You’re considering taking on a business partner or launching a new project with someone by your side. You have a person in mind and are ready to give this a go. Let me stop you there.

Going into business together is a big deal and not something that’s going to be easily undone. This is particularly true if the two of you start a new website together, or even create a corporation together.

Before you take that first step, consider testing the waters with a smaller project. Think of it like dating. You do some fun stuff together and see how well you work together.

Keep The Scope Of The Project Small

The most important part for this trial run project is to keep it small. You don’t want to put a lot of time, work, and effort into something only to find out that you don’t really like working with the other person. Do something small together.

I’ll give you some ideas further down. A good rule of thumb is something that doesn’t take you more than a full day or two to put together. It’s also helpful to make this something both of you can comfortably work on and complete while keeping your respective other businesses running smoothly.

Set A Short Timeframe for Completion

This is also a great time to judge how well you work together on a deadline. How important is finishing on-time? Is quality of the work more important than making the deadline? While the deadline may be a bit arbitrary it will help you learn more about each other and how you like to work. It will also keep things moving along quickly instead of stretching out indefinitely.

Limit The Time This Project Will Earn Income

If this is a product you’re creating that you’ll be selling together, you want to limit the amount of time it will earn combined income for you. If you each do your own selling on your separate sites, this won’t be an issue.

What you don’t want is to do monthly account for years to come on a trial project run that didn’t turn into a long-term business partnership. Agree on an end date if you’re selling and marketing it together. Ideas for that below.

Ideas For Small Time Limited Projects You May Want To Consider

Create a short opt-in style report or ebook together that you can both use as a lead magnet, low-entry level product, or bonus in each of your product funnels.

Make it a limited time offer. Create the product, set up a launch day and create urgency for your buyers by only offering it for a week or two. After this initial sales period, you could each add it as a bonus to your existing product funnel, or completely retire the product.

Instead of creating a product together, run a workshop or a small short-term coaching program. This could be done in person, or virtually. Limit it to 50 people and deliver all content and coaching within a month. Once it’s done, you can both sell recordings, or the product can be completely retired. Of course you can continue to run it occasionally if you both enjoy working together, but aren’t quite ready to become full business partners.