Lauren: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Publish & Prosper. This is episode number 76. And today we're going to be talking about partnerships and collaborations, which is something that feels wild for me to recommend as I sit next to somebody that I've been collaborating with for the last year and a half. 

Matt: Why does it feel wild? 

Lauren: Because it's so much fun to do together. No I’m kidding. 

Matt: See, I don’t – I don’t know if you’re being serious or not now. My feelings are hurt. 

Lauren: I actually tell people all the time that my favorite thing about working at Lulu is how collaborative we are as a team. So I am – while I'm saying it with a very sarcastic tone, I'm actually very serious. I love collaboration and I love partnering with other creative people and partnering with other like-minded business people, or people that have the same passions as me, or people that have some kind of aligned interest. And we've talked a lot, actually, in other episodes, sporadically here and there, about the value of networking and the value of collaborative opportunities and partnerships. But I was going through and we've never actually dedicated a whole episode to it. We've only really talked about it in bits and pieces in other episodes. 

Matt: Yeah, I agree with you. Obviously. Part of my job that I love, and now actually part of my new role is officially partnerships. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So I get to do a lot more of that officially on behalf of the company, like corporate partnerships and stuff too. And that's been really fun as well. So I agree with you in all of that. And I think it's a really important thing. I think it's more important now though. I was thinking about this earlier when I was looking over your outline and I was thinking about some of the people we know that we have partnered with or done anything from sponsorship deals to influencer type activities or things like that. I think it's even more critical right now that people understand the importance of them, but also how to do it. Because right now everything is white noise. Like, we have such an attention deficit out there that it's getting harder and harder for indie authors or creators who are writing books for lead magnets or anybody who's creating content in general to get their content in front of people. If you can master some of these other ways, right? And the stuff we're going to talk about today, a lot of it is not highly dependent on social media necessarily – 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: – although there's a big part of that. But also most of what we're talking about today shouldn't or won't cost you any money. And if it does, it'd be very little. So these are things we're going to talk about that you can do, they're truly collaborative efforts. And in most cases, shouldn't cost you a dime. Yet hopefully net you a pretty decent return on your effort in terms of building audience, selling books, or doing whatever it is you're trying to do. 

Lauren: Authority building too. 

Matt: Sure. Yeah. 

Lauren: Reputation building, for sure. But yeah, absolutely. That was definitely the goal here. I do also want to hang a lantern right at the top that we're, while we're talking about partnerships and collaborations. We're not really talking about sponsorships. 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: That's kind of a separate thing. 

Matt: That's really important. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: But I will tell you this. If you are interested in landing paid sponsorship deals, you are absolutely effing up by not reading Justin Moore's book Sponsor Magnet. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Go find Justin Moore on LinkedIn. Go find Justin Moore, Creator Wizard on YouTube or Instagram.

Lauren: I'll link it in the show notes. I'll link his book in the show notes. 

Matt: Most importantly get his book Sponsor Magnet. There's probably not a better person out there right now in the creator and author world to talk about landing sponsorship deals, how to do it, how to maintain them, all that stuff. So we're not going to talk about paying sponsorship deals today, but do yourself a favor and go get Justin's book. 

Lauren: You know, that was actually the deciding factor for me when I was putting this outline together. I was going back and forth on whether or not I wanted to try to include sponsorships in this. And after a couple of minutes of looking through Justin's stuff, I was like, you know what? There's, there's nothing, there's no value that I can provide here that is going to come close to the value that he can provide here. So let's just…

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – leave it alone and direct people that way. So I'm glad that you mentioned that because that was genuinely the deciding factor for me. It was like Justin's got this. I don't need to touch this. 

Matt: Well, and I'll normally only give a recommendation like that if the book truly delivers value and does it in a way without a ton of fluff. Like, Justin's book just delivers on every chapter value in the chain of trying to land paid sponsorship deals for, for what you're doing. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: So if that's your interest, great. Go get that book, go seek Justin out, do one of his master classes or something like that, but. We're not here to talk about that, because all we would do is muddy the waters. 

Lauren: If you're listening to this and you're like, what's the difference? I don't, I'm not sure. What do you mean partnerships versus sponsorships? Basically, when we're talking about partnerships, we're talking about equally matched creators or maybe brands, but small business brands that are exchanging mutual support. They are – 

Matt: Can I – 

Lauren: – cross – 

Matt: Can I change one word in your definition? 

Lauren: Sure. 

Matt: Can we remove the word equally? 

Lauren: Yeah.  

Matt: Or equally matched, I would say? 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: And the only reason I'm gonna say that, sorry I didn't catch this earlier in the outline, is A it's really hard to measure that, right? So measuring yourself against another creator, or author, or you know, entrepreneur can sometimes be hard because what criteria do you use? Do you even have access to what you're trying to measure against? If you're just looking solely at follower count, that's a terrible measurement. Equally matched, I think, is really hard to measure. But secondarily, I wouldn't discount somebody who, if you're using something like followers as your metric to try and match yourself, like – 

Lauren: Which we're going to tell you not to. 

