It’s no secret that I love collaborating with other artists.

Not only will you make new friends and connect with other creatives like you, but you will also be seen by a whole new audience and expand your reach!

What’s not to love?!

In this week’s episode, I’m diving into the wonderful world of collaborations.

We’re talking about:

🎨 Why you should prioritise collaborations if you aren’t already

🎨 The collaborations that have worked the best for me so far!

🎨 What kinds of collaborations you can do TODAY

🎨 How to initiate the collaboration & what to say when you reach out to collab

🎨 Plus, how to make the most of your collaboration so it’s a win-win for you and the person you’re collaborating with!

This is a jam-packed episode, so get your pen, grab your paper and let’s dive in!

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Running and growing a creative business can be hard, especially when doing it alone, but the good news is you don't have to do it alone.

Collaborating with other artists is one of the best things you can do for your creative business for so many reasons. So today, we will talk about why you should be collaborating if you are not already, or if you are, some collaboration ideas, how to run a collaboration, what expectations to set, how to make the most of a collaboration, and so much more. So, let's dive in.

Okay, before we start, I am a big fan of collaborations, but let me tell you why you need to become collaboration's biggest fan. So there are so many reasons why collaborations are so good for you as an artist. As a creative and business owner, there are unlimited reasons for collaborations, so I'm gonna tell you a whole bunch of them now.

So, number one is just supporting other artists, right? Hopefully, if you are listening to this episode, you are on the same page as I am in that. There is enough love to go around, right? We don't have to be about competition. We can be about collaboration, cheering each other on, celebrating each other, and seeing what we can do to support one another.

Collaborations are a great way to do that. It's hey, how can I help you? How can I do something that will allow us to work together and support each other? We can do a piece of work together or something to promote one another that will combine our expertise and our audiences and all the things that we can do to support one another.

Number one is that it is a great way to support your fellow artists and work together to support each other, cheer each other on, and show that we are a community, collaborating, celebrating, and above competition. So that's number one. Number two is that it is a great way to carry that on and make friends and connections.

So obviously, sometimes it is a little bit difficult to just reach out and say, Hey, do you want to be my friend? Especially as an adult, it's so hard to make friends. But collaborating is a great way to do that. There are so many people that I have reached out to and been like, Hey, I would love to do something with you in this weird and wonderful small business creative world that we have going on.

If you are keen, I would love to work with you in some way to make that happen. We have loved working together and doing something like that. We've gotten to know each other well through that process and become such great friends. Collaborating and doing something like that is such a great way to make connections, make friends, and build your community of people who support you, who love you, and who will cheer you on.

So, making friends and making connections is a great reason to collaborate. Number three is to combine your creativity. we are so good on our own; we have so many creative ideas, but something magical happens when we combine our creativity with others. Sometimes, we work alone so much that we can get stuck in our ways; we can get stuck using the same tools, the same brushes, the same patterns, or whatever it is the same colours.

It is so nice sometimes to work with someone else and see their creativity, how your creativity can combine with them, and what magic happens. So collaborating with somebody else and combining your creativity is fun, seeing what comes out of it.

The next one, number four, we were up to is the combined reach of a collaboration. Two audiences. So if you have a thousand people, for example, they have a thousand people, you combine that, you are now reaching two thousand people. That's just math, baby.

So if you have something you want to get out into the world, they have something they want to get out into the world, or you have something you want to get out into the world together, then combining that thing and sharing that with some people is a really smart idea. If you want to reach more people, then combining your audiences is a cool way to do that.

Number five. The reason a lot of people collaborate is that you reach a new audience of people. So, if you get in front of their audience, which is often a new group of people who have never seen your work or heard your name before, but because this new person is collaborating with you, they are hopefully endorsing and vouching for you; they trust you and put you in front of their audience.

That often means their audience is like, "Oh, cool." That must mean that you are cool and your work is cool, and they are keen to check it out. And so it gets your work in front of a whole new audience. So, that is a great reason to check out CollaboratingSynth.

Okay. Number six is the potential new opportunities that can come from a collaboration. So, collaborations continue beyond the collaboration. You never know what is going to happen after a collaboration. So you could work with someone, and that one collaboration could turn into a whole partnership, or you could publish that, and then someone else could see that collaboration, which could turn into a whole thing.

There are so many opportunities or possibilities that could come from one collaboration. The potential is endless. Collaboration is a great reason to collaborate, as are those new opportunities or possibilities that could come from that one collaboration. Number seven is just not being alone.

