0:38
Hello, hello, hello, hello. Welcome back. I'm excited to chat at you. I hope that you're connecting with me. If you have any questions, you can always hit me up at Val@BundleBash.biz.

0:55
Today, I wanted to bring in a third way to do collaborations for free and for easy. Let me tell you guys, there have been a lot of busy weeks going on, there's been a lot of change going on. We have a family health issue that's going on as well, because nothing can happen in ones or twos, right? All the good and the bad. All of it is going to come on all at once. It is all good.

1:23
Oh, I'm not going down the morbid, right? Definitely not going down the morbid because I can too easily right now. There's a lot going on. I want to keep everything nice and easy. This is exactly a time in my life when talking to you about easier ways to do things is easier for me because I'm having to totally to go into "Okay, quick. Yes. Quick. Yes". I'm having to scale a lot of things back.

1:54
You know, there are seasons where it's just like super extravagant, easy time. I've got plenty of time. Well, plenty of time, right. But there's quite a bit of time, more time, I should say, to go into elaborate processes or you know, take something from A to Z. And right now I'm not in that season. So I am very much aware, especially as we're hitting summer here. That's before I recorded, oh, first day of summer's tomorrow.

2:30
As a matter of fact, and all of that alone, with the scheduling and wanting to be out there and play and enjoy the sunshine, that takes away a lot more and it should. And when I 100% say it should, you should be doing that balance - air quotes here on balance - of, okay, I've been working my booty off, and the reward is I'm gonna take some time off.

2:56
But I want you to have it still productive. I don't want you to come into the end of the summer going, "Holy crap, look at that bank account," right? Because that's a roller coaster that sucks. So keeping this easy, we had the other two tips already. I covered those in the last two weeks. There'll be links to those down in the show notes.

3:20
But I want to talk about one today. And you're probably going to roll your eyes when you hear "quick, easy, what are you talking about, Val, are you insane?" Because my third suggestion for keeping it quick and easy is actually groups. See? I told you, you'd roll your eyes at me.

3:41
Now, I specifically do still stay on Facebook, Facebook is my go-to place. And I know a lot of people don't want to be there. And that is okay. I am not here today to tell you you must be on Facebook or it's going to be a fail and you're not going to do anything.

3:58
There are plenty of places to find groups to be following and engaging in. I don't want you just following groups, right? Okay. So the important part of this being quick and easy is that you are connecting in groups that have engagement, that are a correct fit for you, that you can jump in and jump out and get quick engagement in them.

4:24
And I'm probably going to say "engagement" about 40 more times maybe 400, because that's the important part I want. The group needs to be engaging, and you need to engage back with them. That's going to be the goal and the purpose of the group.

4:41
So, like I said, there's LinkedIn. LinkedIn has groups. A lot of different marketers have their own accounts, like on Heartbeat. They have Mighty Marketing groups. Some people are still running their own forums. There are a lot of different places that you can join groups that are active. I'm probably going to pop off with Facebook when I'm talking because that's just where I go. That is my go-to, for me, because I'm already marketing there. And talking to people, that makes it easy for me. If I have to go to these other different spots, I'm not there already. So let's just get that one out there right now.

5:24
So, for Facebook, as I'm talking about it, the hard part for so many people is not going down the rabbit hole, right? So, getting on Facebook, and then all of a sudden, you're in your feed, and you're like, "Oh, my word I'm gonna punch everybody in the world. It's so negative, why am I even on here?" You know, there's ways to control it. So you don't even see your Facebook feed. There is an extension that you can add to your Chrome that actually takes out your Facebook feed. When you go to Facebook, when I have had major issues with scrolling, that has been an absolute godsend for me.

6:06
Because I didn't even have the option of scrolling, there was nothing in my feed, I was purposely going to, whatever I was going to. You know, the group or the page that I was going to update, all of it was there. So I wouldn't even get the sponsored posts, nothing, it just shows this quote, that's all it'll show up on that newsfeed. And it's great. So, I can't, off the top of my head, remember exactly what that is. But I will make sure that that's in the show notes. Let's see, Chrome, writing it down, Chrome extension. Yeah, I will make sure that that's in the show notes for you.

06:38
It doesn't work on your phone, because you're going to be on the app. So that's a different story. So if you are one of those phone people, you're just going to have to be diligent. Now, I do suggest that you pay attention to which groups are going to be the best for me to go and hit. Maybe one, maybe two. Just really find those groups that are going to be a great fit for you and your business. Who are you going to find your people and who you're going to connect with those people.

07:06
Now, I don't mean you're just gonna go in and be the freakin' spammer. We're not just gonna go in there, and you're not gonna just constantly post about your business and your ads and blah, that's not engaging, and that is gross. I actually suggest if you have those lists of groups that you are going to because these 20 groups, let me come in here once a week, and then I get to go and spam them on that once a week and tell them about who I am and all of that. If that's working for you, you are a damn unicorn.

