https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJfn\_pWzFqg

1 00:00:00.000 --\> 00:01:00.000 what's going on everyone i have been
known as the partnership killer uh and so what i want to share to you
with you today is something that comes up on i mean every week on
coaching calls with uh you know younger entrepreneurs younger business
owners not even younger just other business owners who aren't doing as
much and who want more and the question is usually one of two things
first is you know what should our roles be within our partnership and
then two what do you think of partnerships in general and so what i want
to do is share with you a couple of hard hard hard earned lessons uh
that i have and so first right off the bat i i think i counted i have
nine failed partnerships um and so i just want to say right right before
you even get going i could be the problem with the partnerships right if
if you have that many failed partnerships then it's probably you you
were the common theme so i will say that first and foremost up front um
that being said i think the reason that many of those partnerships fell
they all happened you know almost concurrently i just did partnership
after partnership for partnership because i heard it's like

2 00:01:00.000 --\> 00:02:00.000 you gotta find good partners um but
what i didn't understand was how it actually needed to be structured and
how it worked and so there's uh there's there's a few pieces of that the
first is if you're just starting out i think that for the most part it's
better to not have partners um and that is because usually it's like you
and a buddy and you're like hey we like hanging out we should go into
business together when really you're doing that for the emotional need
to be satisfied to have somebody to talk to and share the experience
with but not because it's a good business decision and the only reason
for you to have a partner is because they either have money or skills
that you do not have that is it it's the only reason money or skills
that's it and so if you both are entrepreneurial people and you're both
you know love selling and love marketing you're very promotion oriented
which many entrepreneurs are right if that's you then if they're that
way too then one of you is not required and you have to really face that
so if you both like the same stuff you both shouldn't have your own
businesses

3 00:02:00.000 --\> 00:03:00.000 it almost always fails like literally
it almost always fails and so that's the first one the second thing is
that those jump into bed together partnerships don't have step number
two which is you don't have a contract you don't have terms you don't
have an agreement and the reason is because you're so afraid of like
messing up the vibe we don't operate that way you will when it gets \[
\_\_ \] up at the end but i'm telling you right now i i now even when i
have somebody who approaches me and says hey like will you take a
percentage of my company can you coach me through this blah blah i say
let's go through the lawyers first all right because the thing is is you
get to see how this person acts under stress because it is stressful
because inherently you're going to disagree on things and so this is the
perfect experience like perfect time for you to go kind of get a
simulation of that it's like what happens if you don't want to work and
i want to work what happens if you leave what happens if i i don't want
to do this anymore like you have to go through all the scenarios and get
a good lawyer and you should really have two that represent you uh if
you don't have the money for that then get somebody to just counsel you
on you

4 00:03:00.000 --\> 00:04:00.000 know you can google a standard
partnership agreement their templates are free online and you can pay
one lawyer for one hour of of time to at least say these are the things
you should look for now you know decide amongst yourselves and so you
can represent yourself in your partnership you know agreement but you
have to have the agreement and you have to spell it out in clear terms
uh because if you don't have that it's like it's the bedrock of good
communication and expectations right like otherwise usually like most
relationships bit partnerships end because of unmet and unspoken
expectations like well i thought you're going to do this i was like well
i didn't know but no one even says that because they can't communicate
so first is you probably shouldn't just jump together with somebody
because they uh they're just like you if you are going to do that then
you should make sure that you have contracts in place and then finally
what i want to do is kind of explain to you what the three main roles
roles that exist in a business are okay three the three pillars all
right i want to see if i have a tripod here all right here we go here's
my tripod all right so there's three pillars

5 00:04:00.000 --\> 00:05:00.000 to every business all right the first
is acquisition which is the rainmaker or somebody who's gonna bring in
business so that's marketing and sales all right acquisition the money
getter all right the second of these is the product which is what you
are actually selling it's the fulfillment it's the service it's the
widget it's the whatever somebody who knows how to deliver it all right
and then third you have the operations which is everything else that has
to happen in the company paying payroll paying taxes making sure legal
and contracts and uh i.t and uh you know finance and all like the you
know your accounting all of that stuff hr has to happen right and so
these are the three legs of every business now they're not necessarily
equally weighted and that's an it's an important point right like a lot
of times there are good operators that you can get for significantly
less and many times not even equity because there are more of them right
now raid making being able to

6 00:05:00.000 --\> 00:06:00.000 bring in business is a very highly
valued skill in the marketplace on the flip side having the thing the
product that you're going to sell is also very valuable now this is why
skill stacking is so important if you can have multiple of these skills
then you have two or all three of the legs right now your these are the
roles that have to exist it doesn't mean you have to be partners with
these people but you have to have all three of these things for your
business to stand up and so for example within uh the company i'll walk
through my roles within each of the companies that i own and so uh the
first is gym launch right so in gym launch i am both the acquisition and
the product right or that was my founding role within the company layla
my wife runs ran all the operations so everything else so like i said i
t billing legal uh finance hr all of that stuff that had to happen she
took care of right super important but because of that we had all three
legs of the stool

7 00:06:00.000 --\> 00:07:00.000 and we were able to build a business
right if you're missing one of the legs it's not going to work right and
with this is where this is really dangerous is like a lot of the
marketing people that are in this world are really good promoters they
can get people in they can sell them but then they have no fulfillment
they have no thing right and then they have no one who's organized and
so everything like you send emails in you try and get help and they
don't respond it's because they just don't have the other piece i don't
think it's because they're bad intention i think just don't have the
skill and so you have to have all three and so if you're going to bring
someone in you you need them to have one of those things right now you
can start a business and own all of it and just make sure that you fill
the roles of those people but as you're thinking through it there's the
role so if you're going to bring partners in in the beginning you want
to be clear about what it is that they're bringing to the table now if
they're if they're one of those three right then that's a clearly
defined role and then at that point that's what you can lay out in your
agreement and then you can argue about or you know negotiate whatever
equity if you're doing this in the beginning but if you've already
started at that point then you can look at the three

