SNM093: Bad Partners Can Destroy Your Business

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bad business partners can destroy your business. Find out how to protect yourself on today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by converted the ultimate list building tagging and segmentation tool to find out how Convert kid can change your business and w profits. Go to serve the master dot com backslash Convert kit today Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. A common misconception about online marketing and working online is that because it's all built around technology that you're totally secure, that the software that the technology used will ensure that the people you work with stay honest, that they will pay you on time and that you never have to worry about a thing bad happening. But it's actually the complete opposite. You can't go to court and say, Hey, look, there was a tracking link. Look at my numbers Disagree with their numbers. Online business is all about handshakes and trust, and I've been through some dark experiences. The first partner I ever worked with stole a massive amount of money for me and still, seven years later, still writes bad things about me online. He stole money from me, and he tried to get the word out that I'd stolen from him. Of course, every time I said, if you don't stop slandering me, I'm gonna take you to court He would stop saying anything for about six months because his worst nightmare would be for us to go to court. I was really stressed about this person for a long time until one of my friends, one of my friends, George Harding, or who is the host of the art of charm podcasts of very sensible podcast, in fact I should probably get is my guest on this one, because Israel genius. But he said, to me, cockroaches fear the light. It's the smartest thing anyone's said to me a long time, and he was totally right every time I said you know what? Let's just He was always threatening, Assuming I said, That's a great idea. Why don't you sue me? Let's go to court and let's talk about what happened. I said, Why don't we open up the bank accounts, Open up the records because I've saved every email you've ever sent me And let's just go to court and see what happens. Every time I say that, he disappears. That's how you know someone's a really class act they love to threaten to sue with a moment ago. You know what? Let's just do it. Let's find out which of us is right and which of us is wrong. We run away. This is the same person that's been through seven business partners and all the other business partners have stolen from him, according to his story. Now I look back now, maybe he just lies about everyone. But I do know he's been through three divorces, and that's a sign that someone doesn't know how to form long term relationships, right? He can't keep business or personal relationships working. I really made some bad decisions early on, and I got some bad wisdom for my first coach who was like, Hey, you just gotta lock in and agree to do whatever it takes to take breaking up off the table so that you can just get to the finish line. And of course, because I stayed in that business relationship, I don't going to the emergency room and nearly dying because I was so stressed. I ended almost eating a hole through my Sophocles. I had so much acid reflux, I ended up in the hospital, and, uh, the doctors thought I was gonna make it. So that's the type of person who nearly killed me and still, you know, still chose to steal from me and chose to attack my reputation. So I know what it's like to enter a partnership with the wrong type of person to really get burned. And so you might think that I'd be totally against partnerships that I've never worked with anyone else ever again. They're a couple of things I want you to think about before you enter into a partnership relationship. I do recommend that you make money on your own first see when you're starting out, and this was my mistake, and this is very common state you partner with someone because you want them to handle the stuff that you don't know how to do or you're afraid to dio. Often times people will say they can do things they don't have to do. He basically said he would be in charge of writing the sales letter and getting all the joint venture partners getting all the people to promote her offer. At the end of the project, I wrote the entire sales video. He didn't write anything because he had no idea what he was doing. None. He put no effort into it, and he was like, I'm spending 10 or 12 hours a day on Facebook. Lining up J V is for us. That's a lie. That's not how it works. That's not how you get Jamie partners. It doesn't take 12 hours a day of Facebook work, right? This is someone who's basically saying, Hey, my job is to sit on Facebook all day and do nothing. That's kind of why I don't even know this person still in the business anymore, haven't heard from or seen in years, and he certainly hasn't launched a product I've heard about in at least five years. Who cares? You can't make a living just sitting on Facebook, talking people all day. And, of course, we end up using my cells. Page. I only found out five days before launch. I had to write the whole sales letter. I had no idea was doing. As you know, I didn't learn copyrighting until five years later. So what I wrote was probably garbage. Let's try and go find out. Probably someone one of my computers. But we launch and almost nobody promoted our offer, and it turned out all he spent six months talking to Facebook, and no, no one actually promoted