In this episode of the StartWell Podcast, Chris Lavoie shares a sharp, practical look at why partnerships are becoming a serious go-to-market lever again - and why most companies still aren’t set up to do them well.
Chris is the founder of Partnership Mastermind, a Toronto-based business focused on helping partnership professionals build skills, confidence, and better outcomes through training, community, and increasingly, hands-on tools. In the conversation, he explains how partnerships differ from traditional sales, why the best partner strategies start with customer outcomes, and how bad incentives can push teams toward short-term thinking instead of long-term value creation.
The episode also traces Chris’s own journey - from leading partnerships in B2B SaaS to launching an eight-week bootcamp, turning that into a growing business, and then evolving it into a broader platform with instructors, software, and AI-enabled practice tools. One of the clearest themes in the conversation is that role-specific training for partnership operators is still missing in most organizations, creating a real gap that founders and revenue leaders should pay attention to.
For startup leaders, there’s real tactical value here: how to define your ideal partner profile, how to identify potential partners by looking at your best customers, and why partnerships should be treated as a disciplined growth channel rather than a vague relationship exercise.
It’s also a useful conversation for anyone building communities or professional education businesses - especially if they believe the future of learning is more experiential, collaborative, and grounded in real-world scenarios.
