Reflections on Business Collaborations One Year After Joining the Co-Promotion Club
In January of 2025, I made the bold decision to quit social media as my main marketing platform. I'd spent 2 years posting daily and 2 more years posting haphazardly and I was over it.
I hate social media and don't even use it personally, so why was I spending 10+ hours a month on a marketing method I genuinely hated?
With assistance from a coach, I decided that since most of my clients came from referrals and business collaborations anyway, I would pivot my marketing focus to aligning myself with fellow small business owners who offered services complimentary to mine and had a similar client base.
The idea was that I would increase my visibility and gain business relationships that would lead to referral partnerships.
The Pivot to Collaborations
As I made the shift from joining any and all collaboration opportunities to be being more strategic and selective in where I spent my time, I received a marketing email from someone who subtly invited me to learn more about the Co-Promotion Club by attending on Open House where we'd talk about growing a referral network.
And it's changed the way I approach collaborations with other founders and entrepreneurs completely.
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The Types of Business Collaboration I Tried Before
Collaborations can take many forms, but the ultimate goal for any small business owner is to use them as ways to grow their visibility and impact. Before finding the Co-Promotion Club, I tried a number of collaborations strategies that just didn't work.
I tried:
Freebie swaps
Participating in bundles
Affiliate marketing
Giveaways
Teaming up with other entrepreneurs to be accountability partners
Guesting on any podcast I could find
And that really just scratches the surface.
Regardless, I struggled to find a type of collaboration that felt right for me and my business.
What I Really Wanted, But Couldn't Name
I'd joined several communities, attempted to form business relationships, and had a few successful collaborations, but I hadn't found where I felt comfortable all the time and really belonged.
I just kept finding people who were:
not as invested as I was
not inclusive or welcoming of all people
not aligned with my goals or the goals of my ideal client
only interested in themselves
only interested in complaining about how hard running a small business was
I struggled to find the people who wanted to take action and make big moves toward growth.
I didn't necessarily need friends, but I wanted:
a community with shared goals of business growth.
to be surrounded by people who were as invested as I was in any marketing effort.
a place I could fee safe to be myself, but also be challenged to try new things.
a truly collaborative environment.
Then I Found the Co-Promotion Club
Building partnerships in business requires strategic action. All parties need a shared goal, but also trust in each other. And at it's core, that's really one of the foundational messages of the Co-Pro Club: in order to truly have someone as a referral partner, you must build trust in them first.
How It Was Founded
Janna Carlson founded the Co-Promotion Club in 2024 after working to build her referral network. She'd left social media and all the other tedious and time sucking other methods of marketing because referrals was what was bringing her the most money in her design business. As she searched for the right partnerships, she realized that finding the right people, the ones that not only complimented her services, but also aligned with her values, beliefs, and work ethic, was not as easy as she thought it would be.
Click here to get The Co-Pro Club Insider, Janna's bi-monthly newsletter, to learn more about how to build a supportive referral network.
Not Just a Networking Group
It's rather difficult to explain exactly what the Co-Pro Club is to people who are not inside it. Technically it's a membership, but it feels like a community. Members share knowledge, support one another, and genuinely want to support you and see you have a successful business.
The premise is that you co-promote one another through a variety of methods that you decide upon alongside another member to pose as a low-stakes opportunity to begin to foster strategic partnerships. These co-promotions, or collaborations can lead to further relationships and even referral partnerships as you build trust with one another.
How it Works
Ways of co-promoting are limited only by your imagination and by what the other person is willing to do alongside you. I've done things as simple as co-working and as in-depth as co-planning and delivering workshops together. Nothing is off limits so long as both people create value and both people feel the experience is successful.
We do have monthly meetings in groups of 6-7 where we discuss topics related to our businesses and get to know the other members in greater depth. Additionally we have a Slack community where we support each other and can connect between meetings. And while we're all there as part of our marketing efforts, everyone is genuinely interested in mutual growth and fostering a culture of collaboration.
Initial Thoughts on the Co-Pro Club
In true Co-Pro fashion, I found the Co-Pro Club through fellow member, Courtney Fanning. I'm on her email list and she'd shared a snippet in the bottom of her email, which I almost didn't see, about an Open House to join if you were interested in building a referral network that you could trust. Since I'd JUST decided this was going to be my main marketing platform; it felt like fate.
