Why Your Marketing Presence Makes or Breaks Your Partnerships

Your marketing presence is your partner's first impression of you. Sarah Gemmell explains why it makes or breaks the deal.

You vet potential partners. You check their website, scroll their Instagram, read their content. So does everyone who's considering partnering with you. In this episode, Marie and Anne-Marie welcome marketing consultant Sarah Gemmell, who has worked with over 1,200 businesses, to talk about why a strong digital presence isn't just a buyer-facing asset. It's the foundation that makes partnerships possible.

Sarah brings a psychology-based lens to a conversation that's usually just about tactics. She unpacks why coaches and consultants who wait until they're ready to grow before building their visibility are already behind, why referrals and partnerships alone can never create a scalable business, and how the two strategies, marketing and partnerships, are meant to work in tandem.

The conversation also gets into networking culture: the transactional commission-breath approach on one end, and the overly relationship-focused friend zone on the other. Sarah has built her reputation as the Queen of Networking by finding the space in between, and she shares exactly how she does it.

Plus: how Sarah categorizes her own partnerships by energy and commitment, why she spent nearly a year vetting a partner before launching a paid offer together, and the low-lift partnership format she keeps returning to because it grows both audiences without burning anyone out.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to Partnerships on Purpose. It is so great to have everyone here listening in. We have a guest here with us. We have Sarah Gemmel. Sarah has been an introduction from our network. As you guys know, we absolutely love people sending us referrals, and Sarah is one of those wonderful people. Sarah, we have looked from the outside in a little bit at your business, taken a look at your website, looked at some bios. Looks like you've been working for with over a thousand different businesses, just like we have. You've got a marketing background. I absolutely love it because this conversation today is going to be so essential for our people who are either just getting into some of the partnership world or they've been there for a while and they need to shake it up. So I would love to give you the mic for just a second. Give us your intro and let us hear a little bit from you.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Yeah, of course. What's up? I'm Sarah Gemmel. I'm so excited. I am a marketing consultant for small business owners and we do psychology-based digital marketing for the small business owners and the solopreneurs don't who don't have in-house marketing, right? And we work specifically with the business owners who have been in the game for a little while. Like we're not new to this, we're true to this, but also the marketing's still kind of random. It's not reliable, it's not predictable, you know, like just kind of throwing random things out there based on good vibes and creative downloads as opposed to strategy. So I help uh entrepreneurs to create that marketing ecosystem and really understand buyer psychology, buyer behavior, how to systematize, clean it up, tighten it. We do a lot with messaging and positioning. Um, I was an addictions counselor actually before. Yeah, out of college I worked in addiction. So I do have a psychology degree, and I it's so funny. My boomer dad is like, don't you want to like do something with your degree? And I'm like, Daddy, I do every day.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Daddy, we do. Yes, I get it. I know. I have a degree in elementary ed, which seems kind of abundant, but I'm a very like educator type person. I'm like, hello, everybody, look at me.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Oh, she is. Yeah, she is.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

So again, yeah, and like it's a creative way to use your degree, you know. Um, so that's what I do on the on the business side of things. We have served over 1,300 business owners in marketing specifically. Uh, when I'm not marketing, I have a little boy, he's almost two, and we have a farm. So I'm a full-time mom, full-time entrepreneur, and a part-time farmer.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Oh my gosh. So wait, this is an important question. Anne Marie's gonna want to know. Do you have a dog on this farm? My dog is snoring right here next to me.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Oh, Sarah, you're my new best friend. Check she's an angel baby.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

I'm surprised actually. I usually have a cat sitting on that chair too. And then like the cats will be sprinkled around the room. The dog is over here snoring. Thank god we have noise cancellation here on the tech.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

I love it. I feel like we I feel like we should like have dog, whoever has a dog and is a guest on our show should like they should do a little appearance. I think that would be great. I would love that. I just go watch like all the dogs. I know, I know. I'm just saying for future, for future. Next time you're on, Sarah, just make sure that your dog is there.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

The dog should be like the headshot on the cover of the of the collab.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Yes, see, we're creating new ways to market ourselves based on our loves of dog. I love this so much. So, um, and the psychology background, like that is super interesting. I have um some of my backgrounds in education are actually in leadership. I was in the military for a while, and so I bring that in a lot of the times too, where I'm like, Yeah, I actually have like a degree in leadership. It's really weird. Um, but it helps when you're having different conversations with people and bringing them in. So thank you again. Obviously, we love having you here. Um, so I do have a quick question because I know you've been working with a lot of business owners. Marketing is super important. We focus on partnerships and making sure that we're presenting ourselves well. Just kind of an ask here like, how can some of the techniques that you share with your clients, how does that work in people who are trying to create new relationships, right? Like partnerships representing themselves well. How can we kind of meld that together?

