S3E3: How to 4-10x your Biz with Affiliates
Welcome to Women Rocking Business, where we are here to help you rock yourself, rock your life, and rock the world as a woman entrepreneur, because the world needs you and the time is now. I’m Sage Lavine, CEO, trainer, unretired camp counselor, and best-selling author of the Hay House book Women Rocking Business. We’ve had the honor of serving over a hundred thousand women entrepreneurs around the globe just like you, who are here to do more, be more, and have more by giving your gift to the planet. So let’s dive in.
I’m so honored you’re here. Let’s dive in. This week’s episode is all about how to use affiliates to 4 to 10x your business. I’m going to be sharing how I’ve used affiliates to grow my multi-million dollar training company.
Sage Lavine
00:00:46
Almost half of our clients come from affiliates every year. It is the most fun and joyful and collaborative way of growing a business. I can’t wait to get you these tips.
So first of all, you guys, we’ve doubled and tripled our business just with affiliate partners out of our multimillion dollar training company, nearly half our clients have come from affiliate partners. So this game is totally worth learning how to do in a way that feels good and in integrity and in alignment with who you are. What I recommend first is that you consider who has complementary services to what you offer, right? Because those are the people who are going to be easiest to promote and they’re going to have the easiest time promoting you.
Sage Lavine
00:01:27
Let’s say you’re a business coach, and maybe you partner with somebody who’s a social media strategist, because you might not teach all the social media tools in your business and your social media strategist friend or colleague might not teach some of the basic marketing strategies or niche clarity strategies that you teach. You guys are going to be great partners for each other. We have clients who are relationship coaches and health coaches and purpose coaches who partner with each other because when people hire a coach for one area of their life, they’re often times over time interested in hiring more than one mentor, more than one coach. So it’s really important as you learn to get your message out there.
Sage Lavine
00:02:11
As you learn to partner with affiliate partners that you say “yes” to having an abundance mindset, that you don’t worry too much about like,” Oh, I don’t want to, you know, take these possible clients of mine and share them with other people.”
Guess what? They’re not actually your possible clients. They’re not your leads. Those very same people are likely following a lot of other people online. And why not actually be the one to suggest services that are actually going to support them. And then to invite those same colleagues to recommend your services in return. And here’s the thing when you affiliate with other people, when you guys cross promote each other, that traffic, those leads that come your way are going be way more valuable than anything that you could do with Facebook advertising, YouTube advertising, Instagram advertising like a warm lead, because one of your colleagues actually recommended you.
Sage Lavine
00:03:11
That’s like word of mouth marketing and word of mouth marketing is never going away. So we have found that our affiliate traffic can be worse, actually five to 10 times more in terms of actually acquiring a customer, actually inviting that new relationship into our world versus just somebody who came on because they saw a little video clip of me online. It is so valuable to give that warm handoff to people that you trust in your business and invite them to do the same.
Now, a couple more tips. First of all, one of the most powerful things you could do this week in your business is tap a couple people on the shoulder who you respect and admire who have complementary services to what you offer and ask them if you could interview them for your audience during their upcoming launch, or when they have something coming up to promote and ask them if they’d be willing to do the same for you, when you partner up with other entrepreneurs and interview each other, it’s like you get automatically positioned, right?
Sage Lavine
00:04:15
Don’t forget to have that person read your bio, ask you a few key questions about how it is that you’re able to create the results in your business and in your work with clients that you love to create. And then don’t forget to give out some kind of a free gift, whether it’s an upcoming video training or a checklist or an ebook that you have to offer. You can even invite people to just join your social media group or follow you on Instagram or join your Facebook group. But having that warm interview, inviting somebody to position you, and don’t forget, you’re going to position them. Don’t be afraid to go first. Don’t be afraid to be of service. When you interview your colleagues, make sure that you know, this person is awesome, right?
Sage Lavine
00:04:59
Praise them, lift them up because they’ll do the same for you. And why are we living on this crazy planet if we’re not here to lift each other up? I mean, come on, isn’t there enough negativity in the world? Let’s actually be the ones that stand up and say, “This person is amazing. Yay for her or him.” Let’s be like that for each other. And when people see you doing that, you’re going to become magnetic with your message.
Okay, rockstar. If this content is resonating with you, and if you see yourself speaking, taking the stage, building an online speaking business in the future… I’d like to invite you to take my Speaker Superpower Quiz. It’ll just take 2 minutes. Whether you’re a visionary, a truth teller, a motivator, or a nurturer, I’ll send you a bunch of business growing hacks based on your speaker superpower, so you can take a deep dive into your superpower and really learn how to leverage it to rock the stage and find your clients online. You’ll get my favorite tips to use all 4 speaker superpowers to grow your speaking based business, grow your confidence as a leader and make an even bigger difference on the planet leading both virtual and live stages. Just take the free 2-minute quiz at www.womenrockingbusiness.com/quiz. That’s www.womenrockingbusiness.com/quiz. I cannot wait for you to discover your speaker superpower!
