Content Creator Collaboration for Audience Growth

[00:00:00] The Women Conquer Business show is an educational how-to women in business podcast. That features stories, marketing news and real life experiences from fun and friendly hosts. Jen McFarland and Shelley Carney. Join us as we dive into the details. So you can slay marketing, overwhelm, streamline processes, and amplify your.

[00:00:22] You'll learn strategies and tactics, leadership skills, and practical advice from successful women entrepreneurs. To help you grow, nurture, and sustain your business.

[00:00:36] Whoa. Hello and welcome to Women Conquer Business. I'm Jen McFarland. Hi, I'm Shelley Carney. Whoa. Hey, Shelley's here. Shelley's in the house today. We're gonna talk about content creator, collaboration for audience growth. The fastest way to grow your audience is to. Be really scarcity mindset and never share with anyone.

[00:00:58] No, what actually that's wrong. the fastest way to grow your audience is to join forces through collaboration with other creators. It means sharing. And sometimes it means sharing with people who are in adjacent or maybe who even do the same thing as you. And there are many ways to do that. And there are a lot of imaginative people out there to collaborate with like us that's.

[00:01:21] But it's all about how do you get started? Who can you collaborate with? What's the best way to reach out and work with new people. It comes down to relationship building and networking with other people, coaches, creators, speakers. That's exactly what we're gonna talk about in this episode, we'll share how beginners get started with cross promotion and other simple one time collaboration efforts, and then take you all the way through to joint ventures and affiliate marketing.

[00:01:46] How you doing today? Shelley?

[00:01:48] I'm super, I'm having a good week. Toby and I yesterday, we drove to elephant Butte. Toby and I have been, of course I talked about this last week. So you can continue in the saga with us. Toby and I have been [00:02:00] reanalyzing. What do we wanna do with our news and views content?

[00:02:03] Are people happy with it? How can we grow that audience? And so we did a focus group Tuesday night and we had a couple of people email us and send us voicemail messages to tell us what's going on. What do they wanna see more of? What do they like? What would they like us to add in to our show and what we heard.

[00:02:23] Was, and now keep in mind, this is the same people that have been with us since we were doing treasure hunting. They, what they

[00:02:30] liked, they want treasure

[00:02:31] hunting. They do a little bit, but what they liked the most was the outdoorsiness have Toby and I going outdoors. In New Mexico showing everybody what New Mexico looks like, what's going on in New Mexico.

[00:02:43] We decided to go ahead and start doing more of that because it's fun for us too, to get out and make, gives us a push to get out in nature and do our video skills. So yesterday we drove down to elephant Butte lake park, which is about two and a half hours south of here. Cool. Yeah. So you take I 25, about two and a half hours and you're there.

[00:03:04] And it's a beautiful park. It's very nice for boaters and water sports people. The unfortunate thing is the water has gone down to levels to where it was when the lake was first created when they put the dam up. And so it's very low and we we did some drone footage. We did the on the gimble footage and we.

[00:03:27] We did an interview with somebody who was working there and got his opinion. He's been there 20 years and he got to talk about what, how he uses the lake, how he works with people what's going on in the town. Because of the economy, because of all of the reduction in use of the lake.

[00:03:43] So it was really fascinating and

[00:03:45] we're like, That's amazing latest journal. You were journalists. Exactly. Going back to being journalists. That's very exciting.

[00:03:52] Yeah. So we were excited about it. We shared that last night. We hadn't didn't have we got back at six o'clock and we had to do a seven o'clock show, so we didn't [00:04:00] have time to edit cuz we don't have a team of editors.

[00:04:02] So we just showed

[00:04:03] clips. Don't have a team of editors yet. .

[00:04:06] So we just showed clips and said, here's what's going on. And here's who we talked to. We showed the little interview we did with the man and it was, I think it was really good.

[00:04:16] Oh, that's awesome. And to see how it goes. Drone footage and gimble.

[00:04:21] Those are things that, so I have a gimble, but it is not as easy as it looks. That's true. I will just, that's true. Say that. And yeah, I would like to learn more about how to do that stuff too. That's fascinating to me, but I, and I love New Mexico. I am very concerned with the climate emergency that we're having.

[00:04:36] how, if it's a viable place to live anymore. I've been fascinated with that, cuz I really loved Taos and yeah. Other parts, truth or consequences, New Mexico. I love that. That's not far from elephant Butte. Oh really? Oh wow. That's so cool. Yeah. So I'm like really in, into all of that.

[00:04:53] And I lived in Arizona for five years. I always preferred the more rural areas. I preferred New Mexico. I preferred going up to Flagstaff in different parts. It's really. That's cool. I think that's the right track. I love that. You ask people. Yeah, we should ask. Hey everybody, what would you like speaking on about the Women Conquer Business show?

[00:05:11] That's right. We wanna know, we should ask people. We wanna know we would cause we have all this

[00:05:15] knowledge, but we don't know which pieces of it interest you guys.

[00:05:20] Exactly. That's right. So in terms of me, so there's all kinds of stuff, I would say that even if you're, you are in marketing, launching something new and doing something new is stressful.

[00:05:32] Yeah. And I have been read revving. Like I was, I've been sharing with like friends. I've been, I feel like I've been at like full throttle for a long time to the point where it got stuck there, and I've had like migraines and all kinds of stuff because of just launching things and sending out emails and having emails that aren't so much Hey, here's how you.

[00:05:55] Something or here's how to be helpful when you teach a [00:06:00] lot. Like I have been, and I get a lot of clients from speaking engagements where I'm teaching. I don't do a lot of like sales emails. It can be really stressful. And I think I've been trying to decide whether or not to share that on here, but I think it's really important for people to realize it's hard for everybody.

