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Amy Porterfield: Well hey there, welcome back to another episode of the Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I’m your host, Amy Porterfield, and it’s another time for an episode based on one of your burning questions.
Today I’m answering a question from Whitney in Austin via an Instagram post. Whitney asks, “How do you find the right partners to help you market your course or product?”
I get a lot of questions about affiliate marketing. I even did an episode on it last year but I still get a lot of questions about my own personal experience. I don’t consider myself a big player when it comes to affiliate marketing.
In fact, even though I do a lot of big, live launches I rarely use a lot of affiliates for those launches. Instead, I’ve prided myself on a series of relationships I’ve cultivated over the years to help me build my business.
I’ve also had a solid group of friends that I tend to rely on again and again for advice, support, and collaboration. I’ll talk about a few of those friends in this episode. So I want you to think of this episode as a soft part two to an episode I did a few weeks back about my own personal journey.
You might have already heard that episode. I sure hope you have because I got so much great feedback about how people loved the fact that it was really personal and really behind the scenes. It was Episode #175 where I talked about how I went from corporate to consulting to courses.
I’m calling this episode a soft part two from that episode because a to of the “how” around how I progressed in my career has been built on special relationships. In this episode I’m going to go through seven major collaborations I’ve done so far in my career.
While you’re listening I want you to think about who you absolutely cannot wait to collaborate with. I want you to put your wish list together. I also want you to put a list together that might seem a little bit more attainable as you ease into this.
I have a special freebie for you. This freebie includes questions to ask before you consider any collaboration. In it I’ll talk about the criteria I personally use when I think about partnering up on anything with anyone. It’s a checklist of sorts. It’s a really great freebie that you want to download and keep it the next time your thinking about a collaboration and then run through the questions.
Honestly answer them and you will know at the end if you should be moving forward with that collaboration or if you should probably nix it for now and keep moving forward solo. To get your hands on that freebie all you need to do is go to https://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/180download or you can find the freebie in my show notes at https://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/180.
As I go through each of these collaborations here’s what I’m going to cover:
¬ What initiated the collaboration? You can see the genesis of how the partnerships came into play.
¬ What I brought to the table.
¬ What they brought to the table.
¬ What I learned from the collaboration.
¬ If the relationship is an ongoing one how it continues to evolve.
That’s one of my most favorite elements, seeing how these relationships continue to change and how we challenge each other and just how the relationship has gotten stronger over the years.
Are you ready to dive in? Let’s do this.
Collaboration #1 – Sean Malarkey, Lewis Howes, and Myself
We created FB Influence. I’ve talked about this relationship a lot so if you follow along in any of my content you likely already heard this story. I’ll spare you all of the details. Plus, I went into detail in Episode #175 around how this relationship came about. I was at Blog World with Mike Stelzner helping him with some interviews.
Lewis and I became good friends. He asked me if I would collaborate. Then I met Sean Malarkey and I thought it was a great opportunity. I loved the guys instantly and we created FB Influence together.
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What I brought to the table was a lot of knowledge around Facebook. It was also around the time that I had landed the book deal with Wiley Publishers to co-write Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies. I was knee deep in Facebook marketing writing one of those big, fat, yellow dummies books.
I was bringing a lot of knowledge to the table around Facebook. I was also working with clients at the time in social media so I was in the trenches. It was knowledge I was bringing to the table around the subject matter.
When it came to Sean and Lewis, these guys were master marketers. They already had a way bigger list than I had and if you know anything about Lewis Howes, he is definitely a connector. He had tons of relationships out there with affiliates. The #1 reason FB Influence was so incredibly successful was due to affiliates.
Lewis and Sean had great relationships with people and we were lining up affiliate webinars literally every single day for months and months and months. That was really cool. The product was good and the affiliate relationships were good and it converted well. That webinar converted really well for our affiliates.
Sean was also behind the scenes a little more than Lewis. Sean had some amazing marketing experience. He had a knowledge around funnels and Facebook ads and how we were going to position ourselves.
We all brought either marketing, skill, or knowledge to the table so it was a good group, the three of us. We liked each other. We enjoyed working together and that was a lot of fun. So that’s what I brought to the table and what they brought to the table.