us because no one liked him. Very unlikable person. And I entered the relationship because I thought, Hey, I don't feel comfortable getting joint venture partners on how to do it yet, and I don't really know how to handle this Facebook stuff, and I don't know howto right, a sales sales copy. So it makes sense to have a partner totally wrong being mistake. It's much better to have learned this and to wait until you really know what you can and can't do by trying things. See if there's something you're partners in charge of that. You really don't know how to D'oh! You're gonna get screwed. Probably 90% of time because you won't know if they can do it or not. They won't. You won't know if they're good or crappy at their job. So you have no way to assess if they're really doing there saying right? I wasn't able to assess if he was really working on the sales that are not because he wouldn't let me see it. I wasn't really able to assess what he was doing on Facebook all day, right? This is someone who was sending over 100 e mails a day. In addition to 50 text today. You're spending all day long riding me because I'm not just cause he was dead inside part of it, but also because he knew he wasn't doing a thing. So he had to put enough pressure on me to get me to do both sides of the work and the reason I was vulnerable because I had no idea. I didn't understand. I was doing so. This is why when I say when you're first starting out, I recommend this and serve no master in the book. I talk about this and I was sure here. Don't get a business partner until you know what you're doing. So I don't hire like I have people who work for me and I would never hire an employee to do something I don't know how to do anymore. I've learned my lesson every time you hire someone, whether it's a graphic designer, copper, anything. As soon as they realize you couldn't do their job, they start to play games. They start to get Lazier slack off or do something, and you always end up suffering and business partner do the same thing. So I know how to do all my own graphics. I every single product cover everything. Graphic on serving a master. I did myself. I used to pay someone else to do that stuff. Ah, lot of money. And then I realized he was probably waiting two hours a week, doing on and pretending to be working for me because he took a job from one of my friends. I said, This guy's supposed to work for me full time. Our contract was that this for graphic designer was that he wouldn't take jobs working for other people, but he wouldn't put in the time of my work. He was ripping me off, and then when I fired him, he was like I thought we were a family was like, Hey, you've been stealing from me You're supposed to work me 40 hours a week. You took a job from someone else, and when I checked your work, you're putting in, like, two hours a week for me. So it took me a long time to learn this list. This is a lesson that cost me well into the six figures to learn over the course of different partnerships and employees. I hope you can understand it now. Yeah, it's hard to do some of these things. It's hard to learn how to build a website. It's hard to learn how to do graphics. But if you don't learn how to do this stuff, your business partners or people you hire will really rip you off. I know someone who pays $25,000 for a landing page design Lenny Pages designed. He's paying probably 50 times more than he should be 50 times more than it's worth, because he doesn't know what he's doing. now the guy's has so much money to pour into it that eventually makes the money back, which is amazing to me. Turns out that you could get ripped off and still make a profit if you have millions of dollars to invest in your business. But when you're starting out and someone rips you off hard, it happens to every he rigged up for grand here. Five grand there, seven grand there. It just destroys you. It's hard to recover from it, and I want that happened to you. When you're forming a partnership, you need to really know what the other person's doing and be able to assess it. This is why I recommend you do everything on your own. Yeah, it's tough. You launch your first product, you don't make that much money. But now you've done it. Now you know all the peace. So then when you work with someone, you can see them accelerate your not accelerate. You could say, Hey, you're not doing a better job than I've done before. Now when I partner people, I can say, Hey, you're not doing something better than I would do it on my own. Why are we working together, so I only work with people that can do something better than me. I partnered up with someone right on my parenting project. Why? Because he's a better copywriter than me. He has a better understanding of the market. I would enter. I have understanding, and I know what I could bring to the table. And I'm very clear about what he could do better than me. So maybe I can generate 10 joint venture partners, but he could generate 115 and I know that, and I know how to track that. So that's where the value comes from. And I've seen his sales letters versus mine is very talented, and we've written some copy together. All of these pieces are because I know my value very clearly because I've done each of those things. Now you can have really good business relationships. I have some very good partners in other areas. I mean, right now. In fact, right now I'm traveling and one of my partners, my publisher, for all of my relationship books now all my relations courses. He paid for the hotel room. I'm staying in for the week, putting