Collaboration is the Key to Fast Business Growth

It has always surprised me when meeting fellow entrepreneurs how many have a plan to take over the world in their areas of expertise that includes no one but themselves.  Sure, in my little world of “one” I reign supreme, but attempting to press my will in the world around me will quickly land me in the middle of a mutiny!

If there is anything that history has taught us in the world of business, it’s that collaboration – one or more individuals working together for a common goal – is a strong breeder of success.

Here’s just a few success stories that were bread out of collaboration:

• Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google
• Bill Gates and Paul Allen of Microsoft
• Steve Jobs and Steven Wozniak of Apple
• Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Roebuck of Sears, Roebuck and Co. (it’s official name)
• Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana of Dolce & Gabbana
• Sonny and Cher
• Bert and Ernie
• Tom and Jerry anyone?

Sure, there are those individuals like Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com and Pierre Omidyar of eBay fame that did it pretty much on their own. But I bet behind each of those individual success stories are key influencers that gave advice, feedback, and assistance as these entrepreneurial rockstars were just getting started or beginning to hit growth.

How I Learned to Collaborate for Business Growth

My consulting practice, mPower Consulting, has undergone a powerful strategic shift that has centered around the idea of collaboration.  I originally started it as a web design/online marketing consultancy since that was a strong skillset I had developed that I knew could get our foot in the door with clients.  At that time, it was all about everything our clients wanted and how we could make sure we offered all of it.  We were buying books, manuals, taking courses, anything to be able to have some level of expertise in all of these service areas.

What I soon realized was what I already knew, we were not the best at everything! We know what we know what we know and that’s it.  Now, I’ve always been a fan of the idea of being a “life-long learner” but let’s face it, our brains can only hold so much and to keep trying to fill it with a little knowledge of how to do a million different things begins to dilute those things that we know a lot about and are great at.

So then it hit me: “Why don’t we just focus on what we’re best at, what we know we can provide value with, and then team up with other great organizations who are experts at the rest?”

Duh! That should have been simple to figure out, right?

Not so much! Those of us in business have always been in love with the idea of being the “one-stop shop” and the “everything to everyone” where we can provide (and charge) for all sorts of products and services, but unlike Wal-Mart, it’s not really a possibility for most businesses, especially for those who are just starting out.

So now with collaboration as our driver, we’re working with 15 other local businesses that we pull into our client projects to collaborate with based on their areas of expertise.  This has allowed us to focus on what we do great and funny enough, we’re able to charge more for it! Our partners (or “resource network” as we call them) bring in their value and we all look like the heroes to the client.  What was I thinking all this time?

Through the continued development of our relationship, we’ve also been able to learn from one another and offer advice for how we can improve different areas of our businesses.  Our collaboration has gone internal and helped us build better businesses. It has been absolutely invaluable and mPower Consulting has begun to attract new, exciting, and challenging projects from clients we never may have reached before as we tried to be the everything to everyone.

Learn this, collaboration can fuel growth faster than you by yourself can!

Eight Steps to Start Collaborating

You might be thinking, “Well how do I find businesses to collaborate with.” Well, I’m going to tell you.  To truly find great business collaborators, it will take time and it will take effort.  You will have to search, research, analyze, test, measure, and continue testing to find the right businesses you should be connected to.

Though that sounds challenging, here’s eight simple steps I started with to find the organizations we collaborate with:

1. Identify your top 5 weaknesses in what you are trying to offer your client (trust me, you have weaknesses)
2. Join a networking organization, review the membership, and identify at least 3 organizations who appear to be strong in your areas of weakness
3. Research their business and determine if you could provide their clients value (This is important because why would they want to collaborate with you if there was nothing really in it for them? Make it about helping each other.)
4. Reach out, connect and have an informal meeting with the owners of those organizations (it needs to be the owner)
5. At the meeting, first talk about how you think they can provide your clients with value, then compliment with how you think you could provide value to their clients (Make it more about what they would want than what you would want.)
6. If you both agree you can provide value to one another, just find some projects to work on with each other and work through them as a test to determine if this is true and if you can work well together
7. In-between projects, continue meeting and building a relationship between your organizations
8. Repeat steps 6 & 7 as it will take some time to really start opening your collaboration to be both externally with one another’s clients and internally with one another’s businesses

How Do You Collaborate?

So what about you? Do you collaborate with other individuals/businesses? How has it helped your business?