The new conversation I wanted to have with you, the part I have probably never talked about before, is what I learned from that whole experience. The first thing I learned is to get quiet and to just learn in the beginning.
At the time it wasn’t like I was a complete newbie on the scene. I had experience in all of my other past jobs plus I had been doing the entrepreneur thing for a little while so I was coming to the table with marketing experience. But it was nothing like Sean and Lewis had up until that point.
I got quiet and let them coach me. I was coachable to a T. If Lewis said, “Do the webinar this way,” or “Say it ‘that’ way,” or if Sean said, “We’re writing an email about ‘this’ or about ‘that’,” I wouldn’t question it. I would just do it and then we would see how it would turn out.
Many times it was a huge success. I think being coachable when you’re working with someone that you know is bringing something to the table you don’t yet have that’s a huge advantage for you.
But here’s where I probably went wrong. I was coachable. I would listen to what they said we needed to do. I would do it. Sometimes I would do stuff that just didn’t feel totally right for me. Maybe for me personally because I was delivering the webinar and a lot of the times it was my tone in the emails it just didn’t feel like me, maybe even a little bit inauthentic because it wasn’t coming from me.
We’ve got three people in the mix here. So when I got more comfortable with the relationship and when things were going really well, I wish I had spoken up a little bit more. It was no fault to Lewis or to Sean, I was just nervous to speak up. I was newer on the scene than they were and I probably devalued my opinion and suggestions and recommendations at that time.
If I were to do it all over again I would say, “Hey let’s try this, “ or “I’m not totally comfortable marketing that way. Can we maybe try it this way or soften that or tone that down a little bit or tone it up?” I don’t have specific examples because it feels like a lifetime ago. But I will say that I remember thinking later on that I wish I had spoken up more.
That was probably my biggest learning lesson. Why did I end up stepping away from FB Influence? The answer to that is that I was ready to go out on my own. I was ready to do things different. I had really gotten clear about my message and who I wanted to market to and what I wanted to market.
At that time I had already built Facebook Marketing Profit Lab so now I had another product that was doing really well. I was ready to let go of that one and just do things on my own. I think I got a lot of that knowledge and know how from that experience so it taught me so much and I wouldn’t change it for the world. That was my first big collaboration.
Collaboration #2 – David Siteman Garland
Moving into Collaboration #2. It was a few years back and it was with David Siteman Garland, DSG. I absolutely love this guy. We had been friends for a few years before we decided to do a collaboration.
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For those of you who don’t know, a few years back I was in a mastermind and David Siteman Garland was in that mastermind. It was a peer run mastermind. No one paid to be in it. It was a small group. Melanie and Devin Duncan, James Wedmore, Stu McLaren, and David Siteman Garland were in it.
We became fast friends in that mastermind and what’s interesting about David, you might be surprised to hear, he is incredibly organized and really follows a process behind the scenes. I don’t know, something about his fun and silly personality makes me think he might be a little bit scattered on the back end. He’s totally not.
I love that about him, being a planner myself, so we were both running Facebook ads at the time and doing webinars and there was one ad strategy that we were both doing that was working really well. This was a few years back so it kind of doesn’t apply anymore.
We had honed in on this one ad strategy and were pairing it with email marketing and webinars and it was a really cool thing to teach. Both of us were talking about it and we said, “You know what? We should teach this.”
We both had experiences around how we were using it and what worked and what didn’t and all that good stuff. So we decided to do a live workshop. It was a two-hour live workshop and I presented half the time, David presented the other half of the time, and then we did a live Q&A.
We charged $500 for the live workshop and we both sold it to our own email list and through social media. We might have run a few ads to it as well. So it was incredibly successful and profitable. It did really, really well. It wasn’t like a million dollar launch. That’s not what we were going for.
We had an idea and we thought it was timely. It was relevant and what was working right now with Facebook ads. This was something our students could actually follow along step by step and do it right away in their business.
Because we wanted to do it together it kind of brought something extra interesting to the mix. We basically created a really, really simple sales page. This is another thing I love about David. He just keeps thing simple, even more so than I do.
