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Business success is dependent on a solid financial foundation & success looks different to everyone & there is a lack of equity of access to resources and information for small business owners and independent contractors & there is a societal narrative making us believe “balance” is our ultimate goal & … There are so many “&”s that impact being your own boss. Let’s have some frank discussions on the basics of business with a holistic focus on everything that helps business owners define and find success.
Molly 0:09
Hello. I am Molly Beyer, host of the Ambiguous &: Business Basics and Beyond, a podcast where we have frank discussions on the basics of business with a holistic focus on everything that helps business owners define and find success. There are so many ands that impact being your own boss. Join us as we explore all these ands and more. Like, subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts, and let's explore these ambiguous ands.
0:39
Hello and welcome to the Ambiguous &: Business Basics and Beyond. I'm your host, Molly Beyer, and I'm here to lead you through frank and holistic conversations on the basics of business. Today, we're stepping it back into the buyer's journey, and we're going to view it from a macro perspective. In our last conversation, we talked about joining the conversation happening in our ideal client's head to help direct them to our service. When we pull out from focusing on a single transaction, we start to see that our entire lives are essentially a buying journey, and as business owners, we need to understand both the micro and macro levels of that journey. The micro level is about engaging with the 1% of buyers who are ready to buy right now, while nurturing the other 99% with consistent touch points. That's something we're going to dive into in our next episode. The macro level is about positioning ourselves at the right stage in the buyer's window for our services. One really powerful way to leverage this is through a joint venture event chain. This involves strategically partnering with businesses that serve the same ideal client, but at different points in their journey. By aligning with businesses before, during and after our services, we're creating a seamless client experience while expanding our regional impact. In these event chains, we can start to see areas that to create joint adventures, whether there are referral partnerships or affiliate partnerships or even just really deep collaborations.
2:06
One of the most common examples of successful event chains is weddings. It's one that everybody knows about, and you can very clearly create it in your own head. You start with a jeweler for an engagement ring. Go to a wedding planner if you're doing that, or if you're planning it on your own, you could figure it all out. From there, you start engaging with venues for ceremony and reception, caterers, wedding dress shops, florists, bakers for wedding cakes, printers for invitations, photographers. So what we're doing in a referral partnership, is creating relationships with those above and below us in an event chain as trusted referral partners. A wedding planner, for instance, is a natural referral hub, in this chain referring to everyone, clients, florists, caterers, photographers and more. An affiliate partnership goes a step beyond a referral partnership. So there's still a referral but it comes with a financial incentive. If a florist creates a partnership with a dress shop that pays them 10% of every referral sale, that creates a strong incentive for the dress shop to send them referrals. So if you have an average wedding flower sale of $2,000 a single referral per month from that dress shop produces for the florist an additional 24,000 a year in revenue with only a cost of 2400 to that dress shop in affiliate payouts. That's an over $20,000 increase in profit for that florist that they would not have had without that single affiliate referral per month. So this florist can go farther than that and create partnerships with the people down level as well, if they say, partner with a baker who makes wedding cakes where the florist is receiving 10% of each referred sale. If we assume $500 a cake, that's an extra $50 per referral, if there's even just one a month, that's $600 a year, simply for sending business their way. And the florists can establish relationships with other bakers, multiple bakers, wedding vendors in other areas as well, photographers, caterers, printers. This additional affiliate income with all of those relationships can add up significantly.
4:28
There's two important caveats when creating affiliate partnerships, however. One, avoid creating relationships just for the affiliate income. Every referral you give is an extension of your credibility. As we discussed in the last episode, you've positioned yourself as the person best suited to solve your client's problems. If you refer them to somebody who doesn't need that same level of service or expertise, it reflects poorly on you. Trust is the foundation of strong business, and bad referrals can quickly damage that. The second caveat is to disclose affiliate partnerships wherever possible, or, I guess, wherever appropriate. Transparency builds trust. I personally disclose affiliate relationships, letting my clients know that I'm going to benefit financially from some of these referrals, but then I'm only recommending those that I truly believe in. I generally will give a couple of different options in these situations as well, so that they get to find the right person for them, regardless of what it's going to do. For me, I think this honesty strengthens my credibility, and so it's maybe not necessary or appropriate in all situations. But I also appreciate knowing when a referral comes with a financial incentive. And I really think other people believe that as well.
5:45
Our next opportunity is collaborations, and these are often a missed opportunity, but they can really offer a wide range of benefits for businesses as well as the business's clients. So the benefits of collaborations is you're expanding your audience to get greater visibility. When we partner with another business, we get exposed to their existing audience, and so then we can really get access to warm leads that are already going to trust us, because again, we're being lent credibility from that audience. We also have the opportunity to create joint events, webinars, content collaborations, these things to reach people who may not have found you otherwise. Collaborations also increase credibility and trust, because again, when a trusted brand or expert vouches for you, it boosts your authority in the industry, because again, customers want to do business with people that they know, like and trust, and if they get sent to you by somebody that they trust, they already feel like they know and trust you. Another benefit is more sales and revenue growth, and this is in addition to referral and affiliate partnerships. Things like cross promotions allow businesses to leverage each other's strengths and lead to higher conversion rates for each and also when you're serving the same audience with another business, but you don't necessarily compete, you can increase the lifetime customer value by offering complimentary services or products.
