Partnering your way to success

“Too often, we get caught up efficiently doing ineffective things, focusing solely on the work that will get us through the day.

The idea isn’t to find oneself another environment tomorrow - be it a new job or a new economy - but to be constantly creating the environment and community you want for yourself, no matter what may occur.”

• Keith Ferrazzi, Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time

I was standing outside one of the most exclusive yacht clubs in the Gold Coast.

My buddy has siblings that operate in more well-to-do circles, and my partner Georgie and I were lucky to be invited onto a super yacht for the day.

There was a big crew, and we met another gentleman who brought flowers who winked and said:

“Gotta show my appreciation hey! It might increase my chances of being invited again one day too.”

It’s similar with collaborating your goal is to be a pleasure to work with.

It doesn’t matter how much experience the other side has with collaborations assume there’s no experience, that you will do all of the heavy lifting, and that working with you is easy.

Remember: they’re helping you.

Be proactive, and make sure the other side is happy with the arrangement.

When they see it works well, they’re more likely to say yes when you ask if they want to do it again in the future.

The specifics of a collaboration will be different based on your business and product, what channel you’re in, and what capabilities they do and don’t have.

To make your life easy, I’m sharing a list of moves you can make in a collaboration to make a deal more enticing:

Offer to teach their audience something for free.

It can be how to use your product for success. Experience you have building what you have. What you learned while pitching your services. How to do one of the things you do when offering a consulting engagement. How to write a book in 30 days. Lessons you’ve learned in your career. If you can articulate it with a hook, and it’s going to be interesting to your audience offer to teach it!

Give them a freebie.

“But my goal is to sell my product” I hear you cry. Find a way to give out a sample, a free version, or a trial. If your product is good and offers what you’re promising, a large enough percentage will become repeat buyers. In the big advertiser world, there are entire specialist agencies who offer sampling at scale profitably. Another reason this works is because of a fancy concept called reciprocity in giving something to someone they’re more likely to want to buy something from you.

Promote their channel in your own social media.

There’s a good chance you don’t have a large following yet, but it’s still good to offer it as a value add it’s more than likely the collaborator will be able to do the same which helps you!

Promote them in your other channels to drum up more traffic.

Other channels you might have include an email list, an announcement you can share in a regular meet-up or meeting, a mention within a larger newsletter, a flyer at your stall anywhere you’re facing or interacting with an audience.

Write a big article.

Producing long-form content isn’t everyone’s strong suit, but if you can write a piece you absolutely should. Share something that people don’t know and why that is, teach people an element of what you know that’s going to be relevant to their audience, take a snippet from your book and provide it for free. When you produce one the various points and key ideas can be broken down into smaller bites to share as well.

Share an excerpt for an online course.

People can find the answer to anything at anytime. The reason people buy one way to do something over another is because they enjoy the teacher’s style, their point of view, and the way they explain something. If you’re selling a course give away some of it for free. You’re not going to lose customers. You will gain customers who were on fence, because they’ve heard, seen, and felt how you explain something. Do it!

Create an online version of something you want to deliver live.

Let’s say you have physical product. It’s a widget that curates herbs from your garden and turns them into spices. How do you translate that into online? You can still add value. Write a recipe that can be done manually, record a video of yourself going through the process, package it up and offer it to any group interested in curating herbs. People interested will follow what you share if you come from a perspective of helping. Do you know what else they might do that’s easier? Buy your widget.

Offer to mention them in media.

I use the term “media” pretty loosely here. Offering to mention your partner in any publication that’s got an audience qualifies. This could be a newsletter you’re contributing to, a mention in the company Teams channel (for when you’re not side-hustling), or even a shout-out in a group or community they don’t have access to.

Offer to share a % of any profit from sales you make.

This can be tracked with mechanics like “mention Randy for a 10% discount”, through to discount codes, through to flat-out offering a cut on all sales over a set period of time if you’re making an offer exclusively through them.

Offer to donate to a charity they care about.

Struggling to connect with any of the above? Find the cause they care about and offer to donate to that cause to kickstart a partnership. The only partner that refuses such a thing is either too busy, thinks your product/offer are lousy for their audience, or is cold and dead inside and supports zero good causes.

Offer an exclusive.

This can work if you’ve got some runs on the board already and you know there will be some good demand. If you don’t or can’t demonstrate that demand will be there… then it’s just phoney.

Partner together with a complementary product and offer a package deal.

If your product doesn’t compete with a partner’s, you can team up and go-to-market with a package deal. A restaurant could partner with a limousine company and offer ridiculous rides home for Valentine’s night. A cleaner could offer 3 months worth of cleaning supplies for a Turbo Turnover Package. A gardening teacher could offer personalised laser-etched gardening tools.

There’s heaps more.

The further you rise up the food chain (or the more refined the partnership) the more elaborate and collaborative you can be with creating value together.

“BUT I DON’T KNOW HOW TO DO ANY OF THOSE!

Relax, you start small and build up. If you wanted to be a radio announcer and didn’t know a microphone from a helmet… you could still find a slot if you haggled and hustled to help the graveyard shift on community radio.

My friend Rohit asked me to be a guest on his startup podcast. He’s now done over 300 and other guests including mega-rich founders and a former Prime Minister.

I’m not in those circles.

But while he was building his channel he was happy to stoop down to Marshy-level.

The lesson is to pick partners and channels that are “your size”.

We all start somewhere.

See how specific this YouTuber is with their audience collaboration request? The system works.

Stretch yourself by looking for some bigger channels, but remember any collaboration is great practice.

Whether a partner has access to 8 people or 800 it’s going to be great for you.

Get used to pitching, collaborating with partners, creating win-wins, and executing it for success.

Also - make sure you deliver value.