As I said, we often work alone as solo creatives, solo business owners, solopreneurs, or whatever you want to call us. We are often alone, squirrelling away in our studios. Sometimes, we work in coworking spaces, studio spaces, or whatever. But working with someone else is sometimes just nice.

Even if it's just a little collaboration or working with someone once a week on something you're working on over time, just being with someone and not being alone is nice. So, collaborating with someone is a small benefit. It's just Having someone to work with, not being alone, having someone to talk to, share things with, and collaborate with, and it's just really nice.

The next thing is trying new things. As I said, combining creativity is great, but collaborating encourages you to try new things. There are so many ways to collaborate, so many ways to promote collaboration, and so many things to do.

So it's a great opportunity and an encouragement to try new things. Often, the person you are working with may do things differently from you, like how they do things behind the scenes or how their business is different. It does encourage you to try new things.

That is a great benefit of collaborating. Last but not least, thank you. It's just really fun. So I think that a great benefit of collaborating is just that it's something different, right? We do the same thing a lot of the time in our business. We are so heads down, like doing the ins and outs of our business, making things happen.

We have to do that to make our business work and survive. So we have to do something different, try something new, and work with someone new. It's fun. Collaborating is fun. I love that about collaborating, so that's a great benefit for me. There are many reasons why I think collaborating is one of the best things you can do for your business.

Hopefully, that's convinced you that if you want to support other artists, make some great friends, combine your creativity, get some amazing reach, reach new audiences, get some potential new opportunities, not be alone, try some new things, and have some fun, then you're on board.

Okay, I want to tell you about a couple of collaborations that I have done and how they have helped us and me as creatives. I want to show you just some examples of how you might think about this and how it could help you as a creative.

So, when I started as a creative, one of the first collaborations I did was a combined exhibition. So, I did a show as a hand lettering artist, and I was part of a combined show. Instead of doing a solo show, which is a lot of work to do, fill a whole art gallery with only your work, promote it all by myself, and do all of the work instead; I shared that with a whole group of people.

We filled the gallery between us. There were about five of us, and we brought in more people to the opening and the entire exhibition because there were more of us, right? So instead of me just bringing, say, a hundred people, five of us brought 500 people. So that was a great example of how, instead of me doing all of the work and filling one entire gallery and bringing a hundred people, I shared the load and filled the gallery with five people and brought five times people to the gallery show.

So that is one example. Another example is collaboration videos, or what we used to call YouTube collabs, on my YouTube channel. I used to do a lot of YouTube videos. You can check out my YouTube channel if you want to watch a lot of those old YouTube vlogs. However, I used to make collaboration videos on my YouTube channel.

What was great about these is that they helped me reach new audiences as we both promoted the video, right? So this is the same now as collab Instagram posts. So if you collaborate on the Instagram post, or if you do like an Instagram live together, or a podcast episode, or something like that, we are both on something together. You can both promote that piece of content together. It helps you reach a new audience because you both get together in front of a new audience.

Another example is collaborating with another designer on a brand together—actually collaborating on a piece of work together. I collaborated with another designer on a brand, and we created something completely different than I would have created on my own because they brought their unique talents, skills, art direction, ideas, thoughts and creativity to the project.

I didn't have the right, and I brought mine, and so combined, we created something really special and unique that we wouldn't have done separately. So that's another example of the type of collaboration that you could do. Another example is that recently, Lauren, who I had on the podcast, did a podcast swap.

So that's another example of doing something we used to do: swapping with another business owner. That was an example of me trying something new and again reaching new people because we swapped audiences. We reached new audiences, and we reached probably a bigger audience. Yeah, then we would have before because we swapped, we tried something new.

I'd never done a podcast swap before, and I don't know if Lauren had either. So, we both tried something new by collaborating, being creative, and giving it a go. These are four examples. Four different ways that I've collaborated have all benefited the other people in the collaborations, too.

So, it's not just me. I've just given all of these different things a go and tried them and seen if they worked. And yeah, I've seen if I liked it or if I didn't, and I've just been open to how these collaborations can work for me as a creative person.

Some other ways that you could collaborate as an artist.

There are three main ways that you can collaborate as artists. Number one is that you can collaborate on the art itself. Maybe you could collaborate on a zine or a piece of art itself, like a big painting, a sculpture, a mural, a collection of fashion, a full collection of prints and stickers, and all that stuff.