[00:06:17] But the more you do it, the more you incorporate it into your message, the easier

[00:06:20] it gets, the easier it gets. And I would say that even, today I know that I'm gonna do some more and it, and I feel okay with it, but it has taken I guess like ripping off the bandaid again on that, because I haven't had to do it.

[00:06:33] Women Conquer Business is at a point now where it. It does its thing and I get clients and that works, and I'm busy and everything, but to grow a membership, it's a different product. , it's a different animal. And so I realized that my little sales muscle was a had weakened since the pandemic, because my business shifted so much.

[00:06:57] So I've had all of that going on and then. But, one of the big courses that we released and it was actually before we became a membership site, we shifted gears because we realized at the Strategic Marketing Membership, we didn't wanna be doing launch after launch and constantly be selling individual courses.

[00:07:13] I released something called find the right marketing tools for your small business. And it's like a three steps formula that really goes into like how to investigate. Talk to software providers and come together, come up with what are basically, what is it that you need? And then if you still need to hire somebody to come and help you pick the right thing it will be there for you.

[00:07:39] So I re we released that originally as a standalone course and in the process of doing that, I also made it into an audio book and it has taken . I think I did that back in. February and March. and it has finally released on audible. [00:08:00] It apparently released two days ago, and I didn't know about it, talk about being a dork.

[00:08:04] I go on audible and I search for my own name and then today I found it and I was like, holy cow. Awesome. I'm on audible. So if you are interested in that, it's one credit on audible, it's called find the right marketing tools for your small business and it includes. A few links to the resources that will help you.

[00:08:24] It's not as robust as if you were to join our membership, but it is a good way to learn more about the philosophy, how we teach at the Strategic Marketing Membership, how all of that. How all of that works. So it's very exciting. And yeah, just do a search for Jen McFarland on audible. Guess what? You'll also find the Women Conquer Business show there, cuz it's already, it's also on there.

[00:08:49] Yeah. So that's exciting. And other than that, we have a massive heat wave. So if you are watching the news and hearing about the Pacific Northwest heat wave, we are in that I am. I am. I am fine with heat. I lived in Arizona and I'm not gonna complain like my complaining is all about the raining so I'm not gonna complain about it being too sunny.

[00:09:14] I am grateful that we had all of the rain because it makes it easier to navigate. We have a lot of trees. We do end up with a lot of forest fires. Hopefully it rained enough. That things will be okay. But aside from that I just want safety for people who don't have air conditioning, cuz we I don't know how we lucked into it, but we got a house that has AC, which is a rare thing up here.

[00:09:36] Mm. So that's been pretty nice. And also in my life, my two dogs have been obnoxious all morning long, so I booted them out well before the podcast. Cause I didn't wanna deal with that noise.

[00:09:53] So that's me. Hi, I'm just telling you all of the things that's good. Oh what do you have on the breaking news side?

[00:09:59] Breaking news.

[00:09:59] [00:10:00] Since Jen brought up last week about people gen Z people looking at TikTok and Instagram for, in, for information for where to eat and That sort of thing. I found this a vari cast survey found 34% of gen Z turned a TikTok for financial advice while 33% get money tips from YouTube. So what does that tell us?

[00:10:23] If you are a money person of financial guide of some sort. In any capacity whatsoever, make sure you're sharing that information on TikTok and YouTube, because you're going to be able to expand your brand in that way.

[00:10:39] Yeah. I'm, I've really beginning to turn the tide on my views on TikTok.

[00:10:44] I'll be really interested to see what the updated statistics are on TikTok. When they're released. I always go by the pew research center. They go through, they. It's a longitudinal study at this point, since the beginning of social media last year, it really looked like it was all younger, mostly overseas people And now this year it's if you have a local business, people are searching local for TikTok. I read this morning that TikTok is going after Spotify and Amazon and releasing, they filed a trademark, I believe for TikTok music. It's growing, people are using it for search.

[00:11:23] People are also using Reddit for search, which I find absolutely fascinating. And I was like, really? And then last week I was like, oh, this is why. So we have a lot of people who live on the streets here in Portland. We have a lot of homelessness house houseless individuals who live on the streets and there was a large encampment by a local business.

[00:11:44] And they had a huge fire. This is like a big business Hopworks brewery. It's on a major street owned run by the state called Powell, not too far from my house. And. There was a huge fire, not covered by the news, but I could find the fire. I found it [00:12:00] first on Twitter. And then I was like, where is this coming from?

[00:12:04] And it came from Reddit. And then it was never covered by the news. So in terms of where you find information, it is. Starting to change. And so when you, if you can get beyond the whole why would somebody look for a local business on TikTok? Or why would somebody get their news somewhere else?

[00:12:22] If you can get beyond that mental shift, you will find that there's a lot going on out there in other places like Reddit never used to be a place where you could reliably go for. You

[00:12:35] know other than just mean people being mean to each other people . Yeah.

[00:12:39] We were before the show, we were going through my checklist for how I promoted the podcast.

[00:12:44] And then there was an item on there that said promoted on Reddit, and I was looking at that. And thinking, gosh, why did I stop doing that? And it was because it was it just felt like a dumpster fire over there. Yeah.

[00:12:55] When Toby and I started a gypsies kiss in 2017, we tried that.

[00:13:00] We went to Reddit, we went on the forest fin treasure Reddits. Yeah. And they were like, get outta here. You don't know anything renting. Everyone's like, okay. We're done here.

[00:13:10] Yeah. So there's a shift happening, but you have to find those little corners of the internet. So understand that things are happening with TikTok things are happening.

[00:13:20] With Reddit, all these places, the other, let's see, what's the other breaking news that I read. Oh yeah. Social shopping. Before we get to the, of course, Google messing around with cookies. Some more. When we first relaunched this podcast, we talked about Social shopping. So this is a little bit different than social selling is when you share a lot on social.

