My experience at Zoom was building all these partnerships, and I learned a lot about referral programs and how people love to introduce and refer each other. The challenge is ensuring the introducer always gets rewarded upon success, which is very tricky. That was the experience I built over there. Before Zoom, I used to be a professional networker, attending more than 1,000 networking events in London in person. People call me the "King of Networking." I used to do 15 events a week. Now, I was completely crazy—bonkers—drinking way too much red wine, talking to random strangers every day. By doing that, I built a pipeline of $7 million in business, purely through face-to-face networking, with zero cold calls and zero cold emails.

I realized that everyone who goes to these networking events is happy to introduce people to each other, but everyone wants to be rewarded on success. If you introduce two people who then close a million-dollar deal, you want the introducer to get rewarded, maybe with a percentage of the deal, for example. I realize a lot of these referral commissions are done as a "gentleman's agreement" under the table. There might be a bunch of emails back and forth, or maybe not. There's often no tracking mechanism.

There's not always a referral agreement signed; sometimes it's just based on trust. Based on my experience, I thought, 'Why not build a platform to make this super transparent and super scalable—to track every introduction and make sure the introducer always gets rewarded, so it's always a win-win situation?' That's why I built Intro Stars, based on my own experience as the 'King of Networking.'

Andy: If you had to explain Intro Stars and how it helps B2B sales leaders and founders, how would you describe it to somebody who is a layman?

Mike: It is really the ultimate lead generation platform based purely on warm referrals, which tracks every introduction you make and receive and guarantees the introducer gets paid a referral commission on success. Think of it as a two-sided platform. As a B2B sales leader or founder, you can use Intro Stars to receive introductions to your ideal customers; it's a lead generation engine based purely on warm referrals. The other side is for introducers who make those introductions and get paid a referral commission on success.

This model opens up for millions of people to become introducers. We're building the "intro economy" to open a new side hustle for millions of people, allowing them to make introductions and get rewarded upon success. It is a solution to track and reward introductions.

Andy: So, anybody going to those 15 events per week could actually get something out of it and not have the referrals and opportunities "fall through the cracks," so to speak.

Mike: Absolutely. The opportunities don't fall through the cracks, but more importantly, it also builds your personal brand and your reputation as a great introducer. That's really important in the business world. Everyone understands the value of your reputation—what people say about you when you're not in the room. That's important. No matter what your business is, you want a good reputation and a good personal brand. The best way to elevate your personal brand is by being an amazing introducer and making great introductions, because then everyone will remember you as a great person and a great helper.

So, how do you make great introductions? You go on a platform like Intro Stars to see what people are looking for and make those introductions for them. You help them, they're super happy, they reward you, and you elevate your personal brand. So, it's again, win-win-win.

Andy: I'd love to—maybe we're jumping a little ahead here—but I'd love to see a demonstration. Would you be able to pull up a quick demo and show us how the platform works?

Mike: Sure. Let me share my screen right now. Let's do it right away. Introstars—the website is very simple, https://www.google.com/url?sa=E&source=gmail&q=introstars.com, because introducers are stars. They create opportunities for everyone around them. The login process uses your LinkedIn login, so you're in in three clicks. You don't have to create a login and a password. This is because we want to use your LinkedIn reputation to guarantee the quality of everyone on the platform as true Super Connectors and introducers.

When you click on it, the first thing you'll see is a list of opportunities which describe the introductions people are looking for and what reward they're happy to pay if you make that introduction for them upon success. For example, the first person here, Maxim, is looking for senior executives in cosmetic companies. He pays up to £100,000 per introduction. By the way, here it's in pounds because I'm in London. If you're in New York, it will be in dollars, of course. £100,000 is a lot, right? James pays up to £7,000 per introduction for CEOs and CMOs of Series A businesses. Jamie pays up to 10,000 for decision-makers of furniture dealers, etc.

