Ep 333: Key Business Relationships You Need

There are critical relationships within business that if you want to succeed exponentially, you need to have. There’s a level you cannot go to by yourself.

If you have a dream, you better find a team. I believe that’s the case in business. For a lot of us. We start our business and then it gets stuck and we wonder why it gets stuck. Typically it’s because you don’t have critical business relationships, people outside of just you and or even your inner circle, and that’s why it’s not going to go to the next level. You’re limited. Let’s put together this team that I’m talking about.

 

1. Suppliers and Manufacturers

if you have a product, you might have somebody who’s creating that for you. You might be a reseller. These people are going to help you get your product, something that you can sell either as a reseller, or something you are having manufactured.

 

2. Contractors

For example, if you’re in real estate, you have contractors. They help you build buildings, get your steel beams, concrete pours, etcetera. There’s countless contractors you would use if you were a developer.

Even in the consulting realm, you have contractors that you may use. These are professionals and typically a very precise thing for you.

3. A Cabinet

The president has a group of people that each have a specialty, or at least they’re appointed to an office and they’re supposed to be a specialist. These are political appointments, and they should be. I’m going to give you just a few that you’d be wise to have.

Legal – somebody who gives you good legal advice. Setting up your initial Corporation. Patents and trademarks, intellectual properties. Partnership agreements, employee agreements and DAs non-disclosures, I can keep going down the line, but you’d be wise to have these professional services.
Accounting – your wife handling the books is not going to be indefinite for a company that has any potential to grow to the next level
Tech Support – Programmers

 

4. Employees

These are people that perform the tasks of your day-to-day operations, from opening the doors to packaging products. Most larger companies have employees.

Your ability to effortlessly staff your company is critical to your success.
And you could get a brain surgeon easier than certain high-skilled trades that we offer.

 

5. Partners

Ppartnerships is how I get expertise. Partnership is how I understand industries.

I typically am pretty good at seeing the need and demands of a market. But from that point on, I’m helpless. So generally, my strategy is I have a business idea and then I find someone to partner with. Then I go forward with the business. Ideas are great, but ideas without the ability to implement them leads to business failure.

 

6. Banking

You must have banking relationships. I work with four different banks within my companies and personal finances. I don’t want my personal banking to know everything, so I kind of have my personal banking, and I have my personal savings, which are separate, and then I bank specifically with three banks for my companies. I don’t want the left hand knowing what the right-hand is doing all the time. I want them always fighting for my business and merchant services. I look at as a completely separate part of my banking, because I want to get a favorable rate when we run credit card charges. your regular bank might be very, very high and you might find someone else you can get lower rates.

Capital One gives us 2% back when we spend over a million dollars on material a year, so that’s like twenty-something thousand dollars back, just as a gift.

You effortlessly get a line of credit if you need it from them. You just want a banking relationship where you really feel like they’re helping your business.

 

7. Mentor

there is no downside to having a business mentor. It doesn’t mean you need to pay for one either. They could be somebody that you’re listening to, like my podcast on my Saturdays, where I share with you as a CEO what I know or my interviews when I kind of speak to CEOS and founders and aspiring CEOS on everything that I learned the hard way. I share with you more failures and victories.

Get yourself a mentor. Find someone that you could take the coffee once a month and just bounce ideas off of before you implement something! Get their feedback. It will absolutely help you.

8. Joint Ventures

Can you do a joint venture with another company? Can you partner with somebody?

Two companies working together is becoming more and more common. We’ve seen this with personalities like rap stars and sneaker companies

 

9. Investors

These are people that will help you fund your company to the next level, and they’re going to get a piece of the company. I always say, sometimes zero times zero is zero. That’s what you’re currently doing. If you get no more money, you’re not going anywhere.

So sometimes you have to have an investor to go to that next level, and you need to consider that.