Sage Lavine
00:06:25
I also want to encourage you to not get stuck in some kind of a scarcity mindset of, “Oh, I don’t think I can promote this person because they do something that’s so similar to what I do.”
I’ll tell you what some of my top affiliate partners have been people that do something so similar to me, Ryan Eliason, Marisa Murgatroyd, Christian Mickelsen. These guys are some of my top partners and we all teach people all to build a conscious business. But guess what? We know that most leaders on the path are not just, they’re not just investing in one mentor.
Sage Lavine
00:07:06
We need many teachers along the path to help us actually find the way. And so, rather than being stuck in any level of scarcity or hoarding of your leads, I recommend you take a deep breath, be the one who comes out this week and is even more abundant and generous than you ever thought. Offer to interview a couple people that you love and ask them if they would do the same for you. You can pick timing, right? Get it in the calendar. So that that interview becomes a lead into a video challenge that you’re doing, or a webinar that you’re doing. It’s perfect to have those interviews come out like three to seven days before you launch something for free. So valuable to be able to create those relationships with potential clients before you head in to your launch.
Sage Lavine
00:07:49
One more quick tip you guys, please, for the love of this spirit and angels and those who are looking down on us, please… When you’re thinking about going into partnerships and deep collaborations with other entrepreneurs, date before you get married. Please, please. Because first of all, it is easy to say, “I feel nervous in my business. I’m not sure what I know what I’m doing. This is pretty scary. Why don’t you and I do this together? And then it’ll be less scary, right?”
You know what I’m talking about? You’re picking up what I’m laying down, right? I used to feel that way.
Sage Lavine
00:08:29
Many of my friends have felt that way. Here’s the thing… until you really know what you’re doing in business until you’ve served dozens of clients, any collaboration that you do is likely not going to be as powerful as it will be once you’ve established yourself. Okay? So trust me. When I say you can actually use the collaborations that you have with partners to lift you up, give you the courage and the confidence to keep going in your business.
Don’t forget to establish yourself first. Collaborate with other people, but do it with interviews, do it with one-off trainings, where you send potential clients to each other, rather than starting to build out a whole program together, right?
Sage Lavine
00:09:13
Because when you start to actually merge your businesses, it can be really murky what you’re even doing. I’ve seen a lot of well-intentioned leaders and entrepreneurs really make a little bit of a mess in their business – I say that with total love – by partnering too soon. So starting with interviewing each other, promoting each other, sending emails for each other, doing social media posts for each other, that’s going to be the greatest way to get started collaborating with people that you love, admire and respect. All right?
Lastly, when your people are going to promote you and you have a partner or an affiliate partner or a referral partner, who’s going to help you get the word out, don’t put it on them to figure out what to say, okay?
Sage Lavine
00:09:53
You are the one that writes those posts. You create the posts for them. You let them know what to say. It could sound something like, and write this down. This is a great thing to say. “You gotta check out my friend, right? You got to check out my friend, Ocean Robbins. He’s got the best tips on how to actually use a plant-based diet to heal your body so you can become the most powerful, vital, healthy, thriving leader that you’ve ever thought possible. Check out his upcoming food revolution summit. Here’s the link.” Right? Ocean would write that for me.
Sage Lavine
00:10:33
You’re going to write that for your affiliate partner. Don’t expect them to know what to say. You’re also going to write emails that they can send to their audience. Okay? So I recommend when you guys choose to promote somebody and then you ask them to promote you in reverse that you actually send several promotions. I promise you that sending at least three emails and doing at least two or three social media posts for one affiliate partner and having them do the same for you is going to be way more valuable than three partners doing one post each or one email each. Does that make sense, you guys? Because what happens is the emails build, not all the emails you send, even land in people’s inboxes anyway.
Sage Lavine
00:11:15
When people see you posting more than once about your friend’s stuff, their resources, their free gifts, they’re going to actually realize that you mean business. So choose a couple people that you want to reach out to this week, do an interview with each other, send some emails for each other and really be willing to go all in for each other. Because isn’t it more fun to even promote other people’s businesses than your own sometimes, right? And I also invite you if this training resonated with you, if you found it useful, you guys forward it to at least a few of your friends that you want to collaborate with. That way, you’ll all be watching the same training. And you guys can really use this training and use this framework to get the word out so that we can all link arms and grow businesses together because who wants to do this crap alone anyway? It’s way more fun together.
Sage Lavine
00:12:03
Hashtag #risingtideliftsallboats. Thank you for being the very best part of this community. Keep collaborating and remember your clients are waiting for you. They’re not waiting for someone like you. They’re actually waiting for you. See you next week.
You’ve been listening to Women Rocking Business. I’m Sage Lavine. The next step is to join our private Facebook group, The Women Rocking Business Sisterhood. Introduce yourself over there for the real and vulnerable conversation of what it really takes to launch and scale a business you love in that Sisterhood group. We have each other’s backs, each other’s sides and each other’s fronts. This is true collaboration. So go grab a seat in the Sisterhood because we can go so much further when we go together, you’ll find a link to the private Sisterhood group and to our upcoming events in the show notes.
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