Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / 3 Steps to Powerful Collabs & Partnerships

Transcript

3 Steps to Powerful Collabs & Partnerships · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:11
  Jinx! Hi. Padlock 123. That would be a podcast. If one of us can't talk. Lol. Padlock 123. I've never heard that. Cute. Oh, really? This might be an English thing. Yeah. Oh, okay. All right. Well, hi. Hi. How's it going? It is going well. It is Tuesday evening. It's a beautiful day in Sydney. How are you going? Good.
• 0:40
  I'm good. We had a long weekend here, which was lovely. I think you were saying it was Memorial weekend in the US as well. No Monday off in Australia. Yeah. I mean, I only realized yesterday when I got like a bounce back or something, but I don't know if it was a public holiday here. I feel like it wasn't. Could be, could be. I mean, maybe it was. I don't know.
• 1:03
  This is entrepreneurial life, right? This is a very relatable way to kick off the episode. I think it's often like, which day is? Yeah, I'm like, I need someone else to tell me so I can take the day off. And sometimes it's a Saturday and you're working and you're like, huh? Isn't that a Friday? I thought it sounded like a Friday. Today's Friday. No. Today's Friday.
• 1:25
  It reminded me of something I saw on Twitter a while ago already and has been playing in the back of my mind as like a little handy tidbit before the week starts. And when I first read this, I was I was grossly offended. So bear with me.
• 1:41
  I did it yesterday and it felt really great today. So I read this thing ages ago. I have no idea anymore where it came from, but it was essentially, it was an entrepreneur talking us through her week. And she said she started the week off on a Sunday evening going through her immediate messages and emails and things like that, which kind of started her Monday off on a better foot. And I don't know if you do this as well, but I think it gets rid of this.
• 2:12
  I mean, I wouldn't say I have Sunday scaries, but you know that feeling when the new week's about to start and you don't really know what's going to come at you on a Monday. And it kind of eases that flow of things being thrown at you. And yeah, I don't know. I did it yesterday and I feel great today.
• 2:29
  I love that. So mine's a little bit different because we work a lot with the US and I spend a lot of the time talking to people in the US. So instead of like a Monday, like kind of checking in emails, I actually already am in my emails on a Saturday morning because I know that things are rolling over from the Friday afternoon. So it's like I'm already ahead of it. And then on a Monday, like the US isn't,
• 2:53
  isn't online yet. And like, you're not online until the end of the day. It's like still Sunday for, you know, people in the U S and so on a Monday, it's like such a great day. It's really quiet because like I'm ahead of everyone. And so like you, yeah, you haven't come online yet. Nothing's going on there. Like U S is still on a Sunday. It's so good.
• 3:14
  That's great about being in Australia. You're just a day ahead of the game. Yeah, we're just a day ahead. We're in the future. Productivity hack. Move to Australia. But actually, though, so I actually really quite like it because I can just get it out of the way on a Saturday morning and just be kind of like on top of anything that's come in. And then it's all good on a Monday. I'm a little bit of an email addict. I love the dopamine hit of an email.
• 3:43
  Oh, yeah. You're also checking on the go a lot, right, on your phone. Yeah, I'm on the go. And making sure to stay on top of it. I mean, that's the beauty of an online business. You can just be, it's just so easy. Oh, 100%. But, yeah, I'm a bit addicted to the emails. There's worse things. Worse things to be addicted to. Yes. Yes, there is. That is so true.
• 4:06
  So today we're gonna jump into a super fun topic. I thought this was a great one because we sometimes send each other campaigns back and forth and things that look really cool. And when we see women founded brands doing something amazing, and often it happens when there is a cool collab going on and a cool partnership and something comes on top of that. And we were having a lot of these messages back and forth and I thought, why not jump on here
• 4:34
  and chat through the process, how people can create these partnerships, how you can approach that, especially as a small business, and you're maybe wanting to leverage the audience of someone a little bit bigger than you. And yeah, kind of the top three things that you could be doing right now. Yeah. I feel like before we do that, I feel like I sent you some really fun ones, like over the last couple of days. Like, was there one with Scrub Daddy? Yeah.
