Collaboration

Collaboration is an amazing, exciting thing that can create something that is exponentially larger than the sum of its parts so to speak.

It's a great way to cross promote.

It's a great way to extend your offerings to your "peeps" (your list, your customers, your colleagues, even your friends and family).

It's a great way to increase your value to your "peeps".

It's a great way to learn about other businesses that are in alignment with yours to promote future referrals.

It's a great way to get new eyes on your business.

All these things are great and why collaboration can be an amazing tool.

That being said, you want to ensure that the project, or the partner business is in alignment with your business, your current direction and your underlying mission. You also want to ensure that the partners you are collaborating with do business in a similar fashion to the way you do business. You have to be an advocate not only for your business visibility and branding, but most importantly, an advocate for your customers. 

A large part of collaboration is cross promotion, and if you are going to open your precious database and invite your customers to experience something, you want to do your best to ensure it will be a good experience for your customers, and one that is in alignment with the type of experience they receive from you.

If you are a very nurturing, high touch, deep relationship building kind of business professional (as I strongly suspect you are if you are reading this right now) then it is not going to be a right fit to partner with a very straight up hard sales type, even if the product they sell is something that your people would be super keen to purchase.

There are many other examples I could site, but I'm sure you get the idea. 

Collaboration can be amazing and create something entirely new and fantastic, for you, the partner, and all of your "peeps". But take care, because it can also reflect someone else's business model and practices on you so choose wisely friends!

Everyone has an agenda, it's naive to think that they don't, and you should, too. You're not in business to be giving everything away. But like any other relationship, you want to be partnering with someone who cares as much about how the relationship benefits you as they do about how the relationship benefits them.

Finally, when you do choose to collaborate, think of it like those group projects in school. You never want to be the guy everyone else thinks is a slacker in the group. Do your share, and most importantly share your brilliance. Sometimes the project originator has an idea, and only through the added insight and brainstorming of a team does it reach its full potential.