I have spent a lot of time over the past 3 years focused on my weaknesses. That led to a great deal of time spent reading many personal empowerment and business books. I actually get pretty pumped when I discover something in my life that I can improve upon. But while focusing on my weaknesses, I really lost sight to the gifts that I had. I was tiring myself out from the circles I was running trying to be an all-star at everything. There is a very powerful word in the Japanese language called “kaizen”, which means continuous incremental improvements.
It is fine if we suck at a certain area of business. We don’t, and never will be great at everything. Being the ‘CEO’ of your company does not mean you have to take on every single task. It means the opposite. You just need to know on how to find the right people who can make up for the things you are terrible at doing.
Being part of a strong team may just be one of the best feelings in business. Making money is cool too. But having a group of people come together that have individual strengths and compensate for each others weaknesses is so tremendously refreshing. I know that there is someone right now halfway across the world who is handling several of the very tasks that I hate doing. Let me say that again…Right now, I have other people tackling the things I hate to do!
Some can argue that partnerships are not for them. I can respect that and of course, they are not for everyone. My personal preference is collaboration. Whether in a partnership or not, nothing beats having a complete team. I have found that selfishness typically overrides the desire to form partnerships. One thing to keep in mind when starting out. is that you cannot lose something that you don’t have.
I have had a few partnerships in the past that did not work out the way I had planned. I hope I am loud and clear to the world when I say that I would not be here today if those partnerships never existed. They sped up the process. They took me so much further than working alone.
Recently, I have partnered up with three other 20-something entrepreneurs. We were all operating in the same space (or what others refer to as competition) and figured we each had a huge contributing value play for the team, so we decided we could get so much further by joining forces. From what I forecasted as a individual business that will produce $250,000 in 2010, now has the capacity to do 10 times the volume with less effort. Pretty good trade-off if you ask me.
Partnerships are by no means easy and it actually may be even harder for you to work as a unit. Realize that a team does not just include business partners. You can have employees, interns, virtual assistants and so forth. You want to always take cautionary steps with an attorney before entering any agreement, but don’t shy away from a partnership because you heard that they don’t work out. Collaboration is key. If you really want to make them work, understand your business partner thoroughly and where they are going in business and life.
