How To Leverage Partnerships To Expand Your Client Base

Does continually attracting new clients feel like a mystery sometimes? Does 'networking' feel like a dirty word? Does the idea of constantly pitching yourself to a bunch of strangers make your skin crawl? 

You're in the right place! Join me for this week's episode of the Creative Magic Club podcast as I dive into how to build genuine authentic connections and partnerships to make growing your audience and finding new clients ACTUALY FUN. 

My email list has been growing DAILY with 3-5 new people consistently this year so far (organically without ads). I'm puling back the curtain to tell you how I've built an audience of soulmate connections who are the perfect fit for my high ticket offers. 

And here's the thing - I'm not just going to tel you what has worked for me - because that might not be the right strategy for YOU. I help my clients to find the right, most enjoyable and accessible strategy for them in whatever season of life they're in. 

AND WE GET TO CHANGE OUR MINDS ABOUT IT! 

If you want to feel inspired and expansive about being a human who wants to contiually grow her impact without having to do a bunch of sh*t she hates - you're going to LOVE this episode! 

Write a sales post to attract your soul mate client using you astrology chart with my FREE 5-part training series! 

When you book my Cosmic Sales Intensive, You’ll walk away with a full, clear, compelling, sales page for your high ticket offer that will attract ready to buy clients and that you can continue to make sales with for years to come.

 Clients who have been through this offer have sold out a high ticket relationship coaching mastermind & had 20 applications within 48 hours of publishing.

https://withsarahmac.com/cosmic-private-intensive/

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Creative Magic Club
• 5:11 Sustainable Client Attraction Strategies
• 9:01 Building Connections Through Authentic Networking
• 15:54 Email Lists: Your Most Valuable Asset
• 20:45 The Power of Guest Podcasting
• 24:18 Paying Into the Karma Bank
• 30:00 Adapting Your Strategy for Sustainable Growth
• 33:40 Closing Thoughts and Next Episode Preview

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:43

What's up, this is Sarah Mack, and welcome to Creative Magic Club. Together, we'll discover inspirational stories of creative entrepreneurs living out their dreams, doing the work they are most passionate about, and building wealth in magical and fun ways, while building a six-figure income. As a writer and coach, helping other women to launch their dream businesses, I've connected with so many incredible people and seen it proven again and again that you can thrive financially doing whatever it is you are passionate about. I am here to share life-changing strategies for mindset, making money and reaching more people with your work in a business and life filled with creativity, freedom and fun. Hi, sarah Mack here from withsarahmackcom.

Speaker 1: 2:32

Welcome back to the Creative Magic Club podcast. Let's talk about how to leverage partnerships to expand your client base and attract a continual cycle of new clients, because we're not just here to be a one-hit wonder. We're not just here to fill your offer one time and make a ton of money and then go and live in a cave for the rest of eternity. We are here to generate consistent income through your business, through your high ticket offers. Well, obviously, one way of doing that is by continuing to sell to existing clients, of course, but I know you're here because you want to have a big impact and you want to share your work with more and more people. And so, in order to do that, in order to fulfill our mission and our dharma and generously share our magic and our gifts with the world, we are going to be needing to reach new people, month after month, year after year. So how do we do that? Without wanting to scratch our eyes out, without getting overwhelmed by millions of tasks on our to do list?

Speaker 1: 3:49

Let me tell you this audience growth hasn't always been the easiest for me, as you can probably tell by the fact that my audience is still relatively small, and I've been doing this for years. But it has not been complicated and it has been fun, and it's been consistent enough for me to make consistent money in my business since 2017. Actually, actually, before that, my prior business, my copywriting agency, I started in 2016. So I have been generating new clients consistently, even with a relatively small audience, for years and years and months and months, and been having so much fun doing it. I have not burnt out on my business, and so I'm going to share some nuggets of wisdom of what has worked for me as well as what has worked for clients. So my more recent examples this has been a good year of audience growth for me.

