One of the fastest ways to grow your business is to find people to do a joint venture with. A joint venture is when you partner with someone to promote a product or service and both you and your partner benefit.

There are several ways you can use a JV partnership to build your business, even if you’re just starting out and don’t have a listing. The idea is to make it a win/win/win situation…for you, your partner, and potential customers.

Here are my 5 favorite forms of joint venture:

1) Joint venture with a local business owner.

This is a great way to start building your list. Find a local business owner who is open to a partnership and preferably has a related product. For example, if you’re a health and wellness coach, you might want to partner with a spa or massage parlor owner. If you are a relationship coach, you may want to partner with a restaurant owner (one that has a romantic setting!), chocolate/dessert shop owner, or gift shop. A business coach might find the owner of an office supply store.

Any type of coach can approach a bookstore owner, especially if you have a book for sale or a restaurant owner. I have a client who gave talks on time management at a local pizza parlor and another client who gave talks on grief at a local funeral home. Use your imagination on this one.

With this type of JV association, you could offer to give a talk on your topic. You could even give a series of talks or a monthly or quarterly talk. Both you and the business owner promote the talk and you will both be exposed to potential new business. Your call to action will be to sign up for your newsletter or a freebie. Your partner can give you discount coupons or a free sample. It is a way of attracting more business to the business owner in a different and interesting way than what he is already doing or has tried before.

2) Joint venture with a colleague who has a related product.

If you’re just starting out, this may be with someone who has a larger list than you do. You can make a deal with them where they promote you to their list now, and you promote them to your list later, when your list reaches a certain size. An example of this type of partnership is a business coach partnering with someone who has a web design service, or a health coach partnering with someone who offers nutritional supplements/health care products.

It’s also possible to partner with another trainer who has a specific product for an area you don’t cover to that extent, such as a business trainer who has an initial training program. Partnering with a business coach who has a product on monetizing with facebook ads

3) Offer your product as a bonus.

If you have an introductory product, such as a book, video series, or home study course, you can offer it as a bonus to a joint venture partner’s larger product. You’ve probably seen this before: You get an email about a 12-month training program, and on the sales page you see bonuses that include another trainer’s 30-day challenge, or a CD series on a related topic, etc. That is an example of this type of association. It’s a way to get your foot in the door with someone who already has a listing and makes your offer seem more valuable.

4) Recommend the products of others.

You can find a JV partner who has the same target market as yours and agree to recommend the other’s product or service. This will work for a related product or a different product. They can promote each other by putting a recommendation in their newsletters or by sending a solo email to their respective lists. Doing this with different partners each month positions you as a go-to hub for valuable resources.

5) Create a product together.

Sometimes I come across someone who has a great product but it’s not a good fit for my list or vice versa. After some brainstorming, we can sometimes find a product that is appropriate for both lists and is fairly easy to create. This product would combine our knowledge in a unique way that our respective products do not cover.

For example, two business trainers I know were discussing how to use a particular software program and decided to create a product that would show their clients how to use it most effectively. Another group of partners combined mindset coaching with business strategy to produce a course that covered both areas.

With all of these scenarios, you can use an affiliate program to keep track of JV partners who send you business so you can pay them a commission. Or you may want to do one JV partnership project at a time so you know where any new business is coming from. Either way, you should keep track of the deals your partners send you and pay them their commissions on time.

A joint venture partnership is a more complex and advanced version of an affiliate program because you cultivate a friendship/relationship with that person that can last for years. It takes more time and work to develop joint venture partnerships, but they are generally more financially rewarding and create longer lasting personal relationships. They can count on mutual support and aim to do projects with each other on a regular basis. You can still give them an affiliate link to promote your products, or you might want to give them their own web page on your site. A satisfied JV partner is one of your greatest business assets.