Stop Going It Alone: The Secret to Scaling Your Business with Chad Jenkins

In this conversation with Vision Alchemist and entrepreneur Chad Jenkins, we dive deep into why most entrepreneurs hit a growth ceiling and how to break through it using collaboration as a scaling strategy. This is a game-changing perspective for any founder tired of doing it all alone.

📌What’s covered:

• The “VCR” framework for turning untapped resources into exponential growth.
• How to spot the hidden market frictions no one’s talking about — and turn them into profit.
• The mindset shift that replaces exhausting solo hustle with leveraged collaboration.

Chad Jenkins help entrepreneurs achieve 10X growth by turning vision, capability, and reach into unstoppable momentum. 

As Founder of SEEDSPARK CoLAB, Chad works with growth-minded founders to identify their Collaboration Currency™ — the Vision, Capability, and Reach that makes them unique — and connect them to partners who help transform bold ideas into exponential results.

🌐Learn  more about Chad at http://seedspark.com/ 

🤝Connect with Chad at https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadtjenkins/ 

📚Resources mentioned in this episode: 

Friction Fuel: The Secret to Listening Strategically and Leveraging Complaints to Keep Your Business Running on Premium by Chad Jenkins 

✨The 1:1 Founder Clarity Intensive. The Marketing Coaching Hour is designed for busy small business owners and entrepreneurs. Click here. ✨

 

💛 Thank you for listening in! 😀

P.S. Don’t forget to leave a review! Much appreciated.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Ultimately, you begin to understand that all the success is a result of a simple formula. Someone had vision, they added someone or someone's capabilities, and then they multiplied it with someone else's reach Steve Jobs said this a long time ago, that all creativity is from combining two existing things, collaboration.

So in my world, I do nothing but collaborations. Which is helping entrepreneurs around the world understand their collaboration currency and how they can utilize it to combine it with someone else's collaboration currency. And when it creates an outcome, everybody gets to split the outcome.

Priscilla: Welcome to The Entrepreneur's Kitchen. Today I've got a very special guest for you. I've [00:01:00] got Chad Jenkins. Chad is a Vision Alchemist, two times bestselling author, founder of CoLab, global Entrepreneur Collaboration, and the founder and CEO of Seed Spark. I'm so excited to have you here. Chad. Thank you for joining me, you've done a lot of things.

, How did you know the entrepreneurial bug had hit?

Chad Jenkins: First and foremost, thank you very much for having me. I've actually posed this question and researched the answer to this question with entrepreneurs all over the world and my answer, which seems to be pretty consistent , we understand around the age of seven to nine, how we're uniquely designed to create value in the world? Sadly, the normal education system begins to train us in about the third grade to have convergent thinking versus divergent thinking. And you'll notice a lot of entrepreneurs have an abundance of divergent thinking.

So for the ones that are, I would say almost stamped DNA to be an entrepreneur. [00:02:00] It seems that it happened somewhere between seven and nine. For me. It was actually exactly eight years old. I remember the day that it happened to me and where I was that I began to look at the world completely different than what I understand now is the convention.

To me, everything is just a resource and I'm running a constant question. I began to ask at that time, how can I take what I see and combine it with what I know and create value for someone else?

, I call it your constant question since I was eight years old.

Priscilla: some of those things we don't think about. Sometimes we get trained out of our way,

, But somehow you never quite are satisfied you find yourself somehow longing for something else and you should be grateful for where you are.

But you know, This is not it. 

Chad Jenkins: Yes.

Priscilla: . Yeah, that's really interesting., I know that you started in a very interesting way. You were into equestrian and landscaping. I'm wondering, did you have a farming background?

Chad Jenkins: we'll just take that same timeframe around eight. I grew up on a farm way out in South Carolina [00:03:00] in the United States, and it was way in the country. So I spent a lot of time putting up fencing and mowing very large pastures. We had horses and cows, so we'll call it a farm.

It was more like a ranch, but it had farm qualities And very early on, it's interesting that you say , you get trained out or you always have, , in my world the word would be friction, that you know that there's something more. And I did know that there was something more I felt as if I should have been born in the middle of Manhattan.

'cause there I perceive things move very fast and where I grew up. They don't move very fast. They move very slow. Oftentimes, I'll joke that time moves backwards in those little small towns. And so I remembered thinking, how in the heck am I ever gonna get outta here? I gotta figure out how to make this stuff.