You can just browse—spend a few minutes browsing what people are looking for—or you can click on 'Filter' to filter by industry or job title. For example, if you used to work in marketing, logistics, or recruitment, you can select those filters and only display relevant referrals for those specific industries. Once you've found an interesting one, you can simply click on it to get more information and understand who that ideal introduction is and who is looking for introductions. You can see your mutual connections to build a bit of trust with that person. Then, you can message them, saying, 'Hey Tracy, I just saw your ad on Intro Stars. Let's go for coffee. Have a Zoom call to get to know each other.' Once you've built a bit of trust with that person, you can simply click on 'Make Introduction,' and Intro Stars will create an email template for you to send. That introduction is then tracked by the platform. It's really easy.

In two clicks, you've made an introduction, and it's all tracked by the platform to guarantee you get rewarded. Once a deal is done, you get an email saying, 'Hey, there's $5,000 waiting for you. Click here to retrieve it.' It's as simple as that. It's really simple to use, and in five to ten minutes, you could make two or three introductions that could bring you $15,000 to $20,000 of extra revenue as an introducer.

Andy: One thing you really focus on is motivation and the tracking and attribution of partnership programs. What are the reasons you see for why partnership programs fail?

Mike: With lots of the partner programs when I was at Zoom, for example, there was a big sales team selling directly to end-users, and then there was the partner program, which I was managing, with partners either reselling Zoom or bringing new customers to Zoom. The problem is there was always an internal conflict of interest between direct sales and partner-led sales. This conflict of interest creates massive issues for everyone involved because the partners are not happy that you're selling direct to their customers, literally going around their back.

The direct sales people are not happy that the partners are taking away some of their margin and commissions. And then you in the middle have to manage all of that. So, I'd say the number one lesson to learn here is to make sure that whatever partner program you have, there's no conflict of interest with your direct sales team. This means your direct sales people should be rewarded equally or more if the deal happens via a partner, so there's no conflict of interest and everyone is aligned. It shouldn't matter if the deal comes from a partner or direct—everyone gets rewarded the same. That's super important because conflicts of interest between the sales team and partners was the number one issue I've seen in every partner program. It's really important to align all of that.

The other issue is being really stingy with your partners, trying to squeeze them out to pay them the least amount possible. That's also a problem. Don't think so much about the short-term margin you're going to lose by paying a commission to your partner. Think of the long-term game. If you're extra generous with your partners and pay them above and beyond the referral commission, they'll be super motivated to bring you more leads and customers, and they'll tell everyone around them. Think of the halo effect—the long-term game—instead of the short-term cost of paying a referral commission to a partner. Again, my advice: don't be stingy on partner commissions. Be extra generous.

Pay them even if the deal is a bit of a 'gray area'—if the partner brought you the deal, but you're already working with that customer. Pay the partner anyway. Be extra generous because this will come back tenfold with ten more leads after that. That's my lesson.

Andy: I 100% agree with you there. I think it's very important to note that a lot of this new business is something you wouldn't have had before, right? A lot of people want to look at it from a margin perspective, but you should assume you never had this business in the first place. So, as far as you should be concerned, it's 100% profit. So, don't get stingy on the margins because you never would have had this business without this partner. If they're properly motivated, they'll be happy to bring you a bunch more business, as you mentioned.

Mike: Absolutely. It's all based on your reputation. As a solution vendor, you want to have a great reputation in the market. You want all the partners to talk about you, saying, 'Hey, I'm doing such good business with this vendor. I want to bring them more business.' Your reputation is so valuable. You really have to work hard to build trust and your reputation among the partner community. Work hard on that—be the best possible solution provider from a partner's perspective.

Andy: What are your thoughts on AI and automation? It comes up a lot, and obviously, everybody's using it. I think people are getting kind of tired of getting a bunch of cold emails obviously written by AI copy with the em dash and all; you can spot it from a mile away. I think that makes introductions and the stuff you're doing more powerful than ever before. I'm noticing it in the events that we're doing. We do a lot of community events, and people love coming together and actually meeting people in real life. We've had a lot of partners who maybe have gotten a bunch of emails from us or seen Nacho Nacho everywhere. It was only after having a one-minute conversation with us and actually getting to know the people behind the brand that they wanted to work with us. What kind of trends are you seeing regarding why human-based introductions are much more powerful than ever before?

