Less Work & More Collaboration with Caroline Griffin
"My whole marketing and comms strategy is very much a reflection of me. I'm a friendly introvert and I do mostly one-to-one and put most of my effort into those relationships. So I think in the summer, I have a list of people in the summer who I'll be reaching out to, to reconnect with clients, partners, to let people know like, okay, I'm starting to think about this. What do you have for me? But I'm not going to do a newsletter. And I'm just going to be real about the fact that I'm truly taking a break. " - Caroline Griffin
Less Work & More Collaboration with Caroline Griffin
Ready to uncover the secrets to successful collaboration and community building for business growth? Today on the Confessions podcast, social media and content marketing expert, Caroline Griffin joins us to share how she has leveraged collaboration and community to do less work and still grow her business.
Caroline Griffin's journey from the world of nonprofit internships to establishing her own thriving business is a testament to resilience, adaptability, and the power of community. Her unconventional start, propelled by a decision to live and work on the road, led her to embrace collaboration and community in a way that transformed her professional trajectory. Through her unwavering determination and scrappiness, Caroline built a network of consultants and professionals in the nonprofit sector, establishing a foundation of support and opportunity. By prioritizing partnerships and valuing the expertise of her peers, she has not only expanded her business but also cultivated a community that drives mutual success. Caroline's story exemplifies the transformative impact of collaboration, illustrating how interconnectedness and shared values can lead to unexpected growth and meaningful connections. Her journey serves as an inspiring reminder that embracing community and working in tandem with others can pave the way for sustainable business growth and personal fulfillment.
Key Highlights:
Discover effective tactics for building and engaging your email list.
Plan and prepare for maternity leave as an independent consultant.
Explore collaboration opportunities to expand your network and projects.
Overcome niche marketing struggles and embrace your unique skills for business success.
Timestamped summary of this episode:
00:03:03 - "Transition into Nonprofit Consulting"
Caroline talks about her background in the nonprofit world and how she transitioned into nonprofit consulting, highlighting her diverse experiences in the sector.
00:10:05 - "Inbound Client Acquisition and Referrals"
Caroline discusses the evolution of her client acquisition strategy from initial outreach to inbound referrals, emphasizing the importance of building relationships with other consultants and setting up a referral program.
00:12:31 - "Partnerships and Collaboration"
Caroline shares insights on building strong partnerships with other consultants, including the use of referral fee agreements and the process of vetting potential partners based on client feedback and quality of work.
00:15:50 - "Structured Collaboration and Product Development"
Caroline explains the structure and considerations behind collaborating with other consultants on products and services, including promotion, revenue sharing, and long-term collaboration strategies.
00:16:57 - Collaborative Project Pricing
Caroline shares her approach to pricing collaborative projects with partners and how they negotiate to reach their financial goals.
00:18:14 - Dream Team Collaboration
Caroline discusses a successful three-way collaboration with two other professionals, sharing the workload and equally splitting the financial gains.
00:20:52 - Email Marketing Strategy
Caroline talks about her monthly newsletter and the effectiveness of occasional sales emails. She also mentions the use of a lead magnet to grow her email list.
00:26:28 - Maternity Leave Plans
Caroline explains her plans to take a break from work for six months and how she intends to manage referrals and partnerships during her absence.
00:33:29 - Building Referral Relationships
Caroline discusses how she builds referral relationships by being transparent about receiving kickbacks and choosing people she trusts.
00:34:26 - Business Confession
Caroline confesses that she has struggled to niche down her business and has felt like a failure for not choosing a specialty area. Ultimately, she realizes that she is a full stack marketer and sees the big picture in marketing.
00:35:58 - Embracing Individuality
The hosts commend Caroline for recognizing that there are different ways to niche down and for not succumbing to the pressure of fitting in with others in the industry.
00:36:34 - Connecting with Caroline
Caroline shares that she can be reached via email or LinkedIn, where she spends most of her time. She also encourages potential referral partners to connect with her.
00:37:24 - Podcast Wrap-up
The hosts express their support for Caroline as she enters a new chapter and thank her for being on the show. They encourage listeners to share the podcast, leave a review, and reach out with any questions
Find Us Online: https://www.confessionswithjessandcindy.com
Connect with Caroline Griffin:
Caroline Griffin (Website): https://marketeronamission.work/
Caroline Griffin (Linkedin): linkedin.com/in/carolinethemarketer
Connect with Cindy:
Cindy Wagman Coaching https://cindywagman.com
Fractional Fundraising Network https://www.fractionalfundraising.co/
LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/cindywagman
Connect with Jess:
Out In the Boons: https://www.outintheboons.me
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jess-campbell-outintheboons/
Transcript:
00:00:59 Cindy: Welcome to the Confessions podcast. I'm Cindy Wagman.