8 00:07:00.000 --\> 00:08:00.000 legs of the stool and see where where
am i lacking right and so for most of you guys who are listening most
people follow me are on the or like the promotion side so they like the
acquisition side then what you need to do is find a strong operator all
right and depending on what you're selling if you know the thing that
you're selling then you can basically be product and acquisition and
have a strong second to help you fulfill on those things and basically
don't go to jail right and you know get buy your taxes and all the other
stuff um and so when i'm thinking about partnerships and when i have you
know younger guys who are coming in many many times after having
discussions with me and then talking to them each other they realize
that they have the exact same role they like the same things and one of
them is not necessary and so they oftentimes split and that's not a bad
thing right it's better to recognize an error early than to recognize an
error late all right and so you may be in one of these partnerships
where you're like we gotta both do the same thing we kind of just
overlap on everything it's like yeah that's just two people working the
same thing um and so it's not like you don't want to just be like oh
there here's all this work i'll do half you do

9 00:08:00.000 --\> 00:09:00.000 have that's not a good partnership you
have to figure out what are the things where i am good at what are the
things you are good at and then we draw a line on the board and
everything on that side you own and everything on this side i own and
i'm responsible for because if everyone's responsible for everything no
one's responsible for anything right and then nothing's gonna get done
and then you can never know who to blame and someday you're like well he
takes out the trash or something i take out the trash and we just kind
of we're just like kind of get it done type stupid there's no there's no
big business that works away all right and so if even if you are small
you need to start thinking big to become big right so you got to do the
actions before you get the results you have to have the beliefs before
you get the outcomes of a bigger business to become a bigger business
and the reason most businesses stay small is because they think small
and they act small so they stay that way because the outcome of what
they're doing is the result of the actions they're making which are
small right and so right now if you're in a partnership if you don't
have a partnership you're thinking about starting a business i would
definitely try and just acquire the skills myself get going and then the
first hire i'm going to have is going to be a strong operational second
all right it's the first thing i'm going to do if you are in a
partnership you

10 00:09:00.000 --\> 00:10:00.000 need to put all the activities that
you do on a board i do this when i do consulting stuff but all the
activities that happen in the business on a board if you don't know what
it is you do a time study which means you write down every 15 minutes
what you do in a week right because you probably don't know because
you're scattered all over the place so if you write it all down and you
both bring it to each other and you put it on a whiteboard or put it on
a board then what you can do is say okay these are all the things these
are all the activities that happen in our business let's divide these
out and say who owns these all right and that's the very beginning of an
organization because you are becoming organized you are creating roles
and responsibilities you were creating specialization of skills which is
what moved humanity forward specialization is a good thing right and so
the very beginning you get all of it on there and you can divide it out
and you can divide it based on the skills of the person if you both have
the same skills then either you decide okay well i'm going to become a
specialist in this and you're going to become a specialist in this or we
shouldn't be doing this business together and you should do a business
that's just like mine or or something else and you should become and you
should be that role for that company and you should find a second just
like i will all right and oftentimes if you can at least think that way

11 00:10:00.000 --\> 00:11:00.000 then you don't lose you don't
liquidate the most valuable thing in the whole world which is your
equity all right because if your thing actually does grow if your
business actually does grow then the biggest dilution of how much money
you're going to make is that first decision when you started when you
just decided just right off the bat to give half of everything away all
right and i've made this mistake nine times um and uh it took me and you
know i haven't had a partner in four years and i've made all of the
money in my life post partners and so um there's also other factors you
want to look at too like what kind of you know what kind of working
schedule do you have how much vacation time do you wanna have are you
gonna work weekends do you work late at night do you work in the
mornings do you expect each other to be responsive like there's all
these little things that you need to make sure you dial in because if
you don't it's just going to cause trouble later and it may be hard
conversations for you now but believe me it'll be much harder later when
the expectations are not being met and now you have money involved all
right so anyways these are the things i think through when i'm looking
at partners and partnerships and why

12 00:11:00.000 --\> 00:12:00.000 oftentimes i do break up many partners
because they don't start them for the same for the right reasons um and
so i hope you found this valuable if you have a partner talk to them
about it show them this video um and uh keeping amazing and uh lots of
love oh total bonus um i have noticed that works really well so many
times is married couples uh married couples starting business together
they already have usually differences in skills and different dynamics
and so that usually works well usually one of them is the more go-getter
hunter killer right you know the acquisition side and the other person's
usually the more organized more stable um you know more even-headed like
does all the ops in the back the back-end stuff right and so even just
thinking about front-end and back-end is a good way to start and that's
why i love having married couples in general because they almost always
are successful if they can just eliminate those skills and they usually
already have even even without speaking they already unknowingly have
made a lot of these specializations that's why a lot of times they're
more successful they also have the interpersonal emotional uh sounding
board to bounce things off of and also relieve some of the stress that

13 00:12:00.000 --\> 00:13:00.000 inevitably comes when you're when
you're running a business so anyways hope you enjoyed the video hope you
found this valuable uh you know share with your partner or potential
partners and uh see in the next vid bye
