Collaboration Over Competition
Trade audiences instead of fighting for them — swaps, JV launches, and peer collabs grow you for free.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 82%
Solomon champions collaboration over competition as a growth engine, especially when you lack a budget. The move is to trade audiences with people who have similar audiences — through podcast swaps, Instagram story shares, joint giveaways, lives together, or a JV (joint venture) launch where two creators promote each other's courses and split the profit. She stresses the relationship-based over the transaction-based mindset: go out of your way to help others and network genuinely. Paid communities and coaching groups are ready-made pools of peers. She pairs this with a specific engagement tactic — ask closed, answerable questions and let people behind the scenes — because open-ended asks feel impersonal and get ignored.
Origin
Solomon used these tactics when she was starting out around 2013–2015, doing 'Instagram swaps' where she and a peer would take over each other's pages for a day to reach new audiences, and says creators have even more opportunity to do this today.
Core principles
- 01Collaboration beats competition, especially when you have little money.
- 02Trade audiences with people who have similar audiences.
- 03Focus on relationship-based rather than transaction-based networking.
- 04Paid communities and coaching groups are ready-made pools of collaborators.
- 05Engagement grows by asking specific, answerable questions and letting people in behind the scenes.
How to run it
- 1
Find similar-audience peers
Identify creators on a similar path with similar audiences, including inside paid communities and coaching groups you belong to.
Pro tip Any course or coaching group is a ready-made pool of potential collaborators.
- 2
Propose an audience swap
Arrange to appear on each other's platforms — the modern version of the Instagram page swaps Solomon did early on.
- 3
Run joint ventures
Do a JV launch where you share your course in their world and they share theirs in yours, with a profit share; or podcast swaps, story shares, and joint giveaways.
Pro tip Lives together, like Solomon does with Jenna, drive a lot of engagement.
- 4
Lead with relationships
Prioritize the relationship-based aspect over the transaction — go out of your way to help others and network genuinely.
In the wild
Before Instagram stories existed, Solomon and similar creators ran page swaps — she would take over their page for a day and they would take over hers — to get in front of each other's audiences.
→ Built her following, email list, and engagement with no ad spend.
Solomon and Jenna do lives together when promoting their courses, combining audiences in real time.
→ Generates a lot of engagement and works well as a current collab strategy.
Common mistakes
Treating peers as competition
Viewing similar creators as rivals forgoes the free audience-trading growth that collaboration unlocks, especially when money is tight.
Asking open-ended questions
General, open-ended asks feel impersonal and get ignored; specific yes/no questions invite people to actually engage.
Is it for you?
Best for
Course creators and creators with similar-sized audiences looking to grow reach and email lists cheaply.
Not ideal for
Solo operators unwilling to build genuine peer relationships or reciprocate value.
From the transcript
“Collaboration over competition, trade your audience with other people who have similar audience.”
“you could do what's called a JV launch, a joint venture launch where you go into their world and share your course, they go into…”
“Don't have it be an open-ended ask... you've got to be really strategic with what you're asking.”
From the episode
Julie Solomon: How to Grow Your Personal Brand
Julie Solomon