Cooperation NOT Competition: How to use Joint Ventures for Your Advantage

Another NLP trainer, Max Watts from Kanousei, rang me up out of the blue the other day. Max had someone interested in doing her NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner training, but they could not do Max’s Practitioner dates, so she was wondering they could book on my Practitioner training instead.

Now, if you can get round all the scope ambiguity in that introductory paragraph, it is a very nice example of the idea of co-operation rather than competition. It was surprisingly open minded of someone to offer up a potential client or customer to someone else rather than try and keep them to themselves.

The self-help field is cluttered with a lot of people all doing similar things. Some better than others. If you go into setting up your therapy or coaching thinking about competition you could struggle to make yourself heard in all the noise out there, even if you have a fantastic and original niche.

It is much better to look around at the other people in the field you want to enter and consider how you could create co-operative relationships with these people.

It could be about creating a formal partnership with someone, or about creating a working relationship where you pass work to and from each other and team up where required. They could be doing the same thing as you or something that is similar and complimentary.

For example, I have often do work, pass work to and receive work from a network of people I have worked with, experienced and therefore trust.

These include (but are not limited too):

• Hazel Bagley, NLP Therapist and Coach, specialising in addictive behaviour and anxiety www.hazelbagley.com
• Cain Leathem GB Fitness, one of Britains leading Exercise and Nutrition Consultants www.gbfitness.co.uk
• Mark Peters, Balanced Approach www.balancedapproach.co.uk

So, whilst doing your research and developing your therapy or coaching business see who is out there that you could team up, maybe they are doing the same as you want to where you can share clients (and costs), or maybe they are in a similar and complimentary field where you can recommend and exchange clients.

Matt