Mike: In the age of AI, we all get spammed all day long with AI slop. I get ten messages a day in my inbox, on LinkedIn, and on my WhatsApp, clearly written by AI bots. It's all slop in the sense that as soon as you see the first three words, you know it's been written by AI. The more personalized it is, the more it sounds like AI wrote it, because a human being wouldn't go that far with that message, right? The problem is that more and more companies are deploying loads of AI spam bots, sending loads of AI slop to everyone to try to get a small response rate. The problem with that, which is quite obvious, is that the response rates are crashing. No one opens those messages anymore. Everyone becomes desensitized to all this AI slop because we're being bombarded all day long. We become so cynical about any message we receive that we just assume it's been written by an AI bot and dismiss and delete it right away without even reading it. So, those response rates are crashing over time.

Buyers of big companies are becoming more and more sophisticated, and they're starting to use AI spam filters to block all this AI slop being thrown at them. It's becoming a 'war of AI versus AI'—AI spam bots versus AI spam filters. This will lead to a zero-sum game at some point, where the response rates will go to zero.

So, what is the solution? What is the antidote to this madness of AI versus AI? The antidote, of course, is warm referrals from real human beings—from people you trust. If I receive a message from someone I personally know, I will open it because I know that person. If I receive a message from you, Andy, I will read it; I know it's coming from my friend Andy. If it comes from someone I've never heard of, I just assume it's AI slop and won't read it. In this world of AI spam bots, human trust and relationship becomes 10x more important. That's the secret to success. If you speak to a startup founder or a sales leader, they're spending so much of their energy on AI outbound campaigns and AI spam bots. They should spend all this energy instead on warm referral programs—building a really great, scalable referral program to incentivize warm referrals from trusted human beings—people with a big network, Super Connectors. That's where you should spend all of your time.

Andy: There's nothing better than a partnership referral, and partnerships are really one of the best marketing channels going forward. I think a lot of companies are starting to realize this: if you have access to the automation tools and AI tools that everybody else does, so does everybody else, and they're going to be rolling it out just the same. You make a really good point: a lot of people are becoming desensitized to marketing in general. It always comes back to the fact that we're selling to humans, right? We're selling to people just like us, and they're getting the same AI slop that we see in our inboxes. It works to have a little bit of empathy around that. So, re-engineer your sales strategy to focus more on partnerships. What you're saying is creating a win-win collaboration—a win-win-win collaboration even—where all the parties' mutual interests are aligned, and everybody's winning from it. Even if you're paying out a little bit more money for a successful referral, you're building a great reputation. You're rewarding people who support and help grow your business, and that scales almost infinitely the more partners you can get.

So, I guess when did you have your 'aha moment'—when you realized that everything was broken, everybody was sick of automation, and you knew what you knew about partnerships and wanted to do something about it to help people grow their business?

Mike: For me, it was back in the day when I was networking every single day. I met so many business leaders, B2B salespeople, and startup founders going to networking events day in and day out, trying to get some new business. They're all desperate for new business; everyone is desperate for new business. The problem is that they went to all these networking events—which is a good thing; you should absolutely do it—but they had the wrong approach. They went to networking events trying to find a customer, trying to sell something. Say they go to an event, shake hands, and say, 'Hey, I've got this product or service. Do you want to buy it?' That's such an epic fail on every possible level. I saw this over and over again. I realized that the secret to being a successful networker is never to sell anything, but instead to build trusted relationships so that you can make introductions to other people, and they can introduce people to you.

And vice versa, you should be a great introducer for everyone you meet. That way, you'll build your personal brand, build your personal reputation, and actually get real business from it. This was something I learned by just doing it, going to all these networking events. I met other people who had understood this, and on their business card, it said 'Networker.' That was their job title: 'Networker.' That blew my mind. 'Wow, there's a world out there of professional networkers!' That's all they do day in and day out: go to networking events not to sell—they never sell—but to meet other networkers and help each other with introductions. This whole secret 'mafia of networkers' fascinated me. I was blown away and became one of them.