Matt: Exactly. But if you are, which is what a lot of people do, think about this. These days, the number of followers means zero. What really matters is engagement. I could have 5,000 followers and Lauren could have 50,000 followers. And that's probably a real life scenario there. You should be 10 X following Lauren versus me, but of my 5,000, I might have 2,000 highly engaged followers that click, that comment, that buy. And of her 50,000, she may only have a thousand that are actually qualified or that follow through and engage. The rest could be bots or just people who are doom scrolling that are friends and family or whatever. I wouldn't use anything like that to judge whether you're equally matched or if there's value on the other end of the person that you're... I would just, you know, again, like Lauren was going into, look at their audience. Who are they talking to? What kind of content do they create? Are there similarities there? Would you benefit from their audience knowing about you and what you do and vice versa? Would your audience benefit from knowing about them and what they do? So just pull that equally matched part out. 

Lauren: Yeah. Okay. That is – totally fair edit. And also Matt did more or less just summarize what this episode is going to be about. So if you just listened to all of that and you were like, okay, but how do I do all those things? And what does that mean? Keep listening.

Matt: Just edit it out. 

Lauren: No, I like that top level summary, but you're right. Maybe the more appropriate thing to say for a partnership is an equal exchange of collaboration, ideas, benefit, whatever. It's not that the partnership is… like the brands or the people are equally matched –  

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: – but that you are doing an even exchange –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – or a relatively even exchange. 

Matt: Yes, yes. 

Lauren: As opposed to a sponsorship is one brand is paying another –  

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: – in either goods or services or actual money. 

Matt: It’s a financial transaction. 

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: It's a financial transaction. 

Lauren: To promote, it's not an equal exchange of promotion. 

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: Yeah. So we're talking about partnerships, not sponsorships. 

Matt: Partnerships are going to be things like blog article exchanges or social media exchanges or…

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Things like that. Whereas, yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Sponsorship's going to be transactional. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: All right. 

[8:19]

Lauren: Right at the top, I do want to talk a little bit about the value of this, why it's important, if you're not already clear.

Matt: Why are you looking at me? Yeah, absolutely. 

Lauren: Cause you look skeptical. 

Matt: I always look skeptical – 

Lauren: That’s true. 

Matt: – when I’m looking at you. 

Lauren: Actually, that is true. It's so fun watching the videos back and editing the videos and seeing the things that you like, seeing the ways that you react to the things that I say when I'm not looking at you. I’m always like, great. 

Matt: Maybe you should just get a little sign that pops up that says fix your face and I'll just know when that sign pops up. 

Lauren: I think we both need that sign. I so often will be like, well, I didn't say anything. Like, I didn't, I didn’t respond out loud and my friends will be like, yeah, but your face is very loud. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Well, sorry. Not really. 

Matt: The value is that you're gonna reach new audiences that in your estimation are already qualified to either read or buy your book, right? 

Lauren: Yeah. If you're doing this correctly, and we'll get into this, if you're doing this correctly, you are intentionally partnering with somebody whose audience is a good match for you already.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: So. 

Matt: You mentioned this a minute ago. It's a great way to build authority and credibility. So if you're partnering with a creator or author who's already built some authority or credibility in that genre or that space, that vertical, whatever it is they do. We'll use Justin Moore as the example. If I, you know, was writing content or creating content for creators that was somewhat parallel to the idea of landing sponsorships or let's say collaborations, I would want to try to partner with Justin because he has an audience that's already primed for it. But he's already built authority in that space. So if I can get somebody like Justin to work with me on something and his viewers and audience see that, then that creates a level of trust and authority out of the gate because somebody like him is already vouching for me. So that level of authority and recognition, I think, is really important and that's a great benefit of collaborating with other creators and authors. 

Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, think about just your own personal experience with like, if there is a creator or a brand or an author or somebody that you hold in any kind of like esteem or value or whatever, and you see somebody else partnering with them, that's automatically going to be just like a little boost to that partner.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That you're like, oh yeah, I trust this person. I like this person's content. I've subscribed or bought or whatever and they, they're willing to work with this person. So that person must be reliable, must be informative, must be a good writer, must be whatever. Yeah. 

Matt: I think that's how – I mean, look at like the last ten books James Patterson put out. 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: I don't think he actually wrote them, or if he did he didn't write much of them. He's collaborating with other authors, and think of what that's doing for some of those other authors that weren't already megastars. 

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah, it's absolutely giving credibility to their names. 

Matt: Yeah, just scale that down to wherever you're at. 

Lauren: Which is also another great way for you to be seen in multiple spaces, which was something that we talked about in the recent episode that we did on boosting your discoverability by adding credible sources. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And we were talking about how generative AI search will prioritize search results that have multiple qualified citations and not just linking back to your own website or your own social media. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So if you are guest appearing on somebody else's blog or podcast or Instagram or anything like that, you're adding new citation points. So you're boosting your own discoverability for search purposes, as well as your discoverability to new audiences and readers.

Matt: Yeah, that's a great point too, because right now in search, everybody thinks they know what's going on and then nobody knows what's going on. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: And so the more you can do to create again, authoritative and relevant content and work with authoritative and relevant collaborators, regardless of what ends up happening in the world of search, it's going to benefit you one way or the other. So either the engines are going to find you and index you or the bots are going to find you and add you to their LLMs. Either way, you know, as long as you're following these things, you're going to be okay. 

Lauren: Right. Which is also going to lead us to our next point that you're also fostering long-term relationships with communities and with other creators. Because we are living in a time and place where things change overnight, whether you want them to or not. Social media algorithms change overnight. The type of content that is being prioritized, the availability of social media platforms changes overnight. You don't know what the future is going to look like a week from now, a month from now, a year from now. But if you are building these long-term relationships with actual real people, whether those are your peers and other people you're networking with or the communities and audiences that you are both connected to, those don't change. Those don't go away.