7:47
And even if it's only taking 30 minutes, that's 30 minutes, you could be spending someplace else, that would be a much better use of your time. So you're actually connecting with them. So, think about it, those places that have the spam opportunities. How much time are you spending in there besides that spam opportunity? Probably nothing, you probably go to that group specifically, because it's Wednesday, and I get to go and post about my business. Everybody else is doing the same damn thing. So there's not going to be an engagement, right?

8:18
Now it's different in groups that have a lot of engagement. And they let you do different posts on different days. I am in some podcast groups, that it's like, okay, well, we're having conversations during the week. And there's other things that we are engaging too. And on Fridays, we also get to post about our latest podcast and post it on there. Right? Different, very, very different.

8:43
So, pay attention, if you've got that list of all the places that you can go on post, pay attention. Is it someplace that I actually want to be besides sending that post? Or is it someplace I'm coming in here, spamming them, and I'm leaving? Don't be the latter. Don't waste your time on the latter one. Be the first one, be part of the first one.

9:05
So, choose a group or two depending on your time and depending on your mental capacity to not squirrel and get stuck in there and go to that group or two groups. And a couple of times a week, once a week. You know what's going to be best for you so that you don't fall down the rabbit hole. Go to those groups and engage. Go answer questions. Maybe even do a search in the group for topics that you're an expert in. We won't even get down into the expertise part of this but search a group for that and then go and answer them. It doesn't matter if it's an old post, bring it back up, bring the conversation back up. But make sure that you are engaging.

9:49
So just like last week, or two weeks ago, when I was talking about you're going to hit reply on those marketing emails and answer their questions that they were asking. But you're not going to go full detail on everything that you do until you're asked. Just like that, you're going to pay attention to those questions that are on there. And you're going to stick to those questions, you know, really give some good feedback, make it obvious that you know what you're talking about. And it's amazing how many people might hit you up for more information? Or oh, my gosh, I need more information. How do you know this? What else do you know? Or they'll be hitting your profile, and going and checking you out. So, make sure your profile, that's good.

10:36
So, I do suggest groups, and I suggest the groups because these are excellent places for you to find new collaboration people. So, for example, if you did a search for a certain topic, you might not even need to answer those people. There might be people that are on there that all of a sudden, you're like, "Oh, my gosh, we are close in topic. But we both do different things, I'm gonna go hit that person up and say, Hey, you and I do similar work. I would love to see how we can collaborate together, you know, can we do a freebie swap?" Make it about helping them. That is what collaboration really works. As you're not going into this relationship with "Me, me, me, me, me." And it is, of course, of course, we're in this, we're in this to build our business. But the way to do that is to actually build relationships.

10:38
So, take a look at you know, who can you connect with? And oh, gosh, please do not just hit them up in a Facebook DM saying, "But I got this and this and this? And can you do this?" You know, strike up a conversation. If I find somebody on a Facebook group post, and I do want to have a conversation in their DM, I will also say something on their reply, I will comment on whatever their reply was and say, "Hey, you know what, we've got, you know, a lot of what you just are going to say in there in the DM, I'd say, Hey, I just saw this post. And I'm excited about what you do I just DMed you, can we talk further." It makes it more inviting, and then they're gonna go look at it, because they're gonna be curious, right? We're all curious.

12:24
So, pay attention to how you can engage with others more in the groups, and really find those groups that are bringing the traffic are bringing the engagement that the group owners are. So it's not just a pitch fest, totally check it out. And if you're finding that the environment is just not going to build relationships, move on, cross it off, move on, leave the group if you want, but make sure that you are just moving on, find a better use of your time, because that's when other people aren't going and you want to find them there somewhere. They are out there. There's lots of people out there screaming for collaborations, which leads me to which of course leads me to my "Collaborate and Grow" membership.

13:19
I would love it if you want to connect with other businesses. And we meet once a month for a networking event where we just talk about what we do, who we are looking for. And we do get to ask for what we're looking for. Like if we're looking for podcast hosts, we're looking for summit hosts, we're looking for people to be in our event. We are looking for events to be in. We're looking for affiliates, whatever you are looking for, a blog post guests, you know, I mean, the sky is the limit. It's anyway that you are looking for people to help connect in your business and collaborate.

13:51
So, we do that once a month. And as of this recording, we actually just met yesterday. So July's event will be getting scheduled. But I would love to have you in there to see how we can all collaborate more, just go to Bundlebash.biz/cg for more information.

14:09
And I think that's about it. I need a lot more caffeine today. Our weather turned to poo. It's icky and it's raining and it's soup weather. And summer starts tomorrow. What in the world? So, I think I'm gonna go down about another five gallons of coffee so that I can get very productive.

14:33
I hope that you have a fantastic week. Please be on the lookout for how you can engage with others and build more business relationships. And don't forget I'm here to build that relationship with you. I will talk at you next week. Later.