Building Partnerships and Dancing Her Way to Success (Laura Sprinkle)

Making It: How to Be a Successful Online Entrepreneur

Episode summary: Laura Sprinkle always wanted the freedom of entrepreneurship. Sitting in a cubicle from 9-to-5 never felt right to her. When a client asked her to become their affiliate manager, she found her jam.

The two core values in Laura’s business, Rock Your Affiliate Program®, are partnerships and fun. She loves all things affiliates, all things partnerships. Her favorite thing when it comes to partnerships is taking completely opposite brands or topics and figuring out how they connect and how they can collaborate.

She does business differently, to the extent that she’s actually turned people off from her brand with her dance parties at the top of every group coaching call or team meeting.

In this episode, Laura shares her view of what “making it” means; how she develops partnerships and having fun; and the importance of partnerships outside of the online space so you don’t get to the end of your life and think, “Oh, well, I made millions of dollars in my business, but I have no friends.”

That would not be making it for Laura.

“Actually stepping away is going to speed up the timeline of me being able to solve that problem.”

“Making it, to me, is not something that you're cooked and done. It's really about being able to experiment and tweak and learn.”

– Laura Sprinkle

Guest bio:

Founder of Laura Sprinkle LLC and Creator of Rock Your Affiliate Program®, Laura Sprinkle is an affiliate partnerships strategist, and her business is founded on the power of relationships. As a creative launch and brand strategist, she combines intuition and sales funnel expertise to support soulful entrepreneurs in growing their businesses naturally.
She’s been honored to share her story in dozens of speaking engagements, podcasts, and interviews and loves to sit down over a cappuccino and talk strategy and soul.

Laura knows the difference between outward success and deep, heart-centered satisfaction in business because she’s experienced them both and can intuitively guide you toward your passion and purpose while making the money and impact you’re meant to. Her favorite things include helping business owners launch for profit in an authentic way, cute coffee shops, and autumn leaves.

She’s the author of She's Got Guts: Your Personalized Guide to Self Healing and the host of The Laura Sprinkle Show, a podcast for entrepreneurs who know that they want to make a huge impact on the world while having fun and being true to themselves.

Resources or websites mentioned in this episode:

1. Mirasee
2. Laura Sprinkle’s website
3. Laura’s LinkedIn
4. Laura’s Twitter
5. Laura’s Facebook
6. Laura’s books
7. Laura’s podcast “Laura Sprinkle Show”.

Credits:

• Guest – Laura Sprinkle
• Associate producer: Danny Bermant
• Producer: Cynthia Lamb
• Assembled by: Geoff Govertsen
• Executive producer: Danny Iny
• Audio Post Supervisor: Evan Miles, Christopher Martin
• Audio Post Production by Post Office Sound
• Music soundscape: Chad Darnyelle Snavely

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Music and SFX credits:

• Track Title: Sweet Loving Waltz

Artist Name(s): Sounds Like Sander

Writer Name: S.L.J. Kalmeijer

Publisher Name: A SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTION

• Track Title: The Sunniest Kids

Artist Name(s): Rhythm Scott

Writer Name: Scott Roush

Publisher Name: A SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTION

• Track Title: Everybody Loves Robert

Artist Name(s): AFTERNOONZ

Writer Name: Dean William Palya, Jr.

