Episode 469: How to create amazing collaborations
In this episode you'll learn:
Strategic Partnership Planning: Understanding how to develop collaborations that create mutual benefit and align with both parties' goals, moving beyond simple self-promotion to create lasting value.
Collaboration Research Method: Learning to create and research a targeted list of 20 potential collaborators, understanding their objectives, and developing proposals that address their specific needs and goals.
Bio Cycle Framework: Understanding the systematic approach to building partnerships through distinct stages: awareness, research, evaluation, purchase, post-purchase, and advocacy.
Long-term Relationship Building: Discovering how to evolve initial collaborations into larger opportunities such as retreats or product development projects, focusing on sustainable business relationships.
Future-Focused Strategy: Learning to plan collaborations with a forward-thinking mindset for 2025 and beyond, ensuring partnerships contribute to long-term business growth and innovation.
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Fiona Killackey: Do you love your life as a small business owner? Let's be real. Sometimes we just don't. It's my hope that this, for my daily business podcast, helps you regain a little of that lost love through practical, actionable tips, tools and tactics, interviews with creative and curious small business owners, and in depth coaching episodes with me, your host, Fiona Killackey.
With more than 20 years experience in marketing, brand content and systems, and having now helped thousands of small business owners, I know what it takes to build a business that you can be proud of and that actually aligns with your values, your beliefs, and your hopes for the future. So much of our daily life is spent working on and in the businesses and the brands that we are creating, and so it makes sense to actually.
Love what you do.
So let's get into this podcast and help you figure out how to love your business and your life on the daily.
Hello and welcome to episode 469 of the My Daily Business Podcast. Today it's a quick tip episode and this is really where we share a tip tool or tactic that you can implement immediately in your business. And if you're listening to this in real time, or really any time, it's going to be super helpful, particularly if you're trying to get your brand in front of a bigger audience. Before we jump into that, I want to of course acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on these beautiful lands in which I live and work and get to meet all the incredible guests for the podcast. And that is the Woiworung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
Alright, let's get into today's quick tip episode. If you're listening to this in real time, it is the very start of December 2024. You may be listening at any other point in the future. Hello future people. But this is a really good time of year to, if you haven't started already, think about who you might like to collaborate with in 2025. Now, collaborations are not just pictures of yourself to come on a podcast. We get that all the time. People are like, oh, I can't wait to collaborate. And I'm like reading through the email going, where, where is the collaboration opportunity here? all I'm seeing is a direct promotion of you on this podcast. No, no, no. Collaboration has to be win-win for both parties and collaboration may be running an event together, creating some sort of, you know, valuable piece of content for both of your audiences. It could be, you know, bartering or working on some kind of offer, where both of you are, creating something amazing and crossing over your audiences. It could be all sorts of things.
Firstly, really try and understand what collaboration means. And if you don't, we have various podcasts that we've done on this, so we'll link to those. But today I really want you to think about in terms of tip, tool or tactic, which is, have you literally sat down and thought about who, are the top 20 companies, brands, people that I would like to collaborate with in 2025 outside of actually creating that list? Have I then started doing the research so that when I do hit them up, they, one, actually know that I exist already, and two, I'm not going to be like, who is this person? Kind of cold calling me with this big request potentially, when we haven't even become friends first.
So December is a great time of year. if you haven't already to at least get this list written, then start really researching what kind of collaborations have they already done? Who have they worked with before? What sort of things do you think that they're trying to achieve in their business or their brand or their personal brand so that essentially you're going to look at your collaboration and I guess this is really where the tactic comes into it, as a series of steps and you need to undertake the first of those steps. Right now, it being December, this is a perfect time of year to literally start this process. So the first thing I would do is get out the top 20 list. I often create these with clients.
So what are the top 20 brands, people, podcasts, media, etc. That you think a decent collaboration could happen? Then I want you to think about the bio cycle and go through your collaborations step by step of the bio cycle. So the bio cycle, for those who haven't heard me mention it about 10,000 times, is really like, if you think about a circle, a cycle that just keeps going and going and going, you've got five or six key stages.
The first is awareness, the second is research. The third is EV valuation. Super important. Once somebody gets through evaluation, they're on a path to purchase, which is the fourth stage, purchase. Then the fifth is post purchase. And if the post purchase stage is done well and they feel like they're nurtured, they've got an actual relationship with you, they have some sort of connection, then they become advocates who then push more people into the cycle. Not push, hopefully, just gently guide, encourage, cheerleader on.
So I want you to think about collaborations for 2025. Have I got my list? Then once I have my list, literally work through them. Awareness. Are these people, these brands, these companies even aware that I exist at the moment? And if they're not, how do I start getting into their orbit? So it may be simply following them on social media, it might be signing up to their emails, it might be going into their shop. If it's a shop or a physical location, whatever it is you want to be like, oh yeah, they're aware of me, then I want you to go into their awareness.
