Who Are Good Collaborators for You?

I had the pleasure of meeting a bunch of amazing people again this week, and having conversations that were both inspiring and thought-provoking.

I met up with Louisa Stewart for lunch and coffee at my local cafe. We had a lovely chat about data and systems because we both love to geek out over that. In fact, she is organising a super interesting free webinar about business mindset and problem-solving next week that I highly recommend you sign up for!

We also spoke about messaging and marketing and how to gain access to the decision-makers. Sometimes it can be hard to speak directly with your ideal clients. Perhaps the people who research solutions are not the same people who sign the contracts. The question then becomes who we address in our marketing and how we can instigate conversations with the right people. So, we explored the question of who else works with her ideal clients and how she can build collaborative relationships with them.

Later in the week, I had a virtual cuppa with Rachael Cumberland-Dodd . We geeked out over messaging, niching, and our shared love of Good Omens. We chatted about how our branding needs to hook in the right people and that we dislike the word hook because it feels manipulative. BUT showing our personality, sharing our opinions and looking like ourselves in our photos will attract the right people to us. We supposed that that IS hooking people in, but maybe we prefer calling that connecting with people.

Interestingly, both these conversations seemed to come together during Cup O' Conversation where Andrew Lopez and I spoke about the importance of connecting and starting conversations as he quoted one of his clients: "I don't care if they're competitors in the room. They'll all want to work with me because of how I talk about real estate"

This is what messaging, branding and marketing are all about. Show up as yourself, share your expertise and vision and trust that the right people will feel that click and understand your value. That connection can be made directly with clients, but also with collaborators. This is exactly where Andrew's expertise lies, in helping his clients understand and connect with collaborators. Because, as Andrew puts it, "If the ideal clients aren’t seeing the message, then the only workaround is to get to the people that have the same clients as us."

Are you joining me for a Cup O' Connection next week?