Do you have business partner meetings in your business? Way too often, businesses fail with partners because of a lack of communication. Business partner meetings are the best way to stay on the same page with your partner, no matter who it is.
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Listen: Business Partner Meetings
Watch: Business Partner Meetings
Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer. You can find this and 400 other answered questions in this series on our YouTube channel.
Do You Have Business Partner Meetings?
Business partner meetings. Do you have meetings with your business partner in your small business? Way too often, and I work with house cleaners all day, every day, who go into business with their spouses or with their parents or with their kids or their siblings, and then the business just starts falling apart because there’s a lot of gray area of who’s going to do what.
So this series is to help clarify all of that and to break it down and make it simple so that if you decide to go into business with someone you know, like, or trust, that at the end of the business, you still have a business and you still know, like, and trust them.
The Catch to Being Partners With Someone You’re Familiar With
Here’s the biggest catch about going into business with somebody that you know, and it’s that you say, “Oh, well, I’m so familiar with them. We’ll just build the business as we go,” right? It’s so easy to do that. But the reality is if you’re bringing a business partner in, this is a business decision. It’s not personal anymore.
So although they might be your mom or your dad, or your son, or your cousin or whomever, this is not a family reunion. This is not dinner, okay? This is a business meeting, and a business meeting needs to be treated like a business meeting. What does that mean?
It means it needs to be on your calendar and it needs to be held at the same time every single week so both of you can expect it no matter where you are and you don’t plan things around it.
I Have a Weekly Meeting With My Mom
Now, this coming Monday at 4:00 PM, I’m going to have a meeting with my mom. And you go, “What? A meeting with your mom?” It’s true. But here’s the thing, I’m a really busy business owner and Mom’s a really busy mom and grandma. And so if I’m going to have a conversation with her, it is on my calendar and it happens every Monday at 4:00 PM, no matter where we are in the world.
Now, the reason this works is because no matter what happens, she knows, “Hey, Monday at 4:00, I’m going to get a call,” and she is on the phone Monday at 4:00. And I know that no matter where I am in the world, Monday at 4:00, I’m going to call my mom, right? It’s on my calendar. And it’s not that she can’t call me at other times of the week. She can, and I can call her and she will take my call, but on Monday at 4:00 PM, I know I’m going to be meeting with my mom. Okay?
I Meet With My Husband About Business as Well
Tuesday I met with my husband, who is my business partner. This is really interesting and important for this reason. We’ve been business partners for 20 years. And as we’ve been business partners, there is a meeting every single week that is separate from the rest of our entire lives.
So this is not I’m getting dressed in the morning and we’re sharing the same bathroom or whatever and we’re having a conversation. This is a meeting where we sit down and we go over the books of the business, where we talk about the employees, where he shares with me his responsibility, stuff that he did in the business this week, and I share within the stuff that I did this week.
That’s the time where we talk and we spin ideas. “Hey, what are you working on? Do you have any challenges? Is there anything I need to know about? Is there anything in your business that I could lend some extra care to?”
We Have a Prayer List in Our Business
And in our business, we actually have a prayer list. “Is there something in our business we’re praying for this week? Is it a person, a person’s family member, a person’s parent, a customer, or an issue of our business?”
And I know that sounds weird and kind of woo-woo if you’re not a spiritual person, but for us, I don’t even need to explain to him what it is. I just have this running list of these things that need extra special care and attention this week in order for everything to go swimmingly in our business.
So we do that every single week, and it’s been every Tuesday for the last several years. For several years, we met on Thursday and then we had to change the day. But the point is this, every single Tuesday, I know we’re going to have that meeting. So if I’m crunching to my deadlines, on Monday, I say, “Oh, I have to hurry and get this done because I got to report something back on Tuesday.”
We Have Meetings for Measurability
The reason for having the meeting is measurability. And so if you have a series of roles that you play in the business, that means I’m not going to play those same roles if that’s what you’re doing, right? But there’s a meeting where we sit down and we check in with each other, “How are you doing in your roles?” So I’m holding them accountable and they’re holding me accountable.