an amazing sweet on the special floor. You only get to in a key card. It's way nicer than, uh than where I would have chosen to stay on my own. I'm so used to island living that I'm always trying to watch every penny when it goes to a more expensive country. I'm just used to living a certain level. I always think, Well, I could spend the money on this, or I could buy another new surfboard so you can have partners that really take care of you and give you ah, great experience. And the only way to separate the two is to know what you're doing and to know what your value is. So as you're starting out before you enter into partnerships, the two steps out really recommend fewer number one Thio. Do an entire launch on your own, go through the entire process of releasing product on your own and then on Lee. Then start to work with someone, cause you can assess what a measure of success is. Even if your first product is a total tank, you can then know what success is now one of things that can really help you, and I'm a big fan of this is a mentorship or coaching that I have worked with. Coach is a lot to help me learn every new skill every time. Want to get good at something. I find someone who's already good at it to help me learn. That's very critical so you could work on your own and have a coach. Now we know there's other lessons we can talk about how to assess. If someone's a good or bad coach, you certainly don't have to buy a coaching from me. Okay, the fabulousness podcast is more than enough. You're already followed me, and I appreciate that you should definitely whatever you want to learn, find someone is excellent at it and you can afford and you can get someone you want someone who's really there with you to walk you through every little piece of the steps. You could normally pieces on your own some of the things that you have to learn to build a business or very painful, and they're painful in different ways. One of those big struggles I know for new people, especially if you're older than me, is building your first website really feels like a nightmare, and it's tough because there's all these tiny little technology steps that feel overwhelming. I didn't grow up on computers, so it's not as natural for you, and I understand that. And then there's all the banking stuff, man, I hate that stuff, too. Okay with this first business partner, he spent a huge amount of money setting up a really complicated legal structure. So he wanted to form the business and Las Vegas. But then the businesses owned in Florida, and he chose a bank. I still don't understand why. So the bank we use for our joint business was the nearest branch was 10 hours for me in eight hours from him. Neither of us live near a branch of the bank, so we had all of these problems. There are all these challenges with how everything was set up in end up costing massive amounts of money spent. He spent, like $3000 sending up, ah, business structure that I was against. I said, Why are we doing it this way? Let's keep it simple. Let's make money first. But some people love to spend, spend spend, especially when someone has a big savings or that came off a big job or they get a big inheritance. We don't want to do that. I'm I'm all about controlling costs. So that way, the distance to profit is shorter. So if you spend $5000 to launch your first product, you have to make $5000 in profit before you've made a dollar to make back that whole investment, whether you spent that money coaching infrastructure or setting up your LoC, however you spend that money, it's the barrier between you and actual success. If you spent 100 bucks, you'll have to make 100 $1 to make back a prophet as opposed to 5000 and one. When you're working with partners, you can get pulled in decisions you're not sure about. Setting up your banking infrastructure correctly can be really annoying. One of my friends were talking the other day. He got into a partnership. His he has a really good business partner, was very good in some ways, but also is always wanted to try new things that could be very expensive. They decided to set up a series of merchant accounts and, you know, I'm against big name merchant accounts because they they're charging him right now $3000 a month to maintain a series of merchant accounts. He's not running any business through them. It's a $36,000 a year loss. They set up this infrastructure and I said, Shut him down. The guys, they basically got partner with some other people that said, Union instead of these accounts will start sending in $100,000 a day in business to your products, right? And then as soon as they spent 10 months sending all this stuff up, all the complicated structure doing all this banking stuff, total nightmare as soon as it set up, suddenly those guys disappeared. It can't find him anymore, that hearing from them on the phone or anything, I know what that feels like. That's why we get caught up in these decisions, right? His partner brought him into this idea. Was like, I'm not sure if we should do sick. No, no, it's gonna be big Now, don't get me wrong. These two guys are great partners because they're total opposites. And his partner also brought him another deal that he was against at the same time that's made him over seven figures this year. So what I'm saying is that sometimes your partner brings a really good idea is that you're against, and sometimes we'll bring you really bad ideas you're against when you're starting out on your own and you you'll be more cautious in the right ways. I don't pay any monthly fees from the merchant accounts