They call money again. I was eight years old, right? You don't know very much, but you're fully conscious. So you come out of Theta State at seven years old, so you're beginning to ask some pretty interesting questions. And I begin to do that. So looking [00:04:00] at things just as what they authentically are, not really what someone labels them, but if I can understand what it could be used for and then I can combine it with something else that has an intent to use it this way, but you could really use it this way and combine them.

It is endless value creation.

That journey started around that time. I'll give you an example. I went from thinking, I have nothing to saying, oh wait, I've been riding horses since before I was eight years old. I go to horse sales with my father two or three times a week., And I noticed if a kid is riding a horse through a horse cell, all the adults that are in the stands thinking about bidding on this horse think they can ride it too.

If a kid can ride it, can't you? Not a hundred percent true. To be really honest with you, you need, you need to know what you're doing. And so at the time people would pay me 10 or $20. To ride their horse through the sale barn. And again, I was doing it three times a week so I could go from sale barn to sale barn and ride five to 10 horses.

I'm making a [00:05:00] hundred to 200 bucks a night, 600 a week. It didn't take long to make enough money that I could buy my first piece of real estate.

Priscilla: Wow.

Chad Jenkins: Yeah.

Priscilla: That's interesting. Sometimes people think, oh, I have nothing but , you realize even at that age no. I know something that a lot of people dunno. And understanding that thing that would be of value to somebody else wow. That's amazing.

You describe yourself as a vision alchemist. What does that mean?

Chad Jenkins: . So Vision Alchemist to me , I've mentioned a couple of the key components earlier. It's a person that looks at things as they truly and authentically are But from a place where you can combine 'em with other things to create new and unique value. So in my world, I do nothing but collaborations, which is helping entrepreneurs around the world understand their collaboration currency and how they can utilize it to combine it with someone else's collaboration currency.

And when it creates an outcome, everybody gets to split the outcome. So as you can see, there's similarities all the way back from when I was eight, I go to [00:06:00] horse cells. I have this capability that I can ride horses. The horse cells are my reach, and all I needed was the vision. How do you connect them? So a Vision Alchemist would be someone who's definitely a upper level visionary.

The word visionary of course, is utilized in a big way and it's widely different to somebody who has a plethora of ideas. To someone who sees true vision. So I quantify vision in four different categories and we'll make it to something that we all probably experienced still. I may be a little older, and I remember there used to be black and white TVs.

So to me that's like having an idea. You have an idea of how something could be better, no clue how to make it real or make it recur. But then some of your ideas, you can even tell me what it looks like and feels like. and those, I would say that you have vision around those ideas that are at a color level. Furthermore, some visionaries have [00:07:00] ideas and they have enough vision around this particular idea, this vision that they have, that they know what it looks like and smells like they could really tell you, and you can almost see it. They also know where they are in the journey to making this become real.

They have the ability to say, I could do this, or I could do that, or I could do this to potentially create this outcome. That's an HD visionary. And then lastly, 3D. So a vision outcome has the ability to take existing whatever is there, see how to recombine it, how much it's gonna take of each part to create this vision, who also is required to make this become real. And then once it's real, how do you make it recur? That's an upper echelon level of vision.

And so oftentimes folks are really, folks being entrepreneurs in general are trying to make a better mouse trap, a vision. Alchemist sees sees everything in the ability of what it could be [00:08:00] utilized to create something that no one's ever seen before and how you get there. So it's just a little higher level.

I spend my days doing is totally fun for me because any entrepreneur that's referred to me, the first thing they're gonna tell you is what title they have, or they're gonna identify themselves by what company they currently run. When I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Once we began to really ask some good questions, they have so many more resources that they're not putting to work both in their vision, their capabilities, and also their reach.

We talked about vision a good bit. Capabilities are awesome 'cause you may have a capability or you may have an ability or you may also have additional capacity in something that you're able to do. Let's say you're manufacturing, you have machines, but the machines only run one shift, so you have all this additional capacity that you could put to work 'cause they're costing you basically the same. So that's a little definition or some insight into [00:09:00] capabilities. By the same token, from a capability standpoint, you may own a piano that is a capability. It is capable of making very nice music. But if you're like me, you might have the ability, which is wildly different than the capability I could only at best, plink out twinkle little star. You can see how the different varies. I have a piano. You don't want me playing a piano. That's a horrible idea. It's a great cosmetic enhancement to an environment, but you don't want me playing it. And then some people have an immense ability, but they have limited capability. So when you begin to look at the world in that particular way, ooh, the world is limitless.