00:01:02 Jess: And I'm Jess Campbell. We're two former in-house nonprofit pros turned coaches and consultants to purpose-driven organizations.
00:01:11 Cindy: After years of building up our separate six-figure businesses from scratch, we've thrown a lot of spaghetti at the wall and have lived to see what sticks.
00:01:19 Jess: We're on a mission to help other nonprofit coaches and consultants looking to start or scale their own businesses past the six-figure mark by pulling back the curtain.
00:01:30 Cindy: Whether you're still working inside a non-profit and thinking of one day going out on your own, or you've been running your consulting business for years, you understand that working with nonprofits is just different. We're giving you access to the business leaders who serve non-profits as their clients. You know, the people who truly get it.
00:01:51 Jess: No more gatekeeping, no more secrets. This podcast is going to give you an inside look at what running a successful nonprofit coaching and consulting business looks like. Basically, we're asking people how much money they make, how they get paid, and what has and hasn't worked in their businesses.
00:02:11 Cindy: Listen in as these leaders share their insights, their numbers, and the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to building a non-profit coaching or consulting business. We're going to empower you to make the power moves that give you the income and freedom you set out to create from day one.
00:02:27 Jess: You ready? Let's go!
00:02:31 Jess: We're back with another episode with another consultant! I feel like we get a little loopy when we do a couple of these back to back, but I'm so excited.
00:02:42 Cindy: I know. I feel like we should give people, like, a behind the scenes. So Jess and I try and batch these conversations. So today we have three back to back.
00:02:48 Jess: Because we're nothing if not efficient.
00:02:50 Cindy: Exactly. So we always feel, like, super awkward doing the introduction because we've just done but–
00:02:58 Jess: Yeah.
00:02:58 Cindy: For all of you listeners, you have no idea. So.
00:03:02 Jess: Yeah. But I'm pumped on this. I mean, I think both of you and I, Cindy, can just geek out on like all things, businesses, marketing, like till the end of time. And so we are so excited to introduce you to our guests today, the one and only Caroline Griffin of Marketer on a Mission. You may subscribe to her newsletter or find her on LinkedIn. She is a real gem in the online space and I'm so excited to have a chat to get to know the insides of your business. Welcome, Caroline.
00:03:38 Caroline: Hello, friends. Thanks for having me.
00:03:41 Jess: Yay. All right. For those who don't know you, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into this world of nonprofit consulting.
00:03:52 Caroline: Oh, sure. Well, I've always been in the nonprofit world, but I've come at it from pretty much every angle at this point starting with internships in college, and then I did AmeriCorps for a year out of school, teaching in a high school. And I was like, wow, I have so much respect for teachers, but this is not what I'm going to be able to sustain for the rest of my career. And then I was in-house with a nonprofit doing marketing and comms for four years as a young coordinator then manager, but really self-taught in marketing and digital marketing.
00:04:33 Caroline: So I went back to school and got my master's in marketing and that was not nonprofit focused. So it was kind of funny because I'm learning about like ice cream brands and doing case studies that didn't feel super relevant, but I learned a ton and then kind of brought that back, went into an agency that does nonprofit marketing and design for a couple of years before I started my business.
00:05:00 Jess: I totally forgot you did that. That's how I met you when you worked for the one in Texas, right?
00:05:06 Caroline: Yes.
00:05:08 Jess: Wow. Time is so weird. Okay. Yeah, that's, I'm like, having a real wow moment, but that was so long ago. Okay. Tell us, how do you get paid?
00:05:21 Caroline: I do a mix of, I mostly do project-based work. Most of my work with clients is like a one or two or three months affair. And then I have a couple of retainers for things like digital advertising, where I've gotten in a groove with those clients and we can consistently get results. And those are like a nice base for me to build on top of with things that are changing all the time.
00:05:51 Jess: Super duper helpful. So how many years have you been running your own business now since time obviously is like lost on me?