SPEAKER_00 4:24

Yeah, this is something actually I dealt with back in like 2017, 18 is the first time I ever went to um a weekend long like entrepreneur conference, you know, and it was hosted by a business coach who I absolutely adore, still to this day, but at the time she was my business coach. She was like, I'm gonna host this event. And I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about, but like, sure, I'll be in Pampa for you know the weekend. And that's where I really discovered the power of getting in person with people and like connecting face to face, people who I was trying to connect with online, you know, and it might take six, eight, 12 months to build a relationship with someone online if it happens at all, was now happening in two days in person. So I really started prioritizing networking in general, but a lot of in-person networking. I still love virtual networking, I host virtual networking, but like just getting in front of people, whether it's on Zoom, in person, weekend long, or like a nonchalant coffee, you know, meetup. That was where I discovered the power of networking. But what happened was there was no systems to support it on the back end. So it becomes really laborious, it becomes really all manual work, right? And it's like referrals and partnerships are so great and wonderful. There's no but statement. The end statement is we still need to have our own digital marketing and our own marketing ecosystem to support the partnerships and the referrals because we have no control over referrals, right? We have no control over that. We can't run or scale a business solely on word of mouth or referrals, and that's a lot of what includes partnerships as well, right? So it's like you have to create marketing that you have more control over because then you can actually rely on it, you can create predictable lead flow and cash flow. But then there's this also like this flip side. Great example is when you just said to me, like when we saw your, you know, you get on the podcast, we went to your website, we went to your Instagram, we started to consume your digital content. Imagine if I didn't have digital content or if it sucked. You guys would be like, hey Sarah, that link shouldn't have been public. Like, no, thank you, right? People want to partner with other business owners who are like them. They want to know that you have an established presence, they want to hear your thought leadership, like they want just like your buyers, they want proof of concept. They want to know that you truly are an expert in your field and that partnering with you will be worth their time.

SPEAKER_02 6:55

Yeah, I love that. Oh my god. There's so much to take from that. I love everything you said. Um marketing. So I want to talk about networking, but we'll talk about that later on because I love you know your bio in LinkedIn and and you positioning yourself as the queen of networking. But um, when we look at marketing specifically, and I love that because a lot of people who start a business don't know where to start. They like, do I get a website? Do I have to be on social? Do I have to be on LinkedIn? Marie and I have these conversations all the time where we're like, she's like, we have to have a social strategy, we have to have some present. And I'm like, oh my God, it's exhausting. So where do you typically tell your clients to start?

SPEAKER_00 7:34

A lot of my clients have been creating content or they've been networking, they've been doing the thing, right? So it's like, where do we start optimizing first? If all of these things kind of exist, we started them and LinkedIn is a really popular one. And I'm even guilty of this right now. Like the LinkedIn is there, but like, don't ask me the last time I logged into LinkedIn. So it's not the most optimized profile. But I always tell people what is like the lowest hanging fruit? What is the biggest opportunity that's gonna make the highest impact in the business? Because what I see all the time, and this hurts my my soul and my heart, is when people are like, Sarah, I'll call you when my website is done. First, I'm gonna build this new course or I'm gonna build a whole membership, I'm gonna develop a new offer, I'm gonna do all these like back-end things that yes are important, but they don't bring in immediate lead flow or cash flow. And if we want to build revenue, it all starts with visibility and lead generation. And if we're not getting ourselves visible and doing things to generate leads every single week, regardless of how busy you are with client work, you don't get to stop prospecting just because you're booked, because guess what? Clients complete their program, they decide to not renew, or maybe something happens in their personal life and they have to they have to cancel early. Now we have that spot in the client roster, right? And a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of online service providers are very guilty of not prospecting until they need to.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Yes, yes, right? Yes, okay. I'm gonna add to this because we talk about this all the time in our membership with our people, is like they'll say, Oh, when I get my book, then I'll start partner prospecting. Oh, when the course is done, I'm doing this. I'm revamping this thing, so I need to wait. And we remind them all the time, like for we do long-term strategic partnerships, right? We're talking about relationships that are gonna be around for the next decade, hopefully, in your business. That doesn't happen like today and then tomorrow, right? That takes time, same with what you're talking about. And so I love that the two things marry really well. And we do, we look at people from the outside in and we talk about it all the time. So, sure, take a minute, optimize your profile, put a website together. It's super, super simple. Like the first run, it's great. Then go back and optimize it over and over again based on things that are changing. Um, but it does, it gives us some professionalism, it gives us a way to continue to prospect because we prospect and we teach our people to prospect constantly for partnerships. It's the same thing with lead flow because partnerships is a layer in your business, like, right? Marketing is a layer in your business, partnerships is a layer, a lead gen layer in your business. And so I it just makes you feel better because you know, sometimes you say it to people and people are like, okay, Marie. And I'm like, no, other people are saying it. So now Sarah's saying it too. It just makes me feel where I'm not the only one.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Yeah, I'm not the only one.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