Speaker 1: 4:50

So I think it's a good goal, you know, a good baseline goal to reach a new person every day, whether that is by slightly growing your organic reach on Instagram, whether that's running an ad, whether that is taking some action to get your shit in front of more people, and this can be at a baseline very, very simple. It can be adding a new person, it can be finding a new person on the social media platform that you like to spend time on and connecting with them. You know following them, sending them a DM, liking some of their shit, reaching out, you know, making friends. Or how I built my business in the very beginning on Facebook I just added people to my network a little every day, and it really gets to be that simple. Obviously, the more we can get our content that we are putting our heart and soul into creating in front of new audiences, the easier it's going to be to attract more and more of the right people.

Speaker 1: 5:52

And at the heart of this conversation is creating relationships. You know and I've never forced myself you know, I've tried to follow people's strategies of go and look on search hashtags. Look for other people who are in your niche. See who's following them. Hunt out people that look like they might be your ideal client, and that never worked for me, but what has always worked for me is who is having conversations that I care about, who do I vibe with, who do I feel genuinely inspired by or like I want to connect with, and we can tell a lot these days from other people's social channels, and so that is at the heart of it. What this comes down to is human to human relationships, people that we would be excited to have in our world, whether that is as a client, whether it's as a peer or collaborator or, in any regard, as a friend. Many of the people I've met on the internet have become friends, really good friends. So even I met my husband on Craigslist when I put an ad up for for a roommate. So who knows what is possible when you put yourself out there online with the intention of just having fun and building community and making a positive impact on the people around you.

Speaker 1: 7:26

So lately, I've been having three to five email signups a day pretty consistently since the start of the year, which is great for me, and while I have been dabbling in ads. That's not the reason. It's actually been a sequence of collaborations through partnerships with peers. So was this a strategic thing that I set out to create? No, is this accumulation of me just continuing to network, continuing to put myself out there and also having a really freaking good invitation for people to join my email list, which is my current free resource by Cosmic Attraction Copywriting five part free series, but I was invited into a couple of bundles. I also was obviously doing a lot of reach out with publishing my book last year and, you know, doing a push to promote that on other people's podcasts. Also, a lot of people in my community just reached out to support me and invite me to come and share my book with their community, which is really amazing. And just through networking from in-person networking, meeting other entrepreneurs who invited me to speak inside their communities, to networking within this online spaces that I'm a part of, including social media, including, you know, other programs. And, like I said, all of these natural, all of these invitations have come through connections that have happened naturally, through me just being visible and making the effort to connect with people.

Speaker 1: 10:31

And, you know, as someone who came to North America. As an immigrant with zero network, I knew one person. I was put in touch with one person in Canada when I came out here through a connection that I had in the UK. You know, I built all of my social media following all of my social media network and everyone that I know here, and then, obviously, globally, as a result of building my online brand. I built it all from scratch. I didn't have a big network existing before when I jumped onto social media, and it's just been one day at a time, one person at a time, one piece of content at a time, one collaboration at a time.

Speaker 1: 11:11

And so when we're talking about growth, let's come back to what is the goal. The goal is to grow our impact through client work, through paid client contracts, and that's really the purpose of all of our content is to produce that result and to further the conversations that are relevant to the clients that we have chosen to support through our business. So you know, I've also had the unfortunate experience of losing an Instagram account, and it's an important reminder. Let me interrupt this broadcast to be another reminder to you to get your contacts on to your email list, because we do not own our social media channels and we put so much heart and love and creativity into our message, into our content, into our social channels and our community, if you're not connected with them in other places where you actually own the data whereby you could access that data and you could reconnect with that community, if you know the other platforms and social media places that you could reconnect with that community, if you know the other platforms and social media places that you're connected with them were to go away, then that's a lot of hard time, energy, work, money that you have put into building that community and an email list is.