[00:13:40] And instead of you don't just slide right into the DMS , but there is a methodology for how you use social media to eventually sell your product. Unfortunately, a lot of people do that with just the here's my stuff, which is jamming a business card down somebody's throat. If you were in person, there's actually a methodology for how you.

[00:13:58] Really teach people about [00:14:00] your product and then ultimately do some social service selling. There is, we need,

[00:14:05] there's a manual

[00:14:05] for this. We need this manual. , that's a separate podcast episode. But when we started the show, if you remember, I was talking about how Pinterest and TikTok and all these platforms were going to what I called a QVC social shopping thing, where you could like, sell products and things like that.

[00:14:24] That never took off. And I don't know if it's because people like me are like, it's like QVC, it's taking off in other parts of the world, but if your customers are primarily in, America, it's just not really taken off. A lot of the platforms are pulling back from that, which is interesting.

[00:14:40] So that's one of the reasons why you always wanna have your own platform versus I'm

[00:14:45] a theory on that. What's that? I think that. That people are like, if I wanted to go shopping, I would go to Amazon YouTube or whoever, wherever they're at exactly Twitter or whatever. If I wanted this shop, I would go to Amazon and I would go buy something.

[00:15:03] I don't want to be sold something I want to buy it.

[00:15:05] And that's what I mean about social. Totally selling struggle with some of these alliterations, but social selling and social shopping. When I teach people about marketing, especially people who are just getting started, it is fundamentally that social media, isn't a transactional channel.

[00:15:24] And I think that's exactly what you said. People don't go there to just buy stuff. Yeah. So what we're seeing is that at least in states, that's playing. And it's not really surprising for people like me. I was intrigued by it and I said, oh this is interesting. So it is definitely something to watch.

[00:15:40] We'll see if it comes back. I don't know. But right now that's on the back burner, the idea that you can go on these platforms, they have, ways for creators to go on and share. I think at the beginning it was you can share your recipes on Pinterest and sell them by showing people the wonderful dishes you can make or things like that.

[00:15:58] That's not working out for [00:16:00] people. If that's part of your strategy, just to understand it, maybe going away from certain platforms, And I think it's for the exact reason that you said, yeah, if you have something you can sell on Amazon people go to Amazon to buy it. Yeah.

[00:16:10] Things like that. You do want people to be aware of you.

[00:16:13] So it's good to have a presence there just for people to be able to find you that's the most important

[00:16:18] part. Yeah. Just understand people still it's just the shopping aspect. It's still just not there. For social. It is in other. So if you're selling, I think in Europe and some other parts of the world, then it's something to look at, but it's being pulled back in the us markets.

[00:16:32] So the big Shelley's like this is all kinds of stuff that was not in the show flow. So now to get to the point,

[00:16:39] now, Jen is reading my mind.

[00:16:41] When I saw TikTok, I was like, yeah, I might as well. I, I. Emailed myself, all kinds of marketing stories this morning. And so these are all the stories that I emailed myself.

[00:16:49] But so the big story that I wanted to share on here this week is that Google, of course, this is not surprising. They are pushing back the deadline for killing off cookies until at least 2024. So what cookies are, they are little pieces of code that are little packets that are downloaded when you go to a certain website, unless you have ad blockers.

[00:17:12] And then if you later see an ad, so say you go to buy slippers, you don't buy slippers. Or sometimes if you do, then you go to another website and pictures of those same slippers everywhere. So that's like retargeting, right? . And that happens because there was a little piece of code from that slipper website that was downloaded to your computer.

[00:17:32] And then if they are running. They're showing you those ads in other places that run ads. So like news sites sometimes they show up on blogs. Sometimes they show up on Facebook, videos, YouTube videos, if you see things again and again, you're like, how did they know? It's because of cookies.

[00:17:48] So basically in a nutshell, this is all Jen's thinking. And I think a lot of marketers thinking is that. Google never came up with anything to replace cookies [00:18:00] with that people are willing to live with. Every time they introduce something like affinity groups and different things, marketers are like, you're never gonna be able to do it.

[00:18:09] Privacy organizations are like this isn't any better than cookies. And Apple's doing all kinds of things around privacy that are basically killing off Facebook ads. So it's making it very difficult. There's just so many things going on. The environment is really up in the air. So it's really not a surprise, but if you are.

[00:18:27] Using things like Facebook pixels and Pinterest pixels and LinkedIn pixels, like you can still use all of that on your website. It can still do the tracking. All of that is still gonna work until at least 2024 until Google figures out. What to do, just understand that more and more people are using things like the brave browser they're using ad blockers.

[00:18:48] so many things that if you have all of those tracking things on there, It's becoming less and less effective. So there's a lot swirling around ads and it is making it very difficult for Google to figure. How they can become, can remain a multibillion dollar ad tech company. And it's okay. Kabillion's not a thing, but billions and billions every quarter is what they make from ad tech, how they can remain the top of that.

[00:19:17] And at the same time understand that technology is changing and people are really pushing back on being tracked so much. Yes. So we'll see what happens.

[00:19:29] Yes.

[00:19:33] I know that on my website, I just, I on Women Conquer Business, I just was like I'm done with all that. So I don't have Google analytics. I don't have any pixels on my website. I did everything I could to create a very privacy focused website at Women Conquer Business. And it's been great.

[00:19:51] So it means then that everybody can see all the content. If you have like ad blockers and stuff, you can go there and nothing is prevented. On other [00:20:00] websites you might not be able to see everything or you go to news sites, they want you to have everything turned on. And so they can, they make money from ads and yeah.

[00:20:09] So it's a much different thing.

[00:20:10] Yeah. I'd add. You and I both do curate on missing letter. And if some, and if I get suggested something, I go look at it first and if, oh yeah, it's a blog post with a whole

[00:20:20] bunch of ads all over it. Huge turnoff. I'm not sharing that. I don't do that. I'm not

[00:20:23] sharing that.

