10 KEYS to a TERRIBLE Business Partnership [GUARANTEED!]

when you're in a business relationship you're in a marriage and their extracurricular life is going to get dragged into the business i promise you in this video i want to give you the keys to having a terrible partnership and the reason we're talking about in this perspective is because my my big hero charlie munger talked

about inverted thinking as one of the best ways to solve problems so rather than think how do i have an amazing partnership let's think about how would i guarantee a miserable terrible partnership that would uh definitely ensue in a terrible breakup with lots of lawyers and all the paperwork and just honestly ideally take forever and result in no benefit all right and if you don't know hi my name is alex mosey i own acquisition. com it's a portfolio of companies over 100 million i make these videos because i hope that you make lots and lots of money from them and then hopefully you apply to become a portfolio company with us as long as you're doing you know three to let's say 20 million dollars a year and ideally an internet business now that being said let's rock and roll on how to have a

terrible partnership now as somebody who has a lot of partnerships um it has taken me a very long time to get here and i have learned a lot along the way and the beauty of having stories is that you can get the lessons without the scars and so i will give you let's see one two three four five six seven eight nine ten different things that you can do to guarantee absolutely atrocious terrible partnership that you wish you could just not live anymore right that is that's what's gonna happen if we can make this partnership as terrible as we're going to shoot for here all right so number one is that we're going to make sure that they have the exact same knowledge base as you all right so this person that you're going to do business with knows the exact same stuff at you there's no stuff that they know that you don't know all right because that way one of you is not unnecessary all right and so this is a great way to have a terrible start to a partnership one of you being unnecessary to begin with which means both of you are giving away half your equity for no incremental benefit it's also not very good for the business because why would you do that so that being said number one have the

same knowledge base and maybe even if we're being crazy which we are right throw into the same experiences right if you both worked at the same place doing the same thing why not start a business together doing the exact same thing brilliant i know all right so number two is time right make sure that uh they have the same amount of time as you all right or disproportionate and what i mean there is the big three on partnerships is knowledge money time right which means they either have to have knowledge you don't have they got to have money time you don't have right and so if you have no time make sure they don't have time too right now if you do have time and they have time then you're fine but the thing is then you'd have to look at one of the other three parts of this equation in order to make sure that it's still a terrible partnership all right so make sure that you're misaligned on time all right the next one is money if

you're getting into a partnership if uh one of you has money and the other doesn't then that's value that's being out of the relationship but if uh you're going to partner with somebody and they don't have money that you don't have they don't have knowledge and they don't have time they don't have then why would you do the partnership i don't know but it is a great way to have a terrible partnership which is what the purpose of this video is now that being said let's say that somehow we still figured out a way that we got in a relationship where one of us didn't have the knowledge of the timer didn't have the money that the other person had we got together okay cool there's still more ways that we can torpedo this thing just wait buckle up so the next one is that we can make sure that we have different expectations of one another and the business all right so it's like hey what do i expect you to do what do you expect me to do right and those expectations we want to make sure and this is number five is that there's no agreements we don't record it anywhere we don't write it down we do it on a handshake because we're old school yeah great way to have a terrible business relationship and the reason that people don't want to do that is because usually they don't want to have the hard conversations all right they don't want to say what happens if this goes wrong right and like what do you expect you really expect me to take the trash out every day like they want to have this unspoken expectation you have unspoken expectations of you know what's going to be magical where you don't actually have to have hard conversations with people and if you can't have a hard conversation with a partner before even doing business before you are even married before you there is even money or stakes on the table or equity value that's been grown then dear god you're not gonna have a good conversation at the end all right so if someone's like i don't do agreements just walk away i just i've been doing this like just walk away it's only like very very weird people do that like banks don't just give you money without expectatio like come on like this is real world and i used to i remember earlier on i heard someone tell me that and i was like oh i don't want to be the guy he's like i'm the type of person that if you can't uh shake your hand then blah and i just don't i just don't trust people that much so the idea for me is make sure the paper says we needed to say but then trust the person right which is like i hope that we never have like we write these contracts with the intention of never having to look at them right but we still use the contract as a vehicle to facilitate dialogue around difficult topics and to have shared expectations in a way that we both understand them and agree right that is the purpose of the contract it's not to get lawyers involved purpose of the contract is that we have clear expectation that is why contracts exist clear expectations on agreements all right so if we're making sure that we have a terrible partnership we got to have all the same knowledge disproportionate time or money right so all those things time money knowledge we're all matched on those which means that one of us isn't necessary on top of that we have different expectations we didn't write it down so there's no agreements and there's no expectations have been communicated about what you're gonna do what i'm gonna do all right now the next one this big one give away everything

