Running and growing a creative business can be challenging, especially when doing it alone, but the good news is you don't have to do it alone. 

Collaborating with other artists is one of the best things you can do for your creative business for many reasons. 

So today, we will talk about why you should be collaborating if you are not already, or if you are, some collaboration ideas, how to run a collaboration, what expectations to set, how to make the most of a collaboration, and so much more. 

The benefits of collaborating as an artist

First off, let’s look at the benefits of collaborating and the many reasons why collaborations are so good for you as an artist.

Starting with the best benefit…

1. Supporting other artists

There is enough love to go around, and we can be about collaboration, cheering each other on, celebrating each other, and seeing what we can do to support one another. Collaborations are a great way to do that. 

It's “Hey, how can I help you? How can I do something to allow us to work together and support each other? We can do a piece of work together or something to promote one another that will combine our expertise and our audiences and all the things that we can do to support one another.”

It’s all about community over competition – and collaborating is how we do it.

2. Making friends & new connections

As an adult, it can be difficult to make friends. But the good news is that collaborating is a great way to do it! 

I have reached out to so many people and said, "Hey, I would love to do something with you in this weird and wonderful small business creative world that we have going on. If you are keen, I would love to work with you in some way to make that happen.”

We’ve gone on to love working together, getting to know each other and becoming such great friends. So collaborating really is such a great way to make connections, make friends, and build your community of people who support you, love you, and cheer you on.

3. Combining your creativity

We are already amazing on our own, but something magical happens when we combine our creativity with others. 

Sometimes, we work alone so much that we can get stuck in our ways; we can get stuck using the same tools, the same brushes, the same patterns, or whatever it is, which is why it is nice to work with someone else and see their creativity, and how your creativity can combine with theirs.

4. Combining your reach

If you have a thousand people in your audience and so do they, when you combine that, you are now both reaching two thousand people. That's just math, baby.

So if you have something you want to get out into the world, and they have something they want to get out into the world (or you have something you want to get out into the world together!), then combining that thing and sharing that with both of your audience is a really smart idea. 

5. Reaching a brand new audience

This is a big reason why a lot of people collaborate. When you collaborate, you get in front of the other persons audience (which is a whole big group of people who have never seen your work or heard your name before), but also, hopefully, if the collaboration goes well, they’ll be endorsing and vouching for you; because after all, they trust you and happily put you in front of their audience.

6. Opening yourself up to opportunities

Collaborations continue beyond the collaboration; You never know what will happen after a collaboration. You could work with someone, and that one collaboration could turn into a whole partnership or something totally unexpected.

There are so many opportunities and possibilities that could come from one collaboration. The potential is endless.

7. Not being alone

We often work alone as solo creatives and business owners. We are often alone, squirrelling away in our studios, which is why working with someone else is sometimes nice.

Even if it's just a little collaboration or working with someone once a week on something you're working on over time, just being with someone else and not being alone is nice. 

8. Trying new things

Combining creativity is great, but collaborating encourages you to try new things. There are so many ways to collaborate, so many ways to promote collaboration, and so many things to do. 

It's a great opportunity and an encouragement to try new things. Often, the person you are working with may do things differently from you, like how they do things behind the scenes or how their business is different. It does encourage you to try new things.

8. It’s also just really fun

A great benefit of collaborating is that it's something different. We do the same thing a lot of the time in our business. We are so heads down, like doing the ins and outs of our business and making things happen, which is why we have to do something different, try something new, and work with someone new. 

Collaborating is fun. I love that about collaborating! It is a change of space and gets you out of that “heads down” state of working in your business all the time.

My collaborations as an artist

Now, let’s look at some examples of collaborations that have helped me (and the person I collaborated with!) as a creative…

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Example 1: Combined exhibition

When I started as a creative, one of the first collaborations I did was a combined exhibition, where I showcased my work as a hand lettering artist.

Instead of doing a solo show, which, let’s be honest, is a lot of work to do: filling a whole art gallery with only your work, promoting it all by myself, and doing all of the work… Instead, I shared that with a whole group of people, and we did a combined exhibition.

There were about five of us, and we brought in more people to the opening and the entire exhibition because there were more of us, right? So instead of me just bringing, say, a hundred people, five of us brought 500 people. 

Example 2. Collab videos

Another example is collaboration videos, or what we used to call YouTube collabs, on my YouTube channel. What was great about these is that they helped me reach new audiences as we both promoted the video. 

This is the same now as collab Instagram posts. So if you collaborate on the Instagram post, or if you do an Instagram live together, or even a podcast episode, we are both on something together. You can both promote that piece of content together. It helps you reach a new audience because you both get together in front of a new audience.