Matt: Yeah, I mean, just think if you wake up tomorrow and you've built your entire presence on TikTok and you find out Jeff Bezos is buying TikTok. I mean, you're in for a bumpy ride. 

Lauren: I mean, it's all going downhill anyway. It's fine. TikTok is terrible these days. I don't know.  Vibes are off. But I mean, I haven't, that hasn't gotten me off of it, but I – vibes are definitely off.

Matt: Yeah, I rarely look at it. But when I do, it's dumb stuff. French Bulldog funny things and – whatever. Yeah, it doesn't matter. 

Lauren: Yeah, that's fair. 

Matt: I think for some of us who at times are a bit introverted and it can be a little bit hard or taxing to just create relationships with people out of thin air or just for the sake of trying to establish a relationship. Sometimes entering into that with a partnership in front of you as the kind of the introduction there…it makes it a little bit easier to build those relationships. So example A would be at an author conference or a creator conference, just me walking up to somebody just out of the blue and striking up a conversation will never happen.

Lauren: Nope. 

Matt: Ever. It's just not in my ethos or DNA. Like I just, I'm not being an asshole. I'm just extremely introverted and in those situations I'm not good. But if I was an author or creator and I saw another author/creator there that I really wanted to try and partner with, I really liked what they were doing, whatever that list of criteria might be, I would be much more comfortable and inclined to go up to them at the right moment and just start a conversation about, again, those things. How I've enjoyed following them on whatever channels or I enjoy reading their content or things like that. And, you know, would love to potentially talk about maybe some sort of a collaboration that would mutually benefit us both.

Lauren: Yeah, I think that that's a really great value add for a lot of those of us that are not super good at, I mean, me too. I'm also not, I'm never going to – 

Matt: You say that, but you're also the girl that will literally go anywhere, sit down at the bar by yourself with a book and a glass of wine and talk to whoever comes up to you. 

Lauren: Yeah, but I'm not going to, but see, that's the key, you're – cause you're right about that. But the key distinction there is I'll talk to whoever comes up to me. I'm not going up to anybody else.

Matt: Okay. That's fair.

Lauren: Right? Like I will talk to you if you come up and talk to me. But if I, if I can sit there and read my entire book and drink my glass of wine without anybody talking to me, I'm not going to go reach out and start the conversation. So. 

Matt: Alright. 

Lauren: You know, but it is also something that will get more into this throughout the episode, but collaborative partnerships like this don't always just have to be a two person thing. And I think that's where people should think outside the box a little bit more. Because if you are, you know, if it's something where Matt's saying, I'm not really good at fostering these relationships myself, but Lauren, you are friends with somebody that I would love to partner with. Do you think that maybe you could organize something that the three of us could do together and that will forge my relationship with this third person? And then maybe the two of us can do a collaboration in the future without you. Like there are ways to do this. 

Matt: Yeah. And we definitely see –

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: – examples of, especially in fiction –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – where a group of authors that write in a particular genre will band together and pool their efforts or their contact –

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: – lists together and send out a joint email or social promo. So yeah, there's absolutely examples of that in ways you could do that. I think the last thing we would say on relationships is, and you touched on this a little bit, is the best kind are the long-term ones. Long-term relationships coupled with long-term partnerships or collaborations, I think – 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: – will take you the farthest instead of looking for that quick flash in the pan. 

Lauren: Right. And by long term, we don't necessarily mean we're doing a partnership campaign that is going to last six months. That's not what we mean by long term. Long term as in you're building a long term relationship with somebody that you can keep coming back to. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: So every book launch, you two are going to do some kind of event together. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: Or every holiday season you like this group of authors is all going to put together a joint promo campaign for the holidays. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Something like that. So that by long term, we mean something that you can keep coming back to. Because we are all constantly looking for new ways to support, whether it's a new product, a new launch or some of your older stuff. You know, we talked recently about giving your backlist a new life and how you can use your backlist book titles to create new revenue or connect with new audiences or whatever. But it's really hard to just once a month reach out to the same group of people and say, hey, have you bought my book yet? How about now, did you buy my book yet? Hey, I know you already bought it, but you want to buy another copy just in case? 

Matt: Well, hopefully you're not doing it that way. 

Lauren: I mean, I hope so too. But these opportunities, these partnerships, are reasons to reach out to people again. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That aren't just you saying, hey, knock knock, reminder that I'm still here. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I mean, you are doing that, but you're just doing it for a fun reason instead of totally on the nose reason.

[18:13]

Matt: All right. Let's talk about some of the criteria or what to look for, you know, in a good partnership, what kind of makes up a good partnership? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: What would be one of the first things you'd want to look for? I think we touched on a little bit already. 

Lauren: We did. But I want to go a little more into it. The idea of finding a qualified audience. And that kind of goes in two directions, because first of all, you want to make sure that you're looking for an audience that does overlap with your existing one. Like, you don't want to find yourself in front of an audience that has no interest in your content or no interest in –

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: – your brand, they're not qualified at all in that way. But you also don't want to talk to an audience that you look at and you're like, these are all my followers. This is just my follower list copied over, because then it's just a waste of your time. 