It's out there.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Um, and there's this like there's people oftentimes think about networking from the standpoint of like themselves being the person who's showing up as the business owner, right? So, like, I'm showing up and I'm here to promote my business, but we forget to look at it as being the consumer of that information. Like, do you like if Marie comes to you or Amory comes to you and the first day they're like, hey, let's partner on something? And you're like, we just met, right? We don't like when people do it to us, but then we go do it to other people. And it's like you have to give it time and you have to plant the seed and allow for that to take time, right? Because like it's the farming analogy we hear all the time in networking, but brand awareness and visibility is a great goal, and even if you're not promoting anything, or if you're completely booked and you're not taking new clients, none of that's gonna turn over today or tomorrow, right? And you're just delaying your blessings by waiting.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Yeah, yeah. And we're absolutely it's relationship-based marketing, right? We don't want any one night stands around here, we want people to stay around for a while. And we that's important. I mean, I don't know if you guys but like it's important for us to think about relationships and how those are built. Um, and yeah, not just like automatically pushing people to promote them, and it's the icky part. It's the reason that powerful online partnerships as a business um exists, is because we saw a lot of the icky that was out there that people were very stats-based or transactional based without thinking about the person on the other side. And it just felt kind of funky. And it's just, yeah. So I'm glad that you're thinking the same way. I absolutely love it. Um, Anne Ray, you had a question about the queen of marketing. Do you want to ask, Sarah?

SPEAKER_02 12:27

Yeah, yeah. Can you um I just love that? When I looked at your LinkedIn profile yesterday, I'm like, oh, I like this. Um, tell me a little bit about it. Like, you know, where are you networking? Um, you talked a little about you talked about being in-person versus virtual. Um, if you can just share a little bit about that and and why you call yourself the queen of networking.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Yeah, yeah. That was actually uh a term that I kind of like was like for a long time. I didn't really fully embrace it for a long time, but I started being called that because of my approach to networking. Um, I'm pretty decently connected. You know, you can come to me for a plumber, a painter, or like a hypnotist, right? And I probably know someone who does all of it. So I am kind of well connected, but really it was my approach to networking, and I was sharing the strategies behind profitable networking that wasn't icky, gross, or weird. And that was when when I first pivoted to really lean into my expertise in marketing, that was my focus was teaching people my approach to networking, my like my strategies, if you will, and taking it and making it a strategy, but making a strategy that doesn't feel gross because I'm sure you guys have seen this where we don't want to be transactional, like we don't want to be that like your old weird uncle and his friends at the you know chamber meeting. But then we also kind of see this other. I love the chamber, okay. By the way, I'm a chamber member, but like it's just the perfect analogy because we all know, okay, we all know what I'm talking about. But there's now this other extreme that we're seeing, especially with female online, heart-centered service providers or entrepreneurs, is that we have gotten so afraid to be transactional that we're like, I'm just here to build relationships, but they have a bunch of friends and they've gotten friend-zoned and they're not growing a business. So I came into the space back in like 2021, I think is when I really first started like putting out the front-facing content and like really leaning into it. I started putting it out into the world, like, hey, we can do both. Like, we can be people above profit and still say that I network and I want partnerships that are actually gonna grow the business. And it's okay to say that I show up in networking spaces because I want to grow my business, you know. Like, let's normalize both. Like, I don't want to reek of commission breath, but I also don't want to be friend zoned. And people really took to that, like that whole approach to it is the number one thing I get booked to speak on stages about.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Yeah, no, we we don't we don't like the friend zone side of things, and it's the same, right? It's why we are in our world, we teach about how to actually have a conversation, and and most of our people are virtual, so and that happens a lot. Yeah, we love to go into in-person, Ann Ray does, I do all the time. Um, but a lot of our conversations are virtual. So, how do you like move a conversation along in a relationship-based way while still saying, hey, what's the next step for us? Right? Like, I don't want to hear how your cat always does the stupid thing all the time. Like, I want to hear, like, okay, how can I support you? Or where's the opportunity? And you know, what kind of referrals do you need? Any one of those. Um, and so I love that. And I I'm kind of jealous that you have it on your profile because now I feel like I can't put it on my profile, but it's okay. You can okay. We'll be royals.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

