You choose to have clients instead of bosses, you start a venture and you come up with the great idea of incorporating your partner into your financial freedom plans. When you tell your family and friends, almost everyone has the same point of view: "You fucked up, entrepreneurship will end up ruining your relationship." I firmly believe in the principle of "what you focus on expands" and you begin to see many signs that your decision is not the right one. You catch an article that says in its title "90% of startups fail in the first year. " Again, what you focus on expands.
You start to finance and form the business with your partner, deciding to distribute 50-50 of the profits, reinvest them and make this baby called "new company" grow up healthy and strong. But nothing goes quite right. You argue, you feel that you are stagnant, you consider giving up and doing something on your own, you feel weak or you feel that your partner is weak and you begin to transfer work problems to life as a couple. You are looking for motivational phrases even from Paulo Cohelo to strengthen your posture and believe in entrepreneurship as a couple. Your life and your relationship are in crisis, you have to make difficult decisions; you think: "or is the company, or is the relationship." You realize that your friends and that article you read were right.
Okay, so do you want to tell me that being a couple is not a good idea?
It is not a good idea if you do what 90% of people who fail do. You must want to be in the remaining 10% that, I assure you, as a couple are having a great time. Entrepreneurship as a couple can be the most wonderful and powerful experience in the world, only if they choose to do so. Note that I said "decide it," which means that you both must be committed to success.
I understand, only by committing ourselves to success will we achieve success. I don't know, Nicko, how something is missing…
Exact. Committing to success involves engaging in many areas of your life - sorry - in their lives, and I assure you it will be a beautiful process, but not an easy one.
What are those areas, Nicko? Do not make so many detours, that I do not like to read so much.
Well, I will give you some tips to start as a couple, which I have lived through pure and raw personal experience. Read it calmly with your partner, make this a topic of conversation and, with all my heart, I hope it will help you to read it, just as it is helping me to write it.
Tip # 1: Analyze your thoughts about money
Even if it is a charity to save puppies and kittens at risk, money is important. Very important. And they must know how to get it, manage it, invest it, save it and spend it. But to do this they must be honest about what they think about money. I know many who ramble on the idea that "money is not the most important thing" and ironically they never have money. The attraction principle explains that you attract what you really think, so if your thoughts about money are negative, they will never have money, and without money puppies and kittens do not eat or heal or operate or hold on until you get them home. If as a couple, one of you thinks that money is bad or corrupts people, then you will not be generating abundance,because within their thoughts they will limit themselves to generating enough to survive. Re-evaluate your position, determine that money is good in your life. Improving your perceptions of money will prevent you from arguing about money.
Tip # 2: Build concepts together
The personal, spiritual and mental growth of each one is very important. Every day you should do something that improves some aspect of your life. But just as important as that is that both go hand in hand and build concepts about skills and thoughts that can be real pillars in their projection as partner-partners. Creating concepts is like creating the foundation of a construction. And you must want to create a building, an empire, so your foundation must be broad, solid, and deep. We did this exercise with my partner since we started being a couple and it has been very beneficial: It has endured emotional and circumstantial earthquakes, and the wonderful thing is that we are still building them. If the foundation is solid, what you build on it will never crumble.
Tip # 3: Be Complicit
There is nothing more rewarding than being in conversation with a client and that, even if you are giving wrong information and your partner knows it, he does not correct you on the fly. I made the mistake of not being an accomplice to my partner on one occasion and thanks to that I understood how important it is to give the other the benefit of being wrong. This does not mean that you do not talk to your partner later, it simply means being complicit and recognizing the moment to correct the mistake as a couple.
Tip # 4: Define your roles by knowing your strengths
There is a phrase that has helped me a lot: "Why shipwreck in defects when I can navigate in the virtues", which means that you highlight the good things of your partner and use it for the benefit of entrepreneurship, instead of emphasizing that you do not it serves the rest of the things. Read this: - My love, I recognize in you your facility to organize your times and your speed to solve problems by focusing on them without being distracted. You are better than anyone at it, would you like to be in charge of serving customers? She may or may not accept the position, however she will still feel recognized with those skills and the best thing is that she will enhance them even more! Remember to navigate in the virtues of your partner. They will avoid many ego and ability problems by doing that exercise.
Tip # 5: Power up your partner
I know many couples who do not enhance each other and their breakup is a time bomb. I will not doubt that you love your partner, but do you enhance it? This concept is key to undertaking anything together or separately. Empowering your partner means not only supporting him morally and wishing him well. It is also influencing your life, completing it, being a reference in some things that help you move forward and, above all, trusting your dreams. When you empower your partner, you see the opportunity to learn from each experience and apply that learning in their lives. You are that voice that says "dare" when everyone says "don't do it". You will see how wonderful it is to give and receive this in your life.
Tip # 6: Don't be jealous, admire yourselves
The personal progress of our partner may awaken uncomfortable feelings in ourselves. Depending on how you manage these feelings, your future entrepreneurship will be favorable or unfavorable. I adopted the position of a person I met who said "there are always two ways of seeing things" and that phrase is one of the most powerful in the management of my life. If your partner progresses more than you in any way, you have two ways of labeling that feeling: it's either jealousy or it's admiration. If it is jealousy, you will not only argue with your partner and assume a victim role, but you will also stagnate in your own progress. But when you admire your partner from the heart, your actions are aimed at emulating her, both in attitude and in action, and you learn so much from the person you love the most that you end up loving her the most.We can always make the right choice.
Tip # 7: Don't criticize yourself, get your bearings
We fall - I say this because I make this mistake a lot - in the position of criticizing when our partner has a series of attitudes, thoughts or actions that are harmful or not very skillful. Not everyone takes criticism very well, so it is more recommended to get your bearings. Also that when you criticize, even with the best intentions, it can sound very hard without wanting to be. It's frustrating to be explaining afterwards that you didn't mean to say anything in a bad way. It is better to orient yourself, to change the language towards something that you build.
Tip # 8: Acknowledge the achievements and efforts of the other
We all like and are motivated by sincere recognition, especially from someone we admire. We work hard to undertake, we deserve that among us we are encouraged to keep going, to always give our best in our ideas (remember to be empowered?) And to be rewarded for it. It is not a bad idea to go out to celebrate a triumph over something they did well as a team with lunch or dinner, a walk or a few drinks prepared.
Tip # 9: Read lots of books, watch lots of videos, listen to audiobooks
Doing activities that are related to undertaking, growing and progressing is very important, just as it is very important that you do it together. Reading business or self-improvement articles, such as T. Harv Eker's "Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, " or Robert Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" will go a long way in your personal and financial training. Also seeing the lectures by Tokoi Kenji, Carlos Slim and some other hero of business and personal condition is a very enriching activity. The idea is that they are committed to their success, their progress and what needs to be done to achieve it.
Tip # 10: Love each other a lot every day of your life
Entrepreneurship as a couple is an entertaining, stressful, demanding, wonderful experience and that on many occasions will challenge us as a couple. It is good to commit to success, but the greatest success is that despite everything they must go through as a couple, they love each other a lot and every day of their lives. Surround yourself with positive people you can admire and feel good about sharing. May the romanticism, the party and the surprises break the routine from time to time, allow yourself moments of intimacy, moments of sharing with yourself and talking about things that are not business… such as, for example, this wonderful article.
