Partnerships On Purpose

Marie and Anne-Marie open up their own market research process — and the surprising decision it led them to make.

What happens when the market research doesn't validate the idea you were most excited about? 

In this episode, Marie and Anne-Marie take listeners inside the market research project they just completed for their own business, Powerful Online Partnerships — sharing exactly why they did it, how they set it up, and what they learned.

They break down the difference between building from assumptions and building from evidence, and why so many entrepreneurs skip straight to launch without ever asking their audience what they actually want. They cover how to identify your ideal research audience, the mix of surveys and interviews they used, and why competitive analysis and a SWOT analysis belong in every research process.

Marie also shares the emotional side of the process — watching real-time survey responses come in, spotting trends, and ultimately deciding not to move forward with an offer she personally hoped would be a green light. Anne-Marie explains how she and Marie used AI tools, including Claude, to synthesize everything into a clear set of next steps.

Whether it's time to launch something new, reposition an existing offer, or figure out why conversions have stalled, this conversation is a practical, honest look at how two established business owners used market research to make a confident, evidence-based decision.

Marie and Anne-Marie tell the real story of how their partnership began — and what it teaches about building collaborations that last.

In this episode, Marie and Anne-Marie step away from interviewing guests to tell their own story — how a COVID-era contractor gig turned into a five-year business partnership and, eventually, Partnerships on Purpose itself. They trace the relationship from its earliest days, including the moment Anne-Marie almost turned down the chance to work on JV partnerships entirely.

Along the way, they share the piece of advice from a mentor that shaped how they've protected their partnership: be friends first, and never let the business overtake the friendship. They also open up about the honest, sometimes difficult conversations that keep a business partnership healthy, from disagreements over strategy to decisions about finances and contractors.

The conversation moves beyond their own story to offer a broader framework: partnership doesn't have to mean a formal referral network or revenue share. Sometimes it means finding someone whose skill set completes a gap in your own services, or being a dynamic enough listener to spot an opportunity already sitting in your network.

Whether a business owner is looking for a first collaborator or wondering whether an existing working relationship could become something bigger, this episode offers a grounded, lived-in look at what it actually takes.

Marie and Anne-Marie break down why authenticity beats overselling in referral partnerships, and how to handle it when a promotion goes wrong.

Ever gotten on a partnership call where everything sounded a little too good? Marie and Anne-Marie have too, and in this episode, they talk about why the partnerships that actually last are the ones built on honesty rather than a polished pitch.

Anne-Marie opens up about her corporate days, when she was repeatedly told to “tone it down,” and why she's stayed drawn to people who are straightforward and transparent ever since. From there, they walk through what it looks like to be upfront about your real numbers, your real list engagement, and your real results, instead of promising more than you can deliver.

The conversation gets specific: what happens when a promotion underperforms, or a partner drops the ball completely. They share real stories, including a partner who ghosted after a deal fell through, and contrast that with what it looks like to own a mistake and ask what can be done to make it right.

It's a conversation about reputation, trust, and why the coaching and consulting partnership world is smaller than it feels, for any coach, consultant, or service-based business owner who wants their next partnership to hold up under real pressure.

Marie and Anne-Marie break down the trust recession in partnership marketing — and the five-step framework that rebuilds it.

If your open rates are down, your partner emails aren't converting the way they used to, or you've felt subscribers grow more skeptical of every offer that lands in their inbox, you're not imagining it. They call it the trust recession, and in this episode they trace exactly how it happened.

Going back to 2021, they share what partnership marketing actually looked like on the inside: back-to-back 30-minute calls, thousands of deals stacked with almost no vetting, and email lists promoted daily, sometimes multiple times a day. It worked, for a while. But it also trained subscribers to distrust nearly everything that showed up in their inbox.

From there, the conversation turns to what's changed. They talk through how AI-assisted research now makes it possible to vet a partner's reputation before a call ever happens, and why relationship capital, not transaction volume, is the metric that actually matters now.

The episode closes with the five-step Trust Framework: credibility before opportunity, consistency, reciprocity without score-keeping, reputation transfer, and time. Five practical shifts for any coach, consultant, or service-based business owner who wants their next partnership to actually convert.

Executive coach Ally Stone on building a $40M business, surviving a medical crisis abroad, and why leaders can't pour from an empty cup.

Marie and Anne-Marie welcome Ally Stone, international keynote speaker, executive coach, and founder of The Inspired Leader, for a conversation that moves from boardroom to hospital room and back again. Ally opens up about becoming an entrepreneur at 22, scaling a restaurant company from four locations to nearly 100, and the people-first culture she and her husband built along the way.

Then the story turns: a medical crisis during the Tokyo Marathon leaves Ally's husband with permanent memory loss, and Ally has to decide whether the leader she'd become still fits the life she now has. The conversation draws a clear throughline to relationship capital, the everyday deposits of trust and support that carry partnerships through the moments no one can predict.

Ally also shares how that season led her to found The Inspired Leader and Inspire and Awaken, her annual leadership and wellness event for women in Edmonton, and what she has learned about building partnerships rooted in reciprocity rather than transaction.

This is a conversation about culture, resilience, and what it really means to lead from a place of wellness rather than depletion.

