Power of Strategic Collaborations for Business Growth with Danielle Wiebe

One of the biggest things you need to plan for your business in the coming new year is marketing; how are you going to get more visibility? I’m a bit biased because I love using podcast interviews as a marketing tool. But how do you get started with pitching yourself for podcast interviews, especially if you don’t have a team to help you?

Luckily, Danielle Weibe, the founder of the Business Babes Collective, knows how and is here to share it with us as my special guest today! She’s doing something that’s so accessible for many people.

In this episode, she talks about how she’s able to consistently land more interviews, opportunities, and visibility for her business by pitching really, really smartly.

On this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO:

8:21 – What is the Business Babes Collective, and how did Danielle get started in business?

14:50 – Danielle and I talk about why it takes an abundance mentality and a strategic approach to make collaborations work effectively.

19:34 – How does Danielle define collaborations vs. partnerships, and how does she increase her chances of creating them for her business?

24:30 – I reveal the red flags I often see when others try to pitch themselves as a guest on my show. What did Danielle do differently to get my attention?

28:18 – Too many treat business relationship building like speed dating. Danielle discusses how being pleasantly persistent over quite some time secured a collaboration.

33:22 – Sometimes, you have to get creative to secure a collab. Also, be careful not to fall into this trap when on the receiving end of opportunities.

35:00 – What is Danielle’s process for finding the right people to work with? She goes through it, step-by-step.

39:05 – I add my own tip that works especially well if you’re a beginner or trying to collaborate with someone with a bigger audience. 

Mentioned in Power of Strategic Collaborations for Business Growth with Danielle Wiebe

Racheal Cook: If you have been following along for any length of time, you have heard me rave about how much I love doing podcast interviews. But how do you get started with podcast interviews, especially if you don't have a big network or you're just not sure how to pitch yourself? Well, I'm really excited to talk today with Danielle Weibe, the founder of the Business Babes Collective, about how she has consistently landed more visibility, more interviews, and more opportunities for her business by doing this really, really smart pitching strategy where she invites people to collaborate with her. I cannot wait for you to listen into this conversation.

Are you ready to grow from solopreneur to CEO? You're in the right place. I'm your host, Racheal Cook. I've spent the last decade helping women entrepreneurs start and scale service-based businesses. If you're serious about building a sustainable business, it's time to put the strategy, systems, and support in place to make it happen. Join me each week for candid conversations about stepping into your role as CEO, the hard lessons learned along the way, and practical profitable strategies to grow a sustainable business without the hustle and burnout.

Hey there, CEO. I cannot wait for you to dig into today's interview because I know by the time this episode goes out, a lot of you are starting to think about what are you trying to create for your business in the upcoming year. One of the biggest things we all need in our business is more visibility. We need more opportunities to get our business, our message, our mission out in front of more people. It's challenging to do this because it often starts to feel like if all we're doing is sending emails and posting on social, we're just sending content out into the void and not really sure if it's bringing new people our way.

Well, if you've heard me talk about our five-part marketing framework, then you know that social media, email, and your own content is Nurture content that is always going to go out to people who already know, like, and trust you, which is amazing. This is how we get people to make that decision, make that buying decision about working with us. But before we can nurture people, we have to get in front of new people. If we're not getting in front of new people, if we're not doing the Attract step of the marketing framework, then at some point, you will burn out your existing audience, you will run out of people who actually want to purchase anything from you.

It's really important that we're all consistently doing Attract marketing, that we're all consistently putting ourselves out in front of new potential clients, and then bringing them closer towards our business. One of my favorite ways, hands down, to do this is through podcast interviews and it serves me really well because I also have a podcast. I find people who like podcasts, if I'm interviewed on a podcast, they find me by skipping on over to my podcast after they heard my interview. It's been an incredible strategy and one that we have doubled down on for probably the past six or seven years now since I got really serious about pitching myself for more interviews.

In the last few years, I've hired team to help me pitch myself for more podcast interviews because it can be time intensive, it can take a lot of going back and forth to land the number of interviews that I want to land. When this email landed in my inbox, I knew I wanted to bring Danielle on because I knew what she was doing is something that is accessible for so many of you, for so many of you who are listening who are getting the ball rolling and maybe you don't have the capacity to hire a team just to pitch you for more visibility opportunities. This is a great creative way to get those opportunities.