I didn’t stress over a super long sales page. We just did something kind of quick and dirty. We got it up there. We had a checkout page and that’s all it was. It was so very simple: Here’s what you’re going to learn, here’s what we’re going to cover, here’s how much it is, and here’s where you put your credit card information.
That’s kind of how simple it was. I wish I had snapshots of it but I don’t. It was just too long ago. So we sold the course before we actually delivered it, before we did it live, and I love that strategy. Then people showed up and we delivered it. If you didn’t show up live you got the recording and you go the slide deck. We also included the slide deck so that people could go back and follow it step by step.
One thing that is really cool about this is that all of the money went into David’s account. We just didn’t want to complicate it. He set up the order form and he collected all the money. I think one thing that’s important about collaborations is you have to totally trust the person you’re doing the collaboration with.
I didn’t even think twice about the fact that David was going to collect all of the money. I knew he was a stand-up guy. I wasn’t even worried about anything related to the money situation. Of course, in true David fashion, I would get reports as to how much money we brought in, how much he might have had to pay for the credit card processing, and then how much money we were going to split together. It was a 50/50 split.
Another thing we didn’t do is we didn’t care where the person came from. Let’s say that 60% came from my email list and 40% came from his. We have no idea if that happened and it was probably so close to 50/50 it’s not even funny because we had a lot of overlap on our lists because we attract the same type of person.
Let’s just say I drove more from my email list. That was not something we were even going to talk about or worry about. We were doing a collaboration together. It was just a short promo and it was 50/50 no matter what. I like that. That feels good to me. That’s a good relationship.
We went for it. So what I brought to the table and what David brought to the table was essentially the same thing. We both had experience with this type of strategy. We both did it a tiny bit different so we got to show his examples and my examples and we are very different personalities. He is kind of loud and a little bit in your face. He’s way funnier than I am. Then I’m a little bit more calm and more calculated and I think the mix was good for a live workshop. I think he kept things more entertaining than I typically would.
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He is super smart and brought great value to the table. So I loved it. I thought it was great. I wish David and I had done more of those back in the day but we just did one and it was profitable. Then we just kind of moved on.
Think about something like a live workshop and who you might want to do that with. But I think the big prize for us is that it was so relevant and timely and our students really wanted to learn how they could do it right away. That was in our benefit. That was Collaboration #2.
Collaboration #3: Michael Hyatt
I wanted to talk about the collaboration I’ve done with Michael Hyatt. The whole relationship kind of started in an interesting way. If you’re wondering how I meet with some of the big influencers and how I show that I can play on the same field and am ready to jump in with them.
I didn’t do this on purpose but something really great happened from an experience I had with Hyatt and I feel it was a start of a beautiful friendship. It sounds weird but it’s true.
Here’s the deal. Way back when Michael Hyatt was doing a live event and his team had asked me if I would speak at the event. What was great is that they paid their speakers which, I think, is so very awesome. They paid for me. They flew me out and I got to speak on stage at one of his events.
In my eyes, probably yours too if you know Michael, he’s a big shot. I had to come to the table prepared. Plus, I knew who else was on the docket to speak. They were big names and I thought I couldn’t look like an amateur here. I’m not, by any means, a professional speaker.
I hired a presentation coach just for that specific presentation. His name was Mike Pacchione and he had worked with Nancy Duarte and had done amazing things inside that organization as a trainer. If you know anything about Nancy she is a master storyteller which meant Michael had all of that knowledge and skill set as well.
He helped me create a pretty amazing presentation, I think the best one I’ve ever done. We were able to weave in great stories and he helped me come out on stage with great presence and I knew exactly how I was going to start it. I knew the flow of the presentation and I knew the last thing I was going to say. He helped me with my slides on the screen. It was an awesome experience.
It was a lot of work. We got on the phone many, many times and I worked on the outline of my presentation a lot. But the reason I tell you all of this is because I nailed it. I nailed it so much so that they did a survey as to who was the best speaker at that one event and Michael Hyatt told me that I got the highest score.
