This week Emily Merrell and Lexie Smith discuss different strategic partnership ideas that coaches can use to grow their businesses. They give personal examples, review campaigns that have worked for their clients, and share what it takes for a partnership to ultimately be deemed successful in and out of the coaching world.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
Follow Em & Lex on Instagram at @readysetcoachprogram
Learn more about the Ready Set Coach Program at Readysetcoachprogram.com
Learn more about Six Degrees Society and THEPRBAR inc.
This week Emily Merrell and Lexie Smith discuss different strategic partnership ideas that coaches can use to grow their businesses. They give personal examples, review campaigns that have worked for their clients, and share what it takes for a partnership to ultimately be deemed successful in and out of the coaching world.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
Follow Em & Lex on Instagram at @readysetcoachprogram
Learn more about the Ready Set Coach Program at Readysetcoachprogram.com
Learn more about Six Degrees Society and THEPRBAR inc.
Lexie Smith
Hi Emily. I always wait to see who's gonna say at first.
Emily Merrell
Like playing chicken at each other who gets it first? Recording today live from Narnia. You know welcome, Boris.
Lexie Smith
To give you you podcast listeners who are not on our YouTube channel a visual. I'm staring at a beautiful granola version of Emily. She's in a very neutral blouse. Her hair is all natural. She is literally the background green forestry like fairies are about to probably fly over her head. She is such a vibe right now. I love it.
Emily Merrell
It will thank you. I am in North Country. I'm in Canada. Okay, how many times you're gonna say today?
Lexie Smith
Don't get me started. I've started here we go.
Emily Merrell
It's I'm one of those people, persons, people, individuals. Whenever I'm with someone who has an accent, I slip into the accent, which could come across like I'm insulting the person, but it's really me just feeling so close to them. So in the south, y'all I am like Southern, and then in Canada, like they say Costa Rica and past breakfast. And there's some things that I'm like that I don't know if I'm gonna I'm gonna do it.
Lexie Smith
I my freshman college roommate who is random who also was one of my roommates from my senior year is from North Carolina and she has a southern accent Well, it's kind of gone away anyways. I now forevermore say y'all because of her having lived with her for two years. And then I'm from Portland, Oregon. Like no one there. There's nothing some boring non dialect like accent but I do say all
Emily Merrell
you say y'all but you can you can fit in, you know, real nurse down in the south.
Lexie Smith
real nasty and sound.
Emily Merrell
real mess. But yeah, so I'm in Canada and I accidentally went camping. I didn't accidentally I might let my husband plan this itinerary for visiting his family. And I always have wanted to go camping and like I have this kind of how do I say this? Like, I have this vision of camping in my mind, like the memories that you make from camping. And Greg's like, let's not go camping and stay at a cabin by the water and have all the amenities without the like the hardship of camping. But I think because I'm raised in a family of girls, we just didn't do things that I put in my mind is like very picturesque family thinks. Anyways, long story long, we went camping and he had put on the itinerary two nights of camping. So I thought that it would be not camping and it was keeping it was actually camping. We just ended up having his mother's RV thing to sleep in. So we kind of had that we had a toilet. We had air conditioning, we had a fridge, we had all the luxury of modern accommodations, but I was surprised when we showed up at an actual campsite.
Lexie Smith
It sounds like a happy medium and like you guys were happy campers.
Emily Merrell
Yes, yes. Well done.
Lexie Smith
So she's camping. Right and I get this text from Emily. Was it yesterday, my whole yesterday. And when I tell you I have never seen a more startling photograph of a friend's child I need it. He's staring at me is the adorable face of her son Jackson with the largest square slash oval raised bump on his head that I've ever seen on a child. I'm not exaggerating.
Emily Merrell
It was terrible. I mean, I'm so glad that it wasn't as severe. You know, your brain has one of the when you see one of these things, especially in your kid I almost started crying when it happened. But he fell off the bench. He was reaching for something and he fell off and he hid the metal part of the bench underneath of the picnic table perfectly. So it was like a cookie cutter of of an imprint of where he hid. And yeah, he had this awesome goose egg and I texted my girlfriend who's a doctor and I sent her a picture. I was like, do I take him to the doctor like is this what do we do in this circumstance? A fun fact is there's typically more swelling in that part of your air of your face because your head has more blood vessels in it that much more. So it looks at much more like horrific. Literally he looked like he was growing up born. But fortunately by the end of the day, and he just turned into more of like a rounded mound, and now he's back to normal. So like she gets like play by plays while I'm on
Lexie Smith
morning. I this past weekend, we went to our neighbor's one year old birthday and while on my husband's watch, which it's funny, Emily, we're like, I'm glad it happened on Greg's watch. While on CJs watch. She fell and hit her head on a cornhole and there was a goose egg, not Jackson's size, goose egg, but I flipped the beat out on him. And so when you were like, I'm so glad it happened on Greg's watch, because if it was on mine, he would flip out and I'm like, I'm Greg, and Greg CJ.