and I merchant through Braintree and threw strike branches on by PayPal. You strike by you square. If you buy anything from, you'll notice because they send you a receipt. That's who does the payment processing if you're doing massive volume. If you're doing more than $50,000 a month, it starts to make sense to use a different platform because of the way the money works out. You know, merchant accounts not to go too far down the rabbit hole. The all charge different percentages. Some of them charge you Ah, flat fee per month, plus a percentage. So let's say you're with emergent. They charge you $500 a month plus 2.9% or, you know someone who's free, but 3.9% so once that 1% of your sales is greater than $500. It makes more sense to go to the other company, give you basic idea. You confined amazing partners to work with once you really know what you're doing. I've had partnerships work in, not work overtime. I've had other people screw me over time. I've had other deals fail in other fields. Do well. I I'll never give up on working with people. But the one thing for me and this is the first I've done this in a while is I really wanted to have something that's totally me serving masters on me. So I have other industries. I'm in parenting, dating, health, physical clothing, some other stuff. I do all these other areas. Those were all with partners. I work with other people in all those areas. But serve no master is the one area that's 100% me. That's why I don't have ah lot of podcast guests. I may know I was talking about this, I mean in the future, especially after I go to some events where I can interview people in person, just crank out a ton of interviews and kind of bring them in as far as a way of bringing in a lot more traffic and to bring a lot more people in to hear my voice. I'm just not 100% sure on that. Yet I think about it back and forth. But I like to have a single message for you. When you have a partner, every decision has to be mutual or you end up in disagreement, and I know a lot of people that we're great partners for a long time, and they always eventually run into something. It's very hard for a business partnership to last a whole lifetime, so I don't really I'm still not a believer in doing 100% your business with a partner. I think it's okay to have a partner for 60% of what you're working on, or even 50% or 40% 9 area. But you always want to have some side projects, stuff you do on your own, and I diversify by having some my own stuff. I also having stuff I do with a bunch of different partners was the two ways I diversify, so think about why you feel the need to work with a partner Or, if you think of partners, a good idea. If the partner is holding up their end of the deal, oftentimes you'll start to see red flags and you'll overlook the Mick. No, I made a commitment, and that's a tough spot to be in. I probably should have backed out of a partnership way earlier. Or maybe I wouldn't be here today if I hadn't, I don't know. But you get these red flags and then you'll ask for extra advice. Hey, should I quit? So the last thing will tell you is that I have a policy, and that is that if I get a bad feeling, I eject from a project. If I get a bad feeling about someone, I don't give them the benefit of the doubt. I learned my lesson. I've done that a few times. And just now, actually, you know, I recently we did that I did the episode, talk about insurance. I got a bad feeling from the insurance person, passed me on to someone else first, he said, Hey, I'll handle you personally and I said, Great. And he passed me on to someone else. A few hours later, I go. Wait a minute. What? All right. What's this about? Okay. And then that person started getting playing games. They started using language they knew I wouldn't know. And even I said, What do you What is the sentence you mean? Because what you're saying is a weird sentence and they responded using the same term. They said, Oh, this includes a 25% loading. And I don't know if that's a real insurance term, because I asked other people I know in American insurance they'd never heard it. And I I said, I don't know why. I don't know what the sentence means. You have to be very clear about what you're trying to say to me. You're asking me to spend with you over the course of this contract, like $100,000. How about you be really clear with me? And the response was again Well, you know, if certain things aren't met, then there's gonna be a 25% loading. And I said I don't want to do business is you anymore. I asked you to explain what a tournament and you chose to re use the term. Whenever someone does that to me. That's a sign that trying to misleading, and as soon as they get a feeling that someone is being a little bit misleading, I back out hard core. I don't do business in that way. I'm really simple. If I get a bad feeling, I walk out of the room. I trust my gut instinct, and that's something you want to think about. Okay, because of the coach I had at the time because of the coach. I mean, this guy we're paying together to coach us through this launch and he certainly didn't help me in some ways was networking with every a lot of other areas. He gave me really bad advice and maybe stay in that relationship, and I'm not 100% sure. Everything you told me afterwards was being, you know, But this is what happens when you're, you know, I didn't pick that coach either. Say mistake. The business partner picked a coach. I was like, Who is this guy? And when you get pulled into this and someone keeps telling you no, stay in the relationship and though