With Laura Esmond

Hello, and welcome back to the podcast you are with Laura Esmond. You know, some of the most meaningful growth that I have experienced in my business did not come from Instagram. I didn't even consider trying to grow my Instagram account when I was growing my business. It just wasn't where I lived. And it also wasn't from like a fancy launch sequence and and email sequence.

It actually came from walking into a local business with a basket of muffins and a handwritten note. Today I wanna talk to you about approaching businesses for partnerships and not in like a super polished, here's my media kit kind of way. I mean, in a, a really real way. Like the kind that gets you friendships, one that's rooted

just being really curious about their business generosity and the belief that when we pour into our community, it pours back into us. I think we can get so caught up in online growth that we forget. There's this incredible ecosystem of people right around us. We've got business owners, creatives, community builders, who are also trying to serve and grow and connect and establish a business for themselves.

And when we link arms with them, not only does our business benefit, but our day-to-day experience becomes so much better. Partnerships for me have never started with a pitch. They always start with this one question, which I say in a thousand different ways, but how can I support you? I wanna walk you through how I approach these relationships

What I bring with me, both literally and figuratively, and three simple ways you could partner with a local business right now. I mean, you could just hop out tomorrow and by the grocery store and put it together in a minute, in a hot minute, and start approaching people. Let's start with what kinds of businesses you might connect with We obviously wanna connect with people who are also serving the same moms that we are serving. So you wanna think about florists, interior designers, real estate agents, boutique owners for both moms and children and event planners. These are people who really deeply value connection and aesthetic and community.

They want more foot traffic. They want more beautiful content, more ways to connect with their people, and you can help them with that.

if somebody owns a brick and mortar store, they are always interested and spending a lot of time trying to get foot traffic into the door. So if you walk into a space and you're physically standing there, look at how maybe you could bring more people in the door. Maybe it's an evening event.

During off hours where you're bringing your clients together, maybe you host a speaker series if the space can hold it. Maybe you're doing a photography event in their space and you're bringing people in the door that way.

The first thing that you are asking that business owner is what have you done in the past? What has worked for you and what is the way that I can help support that effort to make it even more successful? If you are looking at a florist, they want to connect with other businesses. Not just events.

We often think of florists as, you know, wedding florists or doing something for a baby shower, but I used to have a space with a florist, and one of the things that helped support her business and keep that revenue income coming in every single month. were her weekly accounts. A weekly account was a restaurant or a business, you know, it could be accounting firm, a law firm where at the front desk they have a floral arrangement sitting there.

So this space always looks beautiful. Those were, her favorite things for her business, and she worked really hard to. Establish those weekly accounts. So if you're talking to a florist, they might be interested in connecting with your clients who also own businesses or work in a business that has a, even just a simple front desk where they have a receptionist and they have their clients coming in the door,

So they want to have a bouquet at that front desk to make sure their space looks beautiful and welcoming. So I've worked with florist before where I cherry pick clients who I know work in that environment or maybe their spouse does, and we created a floral arranging class.

And while she's there, she got to pitch this, these weekly accounts that she could do. And actually some of my clients even picked her up as a weekly account for their home, which was even cooler for her. If you have an interior designer that you're working with, she might have a specific way that she wants to connect with people.

So you walk in and you just ask, how are you connecting with your clients? What is something that's worked really well that I can help amplify for you? Real estate agents? On the flip side, they're usually looking to. Thank their clients either for referring new business to them or just for buying a home from them.

So you can provide a really beautiful gift to that client of your services, and you just work out with the real estate agent how you're gonna get paid for it. Next. You wanna lead with service. When I first walk in or reach out, it's never about what I want. It's, Hey, I really love what you're doing. I had a few ideas for ways I could help support your business.

Would you be open to chatting sometime soon or if I walk in. Sometimes I walk in with a basket of muffins, literally just a cute little basket of muffins. a handwritten note or a bottle of wine, or just something cute, maybe a candle. I've often stopped into boutiques, talk to them about supporting their business, and then I'll buy a couple of baskets and say, okay, I am off to go talk to the next person.

So I'm just connecting at every single turn.

This little basket is basically saying, I see you and I value what you're building. I don't wanna run in without some sort of gift in my hand. Something to leave behind.

