Offline Wealth is a blog for those in or interested in joining the OFFLINE niche.
Please feel free to join in and comment here, and don't forget to join the Local Biz Builders forum, the PREMIER spot to network with other OFFLINE enthusiasts!
Offline JV's
Posted 09-29-2008 at 05:54 AM by Keith Boisvert
Here is something that I have been running into lately. PArtly in part to the fact that I have been doing this business for a while and have made some contacts during the past 18 months or so.
As a business owner(which you are), it pays to keep your eyes open, There are always opportunities staring you in the face if you condition yourself to look for them.
Maybe JV is too strong of a word to describe this, and maybe Broker is more applicable. The idea here is to use your contacts that you are making to help 2 or more businesses prosper.
I will use a recent experience of mine as an example. I have a regular customer that I do work for, and actually do some part time work for as well. He is an electrician with a fairly small business. His size works to his advantage in times like this because he can be more flexible that some larger electrical companies in town that have 12 plus employees.
Anyway, I recently spoke with a company that does "property management". They handle condo's, housing complexes, and do a lot for the elderly couples in town that spend their winters in Florida(lucky ducks!). Anyway, as I was speaking, I mentioned that I do work for a local electrician and asked who they use for electrical issues. Come to find out they were using one of the "big" guys in town, but found their service slow and unreliable. I know that this is because they (the big guys) have to take the jobs that make them tons of $$ because of their overhead.
So I suggested my elecical client, and if interested I would see what I could do to help bring them to a contract. So I spoke to the electrican, who loves the small one man type of jobs, and told him about my meeting.
To make a long story longer....I brokered a deal between the two that nets me 5% of all work done. Everyone wins. The property maintenance compnay now has a reliable and affordable service provider that can respond to their needs, large or small, and the electrican gets some steady work with a reputable company. Of course as an electrician, he runs into homeowners that might need property maintenance, so he can refer this company.
Now I don't have a physical contract but the electrician is a close friend so I am not worried. Anyone else I would most certainly have some form of written deal.
But the point here is that by utilizing my contacts, I was able to hook 2 companies up that needed each other, and made some $$ in the process.
Just some food for thought.....
keith
PS: This post was made on the new www.LocalBizBuilders.com Social Site available to Special Forces Premium members
As a business owner(which you are), it pays to keep your eyes open, There are always opportunities staring you in the face if you condition yourself to look for them.
Maybe JV is too strong of a word to describe this, and maybe Broker is more applicable. The idea here is to use your contacts that you are making to help 2 or more businesses prosper.
I will use a recent experience of mine as an example. I have a regular customer that I do work for, and actually do some part time work for as well. He is an electrician with a fairly small business. His size works to his advantage in times like this because he can be more flexible that some larger electrical companies in town that have 12 plus employees.
Anyway, I recently spoke with a company that does "property management". They handle condo's, housing complexes, and do a lot for the elderly couples in town that spend their winters in Florida(lucky ducks!). Anyway, as I was speaking, I mentioned that I do work for a local electrician and asked who they use for electrical issues. Come to find out they were using one of the "big" guys in town, but found their service slow and unreliable. I know that this is because they (the big guys) have to take the jobs that make them tons of $$ because of their overhead.
So I suggested my elecical client, and if interested I would see what I could do to help bring them to a contract. So I spoke to the electrican, who loves the small one man type of jobs, and told him about my meeting.
To make a long story longer....I brokered a deal between the two that nets me 5% of all work done. Everyone wins. The property maintenance compnay now has a reliable and affordable service provider that can respond to their needs, large or small, and the electrican gets some steady work with a reputable company. Of course as an electrician, he runs into homeowners that might need property maintenance, so he can refer this company.
Now I don't have a physical contract but the electrician is a close friend so I am not worried. Anyone else I would most certainly have some form of written deal.
But the point here is that by utilizing my contacts, I was able to hook 2 companies up that needed each other, and made some $$ in the process.
Just some food for thought.....
keith
PS: This post was made on the new www.LocalBizBuilders.com Social Site available to Special Forces Premium members
Total Comments 0
