Who should you pick as your joint venture partner or your most senior team member?
Don’t just pick your best friend or the person who you like the most. Don’t even pick someone who has similar strengths and habits as you.
Instead, you want to look for complementary sets of talent. You want people who can fill in your weaknesses and bring something to the table that you don’t.
In this video, filmed at the Titanium Mastermind in the Bahamas, Chris Lakey gives some examples of business partnerships with the right kind of synergy.
LOOK FOR COMPLEMENTARY SETS OF TALENT
Before Chris Lakey became a partner in that business, T.J. Rohleder and his wife Eileen started their business in 1988. Eileen’s job was to manage people in the office and handle the operations side of the business. T.J. was the marketer.
Together, the two of them had complementary sets of talent. A lot of business partnerships are built this way, where one is the operations geek and the other is the marketing genius.
Think about what your weaknesses and shortcomings are. If you’re sloppy at operations, find someone who’s great at it. If you’re bland at marketing, find someone who can fill in that weakness for you.
You can’t do everything, anyway. You’re going to have to hire people, so hire people who bring something to the table that you don’t.
PICKING THE RIGHT PEOPLE
Bill Gates says that his best business decisions have been picking the right people to partner with.
If he had chosen to do business with people other than the likes of Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer, the course of Microsoft’s history would have been dramatically different.
He advises to pick people who you can totally trust, who are committed, who share your vision but have a different set of skills to you. This way, they can not only address the areas you are weak in, but they can also act as a check on you.
Someone who can give you constructive criticism and suggestions can be a brilliant addition to your team.
The MOBE Titanium Mastermind goes into more depth on this topic. Members learn how to do joint ventures and scale their businesses through successive revenue ceilings. To learn more about the Titanium Mastermind, click HERE.
