🚀 Drive Audience, Income & Growth by Mastering Collaboration 👥
Feeling overwhelmed by growing your business alone? This episode is your game-changer! Join us as Lynn Neville, the queen of collaboration and founder of BizBestie HQ, reveals how strategic partnerships can skyrocket your email list, amplify your reach, and turn competitors into collaborators. Learn the secrets to finding the perfect biz besties, tons of creative collaboration ideas (from email swaps to joint summits), and how to say goodbye to the struggle bus and hello to explosive growth. Don't miss out on Lynn's free guide, "30 Ways to Grow and Scale Your Business Through Collaborations," and a special VIP bonus to help you explode your list!
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Hello everyone, welcome back. I am super excited. I am here with Lynn Neville. She is a business strategist who specializes in lead generation, networking, and online events. She's the founder of BizBestie HQ and the Six-figure biz Content Club, Lynn helps businesses grow their audience and get more leads with simple tools and strategies that get results without the overwhelm.
Say goodbye to the struggle bus and say hello to a list full of loyal followers who want to buy your products and work with you. I'm so excited because we're talking all about the power of collaborations and forming friendships and partnerships with other people to help further both of your businesses, which is also a passion area of mine. We speak the same language. Honestly, I love your intro because before learning about collaborations, I was also riding the struggle bus and it completely changed my business. I can't wait to dig into this topic with you. Welcome, Lynn.
I’m pleased to be here. Thank you for having me.
Before we dive into the good stuff, for those who maybe haven't met you yet, do you want to tell us a little bit about your story as an entrepreneur and what brought you to where you are, being an expert in this area of collaboration?
As a middle child, I always wanted to get people together and live harmoniously together, but going back a little bit during COVID, it was a lonely period for a lot of us. Online entrepreneurs were used to working alone, but COVID escalated things. I discovered the Clubhouse at that point and I was addicted because I was getting together and hearing real people in real time.
When I was on there, I started running these networking rooms where we would get these women entrepreneurs together, and we would talk about ourselves and make connections. It wasn't just, “We’re going to have a topic, come over and pitch my business.” It was actually, “You know what? I know someone who would be a good referral for you.” I’m connecting people. I loved it so much. We ran those rooms for an entire year. I host online events like giveaways and bundles.
I thought why don't I incorporate this into my events and get those contributors and those participants to be able to connect with each other beyond those events and go and do their summits together, go and do their collaborations together? It worked out so well. That's all I do now. That's my biggest focus, finding ways for other people to collaborate, showing them how collaboration can change your business, and connecting them with the right people.
I love that. COVID was rough on all of us, honestly. I think we're all still recovering but there's always the silver lining. Some hidden gems came out of it for all of us too. I love that you took what seemingly a terrible situation and you found that silver lining. Now it's at the heart of everything that you do and it has become an entire thing for you, which I love.
The Power Of Collaboration
For people who are maybe new to this idea, there are tons of business builders out there who are trying to do it all alone. They're trying to do it all themselves. Growing their email list, growing their Facebook group, and getting buyers and clients feels impossible. Tell us a little bit about why are you so passionate about networking, connecting, and collaborating. How is it rewarding to do business in general? What are the benefits of incorporating this strategy into your business?
One of the things that new and emerging entrepreneurs aren't aware of is how having business connections can make your business journey so much more enriching and rewarding. It can propel your business forward. It doesn't matter if you're just new and emerging or if you're just starting. It helps you out no matter what stage in business you are in. As human beings, we weren't meant to live alone and we thrive when we connect to others.
Likewise in businesses, we need other businesses. We need collaboration to help move ourselves forward, to grow, and to grow our businesses. Having a long-lasting relationship makes that difference because when you collaborate with other businesses, you leverage each other's audiences. You can increase your visibility. You establish your authority. You can grow your audience, get referrals, and save time and money.
I've seen it work for so many people. I've experienced it myself, where connecting and collaborating can open up a whole world for you. When you're a solopreneur especially if you're doing all the things yourself, who do you turn to ask questions? Am I doing this right? Is this the right way to do this? Is this what people want?
Having these business relationships with biz besties is what I call them and collaborating with people, then you get a better idea of what you should be doing. Your business can grow. You're going down the right path. You'll get access to ideas that you wouldn't have been able to come up with yourselves. When you're first starting out, you don't know what you don't know. Maybe your biz bestie can help you. Maybe they know and maybe they can help support you in growing your business in ways that you never thought of before.