Example 3. Brand collaboration

Another example is when I collaborated with another designer on a brand, and we created something completely different than I would have created on my own. They brought their unique talents, skills, art direction, ideas, thoughts and creativity to the project, and I brought mine. 

Combined, we were able to create something really special and unique that we wouldn't have done separately. 

Example 4. Podcast swap

Another example is podcast swaps. I recently had Lauren on my podcast (you can check out her interview here!).

And then in return, she had me on her podcast, Making Good (which you can listen to here!)

Not only was that an example of me trying something new, but we also reached new people because we swapped audiences and therefore reached a bigger audience because we combined our reach.

There are also plenty of other ways to collaborate as an artist. 

For example…

1. Collaborate on the art itself

You could collaborate on a piece of art, like a big painting, a sculpture, a mural, a collection of fashion, a full collection of prints and stickers, for example.

2. Collaborate through teaching

If you and another artist want to collaborate on teaching other artists or other creatives, you could teach practically what you do. For example, if you are a ceramicist, you can teach others how to make ceramics, or even how to market your art or how to make money from your art. 

So you could collaborate on things like a practical workshop, the ceramics workshop being one example, OR you could make a collaborative eBook together, run a webinar together, or go on a podcast together. 

3. Collaborate on marketing

I’m talking about promoting each other, sharing each other's work, and generally hyping each other up and getting each other's work out there. 

Again, this could involve podcasts, Instagram Lives, content centred on each other's work, or just general sharing and promotion. 

Those are the general ways that I would start thinking about how you can collaborate with other artists. Do you want to collaborate on art? Do you want to collaborate on teaching? Do you want to collaborate on marketing and promoting each other? 

So now, let’s talk about how you do the collaboration.

How to initiate the collaboration

This is the sticky part where people get lost in the “how” of collaborations–how will you split the money? How do you reach out to that person? How will the collaboration work?

Step 1: Reach out to the person you want to collaborate with

Ideally, this is someone you've at least engaged with before because it's unlikely that someone will want to engage with you or collaborate with you if this is the first time they've seen your name.

If you haven't talked to them before, it can be worth trying to reach out to them via DM. However, you should have at least been following them and engaging with their content for a while.

If you don’t feel like there’s anyone you’ve met yet that you could collaborate with, think about your goals for your collaborations (and, more importantly, your business) and then get yourself out there. Go to networking events, meet new people, and start making new connections so that you have people to collaborate with in the future.

Step 2: Make sure the person you’re reaching out to is someone who makes sense when it comes to your collaboration and business goals

This means that you’ll want to find someone doing work that complements yours. It could be the same or different from yours, but it complements yours in one way or another.

For example, Lauren and I both work with creatives, but we do different things and have slightly different approaches to our work. This works really well because we don't like directly competing with each other; we complement each other. 

So think about your goals and whether your work or your audiences complement each other. Do they have the same values as you? Does their audience align with yours, or is it a similar audience but different people? Ideally, you want to ensure it's a similar audience or the same audience but not the same people. Otherwise, if the same people follow you, then you're not getting the benefit of reaching new audiences or double the audience because it's just the same people.

Step 3: Reach out to them either with a direct or more simple, conversational approach

If you’re taking the direct approach, you’ll likely say something like “Hey, I’m Hollie, and I’m reaching out because I want to collaborate with you on this idea I had. Etc etc”.

If you’re already talking to them, it could be as simple as saying, "Oh, by the way, I reckon we should collaborate. What do you reckon?" 

It depends on how well you know them. If you're talking to them already, you'll be able to gauge how direct or casual it needs to be.

If you’re worried about pitching a collaboration idea to somebody more experienced or well-known than you are, or you're just worried about reaching out to people, then just know that the worst they can do is wait to reply or say no.

I have reached out to so many podcast guests, and I have been so surprised by how many of them have said yes and the others have either just not replied or said no. 

My advice? Shoot your shot. You never know what will happen. The worst they will do is not reply or say no. No biggie!

Another amazing designer and podcaster is Liz Mosley. Her podcast, Building Your Brand has a challenge called the Rejection Challenge, where she puts herself out there for this kind of thing and encourages other people to do it, too. 

The whole idea is that rejection isn't bad. It's a sign that you are putting yourself out there and trying to build your brand and your business. So, I highly recommend trying and checking out Liz's rejection challenge.

Step 4: Make sure the collaboration is aligned for both of you

Once you've reached out, they've said yes and are on board, you’ll want to choose some kind of collaboration that works to your strengths, appeals to both of your audiences, aligns with your businesses and fits in with your capacity. 

Work to your strengths. If you both hate video, don't make a YouTube video. If you’re good at hosting workshops and teaching people, do that. 

