[SGC-38] Use Your Imagination For More Collaboration With Guest Prisca Benson

She's Got Content

If you've ever felt stuck watching your email list inch up by single digits or stay at the same number month after month, get ready to turbocharge your list growth! This week on "She's Got Content," we dive deep with Prisca Benson, the master of email list collaborations, who reveals how she turned her slow-growing list into a bustling hub of engaged subscribers.

Don’t Miss Inside This Episode:

• Creative Collaboration for Introverts: Discover the advantages of collaborative opportunities for those who might be more introverted. Melissa and Prisca share their experiences inside supportive communities that offer encouragement, accountability, and the opportunity to forge lifelong friendships with like-minded entrepreneurs in groups like the Collab Club and the Podcast Collaborative.
• Networking IS Relationship Building: Explore the significant role of networking in business growth as Prisca outlines the importance of making meaningful connections. Get valuable tips on becoming an attractive podcast guest and creating mutually beneficial relationships that can lead to a surge in your business exposure and email list size.
• The Art of Effective Email Communication: Listen as host Melissa Brown discusses the common fear of emailing a growing list and Prisca emphasizes the importance of regular communication to stay top-of-mind with your audience. Learn how to balance the influx of emails during collaborations and maintain a strong connection with your subscribers.
• Imaginative Ways To Collaborate: The sky is the limit with the types of collaborations you can create with business buddies. There are at least ten different collaborative ideas shared by Prisca during this episode. Be sure to take notes!

Links and products mentioned in today's episode:

Get Prisca's free gift: 3 Steps to Financial Freedom Guide

The Collab Club, hosted by Nicole Batey, is designed to help solopreneurs and small business owners connect and collaborate.

Podcast Collaborative Find a guest and be a guest on podcast shows.

ConvertKit Email service provider. Get a 14-day free trial to check it out.

The video mentioned by Prisca in this episode about Creator Network on Convertkit:

7 steps to growing your newsletter with Recommendations

SparkLoop The number one newsletter recommendation platform

About Prisca Benson

Prisca is a dedicated money coach who guides professional women towards financial freedom. She crafts simple, customized plans that allow her clients to enjoy life while securing their financial future, ultimately guiding them toward a peaceful relationship with their money. With years of helping people create their money plans and a proven track record of growing her own investment accounts by over $280k in just 6 years, Prisca brings firsthand expertise to her coaching practice. Join her on Instagram (@ourgreenlifenj) for daily strategies, inspiration, and behind-the-scenes insights on mastering your finances and living your best life.

Prisca's Website

OurGreenLifeNJ.com

Connect With Prisca on Social

Connect on Instagram: @ourgreenlifenj

About Your Host

Melissa Brown, MD - Coach, Author, Speaker, Teacher, and Podcast Host.

After leaving medical practice in 2009, Melissa discovered the online world and never looked back! After coach certification, she began a healthy lifestyle coaching practice online and quickly fell in love with blogging, writing, and content marketing.

Melissa believes that coaches have the power to change the world. Unfortunately, too many coaches get discouraged by the amount of content they need to create for marketing their business, which can lead to overwhelming and giving up on their dreams. There's such a ripple effect when a dream dies, so Melissa is on a mission to help coaches and solopreneurs overcome the overwhelm when it comes to content creation so they keep those dreams alive.

Your content can impact massive amounts of people and positively change the world. You've got content in there inside you; let's get it out into the world.

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TRANSCRIPT FOR THIS EPISODE:

Melissa Brown [00:00:05]:

Hello there, content creators. You're listening to the She's Got Content podcast, where it's all about creating content for your coaching business. I'm your host, doctor Melissa Brown, and I'm here every week to help you get your content out of your head, out of your heart, and out there into the world where that information and your services can impact the most people. Get ready to take notes today and then take action, content creators. Let's dive in with today's episode because you've got content to get out there. I am so excited to share my new friend, Prisca Benson, who I met in a collaborative group recently. And that's what we're going to talk about today, collaborations, because Prisca has actually grown her business incredibly with collaborations, and she is full of ideas about how to do collaborations and how to get the best benefit from it. So let's give a great big welcome to Prisca Benson.

Melissa Brown [00:01:07]:

Welcome, Prisca.