Essentially, what happened was Danielle sent me an email where she invited me to collaborate with a podcast swap. I've only done this a handful of times but I have to say I really, really am careful who I bring on my podcast. I feel fiercely protective of my community and of the caliber of the content that I want to talk about here, so usually when I get cold pitches from people who I don't have an existing relationship with, the answer is usually no pretty much right away.

But there was something about the way that Danielle positioned this and approached me with it that it just felt so authentic and like such a win-win. I knew that this would be a great, great conversation. I hope you enjoy. We are going to go deep with Danielle Weibe of the Business Babes Collective to learn all about collaborations, to learn all about how you can start doing things like interview swaps and other creative collaborative ideas to get in front of more potential clients and build that network of peers who are going to make those introductions and open those doors for you. I hope you enjoy.

This series is brought to you by the Get Paid Calculator. I have several different resources I'm sharing in this series, but this one calculator I promise is going to make so much of an impact for you in your business. Because if you are looking for a predictably profitable business, one that consistently brings in clients and cash flow month after month, we have to start by really understanding the numbers behind that. Too often I see entrepreneurs who pull a revenue goal out of thin air and then when it comes down to it, they don't have enough money in the bank to hire the team they need or to buy the technology or the tools they need and often they're paying themselves just whatever happens to be left over at the end of the month.

I want to put an end to this and help turn this ship around, get us all out of the entrepreneurial poverty of time, energy, and money by helping make it incredibly simple to crunch those numbers so that we can start with your goal lifestyle and what you actually want to bring home to your family and then set a revenue goal that will ensure that you are getting paid like a CEO. Not only that, we’ll take that revenue goal in this calculator and break it down into the specific sales goals so you will have the clarity to understand how many clients you need to get, at what price point, and how many people you need to get that offer in front of in order to make this revenue goal and your take-home salary a reality.

I highly encourage you to go over to rachealcook.com/calculator. The link will be in the show notes. Grab the Get Paid Calculator along with the other resources I mentioned in this series and you will be absolutely on the path to a predictably profitable business.

Hey, Danielle. I'm so glad you're joining me today.

Danielle Weibe: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited for this conversation.

Racheal Cook: Well, when you and I connected, you shared something that I thought was so important for more entrepreneurs, especially women entrepreneurs to embrace, and that's the idea of more strategic, profitable collaborations and partnerships. But before we dig into all things collaborations and partnerships, I want to get to know a little bit more about you and your entrepreneurial journey. Can you share a little bit with us about what the Business Babes Collective is and how you got started?

Danielle Weibe: Yes, absolutely. Yes, I'm Danielle Weibe. I am the founder of Business Babes Collective which is a community for female entrepreneurs. Before that, how I got into entrepreneurship was I always knew that I wanted to do something in business because I always knew that I loved people, I loved connecting, and so I was thinking, “How can I use my skills and use the things that I'm passionate about and have that be my career and my business?”

I originally actually thought I wanted to own my own spa. It was the original idea. I started working in that field and realized, “Okay, that's not for me.” Then I ended up starting my own business in university, helping people with their social media and really enjoyed that, enjoyed working with clients that got my feet wet in entrepreneurship, and then from there, I had all these other experiences like working for my sister's business in the wedding industry, my mom's business which is sales of high-end electronics, a lot of different types of industries and businesses which I feel like gave me a really great perspective on what I loved and what I didn't love.

How the business started was by accident, I wanted community for myself. When I had my own business, I felt lonely because when you're your own entrepreneur, you're working from home or from a coffee shop and you just feel disconnected, whereas when you're working in an office with lots of people, you always have that connection. So I started hosting these pop-up events in my local city, which is Vancouver, Canada, and slowly but surely, it just snowballed into this people were asking, “Hey, when's the next event?” I'm like, “Okay, I guess I need to host more.” It just snowballed from there and we ended up launching into five chapters across North America.

That was really exciting, and then, of course, COVID hit so we completely lost 80% of our revenue basically overnight so we had to reinvent ourselves which is where our podcast came in as well as everything that we now do online to support entrepreneurs. That's the back story. Collaborations is honestly what has helped me grow businesses even before I started Business Babes Collective but now that we are doing this, it's basically what we do.

