Having the right business partner from the get go is an important part of going after your goals. In addition to helping you make positive progress toward success within your industry, having the right partner will keep you out of your Beverly Hills business litigation attorney’s office, disputing assets if your venture crashes and burns.
You’ll need to know how to identify that perfect partner, though, and these tips will aid you in weeding through all your potential business matches:
- Trust is the main ingredient. Without it, you won’t be able to make sound business decisions and you’ll spend too much time looking over your shoulder to get anything worthwhile completed.
- Trust is born of shared values. When you and your partner are on the same page, you are more likely to trust one another and more likely to come to agreements (or at least agreeable compromises) on your various business challenges.
- A good partner has skills that complement your own. By selecting a partner with skills and experiences that you might not be as proficient in, the two of you combined can cover a larger range of challenges and back each other up when either is deficient in a certain area.
- Your partner should be able to give and take in equal measure. When your partnership is built on the idea that each member contributes to the business and doesn’t try to “keep score” with the other, you have a better chance of growing together. Equity is the key, but you’ll need flexibility too.
- You need a partner that you can talk through problems with. Not everything is going to go right the first time, and there will be plenty of situations where you and your partner disagree on what is best. For these scenarios, you need to have a partner that is willing to express themselves fully, willing to listen to what you have to say, and willing to reach a compromise so that you can forge ahead.
With those traits in mind, you’ll need to evaluate partners based upon how well they fit the criteria. INC suggests a number of strategies that can help you learn more about prospective partners, which include working together on something unrelated to your business first (so you can get a sense of what they are like), and learning more about their background so that you can see how they measure up to your ideal business partner.