• 5:00
  There was one with Scrub Daddy and... It was so fun. Who was it? Scrub Daddy and like, was it like a beauty brand? I think it was a beauty brand. Let me get it up right now. There was also Starburst with a bath bomb company. So you had the Starburst flavors and all the branding and then you can put it in your bath, which is super fun. Yes. And you know what I think is so smart about those like partnerships, like the Scrub Daddy one?
• 5:28
  Benefit. It was Benefit with Scrub Daddy. It was Scrub Daddy and Benefit, which is just such an unlikely, unusual duo. But when I saw it, again, everything goes back to like human emotion, right? When I saw it, I was like, oh, this makes me feel curious and happy and kind of like, what are these guys doing? And if you always just remember, no matter what it is in your business,
• 5:58
  And like, you want someone to feel something because feeling something then creates an action from it, or even just like a little moment of joy, or hopefully a click to buy. It's like, what is the feeling behind it? And like, how do you make people feel? And how can you be more out there with your like collab ideas and your partnership ideas to really be like, wow, that's interesting. I love that, you know?
• 6:22
  And it looks so cool. It's such a great opportunity to kind of freshen up your brand in a way that makes people also look twice. So if you have, you know, a brand that you're throwing at people constantly and they're used to seeing that thing, suddenly now you see the Benefit logo with Scrub Daddy next to it and your brain's almost like, huh? Like, huh? That doesn't make sense. And just that moment gives you a few extra seconds for people to click on your thing, to read through it and, yeah, to gain that attention, get that reach.
• 6:52
  Yeah, I just, I loved that one. I thought that one was so cool. Okay, where are we starting? What was the question? I actually forgot already because I went down the rabbit hole of Scrub Daddy, which I'm also just like, what a great name. Scrub Daddy is such a great name. So weird. We love it. I love it.
• 7:09
  So I wanted to kick off by looking at, so if there's an early stage founder listening in right now, what would your approach be to reaching out to someone for partnerships, especially if you're a little bit smaller and you maybe don't have the leverage of a big audience behind you? What are some tips and tricks for approaching that in the first place?
• 7:31
  So I will say that actually, like it's such a benefit to being a smaller brand and kind of like in that phase of on the up. Because it means that when you're in that phase, you can do a lot more kind of like testing and ironing out the kinks and trying and failing without it being such a huge risk. And I think that like I've heard a lot of founders be like, oh, my God, like I want to partner with, you know, XYZ amazing, huge brand like benefit. And...
• 7:59
  That's amazing. And that should be your goal, dream, hit list brand to partner with. But you actually want to still build your foundations before then. You want to partner with lots of different people, figure out what works, figure out your secret magic source to what you bring in partnerships and what's great about it. And all your...
• 8:18
  like supply chain, operations, logistics on the back end, so that when you are ready and all those kinks are like ironed out and you can lean into one of those big partnerships, it's like a huge success, not a partnership that has kinks going on during it. So I would say like it's such a fun time when you're in the early days to be building kind of like-minded, mutually beneficial partnerships with other brands or influencers or micro-influencers. I feel like they all kind of
• 8:47
  what would I be doing? So first of all, I'd be kind of thinking about, okay, if I'm wanting to do some collabs or some partnerships, like what are the kinds of goals that I have? Because every partnership is going to have different goals and you can't kind of achieve, you know, 10 things out of every partnership. It's more like, okay, cool. If we're going to do something on social media, those goals and KPIs are probably going to be around like follower growth or, you know,
• 9:11
  reach and expansion and cool buzz online, or if it's more something that your goal and your KPI is actually like a sales driver, it's going to be a different kind of mechanism to drive those sales and building the campaign off the back of what your KPIs and your goals are. So for example,
• 9:30
  You might be like, okay, a small example could be like a giveaway or, you know, doing collab posts on Instagram. Like we're doing one at the moment with Female Founder Collective and it's just a content partnership. And it's a really cool way for us to align with each other. I mean, they're a lot bigger than us, but I think from their perspective, the value that we bring is brand positioning and like these amazing founders that we support, that they support too. We have a really like-minded mission. So we're able to come together and create this...