00:05:59 Caroline: Almost four years and I started in, so okay, I started my business by accident because I was at this agency and my husband and I decided we wanted to live in an RV for a year and travel the country. And I pitched them on letting me be a remote employee. And this was in January of 2020. And I love them. I still partner with them all the time, but they were like, we don't think it will work for our clients. We've never done anything like that before. So I accidentally quit my job, kind of a month before COVID. And then we moved into this van and I was like, what have I done? But it ended up working out and now I'm four years in.
00:06:45 Jess: Okay, cool. That's, thank you for the context and thank you for just like the reminder because I don't even know what day to day is. I'm really curious if you would tell the fine listeners, how has it changed, like getting those few couple clients back when you accidentally quit your job versus what that process looks like today? Like, I think that evolution is so interesting and I think it would be helpful for folks who are newer on their journey to hear what you did versus someone who has more of an established brand and presence and relationships. What is that like, like now?
00:07:22 Caroline: Yeah, when people reach out to me when they're just starting, I tell them it was very scrappy in the beginning. And I reached out on LinkedIn and via email to everyone I had ever met who had any connection to an organization. Like I was going deep and reaching out to people I hadn't talked to in years and just scouring.
00:07:46 Jess: What do you mean though, like on DM or like, what do you mean?
00:07:49 Caroline: Yes. DMing everyone I could think of on LinkedIn, everyone whose email I had, I was emailing just to say, I'm about to be doing this. Can I reconnect with you? Can I learn how you started your business? Or do you need anything? And my first clients were a girl I knew from college who happened to work at a nonprofit, hired me. And then I found one client on Idealist that paid me like $40 an hour. It was very scrappy in the beginning.
00:08:23 Cindy: Oof. Scrappy, but that's how most of us start. You got to reach out to people. That's part of the plan. I like your approach and like, hey, this is what I'm up to. It sounds like you leaned in a little bit to that permission-based engagement where you're like, is it cool if I reconnect? Tell us, I feel like this is something that a lot of people struggle with, like where do I find clients? And sometimes it really is just reaching out. So can you take us a little deeper into that and how that's changed for you over time? Where are your clients coming from now?
00:09:08 Caroline: Yeah, so now I'm very lucky that it's largely inbound. And I think the reason for that is because early on, I researched and cold contacted a lot of nonprofit consultants. And I focused my outreach way more on consultants than on nonprofit professionals or people who were in-house because I wanted to learn from them how they started their businesses, how they were running their businesses. But that ended up becoming my network, my circle. And I found that those people send me work that is already vetted because they're saying, hey, I've worked for this organization, they're great, or I'm working with them and I need you to come in and help with something. And that's become like, I would say 90% of my business comes from other consultants referring it to me.
00:10:05 Cindy: Ooh, love that. Which is also, one of the things I wanted to talk about, I was just saying to Jess, like I really wanna talk about partnerships and collaboration, because I feel like you do it really well, and I've seen you consistently partner and collaborate with other consultants. So let's look, like let's deep dive into some of that in terms of, obviously like at the beginning, it was strategic in terms of finding clients. How did you go from just like, oh yeah, I'll make a referral to, hey, let's actually put something out in the world together.
00:10:44 Caroline: Yeah, I think because I came from an agency, I enjoy working on bigger projects with other people with complementary skill sets. And I didn't want to lose that and just be in a vacuum doing my own thing all the time. And so I was naturally motivated to find people who are designers and developers and do sort of adjacent things to what I do and figure out like, how can I plug into these big projects that they're getting and be of service. And that's allowed me to do some bigger and more impactful work without working at an agency or starting one or hiring anybody, which is really fun.
00:11:33 Jess: What do you think makes a really strong partner and what makes like, for example, on both sides, the people you're reaching out to versus your relationship with other people. I'm also really curious about what some of the agreements look like. Like, is there a set referral fee agreement? Is there a promotional expectation? We've all been in group projects where one person does, majority of the work and other people slack off and that's never fun. So yeah, I guess I'm just curious about, kind of the structure and the form, especially if someone's listening and they're like, you know what, I wanna go try one of those.
