 In this video, I'm going to share with you the one strategy that built my business quickly in the beginning from zero income, zero credibility in my field and in my network in terms of my expertise to a full-time income and expert status within one year. And I've seen many other people duplicate this strategy, so I want to share that with you and I really believe that you can likely apply this as well if you're willing to do the work. The strategy is to have you be featured as a speaker or a guest blogger in front of other people's audiences. Some people call this a content partnership or a promotional partnership. I'm just going to, for the sake of simplicity, call it a partnership going forward. Alright, so imagine your message being shared in front of somebody else's email newsletter featured, featured on someone else's blog, featured in someone else's online group, featured as a guest speaker on a podcast or on a video channel or on a popular Facebook page or Twitter feed or in a magazine or really anywhere where your ideal audience consumes content and gets information. Now you can absolutely do this. When I first started, again, like I said, I had a great interest for my topic but I didn't consider myself an expert compared to many of the other people out there but I certainly was able to help other people who hadn't studied the topic as much as I had. Back then, seven, eight years ago, my topic was how to use social media for business and I ended up approaching other people who taught marketing or business to their audiences but who didn't teach social media and I became the go-to resource for them for social media because I had studied a lot about this. Again, even though I wasn't a well-known name in the field, I hadn't written any books yet, I hadn't made lots of videos yet and I hadn't made any videos yet so I really had nothing to start with except for my passion for the topic, the fact that I had studied it, I had some really helpful thoughts about it. I had helped some people with it, some of my friends actually with it. They found it helpful so as I started approaching other audiences, I really think you can do the same with your current field that you want to build a business in because you have been thinking about it, you've been studying it, you've been helping people with it much more than the average person has. So in essence, you are an expert in your field compared to most people out there. And expertise, expert status is always on the continuum. There will always be people who are more expert than you and there will always be people who are less expert than you. So let me talk about this partnership strategy. A lot of people I think get intimidated by this or they don't like it because it feels aggressive or even unethical and I agree, I agree. I think the reason why a lot of people don't like this partnership strategy is because they feel like they maybe as a consumer of content and products and services, they have been inundated by other people promoting their partners. Oh, meet my friend Joe who has this amazing program and you might get an email like this. Meet my friend Joe who has an amazing program about how to solve this problem in your life or how to achieve this goal. And then the next week, meet my friend Sally who has this and it's like, how come this marketer has so many friends? But these are just promotional partnerships, right? So a lot of times it's been, these partnerships have been done in a way that is very money driven rather than out of true service to one's audience. And that's what I am going to talk with you about in this video to do partnerships in a way that's out of true service and alignment with what the audience needs rather than doing it because just because it pays your promotional partner the money, etc. So another reason why people don't like this strategy or maybe they feel intimidated by it is because there's the assumption, which I think is an erroneous assumption that if someone promotes you to their audience, your message or your product to their audience, that you must also promote their things to your audience. In other words, there is an assumption that it has to be a reciprocal partnership. And yes, that has often been the case, but I have also been involved in quite a few partnerships that were not reciprocal in that way. Someone promoted me, lots of people have promoted me where I wasn't required to promote them to my audience. And vice versa, I have promoted people to my audience where I did not require them to promote me to their audience. So let me talk about the reasons why. So in other words, even if you have no audience yourself, you can still use the strategy and to do it in an authentic and ethical way. So the number one reason or number one way that I recommend is to find a partner. It might be someone you already know or it may be someone that you can be introduced to, or it could be just you're reaching out a cold to a group owner or to a blogger. So all these could work. But find a partner who is getting questions from their audience that is in your wheelhouse. So this partner, for example, talks about topics A, B, and C with their audience. And their audience loves that. But the audience also has questions D, E, and F, that the partner is not an expert and hasn't studied. But you happen to be an expert in topics D, E, and F. Do you see what I mean? So it's related to what the partner talks about, but it's not in the partner's wheelhouse. It's not the partner's passion or it's not their partner's expertise. And so in that situation, you would be a blessing if you approach that partner to say, listen, I know you do such a great job talking to your audience about topics A, B, and C, and it just so happens that I love teaching audiences or I love to help audiences solve problems in the area of D, E, and F. So that's what I do. And my guess is that you have audience members who ask you about that or need this. Is that right? Okay. If so, I would love to share my expertise with your audience so it can help them solve that problem and be a go-to resource for them that you can refer them to. Okay, it would be a relief for your partner that now she has somebody whom she can refer to on your topic. Does that make sense? This is what put my business on the map seven years ago when I first started. Like I said, I approached people who had audiences who needed my topic, but they themselves didn't teach it. And I, you know, and I came along and I taught a free class to their audience, just one session webinar sometimes, or maybe it was a series of two or three. But I was very helpful to their audience. And at the same time, I also made an offering to say, if you want something deeper, I've got another five-part series on this. I'd love to offer to you as a product or as a service and people bought it. And I had several partners in my first couple of years who really appreciated my expertise because it wasn't theirs, but the audience wanted it. And so it really put my business on the map. So I really encourage you to think about your topic and what's related to your topic. That's not what you teach. That's not what you're an expertise in. Seek out partners