I got inserted into that world by building sufficient trust that they would trust me to send me introductions, and I made introductions for them, of course. That's how I built my personal brand. By doing that, I learned the secrets of networking and the secrets of being a great introducer. Today, I want to translate that into Intro Stars as a platform for anyone and everyone to do it. Everyone can become a great introducer, put out what introductions they're looking for, and help each other.

Really, it's not just about money or earning referral commissions; it's about building your personal brand and reputation. One thing you can do is every time you make an introduction on Intro Stars, you get points. With these points, you get a badge that certifies you as a Connector, a Super Connector, or a Master Connector. You can then publish that badge on your LinkedIn profile as an official certificate. You can be officially certified as a Super Connector. That's a game-changer for your personal brand and your reputation because everyone will want to do business with you since they see you as a valuable contributor to the community.

I think that's a game-changer, really elevating your personal brand and your social proof as a Super Connector. That's very powerful.

Andy: You're an entrepreneur who saw a problem and used technology to scale a solution for it. A lot of times, I'll meet people who just want to sell a feature, but I think what you stumbled upon was a real problem that people had, and you used technology to solve that problem in a very efficient way. I think the social proof aspect of your platform is very powerful and important. A lot of people kind of miss that in terms of introductions and playing the whole networking game, right? They feel like they're 'unsung heroes' in a way.

Mike: Absolutely. You're absolutely right. Networking is a skill; it's something you have to work on, but there are techniques, right? It's really about going there with the mindset of helping others. That—excuse me—that's a game-changer for sure. It's also about partnering with these other companies.

Imagine that instead of attending a bunch of networking events, you want to host your own events to attract potential clients, partners, introducers, business partners, etc. The best way to do a great networking event is to partner with other people to host a joint event. They bring their community, you bring your community, and everyone can cross-pollinate and send referrals and introductions to each other. I would say that's also a really good way to do it: try to do as many joint events as possible with other community leaders and people selling a product or service in a similar or adjacent industry. Again, everyone can help each other. At the end of the day, 'the more the merrier,' right? Everyone can introduce people to each other from different communities.

Andy: Again, it's about having a win-win mindset instead of being stingy and trying to hoard everybody to yourself. Exactly. So, I guess what hurdles do organizations face when they're trying to move from a sales-driven motion to one that's more partnership-led growth?

Mike: We touched on it earlier: the conflict of interest between your direct sales team and your partner team. You really have to restructure your whole incentive structure internally so that your direct sales team is as motivated to sell via a partner as they are to sell direct. I think that's the key to it.

But then it's really about communicating around that. If people go to your website, there should be a dedicated page about your referral program. Make it really attractive for potential referral partners to send you business. For example, say, 'Hey, by the way, we'll pay you 10% of every deal you bring,' etc. If you go to a networking event and you meet people, share your partner program. Say, 'Hey, by the way, we pay 10% to everyone who sends us a referral.' You really want to 'shout out loud' to every potential introducer that you have a very generous and juicy referral program. Don't keep it a secret; make it widely known. You can post on social media, etc., or try to find Super Connectors out there who have a big network in your industry who can then bring you these referrals. You can do it manually by just going to lots of networking events—I would recommend that anyway. But you can also use a platform like Intro Stars, where we have thousands of introducers already.

Just post what you're looking for on there, and you instantly get access to this huge pool of Super Connectors who can help you right away. So, I think it's really about putting it out there, being generous with your referral commissions, having a great tracking mechanism to track all these introductions, ensuring the introducer gets rewarded, and then telling your internal sales team to be super excited to work with partners—not to see them as potential competition, right? Again, I've seen too many conflicts of interest in my lifetime. It doesn't work out for anybody, I guess.

Andy: How would you structure the economics for these types of partnerships? Obviously, every partnership is different and every program is different, but who should get the larger split, and vice versa?