00:12:12 Caroline: It's a great question. And it is a bit of a gamble. When you're going into a project and you've never worked with somebody before, there's two pieces. I have a referral program that I set up early on, and it's very rudimentary, I guess, in how it's set up. But I have a one page contract. And every time I meet another consultant or a firm, and I'm really impressed with the quality of their work, we both sign this contract that says we're gonna throw each other 10% back to send either a project or a retainer the other person's way. And that has worked so well for me as this nice extra revenue stream, but also to keep those relationships strong because I can see how we would have all fallen out of touch, but every month or so, if one of us is like sending a potential project to the other one, we naturally stay connected with each other.
00:13:12 Caroline: So I think last year I made, I don't know, around 10 grand from referrals, which is great for something that doesn't take a ton of effort and is benefiting them and strengthening our relationships. And then in terms of taking on projects with other people, I feel like I have to have heard from a client that really enjoyed working with them. And if I hear that the quality of their work and their process is great from the client's perspective, then I'm willing to try it out. And there are kinks that you have to work out with having different processes. But if they're organized and their project management is tight, and I've seen the quality of their work, it's gone really well most of the time. I haven't partnered with anyone where it was a huge mess and I really regretted it. So maybe I've just been lucky, I don't know.
00:14:18 Cindy: This is, so, okay, I have lots of questions, but I'm gonna start with a quick one. I have found that sometimes people in our sector, when it comes to, and I know Jess has experienced this too, when it comes to things like referral fees or even affiliate programs, they're kind of like, oh, you don't need to pay me, I'm happy to share it. Have you come across that? What do you say when people say those kinds of things? And does it affect your decision on who to partner with?
00:14:49 Caroline: I've had a few people say to me, oh, I usually just do that for free. But what most people say is, ooh, I really need to start something like that. Because we're all putting in that time and effort and we might as well all be paying each other for it. I think it feels good in both directions and I think it reinforces my belief that we all deserve to be paid for our effort and our time is valuable. And it's like, if you're getting a great project with a great client and making 90% more than what you're paying me or vice versa. I think everybody's happy.
00:15:34 Cindy: Totally agree. Love it. Okay. So my other question was there are people you partner with more regularly and even like, put out products together, like, you know, services together, which again, I think is fantastic. And I love, I know Jess has talked before about some of the ways that she's collaborated with people in like Black Friday's bundle and stuff like that. And I think it's really valuable for people to like, understand what goes on behind the scenes. Like, how do you structure that? How do you like, figure out who's promoting how, you know, is this something we want to keep doing? Where does the money come into? How does it get dispersed?
00:16:23 Cindy: I feel like this is kind of one of those black box scenarios where people are like, oh, partnership, it looks really good, or it sounds really cool. And beyond the referral fee, which I think is a low lift, right? That's kind of like, oh yeah, we'll kind of send business to each other's way. You're doing a lot more than that. You're going really deep with some partners. So talk to us a little bit about all of that. What are you putting out there that is a collaboration more than just like working together and how do you structure it?
00:16:57 Caroline: So I've done a couple of things where the other person is the primary or it's something they've already built and I'm coming in. And in those cases, I price it out like I would a client project and tell them, here's how much time I think I'm going to be contributing to this. And here's how much I'd like to make. So what can we do to hit this goal? So that's my, that's what I get. And then you're also getting what you expect and deserve. And that's when I'm kind of like the turtle on the whale's back or whatever, when something already exists. And then I'm thinking of. like this past holiday season was the first time I did this year end dream team collaboration with two other gals, one who focuses on social media and one who focuses on email.
00:17:56 Caroline: And that was very much a three-way split where we were like, we're gonna try to divvy this up so that we're investing the same amount of time. We thought about what we're good at, like Brynne's great at design, so she did all the design work. I wrote a lot of the promotional copy. We all were able to lend what we do for our clients to the collab, and then everything was a three-way split financially, so we all had equal skin in the game.
00:18:27 Jess: And I'm curious, like, what were the results of that? How did that go? I'm curious, like, how did that feel? Was it as powerful as you thought it was, combining like, or I guess maybe, multiplying your own audiences? Or was it more challenging in ways that you weren't expecting it? Like, what was it like?
00:18:51 Caroline: That one was a very cool experiment and we set a goal, but we really had no idea. None of us had ever done anything packaged like that. And we hit that goal, but our goal wasn't to make a lot of money for our time. Because in the first year of creating something like that, you're putting a lot of time into developing the thing, promoting the thing. So financially, it wasn't as valuable as if I had devoted those hours to client work. But in terms of growing our networks, we were on a lot of webinars. I think we each got 500 new email contacts from being on a few of those webinars and getting those lists, which is amazing. And they stayed like, largely stayed on our list. So that's hugely valuable. And if we do it again next year, we have the base and it'll take less time, less time, less time. So I would consider it a win, even though by the numbers, it maybe didn't, like, feel as lucrative as something else we might do.