You can collaborate on the art itself if you want to collaborate on a project and release products or a piece of art. One way that you could collaborate with another artist is by collaborating on the art itself. Number two is that you can collaborate on teaching what you know. So, if you and another artist want to collaborate on teaching other artists or other creatives, you could Teach practically what you do.

If you are a ceramicist, you can teach others how to make ceramics. Or you can teach. Aspects of being an artist, right? So how do you market your art or how do you make money from your art? You like all of these different aspects of being an artist, right? So you could collaborate on things like a practical workshop, the ceramics workshop or those types of things, or you could make a collaborative ebook together or run a webinar together or go on a podcast together, or all of these types of teaching are ways that you could collaborate as well. The third kind of bucket, I think, is where you can collaborate on marketing.

Promoting each other, sharing each other's work, and generally hyping each other up and getting each other's work out there. Again, this could look like podcasts or Instagram Lives, or content around each other's work, or they could just generally share and promote each other. So yeah, those are a few ideas for collaborating.

Those are the general ways that I would start thinking about how you can collaborate with other artists. do you want to collaborate on art? Do you want to collaborate on teaching? Do you want to collaborate on marketing and promoting each other? Those are some ideas for how you can start collaborating.

So now I start talking about how you do this collaboration. This is the sticky part: People are like, okay, how do I do this? And how do I do it? Because there are many questions and technical things about how you split the money, how do you reach out to that person, or how do you do all of these things?

So, let's talk about it. First, you want to reach out to the person you want to collaborate with. Ideally, this is someone you've at least engaged with before because it's unlikely that someone will want to engage with you or collaborate with you if this is the first time they've seen your name.

If you haven't talked to them before, it can be worth a try, like reaching out to them on DMs or something. However, you probably want to have at least been following them for a while. You may have been liking their posts or reacting to stories and stuff like that.

I think you need to have been in each other's worlds for a while, or you have at least been in their world. They might recognise your photo or something like that. I think just reaching out of the blue might be a little unlikely if they've never seen you.

At this point, I would say that if you don't think that there's anyone that you've met yet that you would want to collaborate with or that you think would collaborate with you or that you think that you Even at that level with see if you think that there's anyone Or if there's any online or local like networking opportunities where you could meet people like that Or maybe start engaging with those kinds of people online.

So, think about your goals. Do you want to reach more customers? Do you want to break into a new industry? Do those customers, or does that industry or something? Do they host events? Is there an online membership for those types of people? Is there a local community? Start thinking about where those people are and what your goals are. Engage with those types of people and connect with them.

And that's how you'll start. Making those, starting to make those connections, and that's how you'll, you will

get to that place where hopefully you'll have at least that initial connection with those people where you could feel like you'd be in that place where you could reach out to them to see if they want to collaborate with you. So when you do, you want to make sure that it's someone who makes sense.

Someone doing complementary work to yours could either be the same or not the same as you, but it complements yours, right? With Lauren, for example, a recent one who I collaborated with, right? Lauren and I both work with creatives, but we do different things. We have a slightly different approach to what we do.

Or a slightly different niche, but we work with the same people. That works really well because we don't like directly competing with each other, but we complement each other. On the opposite side of things, you might do. It's the same thing but with different people or something like that.

So think about your goals and whether your work or your audiences complement each other. Do they have the same values as you? Does their audience align with yours, or is it a similar audience but different people? You want to ideally make sure it's like a Similar audience or same audience, but not the same people, because otherwise, if the same people follow you, then you're not getting the benefit of reaching new audiences or double the audience because it's just the same people.

So just think about that. So make sure you're choosing somebody who makes sense to somebody who complements your work and has similar values. So when you reach out to them, you can either be direct and say hey, I wanna, I'm Hollie, and I'm reaching out to you because I want to collaborate with you.

I've had this idea. I want to know if you're keen. Let me know. Blah, blah, blah. That can be one approach, or if you're already talking to them, it could be as simple as saying, "Oh, by the way, I reckon we should collaborate. What do you reckon?" It can be as simple as that. Or we should work on something together.

What do you think? It depends on how well you know them. If you're talking to them already, like it will, you'll be able to gauge. How direct or casual it needs to be will depend on that relationship. If you are worried about pitching a collaboration idea to somebody more experienced or well-known than you are, or you're just worried about reaching out to people, then just know that the worst they can do is wait to reply or say no.

I have reached out to so many podcast guests, and I have been so surprised by how many of them have said yes, and the others have either just not replied or said no. Like, I'm busy or not doing podcast requests right now or thank you, but no. Just shoot your shot. You never know what will happen, and yeah, the worst they will do is not reply or just say no.

