Someone asked me last week about partnerships and whether I am for them or against them.

Well as you know I’ve had many partners. Some have been incredible and some haven’t.

It’s taken me a while to learn how to set them up properly — and nowadays I vet mostly by track record and follow through.

If someone is transactional, I don’t want to partner with them. If someone is going to be an utter failure without the partnership, I don’t want to partner with them.

If someone doesn’t have serious utility to add to the equation — utility that is very hard or impossible to find — I don’t want to partner with them.

Some of my early deals were more indicative of my confidence (or lack of) than the utility of partnership.

You can’t make a good deal with the wrong person.

Vet and check every angle you can before jumping in, including meeting in person (and multiple times) if possible.

Most partnerships end in ruin.

Not due to malfeasance or abuse but rather unequal distribution of skillsets and responsibilities.

One partner gets lazy. Or stops growing. Or gets selfish & out of alignment.

50/50 partnerships are almost always bad unless there is a CLEAR captain. The gridlock on 50/50 is not ideal.

Structurally sound partnerships have captains. If there is a tie — one person makes the call and everyone rallies.

Treat every partnership deal as if you can’t get out of it. This will properly tighten up your filter.

If I know I’m “stuck” with you for 10 years, it’ll slow us down and we’ll make the right long term call.

The partners I’m building with now are 100 year people.

Beware opportunists and don’t be an opportunist yourself. The greatest relationships are born out of service and maintained from service.

At one point in my career — I only prioritized people who could give me opportunity.

That life is not to be desired and I updated my operating system as soon as I felt other people doing that to me.

Humans are humans not scoreboards.

And final secret: the bigger your mission, the bigger and higher class people you will attract.

You don’t have to have a big business to have a big mission. But you must have a big mission to steward a big business.

-T