But that basket is also multip purposeful. If I walk into a space, Let's say a boutique and the shop owner is not there, I can leave the basket with whoever's sitting there and say, you know, enjoy the muffins. But if you could please give the note inside and the bottle of wine to the owner, I'll be happy to follow up on email to make sure that they got it, and also ask some questions there.

this way, I'm leaving something special, something that's branded, but also letting them know, Hey, I'm gonna reach out soon so that we can connect in person. So that leads me to my next step of follow up. I don't want to follow up with a PDF of, you know, packages or a pitch deck or anything like that.

You really don't need anything like that. This is just a simple reach out, an email that says I really enjoyed stopping by, or, sorry I missed you. I would love to grab coffee and hear more about your business if you're up for it. I always drop in there that I believe we are connecting with the same clients and I want to be able to cross promote our businesses, and I am here to support you first.

My primary concern when I begin connecting is I wanna serve you first. So once the door is open, what could it really look like to actually partner with them? Here are three ways that have worked for me. One event support something they're already doing. Maybe they already have something planned or something that they've, they've done in the past, but they wanna make it even more successful this year.

And you can partner with them or creating something together. You could help a florist to host a floor arranging class for other women in business. You just find the location. They bring all the supplies, you bring the people, they bring some people, and it turns into a beautiful event. For things like that, I always love to bring, you know, have maybe a wine table set up or some hors d'oeuvres.

You can brand it as much or as little as you have the ability to do. This is about connecting. I do love to make these events as beautiful as possible, but at the same time, I am there to connect and walk around and meet people. You could team up with a boutique for a branding event or a popup, but you could also find out, you know, when do you have your next release of clothing coming out?

Maybe they have their fall collection coming and they want to be able to highlight that so you could come in. And do a little short interview with the shop owner, walking people through the different clothing that they have coming in that they're excited about. Share it on your social media. You could tie that to fall portraits and people coming in to actually purchase clothing from them for their fall portraits.

There are so many ways to connect in that way that is cross-promoting for both of you. For a real estate agent, you could offer photography maybe at a client appreciation event or create a really beautiful, uh, multi-branded, you know, so both their branding and your branding is on the marketing materials, and you create this beautiful basket to leave in people's homes after they have closed on their house.

And it could include a bottle of wine, a gift from you. It could include a package to be able to do portraits with you, and that is the gift. From the real estate agent, Number two, cross promotion. I already touched on that just a little bit, but here are just a few more ways to go deeper with that.

You could write a guest blog post for each other or do a swap feature in your email list And then obviously doing a collaboration on an Instagram reel or behind the scenes content together where you're creating an event or just sharing what they do.

They share what you do. Number three, service-based bundles or offers, think of ways your service can directly support their business. So boutique clients who spend $200 or a thousand dollars get a complimentary session from you. Now, I say 200 or a thousand. It really depends on what that boutique owner says.

They want people to spend so it, for each boutique owner that's going to be different. I have worked with one in particular, very high-end clothing boutique. In Denver and you really can't walk out of there without spending, I would say three or $400. But their target is to get people to spend around a thousand dollars.

So I did a promotional event where I had gift cards just sitting at the front desk or sitting at the checkout counter. And if somebody spent a thousand dollars, then they were gifted a session for me. The reason that worked for me is that if somebody can spend a thousand dollars on clothing.

They could probably afford to do wall art for their home. So that is a client that I am really interested in connecting with.

If you're looking to work with an interior designer, they want to style spaces and if they don't have something that they're working on or that they need to have photographed at that point. Potentially you could hire them to style a space for you that you are going to then use for promoting an event, and so then you're cross-promoting both the styled event, but also their services, so you're getting their name in front of your client.

There are so many different ways to work with people like this One partnership that worked really well for me was a country club that was down the street from my studio. We walked in one day and talked to the main sales person for events. she wasn't sure exactly how we would work together.

And then in the course of the conversation, she said, you know what? We host events throughout the year. For our guests. So we wanna make sure that they've got different reasons to come into the country club and just celebrate family. they hosted a Santa event, they hosted an Easter event, mother's Day, uh, they did 4th of July.

They did all kinds of events, usually wrapped around some sort of holiday. And we started to come in and photograph the event with these step and repeats. And one of the things that we said we wanted to do, if we were going to do this, we wanted to actually style all of the events to make sure that people got a feel for our brand.

