Short & Sweet reviews of our favorite books for entrepreneurs. This weeks review:
NINJA BOOK REVIEW: BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP ESSENTIALS
A Step-By-Step Action Plan For Succeeding in Business With A Partner.
by Dorene Lehavi, PhD
4 out of 5 NINJA STARS
If you are about to enter a partnership, you should take it as seriously as any other life commitment. In fact, many business coaches and teachers do compare getting business partners to getting married – and the reality is that most businesspeople spend more time with their business partners than they do with their spouses! Yet, the failure rate is shocking: in the USA about 50% of marriages end up in divorce while %70 of business partnerships fall apart. According to the book Business Partnership Essentials, if you understand that business problems are often related to psychology, to what the other calls “the relationship of business” you can get the odds of success back in your favor. The book has great advice for creating and saving business partnerships.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Many books about business partnerships are written by businesspeople, but in this case, an academic: Dorene Lehavi, PhD is a widely recognized expert on business partnership relationships, and serves as a trusted advisor to business owners worldwide. Her academic methodology brings scientific and intellectual wisdom to solving business partnership problems.
1 SENTENCE BOOK SUMMARY
“Business Partnership Essentials walks you through every phase of the process – from choosing the right partner and operating your business on a daily basis, all the way through to exit and planning for the unexpected.”
FAVORITE QUOTE
- “All business is about relationships, a place where feelings thrive.”
KEY TAKEAWAYS & QUOTES
- “Business is 20% technology and 80% psychology… or as I prefer to say, the “relationship of business.”
- “Business correlates to your very humanity. Although you may believe that you can take one part of you to work and keep the other part separate for your personal life, it is not possible.”
- “Putting personal gain aside in favor of what must be done, without counting hours and minutes of who will get more, will go a long way in making the partnership and business work well.”
- “Marriages and businesses are more alike than you may realize.”
- Soon after a partnership is formed, “problems arise as the broader, deeper issues of personality, personal goals, varying work styles, different visions and values, and issues such as risk tolerance and family life demands begin to surface.”
- “If partners are unable or unwilling to meet their challenges, their partnerships will be in jeopardy.”
- “Even the best partnerships will at some point face a communication breakdown.”
- “The main tool of communication is listening with the intent to hearand even try to see another person’s viewpoint.”
- “There’s no good reason to rush to the business partnership altar.”
- “Chances are that you will spend more with your business partner than you do with your spouse, so taking the time to make a smart choice is crucial.”
- “Keeping things unsaid requires energy.”
- “The high statistics of failure point to potential partners ignoring their own intuitive knowledge or ‘gut feelings”that something is not right.”
- “Talk about every issue on the spot, or as soon as possible.”
- “If the conversation becomes emotional or difficult for any reason, invest in a coach to facilitate. The return on investment can be saving your partnership and your business.”
- “The most important key to success that all partners must know about from the beginning and do forever is to keep the conversation going using highly skilled communication tools.”
OUR NINJA OPINION
While promoted as a step-by-step guide to forming partnerships that work, this book is really more about the psychology of partnerships. Although it may not be as practical as other books we have covered such as The Partnership Charter, which is full of workbook-style exercises and agreement templates, Business Partnership Essentials does cover the extremely important aspects of emotions and communication. As far as we are concerned, you can’t read enough books about partnerships before getting into one! This one is worth the read.
