It’s one of the first things I say when people ask what they should do to grow their business: build relationships and find partners!

Dependency & Cross Over = Good

A good partnership will mean that you focus on doing something really well and build a reliance/dependency on your partner doing something well in a different area. The idea is that both partners are required to make your customers happy. Often there will be cross over between what you and your partners do which can be percieved as competition, but you need to get past this quickly and decide who’s ‘BEST’ suited to do which part, cross-over is a healthy sign that you’re both focused on the same value proposition for your customers, which is key to you delivering good service.

Risky Business, but a risk you can’t afford not to take 

Naturally all this means risky business because you now need your partner to perform in order to succeed. This dependency and the chance of having too much cross-over are the 2 big reasons why so many business don’t partner, I’ve seen and continue to see it so many times, people just can’t get over the hurdle of letting another business look after something thats key to their business, even if they need to solve a problem.

A Magic Partnership with SilverStripe

I’ve known the founders and directors of SilverStripe web developers and makers of the worlds best Opensource CMS for years and have always admired their energy, persistence and commitment to making it happen. So when things were getting a bit tough with the development of our first web product I started chatting to MD Tim Copeland a bit more. 6 months later and into last year when we needed some work they threw us a bone, which meant a lot to me and helped our business out a lot. Last year after meeting up with Rod Drury and getting online business planning software service PlanHQ started, me and Nat were keen to grow Decisive Flow so we could take on someone else to fill the gap, so was on the hunt for an acquisition, we quickly found one and together Decisive Flow and SilverStripe jointly acqucired GoodUse, and together can deliver more than ever before, sharing sales responsibilities, they do tech we do design…

New Base for the Business

I’ve been chatting to Tim Copeland about shifting the business down next to their cool offices for the last couple of months, and we’ve just this week moved right next door to SilverStripe, which is great so they’re now just through the glass divider.

Failures are part of the journey in any success and partnering is no exception 

Nat wrote about When Partnerships go Bad the other day, and she was referring to a very average finish to a partnership we setup with an Australian web design business about a year and a half ago, which ended up being a pain for sure. I was pretty aware upon entering into it, that it was not the best match, decisions are all about circumstances and timing and the business had just burnt through the last of the $150k I had invested into getting Decisive Flow (Then evolutionone) off the ground, and while I had a 90% finished web product, and we’d built-up some good capability in Nat and another guy and good mate involved at the time Sam, I could no longer afford to support the product development and team financially and needed to get some income from services ASAP.

The Good side of the bad 

The most important thing about that partnership was that we had web design work flowing within days of engaging with them, which solved priority 1 for the business at this particular point in the journey, so to me the partnership had already served its purpose, it limited my requirement to go into any significant debt. The fact that they didn’t pay their last bill and were slow on projects was a right pain, but by that stage, our business was in a very different position, and while a nuisance, it was no longer critical to our success.

So if you’re on the verge of partnering, or not too sure if you’ve got the right ones lined up, Get into it and make more happen : )