Mike: Obviously, it depends on your margins and the industry you're in. If it's a pure service industry where you get an 80% margin, then you can be extra generous with your referral commission; you can give a 30% to 40% referral commission. If you're selling hardware, the margins are typically very low, so you only pay one or two percent referral commission, right? Obviously, you don't have that much money to play with.

It really depends on how much money you have. You have to know what your margin is to begin with so you know how generous you can be. It's like a dial you can turn: the more generous you are with your referral commissions, the more introductions you're going to get. You can really play with that dial—dial it in and out to see how many more referrals and introductions you get based on your generosity.

Also, be very clear about it upfront. Tell your referral partners, introducers, or Super Connectors upfront what your average deal size is and what the percentage of that will be so they know what to expect. If you only tell them, 'Hey, the referral commission is 10%,' but they have no idea what your average deal size is, that 10% could be nothing—$5—or it could be $20,000. How would you know? You have to communicate upfront what your average deal size is. For example, if your average deal size is $50,000, then that 10% is, of course, $5,000, and it's very clear what they can expect as a referral commission. That will motivate them to go the extra mile to bring you those referral leads and introductions. To summarize all of that, make sure your incentive structure is very clear. Communicate about it.

Talk to everyone you meet about your referral program. Make sure to spread the word widely on social media, on your website, or use a platform like Intro Stars to instantly reach a big audience of Super Connectors. Don't be afraid to share it. If you're paying out money for the program, it means it's working; that's a good thing.

Andy: So, how do you find and activate your most likely partners from the beginning? You probably have them in your network already. You might meet them at an event, especially if you have your Intro Stars profile loaded up and ready to go. Where would you recommend the average B2B SAS company go to start building their first partnerships?

Mike: You know what? I go to so many networking events, and every time I go, I always ask people I meet, 'Is there a good introduction I could make for you?' That's a question I always ask everyone. But then I also always ask them a follow-up question: 'Who is the best Super Connector you know?' Very often, you get really good answers, as everyone knows at least one person in their network who is a Super Connector—someone with a big network who knows everyone and loves to make introductions.

So, make sure to get introduced to those Super Connectors, as they're the ones who can open all the doors for you. That's my advice: Go to lots of networking events, ask people who their Super Connectors are, get introduced to them, go for coffee, and then talk about your referral program with them so you can get them on board as an introducer for your product or service. I'm also trying to organize a bunch of events specifically for Super Connectors. We've already done 12 events in London and three in New York, and we're going to do a bunch more. Then we have a podcast called 'The Super Connectors,' where I interview loads of them.

Watch episodes of the podcast, see which ones are relevant to your industry, and then reach out to them. By definition, Super Connectors are always happy to help, and they love it when you reach out, so go for it.

Andy: Don't be shy; definitely get out there and start doing some events. Maybe even host your own events, as you mentioned earlier. That's a great way to attract people instead of just going to everybody else's event. If you feel like you don't know how to do events, partner with somebody who does, or partner with somebody who can bring a crowd. That way, you can bring some of your people, and they can bring theirs, to fill a room. That's another form of partnership, too. They can cross-pollinate the crowds together.

Mike: Absolutely, that's a great way to do it. Do your own events with someone else, and that brings people to talk about you, right? That's obviously the best thing you can do. The other way to do it, of course, is to build your personal brand on social media—on LinkedIn, TikTok, or Instagram. Build your personal brand as someone who helps others and gives great advice, because that will attract people to come towards you as well. Building your personal brand is part of this whole equation. It's not just about relying on Super Connectors; they will want to make sure they can trust you, so your own personal brand matters equally as much. Make sure you build your personal brand on socials: post great content and thought leadership, give great advice to people, and try to become an expert in whatever you're doing. That will go a long way as well. I would say it's more of a 50/50 split. One part is building your personal brand, which is also helped by making introductions for others. The other side is having a great referral program where you attract Super Connectors and introducers to send you introductions.

Andy: So, what trends do you see coming in the partnership-led growth area over the next few years? Do you see any innovations happening, or maybe some trends people should be looking out for?