Speaker 1: 12:37

I think I heard Amy Porterfield talking about how the value of an email list is even more valuable than investing in a house in some cases, from the amount of money it's capable for you to make over a lifetime by building an email list community, by building a group of people who are bought into you, your brand, your mission, your message, your products, your services and, of course, you can evolve. And people you know people unsubscribe all the time from my email list. It's always going up and it's always going down and that's okay, that's a part of the game, but always the people who buy from me are on my email list and it works in tandem with social media and in tandem with my podcast. And I was recently having this conversation with some of the people inside my millionaire witch club community and we were talking about how people came across me and you know a lot of people find my work through guest podcasting on other people's podcasts. So it makes so much sense for me to guest podcast because, number one, I love it. It's a medium that I love to express myself in, I love to share stories, I love to answer questions, I love to offer value and I have a podcast. So I want to reach people who like listening to podcasts, because one of the goals of my business and my mission is to grow the listenership on my podcast. And, yes, people find me on social media. People meet me in person and then they follow me on social media and they become a part of my online community and there are a million different ways that we meet new people all the time and instead of, you know, being in.

Speaker 1: 14:26

I think networking can be a bit of a dirty word and I'm sure we've all had that, those experiences like early on in our careers where we were told to go and network. And you know, go to a quote unquote networking event and, like, get a business card and try and push it into the hands as many people as possible and, you know, ask everyone in there who they are and what they do. And you know I remember back in the early days thinking like every single person who could be a potential client, I have to somehow enroll them into my services. And you know, that's the only way my business is going to succeed. And I've obviously proven to myself over the years that if you make one great connection from one event like, that's a win.

Speaker 1: 15:11

You know, and quality connections are so much more important than quantity. It's not about getting in front of big numbers for the sake of getting in front of big numbers. The fact that I've made hundreds of thousands of dollars through my business with just a few hundred people on my email list just goes to show that it's who you're talking to you, not how many people you're talking to you. That is the most important thing. And the strategic conversations that you're having. Because, yeah, you could get up and stage in front of thousands of people, but if none of the people in our audience would be interested in buying your services. What's the freaking point and obviously there's many different approaches to audience growth increase the probability that amongst that large group of people, there will be a smaller number of people who actually are the perfect fit for you and they are your ideal client and they will really resonate with you.

Speaker 1: 16:09

So do not get too hung up on the numbers, do not get too hung up on the strategy and simply focus on following your heart to genuinely connect with new people every day and every week. And that doesn't mean that everyone I meet I'm like pushing down their throat what I do and what I have to offer and what I sell, and. But you know, things they do arise naturally, and this is the power of having a home base for your business, whether that is a social media channel, whether that is a website or a podcast. You want to be sure what is your valuable invitation for new people? What is it that's going to be an easy yes for them to come into your world. And let's face it, in this day and age, following you on social media it's just the easiest sell, right? It's like, hey, let's, let's be connected, let's follow each other on social media.

Speaker 1: 17:15

Obviously, you know if you have got to know someone well enough to know that you can add specific value to them. Of course you can pitch and I will do that when it becomes clear that I can offer value and this is where it's absolutely imperative for you to do that work of knowing how to articulate the value that you bring and who it's for. Because when you are crystal clear on that conversation, when you recognize that ideal client, then it's absolutely of service for you to share the specifics of your offer, and always having an invitation that's an easy yes is absolutely so important. So the number one goal of any new connection obviously like the dream goal is to get your ideal client on to your email list, and that's how your freebie is really going to act as a filter. You want to very strategically design your free offer. So not only is it attracting the people that would want to buy whatever it is that you're selling, but it's also going to repel everyone who's not the right fit for it. So the more specific, the more niche, the more keywords you can put in that will help your ideal client to identify that you are for them. The more high quality leads you're going to have on your email list, the higher your open rates are going to be, the higher your conversions are going to be. So this is really, really, really important.

