“No One Wants Someone to Be with Them for Their Money”: Partners in Business and Life

AVAlexander Volchek

And build a company worth $10 million. Share tragedy, pain, trauma, business closures, failure, bankruptcy—anything at all—with that person. When you know there's no lying in your partnership. Someone has a billion dollars, so they must partner with people who have roughly a billion dollars. Every partnership in life ends. Absolutely every one. At the very least, one person will die. Stagnation, deterioration, negativity, lost money, enormous amounts of lost time, disappointment. A person doesn't want you to be with them purely for money. They want you to be with them for who they are. How do you find and choose a business partner? An important, interesting, deep, complex, all-encompassing subject and question that will accompany you throughout your life. My name is Alexander Volchek. This channel is about scaling and growth for business owners and people who want to find themselves, identify the right next step, and take it forward. Partnership. I've had many partnerships in my life, hundreds of them. Some have been especially important and deep: the partnership when I launched my first programming company, the partnership at Business Molodost, my partnership with Andrey Rogachev at Agro24, and the partnership at GeekBrains.

Many living partnerships in which I experienced pain, suffering, luck, success, and joy. The pain that arose was, of course, partly rooted in how I chose a particular partner or partners. Why did I choose them? What was operating within me then? What was the inner source of that choice? Write in the comments—

a partner. Write in the comments: have you had partners in your life? Were all those partnerships great and the choices easy? Have you ever chosen the wrong partner? That very mistake that often leads to suffering, but overall leads to your growth as a person. I've had a great many partnerships. I didn't say hundreds for nothing—there really have been a hundred. Partnerships exist in different projects, teams, and businesses, large and small: equal ownership shares, a minority stake, or being the most important person. I also have a partnership with my wife that has lasted a very long time. We actually met in 1987. Thinking about 1987, it seems such a strange and distant time. A long, lasting, real, living partnership through very different circumstances and, most importantly, different versions of me. The most important thing when choosing a partner is understanding that, of course, every partnership happens by chance. We're talking about circumstances in which the question arises: are you and this person heading in the same direction or not?

Perhaps you feel an impulse that something could emerge with this person. They offer you something, or a team or group of people offers you something, or you're thinking of offering them something. In a partnership, the most important thing to establish clearly for yourself is its goal. Why are you creating this partnership together? In my previous video, I discussed business goals and how important it is to know your business's true goal. It's equally, incredibly important to know the goal of this partnership. Why are you doing it? Are you partnering to build a business with a particular goal, with that business as the fundamental basis? For example, you want to build—

a business. You might want to build an education company worth $10 million, a chain of beauty salons you can sell for $40 million, or a coffee shop that generates $1,000 a month. Is the business the essence and purpose of your partnership? Or is its foundation that you fundamentally want to be with this person: spend time and live through things together, share experience and joy, different businesses, events, and circumstances, tragedy, pain, trauma, business closures, failure, bankruptcy—anything? What matters most is living through it with this person. Such business partnerships exist. They're probably very much like deep, real, truthful family partnerships. So there are two important possibilities: your partnership rests on a key business goal, or on wanting to be together. When choosing a partner, start with the following two understandings. First, your own sense of what this partnership will be.

The other side is incredibly important for success and for moving in the right direction together: understanding that your partner may have an entirely different goal, task, actions, foundations, principles, and strategy for this interaction. Your partner is a different person. That understanding lets you shape and reach a real, honest, sincere agreement together. An agreement built on something other than your unspoken expectations, guesses, or fears. You enter a partnership in which things are clear and understood. When you're in a state of open dialo—

when you're in a state of open dialogue, firmness and confidence in the relationship, honesty, truth, and authenticity; when you know there's no lying in your partnership and you've told each other the truth. An interesting, fundamental, unique point is that there's no such thing as partners having to be on the same level to partner together. Some think a person with a billion dollars must partner with people who have roughly a billion dollars or more. Or that someone with $100,000, or nothing at all, can't partner with someone who has $10 billion. That's not true, because each person has their own inner goal and experience of partnership. A person with a billion dollars may want to partner with you, someone without money who has done certain things in particular circumstances, simply to be with you. Perhaps they feel calm around you and want your company, creativity, professionalism, perspective, ability to make decisions, or precision. You, meanwhile, may want only money from them.

Imagine that situation. The partnership will fail if you don't tell them. If you honestly say, “Listen, my inner goal is to make money. What's your real goal?” Try to see that their goal isn't to make money with you, because there's no guarantee you'll make an amount that interests them. You'd be interested in $10 million, but they wouldn't. Perhaps they simply enjoy being with you. They tell you that, and you tell them you need money. Openly and honestly. You'll probably discuss and analyze your inner states, but at least each of you will know for certain that you've spoken the truth. You can try to connect on that basis and see whether such an arrangement is possible.