Publisher Name: BOSS SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTIONS

• Track Title: Happy

Artist Name(s): Empyreal Glow

Writer Name: Mike Payne

Writer Name: Chris Bevins

Publisher Name: A SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTION

Episode transcript:
I'm Laura Sprinkle and you're listening to Making It! I run a business where I help entrepreneurs create profitable partner programs.
My email signature, it says "Partnerships first, fun always." So those are two of my company's values. The fun is something that people notice all the time right away, whether it's on my website or I'm doing a guest interview or hopefully you've picked that up in this right now. And I've got a little pinata behind me when you watch me on video and that is also part of my magnetization within my brand. I love having fun. I believe that life is an experiment and life is about having fun and that's me personally. I've actually turned people off from my brand with that and funnily enough, a lot of those people are based in the UK and they don't see fun as part of business and I do dance parties at the top of every call and so I can be a lot for people and I'm so glad that those humans have found other people to learn from so that I don't have to feel bad about my dancing. And I can attract the people who are like, yes, you do business differently, you bring in that human element and that fun element into the work.
Making it to me really means being able to bring your whole self to the table. By the table I mean every single day of your life. So for me, having fun is not simply I'm going to have a dance party at the beginning of every team meeting and every client call, not one on one client calls, but any groups teaching I do, I always have a dance party. It's also when I'm doing the dishes, being able to turn on music. It's knowing that I'm not a morning person, despite what all the million personal development books say about needing to get up at 4AM and so being able to sleep in and not have any meetings until at least 10AM Eastern Time. Making it to me is not something that you're cooked and done. It's really about being able to experiment and tweak and learn and so making it to me is about that journey. It's about recognizing that we're in it for the long haul and some days it's going to be really freaking hard and some days it's going to be awesome and being able to celebrate all the things in between.
I had an internship in college for a corporation that is in the Department of Defense space. Not that that matters. But you know, having to be at the office and sit in a cubicle from 9 AM to 5 PM and, no matter if I wanted to go faster or slower to be is sort of limited by what the other people in the company were doing that just never really felt right to me and I've always wanted the freedom of entrepreneurship. So people have offered many times over for me to join somebody's company as an affiliate manager. And my favorite part about partnerships is continuing to expand and grow and meet new people and figure out how to piece together new brands and new ideas. So my favorite thing when it comes to partnerships is taking seemingly completely opposite brands or opposite topics and figuring out how they connect together and how they can collaborate.
I was doing consulting and also management for six and seven figure launches and I had just wrapped up with a client managing their entire launch, so their entire webinar sequence and they realized that they really wanted a full time person, a full time project manager on their team. So they hired for that role. I've never wanted to work for somebody full time as an employee. So I declined and then they came back and asked me to be their affiliate manager since I knew the laundry inside and out. I didn't really know what that meant, but I said, sure, let me just give it a try, it'll be fun. And I really found my jam. So that was in 2017 and I fell in love with all things affiliates, all things partnerships because I got to talk to people, I got to have fun and I got to use the strategic side of my brain while just meeting so many incredible humans.
I feel like my personality type as if I'm not jumping into something new... I go like a little bit nuts and so for me it's often a blessing, sometimes a curse, that I love jumping into those things and always learning and I'm willing to say I kind of have no idea what I'm doing, but I think I can do an awesome job, so let's just go for it. So it's really in my blood, I would say to step into something without knowing all of the, you know, the path ahead. When I first started an online business, I actually had a health related business. I was a health coach after studying and learning about gut health to heal my own gut.
And I was a few years into that experience and I had written a book and I had gotten an email list and I had a course out called, She's Got Guts. And one day I looked around and I just realized I don't really care what other people eat. That's literally what I sent an email to my list and I said, I don't care what you eat and not in a rude way, not in a I don't want you to be healthy way, simply that I had studied that and grown that business for personal reasons to heal my own gut. And at that point, the most exciting part of my business for me was the marketing and creating the website and brainstorming on launch ideas. And so I didn't know exactly what I was going to do, but I knew that I didn't want to or couldn't answer any more questions about, "What should I eat and what probiotics should I take?" And in the health journey. And so essentially burned that down and started again. And a lot of people actually came on the journey with me and they had been attracted to my brand for me and not really because if they've gut health stuff. So when I went into branding and web sites and then ultimately into partnerships, I actually still have probably about 200 people that have stuck with me through all of it.
I've traveled extensively and lived in various countries since the age of 11. Well I didn't live in another country until I was about 20, but I've traveled since the age of 11 and really meeting people that have a different perspective from me is one of the reasons why I can take businesses that are seemingly completely different and make connections between them. Because as I've traveled and I've met people from other cultures... so often I'm looking for, 'okay, yes, we're so different in these ways, but we're also really alike in this one way and it's really human element between us.'
The more that we can bump up against something and then step away from our business and actually take that vacation or actually go on that hike or that walk or get out in nature, go sailing, whatever it is, the more that our subconscious brains are going to be working on that problem. I'm actually learning so much about this right now from the Flow Research Collective. And when it comes to flow states and that's really being able to come up with answers to problems that we're having; we actually need to get out of our surroundings and we need to get off the computer and out into the world and we're going to make connections that we wouldn't have been able to make otherwise.
I don't know if you watched the series House, that medical show? But so often he'll be having this like unsolvable medical drama and then he'll be out to dinner and all of a sudden he's like, oh my gosh and leaves the table because he's made some connection based on his conversation at dinner based on the way the food is placed on the plate or something like that. And it can solve the medical issue. And those things happen in our business. And so when we're sitting there at the computer and we're looking at the screen and we're like struggling with something, that has been so huge for me to realize, that actually stepping away is going to speed up the timeline of me being able to solve that problem.
I think one of the mistakes that I made early in my business, when it came to partnerships out of the business sphere, was that I really cut off a lot of the friendships that were not an online business space. And you may have heard the crabs in the bucket metaphor of people trying to pull you down or... it is really nice when you walk into a room of online business owners and you're all speaking the same language and you all understand struggles and trials of being in that world. Just like I'm sure that it could be the same in any other industry that you might work in, to have that camaraderie with people. And that is one of my regrets was that I didn't nurture as much my offline relationships at that time when I was getting things started because just like getting out into nature or getting off the computer or taking a vacation can be so great for your business and your life, let's be honest, not everything is about business success. But also your friendships that are outside of the business space.
My best friend works with trees and doesn't know anything about webinars and I love that we don't have to talk about about metrics when we're hanging out, we can just be real humans. So I think that developing partnerships outside of the online space is so important. But also for your life in general, you know, I don't want to get to the end and be like, oh well I made millions of dollars in my business, but I have no friends. That would not be making it for me.
I'm Laura Sprinkle and this is Making It! You can find me at laurasprinkle.com. Okay!

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