• 9:59
  simple content partnership that is amazing for kind of growth and brand reach and brand positioning. But then you could also be thinking, okay, cool. Maybe I want to go out and find a brand and we do like bundle offers together or like I'm sending a mailer out in their sales and they're sending a mailer out in or in vice versa, basically. So these mailers with offers are going out into each other's, you know,
• 10:28
  orders that are being shipped. Or, you know, maybe it's even the next level up where you're creating custom products together, kind of like what Scrub Daddy and Starburst or Scrub Daddy and Benefit and Starburst and whoever that was with are doing. But that's kind of like, you know, getting on the more heavy lift side. So there's like low lift and heavy lift. And then what I would say is like, you mentioned something earlier around
• 10:52
  partnering up and going up with someone who has like a bit of a bigger audience. But I would say like one of the key things, especially in that early stage and something that I would stick with is finding like the kind of mutual sized audience or like finding people who are on the similar level than you that have these like-minded audiences. So it's really a mutual win-win benefit. Like
• 11:17
  you are able to offer them X, they're able to offer you X, and it's quite equal. Because I think if you're constantly kind of trying to, you know, go to a bigger brand with a huge audience or something like that,
• 11:32
  It's clear what the win is for the smaller brand and it's not as clear what the win is for the bigger brand. And, you know, what's the marketing budget being put behind the campaigns? Like who's driving the most traffic? Like all these kinds of things. You want to be on a mutual level that you're both winning and you're both starting to incrementally grow through these, you know, collaborations or...
• 11:54
  giveaways or bundling or whatever it might be. So I feel like I like went in so many different directions there. But if it was me and I'm an early stage founder, I am thinking, OK, what is my KPI? What is my goal for this collab? Who are like minded people I can get involved with? How can I think outside the box and do something unexpected that drives someone to feel something? And do I want low lift or do I want heavy lift? Am I investing money to make this a success or am I just investing time and like cool kind of like
• 12:22
  things that we already have at our disposal. And on that level of like simple kind of things, like a giveaway or a content collab, it might even be something like, you know, in the past, we've done giveaways where we've shared email lists and like built databases together. So it's like multiple people coming together, we're all building an email list. And then we've all kind of shared this list. And, you know, in the T's and C's, it is there saying, yes, my data is going to be shared.
• 12:47
  But then building like nurture sequences and campaigns off the back of that. So there are like different ways to do like the low lift stuff. And then, of course, you know, bundling. Maybe that's a bit of a heavier lift if you need to like kind of send products and things to someone's 3PL or someone's house to send out. Or maybe you can do like the mailer thing or, you know, actually go full on and like develop a custom product together.
• 13:13
  Yeah, something that comes to mind on that heavy lift side is the episode with Parisa Faust-Pastro. I hope I pronounced the name correctly. And she had a pet brand called Maxbone. It's recently been sold, actually. And they partnered with Disney in the early, early days, which is obviously a huge heavy lift, huge partnership, huge operation. And she spoke through on the episode how that was...
• 13:39
  You know, that really came with a lot of challenges at the same time, because when you're such a small business, sometimes you just don't have the operations in place to be able to meet the requirements of a partnership like that. And it could be worth kind of starting off on a smaller scale, working in these small collaborations, smaller runs before you approach something like that.
• 14:00
  But it was interesting to see her have this opportunity already. And she walked us through the process of how that looks. And essentially, in a big partnership like that, you're still responsible for creating all those products yourself. So they designed a bunch of products together that she then went on to produce and create. And Disney then bought off her to sell in the shop. And they would also sell some. But to realize that there's a huge operation behind that. And when you see that in an Instagram post or on a website, it maybe looks like...
• 14:30
  that would be a partnership where Disney takes a lot of that legwork because they're such a huge company. But the reality is that there's a lot going on behind the scenes there for the small business owner. Totally. It's the small business owner doing the heavy lift because it's them who kind of wants it and needs it.