[00:20:24] And I'm, I don't share things in my newsletters that I send out if it's going to go to somewhere where there's a bunch of ads, so yeah. Your own you're if you're in business for. You don't wanna do that? Don't put ads on your stuff.

[00:20:40] It's if you can avoid it. I know that bloggers it, it's just not as I, I wrote about that in my newsletter.

[00:20:45] If you wanna build an affiliate marketing business based on all of those ads, all of those ads and all of those, click this link and I'm gonna make a little money. That's, Google's starting to penalize. You , even though they make a lot of money for it. It may, it might be a ranking factor issue, but it's also the, it's a real, it's becoming a turnoff for people.

[00:21:05] And then as a business owner of an affiliate business, like there are all these people who create like niche websites, it's I'm gonna talk about marshmallows and that's the only thing I'm gonna talk about. And then they send out affiliate links to all the different elements. I don't know why I picked marshmallows.

[00:21:19] Pretty bad example, actually, but you get my point. , and and so that just isn't working anymore. That's just not a viable option anymore to do that because if you, so for example, ConvertKit, a lot of people are big, ConvertKit affiliates, and they trashed their affiliate marketing to like totally make.

[00:21:39] Like a non-factor then all of the affiliate marketers freaked out and they've changed it back or partially changed it back. But that's the other thing that can happen at any time. So it's a really, it is a turnoff. I think people hate all that stuff.

[00:21:54] Or they ignore it. I there's times when I go to a blog and I'm just skipping down, I'm skipping all the [00:22:00] ads.

[00:22:00] I'm I see it. but I'm like, yeah, I see you because I've already gone to your website and I got the pic, the pixel, and now you're following me with my cookies and whatnot, but, and that's okay. You can be there, but I'm not gonna look at it. I'm not paying any attention to it. I, we've weeded out.

[00:22:16] We're just like, I don't see you.

[00:22:18] yeah I, yeah. I don't know. I don't know what the future is for ad tech. But they will find a way to push ads on us. I'm sure. It's like we were talking before the show about how Instagram is gonna start. 23% of all Instagram content is gonna be suggested. I think that's where it's probably gonna go.

[00:22:35] You're gonna be served up ads all the time. They're just not gonna be called ads, stop using it at that. It's just gonna be more. Oh, and that's by 20, 24. Is that right? That it was, or 20, 23 that like a quarter of all Instagram posts are gonna be suggested. And so what that means then is everybody's gonna be, a Kardashian and selling their wares on Instagram that actually the

[00:22:56] Kardashians came out against

[00:22:57] it.

[00:22:58] Oh, I'm sure they did. Yeah. Even though they're like the biggest. Yeah. Influencers out there cause they're gonna get hurt by it. I'm sure they're gonna get hurt by it. So anyway, that's all changing. It's all evolving. I wish I, so

[00:23:09] we're gonna give you some alternatives alternative methods other than, oh, are we shifting now?

[00:23:14] Yeah. Other than just putting ads all over your blog, we're gonna give you some alternatives to be seen and to start your way towards making money for your

[00:23:23] business. We're shifting into.

[00:23:28] Presentations

[00:23:29] entry presentation mode.

[00:23:34] So how do collaborations help you expand your audience?

[00:23:39] She when Jen and I collaborate on this podcast, for instance, her audience sees me, they might come and look at my things. My audience comes and sees her and they might go get on her newsletter email list and check her out on LinkedIn. So that [00:24:00] is how we grow our audience.

[00:24:02] One new audience at a time. And you can do it that way, or you can do bigger things, but so we're starting off with beginners at a beginner level and just talking about the easy things to do, and then working our way up towards more complicated things.

[00:24:17] Yeah. And it's interesting. I don't know if I've ever told you this Shelley, but when we first joined forces, I had shared with a colleague that you and I were doing this and they were, the first thing was like what are you getting out of it?

[00:24:28] And I'm. What do you mean? And almost I don't know if it was that like, like one of us was supposed to pay the other or something and I'm like, I'm getting out of it. That my show comes back. And I get to talk to somebody. Interesting. A, and we learn from each other, like it can be, and it gives

[00:24:46] you accountability to show up every week.

[00:24:48] Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And so the first thing is so just, so Shelley and I, we have separate businesses. and we signed an agreement before we started doing this. So when we talk about collaborations and stuff, we're still saying, you need to be careful, like we're not saying go into things, Willy nilly, but they can also be a heck of a lot of fun.

[00:25:08] Yeah, we have a lot of fun. We're enjoying getting to know each other. This collaboration is working for us because we're teaching each other things all the time. So bear in mind, we are both believers in collaborations. And it can really benefit you and your audience. Yeah, that's the first thing like each other's audience, they get notified.

[00:25:26] That's right. Yeah. Collaboration is basically using other people's audiences. And in return you are bringing along your audience to increase theirs. So it's a win-win situation.

[00:25:41] Exactly. And there are so many ways you can do it. So like on this one, we have a, an informal partnership. We signed something, but it's also that we can leave at any time.

[00:25:52] So that's why it's pretty informal. And we gave each other vague roles for what we're supposed to do. And we check in on that. That's why I was [00:26:00] talking earlier about how we went through my checklist, cuz I was like, oh. I hadn't been doing some of this stuff. So we do check-ins and things like that.

[00:26:06] So collaborations work really well. We have met interesting people talk to new people through this. That's one way of doing it. There are other methods of collaboration, for example, cross promotion. So when. Before Shelley was on the show. I had a cross promotion with another podcaster. We each made a little ad about our show and we ran ads on each other's shows to try and get more listeners.

[00:26:37] It was one way for us to boost each other. And that's one example of another type of cross promotion. Excuse me, cross promotion. Yeah.