Another amazing designer and podcaster is Liz Mosley. Her podcast, Building Your Brand, has a challenge called the Rejection Challenge, where she puts herself out there for this kind of thing and encourages other people to do it, too. Because the whole idea is that rejection isn't bad.

It's a sign that you are putting yourself out there and trying to build your brand and your business. And you are. Yeah, you're giving it a go. So I highly recommend trying and checking out Liz's rejection challenge. But the main idea is to try not to worry about putting yourself out there and pitching yourself and pitching ideas, right?

The main idea is that you're having ideas, putting yourself out there, and giving it a go.

Okay, so next, you want to plan your collaboration. Once you've reached out, they've said yes, they're on board, they're like, "Oh, my God." Yes. I would love to work with you on something.

Let's do it. You will want to choose some kind of collaboration that works to your strengths, appeals to your audiences, aligns with your businesses and fits in with your capacity. So those are the main things you want to think about. So work to your strengths.

Do you want to think about what we are both good at? So, say you both hate video, so don't decide to make a YouTube video together. But if you're good at hosting workshops and teaching people how to do what you do, that. If your audience doesn't listen to podcasts or They're not like in your local area, don't run a local workshop, for example.

So think about these things, think about what aligns with your businesses, and think about what fits in with your capacity. It's very important. You are very busy, so don't try to do something that's way out of your reach and way beyond what you have the time, energy, and capacity to do.

Very importantly, make sure that you both feel that whatever you choose benefits you both equally. So, for example, if I ask Lauren to be on my podcast, that sometimes is great because I'm like, you are a guest on my podcast, and I am then promoting you. But then sometimes it's okay if I am also on your podcast.

Like we did the podcast swap, you might just make sure that whatever you're doing benefits both of you because then it's fair, and you both feel happy. And you both feel like we're both getting something out of this. There's a give and a get.

There's a return for both of you. Then, in planning, you also want to figure out when you're going to make it happen. Are you doing it next week, next month, next quarter, next year? When are you doing this? When do you want to make it happen? When are you both free? When does it fit in with your lives, your businesses, your year?

That is the next plan. Then, we want to set some clear expectations. There are some things that are important to outline when it comes to collaboration. Number one is assigning who will do what. Again, with this, you want to make sure both parties, both people, Feel like whatever you are doing, the workload is fair and balanced.

Especially if it is a project you're both working on together, you want to make sure that one person doesn't feel like they are doing all the work and one person is doing nothing. It's just like a group project in school, right? We've probably all had horror stories when it comes to that.

So we don't want to repeat that. Set it from the beginning, make sure your expectations are clear on who is doing what, and that you are both happy. You also want to make sure you set up any communications and systems that you might need to make it happen, like task management. Are you going to use Notion to track your tasks?

Who's going to manage that? Are you going to communicate via email, WhatsApp, or Slack? Also, make sure you agree on how and when you're going to do that and when you're going to work on it. For example, does it not matter when you work on it as long as your tasks are done by the due date? Or do you need to work on it together for an hour weekly?

For example, I will keep using the example of Lauren and I's collaboration. I'm sure she won't mind. But for that, it didn't matter when we did it as long as the tasks were done by the due date. We were working on it together because it wasn't a full project. We did a podcast swap and individually did our sides of the swap.

So for. Like my podcast, I did my side of things, and I sent my things to Lauren when she needed them. But we didn't need to jump on calls or anything at certain times to work together. But if you were launching a product, a course, something like that, or a new business together, you would probably want to work together at certain times or ensure that you are working to deadlines and all those things.

It's going to require more commitment and more time. And you want to make sure that you agree on that and that the expectations Are clear. So it just depends on the level of collaboration, how much commitment you need, and all of those things. So you just have to agree and make sure you're on the same page.

And obviously, collaborations can sometimes, again, depending on what type, take a lot of time. So you want to make sure it's not going to detract too much from your own work while giving it the time that it needs. So make sure you talk about how and when we are working on this and what those expectations are.

Next, you want to decide how to handle the finances if that is relevant. Are you going to pay them as a thank you for being a part of whatever you're doing? Are you going to be splitting the money? If you're going to be making money from it, how are you going to split it? Will it be full even if you need to put money into something?

How are you going to do that? If there is money involved, you need to talk about it from the beginning, making sure it's clear. My next step, especially if there's money involved, is that you might need to consider putting an agreement or a contract in place. Definitely consider that.