Is such an arrangement possible? If you don't tell each other the truth, the partnership will end unsuccessfully. Of course, it's important to remember that every partnership in life ends. Absolutely every one. At the very least, someone will die. But every partnership ends. The question is what happened during it. Was it real life, the genuine truth of partnership, a blazing fire and creativity? Did it develop you and everything around you? Or was it stagnation, deterioration, negativity, lost money, enormous amounts of lost time, and disappointment after disappointment? I've partnered with someone whose financial position was completely different from mine. That was at Agro24. My partner was Andrey Rogachev, the creator of Pyaterochka, one of the first people in Russia to earn a billion dollars in cash specifically through privatization. Someone with great experience and wealth. I had my own sort of experience, and we reached an agreement. Why do I say “sort of”? That's an inner feeling that comes from measuring things in money here. We spent a lot of time inseparable, looking for business projects.

We agreed to do a project together. This is important: among our written agreements for the project, we said distributing the business's profits mattered to us. But did he need that profit? Did he need a million dollars in profit? No. Why would he? He didn't need a million dollars, just as I wouldn't really have needed this business if I'd started earning $1,000 or $2,000 from it. I was strongly motivated by money. He was strongly motivated by being with me. He felt something else, a different energy. I eventually told him. Several years into our partnership, when it was already shaky, I honestly admitted it to him. How wonderful it is to be able to discuss that from the start without fear. Why are people afraid to tell a prospective partner their own motives from the beginning? Because they're afraid the partnership won't happen. And most likely, that per—

and most likely, that person already has expectations. I expected us to make more than a billion dollars in that business, because the main goal was to earn more than a billion dollars and build a company worth more than a billion. My goal was to make more than a billion dollars. I was afraid to tell the truth because doing so could have ended the partnership. He could have said, “You know, if you're in this purely for the cash, I'm not going to do this business at all,” and closed it. If you're with me purely for money—people don't want that. They want you to be with them for who they are. In fact, nobody wants you to be with them purely for money. Of course, I wasn't with him purely for money. I was also there because of the person he was. I was probably one of the few people around him like that. But I still had that impulse, source, and motive of money within me. So if you're choosing a partner, reflecting on whether to be with this person, and holding something back, you're creating false expectations for yourself.

Most importantly, you're creating false expectations for the other person. They may also be afraid, leaving things unexplained or lying, and they add their lie to yours. It becomes not two lies, but two thousand. Those lies then spread to clients, employees, and senior management. Everyone starts sensing it somewhere. It spreads to your families and everywhere else. Truth, honesty, and the greatest possible authenticity in a partnership let you approach the result as quickly as possible. Some partnerships have such a strong impulse that there's hardly any need to negotiate. Everything is already honest; you simply move forward. In others, you think through business circumstances in extraordinary detail because there's no other way. Those partnerships will probably be hard to achieve—the ones requiring an enormous number of parameters to be written down. Almost a year ago, I was discussing the details—

yes, the details of a potential partnership, with two people. I set out a whole list of parameters and details under which I was willing to work together. Someone told me, “You can't do that. It's wrong.” The partnership didn't happen. Why did I set out that list? I knew that unless I communicated all those details, I wouldn't stay with these people. I saw some of our principles diverging: principles about life, personal freedom, and managing companies or businesses. I understood that it made sense to discuss certain things in advance, write them down, and establish them firmly. Perhaps I lost a business opportunity by telling too much truth and trying to anticipate too many circumstances from the start. But I know that at the time, I was certain this was how I needed to approach these people. I still believe I did the right thing. Sometimes I form a partnership instantly. You see someone, spend a little time with them, and immediately say, “Let's partner up.” You feel authenticity, truth, and something real. You feel the business will be alive. But if you don't write down and discuss certain details or explore the other person's circumstances too deeply, you need to allow for the things you haven't discussed to be illusions, to be unreal, or not to align.

This also matters for your own life, for developing in the right direction according to the laws of truth, and for moving forward. It won't just let you build a good partnership and a great business, earn a lot of money, gain a good reputation, earn a lot again, keep earning, build good teams, and benefit clients. It will let you, as a person, live your life as fully, honestly, truthfully, and authentically as possible.

Truthfully. Authentically. We don't build businesses and partnerships to become a unit or tool of the business, letting it control our lives. We build them so we can live our lives in freedom, inner sufficiency, harmony, and a sense of taking the right step. Subscribe. On this channel, I explore many aspects of partnership. We'll certainly discuss how to part ways with partners properly. I've already posted videos about partners. We'll examine different points of conflict and talk about being in business on your own. Most importantly, we'll explore how to take your own next step properly. That step expands you as a person, and your personal scale shapes the scale of everything else. See you soon!