You can't grow alone - AKA the power of partnerships

There is no way you can go far in life and in business on your own. Of course there are some partnerships that will also slow you down, but on the whole, if you want to grow, you need the support and backing of people and organisations that believe in you and want you to succeed.

If you believe you can grow on your own then don't read further. Nothing in this article will persuade you specifically as it probably means you still have a steep learning curve ahead of you (am not saying this on the pedestal of arrogance - I made every mistake I warn others not to). If anything bookmark this article :-)

What to do and what not to do when seeking partnerships

So, assuming you have decided that partnerships are the right way to grow, what do you do on a practical level? As always take my perspectives with a pinch of salt: my circumstances may not be yours. Use these tips as fodder for thought and not as absolute truths!

1. Finding the right partners

Finding the right partner is a bit of a hit and miss affair no matter how much due diligence you do. It's not entirely unlike being in love where first impressions are often blinded by the excitement of the potential journey ahead. In love the real partnerships dynamic often only start appearing about 18-24 months into the relationships, when the chemical reaction starts to calm down.

So the best advice I can give you is - based on having grown my business to 28 countries - this: don't get married immediately. Start working together on projects, initiatives, the first couple of clients, etc. Watch how each other behaves around matters related to money, responsibilities and rolling up their sleeves. I personally don't start doing agreements and contracts until about year 2 in a partnership when it is much clearer what each party brings to the table (assuming the parties are both still sitting at the table). Accordingly don't do exclusive agreements. This will obviously vary industry to industry.

How do you find the right love in your life?

• Go on many dates (work on projects together before cementing the marriage)
• Follow people on LinkedIn (what they post, how they engage, etc says a LOT about them as a human being)
• Try and find people who have a good heart first and foremost. That core you cannot change over time so best to time partners with a good heart and the right intentions.
• Be interested in THEM and THEIR future and not just use them as a vessel for your ambitions.
• Have an offering that taps both in their selfishness (i.e. growth) but also takes away a lot of their headaches (e.g. we are really good at online academies, course creation etc but crap at other things so we tend to partner with people who are great at other things and who appreciate our talent at online academies)
• Get introduced. Personal recommendations are a godsent (here's looking at you Annamaria Celeste ? and Paula Quinsee - you super connectors you!)... having said that, some of our best partnerships also come from us the most unexpected places (here's looking at you Ajmal Ramyar! How our little exchange on a LinkedIn post turned into an amazing partnership helping many amazing young girls in Afghanistan!)

2. Make sure partners are rewarded properly (up to 75% of the revenue.. yes. Really)

In the hope of helping you get a sense of our agreements, our partnership revenue split is often anything from 50/50 to 25/75 (25% to us, 75% to our partners) depending on the roles and responsibilities. My experience is that anything under 50% (very rough rule of thumb of course) to the partner usually ends up with them not being able to stick around as the time and energy investment is not worth it. For roles where the partner is under 50% (so let's say, 10-35%) I consider them suppliers and I encourage them to have multiple clients like us.

My experience is that when the partner gets 50-75% of the revenue they are much more invested in the initiative.

You might wonder how we can be so generous? Of course it depends on industry to industry, but in our case we did the effort calculations and realised that on the local partner in a country, region etc has actually much more to do than one things they do... here are a few examples:

• They are opening up their networks (anyone who has built up a network knows how much energy and time goes into building these things)! This is serious reputational investments they are doing and should be rewarded accordingly as they are essentially endorsing you (and in some ways the other way around too)
• They go to meetings, lunches, presentations etc and are your de-facto voice and ears on the ground and know how to localise your offering for maximum impact (and you have to make sure you are prepared to listen to them and heed their advice... because if you are just paying lip service to the concept of having a local partner that understands the local 'language' it will eventually show and you will lose them). This kind of advice is priceless!
• They are the local contractual party to the clients. This is a biggie. It saves you enormous costs in setting up and running and staffing a local company plus the ridiculous headaches that comes with being onboarded as suppliers to clients.
• They collect the payments. If you ever worked in debt collection you will know this isn't as painless as one sometimes assumes.
• They act as customer success managers, constantly checking in with the clients to assess happiness and get feedback. This can cost a ton of money and is very rarely done successfully on a remote basis. People build relationships with people they trust, and local people trust other locals to understand them better than any foreigner could. CSM is one of the most underrated roles in an organisation yet one of the most important one, not just in terms of keeping the relationship with the client, but also in terms of learning well ahead of your competitors what the clients would like to have one day which means you get access to amazing opportunities before they are publicly communicated (not in terms of insider trading of course! more in terms of you are part of a small circle where they are discussing ideas and needs before these are shared with the whole wide world).
• Your partner being locally based in FAR more plugged into what's happening on the ground than you will ever be.
• People do business with people regardless of how amazing your offering is. Obviously you need to deliver on the services, but companies trust individuals more than they do organisations. If done properly the local partner and your offering can be a fantastic combination.

