Episode 441: Who do you want to connect with?
In this episode, Fiona shares valuable insights on building and nurturing brand relationships proactively. She also discusses the importance of genuine collaboration and offers practical advice for reaching out to potential partners. Tune in!
You'll Learn How To:
The importance of proactive brand relationship building
Personal experiences with brand partnerships and sponsorships
How to approach brands
The importance of offering value
Insights on marketing strategies
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Connect and get in touch with My Daily Business:
Welcome to episode 441 of the My Daily Business Podcast. Today is a quick tip episode. This is a lesson I've had to learn myself. I've learned it many times, but recently again in a big way and I think it's just so worth sharing. I wanted to share that with you. But before I do two things. One, Marketing for Your Small Business is coming up again as is How to Get Your Book Published. I love running both of these because you see people go from, I don't know what I'm doing. I've got this idea, but I feel like I need to be more confident through to the end where they're like, I am armed with all the knowledge. I know what I'm doing. I'm excited, I'm enthusiastic about this. Whether you want to figure out your marketing for next year and come up with a strategic plan so you're not just throwing stuff at the wall and hoping that it sticks, or whether you want to market yourself through writing your first book or baby both, you can find links to both of those courses at mydailybusiness.com/courses.
You can also find a lot more on Marketing for Your Small Business at marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com. We'll link to those both in the show notes, but they're available any time of year. However, the coaching component, which is live coaching with me alongside doing the course in your own time is all coming up in September and October this year. If you're interested, check them out at mydailybusiness.com/courses. The other thing, of course, is that I want to acknowledge where I'm coming from and acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of these beautiful lands and me in North Warrandyte, that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their elders past and present and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into today's quick tip episode.
If you're reading this in real-time, it is coming up towards the end of August, which means my book, my second book is coming out maybe a week or two after this gets published. I think it comes out on the 3rd of September in Australia and New Zealand and the 3rd of December in the UK and US. And of course, if you're outside of those countries, you can go online. It is available pretty much everywhere. It is called Business to Brand by Fiona Killackey. And it's all about moving from transaction to transformation. One of the things that's exciting about this book is that we get to do a book launch. We're going to be running two of these. One is live in Melbourne where I'm from, but we're going to do another one online in November. If you're keen to be part of that, it's going to be fun.
It's going to be a part workshop, part party, and it'll be in a time zone that suits most of the world. Then check it out and register at mydailybusiness.com/booklaunch. If you're in Melbourne, hopefully, you've already registered for the live event, which is happening very soon. But that brings me to today's topic. When I created the book launch, a book publisher didn't pay for your book launch. That's something that people don't know. It's something we do talk about in my How to Get Your Book Published course. The book publisher does pay a very small amount, not enough to run an event and not at necessarily maybe the standard that I wanted to run this event. I have been trying to figure out who I want to partner with on the event. Could I get a sponsorship for the event?
Things like alcohol, sponsorship, non-alcoholic sponsorship, all of that because I don't drink and it's very important to me that there are non-alcoholic options. I must say that I've been to so many events lately and there is nothing for people who don't drink, which is, I don't know, just quite disappointing. I just think not very modern in this day and age, but I wrote a list of the companies that I would love to partner with on this and the companies that I would love to get sponsorship in terms of product for this and figured out, what am I offering in return? I don't want to just ask people to say, for example, to sponsor in kind with alcohol or whatever. I want to give them something back. What can I offer? Too often this idea of partnerships and collaborations can be very one-sided.
We get a lot of people pitching to come on this podcast who say it's a collaboration, it's not a collaboration, it's not a collaboration. A lot of the time we are promoting you and we are not getting anything in return. Yes, it's great and we get people on the podcast and it's interviews, but it's not a collaboration. It is a promotion opportunity for a lot of people. And that's great. It's amazing. We love getting these pictures, but you've just gotta be careful with the terminology. But I knew that with the book launch, what could I offer? Could I offer people an opportunity to come on the podcast? Could I offer them my services in running a masterclass for their audience? Could I come in and do some marketing audits for them? Could I do something else in return? But what it has forced me to do is to think about the brands I want to partner with.