What Drew Me In
I'd been joining networking calls here and there and getting nowhere. In fact, I'd experienced one too many calls where the other person was mostly focused on plugging in their business with every breath they took and selling to me rather than trying to build relationships and meeting people they could refer.
While I was a little nervous in the beginning, as I always am meeting new people, I was intrigued by the idea of a group of people whose goal was to get to know each other for the sole purpose of finding people they could refer and be referred by. It was incredibly refreshing knowing none of us were going to have to show up and pretend or guess why we were each there.
My First Impressions
Before we met, Janna send an email with exactly what she was going to ask. As an introvert and someone who stumbles over their words when nervous, this was extremely helpful to me so I could prepare what I was going to talk about. (If you're also someone who freezes up at even "fun" icebreaker type questions, you'll appreciate this.)
When I signed on, the group was about 20 people and it felt rather cozy instead of intimidating. Expectations were clear and everyone complied with expectations and was genuine, something I hadn't experienced much of before. Janna was laid back and reserved in comparison to some of the facilitators of many of the other groups I'd joined recently, which was refreshing because much of their energy always felt forced and unrealistic. The atmosphere was comfortable and it was so much easier to talk to people in a smaller space where we were all given equal opportunity to speak, and I'd been able to know exactly what I wanted to say before ever entering the room.
And while I knew this was going to be a sales pitch, because she does run a business, it never actually felt like one. She was genuinely interested in helping people get to know one another and fostering relationships.
Why I Joined
I left the meeting feeling inspired and confident about the future. All successful partnerships begin with knowing the right person to connect you to them, and I felt so comfortable with Janna and the other people I had met that I felt confident it was a space I was supposed to be in.
The membership was presented to me, not as a guaranteed referral network, but as a place to collaborate on projects or joint marketing campaigns with similar business owners so that we could gain trust in one another. The sell was meeting people that I knew would be people I could trust that I could get to know better through creating and maintaining relationships as we went along.
How Being in the Co-Pro Club Changed How I Collaborate
New View on What it Means to Be Collaborative
Clearly my previous collaboration ideas had gotten me nowhere. No people I trusted, no new clients, and not even feeling good about the effort I put in. I knew something had to change, and when I began co-promoting and knew it was what I'd been looking for.
Co-Promotion vs Collaboration in Building Business Partnerships
Collaboration helps all those involved in the collaboration, but that does not mean it must be equal. Strategic partnerships involve leveraging the strengths of all parties to achieve a similar outcome, building camaraderie along the way, and that's exactly what co-promotion does.
While it sounds like the same thing, it's not. At least, it's not in how I've seen it play out in real-life. "Collaboration" has always been a group of people working together for a summit or a bundle or freebie swaps, but not everyone is always truly invested, putting in the same amount of effort, or even have similar goals. Collaboration is more about the end result, whereas co-promotion is more about getting to know the people you work alongside. Collaboration is a means to an end and co-promotion is the beginning of the partnership.
Everything I do now is much more intentional, strategic, with people who I actually WANT to collaborate with and co-promote. And I've gotten to know some really cool people along the way who have diverse perspectives and expertise.
A Few of the Co-Promotions I've Done
Since being in the Co-Pro Club, I've done a number of co-promotions including:
Sharing newsletters of businesses that align with my audience's goals and I even enjoy myself.
Interviews that led allowed me to write blog posts featuring businesses I actually trust and feel comfortable sharing with my audience like this one about a brand strategist, this one about a bookkeeper, and this one about an outsourced marketing director.
A co-hosted workshop where we brought in more viewers than expected and had a great time working together.
A Quick Note on Referral Partnerships
As I joined the Co-Pro Club to build a referral partnership, I feel I should spend a sentence or two on referral partnerships. I've been able to connect with people I have referred my clients to and I've been referred by several other members of the Co-Pro Club to potential clients. I've definitely accomplished my goal!
Final Thoughts
Looking back on the past year, I realize that more visibility and more collaboration isn't what gets you in the right business circles or more clients. What really measures your business success and the success of your collaboration strategies is who you do them with.
