Consuelo Meux, Ph.D.

Have you considered taking your business to the next step through the creation of a joint venture? Here are five great tips to implement a lasting and profitable online joint venture partnership between you and other online business owners:

1.  Good attitude.

The first and most important attribute to creating a lasting and profitable partnership is a good attitude.  Not only will a good attitude help to ensure that your partner also has a positive attitude -  since a positive attitude is contagious, it will also help you get through any difficult times.  A good attitude is a sure sign of a good partnership and future profits.

2.  Willingness to compromise and communicate.

Any partnership has moments where one partner will need to compromise.  If you’re prepared for these moments, then you’re a step ahead of the game.  Stay focused on the larger purpose of the partnership and don’t allow yourself to get swallowed by the finer details that are often so easy to get stuck on.

For example, if your partner wants 55% of the profits, then fine: make sure that you negotiate the proposal so that you benefit elsewhere.  The key if keeping the lines of communication open.  If you’re unhappy about something, be sure to express your opinion to your partner while keeping a positive attitude.  Additionally, communicate when you’re pleased about how things are going. Positive comments are helpful in maintaining a healthy equilibrium with your joint venture partner.

3.  Willingness to contribute 50% of the effort.

If you’re going into a partnership with someone, it is unfair to expect to reap all the benefits and do none of the work.  Of course, if you can both reap profits with little or no work then that’s great.

4.  Willingness to stick to the plan.

Outline and agree to a plan of action with your partner, then stick to that plan. Don’t attempt to make changes to the plan halfway through.  You wouldn’t want your partner to do that to you, right?  Of course circumstances are occasionally beyond your control and things happen; however, it is important to work your hardest to stick to the plan, timeline, and workload you originally agreed to.

5.  Willingness to modify the plan if need be.

So what if both you and your partner agree to make some changes? You might encounter some unforeseen circumstances that require both of you to be flexible.  Maybe the timeline can be adjusted or the responsibilities and profits adjusted to accommodate the new circumstances.  Be willing to adapt if needed.

Keep an eye on the big picture of what a joint venture partnership can do to build your business. By partnering with another professional, you will both build benefits that go far beyond profits.  The potential benefits of a successful joint venture partnership can be an increased network of business associates, more customers and a diversified customer base, increased professional reputation and credibility, and financial gain.  Start look at similar businesses as potential partners, not just competitors and begin to build joint ventures that mean business profits for everyone involved.

Happy New Year to all of you. Let’s make this a year of peace and prosperity.  It’s time to clean up old stuff, declutter physical areas, get rid of emotional clutter, and start organizing your business for new goals.   Take time to review the activities of this past year. Did you reach your goals?  Where they realistic in the first place?  Sit and make new business goals for the year and start putting them into practice by tomorrow.

I hope you take time to enjoy the day. I’m going for a motorcycle ride with my husband and then returning home to enjoy our New Year feast of tri-tip roast, greens, potato salad and cornbread.  Peach cobbler will top off the evening. 

Talk to you tomorrow.

When you need to make an important, high-level decision, give yourself the time needed to make a wise decision.  Allocate ample time to think about, identify, discuss, and ponder all feasible alternatives that are available to you. 

In the fast paced Internet environment, consumers are often coerced into making instant decisions.  It’s often promoted that a real decision-maker makes a decision.  Be careful of this thinking.  Much of the time it can be a slick ploy to make you spend money on whatever program is being offered.  There are “one-time-offer” (OTO) concepts used to make consumers believe they only have one chance to make a particular purchase. You find these type of offers because the merchants know that if you take time to think about the offer, you’ll more than likely refuse to make the purchse.

Rushing a deicison doesn’t make you a great decision maker; it makes you worried if you made a good decision or not. It might make you get involved with a scam and increase your buyers remorse.  Take your time when making a decision to be sure you know what you’re deciding on.  Get all the facts and information you need.  Generate alternatives to the information and decide according to what’s best in any circumstance. 

On the other hand it could be a good decision. However, a good rule of thumb is if it’s only here today and gone tomorrow, it might be best to let it go. If you rush through the conceptualization and definition phase, it is likely that customers will propose new activities that they want to later add to your project plan. At the conclusion of the conceptualization and definition stage, you should define the preliminary project objective. 

Project management exists because of the need to create something that does not exist or to create something better for what does exist.  When you are coming up with project management ideas, you want to let your best creative concepts flow. 