You could be the you could be the princess. You can be the princess of that. But I do want to say, Sarah, you said something really interesting at the beginning is that you can do both, right? Um, it doesn't have to be, you know, just one or the other. And that's important for people to know. Like we get on connection calls all day, every day. Um, obviously, I always encourage people, uh, and we we we have this conversation a lot in our um membership community where we say, you if you're not feeling it, you don't have to do it, right? Um, so you have to have a connection with that person. You want to have to do business with the person. They have to be like my like all of those other boxes have to check, but then yes, you do go into the transaction. At the end of the day, we're all on these calls because we want to do business, right? Um, so I think that's really important um for people to know you can do both. Yeah, like Merida, you don't want to spend half an hour talking about somebody's cat.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Yeah. Can I actually tell you? I used to be part of a group, it was like an anti-BI group, but they were structured exactly like BI. So there was these 10-minute presentations, you know, for members and stuff. And I will never forget this one girl got up and gave her 10-minute presentation. Eight of the 10 minutes, eight of the 10 minutes was about her family and about how much her son liked to play chess. This was easy, probably four or five years ago, that I was in this group, and I still to this day, the only thing I remember from that presentation is her son likes to play chess. And I'm like, yes, the personal side is cool and fun, you know, but to spend eight minutes for the only thing for your referral partners to remember is that your son likes chess. I cannot make you a referral based on that. And I think she was in, I still to this day don't even remember. I think it was something with finance. So think about over the last five years, how many people I've had that I could have made a referral to someone in finance or whatever it was that she did. And she wasn't even a thought in my head because I'm like, her kid likes chess. Right, right, right, yeah, and it's like I love yeah, as much as you like to hear about people's kids and animals and stuff like 10%, you know, like 10%, and then let's get back to business, or like send me pics of your kids and your dog and stuff on Instagram, and like we just don't need to take time on the calendar to be on a half an hour call to talk about your vacation. Yeah. Yep, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

And we do the same thing uh all the time, right? You want to connect, and we give our people five minutes of 30. So great, yeah. Let me hear about your kids, let me hear about your farm, let me hear about cool things that are happening in your world, how we knew somebody, and then we're gonna move on and we're gonna keep business going. Um, and this is the fun part, right? Like, I am so blessed that we get to do this every day is create relationships. And from that, then our business grows. So, um, question for you. We are coming kind of to the end. So I want to make sure I ask a couple important things because we know that people do partnerships differently, right? This podcast is all about um partnerships on purpose. So, how do you do partnerships in your business? What does it look like when you think about your partnership program? Can you explain that? Yeah, so you are you're talking like paid partnerships or like referral partner partnerships? Any any kind of thing, right? Sometimes people do referral swaps, sometimes people do podcasts, some people are like, I guess in other people. Like, what does it look like in your business and how is it how is it helping your business grow?