Mike: Yes, there are more and more AI platforms focusing on cold outreach. Again, we already talked about that. I think we need to run the other direction and focus on warm introductions. There are now a few AI introduction platforms where AI bots are making introductions for you. That's another trend, of course, which is an obvious one; we saw that coming. I think they're a gimmick. I think they're fun. I use them for laughs and giggles, but are they actually useful? Not really. I think most introductions you get from AI introducers or AI matchmakers are still gimmicky because the only people who sign up for those services are not the high-value people you actually want to meet. The Super Connectors themselves would not use them because they already have their network.

Right now, all these AI introduction platforms are a trend, and it's a bit of a gimmick. I still believe that the best introductions are made by humans who have built relationships over years and years and actually know these people, instead of some AI bots. However, I still think it's a trend. We're going to see more and more of these AI matchmakers and AI introducers. I keep an eye on it—it's a gimmick; I have laughs and giggles. Is it useful in my personal day-to-day business life? Probably not. I still prefer to meet people face to face. I think the more people who are on their phones all day using AI bots, etc., the more they crave in-person experiences. I think we're seeing a trend of people going to more and more in-person networking events because they crave that human relationship. If you just go to a platform like Luma or Eventbrite, you see hundreds of events per week.

There are so many in-person events in New York City and London because people are craving human relationships in person. I think that's the biggest trend: going back to in-person.

Andy: Totally. At the end of the day, we're in the people business, and I think a lot of times in technology, we forget that. We get excited about our new features or AI tools, which is the latest trend right now. But it should never take you away from the fact that we're in the people business. B2B is dealing with other people, ultimately helping them get what they want. If we align our platform and services around that—or the way we introduce people and build our partnership programs—we and they will have better success. Together, 'a rising tide will raise all boats,' so to speak.

Mike: 100%. I think we can all help each other. Everyone who works in business, sales, and partnerships is all about helping each other with great introductions and great relationships. So, it's all relationship building. In the age of AI, where you see AI replacing every job on the horizon, the only job that can't really be replaced properly is relationship building—human trust, human relationship, and human introductions. I think that's never going to be replaced by AI. Not easily, because again, we crave human trust and human relationships. In the age of AI, we don't trust anything anymore apart from people you've met face to face. That's where the trust is. That's where it's at.

Andy: So, get out there and meet people and build your relationships. Use Intro Stars as a technical solution that enables partnership growth, but at the end of the day, build real relationships and incentivize a win-win structure for everybody. Where can everybody learn more about Intro Stars and pick up your services today?

Mike: We're on the Nacho Nacho platform. On NachoNacho.com, just look for Intro Stars; it's on there. We have a special deal for all Nacho Nacho users where they can use it completely free. You definitely want to use it via Nacho Nacho; it's a great incentive to use Nacho Nacho. I absolutely love it. You can obviously check our homepage on https://www.google.com/url?sa=E&source=gmail&q=introstars.com, where you see all the information. Then, follow me on LinkedIn. I'm Mike Adams on LinkedIn; my LinkedIn handle is supermike. You can follow my adventures. I love to share nuggets of knowledge on networking, introductions, connecting people, and referral programs. I'm always happy to help other people. If you're looking for great introductions, reach out to me; I'm always happy to help.

Andy: You practice what you preach, Mike. I'm very excited to partner with you guys finally; it's been a long time coming. Obviously, you're a great partner for us. The first thing that this guy did when I met him was make a couple of introductions for me. He definitely practices what he preaches. If you're looking to build your partnership programs, definitely check out the Intro Stars platform. They've thought through everything. Mike spent his entire life being a Super Connector. He's finally put that all on one platform that will enable you to be a Super Connector as well. You can pick it up today in the Nacho Nacho B2B SAS and AI marketplace. Mike, I really appreciate you coming on today and look forward to seeing you in New York City when you come here.

Mike: Thank you so much, Andy. Looking forward to seeing you as well. Have a good one. Thanks so much.