Choosing Business Partners

As I was reading Randal Pinkett writing a blog about choosing a partner for business, it reminds me of the past few years of working with different partners. At first, we thought of choosing our best friends as our partners. It really looks feasible to do that since we seem to understand each other very well. But it turned out to be the opposite… Now, my very good friend has just converted into an acquaintance whom I could hardly talk more than 2 sentences with. Choosing a business partner is like choosing a girl as your lifetime partner in marriage. You will start to see each other’s weaknesses, and everything seems to be transparent to you that you wouldn’t want to know…

Different Money Patterns

• Friends rarely talk about their views about how they treat money. Some seem to be really generous when in fact, they were very thrifty inside.
• Some seem to be avoiding paying the bill whenever they go in big groups.
• All these are important to find out as we will all be looking forward to get our first income from the actual project together… Some of us might want to reinvest the money to build the business structure, while others might want the money badly for their survival…
• Some of us might not be able to stand long period of temporal poverty which lead to commotions and partnership separation.

Different Business Thoughts

• Some of us wanted to build the business profitably to sell. Others wanted to build the business to last as long as they could.
• Some of us wanted to do the actual job ourselves in the business, while others have been thinking of hiring people and letting the employees to do all the work.
• Some of us wanted to be the leader of the business, while others wanted equal power…
• Some of us wanted the business this way, while another want it another way…
• And the list can just go on because of the different thoughts… As the phrase goes: “One Situation, Two People Can Have Different Experience!”

Different Priorities

• Some might want to focus full time on this business, while others just want to do part time as they work on a job for others.
• Some might put their family priority first, and might delay the business for the sake of the family. While others will put the business first no matter what happens.
• Some put their love as their priority and neglected business, some prioritize business and neglected love, while others try to put both in the priority…
• Some just refuse to focus on business at all… Still in dreamland…

Different Character

• Some tend to be very visual or audible and can only focus on very surface things.
• Some tend to be a thinker and see through a lot of the inner details and just clash with different thoughts from the visual/audible people when the visual/audible just don’t understand what the thinker is thinking…
• Some tend to rush things… Others tend to take things easily…
• Some are just being lazy in business, making their partners really sick of them.
• Some are just not positive person, and tend to see things unable to work in any way at all! They conclude really fast and are very determined in their judgment… while others have to constantly break their beliefs and caused unhappiness in the business.

Conclusion
Choosing a partner for business is the same as choosing a partner for marriage. Some tips when choosing a partner:

1. Don’t sh*t in your own business… Don’t cause extra martial affairs within your own business, or mess up your own business in some way or another.
2. When it’s business, think seriously and finish your job. When it’s a game, play hard!
3. Look for that quality in the potential partner you wanted in your business. Is he an operational person? Marketing person? Technical person? Theory person?
4. Is he a positive person?
5. Take him in if you have a good feeling about it… It is never easy to choose the right partner…