who are on either side of you in terms of your topics and so that you can partner with each other. Now, again, you don't have to reciprocate. Okay. But if you are a blessing to that person, because they have an audience asking for your topic, then you are relieved to them. You are blessing to them. And they oftentimes will be willing to share it because it's solving a problem for the partner to say, okay, now when people ask me this question, I can direct them to you. Okay. Um, all right. The second wonderful way of getting partnerships is when, um, the partner herself is interested in your topic. Okay. Maybe it's just a personal interest of hers or his. Um, and, uh, and also it happens that the audience might. It's not that the audience has been asking her questions about it, but the audience could also benefit from it. Does that make sense? So find out people who, um, are in your general field, but not your specific, uh, topic and, and approach them as, Hey, you know what? I know you address this and I address this. And if you're interested, I'd love to help you out. Um, and, and just, uh, give you, uh, some understanding of this field or help you personally, uh, in the, on this topic. That's how also I've got some of my partnerships where I was not required to promote them back is I gave a couple of free coaching sessions to somebody in my, with my expertise that helped them. Okay. And then they said, wow, this is something that I think my audience would also appreciate. So why don't you teach a webinar to my audience as well? All right. So, um, the third reason, the third way that I think partnership can be wonderful is when you, you find somebody who regularly shares who has a, a channel of some kind, whether it's a blog or a YouTube channel or a Facebook page or a email newsletter or a magazine where they need to continually churn out a lot of good content. And you notice that the content isn't just their own voice, but that they actually curate and collect content from lots of different people to share in their magazine or to share on their blog or on their website or to share on their YouTube channel or in their Facebook page or in their, in their LinkedIn group or Facebook group. And if you've known, seen that to be the case, then, and, and your topic is one of the topics that they share about. Then you go up to them and says, Hey, you know, I noticed you share ideas and content on this topic. I'd love to write a blog post for your audience, or I'd love to do a specific webinar to help them on my topic. Would that be useful? And by the way, you know, you could either do that for free for them, or you can even have your partner charge for it, charge a small fee, a five dollar fee per attendance to webinar. And they could even, you could even offer that they could keep all the money. Uh, and you are simply looking for an audience to share your message. And at the end, you could spend a few minutes of your webinar to talk about your service and talk about your product. And a lot of times, again, with partners who have this requirement to churn out a lot of content, because that's what their audience is expecting. Okay, then you would be a blessing. Again, this is all about finding a fit to help other people. You would be a blessing to that partner because you come along and fulfill his or her need and you fulfill the audience's need. Does that make sense? Okay, so, um, there are a couple of ways that a podcast is another place where people continually need guest speakers, et cetera, radio shows, podcasts, also tele-summits. But, but the, the chat, the problem with some most tele-summits is that they usually require you to promote the tele-summit as well. And I usually tell people, listen, I'm happy to speak on a tele-summit, but I cannot promise promotion to my audience because I've promised my audience to, to not do all these promotions, right? So, um, okay, I've given you three great ways to form partnerships. And let me tell you that there are a couple of ways that partnerships are, are sometimes done that I don't personally like. I don't think it's as authentic as it could be. I want to quickly run through them so you could be aware of what they are. Um, one way is where people will promote you just because of the money. Um, they say, oh great, you've got a highly converting product or people love buying your service. And, uh, gosh, you know, do a webinar for my audience. If they buy, then you pay me 25%, 50%, whatever it is of your product. That's called, that's typically called a joint venture relationship, JV relationship, or sometimes people call it affiliate marketing. Uh, I, I think when it's done just for the money, it doesn't respect the audience as much as it could when it's just done to serve the audience. Does that make sense? So I used to do that a lot and I don't do that anymore. Um, it's not my favorite way of partnering, but it's out there, very common. So just kind of look for it and see if you can transform that. If someone wants that, just kind of transform that to one of the ways that I've, I've just been talking about in one of the three ways that I think are more authentic. Um, another way is a prepaid advertising where a partner is willing to take your money in advance. Uh, whereas the, what I just talk about joint venture is usually the partner only gets the money if there are sales of your service or product prepaid advertising, whereas you pay money in advance just to show up in front of an audience. And I really don't encourage you to do that. I really don't recommend it because prepaid advertising typically takes a lot of testing and a much bigger budget to test with before you get to, um, prepaid advertising that really works. You have to test different, uh, advertisements test, test different way, different messages in front of audiences. So I really don't recommend prepaid advertising. And then, um, uh, another way that I don't typically like is when a partner says, Hey, listen, I'll promote you to my audience if you're willing to just introduce me to some other potential joint venture partners. It's not so bad, but, um, again, they're doing it, uh, not for the benefit of their audience. They're really doing it for their own joint ventures in the future. So again, when something's not done for the benefit of the audience, it tends to burn the audience eventually. And I just don't think it's the most ethical and authentic way to go. And finally, very common, uh, way of partnering, which I don't like anymore is I promote you if you promote me. I promote you to my audience if you promote me to your audience. And these deals, I did a lot in the past and I don't like them anymore. Again, it's, it's typically not just, it's not for the sake of the audience as the priority, it's really for the sake of growing each other's email lists. Um, so it's not my favorite. So I really recommend that you use one of the three methods that I talked about earlier on to do your partnerships, because again, this can put your business on the map or grow your business rapidly. I'm open to your comments, that what, how you've experienced partnerships and how you would like to and any questions that you have.