Matt: Yeah, like if I write historical fiction I'm probably not gonna want to work with you and your audience, because you write like, emo fantasy romance. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: But maybe you are – if I write if I write hockey romance and there's another author that I know that writes baseball romance, maybe we're a good partnership because both of our audiences like sports romance, but they might be reading different sports. So we might do some cross promotion. 

Matt: Okay, there I can see that. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Is there baseball romance? 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: I don't know why I even asked. 

Lauren: Of course there is. 

Matt: How popular is hockey romance right now with the Stanley Cup playoffs going on? 

Lauren: Hockey romance is actually, I don't know if it's popular right now because of the Stanley Cup playoffs, but it is definitely like, on an upward trend in general. We've seen some really big hockey romance novels come out in the last like year or two. 

Matt: That's a good point though. Yeah. You definitely want to work with somebody whose audience is similar to yours – 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: – or parallel, however you want to look at it, but not 100% identical. You're right. 

Lauren: Yeah. As I was writing this outline, I wrote this sentence in my head and was really annoyed about it, but I'm going to – I'm going to say it anyway. You can niche out one niche from here. That's literally how I, in my head, I was like, I can't, I got to find a better way to say this. 

Matt: I’m done. 

Lauren: But that is exactly – I said you can, you know, if you have, if you have niched down into a specific content niche, but you can find a partner who is one level higher than you are, then you're reaching out to a newer audience that is still qualified. And I think I actually fully bastardized the word niche and niche in that. So there we go. 

Matt: Yeah, I'm going to move on from that. 

Lauren: Yes, please do. 

Matt: I feel really good about how that ended. 

Lauren: Great. 

Matt: So I'm just going to move on. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: The other thing that I think is really important after you've kind of identified a few people you might want to work in or work with is you need to try and understand what engagement looks like for their platform, whether that's their social media channels or their blog or wherever their core audience attraction is. And looking at engagement can be easy, but it can also be tough. And it also depends on how much they're willing to share with you or if you've got access to tools that will help you figure that out yourself. But like we talked about a few minutes ago, follower count really doesn't mean anything these days. I mean, it does in the sense that everything is a game of numbers, to a degree. They can't have zero followers because obviously that doesn't help, or zero subscribers to their email list, or zero subscribers to their blog or YouTube channel or again, whatever their medium is. But just because they have a hundred thousand doesn't necessarily mean anything either. So you want to look for engagement, likes, comments, shares, especially comments and shares. Likes are still kind of whatever. I mean, they're kind of a gauge that there's a little more than just bot traffic, but these days bots are very good at liking and leaving comments, I still see it even in LinkedIn. 

Lauren: All the time. 

Matt: It's not even, I mean, it's so dead on obvious when an AI bot has left a comment or something like that, but. Paying really close attention to engagement, I think, is way more important than actual follower counts or subscriber counts or things like that. 

Lauren: Yes, it is. And it is something that, I mean, you can see it on social media more than you can anywhere else, but it's not exclusive to social media. 

Matt: No. 

Lauren: And that is important. 

Matt: You're looking for open rates on email lists, 

Lauren: Yup.

Matt: Click through rates on email lists. For blog metrics, you want to look at things like, depending on what channel they use for their blog or what platform they use, you want to be able to look at things like article read through rates and stuff like that. So, yeah, it's not just some of the normal vanity metrics for social media. 

Lauren: Right. You're also going to want to look at the tone, the voice, the values, whatever of anybody that you're considering partnering with. Because you have to keep in mind that you're going to be positioning this person in front of your audience –

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: – in the same way that you're asking them to position you in front of their audience. So if there's something where the vibes don't match there. I mean, like genuinely, if it's – if you are a content creator whose whole vibe is that your or her whole brand is that you are renovating your home to look like a Gothic Victorian house and you partner with a content creator who is renovating her home to look like a 80s Malibu beach house – 

Matt: Sick. 

Lauren: There is actually a content creator I'm following who's renovating her apartment to look like an 80s Malibu penthouse and it's awesome. But there might be some discrepancies in the followers. Personally, I would be very into both of those creators, but your audience might not align with those two things. Or, you know, if you have somebody who's gonna put you in front of their audience and is gonna go completely white in the face when you say shit on air on their podcast, maybe not the best alignment. 

Matt: You're gonna get us slapped with a language warning on YouTube or something. 

Lauren: You already said a worse word than that. 

Matt: I did? 

Lauren: You did. 

Matt: What did –

Lauren: I'm not gonna repeat it. 

Matt: What did it start with? 

Lauren: A. 

Matt: I did? 

Lauren: Yes. Just, you want to make sure that you're putting somebody in front of your audience that you stand by, and that you think will be a good fit for your audience. 

Matt: Definitely. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: No notes. 

Lauren: Which is not to say that you can't think outside the box and that you can't put somebody slightly to the left of your personal brand out there, but just make sure that it's somebody that you stand by no matter what. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Same way you would with your content, right? 

Matt: Yep.

Lauren: Like you want to put content out there that you feel comfortable and confident putting your name on.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And you want to make sure that your name is associated with people that you also feel comfortable and confident about being associated with. 

Matt: No notes, only vibes. 

Lauren: Fantastic. 

Matt: I can't help it. Anytime I hear that word, I just think like, that is such a millennial thing to say. 

Lauren: I know. 

Matt: The vibes. 

Lauren: I mean, do you want me to say instead? 

Matt: I mean I use the word, but I don't even realize I'm using it because so many people around me use it. It's just become part of my vernacular, but.

