You are planning to start a business with a partner, and you want to get things right from the beginning. You want to make sure that you both build a rock-solid relationship that will be crucial for the creation and grow of a rock-solid company in the future, and this is a smart move. But how to make it happen without turning your business life into couples counselling?
Good news is that this can be easier than you think. You just need to follow a few tips, as you will see below, and you and your partner will be ready to focus on the most essential tasks of your business, instead of wasting time-fighting or trying to reconcile after it.
Treat them as equal
It sounds obvious, but it is interesting how often people make this kind of mistake. You should have clear in your mind that your partner is an equal, not your employee. Even if you own a bigger share of the company or if you are the one who came up with the big idea for the business, the concept of partnership requires equality.
So if you want to be respected, start respecting them as a valuable contributor to the success of the business. To achieve it, just keep in your mind why you didn’t decide to go solo instead. This was because you needed help or there was an expertise that you didn’t have and without which you wouldn’t be able to get the job done, right?
Accept their flaws
Nobody is perfect, and neither are you. So you should be prepared to accept your partner’ flaws as a normal aspect of life. Of course, you don’t have to allow a behaviour that can harm the business or that have been discussed and agreed otherwise. But keeping high expectations and making a fuzz because of them won’t be productive as well.
Again, the idea is that you focus on their strengths, the things that made you choose them as a partner in the first place. Then you can see how you are going to deal with the flaws by learning to ignore them or to delegate the tasks to somebody else, for instance.
Write everything down
The best way to prove that you are taking the business is by writing everything down. And it isn’t only the contract that we are talking about. The routine of the business and tasks/responsibilities division should be on the paper as well, along with instructions about holidays/days off and the dissolution process of the partnership.
A business plan is also mandatory not only to the company itself, but for creating an opportunity to discuss and agree on crucial topics, such as the vision, mission, and values of the company. This way you will speak the very same language all the time, avoiding the awkward situation that happens when an employee gets different orders from each one of the partners, for instance.
Keep your work to the highest standard
If your goal is to be respected by your business partner, you will need to make sure that you keep your work to the highest standard. You can’t expect that they will consider you as reliable and productive if you are usually late, never meet deadlines, and try to avoid hard decisions.
You also should make sure that you learn to write correctly, as you don’t want to be sending emails to your partner and clients full of grammar mistakes, for example – it won’t make you look good at the picture. So do your best to improve your writing and communication skills as well.
Share the hard decisions
And talking about hard decisions, you have to know that there will be the time that they will come to your plate, and you will have to be there for it. Your partner needs to know that they can count on you when trouble has arrived, or they will have very little faith in you.
You might need to fire someone or deal with the loss of a client or a faulty product, and that is it. This is just part of the game, and it will be much easier when you understand that they all go away after a while. Better than that you learn to manage them less stressfully, and the next challenges will feel much easier than that.
Talk about money
Among the delicate issues, there are those related to money. And many of us have been raised to think that our finances are private or have never learned to manage them at all. So when we have to talk to someone about money, we have very little idea about how to do it.
But, in a business partnership, finances become a daily and major subject, vital for any healthy company. So you need to make sure that you know how to deal with it and to reach agreements in a mature way.
The Bottom Line
So, as you see, build a rock-solid relationship with your partner is much more a question of mind setting than anything else. You will need to discuss everything together from the colour of the walls and social media networks to what happens if one of you die, but as soon as you get it all agreed, all you will have to do is to make it happen.
You will also need to make sure that you are the best partner that they ever had, reliable and ready to face any challenge with them. Nobody wants to be around someone that is complaining all the time or that think they are superior to their partner. So if you watch your behaviour, you will be much more likely to be respected and enjoy a positive and profitable partnership with your partner.