The brands that I would love to do stuff with, now we all have these lists and maybe they've been written down, maybe they're documented, maybe they're just in our heads, but we often have these ideas of which brands we would love to partner with or collaborate with as a business. And yet, until we have something like a book launch, we don't necessarily reach out to them. What I've found is that I reached out to many brands that I think are amazing, and every single one, I have to say, every single one has got back to me. Not only that has created a meeting, has created a relationship, and even if they're not doing something with the book launch, we are excited to be working on projects together for 2025 and beyond. Some of them are doing things with the book launch, and I'm super excited, I'll be talking about them more on the podcast, but it has made me think so often in business, we don't take the time to connect with the brands that we'd love to connect with until we have something to offer them or until we have something to say to them.
For example, “Hey, I'm doing a book launch.” What it has reminded me is that back in the early days of this business, I used to connect with brands all the time. I would always be connecting with them. I would go to events or I would connect with them in some way, or I'd send them a little note or just be human. I think I know that I'm putting my hand up and that I'm not doing that regularly enough. I rarely pitch myself to go on other people's podcasts. I rarely pitch myself to brand partnerships, all sorts of things. And yet I do it and I help people do it all day long. I used to do it a lot more when I started this business. And then I don't know if you get complacent, you get busy, whatever it is, there's been lots going on with moving house, selling house, writing a second book, all of that.
But it should be something that's in my quarterly plan. And that is what I'm offering you today is to think about how often are you pitching yourself, getting out there and thinking about brand collaborations, brand partnerships, just brand relationships that you would love to have so that you don't have to wait until something comes up like, I'm doing a book launch. Do you want to partner with me to do that? That you should be able to create these relationships? Some of the Zoom calls I've had have just been awesome because we've just chatted during their meeting, they're like, this is a great connection between your brand and our brand, so let's think about what we could do. And it's going to hopefully create a bunch of long-term partnerships as opposed to maybe just a book launch. That is it for today.
It's thinking how often are you putting yourself out there to connect with the brands that you would like to have a relationship with? Whether that is an ongoing long-term partnership, whether it's, I just love what you do. I think what you're doing is incredible and I'd love to meet up. I often connect to, more people who do coaching. Let's say two people are doing one-on-one coaching, and I think that they've got a good synergy. I'll often be like, is it okay if I connect you guys afterwards? And they're like, “Yeah.” I mean, they've always said, yes, people are very lovely and open to meeting each other. And it's created some incredible relationships and incredible partnerships, and yet sometimes we're not doing that for ourselves. If that is you, if you're sitting there thinking, you know what, in 2025, I'd like to partner with this brand, or I think there's something there and I could do something with this place.
Or even maybe you, you see another brand and you're like, you know what? We have a great synergy with our audience. We should potentially do a podcast together, or we should do this, or we should do that. I think there's so much opportunity that we think about, and yet we don't action. And I know that just having to pull together this book launch, both launches has allowed me to think about the brands that work well with my daily business and that I'd respect, that I would happily talk about whether we were in a relationship or not. But also, what am I doing to nurture that relationship? How often am I reaching out to people? And that is something that we are looking at the next few months of this year and then into next year and pulling together the marketing plan and being like, every quarter this needs to be done at least, if not more regularly.
That is it. If you want to go through your marketing and hear from me about the things that have worked, the things that haven't, and the things that I think are key for 2025 and beyond, then definitely check out our marketing course marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com, or you can go to mydailybusiness.com/courses. Likewise, if you're thinking about this and hearing about the book and you're like, I would love to have a book, then check out our book course, How to Get Your Book Published, which is just, I think incredible. Honestly, I worked in book publishing. I did a post-grad diploma in book publishing at a university. I've now written two books, and there was still so much that I didn't know. I learned through experience and I'm sharing all of that in that course.
And the people that went through the first round, they're so wonderful. Some of them are already at the pitch stage, which is so exciting, and my publisher has been open in that anyone who goes through that course has a direct line to pitch to her, which is incredible and an incredible opportunity. You can find that course at mydailybusiness.com/courses. Thank you so much for reading, and thank you to those who have registered for our online book launch and those who are coming to Melbourne. I'll see you soon.