The last piece is reach. So when I talk about reach, it's about your trust, relationships. We all have 'em. Every human you have certain amount of people, associations, groups. Maybe you serve on a board, maybe you have 10,000 clients. That's all the reach asset of yours [00:10:00] that you're probably not putting to work at the highest level of efficiency that it could, which is at the foundation of an entrepreneur's definition.

I think it was in 1676. John Baptist say, define an entrepreneur. It's someone who takes existing resources that produce at a certain level and increases their performance that's an entrepreneur. It's very simple. I use the acronym VCR. Of course at my age, I remember there used to be VCRs.

You'd plug this thing in and it played movies. It was awesome when I was definitely a kid. That's not what I'm talking about. But now of course it anchors for all the people who had a VCR when they were a kid. Ultimately, you begin to understand that all this success is a result of a simple formula.

Someone had vision, they added someone or someone's capabilities. And then they multiplied it with someone else's reach.

where it comes from. If you track [00:11:00] backward, and I can give you countless examples, and it's the awareness that even right now, like this camera that's making it where you and I can see each other, the internet that is connecting me in the US to you or this computer that's obviously helping us or everything else that anyone listening to this sees at the moment.

Everything started as an idea in someone's imagination, and that particular person did not make it real, and they did not make it recur. It was always leveraging the art of collaboration to make that idea become something real that's very empowering to a eight-year-old kid who thought that he had nothing, right?

I was at a farm. I hear about this nice and wonderful things that if you have money you can have, I gotta go get some money. How do I get money? Oh, you gotta create value. I have no way to create value. I'm a kid. Completely false. When you began to look at the world as the entire world is my resource, and Steve Jobs said this a long time ago, that all creativity is from [00:12:00] combining two existing things, collaboration. In all the businesses that I've started and any amount of value I've ever created, it was all a result of combining two things that already existed. It could have been awareness of something that is a friction in an industry and two or three other people that had the capabilities. What they didn't have is the vision.

They had the capability. They could have solved the problem. They didn't have the vision. What did I do to help create this outcome or create this value? Combined the issue with people who had capabilities, and now if we made it a business, how do you make it recur? We got somebody else that has the credit card number on file for every person we ever want to buy this service. We can spend the time to go get them to like us. First they have to know us. That's expensive. Then once they know us, we can get 'em to like us and then hopefully, eventually they trust us and they buy it. Or maybe I can just collaborate with Ms. Priscilla, 'cause she's got everyone's credit card number on file for the [00:13:00] people who would buy this service.

And then we can go from zero to 10 million in a matter of months. It's a way different and unconventional way to think about growth in leveraging the art of collaboration that way.

Priscilla: I knew that this is a conversation that needed to happen when I was reading about you about strategic partnerships and exponential thinking, a lot of times as entrepreneurs we struggle a lot. We fail a lot. Because we try to do one everything on our own.

Chad Jenkins: that's right. Yeah. Clear example right here. 

Priscilla: We think to ourselves, oh, I can't collaborate or what do I have? Or, I haven't yet proven anything, and so how do I approach people? So let me build value in myself, which as you said, that's not how value creation based on what you've said is made in your thinking. Isolated value creation when you could collaborate.

Why do we think that way? Why do [00:14:00] we continually have this approach to entrepreneurship as a common way

Chad Jenkins: I best I can tell 'cause it's a question I've asked over and over. Not for a long time. 'cause I thought everyone saw the world the same way that I did, even though I definitely was a little bit of an outsider growing up. The best of research that I've been able to do is all pointed back to around the third grade. They start wanting us to think Convergently. In essence, Ms. Priscilla needs to make the same grade on the math test a hundred that I do. They don't really focus on, although our parents tell us that we're made unique and we can do anything that we want to do.

They just left out the part that told me how. But if you get to the third grade and they start giving us testing and we're tested against each other, what if they would consider you're excellent at math. I had the science thing knocked out and our friend crossed the way. English crushes it. If they would put us together [00:15:00] in our favorite word, collaboration, my math's gonna get better.

'cause you're gonna show me and you talk to me on my level, by the way, right? We're all the same age. It's not a teacher learned it a particular way. It's been teaching for 25 years and a lot of kids get it. But now Priscilla is someone that I trust, I'm in collaboration with, is showing me how she does math.