[00:26:47] Yeah. And you can do it with. Other for instance, we do production for our clients and we have clients who would work with us. They would tell their friends and colleagues about the show that they were doing.

[00:27:01] Look, I'm doing this live stream every week. I hope you'll check it out and they'll go, oh, that's really great. How did you make that happen? And then we get that referral. We get. Pro, cross promotion type of a referral from our client. He says I'm using AGK media studio and they handle everything and they're great.

[00:27:19] So go visit them and check them out and, work with them. So referrals is a, is one way of, getting started with that.

[00:27:27] Exactly and that's, I guess another form of collaboration. I go out, I speak to a lot of groups and I do my best to do a great job. And then I can't tell you how many clients I've had that come to me as a result of speaking.

[00:27:40] And it's not the people necessarily, I one of my best clients came not from them. Seeing me directly, somebody else saw me and said, oh, you should talk to Jen. I saw her speak at SBDC. So the small business development center, and then. It was like, I don't know, a year later it

[00:27:58] appeared in front of somebody else's [00:28:00] audience.

[00:28:01] And from that you got a referral. Exactly. So you open up those

[00:28:04] opportunities when you do that. Absolutely. And like a lot of people are like that's a no go because I don't get to sell from the stage. Like it's teaching is what I do. And I've never turned that down because I'm really passionate about helping other people a and B I don't have to sell from.

[00:28:23] Stage, so to speak, to sell, right? Like part of what makes it being sales is that you say things throughout, like when I've helped people, this is a result that I've gotten as a result of this specific tactic, or you talk about things and you share your expertise and by providing value to others, this is my primary marketing tool.

[00:28:46] I provide value to others. People come to. The end, like it's really that simple and I've become this person over time. This didn't happen immediately, that people trust as someone that they can come to when they have marketing questions and then guess what people want more. So they become clients.

[00:29:06] And so that's one way of doing it too. Don't turn down the speaking engagements, just because you can't sell from the stage, you are your product. And I think a lot of people forget. You're your product.

[00:29:17] As long as you're going to be in that area anyway, I wouldn't spend a whole lot of money to get to a conference that you didn't even care about just to speak for free

[00:29:25] No, but you don't have to, you get what I mean?

[00:29:27] Yeah. This opportunity came to me, I've built a relationship with them. I have some collaborations and some agreements that have been in place for years because I just keep showing up. I just keep doing my thing. I just keep showing up and. I get a lot of interest in a lot of clients from that.

[00:29:43] And if you

[00:29:43] can get on other people's masterminds or membership groups as a speaker, anything that's virtual, that's ideal, I've done that then you don't have to get paid because you're not having to travel or spend any

[00:29:55] money on it. Exactly. So I. I have spoken on summits.

[00:29:59] Those are [00:30:00] great. A lot of especially summits where they keep the content up for a long time. I've also sponsored summits. Sometimes summits have really low. Levels of sponsorship and it's accessible, to just get your brand out there as something nice. We, I will travel to speak.

[00:30:17] So for example, oh, and I can announce this. Now I'm speaking at sheep podcast live in 2022, and I'm very excited to travel to Washington DC in October to go speak at that event. And then part of how that works is they promote me. And I promote their conference and that's how it works. And then in that case, I do get to share and collect email addresses from the stage.

[00:30:41] So that's an example of here's a big conference, I'm a podcaster. I do marketing, let's talk. And I get to, to present at that group. I get to meet people. And then I also get to say, Hey, if you want more information, And I haven't decided what the opt-in is going to be but there will be something that's alright, good time.

[00:31:01] But there's they sent over already, like the cross promotional thing. And what I will say is, and I'll say that one of the reasons I stopped having guests on the show is the guests. Weren't doing their part of the cross promotion. , it's not a one way. You don't get to be on the summit and then not tell anyone about the summit.

[00:31:18] Yeah. You don't get to be a guest on a podcast and never tell anybody that you were a guest on a podcast. This is a two way venture. And you have to look at it as a collaboration and be really excited about it. And you have to so do things that you're gonna be all in.

[00:31:33] And next week I'm gonna be teaching on how to be a great podcast guest.

[00:31:37] And that includes how to do your outreach, how to meet up with people who would be a good fit for you, but it also teaches you some of the things that are in your responsibility to handle such as sharing, cross promoting following the show on following the person on LinkedIn. Following their, that relationship.

[00:31:58] Yeah. You're responsible for building [00:32:00] some kind of relationship with that person. Absolutely. And the easier, the easier you as a host, make that for your guests, then the more you're going to grow your network. So it's it, that's also a two, two way

[00:32:13] street. Absolutely. It's it is a two-way street. It's being interested, and I think that's part of the collaborative thing.

[00:32:20] I think a lot of people. I won't say a lot of people. I think that's an overgeneralization. I think there are many people who look at it as what's in it for me. Sure. And what we're really talking about is what's in it for us. What's in it for us. How can we make this work? How can we make it better?

[00:32:39] I can tell you that. One of the reasons I'm back at she podcasts is I did my. I did my part. I like promoted the heck out of it. I participated fully in the conference. I asked questions. You're more likely to get invited back. Y it's just the way that it works, when you do your part, so it's the same thing.

[00:33:01] When you do podcast interviews, we're not gonna y said, I can't wait to listen to it. By the way I won't be on the show next week, maybe . So I can't wait to listen to

[00:33:09] it because she's doing this teaching thing that she's

[00:33:11] talking

[00:33:11] I'm talking about a teaching thing that I'm talking about, and I don't have any control over what days of the week that happens.

[00:33:17] That's outside of my span of control. But if you are in the small business development centers eCommerce class, , I willbe your speaker next weekk at this time. And we'll be talking about how to develop eCommerce. Ah, so that'll be a future topic on this show on this might be. Yeah. And so I'm very excited about that.