I completely agree and love that because your net worth is your network. I know there are tons of people out there who get the seed of the idea, but it's falling apart in translation. For example, I know there are tons of people out there who are trying to network and connect in Facebook groups, but when they're reaching out to people, they're not getting engagement.
They're trying to engage and network on LinkedIn, and they're not getting a lot of response. They're trying to engage and collaborate but it's not turning into something. They're not activating the right mechanism. There are tons of people out there who recognize, “I want to network and collaborate, but how?”
How To Connect With People
Can you give a couple of examples of what that mechanism might look like beyond trying to reach out to people on social media and getting ignored?
There are a couple of things that you need to know before you start connecting with people. The first thing is, “What's your goal?” If your goal right now is to launch a program, then you have to think about, “Who are the people that I can connect with that can help me launch that program, that can support this program?”
The second thing you want to know is who your target audience is and who are the people that have that same or similar target audience. I talk about this all the time. If you're launching a program that teaches people how to get speaking engagements, you're not going to try to connect with an accountant because they are not your target audience.
You want to collaborate with people who have that target audience that is going to be open and want to learn about the program that you're launching. Understanding those things, then you can start thinking about who are those people. How do I connect with them? Who do I know that can connect me with that person? That's one other thing having a network of biz besties helps you.
I remember I learned about you through someone else who was my biz bestie at the time. She helps me grow my network also. It's who you know that has the same or similar target audience as you and can support you with that specific goal that you're working on. If you go in a copy chat or a networking room and everyone's talking about what their business is, but they're not in the same niche as you or they don't serve your target audience, don't even bother wasting your time. It is not worth your time. You need to find the right people that can support your goal and your audience.
Grow Visibility And Authority
Super smart. I know you have a good Elton John and Taylor Swift story that gets into how you can grow your visibility and authority. I would love to hear that story. I'm dying to hear it.
Just thinking about collaboration simply in terms of Elton John and Dua Lipa. They did that song together, Cold Heart, which I love. Their fan bases are different. What happened there is Elton John grew his younger audience with Dua Lipa, and Dua Lipa was able to add more people to her audience from all the millions of fans that Elton John has.
If you think about it, he did the same thing. He collaborated with Britney Spears. Again, they both grew their audiences because they did a song together. Britney Spears fans are younger base. They probably didn't know about Elton John and vice versa, but because they did that collaboration, their audiences both got to get exposed to them. They grew their audiences.
The queen of collaboration when it comes to music is Taylor Swift. Look at all the people that she's done songs with. She's collaborated on songs that started climbing the charts. Nobody heard about them or, they like the authority that she has that rubs off on them, “They did a song with Taylor Swift. They must be good. I'm going to start listening to their other music.” That's what we want for our businesses as well. Justin Bieber does the same thing. He collaborates all the time on all sorts of songs.
If you think of it in terms of business, look at Amy Porterfield. When she launches a program, she doesn't just launch it on her own. She has a slew of cheerleaders who were there to support her biz besties, her colleagues, and her affiliate program. When she launched, it was this massive thing, massive income, because she wasn't doing it on her own. If you have a program and you have a thousand people on your list and your conversion rate is 3%, you get 30 signups. If you have 10 friends that have 1,000 people on their list, that's 10,000 people. The conversion rate is 300 people signing up for your program.
If you add in the dollar figures, let’s say your program is $1,000, if you were to launch it on your own, you would make $30,000 but if you launched it with all those people with that 330 people combined times $1,000 for every sale, that's 330,000. Which would you rather have the 30,000 or the 330,000? Exactly, and that's what Amy Portfield does.
I know there are tons of people for whom the light bulb is going off now. That would be amazing to tap other people's audiences and have them tap yours. I know from experience. It's not like I'm stealing your people or you're stealing mine. It's like, “Meet my people, I'll meet your people, we'll all hang out together.” It's a win-win situation. I know simply from you and I collaborating on this event that a lot of your audience is going to meet me and a lot of my audience is going to meet you, and we're both going to benefit because of it.
