Joining together in a joint venture (JV) agreement with another person or business entity is a common way to join forces without changing the structure of either business. When you join with another business temporarily, you can share resources in terms of people, technology and finances. This can make the combination stronger than each individual business.

* Grow Your Business – By having access to your partner’s connections, you can get your business known by new people and new connections that you wouldn’t have access to as quickly otherwise.

* Expand Your Brand – When you want more people to know about your brand, having someone else mention you, and you mentioning them, can create a discussion that helps expand awareness of both of your brands.

* Build Your Email List – By giving each other access to your individual lists, telling your lists about the other, some of the people will cross over to become members of both lists. This is a great way to build your list with targeted individuals as long as you chose a partner who sells complementary goods to yours, to the same audience.

* Enter a New Market – There are often several markets for one service or product. Finding a JV partner who deals with a portion of your audience that you’ve never dealt with before is a great way to get your foot in the door to the new market.

* Develop a New Product – Sometimes two entities can come together using all their resources and create a brand-new product that neither business could accomplish on their own. This is a wonderful reason to form a joint venture partnership. For example, two business owners could come together to create a live event which is recorded to become a new information product.

* Improve a Current Product – If you both already have similar products but both products are lacking, you could combine the good from each product or service to make a brand-new product or service that provides more benefits.

* Bring in Skills You’re Lacking – If you are lacking in a skill and don’t want to outsource it, find a JV partner who has the skill that you don’t have. Then you can each do what you do best to contribute to the JV partnership.

* Improve Your Authority Level – When you hang around other smart people, you become one of those smart people just by association. Surround yourself with really smart people in a JV partnership and you’ll achieve more than you thought.

There are many reasons to enter a JV agreement with the right person. But, before you get started, know why you want to do it so that you understand, based on your goals, who you should work with. Remember – join with someone who has a complementary business to yours, not your direct competition, and not when it has to do with your main source of bread and butter.