“Each Day we are presented with opportunities to grow and prosper.  It is up to us to recognize those opportunities and then capitalize on them.”

If you have been following my journey these past four days you know I am journaling my progress with the 120 Day Wealth Action Plan. Yesterday I talked about Partnering and promised to share a few effective ways you could collaborate with others to grow your business.  Here they are:

Collaborate with a well-known company – Most small businesses benefit from partnerships that add value, prestige and greater credibility to their own endeavors. Associating with a well-known business can give your company instant credibility and exposure. It’s not always about the bottom line.

Collaborate with Your Best Customers – Look at the company or companies who do the most business with yours. Work with them to solidify the relationship by offering them more than just good products and service. Make it nearly impossible for them to consider going anywhere else. Continually asking them why they do business with you and why they stay are the best ways to keep them.

Collaborate with the Nonprofit Community – Joining forces with nonprofits can increase your circle of influence and your visibility in the community.

Collaborate with a Former Employer – You offer a product or service the former employer needs and provide it to them. You become a subcontractor or vendor to them. One of my dear friends worked for a fast-food company as their corporate trainer. When she decided to go into business for herself, they hired her to continue to provide training to their employees for several years. As her first major contract, the collaboration they created started her company on the road to success, and she still travels and does work for them.

Collaborate with a Competitor – Believe it or not, competitors can be very good partners. For instance, they may offer a service or product you don’t or don’t wish to and vice-versa. They may also have the ability to handle a larger “job” than your company. Joining forces with another business on a project makes you look good to the customer. You become the hero. In 1999, I had the opportunity to provide all the decorations for a HUGE Floral Fair in Miami, Florida. I knew my small company alone could not handle all the business. So I called several other florists in the community whom I respected and who did similar work. I subcontracted them to do portions of the project and get a piece of the action. Because these were floral importers we were serving, the other florists had the opportunity to network with and find new floral suppliers. It was easy to convince them to participate. It was such a success, that it has been an ongoing project for several of the shops over the years.

And now its time to share what I did today to work toward my goal of increasing my monthly net income by $3,500:

Attended the South Florida Business Owners Networking Group in Weston Florida. This is a monthly event hosted by Christina Rowe of Stand Out! Media Group (she is also the Other Blonde in 2 Blondes and a Redhead … I’m the Redhead. But I digress!) SFBONG focuses on business development, education and networking from the heart.

Christina asked me to do the Tech Tip which of course,  I gladly did.  Presenting to a group of business owners is a smart way to call attention to yourself without being overtly self-promotional. At the meeting I met two women who were interested in my services.  We made plans to meet (more on that later).

After the meeting I got a call from  one of the attendees of Loral’s Big Table who is interested in hiring me. She has a website, is not happy with it and knows someone who also provides a similar service including internet marketing and content creation. She also happens to be from South Florida so after some interviewing and probing questions to see what she needs, we made plans to meet.  I also suggested to her that before meeting she contact the person she knows and ask that person some specific questions about how she would “fix” her website.  I gave her some ideas of what to ask such as what type of work it would entail, how long would the job take, the cost to do the job and how she would promote the website online. I of course, gave her an overview of what my company would do and a ball park estimate so she could compare and see which of us would provide the best solution for the least hassle (notice I did NOT say least investment).

As a business owner I think it is always a good idea to compare services of other professionals. I do it all the time. And recommend my clients do the same.  Why? First of all, not everyone is going to be a good fit and second it is in the client’s best interest to find the best solution for her or his needs.  If I am the one, all the better!  I will let you in on a little secret: I am confident that if she does hire someone, it will be my company!

One of the ideas I came up with at Loral’s Big Table was to design a Women and Website Content Survey asking women to answer a few questions about if they have a website, who designed it, what challenges or issues they had along the way and if they do not have a website or blog why not?  The purpose of the Survey is two-fold.  To collect hard data that can be shared in the Internet Marketing and Web Design Community AND to use it as a promotional tool to create BUZZ around the cyberverse.  Will let you know the results. If you’d like to participate in the survey (and I hope you will) go here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KPYSGWS.

This afternoon I got 2 Facebook messages, one from a member of that networking group mentioned above who needed advice about his website – another probable client! The second from a web designer I met 2 months ago during another networking event. He has a client who needs content and the web designer thought of me. In case you were wondering, most web designers do NOT create content. They create a website (I liken it to building a house, they lay the foundation the walls and raise the roof and its up to the client to do the decorating).  Web designers depend on their clients to submit them the content for the site. Most people who have a brand new website or blog do not have a good understanding of  what they need or even what they want to say! They depend on guidance from their webmaster who unless she or is an expert in a specific industry type web design really won’t understand the client’s needs. That’s where my company comes in…

We are meeting this week to see how I can help his client with the decorating :).

In between all the proposals and deal making, I worked on current clients’ projects, did a page by page review of the Women in Ecommerc™ website (it is being redesigned again), attended a group coaching mastermind call and wrote this article.

During the mastermind call Richard Banta of Live Out Loud Community went over the ground rules and expectations we should have for our respective mastermind groups, as well as some ideas to achieve optimum results and achieve our 120 Day Wealth Plan Goals. Tomorrow I will share some of those tips as well as the benefits of participating in a Mastermind Group to achieve exponential growth.

Be sure and leave a comment if you’d like to receive the Event Timeline I mentioned yesterday… and feel free to share YOUR 120 Day Wealth Action Plan!

To your prosperity… and then some,

Heidi