[00:33:38] So we won't talk too much about podcast interviews the next topic, but it is important. I will say it is important to do your part in the podcasting thing. The one side is that yes, the podcaster needs to send. Graphics and, suggested tweets and that kind of stuff. It really helps but then you have to do your part too.

[00:33:58] It's not my job as a [00:34:00] podcaster to just promote the heck out of you and put you on my website and put you out on all the networks. If you're not gonna also. Promote me and talk about this great interview that you had. So that's right. That's gonna be that's me as podcasters.

[00:34:15] Look at our analytics.

[00:34:16] And if we see look at the big jump of downloads I had when this person was on, she promoted herself. She promoted that podcast and I want to have her back.

[00:34:27] People often say I'm one of their more popular episodes. And it's because I always am like, Ooh, I was on the show promoted. Like it's so exciting, and you do it more than once. I do it more than once. Look for three or

[00:34:39] four weeks after it happens. You're still talking about it and that's important. Heck,

[00:34:43] if it's evergreen, I do it forever. Yeah. So I, so we'll talk we that's a Royal, we isn't it. Shelley will talk about that next week.

[00:34:50] That's right in greater depth. I would love for you to talk about this next point because I have never no, I've never done it.

[00:34:56] Yeah, book compilation. This is not difficult. It is an exercise in organization though. So as long as you're a person who knows how to be organized and follow through, this is not difficult.

[00:35:10] So what we did was we were going to a conference Toby and I went to women. She Podcasts last year. And we interviewed 18 different women who were there attending, and Jen was one of them and see what it can turn into. It's amazing. But we did interviews with all of these women and then we.

[00:35:29] Transcribed, it turned it into a book and put it out there. This is a comp compilation book. So then we shared it with all the people who were in the book so that they could share the book with their friends and family and say, look, I'm in this book. And then you know, it grows as. Is a compilation, a collaboration and a collaborative effort.

[00:35:50] And then you can continue to do it if I was gonna go again this year, which I'm not because I have too much other family issues going on in my life right now. If I was going again this [00:36:00] year, we could do the same thing and we could bring last year's book and say, don't you wanna be in this year's book?

[00:36:05] And it. Perpetuates

[00:36:07] itself. Yeah. It's a lot of it's so far away. We're going to DC because John's family lives there, so we're turning it into a family vacation and stuff. Yeah. And we

[00:36:14] could have done that too, because Toby's got his daughter in the area, but yeah, it was just too many things it's too much on this year with medical issues and stuff.

[00:36:23] But I remember, I when the book came out and everything, like I was like super stoked and I shared it and, and still available in

[00:36:28] Amazon, if you're interested, it's called women in podcasting, the messages and methods, interviews, go look it up. And in the book, we not only do the interview, share the interviews.

[00:36:37] We also talk about how we created the book. We give you the whole process in that book. So yeah.

[00:36:43] And I can tell you, you do have to do this with intentionality because at one point I wanted to go back to all of the podcast episodes that I had done and put together a compilation of a lot of the different things that I had talked about.

[00:36:56] I had some themes this was before Shelley, what do you call that? I would call it BS, but that sounds bad

[00:37:04] but, before your life changed for the better before

[00:37:06] my life changed, transformed. But. I went, tried to go back and put those things together because I ran all these series there's series on project management.

[00:37:16] There's some series on leadership it's really hard to do if you don't do that with intentionality. That's right. You gotta

[00:37:22] come up with a theme and you wanna ask very similar questions so that you can expand on those ideas within your book. Now we were gonna do it again on digital marketing. But then we ran into everybody had the same answers for everything, so there wasn't enough variety.

[00:37:39] So we just yeah, we're not gonna do that anymore.

[00:37:41] I wondered what happened to that. I know.

[00:37:42] Everybody kinda had the same answers and we're like,

[00:37:45] That's not enough. Information's not enough. And the episodes that I was going to make into a compilation were actually solo shows.

[00:37:51] And I thought I know what I said, I can do that. But it's getting back to then. Having the structure of a presentation. Exactly. And

[00:37:58] that's what we did with livecast [00:38:00] life. Oh, we did. We did the shows. Then we transcribed the shows. Then I edited them into book chapters and we put out livecast life.

[00:38:08] So that's another way to go about it. But if you are doing this as a collaboration so that other people will promote your work you'll bring those people on for those interviews and put them in your book as well.

[00:38:18] Yeah. Yeah. Book compilation next. We have summits conferences and speaking. So I've done all.

[00:38:30] To different levels of success. So I was in missing letter when they first launched, they had a summit, I was in the missing letter summit the first year. Nice. It was neat. It was good. And I had technical travel cuz it was all virtual. And so it was almost like a missed opportunity because I had, it was really early on in my business.

[00:38:49] And then I. There was an issue with a technical issue with zoom. And I think I was still using PowerPoint cuz I was still crawling out of my corporate shell so I was still really using that and there was, yeah, so it didn't really work. And that's the thing about summits and things that are virtual is, Things can happen and that can make it a lot more difficult.

[00:39:11] However, summits are also great because you get visibility. If it's done well, like the missing letter summit was done well, it wasn't their fault that there were technical issues. I was up there on their website for a long time for this site. I was, one of the, one of the people who was promoted, I promoted it.

[00:39:27] I had a lot of people on there. They were all my buds. Bud skis. So like they were getting into the missing letter environment. It's a tool that I still use. And so you know, it all worked out.

[00:39:41] But not all summits are like that. So you wanna make sure that you get hooked into summits where you're on the same page as everybody. The purpose of it is very aligned with your purpose, cuz remember you're gonna be in a summit and it's like all these names. So you wanna make sure that. It's not, you're not just doing it to do [00:40:00] it.

