We all know collaboration is great but can a completely different sector partnership turn into a huge business and community benefit? Well obviously I’m going to say yes and here’s why.
After being invited on the popular Tezlom podcast, I travelled up to Southport one sunny Thursday to talk openly and honestly with Gemma. I combined the long journey from London with four franchisee visits staying in Chester the night before.
After watching the brilliant Naomi’s class in Southport I drove round to the Tezlom head office for the recording. Before this recording Ryan showed me around and we got chatting about care homes and I mentioned how we’d been doing some intergenerational sessions at diddi dance across the UK. This sparked up more conversation and how we could do this together to reach out to even more settings through their network knowing what huge benefits the sessions have on not only the customers attending but the residents in the homes.
We smiled a lot, we knew the difference we could make to the communities. We also knew how our business ethos and motivations were aligned so working together was a no brainer. I’ll be honest though it wasn’t something I’d ever thought about before!
We followed up with online meetings and arranged the first session between diddi dancer Naomi in Southport and Tezlom’s client. The session was a huge success! We gained local and national press and will be rolling it out across the UK further this year.
“Today was a testament to the wonderful things that happen when franchises come together to support our community,” – Ryan Armitage, Director of Tezlom.
This was a chance collaboration but shows many things –
- Network! It was through attending the same franchising events that myself and the Tezlom team got to know each other
- Be open to opportunities – I could’ve easily let the long journey from London put me off saying yes to appearing on the podcast.
- Communicate – I often worry I’m too OTT, share too much, chat for too long however being this way has created not only great working relationships with many, it created this opportunity
- Be creative – blue sky thinking, thinking outside the box, whatever you want to call it, let your brain explore other ways of thinking and let ideas flow
- Be innovative, don’t be afraid to reach out to others with your ideas even if its never been done before, Be the first.
So reach out, communicate and and collaborate, beautiful things might just happen….