Prisca Benson [00:01:08]:

Thanks for having me. Like you said, I've been growing my business through collaboration. My business is called OurGreenLife, and origin story is that in 2020, when the whole world went amok Oh, yeah. I started a blog. It was a health and finance blog because I felt like a lot of that meshed well together. And then eventually, end of 2022, I decided to kind of niche down into money coaching. I felt like it was a way to really help people take unnecessary stress out of money, especially women. We are extremely anxious about our futures and scared to invest and all these other things that I want to help women kind of leap over that and get the confidence that I know we deserve when it comes to our money.

Prisca Benson [00:01:52]:

So that's what I've been doing now. The vast difference though, especially in the last year or so, is the collaborative aspect. Because when I first started my blog, I already had my email list and things like that, but it was growing so slowly because I was doing it all on my own. And then through the membership that we both were in, this is how I started coming up with all these ideas. Well, inspired by the ideas in there, and it further inspired other ideas to work with other business owners who are also trying to grow their business.

Melissa Brown [00:02:18]:

So you said you already had an email list when you started your blog. How did you initially grow that email list?

Prisca Benson [00:02:24]:

I had the blog, and then I have, like, a pop up, you know, on my blog that says, here's your freebie so people can download it off there. I also had it linked to my social media. I didn't promote it. I don't think even as much, but I did have it there. It was available for people to get. But, literally, my list was, like, at 20 for years.

Melissa Brown [00:02:44]:

So, like, cool. Okay. Alright. So that technique, the lead magnet from your blog and on social media was growing very slowly.

Prisca Benson [00:02:51]:

Yes.

Melissa Brown [00:02:52]:

Okay.

Prisca Benson [00:02:53]:

You gotta imagine too, especially with SEO content. You know, that kind of stuff takes a while to build up, and then you have to get your messaging down in order for people to have interest in what you're offering. So I think this that was just like a big learning process when you're doing it literally on your own.

Melissa Brown [00:03:08]:

Got it. Okay. So in 2023, you joined the collab club with Nicole Batey.

Prisca Benson [00:03:16]:

Yes.

Melissa Brown [00:03:17]:

I did too. I we both joined, I think, at the same time. Right?

Prisca Benson [00:03:20]:

Yeah. I believe so.

Melissa Brown [00:03:21]:

Okay. So tell everyone what's happened since you started in the collab club and and started doing these collaborations with people.

Prisca Benson [00:03:31]:

So just for background too, I'm a huge introvert. Okay? So

Melissa Brown [00:03:34]:

Okay. I can relate. I can relate.

Prisca Benson [00:03:38]:

These kind of things look foreign to me, like, trying to reach out to strangers, but the mindset thing was the first thing that helped. Being in a collaborative membership where people you're expected to meet with people and talk to people. So I felt like the barrier of entry in terms of my own feelings about it was largely decreased because nobody should be mad at me for reaching out to them and saying, hey. Can we partner up on something? That's literally why we're all here. Just a little tidbit for people who are interested. This is a great leap into doing that because, you know, everybody's here from the same place. We're all trying to grow our own businesses. So that was the first thing.

Prisca Benson [00:04:11]:

People would do intro posts, and I would look to see, okay, who has an audience that may overlap with mine. So that way we could probably support each other. What value can I bring to you and what value can you bring to me? And it's not always just as simple as the content that I'm doing, but just in our business experiences as well. When I was first starting this journey, I felt very, very green. And then when you talk to other people, there's people greener than you. So, like, they say, though, a rising tide raises all boats. That's the kind of thing that I was applying through the collaborative membership.

Melissa Brown [00:04:45]:

Awesome. Alright. So let me recap a little bit. You said you're a big introvert and Yes. Collaborations, especially these 1 on 1 or very small collaborations are like they're like honey for an introvert. It's the perfect place. It's like the perfect combination. And joining a group where there is the expectation of having collaborations is really where it's all about because you don't have to worry that somebody's gonna think you're weird or why they're reaching out or what's your second agenda, what's underlying all this, being suspicious of the fishy DM into your Instagram or an email that comes out of nowhere because we've all gotten those.

Melissa Brown [00:05:27]:

But when you say that you're part of a collaboration club or you Yeah. Meet up with someone who's well, actually, I I think I did the same thing. I looked to see who was overlapping with the same audience, and then I would send them a I guess it was a DM inside the collab club because it's held in the heartbeat app.

Prisca Benson [00:05:46]:

Yes.

Melissa Brown [00:05:47]:

And then I think a 100% of the people responded to me when I did that, and people would reach out to me. Same thing. It was like, this is a beautiful thing. The number of collaborations that I had since being in that group has tremendously increased.