And of course, what am I doing? I'm showing how I do the science thing. Joey, he's training us on English, and now we're in collaboration. So everybody benefits, everybody goes higher level of acumen than they had, but I'm able to contribute and I feel very confident by the way I'm able to contribute my science skills to this collaboration.

And every day that I show up, I only need to show up as myself. I don't need to strive to make this a better grade on math 'cause I flunked the last one. Oh, and by the way, I can't talk to you. You've got it figured out, but I need to figure it out myself. Now, I love the strive in that, [00:16:00] and that would be something that someone would say.

It's oh no, you need to struggle. I'm happy to struggle with using what I've been given to heighten the ability of creating outcomes that I can. I want to learn from you in this hypothetical example, math is your deal. I just wanna show up and give you everything I know about science and of course, because you would welcome my help, I would assume. We create an incredible relationship. It probably lasts us a very long time versus of course, the way that we all went through grade school. So I feel like best I can tell, it starts around the third grade and we're trained competitive growth strategies. Not so much with intentionality by the teachers that are teaching it, but much, much more fundamental than that.

It's more man leveraging the ability to manage man. I feel like personally for anyone who's listening, have you ever had an idea of how something could be better? And of course, I know the answer, it's yes. So to me, if the, definition for an entrepreneur [00:17:00] is to take resources at a certain level and increase their performance, and that's the definition of entrepreneur.

We're all entrepreneurs. 

we're all entrepreneurs. So it actually has to get trained out of us. We don't need to evolve to it. We just need to return to it.

Priscilla: That growing to be competitive and feeling like you must achieve things on your own. And that comparison and competition and, all those things that subtley are suggested to you and you take them on as true. It makes a lot of sense.

Chad Jenkins: measure up too, not contribute what I've been given. And I'm sure some listeners are very personality profile centric. I happen to be as well with Strength Finders, which I assume in Australia do you use Strength Finders? They're a good bit as well. Like Clifton Strengths, I think is what it's originally called.

So on Strength Finders competition. My second one outta 34 strengths ranked in order achiever, competition, futuristic focus, analytical and strategic are the top six. So [00:18:00] competition though, if you really research it it's not with you, it's competition. With myself, I have to be better tomorrow than I was yesterday. So there's a way to leverage competition in that respect, the way that it truly is, the meaning, not me against you, which seems to be more of the what we're trained along the way.

Priscilla: , so much you said already, I mean, you've talked about, the levels of vision. Which I think is important. I wonder how do you develop those levels of vision? Because a lot of times we're stuck at, black and white we're people with many ideas, and we never think , there's a next level to that.

We, we are stuck in that phase of being the lots of ideas person.

Chad Jenkins: 2 immediate thoughts. And I'll give you a little background of this, just the way I see the world currently, and I think where we are and where we're headed, and then I'll compliment the answer to the question. I believe we have moved into what I classify as the idea economy. The task economy is quickly dying for years and years. We perceive value as being created when the task has been completed. We pay people for [00:19:00] that. They continue to use their back to create the outcome or to create that task completion in the next three to five years. I noticed just the other day I was reading and I think it's either Japan or China has just released a $5,900.

Actually it's 5,900 Euro robot was pretty approachable, so before too long when robots cut my grass, clean my pool, cook my dinner. What's gonna be left for those trades that are doing that today is your imagination. And the question was, can you, I believe, evolve to a level where you can have that level of vision?

I think it's a wonderful return as well. 'cause whenever you move into the idea economy, when value's not created from completing a task as it has been for years and years on every continent. What's gonna be left? Your ideas. We are moving into the idea economy wonderfully. We all came factory installed with , what we need to strive in the new idea economy.

[00:20:00] But how do you access it? You have to be quiet sometimes you have to close your eyes and you have to access your imagination. Taking us back as well to that same formidable age, seven to nine, when maybe you were dealing with Barbie dolls and they were coming to life and having a conversation. Maybe they were drinking tea.

There might even been an imaginary person across from you that you could have told me exactly what she was wearing at the little small tea table. Or for me, those army men, they did charge down that hill. There were some of them driving those tanks. And if you were to ask a kid at that level before, they've been again trained to have convergent thinking, they could paint a picture for you that you and I could see it conceptually, of course, but it would have all the vivid detail.

Where's that coming from? Imagination. So making sure that we have time to think some space out of our normal day. I have a very crazy routine. I go to bed pretty early, typically 8 58, [00:21:00] and. I wake up around three to three 15. Naturally, at that time, , I'm very quiet. I do not open my eyes.

