Hi, it's Samantha Hartley and welcome back to the Profitable Joyful Consulting podcast. The theme of this season is Business Growth Strategies. And today, I'm going to talk about one of my favorite ones, which is strategic alliances. There are not many shortcuts in business. You really just have to put in the work. Many people who you think of as an overnight success have been seven to 10 years in the trying of that. So this is one of the few methods where you can quickly tap into someone else's audience and put yourself on a path to success faster than doing it on your own.

So the tips that I'm going to give you today, I will give you ideas for how you can put these into action immediately and inspire you to reach out and connect with more people. Strategic alliances, I think of it as intentional connection because you can be connected to anyone in your business but who we specifically want to look for are those who can. So those who can connect you to your audience, those whom you can connect to your audience being very intentional about who you're connected with. If you have five strategic alliances, you can really almost not do any other marketing, but rely on them as referral sources. If you have seven to 10. So it's a really valuable foundation for your business. And I'm going to talk about exactly how to set these up and who to choose and how to work with them. Let's jump in.

The first thing I think, I mentioned connection. Too often consultants are isolated in their business. They're working on their own. They work with their clients. They come home. And there's not enough connection to other people who are out there. Sure there's a few people to whom this comes naturally and you might be one of them. But for a lot of us, we have to be very intentional about reaching out and then connecting. And one of the funny things about this is that a lot of when you reach out can feel like you're connecting to you're finding more and more competitors. What's great about strategic alliances is that no one is a competitor when you think about them this way. It's all about how we can serve our audiences better? So you can develop an abundance mentality about competition.

One of the first ways I noticed this, I went to a training many years ago, a specific marketing training, and there are like 15 people in the room. And I thought all of us are going to learn this and then we're all going to be competing with each other. I thought everybody in here is a marketing consultant and a competitor. And over the course of the three days of the training and also in the weeks afterward, I realized there wasn't anyone in there who competed with anyone else. Everyone was very specific. Had like discrete areas of expertise. And, we might have served the same audiences in some cases. But, I began to receive referrals from like three to five different people in that group. And one of them was actually two of them are ongoing, like years later they are still referral sources for me because I do something unique in that group, which is the brand work, working with smaller clients. The kind of things that I did that those people who refer to me didn't do. Worked one on one, maybe some people don't work one on one. So you can be really curious about who else you're connected to and find those gaps and overlaps. Like here's the places we “compete” because we do very similar things for very similar people. And then here's the things like I do things that they don't do. You do things that she doesn't do. That's a very important part of developing strategic alliances is discovering and finding the differences, the gaps, the overlaps. So about the term strategic alliance, I'm using it interchangeably with joint ventures or referral partnerships. They're very similar as far as strategies. So I'm going to talk about four aspects of them, and you'll kind of hear some nuance in there about which ones are which.

The first thing is when someone has your audience and you can come in and serve that audience and they bring you in. So a lot of the referrals that I would get would be people who wanted me to do something for their audience that they didn't do. And as I mentioned, sometimes they were people who I would have thought totally did what I do like an ad agency. One of my long term referral partners, strategic allies, was an ad agency who would bring me in to do strategic ideation, strategic planning, brand planning, brand strategy, which wasn't something that they did. They did more of the implementation and execution. So super interesting, they were able to bring me and help out their audience and we had that as a financial relationship.

I've also had longtime referral partners, strategic allies, a chamber of commerce. There was also someone who was part of the Chamber of Commerce, but she was basically just a civic leader who would see things happening in the city that I was living in and recommend that I go in and help them. So she was constantly sending me referrals. I had a business insurance agent who, when his clients were looking for help growing like help with their marketing or help getting more clients or help growing the business, he was insuring that business, but he could mention me and I could go in and help those clients.

So sometimes there's no overlap at all, meaning we don't compete at all. And sometimes we're basically in the same field, but just doing slightly different versions of it. In that way, I had a foundation of my business that was based on these relationships. And that's something that you can set up as well. Who is serving your audience and that you can access that audience to bring your skills to them. A broad way to think about this is things like associations, any kind of online communities where you can access them online or offline communities, nowadays, we're doing more of the online communities who can give you an access point where you can put yourself in front of that existing audience. A lot of times I'll have clients who are working, looking at online strategies like Google AdWords and things like that. And it's like you're a part of this association that has like 10,000 members. And if you can get them to promote you to the members, you're going to have all the clients you can handle.

So think broadly about who has your audience and what you can do to go in and get in front of that audience. The second perspective that I have on strategic allies is almost the opposite. It's when you're looking at your audience and your networking connections, who can you bring in to serve your audience? They don't necessarily compete with you in an augment or fill out whatever your offer is. I've seen this with human resources. You would think that they all kind of do the same thing. In human resources, there's kind of a division between those who do compliance work and those who do soft skills and leadership training and things like that. So the client needs both, probably. And if that's the case with some of your clients, then it helps the client and it helps you to already have someone to know, someone that you can bring in.