Take time to honor the process that occurs during a conceptualization phase. This is when you conceptualize an idea and generate project concepts.  Don’t put a stop on your imagination. Instead, let you imagination run wild in an attempt to find an innovative solution to the need that demanded a project in the first place. 

Use the idea conception time to do real brainstorming. That means you refuse to place a judgement on any ideas that are generated. Don’t worry about “how” your going to get the project done, just come up with the ideas. When you start trying to figure out the details, you stop the creative process and often fall back into mundane ways of thinking. You could easily forget to push forward to generate more ideas and select something before you’re ready to do so. Just think of the project and start letting the ideas flow. 

Are you getting ready to put a project together?  Project managment is one of the most important skills a creative person can have. Unfortunately, understanding project managment seems to be less than common practice in many instances. Instead of doing the necessary planning to have a successful project, lots of creative types rush into the doing part prior to completing necessary steps to planning. 

In order to determine a project concept, an initial step for planning includes letting your mind do its creative work through brainstorming.  You want to do some breakthrough thinking. That is, take the time to generate ideas that are new, innovative and can take your project to a new level. 

Generating creative ideas through a creative thinking session results in unique concepts that will go unnoticed without the benefit of a creative thinking session. You want to have as many unique and original solutions for a situation as possible which will let you come up with innovative project concepts.  Breakthough thinking is also known as nonlinear thinking. This means that the ideas you generate don’t follow conventional paths and sometimes seem to defy logic. Start your project management with good creative thinking processes to enhance you chances of ultimate success. 

Have you seen YouTube videos? If so, you know they’re a great way to market your website or blog. Adding video to your website as a marketing concept is a fantastic way to add interest, to communicate with your audience and to demonstrate a technique that may be easier to show than to explain.  Whether you’ve found a video on YouTube that you just have to share with the world or you have created a video and placed it on YouTube, adding it to your website is as easy as click, copy, click, paste, done.

Ready?

1. Open your web page file where you want the video to show up.  If you want the video to be on your home page, then open up your index file.  You’ll want to be looking at the page with the HTML code.  In FrontPage you simply click on the tab at the bottom which says HTML.

2. In your web browser, get to the YouTube site and Click onto the video that you’d like to add.

3. On the right hand side of the video page you’ll see category, tags, URL, and embed.  Copy the code in the embed space.  It will look something like this:

<object width=”425″ height=”350″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/k5c8-OLBWAQ”></param><param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/k5c8-OLBWAQ” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” wmode=”transparent” width=”425″ height=”350″></embed></object>

4. Paste the code where you want it to appear on your website and viola, you’re done.
 
5. Preview it to make sure the video has been placed where you want it.  Save your page and publish. 

One of the great features about embedded YouTube videos is that they are already compressed to the most optimal viewing size.  This means that it takes mere seconds for most visitors to view the video.  There’s nothing to download and no lag time.  The only drawback is that the visitor is then taken to YouTube’s website and if you’ve ever been there you know that it’s easy to get sidetracked.  Either way, this is a great marketing and promotional idea for you to use in your Internet marketing efforts.

Mentor groups, sometimes known as mastermind groups, are a great way to help kick start or improve upon your business.  These groups are comprised of various business owners who all have common goals in mind.  The particular goals can vary, but the point of most mentoring groups is to bring business owners together to help them grow their business.

Here are some of the things to look for when searching for a mentoring group for your business.

1.  Look for people with interests the same as yours. 
2.  Find a group that offers resources to help you in your business.
3.  Look for groups who are constantly updating their resources and not just posting old resources.
4.  Research various groups and ask members of different groups about what the group has to offer.
5.  Find members who have “grown” since joining the group.  This will prove that success is a possibility.
6.  Look for members who are willing to share their thoughts, criticisms, and knowledge willingly.  You don’t want a group of mentors who refuse to help newer members.  Remember it’s called mentoring for a reason.
7.  Find a membership that fits in your budget, but remember that price isn’t everything. 
8.  Look for groups that offers lifetime membership.  You may find that after a certain amount of time or after you’ve completed certain steps you will be offered a discounted or possibly even free membership.
9.  Find a mentoring group whose schedule fits yours.
10. Look for a group who not only allows members to ask questions, but encourages it.  However, don’t expect the mentors to always just give you the answers you need, they should also be encouraging you to think for yourself.

If you can’t find a group you feel is right for you or that fits your budget just yet, try following one or two people in your business area or market that you can learn from.  Study and more importantly, implement the things you learn from them and ask questions when you have them.