Partner up and share the wealth

How strategic partnerships can generate loads of cash

The story of my Airlie Beach health seminar

Airlie Beach is a vibrant little town in North Queensland, nestled in amongst these awesome green mountains, and is the place you start from if you want to go sailing in the Whitsunday Islands.

I happened to be there for the year 2000 New Years Eve. It was so much fun, I decided to stay for another month, and generate cash by putting on a health seminar.

The town is the size of one suburb in a city.

It has one main street where all the shops are.

I simply printed up some A4 posters advertising my seminar, plus some little fliers the size of 1/3 of an A4 page.

Nothing fancy about the poster or flier, except that they were on yellow paper.

What I did

I simply walked down one side of the main street, and up the other, walking in the door of every business along the way.

I asked for the manager or owner, and told them I was putting on a seminar, and would they mind putting up a poster in their shop to let their customers know about it?

If they were happy to do that, I also left some fliers with them to put on their front counter, and to give to certain customers who they felt would be most interested in a seminar on health and energy.

What happened

2 of them started actively promoting me heavily to their clients.

They simply loved my business service, they liked me personally, so they went nuts over it.

From those 2 businesses I received a small flood of bookings for my seminar (at $60 each).

In return, I put a small ad about their business in the handout sheets I gave to participants at my seminar - advertising them for free to people who might not be customers of theirs, and building their brand awareness in their local community.

A win-win situation.

I think there were between 20 and 30 businesses altogether that I approached, and I got at least half of them to put a poster up in their shop, without even having to do anything for them in return.

I ended up making over $1000 from those 3 hours of work, about 90% of which was profit.

Special bonus:

One of the managers of the 2 businesses that went nuts and did heaps of advertising for me...

...also invited me out on a special canoeing trip across the bay at Airlie Beach, to a very isolated and sacred place that almost nobody knows about...

...where there were structures built in a secluded bay, amongst isolated trees, built about 100 years ago, when settlers had to live in wooden huts

This special place was built by the settlers about 100 years ago as a place they could come and pray and have a sacred service.

...the seats were made of old large stones, and there was an old, old Christian cross there, weathered and faded from decades of wind and rain.

Long grass grew over the stones.

And there was a feeling of peace and happiness there that simply released all the thoughts from the mind, and made me feel happy.

Awesome ambience in that place.

And that special experience came out of simply walking around asking other businesses to help me out.