Collaboration it is a hot word and topic right now and it is a great way to grow your business. So how are people collaborating and why are people collaborating and how can you collaborate? Collaboration is where there is a mutually beneficial opportunity for two or more parties to come together, who have similar audiences but provide different products and services, where you can share each other’s community contacts in the right way. For example, I might find somebody who has the same audience as me; which is women in business, but they do something completely different to me. To give you an example, I actually work with a number of copywriters and web designers and graphic designers around branding when I am coaching clients.

I do the business and the brand coaching but to deliver the physical elements, I outsource some of those things a lot of the time. The great thing is that the people that I use and I work with get clients who are looking to build a website, have copy done etc, but are also looking for a business coach. They can then refer that person on to me. Now that’s obviously a great referral opportunity where we can collaborate and give each other business, but we could also potentially say okay well lets maybe give people a great package if we work together and we will send that email out to all of your subscribers and we will send it out to all of my subscribers so that they can get to know you as a business.

They can get to know what you do, who you are and the fact that we work together. If my community trusts me and I am promoting this other person, then there's definitely a sense that this person is trustworthy as well because you trust me and I am recommending them. That's another thing that you can do is obviously not only work together on different projects, but you can refer each other to different clients as well as then potentially promote each other to your communities. That's how you can collaborate. A lot of times there might be more benefit to one person than the other, but down the track the tables can turn.

For example another way that you can collaborate is to do a service swap, so for example I might give somebody a ticket to Epic and they might provide me with a product or service. Then we look at that as a sponsorship. There's a lot of different ways that you can look to collaborate with people. You just need to find people who’s brand really resonates with you, where you build a trusting relationship and you feel really comfortable with them. They’ve got a similar audience to you or they’ve got a product or service that can compliment what you do.

Obviously collaboration when you are building premium packages is also a great way to go. For example, I might have a package that's several thousand dollars. Not only do you get business coaching but then you also get a website and branding and copywriting and financial coaching or whatever it might be.  Think about the different ways that you can collaborate, don’t be shy. Just ask people if you think that there is brand synergy there with them, because the other thing that you want to make sure of is that of there is a brand alignment. You don’t want somebody who is totally off the charts and polar opposite to your band. That can polarize your community. You just need to make sure there's a synergy, there's a comfort level there where the person that you are wanting to collaborate with would also be a good person for your community to get in connection or contact with as well.

Those are just a few ideas. If you’ve got any comments or any tips on what collaborations have really worked for you, I'd love to hear about them. Leave any comments in the comments section below.