I’m not telling you that to brag, I’m actually telling you that because I was able to make an impact, not just of the audience, but I think at that point Michael knew I was there and showing up and doing my best work. I’m hoping that made an impression on Michael because he comes in contact with a lot of people.
So many people want to work with him and speak on his stage and do collaborations with him so instead of me asking if we could collaborate I just did my very best work without any expectations. It really turned out to be an amazing relationship that came out of that.
Of course, Michael would have been my friend regardless. That’s the kind of guy he is. But I do believe that showing up and doing an outstanding presentation on his stage made an impact. So what happened after that I ended up promoting Best Year Ever, one of his most popular programs that he has.
From there he ended up promoting one of my courses, Courses That Convert®️. It did really, really well. He has actually promoted a few of my courses. Here’s the thing that’s important, I didn’t promote Michael’s course so that he would promote mine. He surely didn’t promote my courses so that I would promote his.
It’s not always a tit for tat. I wanted to bring that up and that’s why I brought up this collaboration for a few things. One, I didn’t show up to impress so that Michael would eventually collaborate with me; and two, I didn’t start to promote something of his in hopes that he would promote something of mine.
I think that type of relationship is dangerous. Somewhere down the line someone’s going to feel let down or disappointed and I don’t think that’s necessary. So if I have any advice for you around promoting other people’s courses, I say don’t do it in hopes they will do it for you. Of course it’s a lot of icing on the cake when they do it.
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When Michael promotes my stuff we’re talking about huge success there. He has a giant following that’s incredibly loyal and they trust him and listen to his recommendations. But just like anything in life and in business, if you go into it with the wrong intentions it tends to get a little bit messy or it tends to be very disappointing at the end.
I’ve never had that experience with Michael and he’s always such a professional about the collaboration that we do. I just wanted to share that experience. I feel there are a lot of lessons there. It was interesting how the relationship came about so I wanted to include that special collaboration.
Collaboration #4: B-School with Marie Forleo
I have definitely talked about this relationship in a few different podcast episodes I’ve done but here’s what I want to say. The B-School promotion has been my most successful affiliate marketing relationship for somebody else and everything I’ve done.
I know 100% it is because I have first-hand experience and success with the program. So to back up a little bit, I was in Marie Forleo’s live mastermind, Rich, Happy, and Hot, for two years. I paid to get coached by Marie and then after that I started promoting B-School because I had some great success with her online program.
We have formed a great friendship. I would one million percent call Marie a friend and what’s cool is that she is always checking in, especially leading up to B-School and after B-School. She is just so appreciative of her affiliates.
I think that is one of the biggest lessons that I want to share with you around my experience being an affiliate for somebody else. I remember the last time, two years ago, when B-School wrapped up. Marie actually reached out to me personally.
There are a lot of affiliates involved so I know she couldn’t do that for everybody but she probably chose just a few people every year that she does this with. She reached out and called me, like the cart had just closed.
I wasn’t her #1 affiliate. I was high on the list but I wasn’t #1. She called and said, “Hey, I just want to thank you for all you have done throughout the promotion.” Then she went on to name some of the special things I had done.
She was paying attention throughout the entire promo in terms of what her affiliates were doing. She treats them with kindness just like she treats her students. I think that’s the biggest lesson with B-School in general and how Marie does her promotions. When someone promotes for you you’ve got to treat them as though they are extra special and, dare I say it, I would almost treat them like they are doing you a favor.
Let’s talk about that really quickly. A long time ago I did an affiliate deal with somebody else. It was a guy. It was many years ago. He treated me as though he was doing me a favor for letting me promote his program.
I’ve never been able to shake that off. In just a few things he said I thought he didn’t look at it like I am adding value to his audience and his business and his bottom line. He wasn’t looking at it like that. He was looking at it as though he did me a favor for letting me promote one of his programs.
That just doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t make you want to go above and beyond for somebody else in an affiliate relationship. Flip that and here I have Marie calling me and calling out some things that she noticed that she loved during the promotion and staying in touch with me throughout the year, not just when she wants me to promote.
