I See My Competitors as My Future Joint-Venture Partners
A joint venture involves two or more businesses pooling their resources and expertise to achieve a specific goal. The risks and rewards of the partnership are also shared.
The ultimate goal of a joint venture deal is a win-win-win.
Win to party A, Win to party B, AND win to their prospects and clients.
The reasons behind forming a joint venture include business expansion, development of new products or moving into new markets.
A joint venture can give you more resources, access to markets and distribution channels, increased technical expertise, lower investment, lower risk, built-in trust and much more.
Here are 10 ideas for simple, easy to implement, win-win-win joint venture deals:
1. Accountant/Lawyer
By joining up with other professionals, you can create a network of individuals who, together, form or a full-service group! An accountant, a lawyer, a business consultant, a copywriter and a web designer, for example, could offer a compete package for a startup company.
2. Architect
Thinking of businesses in a similar line of work as you is the first step in tapping into their client base. Consider local construction companies, interior designers, landscaping companies, electricians, and plumbers as your colleagues – and offer to promote their services in exchange for them promoting yours!
3. Beautician/Hair Salon
Make a deal with a local tanning hot spot, local yoga studios or local health clinic to offer complimentary services to each other’s clients. Cooperate with a local florist to create a special offer for brides.
4. Chiropractor/Massage Therapist
Work together with local yoga studios and even offer the owner a free massage so they can recommend you in confidence! Form a joint venture with local gyms, dance studios, and martial arts clubs by offering their clients your services and referring your clients to them.
5. Coach/Consultant/Advisor
Create a joint venture with HR departments of large companies (offer their employees your services). Similarly local medical centers as well as retirement home may be very interested in making your services available to their clients/tenants – consider arranging office hours there once a month to serve their population.
6. Fitness Center
Offer discounted memberships to the employees of your local hospital. Offer the clients of a local nutritionist a free month-long membership. Join with a local swimming pool to create a “Fit to Swim” program, and offer yogis at the local yoga studio your fitness services. Create a run program with local running shop and offer their shoppers a reduced rate on your membership program.
7. Gardener
Work together with garden supply shops (they recommend you, you recommend them). Offer a joint event with a real estate agent and/or an interior designer to all your clients – teaching them how to increase the value of their property before putting it on the market.
8. Photographer
Pair up with a local make-up artist to create a “Portrait” package. Offer a discount to the advertisers of a local publication. Co-promote an event at a local maternity clothes shop and offer a special “Mom-to-be” photo shoot. Loan your photography to local restaurants, and have your name and contact information on the frame!
9. Real Estate Agent
Create a free e-book with your best home buying or selling advice and encourage / incentivize local business owners to share it with their clients – when they hear that someone is in the market for a new home.
10. Web Designer
Make a complete package by cooperating with a copywriter, a graphic designer, and a hosting company and offer that on a monthly recurring fee (instead of a one-time sale).
Now It’s YOUR Turn
For five minutes… come up with as many ideas as you can… what possible joint-venture deals could you form?
Let's Brainstorm
Please share your ideas (all of them or just one) in the comment box below… and let’s get WOWing.
Live fully, stay awesome,
Nisandeh Neta
Top Commenters – last 30 Days
Let's Brainstorm
Please share your ideas (all of them or just one) in the comment box below… and let’s get WOWing.
Live fully, stay awesome,
Nisandeh Neta
26 comments
I look for collaborations as a textwriter with photographers, websitebuilders, marketingcompanies, communicationcompanies, etc.
376 comments
Thanks for sharing all the ideas of possible joint venture partners. I will look into a number of them for my B&B guests.
When I started off as an entrepreneur I worked out which company I had worked with successfully in the past and if and how they could serve me as an independent people ((change) manager. These are the companies I continued working successfully with:
- Get Friday is an off shore company in India which create presentations, white papers etc. overnight so it is ready in the morning.
- TransparancyLab for the generation of powerful assessments with real time dashboards. By allowing them to re-use the assessments I had created in their tool, I receive a satisfying fee.
- European Patent Office for new products.
- a former colleague at CGI for the generation of skill cards based on my design giving him a nice fee.
- Domica for long term rental purposes. They would make sure the contracts where made up, problems were solved and money was cashed.
- Airbnb for more rooms and an additional
Charlet to create a more lees passive income and an interesting tax deal.
- I expanded my contract with my cleaning lady and asked her to find a partner, giving her á salary increase. Both of them are now looking after my house and charlet. Everytime I warm the TOP Host Award, they get a bonus.