That took a while. 'cause normally when you become conscious, the first thing you do is open your eyes. I do not. The very first thing I do is be thankful and I just say thank you until I run outta things. To say thank you for nobody wants me is three o'clock in the morning. After that, I meditate, so it's very quiet.

It's very dark. There's nothing but me and my thoughts. That's whenever I began to, I would argue, receive things from my imagination. One would argue even the divine is part of your imagination. That's where it comes from. But I began to receive ideas that I would never receive during the course of a day. ' cause even though I don't do manual stuff, I'm still involved in some level of task. I'm having meetings to leverage, thinking to create outcomes. So I don't have a whole lot of time to just be in my head, which is where all the ideas come from. I'd like to [00:22:00] ask a question of anybody in the audience. Can you create me an idea right now? Answer's no. You receive ideas. Where do they come from? Your imagination. So helping someone understand and being powered that they have what they need to succeed. It was factory installed, that each and every person has vision, they have capabilities, and they also have reach. And that they would consider showing up as what is classified as a Go-Giver, how can I give what I've been given and contribute to Priscilla around some vision or objective that she has?

And if there's any outcome. The only question I have for Priscilla is how are we gonna split that outcome? Now for those of us who are entrepreneurs who feel like they are absolutely visionaries 'cause they are at some level and they have these ideas, whether they be black and white color, HD or 3D, the opportunity to share that vision with someone else and then split the outcome, I would argue, is what our real responsibility [00:23:00] is here on earth. We've all been given these unique capabilities, and if we would show up and try to give them to someone, what if 8.2 billion people woke up tomorrow morning thinking that same way? Would I have really a lot of concern about what I have that I'm giving to Priscilla when there's eight other billion people on the planet that are trying to give what they've been given to me to help me with my objectives?

Where would we be now?

Priscilla: That's so good. Thank you for breaking that down. 'cause I figured people would be thinking about that, like, how do I grow vision and I like that you said be still so

Chad Jenkins: You gotta be

Priscilla: receive. You gotta be still and you gotta create that space so that you can receive those ideas and so true.

Now tell us about Seed Spark. I know it's a global entrepreneur growth collaboration. What is that

Chad Jenkins: Yes, ma'am. Yes. So you asked about the journey earlier. So I've created over 50 organizations along the way. Some small companies that grew big, some bought big companies [00:24:00] and made them bigger. And it was the only way that I knew. It was very much the convention that if I had an idea and it would create value, I would go turn it into a company.

I got pretty decent at doing that over the last few years. I'd say last three years, I began to ask questions, and I think this is very common in that early to mid forties, no matter what level of success you reach, you begin to ask questions. That sounds something similar to, is this it? We had to look around.

Like you, you've got material things which actually mean nothing. You've got relationships , which mean everything. And you've got your agency. So the awareness that you have vision, you have capabilities and you have reach but you begin to ask, is this all that there is? And as well, one of the books that I had written is Friction Fuel. I'm naturally drawn to be aware of friction that most people are not complaining about. In that book, I talk about three types of friction that you can use to create competitive [00:25:00] advantages and value like no one else in your industry. I'm fortunate, have a lot of experience doing it because I've never had any time.

When you start as early as I did, you don't have time to work in an industry for 10 years, figure out a better mousetrap, and then go strike it out on your own. I started out on my own. But when I began to ask those questions and I was faced with another friction, no matter how many companies I owned, when I would go away and have some really good time to think, to receive those ideas that we just talked about, when I returned back, and normally I would go away for a quarter, I would be gone two days with travel.

I was going a total of three. And when I returned, I would meet with my leadership teams in different companies. And they would say it's a great idea. Where would you like for us to work it in? Our plate is already full, so I was very fortunate. I joined Strategic Coach and I'm not sure if you've heard that. I've got a couple friends that are in Australia as well that joined Strategic Coach.

They come over once a quarter, so [00:26:00] I joined Strategic Coach per request and whenever I was there I recognized something. I was surrounded by entrepreneurs who had scaled capabilities. , A lot that we've spoken about today is vision, capability, and reach. So I recognize those ideas or visions that I would return back to all of my companies and they were already busy.

They love my ideas, but it would take three to six months to begin to start working on them. Very frustrating for me. 'cause why I'm gonna have a lot more ideas than three to six months. That's what I do. And so I took that friction and I remember writing down. Can I create an organization that identifies structures and optimizes collaborations for entrepreneurs all over the world and do it as a collaboration and could it go global?

