what makes partnerships last?
Good Words: “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”
At some point, you might find yourself marrying the person of your dreams.
“Okay, but what does marriage have to do with business?”
Well, you can find yourself in a partnership for your business too. And both types of relationships can rock your world — for better or worse.
So it’s probably good to know what makes these long-lasting, committed relationships successful.
Because statistically, marrying the right person has a 0.71 correlation to life satisfaction.
(Don’t believe me? Read the study.)
No, that’s not 100 %. But it’s still high enough to think twice before you tie the knot. And if you’re already married, this might be a good time to see if you’re still on the same page. Everybody can use a tune-up.
So, what makes a good marriage (or partnership) a good one?
John Gottman studied 3,000 + couples and can predict who makes it in the long-run with 90 % accuracy … in under 15 minutes.
He found successful marriages hinge on talking through six subjects:
Marriage Topics
- Money: Budget? Savings goals?
- Kids: Yes or no? If yes, how many?
- Sex: How often?
- Time: How much time do we want to spend together?
- Jealousy: Do we trust each other?
- In-Laws: How often do we see them? What’s their role?
Here are the business-partnership equivalents:
Co-Founder Topics
- Money → Fundraising / Runway: Raise pre-revenue, bootstrap, or bootstrap then raise with proof?
- Kids → Customers / Employees: Are customers king? When do we hire? How do we manage?
- Sex → Performance: How do we measure accountability?
- Time → Roadmap: What’s the 3-6 month plan?
- Jealousy → Competition: Who are our competitors? Do we even have any?
- In-Laws → Partnerships: Are we looking to partner with others?
It’s not about finding someone perfect or agreeing 100 % down the line — and it’s definitely not about settling. It’s about gauging where someone is coming from and setting expectations from day one.
I didn’t have these in mind until I answered the questions myself.
So dive into each subject now; otherwise, you might discover wildly different views after you’ve already committed, making it tough to bring two paths together.
When I learned about this, I applied it to both my marriage and my business partnership.
Just the act of bringing these topics up will give you far more insight than trying to invent your own framework from scratch.
It’s hard to build accurate reference points without a mountain of data on your side.
So don’t try to wing it on your first attempt.
Leverage John Gottman’s research and stack the deck in your favor.
— And, if you want to improve the other better half (aka, you), head over to readar.ai to find the right book to read next.
Keep seeking,
Michael
readar.ai