I think that’s cool. So when somebody promotes for me I definitely hope anyone who’s ever promoted for me feels that I really appreciate it and I do feel like they are doing something extra special for me. They are putting me out in front of their audience and they’ve worked really hard to get that audience.
I don’t take it lightly and I think I learned that from Marie so that’s my big takeaway from the B-School promotion, something that I’ve never talked about before and I wanted to kind of add to the conversation since I have talked about B-School and promoting it and why I promote it (because I love the program so much).
Collaboration #5: Melanie Duncan
I did this one just last year with Ms. Melanie Duncan, the wife of my business partner, Devin Duncan. Melanie and I have been friends for many years and we do a lot of the same stuff in terms of teaching online marketing and list building and courses and we both do webinars to promote our programs so there’s a lot of alignment between what we do.
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Speaking of webinars, both of us have done many, many, many webinars. We kind of have the same type of style and we’ve had great success with webinars. We’ve marketed each other’s programs and, of course, our own. Then we’ve marketed other people’s programs beyond that.
We have a lot of experience with webinars. You all know that I have a program called Webinars That Convert®️ so this is a big part of my business.
Melanie and I were talking one day and we thought it would be cool to do a weekend live workshop around webinars. But wouldn’t it be cool to actually just have it be a really small group where we get to answer a bunch of questions, go through the process, share behind-the-scenes things we have never shared, allow the group to collaborate together and network and learn from each other. That would be pretty cool, right?
Both of us were excited about this and we decided to do it. I think it was in October in New York. We invited just ten people. It was $5,000 for a day and a half. It was all day on a Saturday and half day on Sunday. We were both bringing webinar knowledge to the table but because we run different businesses we had different stories to share and examples to share. We were both strong in different areas.
I might be really good at the content of what I teach and how I teach it in the free content part of the webinar and then Melanie took over and just talked about what it looked like to transition into the sale and what you should say and how you should say it.
We then both had stuff to share when the other person was presenting so we would jump in and say, “Okay, I want to add here” this little tip or that tip. It was really great to bring just a small group. They happened to all be women.
It was a small group of women together and we got to collaborate just around webinars for a day and a half. It was really, really fun and one of the women that left there got huge results, out of this world results, from just one thing we shared in that workshop. They all, I think, walked away feeling satisfied and ready to jump in.
They learned some new things but there was one woman that just took one little strategy and ran with it. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars later. It definitely was an exciting thing to do.
What I learned was that it’s not all about the online world. Sometimes you’ve got to step out from behind the computer and try new things. I think that breathes new life into your business. It keeps things interesting and fun and allows you to get out into the real world and talk to the people that are really taking action.
Every single woman in this group was an action taker. I think pretty much, at least eight out of the ten women, were doing incredibly well in their business so they were coming to the table with an established business doing well but they wanted to take things to an entirely new level.
Actually, that’s a different group than I usually work with. I tend to attract a lot of people in their first two years of business just getting started, starting to make some money, but wanting to really make an impact both with their audience and with their bottom line.
This audience was a bit more advanced and that stretched me as well. So I like the fact I had to show up in a different way, teach more advanced strategies, and I had to come out of my shell. I’m an introvert, definitely, to a T so getting out there and pushing myself was a big deal.
I will also tell you, because I always tell you the personal stuff, on Day One I felt I was a little bit too quiet. Melanie is an extrovert. The girl can command attention wherever she goes. So I was a little bit more shy. I had her start the workshop off. I didn’t know.
I went to bed that night, on Saturday, and thought it wasn’t okay. I wanted to show up better for those women. They paid a lot of money to be there and I knew everyone was there for the right reason. I just wanted to show up in a different way in terms of talking more and having a bigger presence. I actually talked to Melanie about this and, of course, she said, “Anything you want, Amy.”
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I told her to let me start the morning off and that I wanted to talk about “this” a little bit more. She is a great friend so she said, “Anything you need, let’s do it.” Day Two felt better for me so I’m always kind of evaluating how I am showing up. Am I putting my best self forward? Am I being excellent today?
I learned a little bit about myself. If someone has a little bit of a stronger personality than me I tend to step back and am even a little more quiet. I’m not intimidated by Melanie, it’s just that she could run the show by herself, quite honestly. She has that presence. So I had to kind of find my footing.