Lauren: Would it be better for you if I said that you should look for somebody that has a certain je ne sais quoi? 

Matt: No. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: No, no, no, no. 

Lauren: So. Vibes. 

Matt: I would much rather you stop trying to perpetrate this, this garbage back alley French by way of niche and je ne sais quoi and anything else you're going to try to throw out in this episode. Ratatouille. I don't know. 

Lauren: I don't even like France. 

Matt: Why do you use the language so much? 

Lauren: I don't know. It's fine. Another thing that you should keep in mind in the same vein as you want to make sure that you're putting your quality stamp of approval on the person or people that you're partnering with. You also want to make sure that the content that will be exchanged is up to your standard. If you're somebody that prides yourself on putting out really high quality video content, you don't want to partner with somebody who's going to turn around and provide you video content that was filmed on a potato. 

Matt: Yeah. So clearly nobody wants to collaborate with us. 

Lauren: I don't know what you're talking about. 

Matt: I'm just kidding.

Lauren: And you also want to make sure that you're partnering with somebody who's going to be like, aligning with you in terms of the content deliverables, time frame, stuff like that. If you are advertising to your fans and followers that you're going to be doing a really cool giveaway where you're partnering with somebody else and then they email you three times and say, oops, sorry, can we push it back to next week? Oops, sorry, can we push it back to next week? Like, that's, that's not good. That’s going to reflect badly on you. 

Matt: This is a really important one, because unlike a sponsorship or a financially based partnership, there's seemingly no money exchanging hands here. And so that sometimes leads people to believe they've got a little flexibility in timeline. And depending on who you are, that may be fine. And then for others, like you said, you might be doing something that is time boxed. It has a date on it. Like, you're launching something and you're relying on them to be participatory in this partnership. And if they're constantly pushing this activity off or whatever it is they were gonna do, because they don't have that same urgency or understanding or even respect for the timeline, then that's a problem. So upfront, being very clear and honest with each other, like, hey, I'm really bad with dates, so what's the date that you really would like to have this happen or what's the length of time you'd like to run? Like just making sure you're very clear on timeline.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Dates and deliverables I think is really important, because nothing can ruin a potential friendship or partnership a relationship faster than not delivering on something that the other deems important. 

Lauren: Completely agree. And this is something that we'll get into a little bit more later in the episode. But I do think that it's really important just overall to remember that despite the fact that this does feel probably more informal than a paid sponsorship would, or this feels more like a creative collaboration effort. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: This is something that you are doing a professional exchange with another person or another brand. And it is important to treat it that way. 

Matt: That’s right. 

Lauren: And if that means writing out a specific timeline that you agree to where at the beginning of the partnership you put in writing, this is the timeline. This is what we're going to be expected to deliver on this date. These are the metrics that we're going to use to measure the success of this, blah, blah, blah. Like whatever it looks like, you should be treating this as a professional opportunity, not you know, we'll get to it when we get to it. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: Which is also going to lead me to my last, I think, important thing to look for in a partnership. And that is that you're looking for a mutual exchange of benefits. And I actually went back and forth and I put both equal and mutual in the outline. But I think that especially after we kind of redefined the definition of partnerships at the top, I think mutual is a more important way to look at it. 

Matt: Yeah. Because you both might have different goals for the partnership. 

Lauren: Right, right. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And that, I mean, we've also, we've talked in other episodes about the idea of maybe I'm looking for somebody that's going to help me edit my book. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: And somebody reaches out to me and says, hey, I will provide you free editorial services. If in exchange you hype up what a good editor I am in your newsletter to your 50,000 newsletter subscribers. 

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: Assuming that you both agree that that is equal in value. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That is a mutually beneficial, but not necessarily equal exchange. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That is something to keep in mind for sure. Know that you're coming to the table with something that is valuable and that you're not asking for more than you're offering. That all comes in part with everything else that you're doing for this. 

[29:56]

Lauren: So maybe it's more important first to focus on how to actually find and secure a partnership. 

Matt: I think that would help. 

Lauren: Yeah? 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And there's a couple of different ways that you can do this, obviously. If you want to be proactive about reaching out to people, that is one way to do it. But also you might just want to make sure that people know that you're open to partnering. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So if you want to have that available, keep your credentials clearly visible on your page. Literally, you can just have, hey, open to collaborations. Email me at whatever email address to connect for any potential future ideas in your profile. Why not? Also make sure that you are highlighting past collaborations that you've done. If you have appeared as a guest on other people's blog, or podcast, whatever, have that content clearly visible on your social, or highlighted on a page on your website. Whatever you can do to kind of be like, hey look, I've done this in the past, open to it in the future as well. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I think a lot of people… I think that really helps. Because again, you might have people like myself who might not be the most forthcoming or extroverted when it comes to approaching people for certain things. But if you truly want to attract collaborators and people to work with having that in your social media bio or, you know, as part of your footer or your email signature on your emails or your website or things like that I think is really extremely helpful, and I think you'll get a lot more inquiries I think that way than just hoping people like what you're doing and they come and approach you. So I really like that tip. Along those lines there's a couple different types of networking. There's online networking obviously which is what most of us do on a fairly regular basis whether we realize we're doing it or not. And then there's real world networking or IRL as you kids would say. 

Lauren: I promise it does not say IRL anywhere in this outline. Matt put that in all by himself. 

Matt: No, it's in there. 