Turn your next launch into a competition partners want to win — Marie and Anne-Marie break down how leaderboards really work.

Leaderboards are one of the most fun tools in the partnership world — and one of the most effective. In this episode, they open up their playbook for building leaderboards that keep partners engaged and promoting throughout a launch, from the tracking spreadsheet all the way to the daily emails that keep everyone checking their rank.

Marie covers the mechanics: setting up affiliate tracking, deciding which metrics to follow (clicks, purchases, webinar views), and getting the numbers into a ranked list partners can see themselves on. Anne-Marie adds the layer that makes leaderboards work — the incentive, usually cash, and the recognition that comes with being named publicly, including a nod to the partners who almost made the cut.

The conversation also digs into an underused benefit of leaderboards: they're a prospecting tool. Anne-Marie explains how she scans leaderboard emails for names she doesn't recognize as a way to find new, adjacent partners worth connecting with.

They close with a practical reminder — leaderboards take planning. They can't be scheduled in advance because the data has to stay live, so building in time (and possibly a VA) is what separates a smooth leaderboard rollout from a last-minute scramble.

Bigger isn't always better: why audience quality — not list size — makes referral partnerships work.

Everyone wants to know your list size — right up until it becomes the wrong question. In this episode, Marie and Anne-Marie make a case that might ruffle a few feathers: list size doesn't matter nearly as much as people think, and quality of engagement is what actually drives results in a referral partnership.

They share real examples from their own partnership conversations, including a deal that produced fewer than 100 clicks from a 50,000-person list, to explain why a smaller, more engaged audience will always outperform a bigger, quieter one. They also widen the definition of “list” to include social followings, Facebook groups, paid communities, and podcast audiences — because all of it counts as your audience.

From there, the conversation turns tactical: what it really means to scrub a list, why removing disengaged subscribers boosts deliverability and credibility, and how segmentation and surveying help you know exactly who's on your list. Anne-Marie shares a client story where narrowing a 17,000-person list down to the right 5,000–7,000 people completely changed the outcome of a partnership conversation.

Whether you're just starting to build your audience or you're sitting on a list you've never really looked closely at, this episode will change how you talk about your numbers in every partnership conversation going forward.

Trust is currency. Marie and Anne-Marie unpack relationship capital — the bank account behind every successful referral partnership.

In this episode of Partnerships on Purpose, Marie and Anne-Marie dig into one of the core tenets behind everything they teach: relationship capital. Defined as the intangible value built through trust, goodwill, and mutual support, relationship capital functions exactly like a bank account — and most businesses today are running a deficit.

They walk through why the partnership landscape has changed so dramatically since 2021 and 2022, pointing to what they call a widespread “trust recession.” They explain why tactics that used to work no longer land, and why consistent, intentional deposits into relationship capital are now non-negotiable for anyone building a referral-based business.

From making specific, intentional introductions to using tools like Boomerang to stay top of mind, they share the exact systems they use to keep relationship capital flowing in their own business — plus the biggest mistake they see people make when they try to withdraw before they've ever deposited.

Whether it's showing up at in-person events, engaging authentically on social media, or simply checking in on someone who popped into mind, this episode is a practical guide to building the kind of trust that pays off when it matters most — at launch time, when the ask finally comes.

Learn how Marie and Anne-Marie land top-tier referral partners with intentional outreach, smart AI, and real relationship capital.

Every partnership-minded business owner has a wish list — the handful of “big fish” partners who feel just out of reach. In this episode, they unpack exactly how to turn that wish list into real relationships, starting with a client story that landed a reply from Mel Robbins’ team in under 24 hours.

They walk through what makes an outreach email actually work: research, specificity, and a genuine point of connection — not a copy-paste pitch. They also share how AI has changed their process, describing it as “80% AI, 20% human,” and why that human layer is non-negotiable.

The conversation moves into the etiquette of outreach once a reply comes in, including how to build rapport with an assistant when the top partner isn’t the one responding, and why that relationship matters just as much.

They close with the idea of “relationship capital” — consistently depositing goodwill through gifts, check-ins, and follow-up so that when it’s time to make an ask, the relationship can carry it. Press play for the full breakdown, plus real examples from their own partnership outreach.

Gratitude, not grit, might be the real driver behind your best partnership deals.

In this episode of Partnerships on Purpose, Marie and Anne-Marie step away from tactics for a moment to talk about something that quietly shapes every call, every deal, and every partnership: gratitude. Marie opens with a story from a client's business, where a co-founder paused his team to remind them how far they'd come, and connects that same lesson to a recent behind-the-scenes CRM switch in her and Anne-Marie's own business.

From there, the conversation turns to what gratitude actually does in the body and the brain — including the idea, borrowed from a Tony Robbins gratitude session, that anger and fear can't exist in the same space as genuine thankfulness. Anne-Marie shares how a screen-free morning ritual changed her stress levels, and how a single cold outreach call turned into an ongoing, revenue-generating partnership once gratitude entered the picture.

They close the episode by connecting all of it back to the partnership world directly: showing up to a call with appreciation, rather than pressure, is what allows a person to present their best self — no matter which way the conversation goes.