Give Me a Business Partner Over Going Solo

If you are starting out, find a partner to share the load

When I stepped down as CEO last year, I needed to recharge my batteries and try new things. What I’ve discovered with my new enterprise is that having a business partner is a fantastic way to start and grow a business, and despite all the doom-mongering you read online, doing it with a friend can work.

From day one, James (my business partner) and I have been upfront and honest about what we wanted from working together. I’d been a CEO, he had run his own business for 11 years. We wanted someone to share the responsibility with. I cannot recommend it enough.

I love being an entrepreneur, having the freedom to try new things. Doing that with a partner is the best of both worlds for me.

Who Do You Turn To?

Great people surrounded me at RedEye, people that have successfully run the business, but when you are in charge, ultimately the buck stops with you. For some decisions, you cannot discuss them with others and have to take the burden on yourself. Well, no more!

There is no subject James and I cannot discuss if we feel we need to. We went into this with our eyes open. We spent a lot of time at the start agreeing on what we wanted to achieve with the business and how we would work together. Clear rules were laid out and the goals and values of the company agreed.

I would suggest that is critical for anyone that goes this route. Take the time at the start, before you get going, to really talk about your ambitions, what you believe in. If you don’t and they don’t align, eventually that will come to the surface and cause you problems.

If one of us is uncomfortable taking on a new client, we will say so. We both have to want to work with a client before we will proceed. If we don’t believe a campaign or marketing message is in line with our values or vision, then we will raise it.

Tough decisions are not the problem with being in charge, most outstanding leaders embrace the responsibility, but just occasionally it is good to have someone to run these decisions past. And this is a massive advantage of a partnership. If you don’t have this, I encourage you to seek a mentor if you don’t already have one.

You Don’t Need to Talk About Everything

I have always been a very inclusive leader; I believe it is healthy for a business to listen to people and take a collaborative approach to things. I believe I went too far. Sometimes you just want to do something, you know it’s right and you don’t need a long discussion on the subject.

We have agreed from the beginning that there are areas where we simply don’t need to waste each other's time going through each decision we make.

• Imagery — James is the creative guy. I am not. When we pick a campaign or make a new page or funnel live, James will build a page. I might provide some copy, but he will choose the images, fonts, and colours and doesn't need to ask my opinion.
• Pricing — We agreed on a rate at the start. We decided on a discount for charities or not-for-profits. After that, if either of us is talking to a potential client, we trust the other one to decide on price negotiation, no need to check with anyone else.
• Ideal Customer — We’ve built out what our ideal customer looks like and use that to target all of our marketing. However, if one of us sees an opportunity outside of this that we think is right for the business, then we’ll just go for it.

There are plenty of other small and large decision processes I could illustrate. The point is, if you have someone you trust and you are equal partners, then you don’t need to make people feel included and you don’t have to answer to a board. Just get on with it.

Sharing In Success and Failure

A skilled leader accepts the blame for the company's failures and shares the successes with everyone else (bad ones do the reverse, but that’s a whole different article). Crudely put, when you work in a true partnership, then you half the pain of the failures.

You also get to learn from each other's mistakes and to support the other person. If you have a passion for what you do, when you make a mistake or a decision goes wrong, it hurts — more than most of us will admit.

I also get genuine pleasure when James comes up with an idea that works. When he creates a new message that resonates well with people or gets invited onto another Podcast to showcase our business, I’m pleased for him and it brightens up my day as well.

New Things

As an entrepreneur, I love thinking about new ideas and trying stuff. That doesn’t change when you have an equal partner, it just doubles. Whichever one of us has the idea or suggests trying stuff, we jump in with both feet.

As a prime example, just look at our Etsy store, Geek Dad Designs. One day I was reading an article about how simple it was to set up a dropshipping store. I shared an idea with James and two days later we set aside a Friday to build a store! We did it for the experience and to be better at advising clients.

Double the ideas, double the fun. You also have someone to challenge your ideas and make them better. Creatively, working as a partnership has been more fulfilling than I could have hoped.

We Want To Beat Each Other

There is no doubt James and I have a strong sense of competition, it’s healthy but it is definitely there. It drives us on. If there is a deadline, we hit it, because we don’t want to let the other one down or give them bragging rights!

When I closed our largest deal so far, I knew James would be desperate to get a higher one and within a month he had. When we put together an ad campaign, part of the AB testing is to see who will create the best ad, meaning we put a lot of thought into the ad.

And ultimately I think therefore a partnership, particularly with a good mate, can be a great idea. We support each other, we genuinely celebrate the other one's successes, and we drive each other to be the best we can.

I can’t think of a much better way to run a business.