Turns out the answer is yes. That's been about a year and a half, two years ago, and under Seed Spark, which is an organization that I started back in 2005, a few years before the iPhone came out, [00:27:00] and Seed Spark has always stood for Seed Vision. Spark growth. So it seemed very logical to place my next endeavor, which is the CoLab, rightfully named.

Nothing happens as an individual. It's all a collaboration. We talked about that earlier. Visions are nothing without collaboration, with somebody's capability and ultimately someone's reach. So I've spun up the CoLab seed, spark CoLab to do just exactly that. To help entrepreneurs really embrace and leverage the art of collaboration by understanding and being able to look at the world from a vision capability and reach set of glasses. Because whenever you begin to do that, no matter if you're, you may be very fortunate to have a trust fund, you may perceive yourself as being less fortunate and you have no money. But one thing you do have is your imagination. You've got your own individual vision, [00:28:00]you have your capabilities, and I expect that you're a nice person and there are a multitude of people that trust you.

They can't be taken away. You can combine those with other people's vision capability and reach and start creating value where you are. that's what I did. I've committed to no more companies at all. I will only combine my vision. To grow other entrepreneurs organizations around the world, sharing with them some of the things that we talked about today and helping them leverage the art collaboration to reach well beyond their current dreams and imagination.

And that's where the Seed SPark CoLab came from.

Priscilla: Ah, that's amazing. Gosh, , we're actually outta time. I don't know if you have a little bit more time.

Chad Jenkins: Sure. I'm all yours. Yes,

Priscilla: Okay. Sorry I didn't mean to do this.

Chad Jenkins: it's okay.

Priscilla: I know that you've got a seed spark growth flywheel with three frameworks. I was really intrigued by them and I said, I got to get you to talk about this in our little short time, but removing the film just an overview.

Just add [00:29:00] zero and a hundred x collaborations.

Chad Jenkins: Absolutely. So we'll take that, remove the film first 'cause it's very reachable. Remove the film. I assume everyone who's listening has received a new phone, maybe a new car. You may have even bought a new tv, and that TV looks pretty nice when you turn it on after you get it home, but when you recognize there's a little film over top of it, and when you pull it off like that new phone, you're like, whoa, the screen got a lot better.

That's the way I see the entire world. There are these little things that I classify as frictions. And in the book , that I mentioned earlier, I classify friction in three categories. The first type of friction everyone has, and they're gonna be very aware of it, it's called regular friction. Just as if you were to drive up to a gas station or a petrol station, you have three different types of gas or petrol.

The first type is regular, at least here in the states, the middle type is plus and the best type [00:30:00] premium. Frictions are the same way. A regular friction you have to react to today, you're outta money. Your salesperson just left. They just put in the resignation. Top sales guy. By the way, of course it's the top sales guy.

You didn't get the loan, so sorry. Those types of friction. Or you're on standing on the train track and the train is coming, you will move or you get ran over. That is a regular friction. All of those, the next friction. Is plus friction. Plus friction is typically delivered to you by your best clients. And sometimes you would call them complaints, but as it turns out, if you look backwards when you received a complaint and you changed your product or service, that client who made that polite suggestion to you, AKA, the complaint, they continue to pay you money.

It's actually a pretty good math problem. If you think about it. They're doing your R&D you're listening, you change product, they spend more money. Many companies don't look at it that way. If you embrace that type of friction and you actually go [00:31:00] search for it. I have methodologies around how to leverage article collaboration with your top 10 clients. You can far exceed your competition and you will be an industry leader, but that's not the sexy one. Remember, there's premium, the very expensive stuff at the gas station. That type of friction is no one's having a behavioral reaction to. But if you show up with a solution, everybody will buy it from you. In my world, that's a premium friction. I've started many businesses just by looking at industries and recognizing friction that exists that nobody's paying attention to, nor is anyone complaining about it. But the remove the film methodology, the letters of film actually spell out something. Film for me is friction identification, leverage the market.

So the first thing is I become aware of a friction and I begin to think about the solution. The leveraging. The market has two components. First one, what is the depth of market to this solution? If I create it, who's gonna buy it? [00:32:00] How many people are gonna buy it? Then next, of course, being totally founded on the art of collaboration.

The very next question I ask, who can help me create this solution? Remember, all I have to do is come up with the idea and then I have to collaborate. Or I could do the old way. I could go create companies, but boy, that took a lot of cash, a lot of time, and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.

Or I could leverage the collaboration.