Emily Merrell
I am Greg. And I didn't I didn't say anything. I didn't say like, how could you be so careless? Like I think this is an opportunity in time when you can be really mean to your partner and say really mean things. And then I think about like, what would I want someone to say to me in that circumstance? You're already feeling extreme guilt and terrible. So I was like, Don't do it. Emily upperhand upperhand for you
Lexie Smith
way to be the bigger person bla bla bla, bla bla. Because Because Because Because I guess technically a marriage is a partnership. So that is good partnership advice. And today, we're talking about strategic partnerships that can grow your coaching business.
Emily Merrell
Yes, getting in bed with strangers. But that's good. I love that transition lakhs. So I'm curious about the BR bar and your coaching business with the PR bar. Have you had any strategic or partnerships in the past that have met sorry that have netted, like live impact for your business.
Lexie Smith
So many. And I'm actually going to rewind time because this is a probably the biggest partnership campaign I ever ran for that brand. Circa I think it was 2020. I ran something called the Empower project. And I want to be our coach. I mean, it's still am. And I gathered seven other coaches, all different types of coaches to come together to offer one big freebie package. So I can't remember what I contributed probably a pitch template, maybe the business coach contributed an Excel sheet, I don't know. We put it all on a website. And the entire goal was to collect emails, this was at the infancy stage of my business. These coaches ranged in their seniority level, and we all agreed to a cadence of how you're going to promote it. And here's why this was so freakin great. We were everyone participating automatically put in front of seven other coaches audiences, right. So it was such an organic way to grow brand awareness at the same time also collect emails. So that was one of my first and favorite campaigns. What about you partnership queen?
Emily Merrell
Well, I was gonna ask, Did you spearhead this? Or were you invited to join it?
Lexie Smith
I spearheaded it. I started it, I let it I envisioned it. It was me.
Emily Merrell
She was the problem. Can we do that again? But anyway? Um, actually, we should do that. I'm thinking in real time. We should do that with our Ready Set coach clients.
Lexie Smith
We should. We should it was a lot of work. But it was worth it. Yeah, so you've heard us say that call us out? Yeah, no, it was really, really great. I created a singular landing page, I created all the graphics for everyone. There was direction given on the freebie, you know, there was a, I gave them all bullet points of what they were committing to for marketing. So it was a really low lift for people to be involved, very intentionally made sure it was a diverse group of coaches diverse in terms of backgrounds in terms of what they offered in terms of point of view. So it was really it was a lot of a lot of work that went into it. But I was really, really thrilled with the outcome.
Emily Merrell
So likes one of the things that I want to pull out as a teachable moment here is so often people wait for the invitation to join something. They're sitting there, they're refreshing their inboxes or waiting for the clients to find them by magic, SEO or whatnot. And yet, I love that you had this gumption of this new, new fresh off, fresh off of into the world of coaching and you're like, you know what, I don't have anything to lose. Let me ask these peoples to these people to be part of this bigger initiative. And it was an easy I imagine it was an easy yes for people to say to contribute something that they'd probably already had created. It was an easy yes. Because they were getting something tangible in return. And it was an easy yes. Because the you were doing the majority of the work for them, yet yielding the benefits of doing the work. So this is a great lesson in terms of if you have a solution, or if you have a problem that you want solved, how can you yourself solve that problem, even if it means reverse engineering to get to the solution?
Lexie Smith
Thank you great, teachable moment. And what that campaign also did is it combined a lot of different strategies. So it used freebies and email marketing, it combined social media, there was an element of communicate, cross communicate, cross communications, cross community collaborations. So these are all different kinds of buckets of different partnerships that you can do. Now, Emily is the queen of many things. But one of the things you are so so freakin good at is events and event partnerships. So why don't you share? What are different examples of ways you can partner for an event to grow your coaching practice?