Lauren: Sure. 

Matt: Sort of.

Lauren: Uh huh. 

Matt: Maybe. 

Lauren: Kay. 

Matt: Virtual networking, though. So online networking, things like showing up in community spaces. We talked about finding those places where not only your existing readers, viewers, customers, clients, whatever you want to call them hang out. But as you're potentially evaluating collaborators to work with, where are they at? What spaces are they hanging out in? Where could you go to find more of them? Being an active member of a community often lends a lot of credibility in and of itself to you as somebody that others may potentially want to collaborate with. So find a community or two where you're comfortable showing up and actually engaging, not lurking, but actually engaging, whether that's a Facebook group or a discord or… Just again, some other sort of community or group, whether it's a closed off paid community that some other creator happens to run. It doesn't really matter, but the point is finding spaces where you're comfortable showing up and participating.

Lauren: Yeah. Don't underestimate the value of something as simple as name recognition as a part of authority building. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: If you're participating actively in a space where other people are hanging out and they get used to seeing your name, they will subconsciously start to think of you as somebody who is a member of this community, an engaged member of this community, somebody that knows what they're talking about, because clearly you're in here talking about things. So you must be somewhat knowledgeable and experienced about this. 

Matt: Yeah. And hopefully, like we've talked about in other episodes, you're providing value wherever you can and not just showing up, clicking the like button and saying hi.  

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: But like providing value, contributing to the conversations and or activities that are happening, doing your best to be helpful where possible. 

Lauren: Right. But then also of course, if there are specific people in mind that you are interested in partnering with, go to them too. Don't just try to speak to them in a community space and don't just respond to people on your own page. If there's a creator that you really want to work with, if you want to do an Instagram collaboration with somebody, you better be following them on Instagram and you better be actively engaging with their content on Instagram. 

Matt: Yes. Sorry. Again, just assumed that would be there, but you're right. Yeah. Obviously if there's people you want to work with, you should, you should be following with them – 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: 00 and engaging with them as best as possible at an individual level, yeah, in communities as well.

Lauren: Yes. For sure. But also, like we said earlier, that IRL networking. 

Matt: See? 

Lauren: That was for you. 

Matt: It rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? 

Lauren: Sure does. 

Matt: Perfect. 

Lauren: Sure does. Like Matt was saying earlier with the idea of not finding it super natural to go strike up a conversation with somebody randomly, even if it is somebody that you want to work with, totally understand, because I am the same way. But one place where that is completely expected is at a conference or event where networking is built in as part of the experience. So if you have the opportunity to go to an event, even if it's just something small like a local signing or a local meet and greet or something within your community or something like a three or four day conference that has people coming from all over the world to attend it, everyone is there kind of already in that mindset of one of the things that I want to do here is meet other people in my field and form relationships with other people. So they're already kind of predisposed to be open to fostering those introductions and relationship connections. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So if that's something that makes your skin crawl, that's a great place to actually do it. Because people are already, it's not like you're approaching somebody randomly that might just immediately be like, well, why are you talking to me in the first place? This is not where I want to be spoken to. But you're actually speaking to somebody who is in a place where they're expecting that and probably want it to happen. 

Matt: Yeah. Great place for that is Content Entrepreneur Expo. 

Lauren: Sure is. 

Matt: CEX. 

Lauren: A lot of great networking. 

Matt: August 24th through the 26th. 

Lauren: Can't wait. 

Matt: 2025. 

Lauren: Really looking forward to it. 

Matt: Cleveland, Ohio. 

Lauren: What's the name of the– Huntington Convention Center? 

Matt: I don’t know. Look it up. 

Lauren: Okay. All right. But also, definitely make sure that you're attending events that aren't just related to your content directly. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And that's something that you can do within your own community. I'm not suggesting that you travel to a conference that has no relation to you at all whatsoever. No one has that kind of time and money. Well. 

Matt: Yeah. No, you're right. 

Lauren: Yeah, I mean. Most people don’t. 

Matt: But we have seen some really cool crossover in the last few years – 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: – especially after we bought Content Entrepreneur Expo with authors, like tried and true authors who've always kind of considered themselves authors, crossing over into spaces like CEX, where they're learning from entrepreneurs, business owners, creators on how to apply those things to the business side of what they do. And then vice versa, we have authors and people in the publishing world speak to creators and entrepreneurs and things about how to monetize their content in other ways and things like that. So, you know, there are opportunities to think outside of the box like we talked about earlier, where maybe you might want to attend a conference that is a little different than what you might normally attend. And the reason for that is, is again, networking, obviously, but when we talk about collaborations and partnerships, it's not always like for like in terms of content or the desired outcomes. You might go to, let's say, a financial services conference and meet somebody who could end up helping you in other ways with your book business or your publishing. Conversely, they might need some help with writing some content for their financial services blog or something like that. So sometimes getting out of your comfort zone, I think, can pay off. Just depends on what you're trying to accomplish. 

Lauren: Absolutely. And I just think that if you're going to take an opportunity to go outside of your comfort zone and think outside the box a little bit, just maybe do the exercise with yourself of can I justify how this connection makes sense? 

Matt: Yeah, definitely.

Lauren: We're not saying that you as a romance writer should go attend a med tech conference. That's a little too far outside the box. I don't even care if your justification is, well, the main characters of my next book are doctors. No that's, that's a little too far outside the.

Matt: Yeah, definitely have to agree with the one. 