We collaborate. We work with other women, whether that be for our live events, whether that be collaborating on the podcast, whether that be for different strategic things that we're doing in the business. I love doing it because I think if you try to do things yourself, it's just going to take so much longer and it's not going to be as much fun. That's my motto.

Racheal Cook: Absolutely. I love your story so much and I want to point out a few fun things that I noticed because maybe other people listening to this episode are noticing too. You, like me, were surrounded by entrepreneurs in your family so you got to see behind the scenes of a lot of different types of businesses. I also have that journey because both my parents were entrepreneurs, I'm an entrepreneur, my sister is an entrepreneur, and my cousin is an entrepreneur. We have a lot of small business in our family. I think somehow it's almost like by osmosis, we so soak up so much insight and clarity that gives us an unfair advantage to other entrepreneurs. Would you agree with that?

Danielle Weibe: Yes, and what I didn't mention too is that my Oppa started a business when he moved here from Canada when he was 20 years old and so I saw that family business start as well. I think it just really allowed me to see that that was an option because I think a lot of people don't necessarily know that running your own business, having your own business is even an option because they haven't seen that in their family.

I do feel very lucky that my parents modeled that for me and then also my mom was very, very supportive in when I said, “Hey, I want to do this thing.” I actually hid it from my family and friends for the first few months as I was getting going because I was just nervous, I didn't really know where it was going, and like I said, I didn't think of it as starting a business, it was just creating this community for other people and so I hid it.

Then when I finally said, “Hey, I'm doing this thing and I want to make this into a business. I think there's something here,” my mom was so supportive just like, “Yes, go for it.” My whole family was, but specifically my mom, she just really was excited about the idea. I do feel really, really blessed because I know a lot of other people's parents would be like, “Wait a second. What? What are you doing?”

Racheal Cook: For sure. But from my own experience in my own family, collaborations and the network you build is the thing that makes a massive impact. Because my dad's been in business for 40 plus years, I grew up in a business very old school pre-internet, pre-social, everything, it was very much about the connections you make and the relationships you build. I think because of the internet, social media, and content marketing, there seems to be this feeling of, “Well, all I have to do is post on social media, create content, and just push things out, and then people will find me.”

I think that can work but that is such a slow way to grow your business, to be honest. There are so many websites out there, more businesses starting every day, and more noise on the internet than ever before. I always think that getting in front of other people's audiences, finding ways to collaborate, finding ways to partner, it is like the secret cheat code to growing your own community and your business when you link arms with other women, stand shoulder to shoulder, and say, “Hey, we serve similar audiences in slightly different ways. Let's encourage each other and get each other's messages out in front of our communities.”

Danielle Weibe: 100%. I think it takes an abundance mentality to think that and to actually take action on that because a lot of people feel like, “Well, if I collaborate with someone else and they do similar things that I do, what if they steal my clients or what if this or what if that?” First of all, I love supporting other women and of course, that's why I started my business, as you did as well, but I think every entrepreneur has to have this abundance mentality that there's more than enough for everyone and that working together is going to rising tides lifts all ships.

Because if we try to do it alone as I said, you're just going to grow so slowly and it's not going to be fun. You're just going to see every single person as your competition, you're not going to be supporting other people. I have found anyways, when I've brought other people in, when I've collaborated, the floodgates opened for me as well. I think it's just important to realize that the more we can work with other people in a strategic way, so we're not just working with anyone and everyone and we're also making sure that the people that we connect with, the people that we collaborate with share similar audiences like you said as well as similar values and things that we believe in so that it actually makes sense to work together.

I'm not saying, “Yeah, work with everybody, promote everyone else's business,” it does have to be strategic which is why I love talking about this topic and really differentiating what makes a successful collaboration and what makes a collaboration that didn't really work out too well. That's what I'm passionate about because I think that a lot of people hold themselves back from either reaching out to people to want to collaborate or they look for collaborations that maybe are not super aligned because they just see it as an opportunity to maybe get in front of an audience but it's not even the right audience that they're trying to get in front of, so I think there needs to be some distinction on that as well.

Racheal Cook: Absolutely. To me, we need to stop thinking we're the only option for people to “I think I have a role in everybody's journey who finds me and comes into my world and other people who might also be sharing similar content, they have a role as well.” It's like if you're going to learn more about any topic and you go to the bookstore, you're not just going to only buy from one author, you're probably going to get several books on the topic.

