Episode 45 | What To Look For When Collaborating with Others

Sophia Noreen: Hello everyone, welcome to another fantastic episode of the Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen, and I'm going to be your host for today. Today, I want to talk about collaborations, and in business, no matter what you're doing, be it service, be a product, be it big, be it small, the power of collaborating is immense.

You can 10X your results, your impact with collaborations. So I want to go through a few things that you need to consider before you collaborate because as you know or as you may have heard, as you get bigger, as your business grows, as you get more exposure, you're going to have more opportunities. It's just the way it works. 

The more people find out about you, the more they want to work with you.  We've been fortunate enough to be approached by a number of different businesses, doing different contributors, different organizations who want to collaborate and work with our product-based business, Also Sophia, and now also with our service side, Boss It Club, and that's great. 

I'm pumped, I'm ready, I want to serve the right people. I want to make sure we collaborate with the right people, but there are things that we need to look at before we say yes to every single collaboration. 

Now, when you consider a collaboration, you want to look for two things. So today, we're going to make sure that you walk away with two big strategies when you are looking to collaborate. Two big things you need to identify before you say "Yes, I want to work together. I want to work with you."

The first, as many people know, is there should be a mutual benefit to both parties when you collaborate. Obviously, this goes without saying, and it should be obvious but sometimes it's not, sometimes it's very obscure.  How is that individual or how is that company, or how is that organization going to benefit me and my business?

That is the first question. Now there are a few ways that you can gain benefit and you could offer benefit to the other company, or to the other organization or individual. Obviously, one is money. If there's a financial component that you guys will be putting towards a particular project or a particular objective, then you will have to discuss money.   

Sometimes it's better to collaborate because if you're hosting an event, for example, together, the event costs will be significantly lower because you've collaborated on that event. If you're putting together a product, be it a digital product or physical product, the money may be less of an investment. The monetary investment will be less if both parties are equally contributing,  so the risk is less.

Another thing that you'll notice is there should be a mutual benefit when it comes to time. So you should have a great work plan, a great working relationship so there's not one party doing a heck of a lot more than the other party. Both parties should be contributing to some extent or a similar extent when it comes to time. 

Time is such a limited resource that you want to be very, very careful when it comes to this particular aspect of collaborating. There will be people, there will be organizations and there'll be businesses that we're stronger in certain things than the other.

That's the whole point of collaboration. You want to make sure that when you're collaborating,  both parties who are coming to the table have different skillsets so they both can bring their skillsets together and offer the best outcome for the project, or for the product or event, or whatever it is that you're contributing together. 

If both individuals have a different skill set, that's great. Now you can split your time accordingly, and it should go without saying that you should try to split it as equally as possible. But if you notice, or you sensed that this partner that you're thinking about collaborating with, maybe considering you to do most of the work because you have a great skill set and they're going to leverage your skillset, but you're not seeing how they can bring more to the table. 

Perhaps it could be a situation where you bring the skill and they're going to bring the monetary asset, so they're going to financially back you up, and you're going to do the sweat equity and you're going to bring your skill.

The resourcing, be it time or money, you have to analyze it and you have to see how are both parties coming together and contributing equally. And again, the example I have given is you might be giving more sweat equity, they may be giving more monetary funds to run the business, or it could be a 50-50 of both, but regardless, you still have to look at the resourcing of the project as one of the things that you need to consider before you say yes to a collaboration.

There's another important aspect of collaboration that many of us actually do forget about because sometimes the resourcing for the product or project or event may be so alluring, maybe so great. You're like, "Yes! I have a person I can work with on this project, and I've been wanting to work with somebody on this project for so long."  Because let's face it guys, when you're starting a business, we all want to be working in the community together, and sometimes we just get really, really eager and we say "Yes" to every single collaboration.

But there's another component to collaborating which I feel many people forget about, and that is, are you guys able to work together? Are you sharing the same values as the individual?  Do you guys connect emotionally? Can you speak to each other on a regular basis and actually have a conversation, and walk away from that conversation feeling uplifted and energized, not drained and like "Oh my gosh, I can't believe I have to deal with that person."?

That to me, regardless of the resourcing, regardless if the person is bringing more to the table, money or time or energy if you're not able to work well with the individual and they're not able to fill your emotional bucket as a colleague because that's what they are now. If you're working in collaboration with another business or another individual, then you are colleagues.

So you can need to feel uplifted by your colleague, you need to be able to say, "That's my friend, my colleague, my person I want to go to lunch with, my person I want to go have coffee with, even though it has nothing to do with work." That is the ultimate goal to build that network where you feel like you're being supported at all times.

I want you guys to keep that in mind as well. Do not forget how important it is to feel uplifted when you are working with that particular person on a particular project. There's one more factor that you should consider when collaborating with a new individual, a new party, a new business, the new organization is their network, the strength of their network.

Who do they know and who do you know, and if you put everything together, how can both of the businesses expand? When I look back at how we grew Also Sophia, and how we have been able to leverage the small selling season, it's because we have a strong network. It's because the network helped elevate us and basically helped connect us to individuals who are able to place the products on larger retail shelves. It was because of our network. 