Speaker 1: 18:45

I feel like we're straying a little bit, but this is what you want to keep in mind when you're thinking about who to collaborate with, which partnerships to pitch yourself to or to say yes to or to say no to, because, also, you don't want to fill your audience with a bunch of people who just are not your sole client, because you might get confused when people come to you and they're asking you for something that actually you do not want to provide or you're not capable of providing with. You know the absolute, utmost level of skill and integrity as the things that you truly are the best at. So you don't need to overthink this. The more authentic and genuine you are in your storytelling, in your mission, in sharing your desires, in telling your story and sharing who you are, that is naturally going to filter your people. So, being unapologetically you unapologetically and boldly and loudly having the conversations that you know you want to be having, both in person and online, and that becomes easier and easier and easier when you start getting in the right spaces. So finding those communities where people are already having those conversations, getting in there and making friends. This is really at its most simple. It's like choosing the parties you are most excited to get out of the house for. You know, virtually or physically, open your laptops for, put on a shirt or brush your hair for, like, whatever the metrics are that you are putting on networking in this phase of your life and business getting in the right rooms, showing up, being visible, being yourself and inviting people to connect with you, and then having those really clear pathways to move people into your offers, starting with your freebie leading in to your content event and your launch content that guides the right people into your offer when it's the right time for them.

Speaker 1: 20:49

So one of my absolute favorite and most effective ways of partnering with others is through guest podcasting. So, number one, having podcast guests on my own show is a really great way to cross pollinate with audiences who I know would be into my work. And then, you know, pitching myself and adding value to other people who have crossover communities who I know would be into my work. That's been absolutely easiest, most powerful and most effective way for me to collaborate, and before I was doing that and before I had a podcast. I was just doing that on social media channels. I used to do guest interviews in my Facebook group and I would come into other people's Facebook communities or Instagram live streams. Is, you know, it's exactly the same thing, it's just a different place.

Speaker 1: 21:41

And you know, more recently now I've been less of a digital nomad butterfly flying all over the world. I have started to get invited to in-person events and in-person collaborations, which I did do when I was in Montreal, when I was settled there for a while. I did, I hosted a day retreat. I've done some in-person things in New York that I set up myself, but I was recently invited to speak on a panel and, you know, maybe I got a couple people's Instagrams. But from the most recent event that I went to, I just went for a drink with someone who reached out to me when they saw me on the panel and was like I want to connect with you and already we're, you know, discussing collaborations and ways that we can support each other.

Speaker 1: 22:33

So just knowing and setting that intention that every time I put myself out there, I'm going to attract one more person who is really resonant, who shares my values, who I'm super excited about connecting with and collaborating with, whether as a peer or as a client, and knowing that the more I put myself in situations that I'm excited to be in, the more I'm going to meet people who share my values, the more seamlessly these things are going to start to unfold, and the majority of that happened online. For me, you know, while I was traveling the world or didn't really have a home country and we never knew where I was going to be and was just a little bumblebee on the wind, that was in online spaces, online communities. So there are just endless ways to meet new people and to connect, and I think showing a genuine interest in helping others to get what they want is the fastest way to open doors, and that always leads to reciprocity, and I always like to think of it as we're always paying into the karma bank. So, regardless as to whether or not that person that you helped out is going to help you back in exchange, like that, good karma is going to come around and someone else is going to invite you to be visible in front of their community and to help you with your mission and message. And the more we build good faith and good feeling and contribution and service between peers like number one. It feels so freaking good and it's energizing and you know it's always been such a great experience for me the more we are buoyed and supported and motivated and it just creates momentum. And obviously we don't want to overgive. Obviously we want to make sure that these, this time and this energy is translating into the type of client growth that is growing our mission and our business.

Speaker 1: 24:45

And you know, sometimes it's not crystal clear where people came from or what's working and what isn't working, and sometimes it can take a little bit of time to reap the rewards of the time and energy that you've invested in certain strategies. Obviously, there are ways to gather data on this. You can ask clients where did you find me? You can see. You know this is another reason why email list growth is so helpful, because you can see when people joined your email list, which freebie or course they joined through, how long it took, which emails they opened, when they bought, and you can gather so much data around that.

Speaker 1: 25:27

And as soon as something works, you know to just continue that, keep replicating it and then it really does become a numbers game. You just ask how can I just increase, like I've got this freebie that works, that people is attracting the right clients. People join my email list, then they join my programs and they become paying clients. So, okay, if this is working, then how do I get this in front of more people? How do I get more people through this content system?