If anyone has seen my bookshelf, then you know hundreds of books about marketing, sales, strategy, and about finance, from many, many, many different sources and they all have their place. It's that abundance mentality that is so key, going into it knowing that this can be a win-win and that collaborating is not a zero-sum game. This is a how can we find the win-win, how can we truly support each other, how can we share the wealth, and to take it even a step further, how can we build our own economy.

Women have so much more power than I think we give ourselves credit for. If we want to see other women-owned businesses thrive, then we can do that by not just sharing them but buying from them, and supporting them through so many different ways, both free and paid. But when we start amplifying other women's messages and their voices, that's how we create this amazing economy where more women-owned businesses are thriving and making the impact that we all really, really want to make.

Danielle Weibe: That’s so good. I absolutely love when people say, “I met this person through your community or because you featured them on your social media or podcast, whatever, and now I'm working with them,” I love that so much because it's so cool that I could be that introduction. You think about sometimes when you email two people and introduce them together, how great that feels to connect two people that you know are going to really get along and do something great together. We can do that on a larger scale when we start to build our own businesses and platforms when we collaborate on a larger scale. I love everything you said because I agree 100%.

Racheal Cook: Let's get into the nuts and bolts of how you go about creating these collaborations and partnerships. Let's first start by defining what would you say is a collaboration and partnership because I think this is very broad, how can we make this more concrete for people?

Danielle Weibe: For sure. Collaboration is a very, very broad term and basically, it's whenever you're working with someone else to achieve a common goal. You're collaborating when you're working with if you have a team or if you're just working with one other person. If you're in a mastermind and brainstorming, that's collaborating. But when I speak about collaborations in order to really grow and scale, I'm referring to the thought of you working with someone else, creating a mutually beneficial, somewhat of a partnership together. That could be on a very small scale or it could be on a very large scale.

Maybe you're actually starting a business with someone. Obviously, that is more of a partnership, but it could be anywhere from doing a podcast swap like we're doing. I'm going to have you on my show, you're having me on your show, and that's a more simple collaboration. Then collaborations we've done in the past, large-scale events where you're bringing in different speakers, sponsors, vendors, all of that, and that's collaborating with multiple businesses all at one time.

I see this all the time, of course, on social media or other places where you get together with a group of aligned businesses, whether that be for maybe it's an online summit or if it's something like a giveaway, that sort of thing. There are lots of different ways and I love talking about the different things that you can do with your business, and thinking outside of the box too, because I think a lot of people don't really know like, “Well, how could I work with someone else? How does that work?” and really anyway you want, there are no limits on it.

I've seen some really cool collaborations where people with really aligned audiences will do like an email list swap, where they'll promote this person on their email, they'll promote them on that email, and maybe they'll even come up with a bundle together. There are endless ways. I think really it comes down to figuring out who you want to collaborate with. I love using spreadsheets. If you want to create a spreadsheet, that is the way that I love to do it, create a spreadsheet of who are all the people that you would love to connect with.

I go through a process of really making sure you're connecting with them, you're following them on social media, you're listening to their podcast if they have a podcast. You're supporting them first. Before you really ask anything of them, you want to make sure that you're supporting them first.

Racheal Cook: Absolutely. I think you just hit that perfectly because as someone who gets a ton of pitches from people, it is so clear when this person who's pitching you, they're asking you for something, and one, there's no relationship there. On the receiving end, it feels like, “Why would I do anything? I don't know who you are. You haven't done anything to provide value to me,” and then I'll get pitches that are so unaligned, they're talking about something that's completely different than what I'm talking about to my audience. I probably get a dozen pitches a week that we just literally ignore because they're not the right fit at all and they're just cold pitching without putting in any of this intentional relationship-building.

Danielle Weibe: Yeah. They hear the phrases “It's a numbers game and not everyone's going to say yes,” and all of those things, which is true. However, there are very strategic things that you can do to increase your chances of being heard, seen, and responded to. It really comes down to, and I think you really see this as well as you grow your business, but for people who are new, exactly what you just said, you get dozens of pitches that you just basically ignore, don't even feel the need to respond to them, and then there are some that stand out to you.