I love events like this because it's scaled. It's not just our audiences, it's everybody that's inside of this event that is benefiting. I'm benefiting by getting exposure to my business. You're benefiting by getting exposure to your business and for all the other experts and speakers, they're benefiting and then our audiences are benefiting because we have our areas of expertise and our programs, our services, but we can't teach everything that everyone else, all the other speakers are teaching. Giving our audience access to other people's expertise is a win-win for them too. That's why I always think of it as a win-win-win for everyone involved, our audience, ourselves, and our collaboration partners.
Yes, all the way around. Give us a few examples of different types of collaborations that either you've participated in or some of your biz besties have, or that maybe you haven't yet, but it's on your list of stuff you want to do. What are some of the ways you've implemented this strategy into your own business?
You can do anything from small to big. There are so many different kinds of ways to do it. One simple common one is an email exchange. You have a lead magnet, I have a lead magnet, and we agree to share our lead magnets with each other's audiences. It’s simple. In terms of passive income, this can be an evergreen strategy. You set up these lead magnet exchanges or email exchanges with multiple people and set it up as an evergreen system.
It's something that every time someone new comes onto our list, they get that evergreen email. You don't even have to think about it anymore. It's passive income. Another thing is getting guest spots on podcasts or people's YouTube channels or doing a guest blog post on someone's blog. You're leveraging someone else's audience and you're growing your authority as well.
For example, with a podcast, you're getting exposure to their audience and you're getting authority because this person is featuring you as this expert. It's built an authority there and then if you offer up a lead magnet, that podcast episode lives on forever until the life of the podcast. Anybody maybe six months down the road will listen to it and they see your lead magnet, they get on your list and you start nurturing them. They bought something from you and you did that episode six months ago. That's excellent. passive income strategy.
It's creating evergreen content that can live in so many different ways. I take a lot of these interviews and I repurpose them on the Impactful Entrepreneur show. I also slice and dice them and turn them into reels and TikToks. There's so much you can do. You can take all those different interviews that either you've been in or that you've hosted. You can add them as a bonus in one of your courses or programs. There's so much you can do. It's awesome.
I was chatting with a friend because I have this one program. In it, I make these tech recommendations and she is the tech guru, my go-to person for all tech. I said to her, “You know what, here's a collaboration idea. I can't provide this tech expertise to my audience. Maybe you can be the person that I put inside of this program as the person that they can contact.” That's a collaboration effort. That's an evergreen collaboration effort for her because she doesn't have to do anything. People will come to my course, click on it, and then they can contact her if they need to. different things that you can think about.
It's amazing that the opportunities that open up, even in one of my programs, one of the very first collaboration events I had, I interviewed this girl, Elia Finkelstein. I was so impressed with her. I was like, “You are blowing my mind. You're like a diamond in the rough. You're a hidden gem. No one knows about you yet, but you're going to be a big deal.” I invited her to be a copywriting coach in one of my programs.
Years later, she has taken off, and being a guest coach in one of my programs was a part of that. Now she's growing leaps and bounds and it's so cool to see. You can get guest coaching spots in other people's programs or built-in referrals into courses. It's cool, the stuff you can do. I think people are starting to get it now, but they're probably wondering, “This sounds great, but where do you find these people that you partner with?” I think that's probably the most common question that comes up with this topic.
Where To Find Partnerships
The people who are more established are already in the business. Small, big, or whatever, they have some business they can turn to. It's going to them first. That's my favorite thing to do. Go to them first and ask them, “I have this program. Who do you know that has a target audience that would be interested in this program?”
“I want to get speaking engagements to talk about this program. Who do you know that's going to have an event coming up that I can reach out to and get exposure for my program?” Turning your biz besties because they're there to help you too. Ask them who they know or “Who can you refer me to.” The second is to hop into Facebook groups.
Find out where your target audience is hanging out, get in there, and use that space to find either other colleagues or people whom you could reach out to who have that target audience because they're going to be hanging out in there too. You can reach out directly to your target audience there. Another example would be to go into networking communities. I have a networking community where people can come together and come and meet other business experts, other women who are looking to support one another and build those relationships, and who aren't just going to go on a coffee chat with you that leads to nowhere.
Collaboration: Find out where your target audience is hanging out, get in there, and use that space to find either other colleagues or people whom you could reach out to who have that target audience.
