Business partnerships and collaborations are great opportunities. 

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” – African Proverb

Got a business partner or thinking about it? There’s less risk, there’s more minds, more eyes… and there’s more opinions about everything, so getting an agreement in place regarding the business venture you’re starting before you do it, or now if you’ve not done it, is a good idea.

Invest a little time and money into making it legal, making sure everyone signs and understands.

Whether you partner to host a podcast, or you partner in a full-fledged business, with your sister, your spouse, or friend, you want it in writing. Or there’s two of you or 10 of you, how will you determine the role of individuals involved?

These are things you don’t want to leave to chance.

In this episode I’ll open with ideas about how you may already be partnering and not even realize it, options you may consider having a business partner for first in your business and give you a few things to consider before you get legal advice and invest in making it official. 

Think of this as your introduction into partnerships if you’re not doing them (but like I said, you may be and not realize it), or a great reminder to review what you have in place to keep partnerships running smoothly.

Considering a Business Partnership?

One thing I would suggest is clear. It rang true for all the people I talked with whether they were in a business that was currently making money or that on the flip side, was hurting and not making money. Whenever there is money involved there is emotion. Someone can too easily feel taken advantage of. So, while you’re thinking about it, or in early stages and just beginning to look at how you monetize your podcast business partnership for example, it’s a very good time for all parties to consider “what if.” 

Honestly, this could have been the name or this episode. What if… This is a very good place to start.

Business Partnerships and Collaborations | Amazing Health & Fitness Growth

I’m going to throw out a couple scenarios for you to consider here: 

Do you have investors, someone who helped you with a startup, do they have any decision-making power? 

If you do, what? How much? Who has the bottom-line veto power?

Say someone approaches one of you and wants to do business with you but not your partner. They want you to do something on the side. Is there any agreement about partners ability to have a “side hustle” that is related to the same business? 

What if one of you feels strongly about hiring or firing someone? About the training methods and who is responsible for it? 

How do you split revenue? Is it down the middle after expenses? Or is it split differently based on tasks and responsibilities? 

Are you taking commission and paying yourselves a base salary commensurate with what you’d pay someone else doing the same tasks if you were to hire them? Or are you only taking distributions after expenses? 

That already is a lot. But let’s look at a situation where you and a partner might start a business that includes fitness programs, nutrition programs and social media posting and podcasting. The day-to-day decisions alone are numerous! Who posts? How often and when? How do you determine the posts? That’s a time-consuming task  right there, but if you not only do it, but you have to run it by a second party, there’s a lot of time involved times two. Or is one of you in charge? Or one of you in charge of overseeing your VA who is doing it for you and tracking and reporting the stats for partner decisions to be made at regular meetings. 

Other Fitness & Health Business Partnership Decisions

Then there are pricing decisions, branding decisions, cost of goods sold, services you hire for branding, photos, videography or editing. Or if one of you does this, is that paid hourly or on salary to do it, then again business profits are handled through distributions paid out to each of you in an even split? The platforms you use have a certain cost and as you grow there will be more of them. Who decides or does the research? Who monitors expenses like this? 

Someone has to be responsible for accounting, bookkeeping, monitoring P & L statements to know if this is really working and what parts of the business are working and which are not. 

Let’s look at one of the early business collabs you might do which is co-hosting a podcast.

How fun, right? To host a podcast with a friend, what could be better? You get to have chats regularly, and have twice the reach with your personal accounts plus your business account, and twice the people you meet and want to engage with. 

And then say, you start having people want to sponsor your show or have you promote them and all of a sudden you’re monetizing that podcast. Or you might start promoting affiliate products or services you love to your audience and that starts generating revenue. Is there a business account where that’s going? Is that revenue equally split? Is there any reason one of you will feel like you deserve more because you enlisted them, suggested it and created more of the promotions? 

What if one of you has a business that she monetizes – a weight loss coaching business.

The other one doesn’t really have a coaching or fitness service but is the more journalistic and media personality behind you starting and getting in front of people. 

What if one of you is a doctor and the other a fitness professional? One of you sees patients and builds a business based on medical services. The other a fitness professional may refer to the doc and doc may refer to the fitness programs, but it isn’t clear exactly the benefit to each of you. What if the relationship dissolves? Who “owns the podcast” and the listenership and ability to market via social to the established list? 

Business Partnerships Next Steps:

List all the partnerships you have now 
Consider ones you are thinking about 
Make a list of possible situations (responsibilities, exit strategy, decision-making, distributions) 
Ask your partner(s) to make a list too
Have a meeting (or a series of them) 
Get an agreement made up about the partnership and legal rights of each and how decisions, or board meetings, reporting are handled