Actually, I would love to ask you, what are those ones that stand out to you because that's going to help other people be like, “Oh, okay, that makes sense.” What are the things that tangibly you feel stand out when you get pitches or if someone wants to work with you or collaborate with you?

Racheal Cook: Well, first, spell my name right. If you don't have my name and it's not spelled right, to me, I feel like that's such a low bar. I'll even have people who will pitch me and it'll be, “Hi, Promote Yourself to CEO Podcast,” and they won't even take the time to put my name in there. That's red flag number one. I think the second thing is they don't know who my audience is or what my podcast is about.

If they're trying to get on my show or if they're interested in getting in front of my community, they just don't know what we're about, who we talk to, what our topics are, and again, the things out of the left field. Somebody pitching me about somebody who's running a massive Fortune 500 company or a manufacturing thing, they're totally not aligned with what we talk about, just a wrong topic.

I think the other thing is it's just really clear that they're focused on them first instead of on me first. I think this is something you do really well because you sent me a cold pitch and I knew your name from the internet, which helps, but it was very much like you focusing on what I've been sharing, showing that you've listened to a content, you shared the episode that you really liked, you left a review. You offered value to me first and really it showed me that you know who I'm talking to so I think that's really key.

Because I do get some cold pitches once in a while that are somebody I'm not as familiar with and I'll say yes to but it's always when there's that personal connection, they've shown that they actually know who we are and what we do, and they're leading with value. It's not just, “I need you to do this for me,” it's, “Let's do this for each other.”

Danielle Weibe: Yes, exactly. I think that exactly what you said is really important to realize that you have to know that the other person on the other end is thinking, “Okay, what's in it for me?” because that's what we do. How is this going to help my business? How is this going to help support me as well? You need to lead with that and also realize, “Okay, what does that other person value, and what would be helpful for that other person?”

Taking the time like I wanted to make sure that if I'm going to connect with you and pitch to be on your podcast, I better listen to it and first of all, make sure it's the right fit because if I'm just pitching random podcasts to be on and then I get on the podcast and I'm like, “Oh, this isn't actually my community,” then it's not going to be worth my time either. I think it's important that you’re researching, making sure it's a good fit, and then what value can I offer.

Whether that is leaving reviews on their podcast or engaging with them on social media and supporting them, do they have a book that they've just launched? Buy the book. If you really want to support someone and you really want to work with someone, do that extra step because that is going to be a way that you're going to stand out from all the other pitches that they do. It's not a guaranteed yes, it's not a guaranteed response, but you're going to have a way higher rate of conversion if you take those extra steps, and yes, it is more work 100%, but it's worth it because you're building that relationship.

Like you said at the beginning, business, before social media, before all this digital marketing, was only relationships. If you think about it that way, I think people feel like they should have success overnight, they think things are going to happen for them right away, and like you said, they're just going to push things out on social media and people are going to find them, they're going to get clients, they're all of those things, and they're not willing to put in the time to actually build relationships that are going to last years and years, and potentially a lifetime.

That's why I'm super passionate about building authentic relationships because you never know where those relationships can lead in the future. Put in that time and maybe instead of looking to do hundreds and hundreds of collaborations this year, maybe you're going to only do five. Maybe you're only going to pitch yourself to five podcasts, maybe you want to guest blog on somebody's website, or maybe you want to do a social media collaboration. Whatever that giveaway is, do less but have them be more impactful I think is really important.

Racheal Cook: Absolutely. I agree with that so much. I think the taking the time element, I really can't emphasize that enough. I do think business grows at the speed of relationships but too many people are treating building these business relationships like they're speed dating. My DMs are filled with pitches. My email is filled with pitches. It's just like jumping to the cold pitch without doing any warming up, without doing any relationship-building, without making any real connection.

I’m much more likely to say yes to you if we've been actually chatting about something in DM or you've been sharing things of mine. It's like dating very much so, like you have to take a little time to show that you actually know the person and that will open the door because so many people are just getting these cold pitches and they're tired of it, they don't even open them like I said.

Danielle Weibe: Exactly. Some collaborations are going to take months or even years to actually secure. I always give this example because I think it's really important. When I was first starting my community, there was this one speaker who was very well-known in Vancouver and I really wanted to have her on a panel. When I was getting started I was like, “You know what, I'm just going to go ahead and pitch her.” I did and she said no and I was like, “Okay.” But she left the door open so I'm like, “I'm going to just build this relationship and see where this goes.”