It’s important that you both feel that whatever you choose benefits you both equally. Make sure that whatever you're doing benefits both of you, is fair, and you both feel happy and like you’re both getting something out of the collaboration. 

Step 5: Figure out when you’re going to collaborate 

Are you doing it next week, next month, next quarter, next year? When do you want to make it happen? When are you both free? When does it fit in with your lives, your businesses, your year? 

Find a time that feels good for both of you and put it on the calendar!

Step 6: Set some clear expectations

There are some things that are important to outline when it comes to collaboration, such as assigning who will do what. Again, with this, you want to make sure both parties, both people, feel like the workload is fair and balanced and that one person doesn't feel like they are doing all the work and one person is doing nothing. Make sure your expectations regarding who is doing what are clear and that you are both happy. 

You also want to make sure you set up any communications and systems that you might need to make it happen, like task management. Are you going to use Notion to track your tasks? Who's going to manage that? Are you going to communicate via email, WhatsApp or Slack?

Also, make sure you agree on how and when you're going to do that and when you're going to work on it. For example, does it not matter when you work on it as long as your tasks are done by the due date? Or do you need to work on it together for an hour weekly?

Step 7: Decide how to handle the finances if that is relevant 

Are you going to pay them as a thank you for being a part of whatever you're doing? If you're going to be making money from it, how are you going to split it? How are you going to do that?

If there is money involved, you need to talk about it from the beginning, making sure it's clear.

Step 8: Consider putting an agreement or a contract in place (especially if there’s money involved)

Having an agreement or contract in place is a good idea as it protects you both and keeps everything you agree to nice and clear in front of you, so definitely consider that.

Step 9: Decide how you're going to combine your brands during this collaboration (aka my favourite part!)

Obviously, visually, you want to make sure that things come together. So, if you both have bold brands as creatives, you're going to have a lot of colourful creative things coming together.

I recommend seeing if your brands have any colours that work together well and combining those whilst finding a simple font that will work for both brands. You want to do this in the beginning so there are no clashes where you disagree over what parts of your brand you want to use, whilst the other person disagrees and wants to use specific parts of their brand, etc.

Make sure you have a good, cohesive plan for bringing them together from the beginning. 

Step 10: Determine how you are going to measure success ahead of time

Is it going to be the money you make, the audience growth you have, or how many downloads you get? You want to ensure you are aligned on what success looks like for your collaboration.

This will help if this collaboration doesn't go as well as you hoped. So if you didn't make a bunch of money, for example, but your metric for success was that you got out into your community and met some new people to get your work in front of, that's okay. That's a win, right? 

So you want to make sure that you Have decided and agreed on what our measurement of success is. What are we aiming for? What is the goal? Decide on that together and stick with it.

Step 11: Share and promote the collaboration!!

How to make the most out of your collaboration

Last but not least, let's talk about how to get the most out of your collaboration as an artist…

Keep it fun!

We've talked about many practical, technical, and boring things, but remember, this is all about collaborating, community, working together, trying new things, and being creative.

Prepare and use systems.

Prepare as much as you can and use systems to your advantage. Get as much stuff done in advance, and use systems, templates, and task planning as much as you can. It will help you both so much in the long run.

Promote it a lot.

Collaborations are so good at making the most of two audiences. Take advantage of that.

Cross-promote between the two of you, using all of your platforms. Utilise the features on those platforms that allow you to collaborate, like collaborative posts or tagging each other on different platforms. Send people to each other's profiles as much as you can! 

You want to also think creatively about how you can promote it. So again, we want to do as much as possible to make the most of this. So, could you get featured in different publications? You're collaborating and doing this cool thing. Could you sponsor a newsletter spot? Could you put it in your local community newsletter? There are so many different things you could try. So get creative!

Turn your one-off collab into an ongoing partnership.

If your audiences really enjoyed seeing you both work together and you both had a good time, you want to keep that going. Could you build momentum, build upon your creation, and keep that relationship going long-term? 

You could do the same thing again, or maybe if you did a workshop, for example, you could make that into an evergreen workshop that people could buy all the time, or maybe you could turn that one workshop into a full course or a podcast or a workshop series or so many different things.

You can turn one collaboration into an ongoing partnership. It doesn't just have to be a one-and-done thing.

So that’s it for this episode. I hope you’ve learned a lot about collaborating, from why they’re so beneficial to navigating a collaboration (and everything in between!)

The next step I would love for you to take this week is to think about your collaboration goals. Do you want to grow your audience, maybe break into a new industry, make some more money, or connect with your community? What is your goal? 

Then, I want you to make a list of five people that you want to collaborate with this year based on that goal and reach out to one of them this week—just one. 

And then find me on Instagram @makerandmoxie and tell me you've done it!