I did and I was proud of myself for just not clamming up and not talking at all. Instead I pushed myself really hard the second day to show up better. That was just a little lesson I learned about my personality and overall. The lesson for you, I think, if you want to think in terms of collaborations is that it doesn’t always have to be online and it doesn’t always have to be a big, live event that costs a lot of money.
These small, intimate workshops in your own town could be incredibly lucrative when done right and I think there’s something really valuable around small groups. If we marketed this and said it was for 50 people it wouldn’t be nearly as intimate or as special. We were able to make it really intimate in terms of everyone getting attention from us and getting their questions answered.
Again, just like the David Siteman Garland promo, we didn’t have a super elaborate sales page. I think all of the money went through my account this time and that was not an issue whatsoever. We sent out a few emails. We both wrote our own emails and sent them to our own list.
Really quickly, we filled up with ten and we were done. We had a waiting list. Oh, one more thing we did was have a survey. We knew it would fill up because we were just offering ten seats but we wanted to make sure the right people were in the room so we had people fill out surveys.
What killed me is there were more women that would have been the right people in the room but it was just we could only have ten. So we took the first ten that fully qualified and then we cut it off but when people filled out the survey if they were a right fit it was just “argh.”
We could have done it again but it just didn’t fit into our schedules so we’ve only done one. Maybe we’ll do one again down the road. Who knows. But I really liked challenging myself and putting myself out there in a different way and meeting these amazing women. I am still very good friends with many of them and we talk.
Collaboration #6: Guest trainers
This one is around inviting someone to be a guest trainer inside of my own online course. I get asked about this all the time. People will ask if I pay people to come into my course and teach on a specific topic or how that relationship looks.
I’ve never paid somebody to come into my course and teach, although I’m not against it, I just haven’t had that business model. But in the early years when I didn’t have a lot to offer (I didn’t have thousands of people on my email list or inside my programs) I would do an exchange.
If somebody would come into my course and teach some content I would then go into their course and teach some content that wasn’t their specialty. We would essentially trade content. These days, because I’ve built a name for myself and I have a lot of people in my courses and I have some really good friendships, all I need to do is ask.
All they need to do is ask me as well. Again, it’s not a tit for tat. We’re not keeping score. However, I think our friendships are strong enough they know that if they need me I’m there and I know they feel the same way.
There is a little caveat to that as well. Let me explain this one. I decided to choose Jasmine Star as my example because she is teaching inside of List-Builder’s Lab 2.0. By the time this episode goes live I will have already live launched List-Builder’s Lab 2.0 and likely the cart is closed.
We will open it up in an evergreen capacity pretty soon but the live launch will be over so many of you will be in the course, I hope. You will get a training from Jasmine Star. Let me back up how this relationship came about because I think that’s important. I think it’s good for you to hear how these relationships came about to maybe push you out of your comfort zone just a little bit.
James Wedmore has a mastermind. By the way, it’s an amazing mastermind. He invited me to be one of the very first speakers at his actual mastermind. I traveled to San Francisco and got to speak on launching. Then he invited me to stay the entire time.
At first I didn’t know. I felt it might be kind of weird because at the time it was a pretty small mastermind and I didn’t want to be in the way. But I thought he invited me so I did it. I stayed and I just fell in love with everybody in his mastermind. I got to learn about their businesses, where they were struggling, James invited me to add my insight when I had anything to say. So it was a cool experience.
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Jasmine Star was at that event. She took some pictures for me and James and she instantly became a friend. I don’t know, sometimes you meet some people and you get them, they get you, I like that person. That was Jasmine.
The thing is, it could have ended right there. This is the part I want you to pay close attention to. Instead, we made an effort to stay in touch after the mastermind. We ended up texting each other and chatting with each other. I asked her a question about social media. I loved her answer so I invited her on my podcast.
She would ask me questions about launching and webinars. It was a really good working relationship that slowly, over the year, kind of turned into a really good friendship. I probably shouldn’t admit this but a lot of my friendships start with business and then they kind of go into the real friendship mode, maybe because I’ve always got business on my mind. But that’s okay because they are true, real, dear friendships to me, especially as they are nurtured over time.
