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Guest post by: Patricia Weber Become an Author

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Are you a solopreneur or small business owner who is frustrated about being able to increase revenues in this dour economy? Maybe it's about time you give collaborating with others a serious look. It's not just for the online elite or celebrities! Here are the top ten pain in the butt reasons to get your rear in collaboration or joint venture gear:

1. Long-lasting business relationships are difficult to find. JVs will test your boundaries and limits, and expand your perspective. They will also improve your self-confidence, communication and relationship skills. Three years ago, I was super independent and just beginning to JV. I was choosing partners who were “unavailable”. What I learned about those initial experiences is that I only partially believed in, and committed myself to JV’ing. Consequently, my JVs weren’t lasting beyond 6 months. Eventually, when I was willing to constructively face confrontation and exercise my assertive skills, long-lasting JVs and results became possible!

2. New products and services are a low priority. What’s fun about JVs is that they stimulate your creativity and desire to provide more value to your customers. - Because they boost your motivation to “get the job done”, which means also decrease perfectionist and procrastination tendencies. Talk about many benefits all at once! Of course, this is contingent on finding the “right” partner because if your personalities, skills and strengths are too similar or not complimentary enough, then the JV won’t have lift. Conversely, if there’s great potential and new “products” between you, then your vitality will be renewed. And your customers will feel that emanating from you!

3. You think outsourcing your workload has to cost a fortune. Outsourcing and delegating one’s weaknesses to a supplier (e.g. Webmaster or Virtual-Administrative Assistant) becomes more enticing and probable because your JV budget is larger than what it would be when you’re operating solo. If you don’t make that smart strategic move, then your business will stay stuck at a certain plateau. In human terms, that typically translates into being unmotivated, uninspired, discouraged and sometimes even disillusioned.

4. Up selling and back end products fall victim to forgetting. Your business’ profit potential is dependent on how fluid one “product” flows into the next, including the up sell and back end “products”. Getting “there” usually happens faster when you’re in a JV because as a team, you have a bigger pool of prospects to poll and communicate with, and to therefore gain clarity and plan for the future.

5. Creating products takes too much time and effort. If you enjoy creating products but you’re impatient about getting them out the “door” or your Inner Critic doesn’t allow you to complete them, then this point will really bring it home for you.

6. You can't afford to invest in yourself. In any collaboration worth its time, there will be opportunities for trade. One collaboration allowed me to exchange my expertise for highly specialized personal life mission coaching. The result was, not one penny out of pocket for either person sharing their expertise for their personal development.

7. Joint venture deals require money I just don't have. In a down revenue time, wouldn't you just love the luxury of someone else to share costs with? Collaborations are usually partnerships where is there is unlikely greater out-of-pocket expense because of being able to divvy up costs among the collaborators. Your budget is better off.

8. If other businesses are struggling, there's little point in joining up. Have you heard there is strength in numbers? The morale and emotional strength in people that are optimistic by nature but just at a similar bump in the road can help you leave your worries behind.

9. There's just no time. Nonsense! You know that's just not true. How many things do you already procrastinate about? What kind of actions are you already taking that fit the category of what some call, "brainwasher" actions like computer games, way too much time on social media, activities that make you think you are creating but are spinning your wheels action and you know it? You have time to put a spark back in your business efforts.

10. The – take your pick – depression, recession or a slow economy is a time to pull back. Au contraire! It's a time you want to act more quickly. I tend to get a little lazy at the end of the year with the holidays and all. For you, it may be the looming dark cloud of a slow economy. Whatever stimulates you to pull back, a collaboration can be just the thing to help you move forward. You have the momentum of new energy, new products and new ideas that help new optimism to take hold.

Regardless of what is ailing your business, collaborations can be good for the health of revenue and profits. So what’s it going to be for you? Pick your poison of the top ten to take you down or – the sky's the limit! And if you want to know all the nuances in the most successful way to find and profit from collaborating, then let us help you with true-life lessons. When I say us, this article is a collaboration between myself and a Canadian joint venture partner, Monique MacKinnon.

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