I continued to build a relationship with her, following her, supporting her, exactly what you said like sharing things that she was doing with my community, all of that, and just showing her that I was supporting her. I think I pitched her about five more times until she finally said yes and it was like a couple of years later and she was like, “I'm really glad you didn't give up on me, Danielle. You were very persistent. But you're pleasantly persistent, it's not like you were just pitching and either being rude or following up three times within a week.”

It wasn't that, it was just continuing to build that relationship and seeing what value can I add to her and how can I support her. Every time that I did, I said, “Okay, here's what's in it for you. So if you come, if you be a part of our event, here are all the things that are in it for you.” I think that it's really important to do your research, all of that, and then also realize that a lot of really great things that are going to happen in your business are going to take time and it's not going to happen right away for you. You're going to have to wait and you're going to have to be patient.

I think patience is something that, as entrepreneurs, we struggle with a lot. I know I do as well because we're driven. We see opportunity and whatever we're working towards, that goal, we want it to happen sooner always. But good things take time and sometimes you got to put the work in.

Racheal Cook: Absolutely. They do take time, and like you said, it could take months, it could take years of building relationships. I just 1000% agree with it's that pleasantly persistent, not being annoying and not being like “Me, me, me,” but “What can I do for you? How can I add value to you? How can I continue supporting you?” that goes such a long way for people.

Danielle Weibe: Sometimes it takes a little bit of a different angle too. Maybe they don't want to collaborate in the way that you are pitching to collaborate. Maybe they want to work with you in a different way. Sometimes it takes just being a little bit creative and coming up with a different idea or maybe it takes like sending them a gift in the mail. Get creative and do things that are a little bit outside of the box that is going to grab their attention.

Also, I want to go back to as well emphasizing making sure that they're a good fit and that they share values, they share you, what they're talking about resonates with you because I've made the mistake before even where people have pitched me and I thought, “Oh, this is a really great opportunity,” because they have really big followings and so I've said yes to opportunities that actually were not aligned with our community. At the end of the day, I was like, “Yeah, I probably shouldn't have said yes to that because I had a gut feeling that I don't think this is the right thing but I did it anyways.”

I think it's important to really screen those opportunities. Just because someone has a really large audience doesn't mean that it's an automatic yes or doesn't mean that automatically you want to connect and collaborate with them. Some of the best collaborations that we've done have been with people who have smaller audiences than us, and that's okay. It's really figuring out what is aligned, what is going to really make the biggest impact for both of you, and be the most beneficial for both parties.

Racheal Cook: When you sit down and start trying to find these people and businesses who are aligned, what is your process? Walk us through a little bit about how are you finding people.

Danielle Weibe: Oh man. I love this question. It depends on what we're collaborating with. For example, going back to events. It's everything from Google. Let's say for example we have this master list for our local events here in Vancouver and we have a master list of florists, catering companies, different vendors that we would want to use, speakers, and they're all on different pages of our sheets. We are always updating it. It's Google, Googling who are the top florists in Vancouver, getting a list of those people, then it's going to social media and looking up hashtags.

Or a big thing for us, specifically in the events industry, I know this is not going to be resonating for everyone but I wanted to give you an example, we would go to an event planner, for example, and we're like, “Oh, this is a really amazing event planner,” these are the people that fit, they work with and so we will put all those people on our list. We'll make sure we're following them. We'll make sure we're engaged with them and then we put them on our list.

I like to do it in stages. The research stage is going to take a lot of time. You're going to get their Instagram handle, you're going to have their name, their email, their website, all of the things, and you're going to put that all in a spreadsheet. You're going to make sure you're following them. You're going to make sure you actually do your research. I would do that all in one go because if you're doing that and then trying to pitch them the same day, it's not going to be successful. Do that first. Do all the research.

Then when it comes to things like podcasts, looking on your podcast app, what are the podcasts that are recommended with the other ones that maybe you want to collaborate with? Again, doing your research, figuring out what are those apps where I can actually do that research. One that I love for podcasting is Listen Notes. I don't know if you've been on there before but that's where I do a lot of my research too. Then when it comes to the tactical research, setting aside time to actually listen to their podcast, watch their YouTube videos, read their blog posts, read their captions on social media, all of that.