I basically to coach the have you stand abusive relationship, why, I say it's abusive. Well, I almost died, and I end up having a lot of money stolen for me. So when you're thinking about leaving and you start seeing those red flags, my advice is to eject before you start signing contracts before you start getting joint bank accounts or giving someone or Social Security number. Okay, I definitely had to deal with this. I arrest directly and make sure the guy couldn't keep trying to use my so security number for projects without my permission because he definitely tried to do that. That's the kind of person this waas Okay. I had to do all of these things to make sure that I was protected because behind the scenes he was doing a lot of I wouldn't say extremely legal, but pretty illegal, extremely dishonest. So it was that far down the garden path. Even after determining the relationship, I found out he was trying to continue operating a business under my social security number. What he done was taking my name off the business records without me knowing it. So I was no longer a board member, whatever of the company. But they were operating in my so security number so I couldn't tell them to stop using it. I did deal direct with the I. R s and get that problem fixed. That's the kind of thing you get to deal with. If you end up going down the path with a dark partner, you can end up having trouble if the federal government, which is really, really fun. So when you're thinking about who to partner with and you're thinking about going down this path, I want you to have your eyes wide open and recommend that you wait until you know what you're doing. No, I don't want to end on a super sad note. That would been a pretty dramatic end note. But I want to remind you that now I work with partners who pay me a great deal of money, that we have great relationships, that we have a really strong understanding of what we do when you make a lot of money together so you can have really successful partnerships. But I recommend that you wait until you understand what you're doing, and you've made a little bit of money online so that when you go in with your eyes open and don't have to let people take of injury. And I have a tape, especially if you have money. But you've got 5 10 or $25,000 saved up, and you can use it to build your first business. The last thing you want to do is let some dumb dumb spend that money in a way that ends up hurting you, you know, because when the partnership ends, they go well, the money's all gone and you go, Wait, wait, wait. My money's there going what happened? And that's that's what stinks. So keep your eyes open. Wait until you have an understanding of how to build your online business, and when you get a feeling that someone might not be a good partner back out of it, it's okay. It's better to eject and lose a month of work or six weeks of work that the state there and lose six months of work at the end. Trust your instincts because you do have good natural instincts. You wouldn't be alive if you didn't. When you believe in evolution or cause ality or nature versus nurture. Whatever you have. Instincts that have kept you long enough to be alive to hear this. Lavon are obviously your instincts work, so trust him a little bit if you get a bad feeling about someone pull out of the relationship. A piece of advice that one my business partners gave me was that whenever you're thinking about fire someone as soon as you think about it, pull the trigger was a really good piece of ice because I waited too long to fire someone earlier this year. Cost me a couple 100 bucks or maybe a couple 1000 bucks. I was, like, Probably fire. This person is probably the last person I just waited too long, probably six weeks too long, and it still sucked when I fired them and they still try to make you feel guilty. I was like, I've been trying to know I was like, I've been trying to not fire you for six weeks and there was no appreciation. People don't appreciate it. So trust your instincts when you get that first feeling that something might be wrong, pull out. But when you have constant positive feelings, and when you can communicate with some of the things, they're very good. That's very good. And finally, remember to diversify so that you never have a single point of vulnerability. You don't want to have a business partner who's in control of the entire revenue stream, and then they get sick or something worse happens. And suddenly you don't know what to Dio because you have access to all the accounts you don't have. Certain parts of things are done, so you never want to be a partners in total ignorance. Every time you see a partnership with a really big problem, it's usually because one part of the other doesn't understand or doesn't have to do with the other ones doing. You don't want to have someone you work with who knows how to do something. You have no idea to d'oh! You want to be working with people who are simply better at that part of the business, and that's how you conform. Amazing partnerships. It's how you can avoid getting destroyed by a bad partnership. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race head over to serve. No master dot com forward slash podcasts Now for your chance to win a free coffee of Jonathan's bestseller Serve No, master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you tomorrow. Thank you for listening to this episode of the serve. No master podcast to find out how I can get a free copy of my new book, Head over to serve no master dot com back slash podcasts right now.