00:20:06 Jess: Totally. And, you know, the next time, you don't have to build everything from scratch, which is always the best part.
00:20:13 Caroline: Totally.
00:20:13 Jess: Okay, so you just said the magic word. My ears perked up. You said email, email list. I know you yourself have an email newsletter. And funny is it my sound, I still run into nonprofit consultants, even the ones who do project-based work, who are not into email marketing. And I'm just curious about what your journey has been to starting your list. How do you grow your list? Is that a lucrative place to sell? Because I know you also show up on LinkedIn. Yeah, let's talk, email marketing for about my favorite topic.
00:20:52 Caroline: I have the same regret that I've heard you share before Jess, which is I didn't focus on growing my list soon enough. And it is so important. What I have done is stay true to what I feel like I can do well with email. I send my newsletter once a month. And I put a lot of hours into it. And it's a longer form piece where I dive pretty deep on a different topic every month. And that feels good to me. And then when I send shorter sales emails once in a while, I find they perform really well because I don't do it that often. So people are like, oh, okay. Like we don't get, like a personal email from her a lot. What is this? So far that balance has worked really well for me.
00:21:41 Caroline: I do have a lead magnet. It's a campaign planning workbook and I've pointed people there pretty much every time I've done a webinar or a virtual conference. It's an evergreen thing that I can always drive people to. That was very much worth the hours that I put into making it once. And I'm sure I should create something new and fresh at some point, but it's nice to have something that you can use all the time. And then I do, also publish my newsletter on LinkedIn. So it's kind of an interesting dance where I'm encouraging people to subscribe for the email version, but also I feel like if they'd rather subscribe on LinkedIn and the option is have them there or don't have them at all, I'm cool with that too.
00:22:34 Jess: I'm kind of curious why you said you should, we were just talking about the shoulds of the world. Why do you think you should have a new, fresh freebie? Like what's behind that?
00:22:46 Caroline: I think that there are a lot of other things I do and offer that could work well in that format. But you're right for calling me out on should [saying in that case] because there are plenty of things we all could do. I don't want that one piece to get stale if I'm relying on it for too, too long, but it is something that people can grab and get value out of any time, and that's great.
00:23:16 Cindy: Love it.
00:23:19 Jess: Okay, Caroline, we are back for another round of our rapid fire questions. You, up for playing?
00:23:25 Caroline: Yeah, let's do it.
00:23:27 Jess: Okay. As a New Hampshire woman, what is the perfect way to spend a winter day?
00:23:34 Caroline: Oh, today we had freshly fallen snow and went out for a walk in the woods. That's it.
00:23:40 Jess: Mmm. I bet the air smells so good. Okay. As a marketer, what is your favorite tech stack for business owners? Like what's your tech stack?
00:23:54 Caroline: I am a Squarespace, MailChimp girl because there's a natural integration there and that has worked well for me.
00:24:04 Jess: Okay, I wasn't expecting you to be a MailChimp girl. Okay, okay. And then my last question is, what is something you're looking forward to doing, experiencing, trying out when you're on maternity leave.
00:24:22 Caroline: Smuggling that little guy and also taking a break from work for the longest ever in my adult life. I think I may have some epiphanies or think about things in a new way.
00:24:37 Jess: I guarantee you well. All right, thank you for playing.
00:24:42 Caroline: Thank you.
00:24:46 Cindy: Now, people are listening, they obviously can't see, but even if they could see you, always see is like shoulders and up, you are getting ready to have a baby. Tell us a little bit about that. Like, what are your plans? I was just going to ask like, as you move forward, you know, generally speaking, what are your plans? But I think even more so, what are your plans knowing that there's a lot of stuff coming? You don't know what to expect. No one knows what to expect. Are you taking time off? How are collaborations or partnerships going to, how is, what's happening both going to affect your collaborations and partnerships, but also how might they support your goals if you're taking time or what else you wanna accomplish? Does that make sense?