[00:40:00] Like you need to make sure that you're looking at it from the perspective of a business decision. And if it is aligned with your higher purpose, and if you wanna have your name alongside some of the folks that are also on the summit

[00:40:15] yeah. And that the topic fits what you. Talk about what is your business is, does it fit into that topic?

[00:40:22] And in what way, and often summits can also be like a giveaway where they ask you to give. Some of your, maybe give away a free course or a free book or a time 1 0 1 coaching time or something like that. They might add that in as an incentive for people to up a level to the V I P level.

[00:40:40] So people could come in and watch it for free. Or if they wanna up level to the V I P then they might get these extra things from the speakers. So you have to have something ready to go for that. If you wanna start applying for those types of things,

[00:40:55] Absolutely. And so the only exception I have to it being totally about your topic is if you like, I have a client right now who teaches meditation.

[00:41:05] I have been on more than one summit where somebody comes in and leads everybody in a meditation to get their reset. Now the whole conference isn't about meditation. can be about marketing. It can be about business. I love these types of situations where somebody has a specific skill and they're like leading everybody in like a mindset exercise or in a meditation or in something to get everybody like in the flow of what's gonna happen.

[00:41:31] So the whole summit. So don't turn things down. But sometimes you have to be creative and figure out if that thing that you offer, that's very specialized, how that fits in. And if you can make it work and if you can then go for it. So it's tricky sometimes, and you have to sometimes be very flexible about it but also don't be afraid to say no.

[00:41:55] Yeah. Or just use your imagination and creativity and say I [00:42:00] can't do that, but can I do this for you? And yeah. I heard about, I was at a conference and they did this and I wanna do that. So how about if I do this for you? I've seen people come on as DJs and during transition times absolutely.

[00:42:12] On absolutely. On things like that. So there, Try to think outside the box a little bit, if you wanna be involved in something like that.

[00:42:18] Absolutely. I've yeah. I've been in all kinds of things where they have DJs, they have people coming on stage and dancing. There's so many, it's so dynamic now that if you wanna get in with some people and you see a lot of people that you wanna get to know better and it fits, then find a way to make it work.

[00:42:35] Yeah. Yeah. That's really what we're talking about. So conferences you have to, so for conferences, The difference is, so this year for She Podcasts, I didn't have to apply. They asked me back. Nice. But the first time I did it, I did apply. So you have to go out there and you have to put yourself out there and learn how to pitch, learn how to pitch conferences, learn how to pitch speaking engagements.

[00:42:55] It's a good way to get some PR it's usually places where you can get your website. And then if you're speaking. It's a good way to workshop through ideas get the word out and share important information of value to your potential customers. Nice. While also offering value to the people running the conference or providing the speaking engagement.

[00:43:14] Yeah.

[00:43:15] You definitely wanna focus on the audience. Who's going to be at the conference. What are they looking for? What do they need and how can you fulfill their needs? And then that is what you're going to focus on. When you talk to the organizers.

[00:43:28] Yeah, it's really interesting. So we had our panel last year for sheep podcasts.

[00:43:34] We also had an app for the conference and I was like super active in that app. I was asking questions about, was asking people like, how do you market your podcast? What tools do you use? I was taking advantage of everything that they had to offer. And then we had. Hundred people sign up to go.

[00:43:52] It was like, there were a lot of people there, and I think it was that, and it wasn't just me. There was a panel of five people and everybody, started adding questions to [00:44:00] it because it was just a good way to get people engaged and to get people in. Yeah. So I think it was, I think it was a really good.

[00:44:07] Opportunity. And I think that it's an opportunity that to show some collaboration like you're collaborating, not just, and when it comes to a conference and to speaking, you're collaborating not only with the organizers of the event, you're collaborating with the people who are attending.

[00:44:22] Yes. Yes. And if it's possible to reach out to them, even before you attend, that's all, that's so much better because then you can develop a little bit of a relationship before you even meet in person.

[00:44:35] And then you use your time at the conference so much more efficiently when you can do it that way. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Do you wanna get into joint

[00:44:42] ventures at all? Have, do you wanna talk at all about summits and stuff or no, I think we've

[00:44:47] done that. Okay.

[00:44:48] Okay. I'm good with it. So joint ventures, affiliates, influencers.

[00:44:52] So this is more a pay to play stuff. So this is like I have a big audience. You have a big audience. Let's come up with an agreement with these it works great. You just have to be careful with things like I'm gonna share my email list and, cuz that goes against the terms of service. If I sign up for your email list, Shelley, I don't want you to go sell it to like your joint venture partner.

[00:45:13] So you wanna be really careful about that, but you can do cross promotions inside of. Your newsletter. I guess I've done that because I'm gonna, and I'll start doing it this week. When I start talking about speaking issue podcasts, like I'll have a link if people wanna sign up for that, but they're not paying me for that.

[00:45:29] That's a little different than a joint venture partnership. And affiliate links where like I get paid. If somebody. A buys convert kit or whatever. So those you wanna be extremely careful with because you're really getting, what I've

[00:45:40] seen people do is they'll send out an email to their list and they'll say something really good about, the thing the person or their product, and then say, this is coming up.

[00:45:49] And then at the bottom, it says, if you do not wanna receive any more emails about this topic, opt out here. So then they give you that option to, I don't have any interest in that. And then you can just, and [00:46:00] then you will be taken off of that segmented list and you won't.

[00:46:05] Yeah. Yeah. I. I would just be really careful before doing some of that.

[00:46:10] I've have I have a whole newsletter about influencer marketing where you just have to make sure everybody's in. Everybody has to be all in, on influencer marketing. But yeah, just be really careful when you start getting financially into bed with people that they're legit and that it's gonna be good for your brand.

[00:46:25] And that's a really big part of cross promotion and collaborations is you really want that synergy and you also want. That you are in I'm a purpose driven organization, not a lot of marketing agencies and consultants are so I'm really cautious before I do any of that stuff. Yeah. I have I have a long time before I'm willing to do that.