Now, as I say that, I realize that some people feel there is a risk, you take on a risk when you bring someone in. Yes, we do. In strategic alliances, there's a risk, an inherent risk on each side, I might bring you in and you might not do a great job or you might bring me in and I might not do a great job. So it's really important that all of us are really doing our best to build and nurture connections that we trust. Right. There's nothing more important than we make that person look good who took a risk and brought us in. Now, a quick side note, when you receive referrals from someone, it's really important that you turn those referrals into clients so that you convert them because someone has trusted you and said, I think this person is a good fit for you. And they sent them over. If they're not a good fit then don't convert them, by no means do we want you to work with clients who aren't perfect for you. But if they've sent them, then this person who knows you well should be sending you clients who are a perfect fit for you. If they don't, you can have a conversation with your strategic ally about who's a good fit for you and who isn't. But over time, you should develop a relationship where when they send somebody to you, they turn into a client. And so they can trust that there's this pipeline that they're going to send and you're going to help their person. And that can be a revenue source for them where it's not a fit for them, they send them to you and you turn them into a client and you pay them a commission for that. But more often, it's less that people want the referrals or the revenue source then and it's more important to them that their client is satisfied. So the first thing I think it's really important is that you do convert them and the second thing I think is absolutely critical is that you delight them. So that person that you work with is so delighted with your services and that puts a halo effect on the person that sent them to you.

Now, as I've mentioned, the second perspective is us doing that, where we bring someone in to work with our clients. And, of course, we expect that person to convert. We expect that person to make that referral a client and then also to delight them. So, there's a trust factor in this. There's an abundance mentality of all of us sharing these things that sometimes people have scarcity around like this is my client and I can’t risk, this is my client and I want all of the money from this client or things like that. So it's an opportunity, this strategy to work on abundance mindset and really living into abundance and trust.

Trust that you can find people who are going to serve you. I mentioned in the theme episode that you should work exclusively within your joy and genius zone and that whenever possible you are outsourcing things that can be done cheaper, better, and faster by someone else. And a lot of that is happening here where you're bringing in other experts who can serve your audience better than you can. And also that it's more in their joy and genius zone than in yours. And as you grow in your business, you're going to have different things that are in your joy and genius zone. You're going to have different things that can be done better, faster, and cheaper by someone else. So I love the idea that we're collecting and nurturing these contacts who can be of service. They can be of service to our audience. We're collecting those contacts so that we can be of service to their audience.

My third perspective on strategic alliances is partnerships. It's when you and someone else come together, bring your audiences together. And then sometimes a third thing happens, which is the two things that you bring together to attract a new audience. And so it's really tapping into the talents attraction of each of you to create something that's bigger than you. And I really like this because, again, a lot of consultants tend to stay isolated and to work only with their clients. And this is an opportunity to raise your head up and see what else is out there. You don't have to begin with a huge thing. You can do a co webinar. You can do a speaking engagement. You can hold a workshop. You don't just have free workshops, something easy. You don't have to dive into a ten thousand dollar event. But whatever you're looking at is helping you expand and grow and serve new and different audiences. Serve your audience in a new and different way. They serve their audience in a new and different way and you expand and make a new audience. So I think partnering is a really interesting opportunity.

And the last thing is finding thought partners. We can call these business friends. You can think of them any way you want. But I like to have a few really well-cultivated business connections that you keep in touch with on a regular basis that don't necessarily have anything to do with you making money from them, or you making money together. It's just people that you are exchanging ideas with so that you're exposed to new and different ideas. You could run your ideas past someone and have a few people from different and varying backgrounds. So I have several business friends and thought partners, who I'm thinking things through with and they come from a variety of professions. So some of them “compete” with me and do what I do. But many of them are kind of in different fields and don't necessarily compete, but have enough familiarity with what I do that they can share perspectives. So these can be people that we meet regularly, every three months, or from time to time we're in contact, or we talk every week and text every day.

So having that kind of business contacts in your life is really important, because for a lot of people, when they go home, they're not necessarily able to discuss work things, especially self-employment things. A lot of times when you're having trouble in self-employment and you go home, the people in your friends and family want to take that away from you. It seems like it's a lot of pressure and they don't want you to pressure yourself. They don't want to see you in pain. And business friends that are self-employed friends can look at what you're doing and know that you're in the slog phase, but you're fighting the good fight and you're not actually suffering, you're actually moving towards a better thing. And they don't necessarily have to take that pain away from you. I hope that makes sense because I've seen it a lot with many people. It's really important for you to have as supportive a home and friend environment as you can. But in some cases, that just isn't there and it's really good to have a group of business friends that you can turn to and share your experience and they understand it.

So these are four different perspectives on strategic alliances that I'd love for you to build in your business or explore building and some actions that you can take today to move you closer to this. If you have some of these going on, awesome. And if you don't yet, here are some ideas to think about.

So the first thing I want you to do is to think about who serves your audience but doesn't compete with you? And think about who serves your audience and does compete with you. Can you bring them in to supplement any of your work? Can you refer clients to them who aren't fit for you? It's really good to set those kinds of alliances up.

And then the second thing, are there needs that your clients have that you're not fulfilling? Either you're not able to fulfill because it's out of your joy and genius zone or you're just not interested in offering that. Are there things that your clients need that someone else could come in and fulfill? And if you can write the top three of those and then begin to keep an eye out for who in your network is someone that you trust, that you could create a formal strategic alliance with that they would come in and fulfill that for you.

Strategic alliances are one of the most powerful ways to grow your business. And I hope that this has given you a few new perspectives on how you can approach them in your own business and how you can just connect more meaningfully to those people who you feel attracted to and you want to do something with in your business. But the traditional avenues of you working with them or them working with you aren't exactly right. Hopefully, this can give you some ideas that there are more ways to work with those and to stay connected to people who you want to be close to in your business. Until next week, I'm wishing you a profitable and joyful consultancy.