Sometimes as a brand new entrepreneur or brand new business, or even if you haven't started the business in this preconception phase of what you should do with business, sometimes we don't actually tell anybody. We forget to tell people that we're considering starting a business, or we forgot to tell people about our business and we stay cocooned up, and we don't want to network. 

But guys, the benefit of collaborating with others is that you've expanded your network. You will know more people,  and in the end, you never know who will introduce you to who, which will help elevate and exponentially grow your business. 

Again, I know it's scary but collaboration also brings a broader network, and you should share your information with your broader network so that way they know what you're up to and you never know who they know.

One last thing, when you are looking to collaborate with somebody, you may want to consider doing a little screen.  I'm not saying you do a formal interview, or I'm not saying you go ahead and ask them to fill out a survey or questionnaire, but you should have some things inherently that you want to ask them.

And so, for example, you might pull a few questions that resonate with you from a personality test. I'm not going to give any specific examples right now because I am working on this phase in my business. I currently want to start implementing some filter for who we decide to work with, because we've been very fortunate to have many individuals come forward and say, "Yes, we want to work with you." But how do I know now that they're the best fit for me if you don't get the time to sit and have lengthy conversations and basically get to know them at the level that I want to get to know them if the opportunity is very transient?

Meaning that the opportunity can go quickly.    The phase that I'm in is I would like to build some sort of quick snapshot questionnaire in my head wherein a conversation like this that we're having, I would ask them a few questions and it could be as simple as, "Oh, how do you like to work? Do you like to work in a group setting like a coworking space, or are you more of a lone ranger and you like to work privately?  When do you work? Do you like to work in the evenings, or do you like to work during the day? 

These are very fluid questions that I'm going to start adding because that will help me align with them to say, "Okay, they like to work alone." That's fair, that's fine. But if we're going to be going out and doing co-working sessions because that's part of the team's vision, then we may have to say, okay perhaps this person would be more appropriate to work with us as a solo contributor, as opposed to running a team.

And again, when I say collaboration, that doesn't restrict individuals from collaborating with us and then potentially joining us as team members.  That is starting to happen. We collaborate, we like each other, we decide, "Hey, we need help in this part of the teams. Would you like to jump in?" and then they're like, "Yes, for sure."

So you never know how the collaboration can involve somebody who is an extension of your team. That is the reason why knowing certain traits of the person might be beneficial right from the beginning.

Another thing you could consider doing is a personality test.   You could go on multiple websites and have personality tests completed. For example, I love the Enneagram. When I know their Enneagram, that I know how to speak to them, I understand what their strengths are, I understand what their weaknesses are. You can also do things like the Myers Briggs tests, and you can also do personality tests through Kolbe, and I'll link it in the show notes below.

But basically, Kolbe is a website where you can run personality tests and you can say to them that it's part of our onboarding process for anybody who wants to work with us, we use Kolbe. And then that will give you a snapshot of who they are as a person, and if they're the right fit for your team and for your team's culture, and that is a whole other conversation. 

But again, guys, I want you to really understand that, yes, collaboration is great but it's only going to be great if it's with the right person, or the right team, or the right business or organization. It's not great if, for example, you're collaborating or working with somebody who's not a good fit.

Remember, collaboration and opportunities to collaborate will come up over and over and over again. It's similar to the whole conversation about an ideal customer or client, you're not going to be able to serve everyone and you won't be able to work with everyone in a collaborative environment either. 

There are certain individuals who you'll work really great with, and then there'll be certain individuals where you'll be like, "Oh my gosh. My hair's going to fall out from having this conversation with you again."

So you don't want to be in the latter situation, you always want to feel energized and uplifted when you're working with a team member, when you're working with your clients or customers, or when you're working with individuals who are collaborating with you to help with your mission and help you go and accomplish those amazing goals that I know you will accomplish.

Okay, guys, that's all I got for you today, but I want to just go from the top again. If you're looking to collaborate with somebody or an organization or business, you need to ensure that both parties are bringing equal benefit either in time or in monetary resources, because you don't want to be taken advantage of. You don't want to be putting so much effort into a collaboration while the other organization, business, or person is just sitting around in the backend, and just waiting to see the results, or vice versa. 

You don't want to be the one that's just taking advantage of the collaborative experience. Second, you want to make sure that you hold similar values and that you work well together.  You want to enjoy their company. You want to make sure that somebody will go for coffee with, somebody that you can work well with, and you may want to consider doing a small interview that you'll work with questions that would be important for you to know. 

And then finally, you might want to consider doing a personality test.   You can look into the Enneagram, Myers Briggs, and then there's also a link for a website that allows you to complete personality tests and you can just say that this is part of our onboarding process for everyone in our organization.

That way, you have managed to maintain the culture of your team. And again, culture is such a big topic, that we will talk about in future episodes.  

Okay, guys, it was so great having you here again. Remember you can always email us at [email protected], and we'll see you next week. Bye for now.