[00:46:48] If that's you're gonna wanna do the same thing. A lot of people just jump right in and I Don't. And I don't really recommend everybody just jumps in unless you're sure. Yeah. If it's,

[00:46:59] if this person is a friend of yours and you've done business with them and you feel that they are very reputable.

[00:47:05] Sure. But if you haven't and you don't know, don't just do it for the money, right? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:47:12] I feel pretty good about this training. We didn't get any questions, but I feel like we provided a lot of good information. Yeah,

[00:47:18] that's right. That's right. So if you would like to learn more about doing live streaming and starting your own channel so that you have something to collaborate with and on then go check out the framework that I have created the consist content, consistency framework, and schedule.

[00:47:39] You could find that@frameworkdotagkmedia.studio.

[00:47:44] which is awesome. Yeah, go do that. I'm gonna put, and I am continuing my the Strategic Marketing Membership special offer for podcast listeners.

[00:48:09] Special times where it's just you and me. I'm answering questions with you. So if you like this style, if you like the openness of learning in this way then please consider, please go over to the Strategic Marketing Membership. There's 20 courses over there and consider signing up being one of the first people to be there.

[00:48:27] We've got, we've already signed up a few people. We're gonna, we're continuing to work on signing up even. Yay fun. Why don't we skip tweaks of the week? Okie doki, and go straight to the inspirational nuggets since we're. And here, I thought it was be a short show today.

[00:48:43] Oh, we have so much to say . This is from Marcus Aurelius meditations.

[00:48:49] Again, indeed. If you find anything in human life, better than justice, truth, self control, courage in short, anything better than the sufficiency of your own mind, which keeps you acting according to the demands of true reason and accepting what fate gives you outside of your own power of choice. I tell you if you can see anything better than.

[00:49:09] Turn to it, heart and soul and take full advantage of this greater good that you've found. So basically he's saying, you know what? Money. Is great, but chasing money can create problems climbing one mountain. You see the next mountain that you have to climb. There's never enough. There's never enough unless you cling to virtue and virtue is the one good that reveals itself to be more.

[00:49:35] Than we expect virtue, which is made up of justice, honesty, discipline, and courage is the only thing worth striving for certainly nothing will improve your life path more than virtuous choices. Doing your best work will always bring more satisfaction and better results than doing the bare minimum or shirking responsibility, or just doing it for the.

[00:49:58] What do you think that really ties into what we [00:50:00] talked about today?

[00:50:01] Yeah. Yeah. So Toby and I have been talking a lot about choices this this week what choices he's made in his life and where it's brought him to. And. Other people in our lives, what choices they've made and where they're at in their lives.

[00:50:15] And we can compare and say, why did you choose to go this way? What made you think that was the right answer? And it's usually about, doing the right thing for yourself and your family, so that in the future, it'll be better making the hard choice now.

[00:50:29] It will pay off later rather than immediate gratification of, I don't like college I'm quitting. Maybe if you stuck it out, maybe, life would've been a little different. So think about those virtues as you're making those life decisions. If you want your life path to go into a brighter future.

[00:50:48] Wow. Yeah.

[00:50:49] Yeah. What I like about what you said is that doing your best work will always bring more satisfaction than doing the bare minimum or shirking responsibility. I sometimes overwhelm myself cuz I do too much of my best thing. Like sometimes I need to it doesn't have to be 150%.

[00:51:09] Maybe a hundred percent would be fine. And. But I always feel like you get out of something, what you put into it. Yes. And I feel like the best things have come to me at the times when I've put the most effort into something.

[00:51:24] And you were talking about, when people get into a collaboration and they're looking at what's in it for me then they say no, because I'm not making enough money, or it's not gonna give me enough feed, enough ROI or whatever.

[00:51:37] When did you miss out on, what are you gonna miss out on? Are you gonna miss out on making a lifelong friend? Are you gonna miss out on the possibility that you spoke for free to this group? And then one of those people told somebody else who turned out to be your best client, so maybe don't look at so much the short term what's in it for me and think about, how am I helping the world?

[00:51:59] Absolutely. I, [00:52:00] I think often about a meeting I was in and the person who brought me into the meeting, we get to the end and I was like, oh, this sounds really great. But I'm a teacher and it was a consulting gig and the person like shut their computer and said, I'm not gonna get anything out of this.

[00:52:18] And walked out, like this was like a professional meeting, and I was like, I just kinda sat there. And I looked at my This person, I didn't know, who's now a trusted colleague of mine and we just were like when we stayed, and here we are four years later still working in that partnership.

[00:52:32] And I can't even share with you how much I've gotten out of it. , was it something that was gonna pay, $20,000? That moment. No. Have I gotten, have I learned a lot about myself, about partnerships, about marketing, about small businesses? Absolutely. Like it has, it's the gift that has given me so much.

[00:52:55] And if I had just said, no, I can't, I don't know where I would be if I had just said

[00:53:01] no, it's just shutting that door to a whole, whole new world that you could. Walked into

[00:53:09] and, and my friend, she's gone on to do great things. Different things. , and that's wonderful that there's nothing wrong with that, but it is about what it is that, that it's not always about the short term gain.

[00:53:22] Yeah. For me. Yeah.

[00:53:24] Virtuous choices. That's right. Keep that in mind this week, as you're making choices in your life and day to day and. See what it does for you. Yeah.

[00:53:37] Have a good week, everybody

[00:53:41] Thank you for joining the Women Conquer Business podcast, hosted by Shelley Carney and Jen McFarland. Please subscribe and leave a comment or question regarding your most challenging content creation or business problem. Then share this podcast with family and friends so they can find the support they need to expand their [00:54:00] brand and share their message with the.

[00:54:02] Check the show notes for links to valuable resources and come back again next week.