Why Collaborations are Good for Your Holistic Business

Good marketing is about building relationships, and one of the best ways to do this is to collaborate with other holistic practitioners.

Collaborating with other practitioners is about forming connections to help your business grow. By combining resources and talents, you will also be able to offer a broader service to your clients than just you alone.

Collaborations are a huge learning experience where you will be able to gain new skills and develop your own processes. Bringing together two or more practitioners who have different skill sets is a huge advantage to growing and developing your own practice.

When you work alone, it’s very easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day running of your practice. You don’t always recognise there are alternative ways of doing things that could revolutionise aspects of your business, saving you time and money.

It’s also fun to work on projects with someone else and will bring new energy to your work. It will help you to keep motivated and you will be able to keep each other accountable.

Have an Agreement

Always work out an agreement between you. Decide how things will work, who is responsible for what, and how you will split any profits you make. Deciding these in advance will stop any awkward conversations later down the line.

Inspiration

Spending hours researching on your own for inspiration isn’t enough. You will get to a point where you can’t see the woods for the trees. It’s the sharing of ideas and bouncing them around with others that inspires creativity, gives different perspectives, and identifies opportunities.

Grow Your Network

Being a successful practitioner requires you to continuously build and nurture your network. You need to consistently meet new people in order to keep bringing clients to your door. Just finding new people to connect with, even if you don’t end up collaborating with them will build your network and raise your profile.

Self-Awareness

Whilst most practitioners wear every hat in their business, there are some tasks they shouldn’t do. Collaborating with others forces you to recognise and admit your strengths and weaknesses. This will help you to allocate tasks to the best person for the job rather than trying to do everything yourself.

You may not be able to accomplish something on your own, but having two or three people on board can get it done. 

Save Money

If you are splitting the costs of a project or marketing activities with another practitioner, you will either save money or double your budget.  For example, sharing a stand at an exhibition with a collaborator. You share the cost of the stand, and both of you market to your own audience to increase the number of visitors and the number of potential clients being introduced to your practice.

Not Every Collaboration Works

Sometimes it takes working with someone to find out you are not a good fit, and that’s okay. Use the experience to learn from and you will be prepared next time an opportunity presents itself.

Collaboration Wins

A Pilates teacher friend who specialises in rehabilitation has been working with a medical herbalist to run workshops. They have a similar client group but work in very different ways with their clients that complement each other. This allowed them to share the costs of running the workshop and marketing activities whilst still growing their individual businesses.

I've been collaborating with professional bodies for the past few years to support their members with their marketing. This has led me to speak at conferences and get involved with special projects to support their members whilst attracting clients to my business too. 

Great collaborations are the best way to help and support each other to thrive - together, we are stronger!

If you're struggling with your business, it's time to get help. I'm happy to have a chat and signpost you in the right direction - book a call with me.