Emily Merrell
Yes, so one of the it's very similar to what you had talked about with the whole email and cross marketing effort that you put together with the this initiative. But I think with an event A lot of people, same same advice applies to what I just said. But with an event, what I love to do, is to come up with a topic for an event, and then handpick the people that I think would be good representation of sharing perspectives on said topic, and then making it really easy for those people to invite their individuals to join the topic. So I've done partnerships, one of my very first events that I actually I like to think back on is the ABCs of entrepreneurship. Like I had knew nothing about entrepreneurship. But I was super curious about entrepreneurship. And I wanted to be exposed to more entrepreneurs, more entrepreneurs. So the way I was able to do that was I identified three entrepreneurs to be on a panel made it really easy for them to invite their people to join the panel to watch the panel live. And so now I had an email list of more entrepreneurs, because these three people were so excited to be included in this conversation, they blasted out to their individuals. And then I reached the benefits of keeping the the emails of individuals that signed up. And also sharing those emails with all participants on the panel. So with events, I like to think of it, whether you're partnering with another individual, with a store with another brand, you want it to be something that it's mutually beneficial for all parties involved. So it's something where and I also like to sweeten it even more like I want them to walk away, being like that was a really easy to partner, that it didn't require much of a lift for us at all, be that we're really good and respectful partners. So if it's a store that we we set up, we clean up, we make it really easy we bring in the people, if it's a brand, or if it's someone else we over deliver. So if we're partnering with them, and we need to we promised them pictures that we give them, we promise them 10 pictures, we give them like 40 pictures, because it's always nice to leave a good taste in people's mouth. And it's easier to leave a good taste and read, easier to re approach someone who you've left a good taste in their mouth.
Lexie Smith
Completely agree and something that you just said the key word that I want to bring bring up to the to the table and dive into is mutually beneficial. So one of the cornerstones to having a successful collaboration or partnership is that both sides are getting something. Now in order to get there. First you need to and this is an actionable step, decide what you want from a partnership. So for my example, the Empower project, I wanted to grow my email list. So I wanted more exposure. That was what I wanted. What I could give what I could offer to a partnership was all the organization of the event, I wrote an article, I sent it across my social media. So I similarly while I knew my ask, I also knew what I could bring to the table. So there's a few different ways you can think of it as an ask and again, you can think of it as an offer. And why yes, yeah, there's you can interchange the words. But step one is to get really clear on what you want out of something and what you can give from there. What's the next step?
Emily Merrell
Well, I was gonna say one of the things that's really important is to make sure that your, that your partners are aligned with what your, what your outcome is. So if you are wanting more emails, and you're partnering with, oh my gosh, like a foot fungus company, the people,
Lexie Smith
I don't know, like your is your environment inspiring that, I guess,
Emily Merrell
ever, but if you're partnering with something that is a product, healing, something that you can't really relate to, they might not be an ideal partner. So you want to look at the demographic of their partnership, or look at the, you can do a little sleuthing on their Instagram or LinkedIn. But you want to be in front of aligned partners. And one of my favorite things to reference to people who are just starting out with partnership is that a lot of times, partners, they, they're right in front of you, but they don't feel clear to you. So I'll give you an example of that. So for example, if you're a Travel Advisor, and you're like, I want to be in front of high net worth individuals, where are high net individuals hanging out that you are already in their sphere, your wealth advisor, your wealth advisor, is servicing high net worth individuals? Is there a way to do a partnership or get in front of have a conversation with these individuals that your wealth advisor and let them know that you were looking for this type of client and then do some sort of partnership with them? That's more of a referral partnership. But just thinking about in terms of where is your same client hanging out? It's not always at the sexiest companies.
Lexie Smith
Yeah, and that's such a great point, because that's such another key component of a successful partnership is audience alignment, beyond your own core values, also, who you're serving. So, some, we're gonna go into some real life examples here. And I'll start with a ReadySet. Coach example. We last year, what year is it? I don't know. Last year, we partnered with a community called ladies get paid. And we partnered in way of an event. So we hosted a event we taught a workshop for the ladies get paid community. Now what we wanted from this was exposure to the audience of ladies get paid because their audience was at that time for that cohort, really our ideal people, flipside, ladies get paid was getting us delivering value and content to their membership community. So there was, we both got what we wanted. And we both were aligned, also at the end of the day with our users.
Emily Merrell
I think that's a great example. So communities are a great one. I'll give it a personal example. For six degrees, we partnered with a female owned gym, based in New York City. And they have the same mission or had they're no longer around, but it had the same mission had the same passion for helping and inspiring women. So we did a giveaway, where it was a strategic partnership, in that we were both promoting it to our lists, we were both promoting it to our Instagrams. And we were both talking about this mutually beneficial experience. And so with it, we were the asked from it, it was following us on Instagram, and giving us their emails. So we were both successfully able to grow our Instagram and our emails to give them i think i We gave him like a year of membership to both opportunities. And so it was an easy lift for both of us. And we could have even sweeten the deal by doing an in person event with both of the entities but we did. Max, how can people find out how to
Lexie Smith
work with us? Super simple, go to ReadySet, Coach program.com, and you can show notes. So if you're sitting here listening, and you're like Cool, cool, cool, but I don't really have much to bring to the table. I'm new. I don't have a list yet. I have like two followers on Instagram, no one's gonna want to partner with me. You need to first reframe that a little. There's a lot of things you can bring in one of the things you can bring, especially as a coach is your expertise. So maybe what your offer is, is in form of content or in form in form of leading a free workshop. I want to give another example of two of our clients who are currently doing a partnership and why it's so smart. So they have very complementary services. One is a business development coach, and one is a thought leadership coach. They align and they ultimately serve the same person which are agency owners, but they they offer different things. So they're teaming up to co host a seminar they're still it's still kind of in the in the works and what they're giving each other giving each other is the CO share of content to make a real The spectacular event, right? And yes, they'll both marketing, etc. But they're not as focused on the volume of collection of social followers, etc. They're really wanting to leverage and partner with each other's expertise.