Lauren: But I do absolutely think that there's great opportunity for slightly outside the box. So. As long as you can justify to yourself and maybe to somebody else in a way that would convince them that you're correct, that like, there is a connection here and it would be interesting for me to attend this kind of event. Go for it. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Events are fun. 

Matt: They are, but – and you, you mentioned it earlier. There's, there's obviously a cost and time factor there. So making sure that, like you said, that you get something out of it, or there's some way to draw a dotted line from what you do to what, what's going on there. And I think is important, so.

Lauren: We have an episode on how to maximize your ROI on events. So if you want help justifying how you can make the most out of attending an event – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – go look into that episode. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: But you're also going to want to stick with some things close to home too. And that is totally fine. And one great way that you can find, without traveling all over the place, new people and new places to connect with; pay attention to what your audience is paying attention to. Not just what are they talking about, but who are they talking about? Who are they following? 

Matt: Right. Who are they talking to? 

Lauren: Who are they talking to? Who are the people that you're following following? Where are they hanging out? 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: What trends are they paying attention to? 

Matt: Sounds creepy, but I like it. 

Lauren: It's not creepy if it's research. 

Matt: Oh. 

Lauren: That's absolutely not true. 

Matt: I need that on a t-shirt. 

Lauren: Oh no. 

Matt: It's not creepy if it's research. Paul, if you're listening, that one should go in the book as well. 

Lauren: I don't stand by that at all. 

Matt: You just said it. 

Lauren: I immediately take it back. I immediately take it back. I'm so sorry. Oh, no. But Matt has some tools recommended in here because there are actually tools that you can use to do this. It's not just something that you would have to do manually. We've definitely recommended SparkToro in the past before. It's a great tool for social listening, where you can kind of go in there and say, I'm interested in people that are interested in this type of content. And they will tell you, these are the hashtags they're using. These are the social media platforms that have the most posts about this topic. This is… 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Like the websites or even the podcasts that they like. 

Matt: SparkToro actually is way more than social listening. In fact, I would say it's more of a research tool, but more in the way that most of us would use it and not Lauren with her creepy research. SparkToro is great. We don't get paid to say this. We do use SparkToro. It's just a great tool for audience research and for segmentation, things like that. So again, if you want to know who follows this particular person that you like, you can find that out. If you want to know, let's say, of a certain website, how many people have visited that website or where they at on social media. There's all different ways to connect certain topics or themes or trends to social media channels, to the people that follow those channels or those particular authors and creators. There's so many different ways to slice and dice it. It's just a great tool to use. But there are other tools as well. Buzzsumo is actually more of a social listening tool than a research tool, but it does incorporate a lot of those things as well. And there's, I mean, there's a ton of others out there, but these are just a couple. There's another one called YouScan, Y-O-U-S-C-A-N. It does a lot of the same stuff. We just recommend the ones that we know work or that we've used before. And again, really like SparkToro and Buzzsumo works pretty good as well. 

Lauren: Yeah, I guess I have a slightly biased experience using SparkToro because I was mostly using it for audience research for social media. So I just automatically associate it to be – 

Matt: You’re out there creeping around the internet trying to, trying to do some research. 

Lauren: I mean, I am a notorious lurker. Very rarely actually, on a personal level, I very rarely engage. I guess that's pretty accurate. 

[42:21]

Lauren: Anyway, obviously, once you've done all the work to identify different creators that you want to work with, different partnership opportunities, you have to actually make sure that you're going to pitch them correctly. I'm not going to dig too deep into how to pitch yourself to a potential collaborator, we've done that in other episodes. You can listen to episode 13 for more of a dive into how to pitch your book for earned media or earned promotion. But also just keep in mind that in this case, your book is kind of tangential to you as the creator or the brand or whatever. Even if you are a fiction author, your book is not the primary motivator for somebody to want to partner with you. It's kind of a secondary motivator. If it's even related at all. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So make sure that you're pitching yourself. So you're going to want to focus on why you would be a good fit for a collaboration with this person or this brand. If you have any past collaborations or partnerships that relate or like clearly identify why you would be a good person for them to want to work with. Like I said earlier, make sure that you're clear about what you can bring to the table. This is something that I see all the time where people will reach out to us and say, I'd love to partner with Lulu. On what? Like what's the rest of that sentence? You wanna…you wanna partner with us to do a giveaway on Instagram? You wanna partner with us to create YouTube content? 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: You wanna partner with us for the purpose of promoting your book? What? 

Matt: All of the above. 

Lauren: You know, include that in your original pitch, perhaps. 

Matt: I think as long as you just remember to always lead with value. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Always focus on value and earning trust, period. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: So if you're gonna pitch, don't make it salesy. Talk about the value that you could potentially bring with your audience and what you do. The goal is to earn trust, right? You're not gonna work with a collaborator that you can't trust. So it's about value and trust, period. And whatever that looks like for you, that's what you go with. Period. 

Lauren: Period. 

Matt: And as Lauren alluded to, try to use complete sentences. Don't just say, I'd love to partner with you. Okay, cool. Let's take that a little further.

Lauren: Yes. Also remember that as you're crafting your pitch, all of those things that you were considering when looking for people. So things like audience engagement, audience demographics, whatever, that's also relevant to whoever you're pitching. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So I'm not saying that you have to include, you know, every single metric that you have about yourself in an initial pitch email, but be prepared to support with some actual numbers and data why you think you can bring value to this partnership.

