around is going to resolve most likely by using attorneys, hiring attorneys, spending money on legal fees.

We don't want that to happen. So we can avoid all of that by having that in a nice written agreement. And the final step is going to be executing and managing what we have built, creating structure, structure for the collaboration, structure for tracking the progress as we go along, and structure for how we're going to deal with anything that comes up.

And maybe we need to shift and change direction. Here I suggest having regular standing meetings. Standing meetings with your strategic partner so that you can track that together.

You have the system in place, you know what numbers you're looking at. Sit down together and start assessing where are we? Where are we in line with our expectations? So in the beginning we should have already mapped that out in the legal agreement, and now we can look at how are we doing? Let's benchmark where we thought we'd be compared to where we are now, looking at both your revenue numbers, looking at if your customer base has expanded, looking at all those different metrics you thought about that would help you evaluate whether this is going to be successful. And if it's not, that gives you the opportunity in those conversations to work through what can we do? How are we going to shift? If we wait too long to engage those partners, we let the frustration build because we both see there's something that's not working here, and we need to be working together to make sure that we ensure the success of what we're building.

So keys to making sure this partnership is successful, defining our roles and responsibilities clearly. Making sure both sides know what they're doing, what the expectations are from the partner is really going to help us ensure the success of what we're building with a partner. Having that legal agreement, again, can't say this enough, make sure it is in place with nice, clear terms for all aspects of what you're building together.

We've identified our roles and responsibilities, our expectations, our revenue, our revenue goals, and ways that we can step out of the partnership if something goes wrong. So Nicole, I totally agree with you on the agreement, of course. But just, it's also for compliance.

So if you're an attorney, maybe it doesn't matter in any other industry, but for example, an attorney, if you're going to get into a referral partnership with another firm, you have to have certain wording from the floor of our court, you're not in compliance. If you get an ethical violation or something, et cetera. The agreement takes care of compliance too.

Absolutely, and you work with an attorney who will say, have you made sure that you have taken care of this? Because of what you are putting together may have legal implications that you are unaware of. There may be compliance with state and federal laws that you need to make sure you're aware of. And that's why we, another reason why hiring an attorney to help you put that agreement together is of critical importance.

Consistent communication. Again, regular meetings, regular communication, just like with any partner. Partnerships are all built on trust.

And we do that by making sure that we're communicating with our partner. We're sharing what we're seeing, what we're observing, what might be bothering us about the alliance we venture into. It gives us the opportunity again to identify issues that may arise and help us correct them.

And then finally, measuring your performance. So something that we should be doing together because we put a structure in place to track that growth, measure our performance and our revenue, and making sure that if something's wrong, we can correct it, we can help fix that and ensure the performance continues to increase. So different benefits of strategic alliances.

I'm gonna do this one with a case study. I happen to love sneakers. If you know me, you know that.

So I'm going to use an example of a very well-known collaboration that hits on so many of these benefits of strategic alliances. So Nike and Off-White are two brands that came together and created essentially a product that blended the two brands into one and marketed it to both of their consumer bases. Off-White is a high fashion sneaker brand that was developed by a designer who after this collaboration went on to become the head of a major fashion house.

The sneaker you probably have seen because it has the plastic zip tie on the shoelaces. And if you haven't seen the sneaker, you've seen the head of the Dolphins. If you ever watched the Dolphins game, Mike Daniels was well known for wearing Off-White sneakers like every single game.

And sure enough, a cameraman would zoom in on his shoes at any given time during the game to, basically because people knew what the brand was and they were excited about the brand. So it got its own airtime during the football games. So a lot of people didn't know what that brand was.

I mean, it was popular to people who are sneaker enthusiasts, but it wasn't popular in a mainstream way. So when Off-White formed its partnership with Nike, it gave Off-White immediate access to mainstream consumers who were sneaker enthusiasts. It gave you access to all of Nike's customers.

Nike has its own sneaker app for customers who are big enthusiasts. They wait for new shoes to drop and they're on that app to get alerts. They know when they're happening.