Speaker 1: 25:56

And if something isn't working doesn't necessarily mean it's not working yet. But you can continue to experiment and to tweak and to try different things. And you know, pay attention to what works, pay attention to what doesn't work, pay attention to what feels good and is sustainable for you, pay attention to what burns you out and isn't really fun for you, and continue to fine-tune and tweak your strategy accordingly. And this is really the work I do with clients, because you know I've been through many phases of my business. I've been through massive burnout. I've been through, like I said, digital nomading, living in the middle of buttfuck, nowhere and feeling like a million miles away from my ideal clients. They haven't always been a whole gang of them right on my doorstep, like there is now here in Venice and in California. So we get to tweak and adjust according to our life phase. There are 50,000 million ways to build a business. People were building thriving businesses before social media existed.

Speaker 1: 27:01

So there are a million parts to making human connections and I was telling the story inside Millionaire Witch Club the other day about how, when you get that clarity on your mission, on your work, on your client and how to talk about it, and you are excited and you're open and you're motivated, the clients literally start to show up. Like I bumped into one of my first coaching clients when she was literally crying in the street about being stressed around money and I was like, oh, I just launched a membership on Money Mindset for creatives. Like this seems to be exactly what you need right now. She turned into one of my clients and ended up, you know, working with me and my high ticket offer and this has happened to many clients as well. And I'm not saying that this is a good strategy to just wander around the streets and randomly magnetize clients, although I mean, it's happened. So we get to blend different strategies.

Speaker 1: 28:04

You know there've been periods of time where I've had really bad health and I haven't had the bandwidth or the energy or the means to, you know, like, go and travel to meet people. But I have always consistently put myself out there at the ability that I have from moment to moment. You know, maybe there'll be a period where, like after I've had kids, maybe doing podcasting interviews won't be so high on my agenda, or maybe it will and I'll just have to. You know, it'll be a different process for me where I'll have to make sure I have someone who's babysitting while I'm doing the podcast interviews, or maybe I'll just be doing more pre-recorded content. There's so much flexibility that we have to create connection these days using technology. You know, maybe I'll just be pouring into my local community and that will become more of a main way that I'm creating new clients in my business. Who knows who cares.

Speaker 1: 29:04

As long as you are having fun, as long as you are living your mission, you're living your purpose, you're spreading your message in whatever way feels accessible to you today. That's all we really need to focus on and just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Nothing's going to work if you're hiding. Nothing's going to work if you're not consistently speaking your message and introducing your work to new people. But it can be so much fun. After all, we are here to create. We are here to share our message. We are here to impact people through the work that we are called to put out there into the world and it gets to be fun.

Speaker 1: 29:50

So, whatever doesn't feel fun about the way you're currently doing it, what small changes can you make? You know, and I've made what have felt like very radical changes that have actually been very small changes that have made all the difference for me, such as shifting my podcast from video to audio only when I was going through long. Covid didn't make a huge difference to my listenership or to the impact of my work, but it meant I didn't have to brush my hair, I didn't have to put on makeup, I didn't have to turn on a light and like sweat while I was recording my podcast. That just made it that little bit easier for me to maintain in that season of my life. So be adaptable, be flexible and, and most importantly, have fun.

Speaker 1: 30:44

So tune in to next week's episode where I'm going to talk about one of the most powerful ways to get in front of more people, to warm up those relationships faster and to make more sales into your high ticket offers, which is using the power of video marketing. So make sure you come and tune in for that episode. Let me know what came up for you. Let me know if you love this episode. Let me know if you have a question or something that you want me to address on future episodes. Send me a message over at SarahMcMagic or Creative Magic Club on Instagram, ping me an email. I love to hear from you and I'm sending you so much love and I'll see you next week. Bye, for more inspirational content, head over to my website withsarahmackcom, and please support the show by liking, commenting and subscribing.