#spirituality #selfdevelopment #personalitytransformation
Personal Experience
How to find and choose a partner in business? It's an important, interesting, deep, complex, and all-encompassing topic and question that will truly accompany a person throughout their life. I've had hundreds of partnerships in my life. Among them, there are significant, deep partnerships: when I launched my first programming company, in the company “Business Youth”, the partnership with Andrey Rogachev in “AGRO24”, in the company “GeekBrains”.
Many such lively partnerships, where I've experienced pain, suffering, luck, success, and joy. And the pain that arose was partly due to how I chose this or that partner or partners.
What was the reason for the choice? What was operating within me at that moment? What was the source of my choice of partner at that moment? I didn't just say that I've had hundreds of partnerships in my life – there really were that many. There are partnerships in different projects, in terms of teams, different businesses (large, big, small), equal partnerships in terms of shares, where I'm a minority or the most important person. And I have a partnership with my wife, which has lasted a very long time. We met in 1987. I thought about it and realized that it seems like a very strange and distant time. A long, enduring, real, living partnership with completely different circumstances and, most importantly, a different me.
It's important, when approaching the choice of a partner, to understand that any partnership is random. We're talking now about the circumstance where you face the question: "Is this person on the same path as me?" Or you see some impulse that something might work out with this person, or they offer you something, or some team suggests these people, or you think about offering them something.
The most important thing in a partnership is to define its goal. Why are you doing this together?
To start a business with a specific goal, and you have a fundamental story about this business? For example, you want to start a business in education and create a company worth 10 million dollars? Or you want to create a chain of beauty salons and build a company that you'll sell for 40 million dollars? Or you want to open a coffee shop that will generate 1000 dollars a month? Your essence and goal of this partnership – business or wanting to be together with this person? Just being with them, gaining experience, joy, different businesses, events, circumstances, experiencing tragedy, pain, trauma, business closures, failure, bankruptcy – anything. But the main thing – you want to live through it all with this person. Such business partnerships exist. And, probably, it's very similar to a deep, real partnership in a family.
Two important circumstances: your partnership is based on a key goal in business or on wanting to be together.
$31
The Importance of Honesty and Transparency in Partnerships
The partnership will be unsuccessful if you don't tell them about it. If you honestly tell the person: "Listen, my goal inside is to make money, what's your real goal?" Try to see that their goal is not to make money with you, because together you might not make the money that interests them. For you, 10 million dollars might be interesting, but not for them. For example, it's just nice to be with you. They tell you that, and you tell them that you need money – openly, honestly. Most likely, some internal discussion will take place, but at least each of you will firmly know that you've voiced the truth and you'll try to determine based on it whether such a construction is possible. If you don't tell each other the truth, the partnership will end unsuccessfully.
It's important, of course, to remember that absolutely any partnership ends in life: at least, one of the people will die. The question is: what was during this partnership? Was it a real life, partnership? Was it a fiery, creative partnership? Was it a partnership that developed you and everything around you? Or was it stagnation, degradation, negativity, loss of money, loss of a huge amount of time, disappointment?
$32
The point of truth, honesty, maximum authenticity in partnership allows you to reach the result as quickly as possible.
Sometimes a partnership has such a strong impulse that you don’t really need to negotiate much, everything is already honest: you just take it and move forward. Sometimes a partnership requires you to think through various business circumstances incredibly carefully because it’s impossible otherwise. Those partnerships that require writing down a huge number of parameters are likely to be difficult to achieve.
Stories of Success and Failure in Business Partnerships
Almost a year ago, I had a situation where we were discussing the details of a potential partnership. I was discussing with two people and laid out a whole list of parameters and details under which I was ready to collaborate. Someone told me that you can’t do that, that it’s wrong. The partnership didn’t happen. But why did I lay out this list of details? I knew that if I didn’t communicate a large number of details, I wouldn’t be able to work with these people. I saw that some of our principles—life principles, personal freedoms, company or business management—were diverging. I understood that it made sense to discuss some things in advance and write them down, fix them firmly. Maybe I lost the business because I told too much truth, tried to predict many circumstances from the start. But I know that at that moment, I was sure that with these people it had to be done exactly this way. And now, I’m sure I did the right thing.
Tips for Choosing the Right Business Partner
Sometimes I make a partnership instantly: you see a person, spend a little time with them, and immediately suggest a partnership. You feel the sincerity, the truth, the essence, you sense that this business will be alive.
But if you don’t write down and discuss some details and don’t learn certain circumstances about the other person, then you have to assume that the things you didn’t discuss might be illusions, unreal, might not align. This is also important for you to live and develop in the right direction in terms of the laws of truth and to move forward. This allows not just to make a good partnership, to build a great business, to make a lot of money, to gain fame, to create good teams, to benefit clients—it actually allows you to live life as awesomely, honestly, and truly as possible.
After all, we do business, partnerships not to be its unit and tool, so that it controls our life, but to live life in freedom, in internal abundance, in a state of harmony and the right step.