The next point is to decide how you're going to combine your brands during this collaboration—my favourite part. Obviously, visually, you want to make sure that things come together. So, if you both have bold brands as creatives, you're going to have a lot of colorful creative things coming together.

And it is difficult to figure out how to do that and bring them together when you collaborate. But you still want to ensure that It's consistent and it has its own mini identity for whatever you are collaborating on. If the collaboration isn't like its own separate brand, like a new business or like a course or something like that what I recommend doing is seeing if your brands have some online Colors that work together well. It might not be and probably won't be all of both of your colours But it might be like one of your colours and a couple of theirs or something and using those to create a combined colour palette that's like a simplified but cohesive Combination of both of yours and then just using a simple font that would work across both.

So that's how I would recommend combining your brands, but definitely make sure you consider how you're going to do that before you have a bit of a clash of I want to use my brand this, and I want to use my brand this, and how are we going to do that? And blah, blah, blah, blah. You want to make sure you have a good cohesive plan for how you will bring them together. You also want to determine how you are going to measure success. Is it going to be the money you make, the audience growth you have, how many downloads you get, and what it will be? You want to ensure you are aligned on what success looks like individually.

So, what does it look like for you? Do you want to pursue similar collaborations in and together so that you're on the same page about this particular collaboration and its progress? This also helps if this collaboration doesn't go as well as you hoped.

So if you didn't make a bunch of money, for example, but your metric for success was that you got out into your community and met some new people to get your work in front of, that's okay. That's a win, right? So you want to make sure that you Have decided and agreed on what our measurement of success is.

What are we aiming for? What is the goal? Then you're both on the same page. That's great. Obviously, you want to execute this collaboration, make it happen, follow through on all your plans, tick, tick. It's going to be great. Then you want to share and promote the collaboration and get it out there into the world.

So last but not least, let's talk about how you want to make the most of this collaboration. First and foremost, keep it fun. We've talked about many practical, technical, and boring things, but remember, this is all about collaborating, community, working together, trying new things, and being creative.

So prepare as much as you can and use systems to your advantage. If you're launching something or sharing this new thing with the world, then prepare as much as you can, get as much stuff done in advance, and use systems, templates, and task planning as much as you can.

It will help you, especially when splitting tasks between you and all of that sort of stuff. And then you want to promote it as much as possible because collaborations are so good at making the most of two audiences. You want to take advantage of that. Make sure that you are doing all that you can to do that.

So cross-promote between the two of you. Use. Both and all of your platforms utilise the features on those platforms that allow you to collaborate, like collaborative posts or tagging each other on different platforms. So you make sure you're sending people to each other's profiles as much as you can, like reposting TikToks or remixing reels, like all of that type of stuff you can do.

And collaborate. There's so much stuff you can do. You want to also think creatively about how you can promote it. So again, we want to do as much as possible to make the most of this. So, could you get featured in different publications? You're collaborating and doing this cool thing.

Could you sponsor a newsletter spot? Could you put it in your local community newsletter? There are so many different things you could try. So get creative. combine your brains to get creative. And yeah, see what you can do to get it out there. And then you want to think about how you could, maybe if you liked it, turn this one-off collaboration into an ongoing partnership, they enjoyed seeing you both work together, and you both had a good time. You want to keep it going. Could you build momentum, build upon your creation, and keep that relationship going? Think about how you could turn that one collaboration into something even bigger if you wanted to. So you could do the same thing again, or maybe if you did a workshop, for example, you could make that into an evergreen workshop that people could buy all the time, or maybe you could turn that one workshop into a full course or a podcast or a workshop series or so many different things.

You could turn one collaboration into an ongoing partnership. It doesn't just have to be a one-and-done thing. How do you keep that relationship going and keep supporting each other? Okay.

This has been a longer episode than usual, so I will stop talking, but I hope this has been helpful.

I hope that we have covered why you should collaborate. I've given you some examples of how I have done some collaborations and how they've helped me and the people I've collaborated with. I've also given you some examples of the types of collaborations you could do and walked you through how to do a collaboration yourself and how to make the most of the collaborations you do.

Put into action. So, the next steps I would love for you to take this week are to think about your collaboration goals. Do you want to grow your audience, maybe break into a new industry, make some more money, or connect with your community?

What is your goal? Then, I want you to make a list of five people that you want to collaborate with this year based on that goal and reach out to one of them this week—just one. And then come and take me on Instagram and tell me you've done it. I would love to see that. I will see you next week. As always, be creative, and I will see you next time. Bye!