Then the third part is, “Okay, now you're ready to actually pitch.” Once you've figured out who are those people that I want to connect with, who are those people that I want to collaborate with, how do I want to collaborate with them, and then crafting a pitch that like you shared with us and what stood out to you that focuses on value for them first and then what are you asking of them, and making sure that is very clear. Because when people just give you value and then they say, “Do you want to collab?” you're like, “I don't know. What are you asking of me?” The anxiety is raising because you're like, “I don't know what they're going to ask of me.”

So be very clear. In your email, don't just share value with them and then just say, “I would love to collaborate in any way,” because if you say that, then that's making them have to come up with the idea. Don't make them have to come up with the idea of how you're going to work together. Make sure that you have a clear ask whatever that ask is. If you want a guest post on their website, I'm going to do a guest blog post let's say, be very clear with what you can guest blog about and what that value will bring to their audience. I would say have the value for them, make sure you use their correct name, just give them a little bit of information about yourself, and then share the ask. That's what I would say.

Racheal Cook: Perfect. I love this so much. The only thing I would add to that is if you do not already have a relationship with the person and the cold pitch is not enough, take the time to reply to the emails that they send out every week or connect with them on social media, get in their DMs. It is not as hard as people think to build the relationship, it's just connecting. Once that name hits your DMs or your inbox enough times, they're saying things like, “Oh, this was so helpful. This was so good,” that stands out to people.

Even if you think that only their assistant reads that, I will tell you their assistant will say, “Hey, so-and-so just sent you back a thank you.” These are the things that do stand out, especially as you're starting to pitch people or want to collaborate with people who may have bigger audiences or bigger businesses than you, it's taking that little bit of extra time that goes so, so far.

Danielle Weibe: Yes. Also, too sometimes it's worth really connecting and collaborating with those people that are on that same level that do have the same community size and then using that as an example of how you can collaborate with this other person. Because a lot of times, if you are pitching to do something, they want to see an example that you've maybe done it before, especially if it's a larger platform.

I think utilizing the skills that you have and being creative with that, what skills, are you a virtual assistant? Could you give that person two hours of free time to help them in their business in exchange for something else, in exchange for a review or testimonial? Again, with collaboration, opportunities are endless so it's just being creative. I love that you added on the building of the relationship because it's so key.

Racheal Cook: So key. I think that one of the most important things I want more people to really embrace and understand is to stop looking at business relationships as just transactional and actually look at them as real relationships, just as if you were, again, doing business in the 90s pre-internet, where you would actually have to connect with people, follow up with people, and have that actual relationship. It makes all of the difference and makes it easier to continue to go back and continue collaborating in different ways.

Danielle Weibe: Absolutely.

Racheal Cook: Thank you so much, Danielle, for reaching out and for sharing this insight with everybody. As we wrap up today, I would love for you to share with everyone where they can find out more about you and the support that your community offers.

Danielle Weibe: Yeah. Thank you so much, Racheal. My community is Business Babes Collective. Our podcast is just called Business Babes Collective, so if you want to listen to us, you're welcome to do that. Then the website is businessbabescollective.com. My personal Instagram if you want to connect with me there is @danilivinglife, and my business Instagram is @businessbabesco.

Racheal Cook: Awesome. If you got value out of today's conversation, I would love for you to head over to Instagram. We will have a post there. Connect with us. Tag us and share with us your biggest aha or your biggest takeaway, we would love to hear from you. Thank you, Danielle, so much.

Danielle Weibe: Thank you so much.

Racheal Cook: There you have it. I hope you are full of ideas about how you can collaborate with other incredible entrepreneurs to collectively get more visibility for one another. I truly believe this is how business should be done because as they say, a rising tide lifts all boats, and it only lifts all boats if all the entrepreneurs involved in these communities are proactively opening doors for one another. This is how we change how business is done and take it from being just transactional to truly relational.

I'm so excited about this idea and I would love to hear from you. If you are going to incorporate this in your marketing strategy, what are you thinking of doing? Come over to Instagram and let me know. Thank you so much for listening to this episode and I will catch you next week on Promote Yourself to CEO.