It’s like somebody turning in a progress report at the end of the week, or in the cleaning business when we have a customer who then turns in their payment and they turn in a rating and review, that means the job is done. They’re not going to give us a callback or whatever, the job is completely closed out. We have held our cleaner accountable for that job, right?
If there’s no accountability, weird stuff happens as cleaners will disappear in the middle of a business day, we may or may not get paid for that job. There’s all this weird kind of gray area stuff that happens if there’s no accountability. Having a business partner is accountability. “Did you do what you said you’re going to do in the business this week?”
You Need Crystal Clear Boundaries in Your Business
Now, you say, “But he’s your husband. Why would you talk to your husband that way?” Well, the reason he is my husband is that I do talk to him that way because we have crystal clear boundaries and measurability for our business. After 20 years, he’s still my husband, right?
I’ve seen so many house cleaning businesses that just blow up and explode because both parties thought the other person was going to kind of do everything and then no one was accountable. And then when the accountability tried to happen, like, “Hey, did you do what you said you were going to do? Well, I thought you were going to do it“. Then there’s blaming and back and forth and nitpicking and fighting and disagreements. Then the business explodes, right?
It Has to Be Run as a Business to Work
So if you are going to have a business and if it’s going to take off and if it’s going to work long-term, it has to be run like a business. And so where do you draw the line? Because like my husband it is not my business. My husband is only part of my business, right?
I have another whole life with him where we go traveling around the world. We do fun things and we hang out and we eat dinner and we watch movies, and it has nothing to do with business.
And so we have to compartmentalize, but when we sit down on Tuesday and we have that meeting, it’s all business, okay? We sit down and we bring all this stuff out that we’re working on.
Sometimes Business Partner Meetings Aren’t Planned
Now, it’s okay, like I said, it’s okay if I talk to my mom during the week, it’s okay if I talk to my husband during the week. I remember one night I went into the bed and I was standing there, I was fully clothed standing there at the end of the bed and I just was kind of in a daze. And my husband said, “Oh my goodness, we can’t wait until Tuesday. You have to tell me what’s going on.”
And I said, “I’m really struggling with this particular thing in my business.” And he said, “Is it something that I need to help you with?” And I said, “No, this is something that I’m in charge of. I just, I’m at a loss. I don’t know what the answer is.”
And so he said, “Well you can share with me what’s going on and I could come up with an answer.” And so I shared with him what it was and at the end, he said, “I don’t have an answer either.” And I said, “Okay, great. I just wanted to share that, and then let’s both be on the lookout for an answer.”
We were able to discuss it where it didn’t bleed into our family time, right? I was able to bring it up briefly and we were able to kind of figure it out. “Let me think about it, let me sleep on it. Let me mull over it for a couple of days,” without it wrecking our life and consuming all our energy or us having a big blowout fight over it or whatever.
The Reason We Treat Our Business Like a Business
And so the reason, the reason we treat our business like a business is so that it responds to us as a business. And in that, if you have a business partner, you must have business meetings where everything that they do during the week is accountable to you and everything that you do during the week is accountable to them.
That way you’re both playing on the same page and you both show up with renewed enthusiasm because you know I’m not doing all the work myself. “Oh, I thought that was your job.” Nitpick blame, right? It’s everybody’s bringing their A-game to the table. And when you show up at that meeting, it is empowering. It is enlightening. It is inspiring. So that’s how that works.
Resources
Business Partnership Essentials: A Step-by-Step Action Plan for Succeeding in Business With a Partner – https://amzn.to/3g7iP2A
When Your Business Partner is Your Spouse: How to Have a Successful Business AND a Happy Marriage – https://amzn.to/3itpaH4
Forming a Successful Business Partnership: The 9 Things You MUST Consider When Starting a Small Business with a Partner and Creating a Business Partnership Agreement – https://amzn.to/3cNYNZ5
Strategic Business Partner: Aligning People Strategies with Business Goals – https://amzn.to/3x6g7A7
Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You – https://amzn.to/3pBmSHs
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