That’s how I met Jasmine. In addition to that, let’s talk about what I brought to the table and what she brought to the table in terms of her training inside of List-Builder’s Lab 2.0. What I brought to the table is what I already mentioned. List-Builder’s Lab, the first program had a few thousand people already in it and they all got the upgraded program so she was going to get in front of thousands of people anyway.
Then I was doing a live launch for 2.0 so we would bring more people into the program. She knew she was going to get in front of an ideal audience for her. The people in my audience are going to love what she was going to share and they are likely going to start following her on social media and getting to know her more if they aren’t already. They will also get on her email list and she is attracting a bigger audience so that’s a win, for sure.
What Jasmine brought to the table is knowledge that I do not have. It already compliments what I’m teaching inside of List-Builder’s Lab. There is a section in List-Builder’s Lab 2.0 around social media. What I knew my students struggled with when it came to social media was what their captions should be, what images they should post, how often they should post, whether they should get a plan together, and although I can speak to that I felt that Jasmine could do it a whole lot better.
Plus, here’s the caveat I mentioned earlier, Jasmine has a service called Social Curator. Every single month you get a group of stock images and then captions to kind of inspire you. She does a caption that you probably aren’t going to copy and paste but at least it will spark some ideas for you own caption because we have all had that caption freeze where you don’t know what to write. Or is this just me? I hope I’m not alone. It definitely has happened to me enough times.
I think Social Curator is an excellent service so I asked her to come into my program to talk about what to post and when to post and how to put an entire social media plan together in a day (one month’s worth of content in a day) and I asked her to tell my audience about Social Curator because we don’t sell a lot of stuff inside of my programs.
However, if there is a service or tool that I think can take things to the next level (meaning take my program and make it even more valuable) then I will definitely mention it with no hard sales, must a mention, and that’s exactly what she did.
Now Jasmine is inside my course. I think she’s going to add immense value and our friendship continues. So, how has it evolved? Like I said, it’s like a true friendship. What we’ve done is make a date every single month to get together. I live in Carlsbad, California. Jasmine lives in Newport Beach. Kind of in the middle is San Clemente, a really cute beach town. Once a month, margaritas and business talk and personal talk so it’s really fun.
We’ve got to make the time and make the effort and I think that’s what’s important about relationship in general. That’s Collaboration #6. Let’s move on to the final collaboration.
Collaboration #7: Rick Mulready
This is with somebody you probably already know very well if you listen to my podcast and that is Mr. Rick Mulready. Rick is a regular guest on this show but I thought I would talk to you a little bit about that relationship in terms of getting Rick on the show, what I bring to the table, what he brings to the table, because this was an easy, easy collaboration that you might want to look into as well. Let’s talk about it.
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I met Rick through Pat Flynn. Rick and Pat were friends. I’m not sure how they became friends but Pat said he wanted to introduce me to a guy named Rick who was really cool. He thought we would really have some great conversations.
I don’t like random coffee dates. They make me very nervous because I am thinking, “I don’t know this person. What are we going to talk about?”
Rick contacted me and asked if I wanted to meet at Starbucks. I was thinking, “Not really,” but he is a friend of Pat Flynn’s so I felt like I should just say, “yes”. So I met with Rick and I remember I was leaving my house and I looked at Hobie and said, “I hope I’m back in 30 minutes. I’ve got to meet with this random guy that I don’t know but I said I would do it.”
I was dreading it. Yeah, great attitude, right? Get it together Amy. I left the house, I met Rick, and within five minutes I was thinking this guy was really cool. He’s down to earth. He’s easy to talk to. He’s not all about himself. You guys have been there, right?
You go to a coffee date with someone that won’t stop talking about themselves. You wonder what you’re doing there. Or, the worst yet, you go to a coffee date and you don’t realize that you’re there because someone wants to pick your brain the entire time. I hate that. I just feel totally sabotaged when that happens. I think I am going to a coffee date to have great conversation and learn about the person and they can learn about me. Then I realize they just want free advice. I hate those kind of coffee dates.