- A partner network to exchange ideas and generate leads and assignment. As I grow more successful I get more critical of the partners I work with. I now find that the investment does not deliver the return I need. So I will end this and look for new inspiring group. The brainstorm sessie yesterday was very inspiring. This is what I look for
so I will check out if it can turn into something permanent.
94 comments
What do you do if your competitors are big companies???
409 comments
win-win-win
- let your specialty be a part of a bigger training, school of business
- ask someone else to be a part of your business (so that's the other way around)
477 comments
What I would like to have JV are:
Lawyers
Financial experts
Organizational experts
HR specialists
To offer a total solution for reorganisations, takeovers and further developments at SME organizations. We make the big difference because we are not employees but also entrepreneurs ourselves.
112 comments
Interesting topic. Have not really thought about a JV before. Possibilities are:
Homework tutors
Remedial teachers
Remedial educationalists
718 comments
Dunja, are you familiar with Melanie Lo (lerespel.nl)?
She's in my mentoring group - might be interesting for you to discuss possibilities with her.
112 comments
Thanks for the tip, Nisandeh. I get her newsletters, which are very interesting.
69 comments
For me in my role as Agile teamcoach it would be something like;
* Gaming companies ( who take care of parts of the program)
* Competitors, why not? When large companies have big transformations, it is hard to populate IT with a team of your own consultants with only 'aces'.
* Colleagues with specialties in other areas.
* Training institutions (maybe guest lectures)
Furthermore think of combinations of:
* Interior designers and producer/designers
* Freelance Marketeers and promotionel gifts companies
* Garage/tire center and carwash
477 comments
Hi Frans, let's talk about your second topic.
160 comments
I love JV, but many others are a bit afraid or suspicious...
Since I focus on caregivers, mainly of people with dementia, I already partnered up to promote each other with:
- singer specialised in dementia (zorg zangeres)
- mantelzorgmakelaars
- casemanagers
- photographer
For my MD part about microbiome and prevention of diseases like dementia and auto-immune diseases:
- osteopaths (where we will do an old fit program)
- (orthomolecular) dieticians
- psychologists
175 comments
Today's brainstorm, I was quite focused on my own company. I (gravestone designer) could form a JV with:
- a nursery garden
- a funeral insurance company
- an art gallery
I'm making a picture book and a collection of products about the 'god of the miscarriages and stillborn babies'. It would be great to work with:
- Obstetricians
- Gynaecologists
- Hospitals
- Family doctors
Other ideas:
Interior accessories designer - florist
Nursery garden - art gallery
Motorcycle driving school - Motorcycle shop
477 comments
Hi Ine, how about working with someone who does bereavement?
175 comments
Hi Marcel, thanks for thinking along! I think you mean undertaker? I already work together with a few. For my smaller products, it works. For the big gravestones it doesn't (with a few exceptions). Undertakers have intense contact with their clients for max. 10 days. In that period, relatives are not ready for a monument.
477 comments
That is the chance to distinguish yourself correctly. Create opportunities to respond to the processing after the 10 days. The biggest hole people fall into is when contact with them wanes after a while. In the beginning a lot of people come to visit and that decreases after a while. It is precisely at times when they really need a listening ear, you can provide that with experts in this field. Who knows, they might get inspiration about how they want the monument to contribute to processing of their grief.
48 comments
I have had some good and some bad experiences with JVs and from both, I learned a lot. I needed the bad experiences to get more clarity on who I want to work with and on what terms.
1. I work together with the company that writes my foreword in my book. They will do the marketing campaign so I can focus on the content. We are not each other's clients but work together with a mutual benefit.
2. I want to work with someone, we are already talking together about this for a while now, who is specialized in YouTube videos. Because lead generating is one thing, turning this lead into a customer or client is another.
3. I am talking to a woman who is an excellent coach and she works with horses. She was my client for a long time and at one point we discovered how we could work together. A lot of entrepreneurs find selling difficult and way out of their comfort zone but are ready to step out of it and with the right tools I give them, they go for it. Some encounter problems which are another level and they need to go deeper and first face some other issues. Issues were people who enter my masterclasses already dealt with. So she addresses in more depth the insecurities (on a therapeutic level in a way) and afterward I come into the picture.
4. I can work together with language coaches if my clients want to go international but the insecurities about their English hold them back.
5. I can work together with a vocal coach because a big but underestimated part of sales success is knowing how to use your voice.
6. Speaking agencies
7. Magazines
8. Different social media experts
576 comments
LOVE this topic.