all right so make sure that you give away everything in the partnership and do a disproportionate amount of work at the onset because that way you'll just definitely make sure that you can garner a resentment towards the other person and the flip side can be true too if you know the other person doing a lot of work uh then you think to yourself oh well i'm going to squeeze as much out of them as i possibly can well what's going to happen they're going to resent you and they're going to try and renegotiate later once reality sets in so if you can think a few steps ahead of the person rather than saying like oh i'm going to get them just say like hey i don't know if this is going to be equitable in the future like give them more and you'll actually start to create a relationship rather than a negotiated contractual agreement which at the end of the day that's all contracts are supposed to do is just outline the expectations between two parties that's it all right now the next one is that we want to make sure that we have not we won't have a misaligned three things mission values and vision all right which means that we don't actually want to take this business to the same place and this may sound hilarious to you but you would be amazed at the amount of partners that we get on the phone with that i'm like what do you guys want to do this business and what person's like i think we should go this way the others that way i'm like i think that you should figure that out right or one of you shouldn't be here right figure it out all right which is where do we want to go and the next one is the values

which is how we're going to get there right what are the things that are important to us about how we deal with other humans right what are those values and if some people have different values becomes very difficult to do business even if you want to accomplish the same thing because you want to do it different ways right and that'll create endless strife and conflict throughout now the last one is what you consider

lifestyle right which is what are you uh similar interests lifestyle uh it's very difficult to do business with somebody if you're like you're a dave ramsey saver and you know you're you live far below your means and you're doing business with somebody who lives far above their means and goes into debt all the time because the thing is when you're in a business relationship you're in a marriage and their extracurricular life is going to get dragged into the business i promise you it is going to get dragged in right and so you've got to look just like you uh you marry the girl you marry the family that whole thing um it's the same thing with business if like they've got all this crazy stuff going on in their personal life it's a great way to guarantee that stuff is going to trickle into your business and the thing is if you have an unreliable partner creates an unreliable relationship which creates an unreliable business and so it's a great way to have a terrible partnership all right and so when we're thinking about partners big picture i give you two frameworks and then some in-betweens so framework one is that they got to have knowledge money or time that you don't have if both of you have the exact same experience knowledge time and money one of you isn't required i know crazy the thing is just because you need something for example if i need an accountant for business doesn't mean i have to partner with my accountant it means i have to pay them for services so just because you have a need doesn't mean they have to have equity all right it's a big aha moment here if you're like well i don't know how to do that he does it's like well can you pay someone to do it like equity is the most expensive thing that you give up in a relationship so you want to make sure if you especially want to build something big then you're giving away equity to people who are going to really drive the growth and you have to see this thing 10 years in the future which no one thinks anyways which is why everyone's small okay so boom so knowledge money time you got to check those boxes make sure that you're aligned there next one is expectations

agreements all right make sure that they're equitable well understood and making sure that they're documented right if you do those things then it's very it's much less likely that you're gonna have a terrible partnership you can still have one but it's much less likely all right and the point of this video is to guarantee a terrible partnership all right now the next big framework is that

mission values and similar interests it actually works the same way in marriages as dozen partnerships and to be real it's very similar so you got to make sure that you want to do the same thing with the business big picture you got to make sure you want to do it the same way right and then you got to have similar interests and lifestyles right which is making sure that they don't have a messy life which you want to be proud to associate with the other person that you're doing business with and i'm saying proud not okay with but proud to associate with them you want other people to meet them just like you want to meet you know the girl meets the parents you want to be proud to present this person not like crap right big picture great ways to guarantee a terrible partnership is if you do all those things all right so on the flip side make sure that they have time money and knowledge that you don't have right either they got money you don't have they got time don't they have knowledge you don't have or experience right so they can bring something table you don't already have so one of you or both of you are required and that the company grows based on the shared skill sets that both of you have all right you want to make sure that you set expectations that you document them and then you make sure that they're equitable all right because if you do that then it's very unlikely that you're going to fail right and the next one is that you want to make sure that there's aligned mission values and similar interests you want to deal with the types of people who see the world the same way as you have the biggest long-term goals and they want to do the process of getting from where you are to where you want to go the same way you do and the easiest litmus test is if you present both of you with the same data would you make the same decision if these answers yes then you'll have far less conflict in your partnership over the long haul and so the idea is can i find people who have complementary skill sets but align mission values and interests if you can do that you can make room for a magical rather than terrible partnership all right keeping awesome donation lots of love and i'll catch you guys next video bye mozzie nation if you enjoyed that video smash the subscribe button and hit the little notification bell the reason for that is because i don't actually have a cadence when i make these videos so if you want to make sure you don't miss the next one that comes out go subscribe notify and i'll see you the next one