So the first one is remove the film to become attentively aware to the frictions that exist in your industry or adjacent industries. Or just a business that you go into once a week. Maybe you're picking up your dry cleaning, maybe you're buying fuel, maybe you're going to the grocery store. I would dare say each and every one of us on a daily basis recognize friction.

Some of us voice it and they make it as a complaint. Some of us internalize it, ask some questions. If I solve this, how big of a market is there? And if I come up with a solution who can help me [00:33:00] make that solution real and ultimately recur? So that's, remove the film. The next one you mentioned just outta zero, I would assume many entrepreneurs are listening and they all have P&L Statements So , if you pulled out last month or last year's P & L statement, and we talked about growth, the first thing I'm gonna do is add a zero to every line item. If you do that in a leadership meeting and you just put it up on the board and add a zero to it. How long do you think it's gonna take before your leadership team tells you why line number one or line number three, or line number five, or line number 22?

That would never be right. In essence, we're not gonna spend that much money on uniforms. If our revenue grows by 10. Oh, by the way, we're never gonna sell 10 times more this month than we did last month with this sales team. They'll tell you all the reasons why that couldn't be true, and I have the power of one word and a polite suggestion. With a quiet demeanor, take down all those reasons and write 'em down on a [00:34:00] whiteboard if you have of bullet points. While this could never be true, and then you would implement one word which is unless, and write, unless after each one of those bullet points on the whiteboard and now as the entrepreneur, the one that they look to, to have the answer to everything.

This is the time in which you have to be super quiet. It can take up to a minute and a half. It is very painful for an entrepreneur and someone around that table will validate why you're investing that type of money into this type of talent.Someone's gonna look at that and say if X, Y, Z happened, line, number three, it'd absolutely be that.

Matter of fact, it could probably be more. And then that will start. An avalanche of ideas that come from your leadership team around how you don't grow by 20%, or in your industry, you're not considered fast growing at 30 or 35. You're doubling, let's say that you don't 10 times your revenue in that year, you're gonna benefit so much greater by asking bigger [00:35:00] questions. This all starts exactly going back to eight years old thought I had nothing. Began to look at the world a little differently. I recognize that everything that I could see all started as an idea in somebody's imagination. Why not mine? So for you as an entrepreneur with your leadership team, with your P&L, this is a strategy that you can apply starting tomorrow morning.

Good things will come from it. And I'll leave you with one other caveat under the Just Add A Zero framework, which is actually the first book. I published maybe a couple years ago, and it lays out a lot of this, but you can also add the zero to the front. If you're doing 10 million and you want to do a hundred million, your team will gladly tell you how fast you're gonna get there.

Your CFO would tell you at this run rate, we're gonna be there in 10 years. Great. I wanna know why we can't be there in one year and then be very quiet and see what your team can do. Yes. Granted, [00:36:00] there's gonna be some things that you don't have the capabilities for. A hundred percent true. Happens every day.

Happens every minute. Pretty much in my world. That's whenever you enter the last one, the a hundred x collaborations. You might remember earlier in our conversation, we talked about when I have a good product or service, I can go and identify what is it so commonly referenced as my ICP ideal client profile. And then I can go spend a lot of money on marketing. I can spend some time, I can tweak that marketing. The first two companies had a bunch of glam metrics, but nobody ever made my phone ring or I can leverage the article Collaboration someone already has. It's 2025. Someone's likely got their credit card number or an open PO already on file.

So they already are known. They're already liked, and they're already trusted. It's just they don't trust my organization yet. If I'm really lockstep with my vision, I can leverage that a hundred [00:37:00] x collaboration framework and go identify those that already have the credit card number on file and just figure out how I'm gonna split the outcome.

For any of the people that know them, like them, trust them, began to buy my product or service. Why would I take that approach? So those are the three wrapped up in one. If you want to grow like no one else in your industry and as well as you begin to think this way, you're not that excellent at cocktail parties because you don't talk like everyone else.

But good gracious, can you create a pretty exponential outcome?

Priscilla: Thank you for that. So many thoughts are racing through my mind. , I knew that people are gonna really benefit from listening to that. You talked about, remove the film. I thought about even premium. Categories of people that have been ignored by the marketplace, people of color, things that we've just accepted.