So really looking, are you aware of everything that they're doing at the moment? Not every single thing is like a stalker, but in terms of offerings, are you aware that, oh, they created this completely different collection for kids in the last three months? Did you know that that happened? Or were you going to pitch to them purely for adults when you didn't know that they also have the kids line, for example. So you want to be completely aware of what they're doing, also aware of which platforms they're on, what social media are they really working well on? Where have they cultivated a community that if you do a collaboration with, you're going to get in front of? Also in awareness, you may look to see if there's any media or any interviews they've done recently. And this is really where you're going to go from awareness into a stage of research. So you're going to start looking at how can I get an idea of what it is I think they are trying to achieve? Because if you're coming with a collaboration request, you wanna make sure that it's helping them, not just helping yourself, that is purely just promotion. So you're going to then research, okay, what have they done recently? What are they trying to do?
I've read an interview with them recently or I've listened to a podcast and they were mentioning how they're going to do XYZ in the near future, where they'd really like to do, blah, blah, blah, insert whatever it is that you find. So you're in that stage of research. While in that stage you also wanna think about from their perspective, if they were researching you, your business, your brand, your personal brand, what are they going to find? And do you think that that's an attractive offer for them? So you wanna look and almost do an audit of your own social media, your own emails, when people sign up your website, whatever it is, your store, if they're going to come into a physical space and just order it through the lens of them. So if they're gonna look at you as a collaboration, you know, potential, do they like what they see? Really? Are they like, yes, okay, I can see there's good content. I could see how we could work together. Are they going to see examples of any other collaborations you've done? Yes or no, case studies, et cetera. You've gone through the awareness and the research.
The next stage is evaluation. And that's really where you need to confront yourself and really go, honestly, am I a right fit for them? What can I offer? Because if they're going to get to that point of evaluation, they're going to be asking themselves all of this stuff, why would we do this with you? What's in it for us? What's in it for you? Is there kind of an equal win-win happening here also from your point, do you wanna really evaluate?
Maybe you thought that they were one thing and then you've done this research and you realise m maybe that's not the right fear for me, or maybe we're actually quite misaligned in terms of our values or maybe they've just done something recently that you're like, u n, nah, nah, that's not the right fit for me. So you're gonna evaluate them as a potential partner, but also you're going to think about if they were evaluating you, what would happen. The next stage is purchase.
So I want you to note down for each of these kind of 20 companies, or maybe you could just start with 10. Whatever it is I want you to think about, okay, if I'm gonna go in with the pitch, what are three ways that we can collaborate? What are the three things that I would be offering them that they may or may not say yes to, but hopefully say yes to? Almost like you've got the purchase. So what is it? What do you think?
Out of your research, your evaluation, you've looked at everything that they're doing and now you're thinking about what would be the three things I could pitch that I think could get them across the line but also is going to be beneficial for you as well. So this is, we've done awareness, research, evaluation, purchase, and now we're going into the final kind of fifth, sixth stage which is post purchase.
So you want to think about it because the best collaborations are ah, long term collaborations and they're relationship building so that it doesn't feel like just a, oh, they just, you know, winde and dine me and then they were done. You want to be thinking about, okay, how do we build a long term relationship with this person or brand or business or whatever it is.
So you wanna be in that post purchase stage. So after we did this collaboration, what could that lead to? So maybe we're just gonna do a podcast together or we're gonna do a live event together. We're going to do, I don't know, something sort of smaller. Not that a live event is that small, but then from there what could this become? So could it then become. Actually we could do a whole retreat, like where we bring their audience, my audience, we go away for a week somewhere, you know, what could it become? So you want to be thinking bigger. because if they do get excited and they're like, yes, they don't want to and you don't want to as well, spend all this time and energy and potentially money as well introducing them to your audience and vice versa for it to just be a one off thing. So you want to be thinking from the post purchase perspective.
Okay, what else could this become after that initial collaboration and then advocacy, which is the final stage. How could you become advocates for one another's brand and maybe even go into like product, you know, development together on something, you know, there's no end to this. But I think so often people just think I wanna collaborate. And collaboration really means I'm just gonna pitch to them this one idea and if they don't write back, that's it.
And you know, that was my whole thing. As opposed to really thinking about this strategically, going through the bicycle, going through your top 20 list and coming up with a plan for collaboration, which is so much more in depth and quality versus you just coming up with some random idea on a whim, messaging somebody and then being annoyed that it didn't work.
So that is it for today's quick tip episode. Really thinking about who you might collaborate with in 2025 or beyond. And if you're listening to this in the future, hello again. Hello future. And how are you going to make that initial pitch as good as it can be so that hopefully the whole collaboration is as good as it can be. So that is it for today's episode.
You can find the show notes, links for anything I've mentioned at mysdailybusiness.com podcast 469. Thank you so much for listening and if you enjoyed this and you got anything out of it, and I hope you did, please, please, please can you leave a review? It really, really helps us get found and it is towards the end of the year so if you've listened to this all year, and I know we have thousands of people listening to this, thank you.
I would love it so much if maybe your little end of your gift for me maybe leaving a review. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We read every single one. Honestly, they are just the most incredible feedback and I appreciate every single one. Whether you're leaving it on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to this. Thank you in advance. Bye.
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