When people first start this idea of collaborations, the most common I see is people saying, “I want to start a podcast.” They then very quickly realize, “Wait a minute, I need to find nonstop, never-ending guests. How do I do that?” Or “I want to be featured on podcasts.” They're then looking for a way to get featured. It feels like this dead end of how do you even get started? It's one thing to know you want to do it.
It's another thing to figure out how to do it, which can be tricky. I know you have a community of people where people connect, they form collaborations. That's one of the places where if you're looking for how on earth do I even start this, this is a perfect example of the community that could be helpful. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
It's called BizBestie HQ and it's a community of predominantly female entrepreneurs. All of us in there have that supportive mindset. We're there to build these long-lasting relationships and mutually beneficial relationships because the collaboration isn't a “Me, me, me” kind of thing. It's you and I. It's that win, win, win thing that I talked about.
The women in there were networking, brainstorming, sharing ideas, and cheering each other on. To have that bestie to turn to when you have a bad day with a client, having someone to say, “My God, talk me off the cliff. I had a horrible day.” That's the place where you feel like you can be heard and that you're not in this alone. We're not in our businesses alone and you can come up with ideas of how to collaborate.
One thing that makes this community different from any other networking group is that we learn together how to be a savvy collaborator. How to find the right kinds of collaborations with the right people, with the right audience that is going to make a difference for our goals right now. You're not just spinning your wheels. You're not just going in, having these coffee chats, and going to these networking rooms that lead to nothing. You're setting up simple and effective strategies to grow your network, grow your community, and grow your business.
That's so helpful because once you're tapping into the right circles of people who understand collaborations, not only do they leverage them, but they're open to swapping collaborations, supporting each other, or helping each other out. It's interesting. Before finding collaborations, as I alluded to earlier, I was riding the struggle bus and I was like, “This is so hard. It takes forever.”
Once I found it and tapped into it, I realized there's an entire world of people doing this and I didn't even realize this world existed. Just like anything else, before finding an online business, probably for anyone tuning in, rewind to a day when you had never heard of an online business and you didn't know it existed. When you finally discover it, it's like discovering this whole world of, “People are doing this? What?”
Lynn’s Gifts
It was like that for me. I'm sure many people might be like that for them right now. I know you have a nice free gift that can help people if they're just now realizing that there's this entire world of collaborations that they didn't know existed and their mind is being blown right now. You have a gift that can help them to get started. Do you want to tell us a little bit about it?
It's called the 30 Ways to Grow and Scale Your Business Through Collaborations. It's a PDF guide that lists 30 different ways that you can collaborate. As I said earlier, it can be something small, like an email exchange, or it can be something as big as hosting your own summit, your own bundle, or your own giveaway event.
It gives you ideas to get the brain and you can look through those and think about, “What would light me up? What would an email exchange make me excited? Do I know people who would be interested in doing this with me?” Going through that gives you ideas on what would work for you. There's a space for you to be able to keep track of your outreach efforts.
If you do a coffee chat every week for a month over two months, you are going to lose track of the people that you've been reaching out to. It's important because you're building relationships. It's important to keep track of the people that you've been reaching out to. What kind of collaboration did you talk about? What did they do for their business? When should I reach out to them next?
There's a place for that and then one other thing that I get all the time is, “This sounds wonderful but I'm afraid to reach out to people. What do I say to them?” There's a swipe copy in there. Easy to follow and tailor it to your voice, but it at least gets that started, and then you have to think about the people that you're reaching out to, they're most likely wanting you to reach out to them. They want to reach out to people too. They want to collaborate. Don't be afraid to reach out and you never know. More than likely, they're going to say yes.
Don't be afraid to reach out. You never know, more than likely, they're going to say yes.
We all get this idea in our head, “If I do this, they're going to say no, or if I invite them, they're not going to be interested.” You are just making them. You don't know what they're going to say. If you're going to make it up, make it up good. Assume that they're going to be like, “I love that you contacted me. This is the best idea ever.”
Why wouldn't you assume it's going to be great? That's what I do exactly. I love it. What a great way to dip your toe into this world. Have an entry point, have a way to stay organized, track everything, and immerse yourself into this world. I love it. I know you also have a VIP gift for those who are one of our VIP ticket holders. Do you want to tell us about that one?
