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What can you gain from collaboration?  Do you avoid working with others because you feel it will distract you from your own professional goals?  How can collaborating help you reach your goals faster?  Do all forms of collaboration involve beginning a new project with someone else?

To answer these questions, let’s discuss the meaning of collaboration.  Collaboration describes two or more individuals who work together toward a common goal.  Whether that goal is to create a product or service, to educate people about a particular concept, or to simply promote each other, if you are working with another person, you are collaborating.

So how can collaborating help

you move your business forward?

Working with others is a great way to gain more exposure.  You will not only be seen by your own target market, but also by the target market of the person with whom you are collaborating.  Most likely, you will both be promoting your project.

Collaborating will also teach you new perspectives, ideas, and practices.  When you work with another person, you will get an inside view of the way they operate, more knowledge about that person’s target market, and see how they promote to that market.   You can learn a lot from working with others.

There are different levels of involvement when it comes to collaboration.  Here, we have grouped collaborations into 5 categories, for the purpose of simplification.  However, the possibilities for types of collaboration are as vast as the various types of business endeavors, if not more.

1) Business Partnerships –This is most likely the highest form, because a business partnership may require the most time, effort, dedication, and focus.

2) Small Project Management – This is considered a temporary project, even if the promotion of that project continues long after the project itself is complete, because the bulk of the work for the project itself will be ‘finished’ at some point.

3) Masterminds – If you are part of a group of entrepreneurs working together for the common purpose of helping each other succeed in their own business, this mastermind group fits the description of collaboration.

4) Brainstorming – If you know someone whose knowledge will improve a product or campaign you are creating, invite that person to brainstorm ideas with you.

5) Cross-Promotion – This is the most indirect form of collaboration that sometimes begins with one person promoting another, without any expectations from that person to ‘return the favor’.  However, the moment they begin to promote your work, you are collaborating, (even though you do not actually sit down together and brainstorm, plan, etc), because you are, in essence, working together toward the common goal of giving value to your community and promoting each other.

Richard Goutal, a graduate of Coaching Cognition, is an expert collaborator who helps other entrepreneurs learn how to collaborate successfully.  He comes from a long background of teaching, and enjoys taking concepts and making them easy and fun to learn.  His website, www.collaborationsimplified.com, is designed to give entrepreneurs the opportunity to learn from his expertise and apply the lessons to their own business.

You may have read his recent article about the No Excuses Summit in Vegas this summer (2010), in which he describes his experience of self-discovery as a leader in the industry.  In our interview (below), Richard discusses this article, how collaboration in the form of cross-promotion helped him get noticed, and the incredible response to the article.

Richard Goutal wrote another insightful article in which he compares collaboration to schoolyard children at play and discusses the lessons we learn as children in the world of play seem to be re-learned as adults in the world of business.  Reading this article will help you tap into those lessons learned long ago and apply them to your business today!

As a brand new coach with Coaching Cognition, Richard Goutal is going to be taking his expertise to a new level by helping you discover your own methods, strengths, and skills that can be used to develop and maintain successful and profitable collaborations.

So be sure to find Richard Goutal at Coaching Cognition so that you can work with an experienced entrepreneur and trained coach.

The interview with Richard Goutal was absolutely enthralling.  You will gain new insight on how collaboration, specifically cross promotion, will help you move your business forward.  It was an honor to interview Richard, because he brings such a unique perspective to his work.  The presentation of his articles, videos, and webinars allow his audience to do more than just watch, listen to, or read his work… you experience it.  We are so proud to have an industry leader like Richard Goutal coaching with us at Coaching Cognition!

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