Finding the right people to collaborate with, the ones you trust, is a better way for business owners to collectively succeed. It's okay to be selective about who you hang out with: in life, in business, and especially in effective collaboration.
More About Janna Carlson, Founder of the Co-Pro Club
Feature an image here. Use similar to the one with Aneisha & Jamie.
With over 25 years of experience running her own businesses — first in music education, then in design — Janna founded The Co-Promotion Club in response to a need she was experiencing in her own work.
In early 2024, while struggling to book enough design work, Janna realized that none of her broadcast marketing efforts were actually bringing in clients; all of her clients came from direct referrals. So she quit social media, blogging, and podcasting, and dedicated 2024 to building her referral partner network.
That year, Janna realized how difficult it is to build a trustworthy referral partnership unless both parties are equally invested. She began to hunt for a space where online service providers were committed to building partnerships together, and when she failed to find it, she decided to start her own.
The Co-Promotion Club began as a way for her to build her own referral partnerships more effectively, and she launched it to the public in December of 2024.
Successful Collaborations Start with Taking the First Step
Members of the Co-Promotion Club are interested in learning from each other, finding and sharing quality referrals, and generously supporting each other. Whether you want to do multiple co-promotions a month or just join the monthly meetings that month, the Co-Promotion Club is the place to find other people who are growing values-aligned businesses along side you and understand the value of relationships in building a business.
Join me in the Co-Promotion Club and start with a Mini-Membership because the first step to finding successful collaborations is to find the right place to collaborate.
If referrals are your only priority, the Co-Pro Club is likely not for you. It has taken me a year to see a monetary return from the Co-Pro Club, but that isn't what I'm measuring the value of it or my success because of it on.
Not ready to join just yet? Sign up to get Janna’s newsletter, The Co-Pro Insider, to learn more about how to build a supportive referral network.
FAQs About Business Collaboration
What is business collaboration and why does it matter for small businesses?
Business collaboration brings two or more businesses together to achieve a common goal. Small businesses working together often offer complimentary services in order to combine resources and expertise from each business in an effort to support other businesses and fuel their own marketing and business growth. These partnerships help small businesses to gain access to new audiences and build relationships with other entrepreneurs that can refer them to their own clients or customer bases and support them in a variety of other ways.
What is co-promotion and is it different from collaboration?
Technically, they are not different; however, I feel they are different because all the spaces I've been under the guise of collaboration have not been anything like the intentional co-promotion I've done in the Co-Promotion Club. See the section Co-Promotion vs Collaboration in Building Business Partnerships above to see more on my thoughts on how the two differ and why Co-Promotion is WILDLY superior.
What business collaboration tools help make partnerships run smoothly?
CRMs and any place you can keep track of your notes about a partnership, will help it run smoothly. I personally use ClickUp to track my relationships, including my business partnerships. However, I find that ClickUp is overwhelming for many people, so I created an Airtable template so businesses can achieve their collaboration goals, track every single part of their efforts, and document the people and businesses they want to keep in touch with after a collaborative effort has ended. If you have everything you need for a collaboration in one place, you begin to build a system for collaboration that allows makes you organized, keeps you from forgetting things, and reminds you to follow up. If you're struggling to track your collaborations, my Collaboration Station Airtable Database is easy to use, comes with how to videos, and can be used fully on the free Airtable plan.
Do I have to be on social media to make collaboration work?
Absolutely not. I'm barely on social media and most of the other people I talk to now are rarely on social media. Most of us are using email as our main platform and the collaborations as ways to grow our audiences. If you decide to use social media, it's an added bonus, but unless your goal is to grow your social media following, there is no reason you HAVE to be on social media to an effective collaborator.
Is the Co-Promotion Club right for my business?
The Co-Promotion Club is welcoming to business owners of all backgrounds who have been in business or been running a business for three or more years. The businesses that benefit the most are those that are looking to give as much as they take. If you are only looking for referral partners, not able to show up generously, provide support, and build real relationships with other business owners, this isn't the right membership for you. However if you've been around a while, and have the time and capacity to give and receive support, then you will find success then you will find success with the Co-Promotion Club.