They're already trying to get those shoes at a retail price. And once you don't get them at the retail price, then they go to a secondary market. So when they created this collaboration, the prices for the shoes went up.

There was exclusivity. They only have so many of every type that they come out with. And then they have to get sold on the secondary market, which in turn exploded because of what they created.

When they added their Air Jordan brand to that, it went through the roof. So more exclusivity, more cost, phenomenal alliance that allowed both of them to, first of all, gain access to the established customer bases, as I mentioned. Off-White, it went to a mainstream market.

Nike was able to break into the fashion sneaker market, which Nike wouldn't have done without making an alliance with a brand that was already there. It helped both of them really lower operational costs in what they were doing because Off-White made the sneakers. Nike used its existing distribution channels to be able to push those out to all of its consumers.

So when you bought them through Nike, they were handling the packaging and the shipment of the shoes and still are. Increased brand visibility for both companies. So here, both of them, again, by putting those two names together, really put them on the map, put them both on the map for that type of shoe.

So where Off-White didn't have that mass reach, it now did, and Nike obviously had that high fashion brand to bring to it, but together they created something that was special. I remember we talked about bundling. It created a product that had greater value together than either one did independently.

And another final benefit that I want to make sure we mention is leveraging new technology and expertise. So oftentimes, if we wanna bring a new technology to our business, we know we have to look at how much is this going to cost? What is it going to take to implement it? There's going to be time involved. There's going to be money involved, and it could take far longer than I think we might anticipate on the front end when we look into it.

But using a strategic alliance to be able to access technology can allow us to cut down the cost of it, it can allow us to cut down the time, and all of a sudden we're there. And a lot of companies have now been doing this with the use of AI. So taking a software that's been built using AI and bolting it onto a technology that they already have allows them to avoid the downtime, and for example, training the model, coming up with whatever they may need, and they can already add it into their existing technology with their existing customer base, and they've now created an opportunity to capitalize on that leverage.

So we've already gone through the first two, as we talked about Nike and Apple and the watch that they created together. We talked about the GoPro and Red Bull Extreme Sports Marketing Alliance. And a final one that we've all seen and maybe hadn't really thought about are what delivery apps did for our local restaurants.

It took local restaurants that no one ever heard of, unless they were maybe in your area, and it put them on the map for consumers all across different markets. You know, especially like here in South Florida, you could have a small little local restaurant that only served a small base, and all of a sudden when it's on that app, it's in front of tons of tons of consumers, and it's being delivered to their door. It allowed some restaurants to, first of all, expand their customer base, but some of them to even obtain new locations.

So expand by opening another restaurant in a different area because they realized what the demand was for them. They were getting brand recognition out there in the marketplace. So really helped a lot of these small restaurants grow and gain visibility with a customer base.

So how can we measure our alliance's success? So a number of ways, and here is our guide in order to identify whether your alliance is going to be a successful one. Starts with the numbers. It always starts with the numbers.

Definitely looking at how is this alliance doing in terms of revenue. Are we seeing an increase in our revenue? Are we seeing decrease in our expenses? Is it profitable? We should have a measure in place just to look at what has happened with this alliance rather than the overall business. So if we're able to separate that from the financials of the overall business, we really want to hone in on exactly what we think this has been doing to help us assess whether it's going to be a profitable venture going forward.

Our customer acquisition. Are we reaching new audiences through the alliance? So here, ways we can look at that are, certainly has the number of customers increased? Has our reach increased? Even if we can't pinpoint the specific number of customers, we can certainly look at that and say, our reach is now broader, and if we're seeing a positive return in the numbers, then there has to be a conclusion that we've now reached more customers and gained them as a result of this. Our brand recognition and reputation.

How has the credibility improved? This one's a little tougher, but here what we can do to assess this is to look at our customer reviews. Most of you are already using some form of reviews, whether it's on Google or it's on Yelp. You can look at those reviews and see what people are saying.