Emily Merrell
Yeah, that's a great example. I want to talk a little bit about email marketing partnerships. So I think that what you talked about in terms of the Empower, how did you say it empower, empower project power projects? I'm like, why don't there's so yeah, I didn't want to budget, the Empower project. There's other ways to be an email marketing partner. And I think, to also give love to people, I call this kind of learning. And this is my favorite example of flirting. So you could write a newsletter, so you write a monthly newsletter, or weekly newsletter, you could, you could spotlight your favorite brands, or your for your favorite coaches, or you could give a shout out to something positive that happened, or maybe there was an event, you're going to, you can link to it. And so it's a partner. It's not a partnership in like the formal sense of partnership, but it's drawing awareness to this, these things. And you might ask, like, so why, why am I driving awareness to these random brands, this doesn't make sense. People will then trust you more for curating and ideally in things that you believe in, and you'd like to go to. And it's something that you can then use down the road in a more formal type of partnership process where you could get paid for partnership. And I don't want to overcomplicate it and talk about paid partnership. But I'm saying that you're building up the fact that you have 400 people clicking on this one link every single month, that when the time comes, and you want to pitch a brand, and you want to formally partner with them, and have them pay you to be in your newsletter, you have stats to prove that your newsletter gets these results. And these sorts of engagement and people are following through when they're clicking the links. So it's just something to be doing kind of organically in good spirits. Kind of okay, let
Lexie Smith
me let me make sure we're, we're following on that. So because we kind of went on to to capacity. So the first thing I heard was to just almost in a good karma sort of way, get in the practice of shouting out or highlighting other brands you believe in? Yeah. And secondary for planting the seed long term, as you continue to do that. And as you continue to grow, how does featuring other brands in your newsletter, lead way down the line to parent partnership? Exactly. Know how,
Emily Merrell
how. So it leads down the line where if you're wanting to partner with a bigger brand, either you want to partner with them on an email partnership, or you want a paid partnership, you know, have numbers to back up what partnering with you could look like,
Lexie Smith
okay, okay, so here's what I'm pulling from that. If you focus on delivering good value, truly good value, beyond just your own services and selling, you're likely going to grow your list faster, you're gonna have great stats. So there's a long term benefit there. So the next one, like we're bringing it back in. So there's marketing, there's referral partnerships. There's simple things like content, swap partnerships, you can do Instagram lives together, but the whole concept what
Emily Merrell
I was gonna say podcast, podcast, partnerships, that's a good one.
Lexie Smith
For just podcast swaps, you have a podcast, they have a podcast, we both go on each other's podcasts right now their form of content. So the whole point we're trying to make is, it's a really great organic, easy way, and quick way to grow your reach, and to get in front of another individuals, audience or communities audience where they have already built know, like and trust. So by you being presented in front of their audience in way of them, that is telling the audience similar to what you were saying that you believe in this other code.
Emily Merrell
So like some other thing that we can think about, too, for those coaches out there is a strategic partnership of being a coach in other people's coaching programs being a guest coach, or in their masterminds. And what I love about that is typically the host of the the mastermind, or the guests program, or at least what we do with Ready, Set coach. So we create graphics for those individuals. So it's cross pollination and cross promotion for us where they're posting on their social media, that they're speaking at this organization. But simultaneously, we're posting about them, and then we're granting them access to an audience that's primed and warmed for the topic that they're talking on.
Lexie Smith
Yeah, so again, an expertise and knowledge swap that's very similar to what we were talking about. When we went in and led a workshop for ladies get paid. We were delivering value Are you in our expertise, which was a win win? So, let's go into homework. So start to if we start to think about how you can take the components of this episode, and turn it into your next partnership. First step one, get really clear on what you want. Step two, what you can give. In step three, start looking for a partner that's complementary and serves an aligned audience. So Emily went off into Narnia for the remainder of this podcast, her internet isn't stable so you guys get to hear the lovely clothes out from me and me alone today. Thank you for joining us on the red D set, poke coach pod cast.
Emily Merrell
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