Matt: Yeah. 

[45:07]

Matt: And then lastly, let's talk real quickly about how to make the most of a partnership or collaboration. There's a few things that I think as long as you're doing these things, or making sure they're getting done, paying attention to them, it should go pretty smoothly. The first is again, a timeline with some goals. What's the length of this partnership going to run? Is there actually a timeline for it? Is it something that's a little more loosely based on your goals? So what are your goals? What are you trying to get out of it? What is the other party involved trying to get out of it. Is it strictly, you know, exchange of content and audience and potentially followers or is there more meat on the bone there for that one to materialize into tangible things as well? So making sure that timeline and goals are there. You really need to make sure that you've got some clear guardrails in place just to make sure everything runs smoothly. 

Lauren: Which also is going to include like, clearly understanding the responsibilities and expectations of all parties in this partnership. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So if this is a content exchange, who's creating the content, what happens to it once it's been created? If Matt and I are doing a blog post exchange, am I – 

Matt: If we were writing a book together? 

Lauren: Yeah?

Matt: Go ahead, finish. 

Lauren: Well, if we were writing a book together and we were taking turns writing one chapter. When the content is delivered, are you going to go back through my chapters and edit as you see fit? Or are we assuming that I am handing over completed edited content and you better not edit it. I'm going to be annoyed if I go look at your final draft later and you've changed my words without running them by me first. 

Matt: Great questions. 

Lauren: Such great questions. You know, that is important. If you're creating video content, are you providing somebody a full and completely edited video or are you providing somebody raw video footage that they're going to edit to go with their own page? Are you providing somebody landscape video content that's going to go on YouTube or are you providing them portrait video content that's going to go on Instagram and TikTok? Like, make sure that you're clearly understanding who's going to be creating what, how it's going to be delivered, where it's going to be posted. If there's any expectation of like, this is only Instagram content for you, I might post it on TikTok, you post it on Instagram, we're not gonna cannibalize each other's numbers here. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: Something like that. That is all something that you should establish ahead of time, especially if you want this to be a long-term partnership. 

Matt: Yep, and then you have to be able to measure it, right? 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: So what kind of metrics are you going to be using, you should agree on those metrics, or what the success markers are for this particular collaboration or partnership or campaign or whatever it is you're working on. Again, based on your goals, if my goal is to book more consultations for my editing service and your goal is for something else, then what I'm gonna be looking for and what I'm gonna hand over to you, by the way, is here's a link to my booking page. I'd prefer that you use that when you're talking about my editing services. You're probably gonna be having me edit your book, which you never would. So what you're going to be looking at is a different success marker. How many edits needed to be made? How long does it take me to edit the book? You know, those types of things. So making sure you're very clear on what those metrics and success markers look like so that everybody knows where they stand at all times and whether or not this partnership, collaboration, whatever that might be is working. 

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. Because you do want to be able to understand if there's something, especially, I mean, there's all kinds of situations where it doesn't go according to plan. Whether it doesn't go according to plan because something went wrong or maybe the idea just didn't work out the way that you wanted to. You didn't quite get the engagement on it that you wanted to. And that's okay. That doesn't mean that this partnership is doomed or that it wasn't meant to work in any way, but it is a good idea to have communication with each other about like, okay. What happens if it doesn't work out the way that we wanted it to? Do we want to try again and do something differently? Do we want to delete those posts and pretend they never existed and try something new? Do you want to maybe say, okay, it didn't work out this way, but what if we do this, that and the other thing instead? Or what if we revisit that maybe the timing didn't work out and we tried doing this again in four months? 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: You know, you need and you need to understand what went right and what went wrong in order to either try again later or if everything goes really well and you say, okay, this time next year we're gonna do this again, you wanna be able to look back on that next year and say, all right, how do we recreate the success a second time around? 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: Yeah. So I mean, realistically it's about communication. It's about being professional, it's about being responsible and it's about communicating with your partners and making sure that you are fostering a long-term relationship here. 

Matt: Perfect. 

Lauren: Wow. 

Matt: Value, trust, communication.

Lauren: Exactly. 

Matt: What do your bracelets say? Probably not those three things. 

Lauren: No, they don't. Wow. If only, if only I could have known that ahead of time. They say This is the End. 

Matt: Oh boy. 

Lauren: Yep. Haunted and Let’s Get Lost. I was feeling ominous this morning, like the weather. 

Matt: Value, trust, communication.

Lauren: Actually, I think my bracelets do say those three things. Perfect. 

Matt: Oh, all right. 

Lauren: All right. I think we've done it. You think so? 

Matt: Yeah, probably as much as we can. 

Lauren: Yeah. All right. Well, I think that we are a prime example of a really great collaboration and partnership.

Matt: Depends on if you catch us before lunch or after lunch. 

Lauren: That's true. Do you think lunch is here? 

Matt: I think it might be. 

Lauren: Let's go find out. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: All right. Well, thanks for listening, everyone. If you have any questions about partnerships, collaborations, anything of the sort, you can reach out to us. If you have any questions about anything unrelated to anything we talked about in this episode, you can reach out to us.

Matt: You can reach out to Lauren. 

Lauren: You can reach out to Lauren. You can find us on Lulu's social media. You can find us on YouTube. You can leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. You can email us at podcast@lulu.com and you can tune in next week for another episode. Thanks for listening. 

Matt: Later.