Prisca Benson [00:06:02]:

Oh, yeah. And it's lifelong friendships, I feel like, too in business. So especially if you're new, your friends in the real world, quote, unquote, may not relate to what you're doing. You you could tell them what you're doing, but there's limited assistance they can give you because they're not going through things. And a lot of it is very sometimes it's very discouraging, and you really need someone who's been there, who's gone through it that could keep you encouraged. And so there's a couple people in there that I literally make sure I regularly text. Hey. How are things going with your business? They check on me.

Prisca Benson [00:06:31]:

They look at my content like, good job. None of my real friends do this. Okay?

Melissa Brown [00:06:34]:

Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's so lonely trying to be an entrepreneur out there when other friends and family, they just don't understand what you're doing. They just don't get it. Yeah. And they don't have the experience of what you're doing online. Yeah.

Melissa Brown [00:06:50]:

Yeah. There's someone that I have met through the Podcast Collaborative, which is another group where Yeah. You're looking for speakers and people are looking for, guests. So and we've grown into becoming accountability buddies and doing collaboration. You're right. Lifelong friendships.

Prisca Benson [00:07:08]:

Mhmm.

Melissa Brown [00:07:08]:

I'm curious. Tell us what kinds of collaborations you've actually done and how it's worked out for

Prisca Benson [00:07:15]:

you. So I first started off with participating in bundles. Mhmm. So with bundles, it's kind of an interesting thing because you wanna have a digital product that you are already selling or planning on selling or it's for a price. And during the bundle, you are then offering it to the bundle as a free product. The people who sign up for your product through the bundle, they will be on your email list, and then you get to nurture them to hopefully become a paying client.

Melissa Brown [00:07:41]:

Yes.

Prisca Benson [00:07:43]:

So that was the first thing I did, and that's a low barrier of entry for people who are just getting into the collaborative space. Usually want to find other groups. Facebook is robust with this. I don't know any place else where it's, like, as robust as Facebook to find these kind of opportunities. There's specific groups that people join where they are looking for guests, and so they advertise it and then you just sign up. You make sure that you're eligible and that you can meet the requirements. A lot of them have a very low barrier of entry even if you're just starting, may not even need, a large email list. But we wanna make sure, if you're gonna do this, that you are routinely emailing your list because otherwise, it'll be a waste.

Prisca Benson [00:08:22]:

You don't want to get people on your list and never say anything to them. So those are, like, the key things that you want to pay attention to when you're applying to a bundle.

Melissa Brown [00:08:31]:

Yeah. That is such a good point. I hate to admit this, but that I I wanna say a 100 years ago or and when I first started building a list and I started participating in bundles, this was back before bundles were really, really as popular as they are. But my list grew to, like, a1000, and I was afraid to email. It took probably literally a year before I sent an email out to people.

Prisca Benson [00:08:59]:

Oh, wow.

Melissa Brown [00:09:00]:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean and most of those people were like, who is this person? So, yeah, I have made that mistake. I'm not making that mistake now. But, yeah, I was actually challenged by a mentor of mine at the time to just write the first dang email. Yeah. Just write it. And then write another one a week later.

Melissa Brown [00:09:20]:

And then I said, you know what? I have to get into the habit, and I think it's been four plus years that I send out a Monday message email since then. So I haven't missed one through a lot of trials and tribulations, let's put it that way, and things that I'm like, oh, do I really have to send something out today? But I do. So, yes, you need to email the people that come onto your list through these collaborations.

Prisca Benson [00:09:45]:

I do wanna remain top of mind too, especially if you're selling a service. You want that if someone, maybe even if it's not that person that becomes your client, but maybe their friend. In my instance, I help people with managing their day to day money. So a friend complains about it. Like, oh, you know, I know someone. But if they never hear about you from me, they're gonna think of the other person that was in their email box. You know? Mhmm. Mhmm.

Melissa Brown [00:10:06]:

One of the tips that I've discovered works really well. When you're in a bundle, everybody's sending a whole bunch of emails to the people who sign up for the different products. If you send an email, either the one that delivers the product that you're giving away or the next one, and say, hey. I know you're gonna be inundated with emails. I don't want to add to that. I'll be back in your inbox and, you know, fill in the blanks. We a week, 2 weeks, or when this thing is over or when the the deadline has passed. So just know that I respect the fact that you're you're gonna be inundated, and I will be back.

Melissa Brown [00:10:47]:

Don't forget about me or something like that.

Prisca Benson [00:10:50]:

That is true. People do appreciate that. I even saw that recently in