• 14:47
  in, oh, not in every case, obviously, but like that makes sense to me in my mind. I'm like, yeah, well, of course, like they've got to come to the table and bring something too. But obviously small brands in those scenarios can actually bring something that a big brand can't bring, which is that kind of like fresh approach, new, cool, different vibe that, you know, sometimes these bigger brands that have been around for a hundred years, you
• 15:12
  like the Estee Lauderdos of the world, they just don't have that same kind of edge. And so there definitely is an advantage for a small business owner to come in and partner with bigger brands on that aspect. But I think generally speaking, it's so good to focus on how is it a win-win for both and leveraging your audiences when you're at a mutual size because it's
• 15:31
  it also just becomes a much easier pitch to like drop into someone's DMs or emails who are like, you know, values aligned, similar kind of sized audience and just be like, hey, do you want to do this thing together? And it's like much easier versus being like, okay, cool. I'm going to go to like the top of the mountain and be like, knocking on the door.
• 15:51
  I wanted to dive into exactly how you can make a collaboration mutually beneficial, which I think we very much covered now. But from a searching point of view for a brand, you know, at all different stages, how do you approach that first search? Do you look in people that you're following? Do you look in your network? How do you find those like minded brands at a similar stage? Yeah.
• 16:15
  Yeah, I mean, there's like the intuitive answers, like the intuitive answers where you're like, oh my God, I would love to partner with this brand. Or like, oh my God, I would love to work with them. And they're kind of on, you know, your, you know, I do everything by list, obviously. So like I'd have my list, I'd have my dream hit list, and then I'd be kind of like stacking them like, okay, if this one's a really big one, I need to put it at the bottom of the list and I'm going to like work towards that when I've got other things figured out and I know really like how I can approach that pitch.
• 16:43
  And you might be like, cool, these people are still on my dream list, but I know that we're kind of like similar sized audiences. So it's going to be like an easier thing to do and like roll out. And I'd put that at the top. But then I guess it's also about like, there's things you could do, like ask your audience, like who else do you buy? Like who else are you shopping from? Where are you like hanging out? Because it might not even need to be another brand. It could be a venue. It could be a tech company. It could be like, there are so many different opportunities. It doesn't have to be like,
• 17:11
  you know, also a CPG brand. You know, if you're a beauty brand, it doesn't also have to be another CPG beauty or kitchen or whatever brand. It could be something totally different. So I'd be like listening to your customers and asking like where they hang out, like what are the products they buy religiously? What are the best products that they buy from other small business owners or other women founded companies? Then I'd be thinking, cool, like,
• 17:34
  Maybe you could set yourself a goal of being like, cool, what are the 10 like intuitive people I'd love to partner with? What are the 10 that I think my audience would really love to see a partnership with? What are the 10 that are like would be so unexpected and out of the box? And just spending time like even, I don't know, like you could be going through your social media, clicking into your followers and then seeing like what other things they're up to on their social media and getting inspiration and ideas through that. But, yeah, I'd probably start with...
• 18:05
  asking my audience and listening to my intuitive self and going from there. I think a lot of this stuff, it's about searching on social media. It's about seeing what's cool, what's popping on TikTok. If you're an early stage founder, maybe you're starting to go to different events or you're kind of looped into different Shopify experiences, whatever it might be. And it's quite kind of...
• 18:29
  I think you're naturally building those network and ecosystems as a brand owner. So it probably is quite easy to identify who are the first people that you would go to for a collab. Especially if you have a network of other founders, definitely start there. Definitely say, hey, we're already friends. We already know each other. We're already like-minded in our...
• 18:51
  values and what we care about. And also our audience demographic is kind of the same. Like, why don't we just do something really cool? Because I think the other part of collabs and partnerships, and this is something that it might not be the same thinking for everyone, but I'm like, this is where you can just have the cool day-to-day fun stuff that you dream about in having a business. Like do shit that's really fun. Be like, how can I just make this great for me? How can I have excitement through this? Yeah.