A few caveats...

• You will have rough times in your partnership journeys. At the beginning it is all exciting and positive but the real test of a great marriage is if you stick together in tough times.
• Partners come and go... While you may love to have a partner for life, don't be too upset if things change. Try and not burn bridges. I have worked on and off with Jayshree Naidoo - one of the most amazing human beings I know - for over (I think?) 15 years. Sometime we work on projects together and sometime we don't, but there's total trust between us.
• ...and talking about trust: NEVER EVER breach trust. Fuckups do happen - they WILL happen. If you are honest, open and put them on the table even if your partners are upset eventually you will resolve things. Just don't hide things or lie. Ever (I have done that and it NEVER pays off)
• Know your cost really well and what you can and what you can't do. Like in any relationship if you don't know yourself well enough you'll end up - perhaps accidentally - taken advantage of. While it is nice to go out of your way for a partner and a project, remember that to be sustainable in the long run you both need to find the right gears. This is easily achieved by open and regular honest check-ins with each other.
• Try not to lose money or resources in the opportunities you are working on. I have personally given away much more than I should have and it costs me dearly but I knew the true cost (both resources, time and mental attention). You may not get paid but at least extract value. For example, when we launched the offering to cities a few years ago we said "Ok. We will do the academy bit but you Mrs City will do the promotion bit". This partnership worked really well as each knew roles and responsibilities and each got something out of the relationship.
• Never pay introduction commissions etc. I've lost track of the amount of people who want to introduce me to a project, company or organisation if I pay them a fee. That's not to say there's no value, but I prefer to give them roles and responsibilities in the project rather than a straight out payment.
• Make sure you are both protected. For example, in our case we supply and manage all the online academies but our partners manage all the legal and financial responsibilities locally. That means: they collect the money and transfer the net amount to us. We control the platform so if they don't pay us we switch it off. Both can hold each other accountable and both parties are protected. In some ways we are even less protected than our partners (technically they could start their own academies without us, but given that we share so much of our revenue with them they would have to be really bad at economics to want to do it - they could NEVER achieve the cost structures we have if they did it on their own (e.g imagine they had to create a whole online academy, film 200 courses, manage the students, support them etc. The cost of doing this plus staff to manage the project would be 100 times what we charge).
• Treat your partners as you would a treat a loved one. Have fun, remind them how much you appreciate them and in tough times be open and honest but not personal (i.e. don't attack). You want the inevitable hiccups in your journey to survive the test of time!
• Let them take the spotlight! They are NOT working for you... in fact I'd argue that you are working for them! Without you they can go on and do amazing things. Without them you are screwed.
• NEVER EVER backstab them. They were there to support you when you entered the market and now that you have grown big and famous you're thinking of dropping them in favour of a bigger local partner? Don't. It will come back to bite you hard (aside from being the wrong thing to do). Involve them in the bigger opportunities! You will ALWAYS need someone you can trust.
• It's ok to move on. Really. No harm done. You will meet each other again in the future!

Additional resources?

• Check our Peter Simoons, CSAP who is one of the world's leading authorities when it comes to understanding what works and what doesn't in terms of partnerships
• If you are facing challenges with your partners do this short free online course by the amazing Dr. Katrin Hinzdorf - https://www.thestartuptribe.org/courses/cofounder-challenges
• Get a mediator or mentor or experienced business person to give you a less biased and emotionally laden take on whatever mess you find yourself in. I used to ask my mother when she was alive: she had an amazing sense of people's honesty.
• Remember that most problems can be resolved with honest and clear communication. Sometime parties feel taken advantage of but don't share it so build up resentment so do have an open chat, really listen to the other parties and try and work out something. Do not throw agreements etc at someone but rather focus on what they are really saying.

Hope this was of help!

Yours

York, Don Capuccino, earl of Espresso