That’s why I’m probably so apprehensive. They have happened to me more often than not. But not with Rick. It wasn’t anything like that and we became fast friends. In the beginning we really didn’t collaborate. We just met on a pretty regular basis and we talked shop. Specifically, we talked a lot about Facebook advertising and all things online marketing.
We live pretty close to each other so it was a Starbucks date here and there and then it became pretty regular and it was just so valuable. Then we were talking one day and I thought, “You know what, Rick? You know so much more about Facebook advertising than I do. I know a lot. However, you take it to a whole new level.”
He teaches more of the advanced strategy. A lot of time when I’m teaching Facebook advertising inside any of my programs it’s really how to get started with it because a lot of my students are just getting going or they need some refresher.
It’s not those advanced strategies. I kind of leave those with Rick and I tell my audience, “When you’re ready to take ads to the next level you’ve got to check out Rick.”
We were talking about this one day and I thought he should be a regular on my show. We had just done a podcast together and I love our energy together. I love that we both have ad experiences that we can talk about. But I can ask him questions that my students are having and he can take it to the next level.
What we’ve done is probably every six weeks, sometimes it’s more, but we make it pretty regular that Rick comes on my podcast. I always make sure I survey my Facebook groups and say, “Rick’s coming on the show. What do you want us to talk about.” We both bring knowledge of Facebook ads and knowledge of growing an online business to the table. But I definitely leave the more advanced stuff for Rick and I let him dive into all of that.
That’s really where that relationship has gone and here’s the cool thing, Rick never comes to the table with an agenda. He doesn’t’ want to be on my podcast so that he can promote something. But, because he’s so generous with his time (and the cool thing is we’ll talk for an hour on the phone about the episode before we go live so we prepare for this stuff and want to make sure it’s a really, really good conversation) I feel that I want to give back to him.
When he comes on my show I know he’s getting exposure. I know he’s getting introduced to a lot of people if they don’t already know him. But I also want to go the extra mile for him because he’s so generous with his time and so giving. So, if he has something coming up I’ll tell him to make sure to promote that special webinar he has coming up or tell people what he’s working on.
I think he appreciates that but he never asks for it and I think that’s really cool as well. There’s nothing wrong with going after what you want but I also think that you need to come to the table with these relationships that are going to move into collaborations and give more than you receive.
I think that’s a really good place to wrap up this episode. Give more than you receive, come from a place of service in that collaboration, and really let go of all expectations. When you do that some pretty magical things will happen. I have no doubt in my mind.
So there you have it. Let me give you some marching orders if you want to make your time with me more actionable. That is to grab the freebie for this episode where I take you a little bit behind the scenes and give you a checklist of the questions I ask myself before I get into any collaboration.
Go to https://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/180download and you can grab the list of questions right away. You might not need them right now but I promise you, you will need them down the road. The other thing I’ll encourage you to do is to put together (I mentioned this earlier) a short list of people that might be your peers.
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Make a list of people that it would probably be easy to do a collaboration with and you see some really good alignment with. Then I want you to put together a very short list of a few influencers that, down the road, you would love to collaborate with. Write two or three names that might feel out of touch right now. However, they are now on your radar and that means you are going to work to engage with them authentically as much as possible.
Social media is probably the best place to do it but maybe if you run into them at a live event you make an effort to say, “Hello” and let them know what you love about their content or what you admire about what they’re doing.
Put that short list of your peers together and then a few of those influencers that feel out of reach right now but won’t necessarily always be out of reach. Go after it. Do what you can to make it happen.
Thank you so much for coming on this journey with me. I hope you found a lot of value in this episode. My hope is that you walk away knowing there is more than one way to collaborate. It’s not always about finding affiliates to promote your online training programs. There are live workshops and workshops in real life.
There are guests you can have on your podcast on a regular basis. There are people you can invite to be trainers inside of your own program. There are a lot of different ways to collaborate so open your mind around your possibilities and I cannot wait to hear what you create.
Have a wonderful day. I’ll see you next week. Bye for now.