00:25:39 Caroline: It sure does. And it has been a journey figuring out my own plan. As a team, truly a team of one, I do have subcontractors help me from time to time, but it was freeing and scary when it's just me trying to figure this out. I started by asking a bunch of other consultant mamas what they did, and they all told me they didn't take enough time and they regretted it. They all said I took 12 weeks or whatever and it wasn't enough. And I wish I took six months, even if that had been really financially challenging, it would have been so much better for me and my mental and physical health. And I heard that enough times that I was like, okay, I'm gonna make it work. So that's my plan is to take off March through until September-ish and then come back, hopefully come back at a good time to help with year end and some of the seasonal stuff that kicks in around that time.
00:26:46 Caroline: My state… I live in New Hampshire and there is a brand new parental family leave insurance type program that I'm paying into like $50 a month and I'll get 60% of my salary for three months. So that's something. It’s not–
00:27:08 Cindy: That's good.
00:27:09 Caroline: Yeah, it's not everything, but it's something and it's a brand new program with tons of problems and some loopholes. I think I was able to work to my advantage. But when I first looked, it didn't exist. And then I happened to check again, and there it was. So keep checking in your state like up until the last second to see if something like that has come to be. I have a couple of retainers where I have subcontractors who I've worked with before, who I trust, who are going to keep, run those retainers. And then I'll just make a little bit off the top to do the billing and be a resource and like, keep things afloat. But those will pretty much run themselves. And then other than that, I'm shutting everything down.
00:27:59 Jess: Number one, yay, New Hampshire. One of my clients is the Chamber of Mothers, who is the most badass group of moms working to get paid family leave passed in the United States. And one of the gals is from New Hampshire and she's a rock star. And I'm happy to connect you with her offline too.
00:28:18 Caroline: I would love that.
00:28:20 Jess: Yes, yes. And Cindy's over here in Canada just like–
00:28:25 Caroline: Laughing at us. Yeah, it is, it is.
00:28:29 Jess: But I'm just curious about when you say shutting it down for six months, I'm really curious. Does that mean like no monthly email? Like you're not pre-scheduling any content. Like, does that mean shut down or does that mean like I'm preloading some stuff and then shutting down with like a very savvy autoresponder that funnels into all the places?
00:28:53 Caroline: I am not going to put out content while I'm on leave at all. And I talked to a few other consultant mamas who invested a lot of time and money into creating all of that stuff and scheduling all of it in advance and then told me they didn't feel like it was worth the effort. I think it depends on your business and for people who do a lot of one to many stuff and are very active on a lot of platforms and send a lot of emails, I think that makes sense.
00:29:29 Caroline: But my whole marketing and comms strategy is very much a reflection of me. I'm a friendly introvert and I do mostly one-to-one and put most of my effort into those relationships. So I think in the summer, I'll be... I have a list of people in the summer who I'll be reaching out to, to reconnect with clients, partners, to let people know like, okay, I'm starting to think about this. What do you have for me? But I'm not going to do a newsletter. And I'm just going to be real about the fact that I'm truly taking a break.
00:30:12 Cindy: I love that. And like, own it. It's such a gift that you get to do because you work for yourself. So that's so beautiful.
00:30:22 Caroline: Oh, I am creating a list of referral partners.
00:30:26 Cindy: That I was gonna ask about how you're gonna manage referrals while you're off, because this is a great opportunity to build that, like continue to build that revenue without actually doing any work. So what are your plans?
00:30:40 Caroline: 100%. So what I'm thinking is I'm gonna create a webpage with my go-to referral partners and share that out a bunch before I go on leave and make sure all my clients have that list. If you need any of these people while I'm out, just tell them I sent you. Here's their contact information. I'm already doing a lot of that right now as people are asking me for things. And I'm already booked through March. I'm sending them, sending them away. Yeah, so I'm hoping that will be a source of revenue and a way to give people something so they don't just feel like the communication is shut off.
00:31:25 Cindy: Okay, I have a really tactical question and it might be that the answer is like, I don't care and it doesn't matter. But when you set up a page like that where it's like, you know, tell them I sent you, are they really gonna tell them I sent you? Do you know what I mean? Like, are they really gonna say, oh, Caroline said I should connect? Does it matter? I mean, obviously that's how you track referrals. So is it fine, like what, if it happens, it happens, great. If it doesn't, it doesn't, fine. Or do you have any incentive or way to be able to really track it, if, like to sort of incentivize people to actually mention that it is a referral?
