How To Find A Business Partner

Guide To Finding The Right Business partner

Curious as to how to find a business partner? What are the characteristics a great entrepreneur? Is it a charismatic personality? The ability to crunch numbers? Being able to read a given market a give consumers exactly what they are demanding? The characteristics of a successful entrepreneur are much deeper than that, but there are a few qualities that are universal to all people who strike out to achieve their own financial independence.

Finding a business partner has many advantages, ranging from being able to share responsibilities, bounce ideas off one another, and bringing different yet complementary skill sets to the table. However, while it is easy to answer why someone would want to work with a business partner, where to find a business partner can be a much tougher problem to solve.

Friends and Family

Sometimes the best place to find a business partner is in your closest social circles. After all, who understands your goals, habit, idiosyncrasies, and entrepreneurial vision better than your friends and family members? Within those circles, weigh the qualities among your friends and family when looking for a business partner. You might think your best friend is an ideal candidate, but will you both focus on the business at hand, or spend a good portion of the time joking around and having fun? If you are looking for a business partner among friends and family circles, then approach the prospect with an analytic eye, as if you were putting together a team for a critical project. Weigh skill sets, personality compatibility, and if going into business together will strengthen your relationship, or put a negative strain on things. As a business owner, you are already making a lot of sacrifices – the last thing you need to do is sacrifice a close relationship by picking the wrong friend or family member to share the burden.

Former Professional Colleagues

When looking for a business partner, try your former place of employment. Look at people you’ve worked with on projects in the past. Maybe it was someone in your department that you got along with really well. Finding a business partner in a professional setting is usually easier than picking among friends and family, because you already know their levels of professionalism, skills, ambitions, and how well they work – both independently and with others. What’s more, looking for a business partner among former professional colleagues will give you a good idea of who is on board with your business idea. Most people dream of helping to launch a successful business, and pitching the idea to former colleagues will most likely give you a few really strong candidates from which to find a business partner.

Friendly Rivals

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals, is much more than a history book about Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet. Many business leaders recommend the book to show that, when looking for a business partner, choosing someone who is aligned with you in every way does not necessarily increase productivity. Some entrepreneurs intentionally try to find business partners who will constructively (that is the key word) challenge their ideas, and whose skill sets are dissimilar to their own. When making decisions or bouncing around ideas, finding a business partner who can offer a different point of view can help to move a business forward.

Qualities to look for when finding business partners

When looking for business partners, there are some key qualities that can greatly help your business. As mentioned above, finding business partners with complementary skill sets is important. However, there are other qualities that are often overlooked when people are looking for business partners.

Goal Sharing

When looking for business partners, it is important to find someone who shares common goals. We are not simply talking about being successful and achieving financial independence – those are common goals that can be found everywhere. By “common goals,” we mean for the business. Does your potential partner see the long view and where the business should be one, ten, twenty years from now? Are they willing to connect the dots to get to that point with you? Then looking for business partners, it is important to discuss their core values and how they would approach various situations. Find out if your potential business partners are goal-oriented or process-oriented. See how they would fit into the business, and think critically about how the business would run in various situations, such as if you are traveling, or if your partner is meeting with clients.

Finances

When looking for business partners, it is essential to bring up finances early on in the conversation. Is your potential partner candidate able to take the financial risk of entering into a business partnership? Can the partner bring any capital to the table? How responsible are they with their own finances and “company money?” Do they have any experience with accounting and commercial financing? Ideally, you will want to find a business partner who is more than an “idea person.” You’ll want a partner who is capable of making critical financial decisions, feel invested in the company, and who can weather the startup period when revenue can be lean.

Complementary Skills

This was mentioned above, but it cannot be stressed enough – finding a business partner who has a complementary skill set is essential to running a successful business. When running a business, entrepreneurs often wear many hats. They are accountants, marketers, salespeople, managers, and many other roles. The ideal business partner should be able to take some of these responsibilities, as well as demonstrate strengths in certain areas, while your own strong points are in others. Have partners who can both make sales is a boon to any business, but being able to trade off on things like logistics, accounting, marketing, etc. can free up a lot of time and other resources so you can focus on other aspects of running your business.

Find A Partner And Open A Finance Business

If you are looking for a business opportunity with a low investment and high-yield returns, where you can work on your own as a sole owner, or with a partner to double the revenue – consider the Commercial Capital Training Group (CCTG). CCTG offers unlimited income possibilities to people who graduate from our program. The CCTG program gives emerging business owners the tools, training, and support they need to launch their own businesses in the world of commercial finance, work from home, set their own hours, and reap the rewards of true financial independence.

Further Reading