I am beginning my real estate business. I decided on real estate through my intuition steeped in my business background. I set my sights far out into the future. I first determined my mission, vision, and values for my life, which for me took nearly three to four years to write, and I continue to refine it and add to it as I gain deeper insight into my purpose. After, I determined my primary aim for my personal life, I determined my strategic objective for how I wanted my business to look when it’s finished. Some people might look at that strategic objective and think “pipe dream.” However, I know that if I carefully cooperate with the laws of success, nothing is a pipe dream. Of course, this is a personal opinion colored by spiritual undertones. I decided to take on a partner; in fact, he’s a good friend of mine. I showed him my strategic objective, and he just sort of looked at it and said that’s not important. He said what’s important is what we are going to do tomorrow and one year from now. We need to get out and take action is what he said in so many words.
Now you might think that I am looking at this as a sign of conflict. I mean I show the guy my picture of where I want my business to go and he seems apathetic about it. Well, I agree. If you are going to start a business, you have to know where you are going to end up because how can you ever measure your success. You never know when you have achieved your objective. You just run in a purposeless cycle trying to figure out what you are going to do the next day.
However, I thought about our partnership and considering my optimistic attitude came to the conclusion that any partnership can work out if you can convince your partner to follow some fundamental principles in business. I mean if building a business on principles doesn’t lead to success, I must have floundered in my education and listened to all the wrong mentors. I doubt it though.
Here is how I am going to make this business relationship work based on the following three fundamental principles for business success.
1.My business partner and I share our goals in life. We talk about our vision for the future, and what is most important to our lives. We really get to know each other and what each of us believes is our purpose in life. This conversation will help us not only develop a better relationship upfront, but also help us understand ourselves better.
2.Next commit to the strategic objective for the business. My partner and I are going to separate ourselves from the business now and give it destiny to fulfill, and we are merely there to work for the business and on the business to help it fulfill its strategic objective. To determine the strategic objective we ask some key questions. For instance, what is the core statement of the business? What does the business look like financially when it’s done? Where is it located? We want to know everything about the business because we need to know if the business can help us fulfill our primary aims in life. Now here is the difference between my business partner and me. I am a visionary and dreamer. I take pleasure in strategizing and defining my life. I use my imagination and my mind to control the outcomes of my life. My goals are often lofty, so I created a strategic objective that would get me there. My partner on the other hand is more hands on, critical of what can and can’t be done, looks for the reality of the situation, and overall has modest goals in relation to my own. Now personally, I don’t view these traits as flaws. I view them as assets. He is merely using his own perspective to bear on the situation and that perspective can find its way into a successful business partnership. I feel that if he can’t see the objective of our business and his goals are modest compared to my own that just means his involvement with the business might decrease as I am pushing to reinvent the business to realize further growth with the application of innovation.
3.The last key to a partnership is to not consider yourselves partners. We are going to create an organizational chart that shows all the functions of our business. This way we know where we are spending our time, and we can each assume responsibility for specific functions based on our individual talents. Also, we can document what how each function will function by documenting what we learn about that role through experimenting with what works best. We make everything standard and predictable, so that we aren’t bumping into each other and fulfilling roles we haven’t agreed upon. We don’t do things that destroy value to the business, but add value. We eliminate as much discretion as possible from the business, but always looking for ways to innovate the business by asking questions on how things can work better and increase profits. Everything we discover that adds value, we document in our organizational manual. Any time we are operating within the organizational chart, we are going to consider ourselves employees and not partners. However, what really makes the org. chart a beautiful relationship saver is the box above the GM position called shareholders. We are going to consider ourselves shareholders. This is a great revelation and I would recommend it to any partnership based relationship. I would do it with anyone and especially with people I have a personal relationship. When you view yourselves as shareholders, you eliminate the 50/50 mentality and disagreements that creep up in business relationships because in the operating agreement of your business it clearly states the percentage of profit distribution. So with an org. chart everything is kept under control and professional. When we are operating within the org. chart, we are employees with defined responsibilities, and when we step out of the org. chart we take on the role of shareholders or member managers if you operate an LLC.
So that’s my take on the way to first begin approaching a business when you want a person to help you run the business.
__________________
Brian Powell Jr.
What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do. - Bob Dylan, 1941-?
Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth. - Katherine Mansfield, 1888-1923
I am beginning my real estate business. I decided on real estate through my intuition steeped in my business background. I set my sights far out into the future. I first determined my mission, vision, and values for my life, which for me took nearly three to four years to write, and I continue to refine it and add to it as I gain deeper insight into my purpose. After, I determined my primary aim for my personal life, I determined my strategic objective for how I wanted my business to look when it’s finished. Some people might look at that strategic objective and think “pipe dream.” However, I know that if I carefully cooperate with the laws of success, nothing is a pipe dream. Of course, this is a personal opinion colored by spiritual undertones. I decided to take on a partner; in fact, he’s a good friend of mine. I showed him my strategic objective, and he just sort of looked at it and said that’s not important. He said what’s important is what we are going to do tomorrow and one year from now. We need to get out and take action is what he said in so many words.
Now you might think that I am looking at this as a sign of conflict. I mean I show the guy my picture of where I want my business to go and he seems apathetic about it. Well, I agree. If you are going to start a business, you have to know where you are going to end up because how can you ever measure your success. You never know when you have achieved your objective. You just run in a purposeless cycle trying to figure out what you are going to do the next day.
However, I thought about our partnership and considering my optimistic attitude came to the conclusion that any partnership can work out if you can convince your partner to follow some fundamental principles in business. I mean if building a business on principles doesn’t lead to success, I must have floundered in my education and listened to all the wrong mentors. I doubt it though.
Here is how I am going to make this business relationship work based on the following three fundamental principles for business success.
1.My business partner and I share our goals in life. We talk about our vision for the future, and what is most important to our lives. We really get to know each other and what each of us believes is our purpose in life. This conversation will help us not only develop a better relationship upfront, but also help us understand ourselves better.
2.Next commit to the strategic objective for the business. My partner and I are going to separate ourselves from the business now and give it destiny to fulfill, and we are merely there to work for the business and on the business to help it fulfill its strategic objective. To determine the strategic objective we ask some key questions. For instance, what is the core statement of the business? What does the business look like financially when it’s done? Where is it located? We want to know everything about the business because we need to know if the business can help us fulfill our primary aims in life. Now here is the difference between my business partner and me. I am a visionary and dreamer. I take pleasure in strategizing and defining my life. I use my imagination and my mind to control the outcomes of my life. My goals are often lofty, so I created a strategic objective that would get me there. My partner on the other hand is more hands on, critical of what can and can’t be done, looks for the reality of the situation, and overall has modest goals in relation to my own. Now personally, I don’t view these traits as flaws. I view them as assets. He is merely using his own perspective to bear on the situation and that perspective can find its way into a successful business partnership. I feel that if he can’t see the objective of our business and his goals are modest compared to my own that just means his involvement with the business might decrease as I am pushing to reinvent the business to realize further growth with the application of innovation.
3.The last key to a partnership is to not consider yourselves partners. We are going to create an organizational chart that shows all the functions of our business. This way we know where we are spending our time, and we can each assume responsibility for specific functions based on our individual talents. Also, we can document what how each function will function by documenting what we learn about that role through experimenting with what works best. We make everything standard and predictable, so that we aren’t bumping into each other and fulfilling roles we haven’t agreed upon. We don’t do things that destroy value to the business, but add value. We eliminate as much discretion as possible from the business, but always looking for ways to innovate the business by asking questions on how things can work better and increase profits. Everything we discover that adds value, we document in our organizational manual. Any time we are operating within the organizational chart, we are going to consider ourselves employees and not partners. However, what really makes the org. chart a beautiful relationship saver is the box above the GM position called shareholders. We are going to consider ourselves shareholders. This is a great revelation and I would recommend it to any partnership based relationship. I would do it with anyone and especially with people I have a personal relationship. When you view yourselves as shareholders, you eliminate the 50/50 mentality and disagreements that creep up in business relationships because in the operating agreement of your business it clearly states the percentage of profit distribution. So with an org. chart everything is kept under control and professional. When we are operating within the org. chart, we are employees with defined responsibilities, and when we step out of the org. chart we take on the role of shareholders or member managers if you operate an LLC.
So that’s my take on the way to first begin approaching a business when you want a person to help you run the business.
Brian Powell Jr.
What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do. - Bob Dylan, 1941-?
Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth. - Katherine Mansfield, 1888-1923