Have people commented on this alliance we've entered into? Have they said anything that we can tie to the alliance? We can look at our social media presence. Do we have an increase in followers as a result of this alliance? While we may not be able to tie this 100% to the alliance, we can certainly look for these cues and look at the timing. From the time we put the alliance in place until today, what have we seen? Have we seen an increase in followers? Have we seen an increase in customers? So in addition to that cost, and we look at all those metrics together, we can certainly draw conclusions that this has allowed us to gain additional brand reputation and recognition in the marketplace.

I have a question. So what if you do the agreement in such a way that you're gaining some of these, but not all of them? So like for instance, revenue growth and brand recognition or something like that, but you're not getting, or I mean, I'm sorry, revenue growth, customer acquisition, but not necessarily the other things because maybe you're hidden beneath another person's brand. That's a great question.

I don't think that you will necessarily get all of them in one. I mean, that would be a home run to have an alliance where we hit everything. New customers, new revenue, new market.

I think it's really going to depend upon going back to your goals. What did we say our primary goal was? And if our primary goals was increasing our revenue, then that's really going to be the main focus. If we can get some of these other benefits, excellent.

If we can make sure, and customers will generally relate. If our revenue share is increasing, generally we're going to see a broadening of the customer base. But some of these other ones, maybe not.

Operational efficiency, maybe not. That's a little bit more specific. That's where our goal might've been, can we look to a strategic alliance partner who has expertise in a particular space? Like we saw with the distribution channels.

That's going to be operational efficiency that most of us won't see, unless you're Pete and you're dealing with products and you're thinking about, can I use somebody's expertise because they have an enhanced distribution channel on a particular space, then we may not see that. So I think it's really dependent upon the type of alliance that you are creating. It also depends on the stage of your business life cycle too, right? So if you are a newer business and you're just trying to grow your revenue, like a white label partnership where you provide services behind the scenes under someone else's brand might fit the profile for you at that point because you're just trying to drive revenue into your business, right? Three, four years down the road, you want to be able to own those clients.

So the white label partnership, the strategic alliance may not work for you any longer at that point. But when you first start, you want to get the money in the door. So the white label is probably a good way to go, right? The opposite is also true.

So you may decide, if you're a mature business, you may decide to do a strategic alliance just for brand recognition in a new space, even if it's at breakeven or a slight loss. So that was the case when I was with Marriott. Marriott bought a very small corporate housing company and it was a disaster revenue-wise.

They were losing money and then they put me in place to Marriottize it, but they needed to get into that industry somehow and they couldn't break in because they didn't have inventory in key cities. So the way for them to get the inventory was for them to buy this piece of dog poop that was the client, that was the business at the time, that got them into it and then we made it profitable from there. So they had the brand that got them in, they just bolted their name on the back of the brand and so the reverse of that first scenario was true because they wanted brand recognition in the specific industry.

So it depends on your stage in the business life cycle and also, like Nicola said, your goals for the business as you're moving forward. So the takeaway here is each point of success is going to help us measure the overall success. So these are different points of measurement that may or may not apply depending on the type of alliance and then overall really gives us a view of how successful this alliance is.

When to exit or adjust. So here's where we're really going to look out for. What are we seeing when we're coming together and regularly communicating that we may need to do something about? So results aren't meeting expectations.

That's pretty obvious. If we've identified those in our agreement, we already had what we thought this was going to do. We had our expectations set.

Hopefully we've already made adjustments, maybe they've increased, maybe they haven't, but we've made adjustments as we've gone along. And I would say, give this some time to see, obviously in the beginning, we don't know generally what this is going to look like. If it's a brand new alliance or unfamiliar with alliances, there's going to be an adjustment period.

