Heidi Sloss blog posts

When 1 + 1 = 3 or More!

Business, Partnerships No Responses »

Apr 262013

Last week I wrote about joint ventures or what I called “success partners.” Thank you for all the responses and a special shout out to Eric Doner of Achieve Corp for posting a response on my blog–I always appreciate blog love! If you leave a comment on my blog, I might give you a shout out in a future post too.

Joint ventures are a great way to grow your business, but some companies need more. For these companies, measurable growth comes when a partnership is formed, between two or more people who are all responsible for the company’s success. In other words forming a partnership, with another person, who compliments your skill set, may be a wise decision for many business owners.
From my perspective, two people, as partners, can accomplish much more than they could alone. This is when 1 + 1 = 3 or more! The sum of their parts is greater than their individual accomplishments. It is ideal when the partners bring complimentary skills to the table, but even if your skill set overlaps with another person, I see significantly increased productivity when people team up and form a partnership to run their business.
It does not matter what industry you are in. Partnerships, when done right, are a more profitable and effective way to run a business. Whether you are a service provider or not, having a partner may mean the difference between barely hanging on and thriving.
How partnerships are structured vary, there is no one magic formula. Approaching a partnership with trust is crucial. My first real job, was working with my father. A few years later we formed a partnership when we started our own business. It was a wonderful opportunity for me, and a huge help for him–it worked for both of us and this is critical–it has to work for all the parties involved.
How partners share the workload is as varied as there are partnerships. Two examples I want to share with you are Ruth Brown and Sarah Little of Small Brown Landscape and Susan Castaneda and Shawn Miller of Susan and Shawn of Coldwell Banker Los Gatos.

Ruth and Sarah of Small Brown Landscape act as sounding boards for each other for both business and design issues as they come up. Being able to bounce ideas off of each other is important to their partnership. They mostly keep their client base separate, but will work with a client together on occasion. When I spoke to Ruth last week, she talked about the importance of compatibility and she feels that this is a key to the success of their partnership. Ruth told me that she would never have gone out on her own, but having a partner in Sarah makes all the difference for her.

Susan and Shawn of Coldwell Banker Los Gatos have been partners for years, first in another industry and now in residential real estate. They structure their partnership 50/50 on all things. They both work with all of their clients and they both share in the costs and profits of running their business. But they divide the tasks that need to be done based on their skill set. They have archived great financial success and Shawn attributes it to how much they enjoy working together. “It is hard work, but worth it when I know I have a great partner I can count on.” Shawn also told me that she has seen partnerships fall apart when the partners start thinking that their individual contributions are worth more than their partner’s.

Both of these partnerships are made up of pairs of women who recognize that their individual efforts result in accomplishments that are multiplied because they are working together. Of course, all partnerships, like all relationships, take work. Delineating roles & tasks, maintaining open lines of communication, loyalty, trust, collaboration and bringing out the best in each other are also important elements in a successful partnership. But at the end of the day, many business partners talk about the importance of not feeling alone that inspires them to reach for more as part of the success of their partnership. They like being able to count on someone else as well as being accountable to that person too.
Is a partnership right for you? Take a look at what you are doing and what you feel are the problems or pitfalls you face in running your business. Would it be easier if you had a partner? If so, start thinking about what a great partnership would be like for you. What tasks would you want to share? What tasks would you want to keep? What tasks would you want someone else to do? So many business people worry about how difficult is it to find a great partnership, and then use that worry to talk themselves out of finding the right person. Instead think about how much more you could accomplish with the right person at your side.

Yours,

Heidi BK Sloss
Marketing Strategist & Follow-Up Expert
Best-Selling Author of Fortune is in the Follow-Up®
hsloss@heidisloss.com
www.heidisloss.com
650-248-1545

Do you have success partners in your business?

Business, Guest Blog 3 Responses »

Apr 182013

Do you have success partners in your business?

Who helps you to succeed?
Professionals that you hire? Good.
Other business owners that you do joint ventures with? Even better!
Doing everything all by yourself is a recipe for bad choices, poor decisions and burnout. Fact is that you don’t have to go it alone. There are plenty of people to work with who can help you to achieve your business goals. And they don’t all have to be people you hire.
Doing joint projects or ventures with other business professionals can make a huge difference in your business success. Sometimes business owners formalize this relationship and call it affiliate marketing, other times it is very informal and just a quid pro quo [Note definition: Quid pro quo (Latin: "this for that") means an exchange of goods or services, where one transfer is contingent upon the other. "A favor for a favor"; phrases with similar meaning include: "give and take", and "you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours.]

Two recent ventures that I participated in were guest blogging for two other service professionals. Check out my guest posts on Ryan Corey’s SalesRepMarketing Blog and on Rosalinda Randall’s Your Relationship Edge Blog Part I and Part II.

Why did I do this? One is that our services compliment each other, two is that they have blog followers who are part of my target market, three is that I hope to generate some good old fashioned SEO from their blogs to my website, and four is they asked!
Who do you think would make a good joint venture partner with you? Do they do business in the same or similar industry? Do they do business locally to you? Do they have a complimentary business philosophy or products or services? All of these are important, but the most critical one is to make sure that they serve an overlapping target market. In other words, do they do business and interact with your prospects? If so, then pursue it.
Working with others is not always easy, but when it succeeds it is effortless and brilliant.

Yours,

Heidi BK Sloss
Marketing Strategist & Follow-Up Expert
Best-Selling Author of Fortune is in the Follow-Up®
hsloss@heidisloss.com
www.heidisloss.com
650-248-1545