We've adjusted our lives to not have it, but that's a premium, I think

Chad Jenkins: Yes. We took it as this is the way things are, and that's not true. It all starts as an idea in somebody's imagination. Why not yours? Today , I have a corny thing that drives me and a long time [00:38:00] ago, and I put it out thinking that first book, there was a squire for Teddy Roosevelt that said, do what you can with what you have, where you are. The only thing I added was a d. And this is the part where typically people laugh and they know exactly how corny I'm d is. Do it now. Do what you can with what you have, where you are, do it now. And so if you take the operational words there, the activation words is, can have r and. Of course it spells Chad.

So it became the Chad Method a long time ago when IF like I recognized this and for some weird reason, one of those ideas that popped in my head was, if I put a D on this, I'll remember it forever.

and I also know now why I remember it forever 'cause it's so damn corny. But the Chad method has driven me a lot because I always felt like I didn't have stuff.

And until I started seeing the world this way, it really felt like that. And it wasn't true at all. I have people all around me. They have other capabilities that are wildly different than mine. And if I have an idea that can help them, [00:39:00] why would I not share it? And if it produces any outcome, how are we gonna split that outcome? The wonderful thing about this type as well. You can do it over and over and over and over a lot of times in the same day. Think of what you could create over years' time.

Priscilla: So good. can't even go into all of it 'cause I'd have you here and I know it's really late over there. I'd have you here , all morning for me having a good time. But , not for you, because I know, you need to go a bit early. Thank you so much. I just wanna finish off by saying what's exciting personally for you and as you look out into the marketplace right now.

Chad Jenkins: Oh, it's the alternative strategy of implementation of AI that I see. So a lot of folks are quite concerned about how AI is gonna impact maybe their role at their organization or their type of company that they have today. Or their market or their industry. And the answer is yes, it's going to affect it.

But thank goodness it is. Earlier we talked about my perception and the way that I feel like we've [00:40:00] moved and evolved into the idea economy and that you already have what you need. We spent a lot of time talking about that today, your imagination and leveraging the art of collaboration. So I'm most excited by and at any organization that I own today.

We have this thing called my AI time. So when we find an AI that we want to implement, we do a quick analysis of how much time this is gonna save us by day, by week, by hour, sometimes, or by month. And for three months, we take that amount of time and put it on a calendar and whomever is gonna be affected by it.

We give them exactly what we talked about earlier today, space. We put 'em together. We have some nice rooms at offices that I have that they can just go inside and be together and have ideas around how things could be better. They know them already, maybe they didn't have the ability to have a voice in the organization to share it, and so very intentionally, we're trying to get a jump on the [00:41:00] impact of AI in a very positive way.

If it empowers us to have more time to think, then it will enable us to be more human, to get back to our roots, to leverage what we came factory installed with, which is our imagination, and to greatly impact those around us with those ideas that have been bottled up for a very long time because we had to do a task.

So I'm most excited about that. How I'm going to make my small dent in the world is absolutely through seed, spark, CoLab. It's to help first entrepreneurs understand and embrace this way and this type of thinking, this mindset. And then create frameworks. We talked about a few , that exist in the marketplace today.

Just at a zero. , Remove the film, and then leveraging the art of collaboration. But I do absolutely expect that by the time I'm done, these methodologies will be taught in schools if I have to create a collaboration with schools myself. Luckily, I've got a few CoLab partners that have reached [00:42:00] to a couple million schools and children already, so that's what I'm very excited about.

Priscilla: Oh I'm excited just listening to you talk about it. Thank you so much, Chad. It's been

Chad Jenkins: Yes. It's my pleasure.

Priscilla: please to the audience, we'd like to know more about Chad and he's written a couple of books, which I think will be really beneficial to entrepreneurs. If you've listened to this conversation, you've seen how you can 

Really elevate what you're doing, elevate your thinking, create space for more ideas, and please go to seed spark.com. It'll be linked in the description. Chad, you're active on LinkedIn?

Chad Jenkins: Yes, ma'am. Yeah, quite active on LinkedIn. Thanks to my wonderful team. It is absolutely my thoughts, ideas, and methodologies. then of course, you could tell the way that I talk and deliver my lovely team makes it more LinkedIn friendly. But yeah, it's a wonderful place that we put out quite a bit of content.

Priscilla: Thank you so much. It's been great. You've made me think about things deeply. I'll probably listen to this over and over again to really soak it all in. But thank you. It's been an honor.

Chad Jenkins: yeah. Ms. Priscilla, I really appreciate it and if I could be [00:43:00] helped to you or anyone in the future, I'd be happy to be. So it's why I'm here.

Priscilla: Thank you.