So maybe give that a little bit of time as we measure it and see times going on, is this continuing to happen? Are we still not hitting our expectations? We're now months in, that's a time to really sit down and say, what can we do and what can we adjust to really course correct this so we're not going to be in a worse position? And if we're having those communications, we shouldn't, the partners shouldn't be as frustrated on either side because we're seeing this together, we're talking about it together and having that communication is really going to help ease that. This is new for both sides, something to keep in mind, not just entering into a strategic alliance, but this one will always be new to both sides. So we have to make sure that we're communicating regularly and we're looking at this together and making those decisions together because we don't want this to end up in a situation where we end up in a dispute or either side is just starting to lose trust.

If our business priorities shift, that may be a time to really think about whether this makes sense for us. Perhaps when we entered into the alliance, our focus was on startups. With startups, we really thought about how are we bundling our products and services to tailor to that market where we know that they're going to struggle a little bit with the cost involved.

We're not going to, generally speaking, get to offer them a premium product because they're worried about all of their costs. They're just trying to get their business off the ground. But if we know the future of our business after we've entered into this alliance, we start saying, you know what? We're better off working with established businesses that are looking to grow to that next level.

That's a different consumer base. So if we're going to start attracting completely different consumers, then we likely need to make an adjustment with this alliance. It's likely going to be exiting this alliance because it's just no longer in line with what the future of our business is going to be.

Another time to consider exiting or adjusting is if your trust or commitment declines. As with all partnerships, there has to be good trust. And if that starts to erode, let's start looking at that early.

Let's start looking at that early before it gets to the point where both sides are just completely done with the alliance. There's ways to be able to correct that. If this is a good alliance, it's been successful, but something has happened in the course of our time together that's just caused someone to have a little bit of a salty taste.

Having those communications can help us smooth that out. And if it can't, and we have our legal agreement in place that is nice and clear, we have a way to walk away if unfortunately things just don't go the way we planned they would. And another time to exit or adjust is if a better opportunity arises.

Hopefully we've had success with a strategic alliance we've already put in place. But as we've done that, maybe we see a future opportunity that can really take us to a whole different direction or to a new level. It doesn't mean that we have to stay in that alliance forever, but if we see a better opportunity, it's great to be able to have the ability to say, you know what, let's move on.

Let's step away from this alliance that we're in now. Let's form the new one because maybe for us that's taking us to a completely new level in our business. So here is the know-how.

Here is the how are we going to do this when we're really thinking about entering into a strategic alliance. We want to give you a guide to be thinking about to do that. So first, identifying those opportunities.

That goes back to the right partner. The right partner that's going to, for you, be able to provide you with complimentary business. It will have complimentary strengths, ideally.

They're going to have that proven track record in the marketplace as well as the same goals and mission that your business has. The next step is going to be valuing those benefits and risks. So here I would do both.

Again, I would write these out. I really want to know potential benefits, potential risks of entering into this so I can fully evaluate all of them. The benefits, we've already spoken a lot about, but to name a few of them, again, it could be entering into a new market.

It might be leveraging technology or other know-how that your alliance partner has. Or it could be simply just expanding your consumer base or your brand reputation in the marketplace. Some risks that will likely apply to all of us are potentially entering the wrong partnership, which could harm our brand.

So it's brand reputation harm. It's risk associated with that. And there's potential financial loss.

You know, what are we investing in this strategic alliance that we need to be concerned about that could potentially, if it went south, then how could that hurt us financially? So I would look at what's that investment you plan on making, both immediately and into the future for this alliance to then assess what's the true risk associated with this. And next is your execution plan. How will we do this? How will we start out? Structure, making sure that, again, that agreement is in place, so we know what everyone is doing.

We're regularly meeting and communicating about this plan. And we have clear expectations for both sides. We have structure in place to measure how we're doing, tracking that progress, assessing it, having communications about whether we need to make adjustments in our approach.

And then finally, tracking and adjusting as needed, going back to regularly assessing, looking at those metrics we talked about, looking at the numbers, what they're showing, looking at what the customer base is showing, if that's expanding, really listening for consumer feedback in different places, and deciding whether we need to make adjustments in our strategy now so that we don't end up in a place we don't wanna be.