SPEAKER_00 19:36

Yeah, for sure. And I I love sharing audiences. I mean, I think Anne-Marie, you said it in the beginning of the podcast. It's like one of the best ways to grow a brand or to grow visibility is to share, right? At this point, being 10 years into my business, and I'm also like, I love boundaries. I love boundaries. Okay. I'm a self-aware, like my self-awareness is on level sexy. I know exactly how I operate, how I am, what works for me, and what doesn't work for me at this point. So I am very intentional and I just have in my brain, like, okay, these are like low lift, really easy partnerships that I can easily commit to. The higher, um, not higher intention, but like higher barrier type of partnerships, the ones that are gonna be more time, more energy, more money, right? The ones that are gonna take a little bit more out of me. What do I really want to do in those partnerships? What does the the dream partnership look like? And then what do I love in a partner and what do I not love? Because guess what? In 10 years, I've had a lot of partnerships where I'm like, WTF, how did I get here? Like, how did I end up here? And that is really good feedback and good information because I know what my personality type is, I know how I operate. I also know that I have a toddler, an ADHD brain, and I have a farm. So I just know how I operate and I can communicate that to people and say, if you are super type A neurotic, you need a response, like right this second, you're gonna hate me. Yeah, like you're gonna hate me, you know, and that allows for me to get myself into partnerships that are going to more than likely, of course, there's things that can still happen, but it it gives me a safety net to get into partnerships that are truly aligned with people who feel really good, and I know that they're gonna show up as much as I do, or I'm gonna show up as much as they do. And then categorizing people because it's okay to say, I like you as a person, but we're categorized in this like super easy low barrier partnership versus these higher level ones. It's kind of like how I treat people in my personal life, right? Like it's okay to re categorize people from best friend to like we're friends.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

Yeah. I love that. I love that. Um, thank you, Sarah. So, one final question. Um, can you share? Um, can you tell us about a partnership that has worked in your business and what made it so successful?

SPEAKER_00 22:14

A partnership that has worked. You know what I really, really love is I love doing virtual networking collabs with other communities. So I find these other uh community leaders who I get along with with really well, and we'll co-host like a virtual event. They're relatively easy to put on, they're very high impact. The both communities love it. It's a really easy way for both of us to show up. And then on the back end, it's an email list grower for both people. Like it's just such an easy, clear, this is what we're both doing. And it's really easy for both of us to show up. It also feels good. Like I always like to look at my marketing as a whole. So like everything I do should serve a purpose. And I don't want to do anything that doesn't cohesively fit with the other efforts or is redundant, right, or reaches the wrong people or anything like that. So that's like a really cool, uh, fun collab I do. The other one I really like is um affiliate partnerships where we are sharing a little bit more intentionally. So I have a friend who has a membership. I went in and did a training in her membership, everything was linked to an affiliate. Then her stuff is in my community, all linked to an affiliate. But there's just more intention versus like we signed up for affiliate links and we forget where they went, right? It's like adding it into uh membership dashboards, onboarding emails, offboarding emails, and there's actually a partnership. Maybe by the time the podcast's out, this will be public. So I'm gonna tell you guys. We started this new partnership on a paid offer, and I vetted the heck out of this girl. This was not a quick partnership. We've been uh in each other's world for close to a year before we decided to do this. She's a social media manager, has a really like awesome perspective on digital marketing. We get along really great, we collab on a lot of client work together. We started a new subscription, uh, like a subscription offer, really low ticket, but it's a great intro offer into bigger things for both of us. And we're really excited about that partnership. We've been uh testing it on uh some of my clients as guinea pigs for the past like three weeks.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Oh my gosh.

unknown 24:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

I love that stuff, right? Like making something creative, and I think that's the biggest thing with partnerships on purpose as a podcast, is sharing with people like how creative you can get and how it's not just like today you meet somebody tomorrow, the whole thing is like blowing up and you're making millions of dollars like other people's audiences. Like I love the fact that you're vetting somebody, I love the fact that you've created an intentional space that serves both um audiences. That's huge. So thanks for sharing that. Um, I also want to just like highlight, put a pin on um this week, you're the second person who's talked about those collaborative rooms from two different places. And so it's definitely a trend inside of um, we don't love networking as a word, but like the collaborative world out there that is businesses working together to increase visibility is this idea that people really do. They want to connect. And if you do that intentionally and you bring two hosts in, it can feel really peaceful and people love it. And then we get introduced without it being heavy lift. Um, I know you're gonna join us for our collaboration room, which is something we always let people know is out there. Um, and that's how we like to do things. We just like people to come together, have good conversation, and then be intentional about the follow-up. So yeah. Sarah, it's been so good to have you here. So thank you so much for being in, sharing all of your wisdom, being with us. Um, obviously, we're gonna put all your details in the show notes so people can find you and connect. But um, any last quick words before we close up?

SPEAKER_00 25:55

No, I don't think so. Thank you guys so much for having me. That this half an hour, I think, was the quickest half an hour of my life.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

I also wonderful. Yes. So good. Well, we're thankful to have you, and we will see everyone on the next episode.