7:14
Another benefit is cost effective marketing and lower acquisition costs, because joint ventures allow businesses to share marketing costs, like ads or event costs, the cost of content creation. You get to spread that over the two businesses, so you're not taking as much on your own. So instead of those spending 1000s on, you know, paid ads, you can gain more organic exposure too, through your partner's audience. And if you're doing the ads again, you can split that with the person you're doing it with. Another benefit is faster business growth and new opportunities, because collaborations open doors to new markets, industries, and high value partnerships, and you will probably discover revenue streams through partnerships that you had never considered before. Another benefit is increased innovation and creativity. Working with others brings fresh perspective and ideas and also new strategies to your business. Brainstorming with another collaborator often leads to, again, new offers, new services or unique approaches you would not have thought of alone.
8:15
Another benefit is reduced workload and shared responsibility, because, again, just like the money, joint ventures distribute the workload. They allow each party to focus on their strengths in the situation, so nobody is giving too much. If one partner is not great at content creation and the other isn't great at lead generation, both benefit from this synergistic effort. You also have the benefit of stronger brand positioning, because if you're collaborating with respected figures in their industry, then it elevates your brand perception as well. And if you partnered with high caliber experts, your brand is automatically associated with their credibility.
8:55
Another benefit is more engaging and valuable customer experience. When businesses work together, they can provide seamless experiences for their customers. So like a business coach could refer on to an accountant could refer on to a marketing strategist, the three of them teaming up together offers a much easier experience for their clients and going out and finding those people on their own, so they get that really comprehensive solution, rather than a piecemeal sort of service.
9:24
And the final benefit is long term strategic relationships. Strong collaborations lead to ongoing partnerships, recurring referrals and even new joint ventures down the line. Some of the best collaborations lead to long term business relationships that continue to drive your growth for years to come. If you're looking to expand your reach, grow faster and add more value to your audience, collaborations should be a part of your business strategy, but many business owners struggle to see how this applies to their industry. I know I was one of them, so let's break this down with a few examples, using industries from our last episode and looking at all different levels of the collaboration, including referral partners for before and after in those event chains, as well as collaborations during the actual service that you're providing. So looking back at our business coach, remember they were scaling entrepreneurs without burnout. That is their event chain that they're in. So the people who are going to be ahead of them in that event chain who could be referral or affiliate partners with them, or people to collaborate with, people like brand strategists, business attorneys, so that collaboration could look like workshopping on branding and legal foundations, while the business coach is working with the client, they could collaborate with a systems consultant to have a live event on scaling with strategy and automation. After the business coach is done working with them, they can then refer them onto PR agencies or High Ticket Sales coaches. There's also an opportunity for collaboration here, creating a master class on marketing and closing high value deals, looking at our marketing consultant, they were in the profitable marketing for small businesses event chain, before then, we're looking at web designers and brand agencies. Collaboration opportunities here, branding and website optimization workshop. While working with the client, the marketing consultant could also collaborate with an ad strategist to have a strategy session on organic and paid marketing. After working with the marketing consultant, we can move them on, then to a CRM software provider or a copywriting agency. We can also collaborate with them on a webinar on automation and conversion copy. Our fitness coach again, in the strength and energy for business professionals event chain, before we're looking at maybe a nutritionist or meal prep service, here's an opportunity to collaborate on a workshop on meal prepping and nutrition. While working with those clients, the fitness coach could collaborate with a physical therapist doing a live session on functional training and mobility. After working with the fitness coach, we can move them on to a mindset coach or stress management expert. And here we have the opportunity to collaborate, maybe on a seminar on sustainable fitness habits. So why does this work? It works because each event naturally leads to the next. It keeps your clients engaged. The partners are benefiting from the mutual referrals and the shared audiences, and the clients receive a complete transformation, making each step you move them through even more valuable. But if we pull back even farther, we see that the buying journey extends well beyond a single moment. So for our wedding event chain, after marriage, many couples begin searching for their first home. So we can expand this event chain further to add mortgage consultants and realtors. This is why we want to look at that greater buying journey, because understanding this big picture allows us to create even more strategic partnerships that benefit everyone involved. We also want to consider that sometimes our strongest referral sources don't come from these obvious connections. So think about your own business. Who is regularly referring clients to you? Are they in one of these natural contact spheres, or is it from somewhere completely unexpected? And also think about who you are regularly referring clients to. A mortgage consultant in my network, for example, receives a surprising number of referrals from a flooring contractor. Why? Because homeowners considering flooring renovations often discuss long term plans, including selling their home or refinancing, which leads naturally to a mortgage conversation. In my own business, I've realized that my down event chain includes therapists and life coaches just as much as it does tax and insurance professionals. As deep as I get with people on their finances, we often uncover personal and emotional challenges that a mindset shift or coach could really help with, even more so than back taxes or investment strategies.
13:52
So if you're unsure of where to start, again, look at your past clients. Where did they come from? What service is it? Did they seek before and after working with you, or during working with you? And Are there patterns in the types of businesses that they interacted with? Using tools like CRM tagging, referral tracking or client surveys, can also help you uncover some of those potential partnerships that are aligning with your clients natural journey. The point is, that the more we align our efforts with that macro level journey, the more impact and success we can generate.
14:26
Thank you again, so much for hanging out with us today. In our next episode, again, we're going to zoom in further, looking at that buyer's journey through a micro lens. Until then, we'd love to hear your feedback on today's episode, as well as any requests for future content. Drop a comment or suggestion and join us next time for more frank and holistic conversations on the basics of business. Please also like, subscribe or follow so you never miss an episode and until next time, I'm Molly Beyer, and this has been the Ambiguous &: Business Basics and Beyond. Have a wonderful day.