Are you spending the right amount of time on the wrong projects in your business

It’s all about minimum input and maximum output.

When I was first starting out on the Internet and as a business owner, I would sit in front of my computer for hours hitting the refresh button after every promotion, website tweak, or SEO hack I implemented. One day it finally hit me. I was spending so much time on activities that only garnished me a small output that I realized my efforts were taking me a long time. Hours and hours, and sometimes days, yet the output that I got from these activities were minimal at best.

I want you to try this exercise.  Take out a piece of paper and draw two lines on that paper dividing one page into three columns. On the left side put the title on the top of the page and call it  “input”.  In the middle column, on the top of the page, label that “category”. On the right side, on the top of the page, put the heading of “output”. Now, on the right side, start listing some of your activities that you do on a daily basis to build your business.  Use this as a brainstorming session. Just write down whatever you do starting tomorrow morning when you get in the office or when you start working from home. You could break your tasks up into a number of categories such as strategy, tactical, operational. For the sake of argument and keeping this article concise and to the point, we’ll label each one of your tasks on the left side with the three categories that we just described. So, for example, if you put down in the left column “modify my meta tags on my blog”, give this a category of tactical in the middle column. If you put down “split test my landing page offer”, this would fall under the category of strategy.  If another one of your tasks is “prepare media Kit”, this would fall under an operational task. Then on the right column, write down what you got out of doing this task. Was it motivational, a desired result, a sale or maybe that activity resulting in no output at all. Whatever it was, just write it down.

By the end of the day, you should have at least 5-10 tasks that you believe are related to building your business that fall under the strategy, tactical, or operational category.

After you do this for just one day from the time you start work until you finish your work, you’re going to be very surprised at the number of activities that you spend time on that do not yield you a high output.

Usually these are tasks that fall under the tactical and operational category. These are certainly important tasks and need to get done, but more than likely, they are not contributing to increasing your profits, or meeting your income goals.

The point of this exercise is to make you aware of what activity you are spending your time on. This will allow you to determine if your current input (your activity) is equating to a high output (your results). I’m not saying do not do these tasks, since they are clearly important to you and your business. What I am saying is to be aware of the time that you’re spending on tasks that should be delegated to a coworker, employee, or virtual assistant so your time can be freed up to work on the strategies that will produce the most tangible outcome in the shortest amount of time.

Why Joint Ventures are Worth Your Time

Most new entrepreneurs and business owners believe that joint ventures are difficult and complicated. In fact, when you think of it, being an entrepreneur itself is difficult and complicated, with all the minute details involved with growing a business. Proposing and forming a joint venture is just one of the many important cogs in the wheel of entrepreneurism.

Joint Ventures: Large Successes

Joint ventures can take many forms. It could be a simple as selling advertising space on a menu, or a complicated agreement to combine capital resources in a high stakes moneymaking venture. An example of a high-tech joint venture is a partnership between the Canadian telecommunications company, Nortel, and the China based Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.  Both companies are world leaders in networking, networking products, and broadband access. Through their partnership formed in 2006, they planned to expand the potential market by using combined technologies offering innovative broadband solutions.

The partnership between the two global communication giants involved Huawei’s worldwide leading broadband access combined with Nortel’s voice and networking technologies. The combined products provided extra value and enhanced performance to service providers.

Internet service providers around the world were able to deliver an ultra broadband product that included voice, video, data, and wireless services to both businesses and residents using copper, fiber, and fixed wireless networks.

The successful joint venture created new revenue opportunities for Nortel and Huawei and through their combined strengths, both companies gained a larger market share in the ever-growing broadband and Internet services industry.

Using Joint Ventures for Small Businesses

This type of large-scale joint venture example can be used to see how you can gain a larger market share in your community, region, or even nationally by envisioning a combination of strengths with a joint venture partner. Your potential JV partner doesn’t have to operate next door. Look around and research businesses that offer similar products or services as yours in other parts of your state or across the country. When you find one that you feel has strengths that are synergistic with yours, begin the process of brainstorming JV ideas.

Like in the example above, you could combine technologies and resources to form a better and more innovative product. Or perhaps your potential partner manufactures a product that is a good fit with yours and could be sold as a package. You can simply start a joint venture marketing relationship that allows you to contact and market with each other’s existing clients. A good and creative entrepreneur can think of a myriad of ways that a joint venture could succeed.

If you are an entrepreneur who wants to expand your business, then a joint venture option can be a big winner for both you and your potential partner. Remember that entrepreneurship involves being creative and forming new business ideas and promotions. You don’t have to do it all by yourself. Look around. Find a potential partner. Get enthusiastic about your combined business idea. Your efforts in promoting a joint venture are worth your time to expand business and gain new business partners.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free JV Wealth e-zine.

Sales grew from $130k to $1.3 million using a Joint Venture approach

Do Joint Ventures Work? Case Studies Prove Their Effectiveness

Using Joint Venture Marketing to Grow from $130K to $1.3 Million in sales

Entrepreneurs sometimes endure the feeling of having the weight of the world on their shoulders.  A business can encompass an abundance of time with all the details of administration, getting new business, marketing, development, and of course, taxes.  Entrepreneurs are idea people.  They like to create business ideas and watch it become successful.  But sometimes there just isn’t enough time for business development.

That is why a joint venture can be a great option for an entrepreneur to explore new business ideas and expand revenues at the same time.  A joint venture allows an entrepreneur to remain autonomous with his or her business and still enjoy the benefits of a partner sharing expertise and part of the workload.

Roxanne Batson, an entrepreneur and managing partner of two separate small businesses, found out just how forming joint partnerships helped in both the quality of the end-product and increased revenue.

One of her businesses, WomenCorp.org, is an online multi-media women’s magazine.  Roxanne started the magazine as a business newsletter to deliver learning opportunities for women in business.  However, she had to perform all the work herself – researching topics, writing articles, marketing the site, and designing and maintaining the website itself.  The workload was too much for Roxanne, who had other obligations to attend in addition to the newsletter.

Her solution was to open the possibility of a tech savvy joint venture partner who could help with the maintenance and upkeep of the website.  With a great web media specialist as a joint venture partner in hand, Roxanne then found 20 content providers who could do the research and write the continually updated content for the website.

The result was a richer, more dynamic online magazine that attracted more visitors and is more profitable.  Profit is generated by ad sales and shared among the joint venture partners.

Roxanne is also the managing partner for an offline business called Clicker Girls, a business that developed the Classroom Performance System (CPS).  CPS involves the use of a remote response pad technology.  The clicker technology allows students to engage with teachers and receive instant feedback and automated grading during classroom lectures.

Sales of the system were stagnant and Roxanne wanted to find a way to grow the business and increase revenue.  She found the help of DCI, a whiteboard technology dealer.  Their product allows teachers to more easily interact with the students responses through the CPS remote technology.  Through this joint venture, they were able to approach school districts together with their interactive products.  The result?  Sales skyrocketed from $130,000 to $1.3 million!

Making Life Easier and Business More Profitable

Roxanne Batson is a believer in joint ventures.  She says they make life easier, can build a better business model, and she can make far more money than she could alone.  If you are an entrepreneur, consider that your business can have more growth and more revenue if you share ideas and marketing strategies with a joint venture partner.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free JV Wealth e-zine.

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