As small business owners, we often feel like we need to do it all.
When it Doubt, Co-Create
Certainly when it comes to our clients we want to be all polished and buttoned-up with the solutions we provide to respond to clients’ problems and needs. But we’ve come a long way since the “gotcha!” days of Darrin Stephens on Bewitched, where everything down to what he (or in his time–speaking of Women’s History Month—his wife) served for dinner, was on the line to please a client.
What I find today is that many clients prefer co-creation. Co-creation is an in-between approach, somewhere between a “do it all for you” model and a “coaching model”—telling someone what to do, and they do it themselves. Especially with mission driven businesses and life projects, co-creation allows an owner’s voice to be heard across their content.
What does co-creation look like?
Co-creation means creating together. For example, this post 5 Ways to Support Your Teenage Grandchild’s Mental Health Now was co-created by a 93 year-old grandpa, a young-adult grandchild and a marketer. The result is a deeply empathic and authentic article with an easy-to-read marketing structure.
Why Co-Create?
The wonderful thing about co-creation is that it looks different for everyone I work with. It might look like interviewing you, where you’re the star of your own live broadcast. It could be your initial draft or verbal story, and I turn it into a written piece of sharable, marketable content. Or even turning your idea into a published book or play shown in cities around the country!
No matter how you approach it, co-creation allows all involved to get ideas out of their own heads, by-passing any creeping self-doubt–the “who cares?” reflex. Working collaboratively with another is like where 1 + 1 equals 10.
Where can you ask for a partner? Who can you help? At a bare minimum, you will both have the benefit of social connection, and likely something new and brilliant brought to the world to boot.