00:32:07 Caroline: Great question. Typically I make all those intros. And then I track in a sauna every time I've made an intro and I look at that like once a month. And if I haven't heard anything, I might follow up and say, hey, did you ever end up working with each other? Though in my experience, everyone's always been very forthcoming when something does come through about letting me know. But during my leave, it's just gonna be like a trust and see because I don't really have any way to, and I feel like those clients and partners, everyone's aware of the fact that it works this way on the client side and they don't have a problem with it. And if they know that I'm going to get a kickback while I'm on maternity leave, like, I think that they will love it and be sure to use my name. You know what I mean?
00:33:07 Cindy: Okay, sorry, I love little nitty gritty details. How do you communicate that you get a kickback? Especially, what are your plans to communicate it in this more passive way? But even with active referrals, what do you say to people, to potential clients?
00:33:26 Caroline: On this webpage, I'm gonna put full disclaimer, I have referral relationships with these people. And I typically do that even when I'm making one-on-one intros too. I tell my clients like, hey, full disclaimer. I get a kickback from this, but I chose these people because I really trust them and the quality of their work. And no one's ever had it. No one has ever been sketched out by it.
00:33:55 Jess: It's also, it feels so aligned with, you know, I know we're not best friends, but what I know about your personality and your vibe online, and it just feels very kind of ease-ful in how you've designed it. So I'm so excited for you and congratulations again.
00:34:14 Caroline: Thank you.
00:34:15 Jess: You're welcome. So as we do with every client or client, you're not a client, every guest on this show, we love to ask what your confession is. So tell us something that maybe you have never quite said out loud or maybe you whisper to those only closest to you. What's your business confession?
00:34:37 Caroline: This confession, Cindy already knows because she's done some coaching with me. My confession is that I have tried many times in many ways over the last four years to niche down and choose a specialty area of focus for my business. And I have failed at that time and time again, and had periods of really feeling like a failure for not being able to figure that out because I'm a marketer and a communications person and I help organizations get clear about what they do and how to share that. And I felt like I couldn't do that for myself, even with like, really smart people coming in to help me. And then I've realized over and over again that I'm just a full stock marketer. Like I'm a generalist, my thing is that I see the big picture and how the platforms and pieces fit together. And getting tight on how I communicate that is the work that I need to do, not picking one platform or just one thing to do, if that makes sense.
00:35:52 Jess: Absolutely. And I love that for you. I think there's definitely different ways to niche. You know what I mean?
00:35:58 Caroline: Yeah. Yeah.
00:36:00 Jess: And it's good on you for recognizing that. I know.
00:36:01 Caroline: It's been painful figuring that out. Sometimes you feel like why can't I just pick something and do it?
00:36:08 Jess: Or the pressure, or we talk a lot about, you know, that side eye that's looking at what other people are doing and the pressure to be like the other people, you know, versus like looking forward. So good for you. That's amazing. Okay, as we wrap it up, tell us, where can people connect with you, learn more about your work, pitch themselves to be a referral partner, all the things.
00:36:34 Caroline: I'm kind of an old lady when it comes to my own marketing y'all. Email me Caroline@marketeronamission.org or LinkedIn is really where I live on social. And I love it and I'm on there all the time. Obviously check out my website and you can contact me there. But I would say LinkedIn is the best place to stay continuously and in touch and I love connecting.
00:37:03 Jess: Caroline, it was so nice having you on the show. We are sending you so much love and blissfulness as you enter into this new chapter. We're cheering you on, and we cannot wait to see you when you're back.
00:37:18 Caroline: Aw, thanks, mamas. You both inspire me.
00:37:24 Cindy: Thank you again for listening to the Confessions podcast for nonprofit coaches and consultants. If you enjoyed today's episode, which I sure hope you did, you can show your support in one of three ways.
00:37:35 Jess: Number one, post a screenshot of this episode to your Instagram stories or LinkedIn profile and tag Cindy and I so we can repost you.
00:37:43 Cindy: Number two, share this podcast with a fellow nonprofit coach or consultant.
00:37:48 Jess: And number three, leave a positive review on Apple podcasts so we can continue to grow and reach new listeners.
00:37:54 Cindy: And of course, make sure you subscribe so you can get the latest and greatest interviews as they drop every Thursday.
00:38:01 Jess: And to our fellow nonprofit coaching and consulting friends, remember, we're an open book and here to answer your burning biz questions.
00:38:08 Cindy: See you next time.