• 19:17
  Absolutely, because you're not only when you're partnering with someone kind of aiming to double your reach in your audience and your impact in that way, but you also have double the resources. So the extra fun that you can put behind a campaign like this and something came to mind just now when you were talking about similar, similarly minded brands and brands.
• 19:37
  These brands have both been on the show prior to partnering together, but it would be great to like get them back and get a spiel on how this actually looked. But I don't know if you caught this at the time that Fish Wife and Fly By Jing partnered together. I did say that. Fish Wife is a tinned fish company.
• 19:52
  Yeah. And Fly by Jing has a really famous Szechuan sauce and they mix these together into a product and had a huge campaign around it. And this created so much buzz at the time. You just could not get away from it. And that's such a good example of two companies that...
• 20:10
  I think we're in similar growth stages, kind of playing in the same arena. We're both on the show. I mean, that's also a discoverability tool. Just search through our catalog who's been on the show. And female-founded brands coming together, and the community just adored that. You could see how well that worked.
• 20:28
  Totally. Absolutely. And I think like it doesn't even have to be like a brand and a brand. It could be cool. Let's go out and create something with a local artist or let's go out and create something with a venue or someone who has a physical store and I don't. So like let's create an event together or a pop up together or let's create a meetup together. Like it doesn't have to be necessarily fun.
• 20:50
  you know, just the super obvious things, it can also be more, you know, out of the box. And like, why I'm saying that is because I was talking to a friend of mine who has a company, like a phone case company. And
• 21:04
  It's all print on demand. It's an amazing brand. It's an amazing business. But they don't have that kind of like physical footprint in retail or anything like that. And they don't have plans to. But we were looking at, I don't know if you've seen all that rise of like crafting on social media and like those stores that are opening where it's like, you know, go in and like
• 21:22
  do a workshop where you embellish, you know, your phone case or your phone case or like whatever. And I was like, cool, even though that you're not going to sell that, but like, what about creating like a partnership with like a jewelry brand who has bits and bobs and you do like events together or a series of events for your VIP customers or a series of events for PR and media where you come together and, you know, you're embellishing stuff.
• 21:48
  the phone cases with their pearls and beads and chains and like in a really fun kind of experiential way. And that's not going to be necessarily a driver in terms of sales, but it's a way to reward your loyal VIP customers. It's a way to create interesting content for social media that has that viral aspect to it. It's a way to still leverage, you know, maybe you tie it into a giveaway and then you're leveraging email lists and databases together and you're promoting it to your databases together.
• 22:17
  whatever it might be, kind of thinking outside the box. It doesn't have to just be like the obvious.
• 22:24
  Absolutely. That leads on to the last question I had nicely, which I kind of wanted to bring in this question of how that works together with influencers and whether brands should imitate the way that influencers might partner with someone. And do you think it would be beneficial as a brand to kind of see themselves as an influencer and approach partnerships this way? Like you said, with in real life activations, we also had within the community ourselves, we had Miranda and...
• 22:54
  becca work together in a live event and bring their products together and they also got other brands involved and created this whole spa day and this was just amazing to see and i think also leaning into the kind of influencer side of things and how you can invite influencers to an event like that and you have content that will keep you going on social media for a long time and what's your approach to that side of the coin
• 23:21
  Yeah, I mean, I guess I would approach like relationships with influencers, again, in the same bucket of collabs and partnerships in general. So, yes, it could be like co-creating, like inviting them to events and things like that. But also it can just be those simple kind of collabs where it's.
• 23:37
  And it's so straightforward. It sounds kind of like almost boring saying it, but these things do work. It's like you start with gifting. You're like gifting at scale to micro-influencers, macro-influencers, and you're kind of spreading the net wide to identify these people who truly love your brand. And then you're thinking, okay, cool. So let's track the...