It's the 100 Plus New Subscribers in 30 Days and it's a quick course broken up into easy, simple snippets. It comes with a worksheet so that you can plan out the different things that work for your business because throwing spaghetti at the wall and trying all these different things doesn't always make sense. Looking at the things that will work for you, but it gives you this laundry list of things to consider and then you can plan your attack on what are the best ways for me to get that 100 plus. It's a plus, it's not just 100, but if you follow the tactics that are talked about in there, then you'll be able to grow your list.
I love it because list growth is one of the most valuable things you can do in your business. I would much rather have 100 email subscribers than 100 social media followers.
It's something you have to constantly do. People drop off your list and as you start collaborating, your list grows exponentially. If you try to grow your list on your own and that's one of the things we talk about in that bonus for the VIP is that if you throw in collaborations into there, think about it as a hundred plus, think of it more as a thousand plus. That collaboration exponentially grows your list.
It's amazing. When it comes to collaborations, I tell people to buckle their seatbelts because things move a lot faster when you start collaborating.
It's more fun.
Every time I collaborate with someone and come up with something, I make a new friend and I’m like, “I'm keeping you around. We're going to stay in touch.” It's a fun way to make friends. Honestly, I joke and I say it's the adult version of saying, “Do you want to play with me?” We make friends so easily with kids, but as adults, it's different, but it's the adult version of making friends in business. As you said, biz besties.
Client Experiences
Lynn, this was such a joy diving into this topic area with you. I have the feeling that some people watching had their light bulb moment today and realized, “I don't have to do this all alone.” No, you don't and it's amazing what can happen. Before we wrap up, do you have some real-life examples for yourself or for clients or people you've worked with? What collaborations have done for their business? What results they've gotten, whether it's list build or income or any real-life stories you want to share with us?
I emailed my list about this the other day. Sadie and Julie partnered together on a project. They put together a course. Because they did it together, they were able to do it so much faster. They were able to launch it to a wider audience and they were able to make more money because they did this in a collaboration effort. Things like that.
Also, doing simple email exchanges. A friend of mine is looking for other people to share an offer of hers. She's asked these people inside of the Business HQ who would be willing to share this with their email list. Maybe she has a thousand people on her list. Now she's getting in front of other people on their list. She's going to grow her list. She's going to get more people signing up for her offer, and then if you set it up right with funnels and all this other stuff, you can grow your income too on the backend by nurturing the people that are coming onto our list. There are so many different ways to grow your business and your collaboration.
There are endless opportunities. Once you wire your brain to think that way, you start seeing collaborative opportunities everywhere. Whatever you look for, you're going to find. It's like you bought a new green vehicle and all of a sudden you see green.
Once you start opening your eyes to collaborations and seeing things differently, people start seeing you differently. I get invitations to be in summits and bundle events to collaborate and be on podcasts all the time now like “How did this happen? When did this happen?” It probably was there in front of me. I just didn't realize it.
There's also this element too. I experienced this myself and so do many of my clients. The minute they start inviting, they start getting invited. It's like putting that energy out and it reflects back to you. It is very common that once you start reaching out to others to collaborate, suddenly you're being invited to collaborate on tons of things.
It's opportunity after opportunity, visibility, exposure, authority, all the things. One of my favorite things about this strategy is if you are feeling imposter syndrome, squash that, and throw it in the trash. It disappears like that because all it takes is 1 or 2 collaborations and making some new friends, those negative thoughts get washed away.
Thank you so much, Lynn. The audience is probably brimming with excitement and possibility and maybe a little bit of wonder. I encourage you guys to grab that gift. If you're not a VIP ticket holder yet, what on earth are you waiting for? You're going to want that VIP gift so that you can add 100 email subscribers to your list in 30 days. Scoop that up and Lynn, if that was a pleasure, I would love to stay in contact and collaborate on other things.
Yes, definitely.
I love it, Thank you and we'll see you guys in the next interview, bye.
Important Links
Lynn Neville - Linkedin
BizBestie HQ - Website
Six-figure biz Content Club - Website
30 Ways to Grow and Scale Your Business Through Collaborations - Lead Magnet
About Lynn Neville
Lynn Neville is a business strategist who specializes in lead generation, networking, and online events. She is the founder of Biz Bestie HQ and the 6-Figure Biz Content Club.
Lynn helps businesses grow their audience and get more leads with simple tools and strategies that get results without the overwhelm. Say goodbye to the struggle bus and say hello to a list full of loyal followers who want to buy your products and work with you!