Bina, what a great idea to co-author a book! I'll think about that... and seriously guys, Aramik and Franck, wouldn't that be something for you to explore together in your mutual topic LinkedIn? I would love to hear your ideas on how you could make a fantastic JV. Because you are right now, as I look at it, doing pretty much the same, and it would force you to really get into what is your strength, where are you different and how can you make each other stronger? You have a completely different style but are both very successful, and I can imagine that it would be very valuable to show us the different ways.
As for myself:
I just talked with another guy who was doing teamcoaching, and he said "I would love to learn to be more playful", when I said "let's think about how we can work together". So that would definitely be something that I could create a JV in! Right now I am offering companies that I would do a meeting for them, but in a JV I can give this as a service they can give to their clients. Even as something they can offer for free- so the company that he is working in, can get to know me.
I often tend to think that I can do what others do too, while it's soo good to be very thoughtful on what I do best.
Other JVs:
* teamcoaches is a fantastic JV for me I think.
* Companies who are hired by another company (for instance: IT companies). As part of the offer they can give to their clients, they can offer a special session on working together, facilitated by me. That's a total Win Win Win for all parties! (and now that I think about it, it's an amazing product for me to develop anyway)
* a training company in leadership so they can offer as part of the service also how to run meetings better
* a company who helps businesses with the physical stuff for remote and hybrid meetings
* event managers and people doing team events for teambuilding but are struggling to find a bit of depth
When I get a bit bigger and have so much work that I can't do it alone anymore:
* find other coaches that I can train in my methods so they can serve my clients.
WOW . I am thrilled about those ideas. Where do I start? 😀
111 comments
@Gerdy, I'm happy you find this idea useful for you, I never thought about it as a JV but once I read Nisandeh's ideas I realise it can definitely fall into this category.
I think that when it comes to non-fiction books it will be much easier to do this kind of JV in writing a book as each person can come their own field of expertise and add value from a different aspect to the same issue.
As a fiction writer it's a bit more complicated to do this, though when you write in a Writer's Room for TV series it is much more common. Each writer gets their story that they need to write for the specific episode.
276 comments
I love the triple win. In my previous company, Sunny Games, we made cooperative board games for children. So you either won all together or not at all.
We used to talk about cooperative entrepreneurship and the third win. So a cooperation where all parties benefit and there are third parties also benefiting from it.
1. Have sustainable growth goals. By doing good for the world, even people you don't know will benefit.
2. Plant a tree
3. Dare to go first.
111 comments
Ok, I never thought JV partnership are something that is in my field. However, when I read this post and the ideas both @Aramik & @Franck mention I realise that I have been doing LOTS of these kind of JV without calling them that name.
Here are some examples that might trigger ideas for others in other type of businesses:
1. Cowriting a book with another author
2. Creating a program with teachers at school to advance and promote reading
3. Cooperate with a local library in promoting reading to the community
4. Create a JV with a producer, director and a group of amateur theater and write for them a play/movie script
5. Cooperate with a child psychologist and write a series of books that explain different ways of how to handle "challenging" children in class
328 comments
yess @Bina! Such a great idea's! Co-writing a book with another author. I love that one!
16 comments
What a great examples Bina. Thank you for sharing.
328 comments
Yes! Love JV-partnership game now, But I did use to getting scared and intimidated by it for a long long time. I had some really bad experiences and for a long time, I just refused to see the huge amount of Value it can bring to my business AND into my life. So yes: Now I am enjoying my JV-Partnerships and even more: Average of 25% of all my Lead generations and Revenue is coming trough JV-deals.
These are my idea's, I could form JV's with:
1: Another training and coaching company who is specialised in Facebook or Instagram or Tiktok. I am the LinkedIn Expert and they can be expert on any other Social Media
2: Another LinkedIn Expert 🙂 : Yes, ofcourse! I can have a JV deal with a LinkedIn trainer who is specialised in LinkedIn Ads or LinkedIn Sales Navigator or any other expertise I don't have or don't want to do. This would be a huge advantage for our audiences
3: Online Marketing Agencies
4: Public Speaking Agencies
5: Book Publishing Agencies
6: Personal Development companies
7: Financial Growth companies
8: platforms/sites like "Frank Watching" or "Marketing Facts"
9: Any written Media like Elsevier, Quote or even Linda or Jan
10: Any MLM-cmpany
67 comments
In the past I have set up successful JV and Joint Promotion with trade associations, business associations, purchasing associations and networking clubs. Also the Dutch government has been willing to set up partnerships both local, national and even international. We also work with so called revenue partners (affiliates) which could be customers, vendors or suppliers.