Business Collaborations and Events by Millennial Women

Business Collaborations: How to build successful business collaborations with millennials? 

Business collaborations are extremely important today more than ever before. We have recently interviewed the founders of the We are Millennial Women podcast and events, and the gorgeous sister-business partners, Melissa and Stephanie Carcache.

Melissa, an actress, and Stephanie, a singer/songwriter, founded the podcast as they felt there was a lack of inspiration, business collaborations and representation for the millennial generation.

Through their podcast, social community and events, Millennial Women has become a hub for business collaborations, sharing perspectives, igniting open and educational conversations, as well as showcasing that fundamentally we are all so much more alike than we are different. More importantly, it is the perfect place to build authentic relationships and business collaborations that can potentially drive your business to success.

Millennial Women now travel the USA, interviewing amazing women,  creating local business collaborations and making a huge impact for millennial women through their events and podcast.

In this blog post we have summarised our one-hour chat about business collaborations and events that we hope will help you create more meaningful and successful business collaborations with millennials too. 

Business collaborations: Getting Started

With any business or an idea, one of the hardest things to do is to get started.  What often happens is that you would spend so much time pitching your idea to feel validated, that you don’t have enough time or energy left, to do it!

You may delay, but time will not, and lost time is never found again

– Benjamin Franklin.

You won’t be perfect at first, and you will make mistakes, but that is the best way to learn in business – because you won’t make them again!

You will never have enough money, enough time or enough knowledge, but even if it’s not perfect, you have to start girl!

It is much better to prove yourself first, through your own work and dedication that to try and prove something to others.  Trying to prove others is a sure way to self destruction.  

Melissa and Stephanie’s tips for getting started:

• Don’t be afraid to learn! Everyone started somewhere!
• Reach out to people who have done similar things to what you are trying to achieve, ask questions and be grateful of any knowledge they are willing to share. Build strong business collaborations wherever you can.
• Do you market research and ask your friends and connections what they think, what would they like to hear, feel and see from your event?
• Immerse yourself in research, use google, youtube and any other platform you can access to be more informed
• Be prepared to wear lots of hats and juggle priorities – it will get easier in time!
• Be prepared to travel and go out and meet people – sometimes people need to meet you before they can fully understand your business and that is how connections with longevity are made

Business collaborations: Getting people to attend your events

Genuine fear for a lot of women organising business events is ‘What if nobody attends?’.  There is always a risk that you won’t get as many people attending as you’d like, but there are plenty of things you can do to help you encourage attendance.

Business collaborations: Spend time getting to know your social community

Your social media following are an incredible asset to you, however, to build that know, like and trust factor you really need to understand who they are.  Spend time getting to know them. You can do this by reaching out to them through private messaging on your social media.  Don’t send a blanket email though as people will see right through this! How many times have you felt ever so slightly offended when it happens to you?

Come from a genuine place and take the time to understand what value you could bring to that person.   Remember, your intentions will translate into real life and being personal, and authentic online goes a long way to making real and genuine connections.  Making people feel like they are your friends and treating them in the same kind way will really help you engage with them.

Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads are a great way of gaining more visibility and promoting your events, and even with a small budget or investment, they can have quite a significant impact. Test out different Ads and see what works for you.

Business Collaborations

Business Collaborations are a fantastic way of furthering your reach and promoting your event. It is essential however that the partnerships are going to be worth your while and are going to be beneficial.  These are some of Melissa and Stephanie’s top tips when it comes to business collaborations:

• Make sure they are mutually beneficial to both parties
• Ensure your business collaborations make sense to them and their business as well as to you
• Know what the benefit is for them before you start pitching
• Understand what you’d like from the business collaboration
• Take the time to research the people you want to collaborate with
• Don’t just pitch to businesses or people with the largest following – make sure their audience is relevant to your business
• Don’t be disheartened if you don’t hear back from people, it may only take one reply and one successful business collaboration to change the course of your event!
• Ensure you follow up with people – you can’t send them a message and expect them to do the work
• Follow up with them once or twice, but don’t hound them with messages. Continue to raise awareness of yourself and the opportunity but in an authentic way
• Utilise your social media and connections you have in place already, do your audience have any potential contacts you could take advantage of?

We’re always on the lookout for outstanding women in business to collaborate with, find out more here.

Business collaborations: Your pitch

Once you have yourself in front of a prospective business collaboration partner or audience, you need to make sure your pitch is on point and make the most of the opportunity!

Melissa and Stephanie’s top tips for pitching are:

• Make sure you can get your message across concisely. People don’t want to read paragraphs of information before finding out what you have to offer. Really nail down your offering
• Ask for what you want concisely! Be clear about who you are, what you want to gain and what is in it for them
• Be strategic with your outreach and do your research, tailor your pitch to the person you are speaking with

Perfection is impossible; just strive to do your best

– Angela Watson

Business collaborations: Bringing it all together

In business, there is rarely a perfect time to do anything.  What is important is, if your intention going into things is genuine, it is far more likely to be successful.  Melissa and Stephanie felt the following points were the most important taking everything into consideration:

• Focus on creating an experience, not an event – women want a safe and empowering experience from the events they attend
• Never make it about the money – think about what value you can bring and meet the needs of your audience, and your event will become a success
• When planning, thank about the things that you would like. What would you like to feel, see, hear and experience at an event? Look within yourself first and then use that as the focus for your event
• Utilise the support you have around you. Engage and communicate with people and get as much information as possible
• Just get started – you will never have enough money, time or connections – just start, and the rest will come
• Visit venues and see how they make you feel.  Ask yourself if you’d be comfortable attending an event there

For more information on public speaking and organising events, go check out the other fantastic workshops we hosted for this theme in our member’s club! 

If you’d like a business collaboration with us at Women in Business please visit our events Events page for more information.