So we created these really darling sets for the guests to be able to just walk by and have a photograph taken. So sort of step and repeat style and the guests of this country club. Absolutely loved it. One of the reasons this worked really well for us was because

a lot of these families had kids that were, you know, newborn all the way to maybe 10 to maybe 12 years old. That seemed to really be the strongest demographic and. Of course that was my demographic. So we created these beautiful little styled events and we got paid for it, but not very much. That's not where I was looking to make the money.

I wanted to connect with those clients, So as we photographed the event, we would get their email and then we would send out the event and all the photos to everybody on the email list. Then these people were now on my email list. So every time I was promoting something in the studio or just sending my monthly newsletter, it was now going to these people that were very, very much my demographic.

And it built that studio. It 100% built it. So many of those families began coming to us. We had all of our events, booked out within a number of days. Almost entirely from that country club. And then a lot of those people were still having family. So these were our maternity sessions, newborns, family sessions, you name it.

It was such a wonderful partnership, and I have to be honest, when I first stepped into it and started thinking about it, I was really afraid that it was going to be a, a waste of time. I was afraid that it really wasn't going to be right for us. but we said, you know what?

Let's make it work. Let's do this for a year and see what happens. And it paid off so well. So what surprised me most when I started to do this work was in the beginning, you have to be willing to do it all. Do not expect the businesses that you approach to be immediately on board or to even do 50% of the work.

But once that trust is built and that friendship is there and they, they really learn to trust you, there often is this like beautiful turning point. You both start to show up for each other. They start to see you as a true business partner. And there was one woman that pointed out to me.

Why this was so important. I had been partnering, partnering with her on a couple events that we were doing in her space, and at first she was very hands off, I think she said, fine, let's do this with you guys. But they never really work. But we stepped in and. Didn't give up. We promoted everything. we did ask to use her email list.

We brought everything that was needed. We had all the hors d'oeuvres and bottles of wine ready to go, and the event turned out beautiful. The thing that I found out later was that she'd been burned in the past. She had been approached by multiple businesses to do events that were similar. But in the end, they didn't work out well or the person that was supposed to be planning it sort of fell off the radar.

And now she had been promoting something that never really happened and never came to fruition. And so it was, in the end, it was always a little embarrassing that the event didn't turn out well, but she just didn't have the time to dedicate to it. She already had. A relatively busy, busy business. She didn't really need to do these events, but she knew that they would benefit her.

So when we showed up and checked all the boxes and, and made sure that everything turned out beautiful, I won her trust. And then we began to work together more. So I brought that same care into every single time I approached, any other business or just business owner saying, look, I, I understand people have probably approached you before.

This is really important to me and my business. I am growing it and I really want to connect with you. I love your brand. Here are the things that I will take care of. And I would show a list of everything that I was willing to do, and it was a a checklist so they could literally see me checking things off

And that enabled me to win the trust of so many businesses.

So here's your invitation. Think of one business in your community that you admire Do think outside the box. I think sometimes we're always focused on doulas or uh, O-B-G-Y-N places and women's boutiques. I want you to think about literally any type of business that a mom or husband and wife, team.

Who are they working with? Who do they already trust? Think of places that you frequent, someone you follow, a storefront that inspires you. Where is your client already doing business? And this week, show up, bring a note, drop off a treat. You can send a dm. Just open that door and walk through it. It takes 20 seconds of courage.

And these connections don't have to be complicated. Just start with generosity. Just, you know, stay curious for what's worked for them in the past. What is something that they've been interested in doing but they haven't had the time for? What's something they've done, but they wanna do it a little bit better?

They just wanna go deeper and do your research. Look at their social media, look at their blog posts, see what they have done in the past. You know, make sure that you go in educated.

And truly trust that showing up in your real life community, live in person will always, always come back around to serve you. So let me know how it goes. Before we sign off today, I did want to announce that I am taking just a handful of private mentoring students over the next few months. So if that has been something that you have been curious in, you're wondering what it looks like to have a mentor or have been craving just to have somebody to talk to about this business and.

Work through selling strategy, product pricing, marketing, branding, really anything. That's what PRI Private mentoring is about. We get to really dedicate time to you and to your business and your specific goals just to help you get moving faster. It doesn't mean that you have to want to grow a really big business.

It could just mean that right now you're feeling stuck and you need somebody to talk to to help you move that needle a little bit in your business or a lot of bit. You can find out more at laura esman.com/mentor. If you have any questions about it, reach out there or send me a dm, send me an email, whatever works.

All right. It's been great to chat with you and I will see you next week.