• 23:57
  impact and the results of this not from a sales perspective necessarily but from like the even the perspective of content like who are the people who are then receiving your product and they love it so they want to talk about it and share about it and it's like cool maybe you do see that there are some results from a certain influencer and then maybe it's moving them from just a gifting relationship to an affiliate relationship so that they're actually you know
• 24:20
  getting some of the upside and getting that commission from sales, which is obviously going to happen a lot now that TikTok shop is around and launching into Australia. And then how does that evolve into, you know, if you see that there's someone you're working with that's absolutely like brand obsessed, they love what you're doing, you love what they're doing in terms of content, you can see that they drive sales. It's like, oh, okay, cool. Why don't we evolve this into a long
• 24:45
  How does that look? Is that creating a custom capsule collection? Is that naming products after you? Is that like, what does that look like in terms of a longer fleshed out partnership and like really working together to make sure it's a success? So like kind of testing small and then evolving over the long period of time. And I think like going back to what I was saying at the
• 25:09
  It's all relationships, all these partnerships and collabs and things like that. It's like doing cool shit, seeing what works, and then like strengthening that relationship over time and like iterating and making things better and making it a win for both people and both parties, whether it is a brand or a venue or an influencer or like the stakeholders that have come together to find like whatever's mutually beneficial for the two of you or five of you.
• 25:36
  Yeah, exactly. And sometimes that might transpire within a few weeks. Sometimes that's going to take years to come together. And that's also totally fine. I think the important thing is that you stay in each other's ecosystem and that you stay open to the idea of collabs and that you keep putting feelers out there and letting people know that that's an option and that you're open to it.
• 25:57
  Totally. And I feel like anyone listening is going to be like, but how do I know? Like, how do I know who, who is like following me and who my kind of like, uh, cloudy customers are. And like the, if you're small, it's like the simple answer is like just scrolling back through your orders and seeing if you ever recognize like an address or a name. I remember when I had my jewelry brand, um,
• 26:19
  I got an order and it was being shipped to Refinery29. And I was like, holy shit, like someone from Refinery29 just ordered because I would obviously religiously look at, you know, as a small business, I was religiously obsessed with like who's the customer and like where do they live and what are they up to. And so from that, I think I even spoke about this recently. I don't know if it was on this website.
• 26:41
  or if it was on like someone else's show. But from that, I ended up like reaching out, got in touch with the person, and we got an article on Refinery29 that mentioned us in like one of their features. And that's just because, you know, you keep an eye on and you see like, oh, there's something here I should reach out. And the same thing with social media, like go through your followers.
• 27:01
  Go through your followers, see who has a blue tick, and it's like, or see who's watching your stories and be like, ooh, this person has a blue tick. What are they up to? Like what are they doing? Because they're obviously watching. Maybe they are someone that could partner with you in some way.
• 27:16
  And the last thing that you just reminded me of is, and something that we're seeing a lot on social media at the moment. Have you seen those videos? I feel like we've sent them to each other before. It's like brands being like, Hey, we're looking for people who want PR gifting. And they just like put it on a video and it says like, drop into the comments. Like if you want to receive a PR package and especially for brands who are CPG brands that,
• 27:41
  have the ability to gift at scale because the cost per unit is potentially smaller or they have like a specific product that they're able to gift at scale. Like when you're able to create that kind of buzz and then you're able to see like all these people who want to receive your products and like shout about it or tell their friends or create content for you. Like that's just an easy way to put the word out there. And I feel like I've seen a few brands do it now and I'm like, oh yeah, good one. Like it's working. Smart.
• 28:09
  Absolutely. And you get that, you get that reach and the algorithm loves that on social media, of course. And exactly. It's that one small opt-in for people to just show like, I'm a fan of your brand. Let me get involved. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Oh my God. I love collabs and partnerships. It's like such a fun aspect of building a brand and building like your positioning and who you're kind of like seated next to.
• 28:36
  to like in the industry, such a fun part of business. Absolutely. I think that's a great note to leave it on that. This is such a, it's a fun opportunity. And especially if you're wanting to flex that creative muscle or you're missing that part of, you know, the fun start of building the business a bit later on in the game, this is such a fun way to pick that back up again. And yeah, thanks so much. Love this. Yes. Let us know if you have any questions in the Facebook group. Yeah, book into the Facebook group.
• 29:04
  That's the pod. Bye.
• 29:10
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• 29:35
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• 29:57
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